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CHAP man
my wife says
Who you chatting
to I tell her
A girl on facebook
NO
a woman
I'm not sure She is almost
25 but she looks 17
Her name is Sarah
My wife says
How come so many
females like your poems
I said
I don't know maybe because
I'm sensitive
to light
and my skin is
ghost
white some people say
I'm almost
HOLY and my friends lean
in real
weird when I talk
As if any second
I'm going
to give them
answers
or ask
an important question
that makes the night
sky shiver like another
life
dancing with cool kids
I can hear
the single woman
next door
Our new neighbour
moving in
throwing tools pulling
tape that
smacks off
the roll
She scrapes her teeth
along the wall
She
hurts
her breast
against the bedpost
I'm talking
to Sarah She won't admit
her poems are good
Her messages are
short like
lines of coke Her poems
are good
but she won't
admit
they are good
that is why
I am standing on
the roof
tOday
Just remembered today's poem
Was going to be about the time I fell
Into a sewer
And waited in shit-gasping
Darkness for days for help to come
And that no one
In my family remembers this
As far as they're concerned it didn't happen
It's a fucking scary thought for me right now
But that memory is as real as this as
real as me here stoned pushing
Out a poem not sure if I care that you care if this is sunshine or
dirty dick stench
My mom asleep
My dad asleep
Our gay cat eating invisible chicken in the haunted living room
The copying and pasting of poems from one box to another
My anxious neighbour
Flushing his toilet every 15 minutes
Best DAD in the WORLD
There was a man in the park today
He looked like the best dad in the world
His daughters' looping
Laughter on the swings he smiled like it was easy
Like it wasn't lifting a bag full of sad people
It was a red leaf blowing off the library steps
He was obviously
A very clean dad with lots of skills
Such as fixing things
And making women happy
I considered flicking the shitty
Baby-wipe off the bench
But the thought of it made me feel angry at the mysteries of life
The man was goofing around he didn't
Care who was looking because
He was having fun with his children
I studied his comic timing
Memorized his clothes
Not once did his handsome face
Scrunch and flicker
With a n
x i e
t y
First the ginger girl
Kicked him up the arse
Then the brown-haired girl
Kicked him up the arse
Swinging and giggling
Like it was
Falling and crying
Cross road with MEEEEeeee
I am not crippled with anxiety
Didn't walk out in front of that
red car on purpose.
My body
is clean, friends
Compare me to a glass of water.
I am not
thinking about heroin.
Mother calls me 'The
Grand
Piano'
I
have
never been
Freaked
out
by genitals
Edwin
Laughing at his trainers in the changing rooms
Look at my cheap trainers he chuckled
But the other boys had big hairy
Dicks in the showers
One of them had a tattoo on his fat red bicep
I thought it was a horse with an Afro
But it was a crappy wolf
With the moon behind its head
Edwin
Shouldn't smoke weed
Because Paranoid Schizophrenia
Because his older brother
Smothered an old lady with a pillow
Because of the cross he branded into his forehead
With a glowing butterfly knife
I remember his toothless
Parents brought their collection
Of snakes into school
Stupid snakes laughed Edwin
Look how poor we are
My parents have been wearing
Those nasty clothes for weeks
They smell like forgotten groceries
But the other kids
Had sexy legs and they said Ew Yuck
When our sassy biology teacher
Squeezed green shit
Out of the dead pig's anus
I told my therapist
That we used to stand by the pond
Because Edwin felt
Peaceful there
Sharing my cheese and cucumber sandwiches
I wonder why I think about him so much
© Bobby Parker 2013
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