Not that I’ve tapped into your webcam or anything, but leave your loose change between those ugly couch cushions.

Today, I give you two free poems for the price of one free one. This weekend, expect a free story based on a wet plate collodion image of mine. Or two.

And put some clothes on. Nobody wants to see that.

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Bountiful Hours

Open only during Bountiful Hours

Read the sign twice she says

She held a door already open

.  .  .

First times never enough

Lost in mere overabundance

During Bountiful Hours

.  .  .

Blessed offerings cast

Offered blessings on face reflected

Time becomes ours

.  .  .

Apologies overstayed

Boundary blurs from time to times

Door swings time decreases

.  .  .

Release a most grateful prayer

Her embrace of my darkest places

Until bright blessings return closed

–   –   –   –

He is Probably in Baltimore

He is probably in Baltimore

Selling or buying drugs used

After his failed marriages

.  .  .

Sleeping with any things that move

Remaining long enough still

Leaving traces of a presence

.  .  .

He never calls us

He never calls for us

Never know known knowing  

.  .  .

How does love give and accept giving?

He just takes takes takes because

He is formed from bad seed that is all

.  .  .

We did not do all we could to raise him

A lot of hope is uneasy

Life fills with stretched little hopes  

.  .  .

Good kids who do not call

Confuse the best of us parents

Bad kid failures are explainable

.  .  .

We don’t care where he is or would be

Just that he is barely existing

Never without

.  .  .

Just when closure waves

A cry a laugh over shared family photographs

We notice signs of life again

.  .  .

And we realize

He never fully stays away

Goodbyes don’t carry weight

.  .  .

Worse than an invalid ghost

You take up stale space

You can’t even make the phone ring

.  .  .

Some days you would be better dead

A place to plan a family visit

Exorcised to a final resting place

.  .  .

We think of all our kids

In this manner

Otherwise you things grow unmanageable

.  .  .

The kids we never had

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