Lifeguard Lauren

Sure, Swimming every other day wouldn't be
half as nice without you there
to talk with

Yes, You smile when I joke and you look
at me with bigger and bigger
eyes still

Almost like the water that bubbles zeros
into the gutter, like bowling
or something

Girl, I know you know I know your face
sank when I told you about
valentines

with my girlfriend

Hey, I just wanted to enjoy your company
and keeping your heart around
to use MWF

So when you see the rings from the bottom
of the pool and I'm drowning
you can get it fast

enough

Please, Don't cry at the Busstop, on a game show
or on the plane, at your wedding
for me.

I played a game enough for both of us
and I lost in over time,
my bets lost.

Oh Wow

You know. I am elbows deep in poetry
I say I know it. I can breathe it
I teach it and tease it.

But what you didn't know
is that I didn't know it
like you do.

I learned it moments before you and
i talk like I have known it a lifetime
like some soap opera star. memorizing

lines from pages written by
old white men
who pretend to be young women

I will so soon be that man
pretending to identify with you
girl, you know it's true

you fake thing
when you read this, old man
don't pretend you are still young

you're not. Act your age.
Act like a fucking adult.
Quit playing those kids games.

You can't write. stop trying
you are nothing without me.
You are nothing without this.

You don't live alone,
You don't get to stay up late
you're kidding yourself

you are a joke.

During Superbowl XLIII

hush those hiccups
beneath the Gothic gazebo
the lassitude of liberty's love
won't save your emollience

my mind harbors of memory
a rhapsody of pelagic offing
that lagoon's luxuriant odalisque
the quintessential scintillation

I glow in joy
sunflowers smashed to smithereens
Twinkling tintinnabulation twinkle in
twilight

Oh zining sempiternal sound
your loquacious laughter licks
the sticky lollipop of my ear
and bounces the jejune kangaroo on my knee

what a game. what. a. game.