Foolish / Grown-Up Stuff

Featuring a pair of rambling poems

we’ll be right back!

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Foolish

who's the fool, fueled by a desire for 
the fool is fractured, on a quest for a MacGuffin
absurd, right, yes, just, so, absurd, but
the fool is stretchy, Mr. Fantastic,
not as smart
who's the fool, surrounded by pylons, there're're're um,
houses, yes, houses, McMansions, origami unfolding
into swans, not the exotic ones, just a flaunting goose
could've said ugly duckling, who's the fool, someone
who wishes
because i said so, temperance, tantrums
crying during mini golf
but always loves the sky worlds, one more
chariot derailing, one more (please)
empress proud, one more
hanging pear, one more(?)
go to sleep, darling

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Grown-Up Stuff

give me the sound of real life

i shot nerf bullets, running through caution
tape and gashing my head in the corner of
a glass table inside a glass house that i loved
to watch outside the windows from at night,
i would wake up, my paranoid mind and see
a black sedan crawling about the cul de sac,
our neighbors kept bees, i’ve been stung thrice
and i’m only now growing unafraid,
there are many things i’ve stepped on to get 
here, i’ve stepped on nails and glass and 
lego bricks and wasps and yes bees,
many things rest forever on the ground as i
keep walking, i watched a baby robin twitch
on the ground, swarmed by flies, but only 
after i watched it and held it and 
fed it and needed it and loved it,
but i was only a kid, and last night we saw
a crane flying in the green sky so i guess
life does go on, only in other ways,
you don’t see fireflies anymore, right,
but the other night i saw them off the highway
in a field so i know they still exist, they seemed 
happy but different, still beautiful, i am
relearning a lot of things, my cousin 
took an edible at my tenth birthday party
and i understand why, nobody wants to see
a kid unwrapping the lego set you can’t have,
so just chew and be a good example, i am
the youngest and most confused,
i am living a life i’ve seen already, swallowing
baby blues and hoping the rest
of the day goes down with them

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