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The common domestic pair,
Measured in units of misery,
Not happiness, not love.
The heaviest moments tip the scales,
And all the airy, ethereal ecstasy
Cannot be the ballast
That brings us back together
In the face of such despair.
It fills a room like humidity,
So dense the doors stick
In their swollen jambs
And make slamming less of a period,
More of an ellipsis,
So that we somehow manage the building up
And cannot fathom the breaking apart
When all that weight, that dense element
Falls around us,
Shaking our foundation.

It's much easier to share

• It's much easier to share
  Sadness on common shoulders,
  To settle tragic memory
  Like incense in a room,
  Than the perfume
  That is Joy.
  
  
  That pleasant, fresh-baked
  Happiness is less,
  Just less, and distress
  Is such sweet punch to swallow.
  
  
  I should have sensed
  The heady lingering scent
  Is too great, that its
• Pesky presence seems a slight.
• It's not. It assists as it stings
• To smooth the lines
• Binding two distinct times,
• Soothes as it bites.

figures

Carly

Beans

Nora, Janessa

Sarah, Justine, Elise

Claire

Leah 2

Leah

Melissa, Katherine, Ivana, Nikki

Megan

Thank you, Sunday

Let's sing a song for Sunday,

Chanteuse, nocturnal muse,

And night-nurse.

We couldn't hate you,

Your wake-up call so sweet,

The anti-lullaby.

Thanks for singing us awake

For morning smokes, and meditations

On snow-crusted granite.

Thanks for staying up--

Listening to snores

And finishing our puzzles--

Warming your voice for sunrise.

Tony Degan

Tony Degan, Tony Degan, next time

You take my lunch money

I’m going to tell my brother because

People like you

Deserve

To get the shit beat out of them

Sometimes, too

stephen & claire

The mouse's mouth

Forbidden bits

The mouse's mouth

Forever seems to seek

The cheeky mouse

For choicest cheese

Is anything but meek

They found, these

Sixteen, seventeen

Blind, brown mice

The nicest bits

The bestest bits

(Are these new bits

If they've bitten before?)

Do their blind, blue eyes

Know the difference?

Would they nibble

Anyway, a little bitter

To sniff and whisper

"I've had better"

And blink, forget,

Proceed?

december war

our voices can't bring us back together.

i've lost not a battle but a war.
the only way out is through
except that's hardly ever really the case, is it?
the only way out is to turn back!
and to keep going is basically certain death,
saying the only way out is through
is really just accepting that you're fucked,
because you're so far fucked
that you can't even turn back.

jamo

Now with purpose

When a shiny silver surface
Made her shudder like a circus
Tightrope walker, now with purpose,
Now with worry, now with nerves as
She could barely see the curves of
Her own face, did she deserve this,
To be made to shake and shiver
--strange, the mix of pain and pleasure
--Like she felt upon her very frame
The hushed but heavy dancing
Of a ghost across her grave?

sketchbook 2