I AM MY NIGHTMARE MIRROR

   I love you and I love the hair on your arms and knuckles and how you never look happy    I love when I catch you at the barber shop and you’re sitting next to me and I can see the thin strands of your facial hair from up close    I love your sideburns and I love your moustache also how your eyebrows are all thick and connected, and make your face so expressive      I love your tribal tattoo on the biceps and how your lips never glisten so the curvature of your hips and their synergy with your shoulders    You’re so small and so incredibly fragile with no woes to inspire pity always ready for an act of cowardice      Show your claws with the automatic    Make me feel like a stupid bat    Laugh at me, 6 feet under, blare my organs for juice      I love you, but I love you more when you’re looking at me    Your eyes don’t deserve to be so green or your skin so sensitive to the sun    Everybody can see you’re allergic to the silver of your links and that you like me at least enough to s

    A birthday like any other    as special as they come    Woke up with the flu    now I can’t do the laundry    Drink my tea, avoid coffee    Maybe roomie will come at noon -  Gotta clean all this poo    and pee, special Betsy    At least someone is happy to see me      Mom remembered, like every year    Gave me the same line as always    Same I’ve heard over 21 times now    Didn’t answer my call, nobody did    Nobody so far, to wake me up at midnight    shake my shoulders and say...    It’s 8a.m. on a Saturday and my bones hurt      Too weak for chores    too sick for ice cream    Dog ate the modem cord     “Lie in bed all day    cartoons will take you away    from this world of chest pains    and misery and oblivion”    But my back hurts, 1800 hours    Nobody else is home and I’m crying    Needed out of there    Went out to smell a cigar    and the cold winds of a wintry weekend    But the drunk kids were laughing at me    Sitting alone, at the empty park    My head hurts, my eyes