Poetry - Okay

when a character asks
'are you okay?'
shouldn't you look around
at the true friends you lack
and ask why,
and where,
and how

you lost them?

why you pushed
yourself
apart

took solace in a machine,
faceless but for pixels
heartless but for contrived,
scripted compassion;
an illusion,
a ruse,
a fake

you should recall:

real people do
have worth
enough

to ask 'are you okay?'
with genuine regard,
and to understand,
even when the answer is
'i can't be'
'i'm not'
'no'

Poetry - The Waiting Game

the waiting game slips
from one couple to the next
leering certainly

until they aren't couples;
they are one, singular couple

relationships melting into
a spectrum of color,
mingling blurry hot and cold

waiting, the game is not partial
to any one person, but all persons

divides created by
misunderstood calculations
of opposing gender

she waits, he doesn't notice
until me time becomes my time

replacing our time

the game never claimed
its rules' fairness, only that
it repeat the roll of the dice

each time, each couple
lucky snake eyes

Poetry - Away

needing time with you
without him
without them
makes me selfish

mirrorimage
and
transition

i don't know what to say
i'm across from him
wraught-iron interlocking, pole blocking
you fetching napkins

sex replaces friendship
i know.
i'm there.
lust in place of love
oedipus latches on

wrong drink
drunk from
white chocolate bonds
tethered to him and
skirting around catty, petty

but we've always been that way

maybe i was in love with
someone unexpectedly expected
stranger than you and not;
a work of fiction

he's gone
she's gone
i'm gone

away