It seems so rare that any of us
come together wholly formed
We’re like junk yard robots
pieced together at random
a rusted slinky for one arm a
used toiled brush for the other
caved in football helmets for heads
while our mouths are out of tune harmonicas
wheezing Auld Lang Syne
We have cracked Ker Plunk towers
for torsos and Niagra Falls place mats
for our chests while our organs are
combinations of tattered bed sheets and
greasy fast food wrappers
Except for our hearts
we’ve all got car bomb hearts
for 6 billion different causes
martyrs in our own minds
each one of us holy forms of misfits
Yet sometimes magic happens and we meet
like snowflakes on wet tongues
like drunk drivers colliding head on
like cell mates in a prison
we didn’t know we were locked in
My prison is a post office full of dead letters
from old lovers and your letter is the only one
I ever open it sits right beside your wedding invitation
and reads “If you had asked me to stay that night
I would have but you didn’t so I left…”
We were like the first moon landing
not fake necessarily but more like
we both really wanted something amazing to happen
if only we could have directed it ourselves
because our relationship was less like Stanley Kubrick
and more like Kevin Smith
At least we didn’t fuck on your wedding day
I’ve been assembled in the image of too many
twisted gods but it’s time I found the peace
inside these puzzles leave this junkyard to the rotting
for this robot is a toll booth imagining itself a cathedral
and the broken mirror that was a childhood has now
become a stained glass window
And outside is a bar where Lee Majors is sitting
on Evil Kneivel’s motorcycle drinking milkshakes
with the Elephant Man and Stephen Hawking while
Kermit the Frog and Judy Garland sing Karaoke
to “Blame it on the Rain.” It’s a very strange bar.
Out back they’re having a picnic where
everybody loves everybody and maybe
near sunset in the orchard you’ll be there
in the twilight picking up a rusted tin can
with a tangled string attached and you’ll
put that tin can to your ear drum and
you’ll hear my car bomb burst “I’m sorry
this tin man in the forest couldn’t fix
his broken heart enough to love you”
Some days I pretend I’m an unwilling
participant in this prison but most days
I know I must take all these spare parts
and hand me down collages and somehow
build a hospice where our broken dreams are
salvaged and all the lies about ourselves
finally have a place to rest
