Words Kept

Words Kept 

Promises, I need you like a mail delivery

Even if it was only credit card applications

At least I knew there was something to check for

The element of an expectation that got me through the mornings  

The anticipation like high school when I had a pen pal

And went weeks in between letters before the internet or texts

When humans use to write each other in long-hand with ink pens

I would salivate, see it empty and still hope the next day  

I know how to do the laundry now, fabric softener and bleach

I can dispense and swirl to steam sanitize the bed sheets

In the Kenmore Elite you so wanted us to buy from Sears

I kept what I could knowing the walls were yours 

Rolling for the empty like a true rock and roll song on the radio

Never heard before and danced a thousand beats in the head of dreamers

Exploding into requesting the disc jockey for a favor

To listen to that melody again like a tune not yet nauseating to be designated classic 

Station format change from indie to southern rock, reversion and the

Coercion of Rancid punk fiends for Zeppelin something once renegade and now accepted

Where the hell is Woody Guthrie when you need him?

He’s heard it all, the goodbye to his home, a hobo and a guitar, a step stone in a song 

Promises, I need you like a cigarette even though I have never smoked

I imagine I would crave if I was addicted to any substance but this loam

Scent, the Earth baking within my till, I remember what I thought the soil was

Caskets and peach pits germinating nothing in this ground  

Water and sunshine, repetitive battery licks the alkaline

Hoping for energy to make bread where there is no seed

Circles and portals afterlives and missing hymnals

Science and consciousness, invisible and circumstance  

I would give my left lung for someone to ask me to make a promise

Something to keep to, pure and honest exposing an example

Even if only midnight looks at it; I would have it

Swaddled like a hazy sway drunk on giving that I gave what I could that day 

I would slobber all over myself knowing someone wanted me to come through for them