I have problems

and I’ll swap mine with you like trading cards.

Long lovely disorders go over the lips like chocolate

but honey, we’ve been writing about these pits of darkness

long before shrinks slapped name tags on them.

While the rest of the world cringes and looks away

together we will scribble from one breakdown to another.

It is a saga marked by the usual trappings of our kind:

I have dizzy spells, you cry at night, I have pills,

you describe flowers, I see through hypocrisy,

and we both lose love like loose change.



I have problems.

I used to eat the skin at the tips of my fingers

but my bad habits are now limited

to searching out the human condition

and touching my face a lot.

I name and shout about my problems

through the glittery curtain of metaphor

because who wants to hear misery unless it’s diluted

by pretty words?

There is something uniquely rewarding

about well-written suffering;

poetry is the confetti at a pity party.



I have problems

yet writing helps me and it’s mine.

That’s why I read it to other people

when I’d never post my x-rays in the waiting room.

Look. Here’s the crow and chips

I ate last night, the break in my heart,

the back pain from always looking to the sky.

If you find your condition

between my lines, if this makes you ache

I’m sorry. I mean’t to, but I’m sorry.

No one ought to feel this

but at least we can share it.



I have problems

and poetry doesn’t solve them

like pills might, but it goes down easier.