Melatonin Gummies

for Michael Palmer


I’m afraid to go to sleep. That’s nothing new but it bears repeating. There was a pandemic last night they were crowding the middle school dance floor unseen aliens playing the fool. It was impossible to find anything other than my brother in the grocery. We needed water but ran out of time before.


The problem with them in a crowd is they are all there waiting to be taken in for questioning. That tree. That one very specific tree tears hang like gallows as they watch apple after apple after people guide themself to the cider factory.

They aren’t there this morning. No this morning as dark as it may be they had to rush. A river a bridge a winter wall set in grey and I’m only seven pages deep.

The world is beige because it wants to be paper colors have room to breathe. Ink man of a-ha fame blurs over the bridge hands on rails stream absent tufts of grass on stream’s edge. 

Cattails bend.

He stops his face continues dear reader he asks where is it I’m meant to be?


Unless you’re dreaming but of course I am where else would I find a high school band teacher’s closet desk amidst a middle school gym with a father whose eye lets on with a twinkle?

But of course the wallet hides under the rack of paper towels for acts of vanity. He is wearing a dress is what I would hear if I could hear what they won’t say but I choose to read smiles instead.

“Things try to stand for things.”

Someday the snow holds others hold forecasts in their laps to pray. 


A splash of type reinserts semantics where it doesn’t belong. Lines on a page but sometimes we make sounds but sometimes we just stare as we sleep.

I am reinserting semantics where they do not belong syntax be damned. Justin Bieber taught me the meaning of lyricism but I forgot the name of the song.


The weeping tree wide-eyed with rose tinted glasses whose eyebrows are caterpillars in desperate need of clipping their nails. It’s dry tonight. There’s nothing more to say why does her name still come to mind?

The tree remains a tree no matter how many pages it tears. The coyote and the brush and the two tonne anvil continue to fall there is no bottom. Sunsets of gold never last but neither do silver or brass.

Is there a swing set hanging from death’s branch? Does a girl smile? Does the wind know which way is west it is not the first time the child has witnessed their father’s death.

White picket fence all shiny as hell. Huckled and buckled as they say. Once more unto the breach. Onward and so on. Mark Twain didn’t say half the shit he says he said but who’s counting.

It remains to be seen if the tree is still a tree stubborn and stoic as it may be.


The motorcycle rides itself camping among the stars a forest alone can’t be left alone. Waterwheels won’t write themselves according to Kurosawa. White saviors stole that too.

Sometimes all you want to be is to be someone someone wants to talk to.

“I’m tired and I would very much like to go home” and now I’m angry at my cats for existing. I miss the days I could sleep on my right shoulder for more than ten seconds at a time.


Like snow on the beach pacific grey mist of February aquariums. A small rock island the size of a child’s nine-year-old feet rogue wave cold ride home. Both parents were there which simply isn’t true they filmed the Goonies there.

We’re back to where we were before we weren’t there.


Smoke rises over the horizon red air red ash white masks bleed and coughing. Not dying praise be. Is it the bed the tinnitus in my head simply wants to sing. I think I will.

I’m scared to bed but it bears repeating. Let it sing I say let it sing.