Alone in the night, I erase my thoughts

although maybe it's only eighty times

using an old old washcloth or

one of his paint splattered t-shirts

or a white board dry marker eraser


Don't tell me you've never

done the exact same things

seventy times seven or seventy

or is that the forgiveness lesson

like the teachings of Jesus


Alone in the night, I wipe clear

the worries of the day's doom

the mindless doodles and

dipsy dreams of the earlier

distant conversations and decaf


coffee or tea I pour for

my mother and sister, a young person

whose mother had a brain tumor

removed, the medication which

makes things much worse before

better, can you hear me?


Hazarding a guess, I'd say

barely sixty thoughts turned

into words of wonder and might

never alone, we walk in and

out, some of us never saying

the least hello, thank you


for fifty nothings, you got

my message forty-nine times

motherfucker, I'm not sorry

the emphasis was necessary

on the right or left syllables


Put that in your collective

pipes and don't ever smoke

because even thirty times per

day is excessive and bad for

your health and unborn babies


Twenty years ago, this was

known as well as how sugar

consumption can cause health

problems, seriously, read

all about it, erased, extant


even ten years alone in the

night thoughts, night horses

wild couldn't drag me here

but for screaming rules and

your poems with enticing


everything must die, excuse me

but that's common knowledge I

didn't make that up although

sometimes I stretch the truth

like a rubber band about to break


IN