You can rhyme if you want to, but it's not really allowed.

Ah, rhyming. That sweet, often sickly cousin of free verse.

Some people can get away with it. They're usually 200 years dead or Shel Silverstein.

In college, I met some people whose poetry strictly rhymed. And they were into Pokemon and Dungeons & Dragons with equal avidity.

But sometimes, man.

Sometimes. I get that lethal itch. It's like cross dressing for some men. I just HAVE TO DO IT. In secret. But a in-secret-in-public kind of way. The same way a former football player will walk into Denny's at midnight with 'Runway Red' on his lips and a girdle.

Dear grandmother

I’m that whore that you raised

yes, dear grandmother

I’m that Babylon craze

My mother’s head soaks in bleach

there are rags on the chair

we had the same blood illness

spreading our legs everywhere. 

Now that I have that out of my system, we can move on. And by moving on, I mean in a way that means I don't really move on, but perhaps you think I have. 

As usual. this week I'm dealing with the (seemingly lifelong) themes of petty jealousy and envy - those godforsaken talented, wildly successful people who create loads upon loads - ENDLESSLY. 

One of the truly great ones I can just push aside pettiness and awe for is, well, not a writer in the traditional sense. 

Billie Holiday.

Something about her music drives me mad, lonely, fiercely joyful. This is her voice at the end of her career - which is admittedly different from the start of it. But heroin will do that.

Listen with the lights out, reading from your computer monitor. Do it for old Billie.

How to dance to Billie Holiday

Move your hips like they

have borne a thousand children

and none

they cry out from the bedsheets

spent

It’s okay, you say. This world is too

rough for you. I saved you. Birth control

and the Blues saved you from being born.

I’ll put you in the wash tomorrow.

How to dance to Billie Holiday at night

scrape your chest off like

you’re scrapping a plate

get it all off. All that red gunk

runs to the floor. Now, don’t you

feel lighter without it? Like a feather

on acid?

Now, move your feet, dear. Move.