losers

1.
if your story is dull
water on stone
wearing you down until

one day there’s this
deep depression
right in the center of you

and there’s nothing left
to study but that hole
in your middle

and the whole has teeth
and the money never comes
and you find your eyes

they weigh a thousand pounds
the boulder that is
your whole your hole

and it has teeth. rotten
teeth that ache in your mouth
and gnash in your sleep

2.
if your story is horrible
and plain when it lays
beside the pain of the world

and the hole grumbles
and sends its stuff all over
your aching body

and all your friends have
wholes too,
and aching bodies
and terrible stories

and the world is a wave
that crashes on you over
and over on all of you

and you try to keep each other’s
hands but your fingers slip
away from each other

and all your pain and your
aching bodies and the
drone of the wave

it’s so loud
so fucking loud
but you learn to drown it out

with the television the
internet and those hands
hands you maybe never seen

3.
if you fold these ghosts
into your heart between
two delicate leaves

even as the waves are
crashing and the noise
is echoing through you

and the leaves fall away
one at a time or
in a great rush

and your tears fall
like rain and your screams
disappear into the ocean

4.
if you are lonely and whole
and you’ve met the maw
in your inmost being

if you are sad and aching
and loving and fierce
and exhausted

hold on
hold on
hold on
hold on
hold on