Author: Cody Swann

9/26/13 9:17am – 10/25/13 2:49pm

cold shower diet
(digging my own loopholes)
(take two birds one stone as a sign)

she said it herself two birds one stone
after i said it and i meant it
on the page that i was on my own
the words the same the difference the tone
but what different chord my accent hit
heard with two ears that were my own

she said it turning to me to stone
drop your pants please and lift up your shirt
but to my surprise not much had grown
where i’d planted loopholes in the dirt
out the window my two birds had flown
she said it herself two words; no stone

i’m unsure of where it will end
if this is only where it starts
in showing myself to someone
who only sees me as parts
what’s to come is me yet again
if no cold shower diet starts

9/25/13 8:32pm – 9/25/13 9:04pm

dinner getting colder
(until then salivating)

here’s what i think:
and correct me if i’m wrong.
i think that you are bored.
i think that you think i am here to entertain you.
but here’s what i know:
i know that you bore me and
that this conversation is over..
..with myself..sitting here alone..so that
i may finally eat this dinner getting colder.

but in the future when I meet you,
you deserving of my too thought out rehearsed response,
you will sit there and take it as you watch me stumble over those words.
as i try to get them out just as they were written here in one piece
after i’m caught off guard in my anticipation of you.
until then salivating.

9/24/13 11:29pm – 9/25/13 1:33am

holy three
(immediate family III)

in the name of the father
a quivering shivering chin
the son a bedwetter
and my holy spirit amen
she had gotten better
but mary she’s lost it again
us holy three won’t bother
her to pray for another sin
praying we’ll soon forget her
the most blessed amongst women
still she’s ours to say a hail her
at the hour of her death amen

9/22/13 3:59pm – 12/19/13 1:02am

the perverted chorus
(cold shower diet iii)
(heaven is a bathroom with a lock iii)

i haven’t felt myself today
and i know i won’t tomorrow
it’s by my own hand or lack there of
to not go how far too far goes

it’s my safe search for the answer
to the perverted chorus
the lightened load weighing on me
that seems never to bore us

what’s to come is not me for now
where my blood has always rushed
what came over me was the urge to prove
what’s done is what’s flushed

it came to me while adding my
finishing touches to heaven
to start on a diet that i thought
would make it to day seven

but here my ears perk on day six
to hear it playing for (weighing on) us
once this cold shower diet stops
start the perverted chorus

(the end of my end of the bargain)

9/15/13 3:09pm – 9/23/13 10:21pm

dedicated to patricia
(the line of know and knew you is thinning)
(one side of a two-story house)

you handed me the title
before i had this verse
as your usual blessing
for each and every curse
all i’d never need or want
here inside you where i haunt
these blessings that come in spurts to taunt
the sick staying sick for your nurse

9/9/13 9:57am – 9/17/13 8:33pm

out of the palm of the elderly hand
(desire to feed what need to be fed)

out of the palm of the elderly hand
together they carry on tradition
whatever it is that possesses man
it comes with age’s simple addition

on a park bench it comes to fruition
desire to feed what need to be fed
birds spoiled with elderly permission
crumbs direct the flock with hands breaking bread

oh it seems to me there’s something to be said
for what seems to be the human condition
if aging feels the need it’s our decision
to desire to feed what need to be fed

9/1/13 1:21pm – 9/11/13 11:01am

third daughter
(fog of faking interest)

i didn’t know it was possible
to be adopted by a lover
she’s been taken in even when there’s
a mother and father that love her
through her fog of faking interest
clearly we see what went above her
she didn’t know it was possible
what we are really thinking of her

8/30/13 1:39am – 9/5/13 12:58am

frozen grapes
(the last life’s coattails)
(same time last life)

the last time he died he died so well
looking back on a past life well spent
and this time wondering where it went
riding still on the last life’s coattails

approaching thirty-three turns him pale
the pastel greens flush his face with mint
same time last life with where all he’d went
the past tells nothing could make him dwell

and what is left of his second wind
all the proof you need man came from ape
he’d rather pick up where this life ends
and spend what’s left trying frozen grapes
whining they are not the seedless blend
advertised on the bag’s frozen shape
hurting to the touch of cold he sends
sensitive teeth a jolt of red tape

8/24/13 4:06pm – 8/29/13 2:57pm

accidental waterbed
(excusing the mess)

brother,
wet marks the spot
the bed you wet marks the spot
another accident is yours
but the fault is not

today it’s a dripping faucet
tomorrow a dipping finger
tales you’re told by an old wife
excusing the mess that you bring her

riding on an accidental waterbed
drifting farther and further along
and wherever it is that bed may take you
at least ‘you’ know it isn’t wrong

8/21/13 11:06pm – 8/21/13 11:38pm

our cloth separation
(for the sake of losing light)

if you told me the buzzing was coming from inside my own ears i might believe you.
i know now that it comes from them, the mosquitos, fluttering just outside of our cloth separation.
in a matter of hours this trip has already proved worth our efforts.
if this night is any indication of the nights to come i’ll sleep more sound than i was already planning.
detouring for the sake of losing light, the shooting star missed by the corner of an eye,
accidentally facing the blinking lights of airport landing strips instead of a full moon,
the gentle decline in battery life of flashlights, the mating calls of young adults in heat,
the consideration of tide coming in at a lake, the cheap wine with bread that is named
differently depending on what part of the country you are in,
exceeding the expected
average time it
would
take
to
construct
our tent,
being told to look to my phone as an unofficial editor, not knowing if a sound is rain or
bugs smashing into the side of that very tent, one hundred years of literature,
planning to sleep with a ready knife, the admittance of alien life, the denial of ownership over land,
the catholic hats, crystal pyramids of bermuda, dead bodies tied to other buoying dead bodies,
giving up on holding anything against my brother’s newborn daughter all in a first impression,
and the unfortunate circumstance that the first to wake will find himself in ALL make sleeping
easier and all the less desirable.