SMELL YOU LATER

I park my bike in pretty much the same place every day
and my old girlfriend, sometimes
she used to stick little notes for me in the bike chain.

One of the notes said:
Dear smelly, I can smell your smelly bike a mile away.
Smell you later. -K

K used to write me these love letters.
Except the great part was, they were hate letters.
She used to spend pages detailing her
crazy hate for me. It was great.

Now, it sort of just hurts. I keep them in this little
orange and yellow box, orange with yellow swirls.
And it's in the bottom third drawer of my blue clothes dresser.
That's the drawer where my socks are.
These days whenever I put my socks on in the morning,
I feel like there's a bunch of those little lemmings from that computer game
and they are all marching on my ankles and banging with their hammers
chipping away at my flesh.
And then when I take my socks off at night,
it's like I hit the button that makes them all
explodeanddie.

:: More from THE ANCIENT BOOK OF HIP ::

*Excerpted poem from THE ANCIENT BOOK OF HIP with permission from author & Fourteen Hills Press