What have I even learned in these wrinkles?
I’m not quite thirty and the world has already ended so many times.
I look at the newspaper and it says the Earth is almost finished.

But
Not
Quite
Yet.

This year the planet made it to another Earth day.

When April is the saddest month, it feels like a year.
Police officers with bad combovers start populating the park I like.
They smoke and drink Red Bulls getting ready to do
Absolutely Nothing.
I taste my breath in the mask and feel the wet mush of the ground
slide around my feet.
How do I explain
that I cannot be in a space with pulsating light
or dim light or bright light?
That I can’t really be anywhere
to the point that I guess I’ll just be anywhere.

I’ll be laying in bed next to a beautiful girl
and wonder if she’s thinking what I’m thinking—
that we’re both sucking on each other as if we’ll
bring the other’s body into our own, where we’ll
digest each other until we blossom at the other’s crotch.
Yes, I wonder…
Today, I’m thankful for the fourth wall of wondering.

And
that at least,
I make art.

I stare at bowls of fruit, as if
They’re my pet
waiting for them to do a trick.
The joke is on me though,
because it’s not until I paint them
that they start to behave.

So much work,
being an artist.

Overexplaining to you the viewer
that the hand is green and purple and red
that the curve is romantic
that light is ice blue

Today I’m grateful that some things are easy to look at.
That some eyes let my brain open the gate
where past the fence
I find a backyard
with an ecosystem
I never dreamed possible.

And it’s worth it.
Two have two eyes, two ears, a nose and a mouth,
When I stare into the opening of a good face.
A nice face portal.

I enter my best friend’s face portal as they cry on my stoop.
I’m glad we have each other to witness all of this with,
these declines.
It feels less wild with them, more funny.
Today, I’m grateful for funny.