Grief Thoughts in a Borrowed Car, Enroute to a Joint Funeral

Crumbling pillars from cracks and fissures
stone soup tears that do not yet fall
just a face I hold in place as the rush
of scenery smears fields and flowers
with the brushstrokes of lost hope

My butt is oddly warm, though—
Medium settings on a rainy, washed day
oven coil cradle, sitting in a warm nest
beagle curled into a laundry ball on the floor
brooding souls under heat lamp temps

The leg room is immaculate
coffin length is the leg space
six foot two, angled obtuse
I have never felt this comfortable
paper shredding happy moments

Plucking memories into bouquets,
my heart beating with the ferocity of
the rear speakers and the smooth ride
tread to wet blacktop, jealous of how
the sky can so easily cry down in drizzle

Diary of an Anxious, Manic Half-Hispanic

Today’s Intrusive thoughts are as follows;

All of the people who are underneath my skin
like the tumor I try and avoid touching
while petting the belly of my elderly beagle
Knowing her time is nearing end
sick with the thought of holding her limp body
without breath or baritone, her floppy ears dangling
As a man hung, rocking in the gallows

How all the tender love and care in the world couldn’t stop
my stupid ass from chasing waterfalls. Gargling sea water
in salty licks and splurging my time on the wretched urchins.
The unwise words of days past singing like cicadas in chorus
A body left to abandon a shell of its former self,
a crumbling exoskeletal skulk, strutting as urn ashes in the wind.

The way my mind pairs together mismatched socks
into a working ebb and flow when my hairy legs show,
Another indication that I am finally old enough and wide enough
for the fat dads club, My card holding membership, pending.
Immense in my failures, Blimp body rich in warm understanding,
Some would call that the caramel core of the gods.

How my lover has been staring at her phone a little too long, wondering
if she is longing for someone else. This fear measured by
the length of my long face, give or take a couple of inches.
I am her tall drink of water spilled and splattered about
hoping i’ll dry out or absorb into the carpet before she notices
She’s been mentioning a coworker more often, too often
for me to feel comfortable in listening to the tales
without being peppermilled in grains of jealousy
atop the attention I wish, I too, was getting.
I sit watering the vines of my growing suspicions,
my worries, my woes setting my glare towards a new foe.
She slips me a juicy bite of the true morsels she potentially hides.
And when she tells me, it’s always (and I mean always)
with that little smirk I thought she had lost,
the one she formerly used to punctuate her stories about me.


All the things I would say at the podium if any person
I care about passes before I do. In this instance,
I am a sucker for preparedness in the name of honoring
those I love most with my complete loving, anguish.
I’d impulsively make an off color joke or two,
A bucket hat flipped inside out with my transparency.
Taking X-rays of my chugging heart  and while
my train of thought flashes frames of its fleeting caboose,
the black screen illuminates. Showing my heart swell and plump
My ribs cracking with how hard I make myself laugh, masking my grief
in what sounds like Thanksgiving wishbone splits.

The quandary between myself and a dear friend;
these personal differences assuming the shape of the grim reaper,
A scarier version of a porch display my parents made, circa 1994.
His skull was made of fractured plastic, dressed in black polyester drapes.
Like a stray found puppy, we named him Savage
and let him live his new life leashed to the banister.
He’s the first friend I ever wadded up and threw away,
but he definitely wasn’t the last. Won’t be the last.
It’s never the last, because surprise, surprise
Friendships do not last. They just live long enough
to go another direction when confronted with anything hard
or they up and bail on you for a homie holding a sickle;
That same deadbeat friend I was smart enough to throw away, long ago.

How the mirror so easily becomes the photograph of myself that I hate the most
but i continue to let it miserably hang on the wall despite that fact.
This particular intrusive thought needs no dolling up or poetic execution,
It simply holds a megaphone to its accursed lips
and speaks obnoxiously until the point gets too garbled to understand
and I wind up right here…back at square one,
staring at myself on the wall, reflecting all over again.

Nicholas Grooms is a poet, author and musician hailing from Garden City, Kansas. He has recently appeared in such periodicals as Suburban Witchcraft, Midsummer Dream House, Ionosphere and Villain Era Lit though he is best known for his work creating music for the Kansas City Chiefs organization. Grooms is author of the books “Me, Myself and I Hate You”, "My Mental State Has a Midwest Shape", and the upcoming chapbook "Estranged Things" due out October 21st via Crying Heart Press. He currently resides in Austin, TX where you can usually find him on the playground with his kids or perusing the bins of one of the many record stores in the greater Austin area.