Lover sitting on the shower floor
spits at the drain,
watches it circle away between his feet.

I tell him to close his eyes
as I point the spray at his hair,
pull out the caked-dirt tangles.

I scrub at his back until it's red and raw,
and a thin trickle of blood
from a pimple or an ingrown hair
dances down the steps of his spine.

I could bathe him
in all the world's finest oils,
until the cacophony of fragrances
made my head spin
and he would still tell me that
I missed a spot.

Wrapped in a towel,
he asks me why I
do the things I do.

I say nothing,
and wipe a speck of grime
from his wet, swollen cheek.

Do you remember
the time I
thought I was the
Devil?

The crack-crack of my
neck
as I tried to turn it
all the way around?

Those were good days,
sitting in the dark
with the door shut
and my eyes wide.
I could hear your voices
seep
in from the other side.

When I emerged I
stared
at each of you,
long and hard,
and declared I was
the King of Hell,
and no one laughed,
because it wasn't a joke.

And then my jaw fell unhinged,
and bats
poured
from my broken mouth,
as a scream rang out,
so loud you could feel it in your
dirty bones.

Ok, maybe I made that last part up,
but your faces were
priceless.

Let me begin with the chorus,
and explain the details of my life.
I will paint broad strokes over eras,
and ensnare your leering gaze.

Watch me grow and put on masks,
paints and blushes caking in layers,
cracking and brushing off on pillows
and hands.

Now, it is my big moment!
I stand front center stage
and, with an expression of pained thoughtfulness,
deliver my solliloquy,
to an audience loud with sobs and peals of gut laughter.

Laid so bare,
I stand on trembling legs
and suck down air.
The trap door opens beneath my feet,
and I vanish before their rolling eyes.

I'll sit here under the stage for hours,
relishing the tar darkness,
the relief from the blinding cast of stage lights.
Have a good night, folks.
I'm here all week.

A half-finished bottle of liquor.
One lost glove.
A shopping list that someone wrote
and left at home,
in April of 2010.

Two pairs of broken headphones,
occasionally sounding out
barks of mindless static.
Listen long enough,
and you'll start to pick out
voices in the fog.

Piles upon piles of
free AOL internet discs.
I took every single one
from mailboxes and trash cans,
and swallowed them whole.
1999 was a good year for me.

The superman action figure
that you carried everywhere,
to the supermarket,
and the doctor's,
and your parents' ugly church,
that you thought was thrown away
when you moved house in the seventh grade,
lies on a high shelf,
in a locked room,
inside me.
I stole it.
I'm sorry.

Ancient tree,
ugly, and gnarled,
with your withered roots pushed into
the softnesses of hearts and lungs,
you drink deep of blood and bile
to push your bitter sap up trunk and twig.

You trapped me beneath your bracken,
your chaos and decay piled high on my chest,
and you choked me with your rotten-fruit stench.
You threw your seeds to the wind,
and they settled on my skin.

Your vines hung thick and heavy in the heat,
like a thousand sticky nooses,
but today,
today, winter has come.

The German tongue is wild and true,
with hush and hiss like lion's claw.
It burns my ears and crashes through.

Tutored in its bite and chew,
the words fell from your grizzled maw,
"the German tongue is wild and true."

The words brought me so close to you,
as ders and dies clanked in my jaw.
They burned my ears and they crashed through.

Your sweater and your eyes were blue,
the day you pointed out my flaws.
The German tongue is wild and true.

You packed your clothes away to move,
choked down your bitter slaw.
You burned my ears and you crashed through.

My life is twisted all askew,
you left my body raw.
The German tongue is wild and true.
It burns my ears and crashes through.

Bruise-eyed woman,
kick at dirt that isn't there.
Scuff your shoes on grimy concrete.
You've been given a piece of his mind.

Eye pushed from orbit,
and framed with ugly purple
like an inkblot,
or a blackberry,
crushed into the pavement
by a curious thumb.

When he screamed at you,
did his spit feel like lye
as it rained on your cheek?
Did it burn a hundred holes
in your loose and stretching skin?

O, woman,
quiet in the crowd:
I can see the violence
in the trenches
of your face.

You turned and stared,
impaired, with bare neck,
drawing in my worried lip,
drawing in my nose's drip.

I watched your eyes engulf mine,
beneath the soft woolen edge
of your black woolen hat,
pulled low 'gainst the cold, and the old
bite and prick of thin wind
and thin snow.

You pushed your hand into mine,
alligned finger and gap, intertwined,
and it felt so strange,
arranged there on my skin.

Your skin feels strange,
a stranger's skin,
like I've forgotten our years and
the din,
of your skin, in my ears,
sliding smooth between sheets,
and in caves, breathing heat.

No heat now,
only frost,
stretching stiff stranger's skin,
wearing lines in fine patterns
on your skin, wet with gin,
and the sweat of your nerves,
swerving off into folds
in your skin, needles, pins,
needles, pins.

If you laid your hand on my pale chest,
you would feel my ribs:
the skeleton that gives me structure
and strains
to touch you.

You might feel a trembling,
a tremor,
a viscous, scraping sigh.
That is the sound
of my wet lungs,
the engines to my soft pursuits.

Perhaps, if you tried,
if you closed your eyes,
and I held my ragged breath,
you could feel my stomach writhe,
empty but for the thick, yellow tar,
the ugly mess,
of my emotions.

You,
aged, wrinkled,
large, heaving,
shrouded in cloth,
in airy patterns
and black gauze,
smelling of strong coffee,
and with eyes that droop like leaves
battered by a thousand rains,
and ready for a thousand more,
you!

You looked at me
like you knew my name!

Have you ever listened to a kettle's screech?
Heard its pitch,
thin and white,
climb and climb,
until you could barely stand to hear at all?

Have you ever felt so much,
of everything, and all at once,
that you could barely stand to live?

There is beauty in misery,
like a mole on the white of an eye.
That cannonball,
that core,
of disgust and wide-eye anxiety
is an imperfection on the soul
that makes it
that much more
delectable.

Every unseen claw mark on your cheek,
traced with desperation over paths
primordial in age and nature,
is a brushstroke
on the tattered little canvas of your life.

If you watch the backs
of ambulances,
you can see a person's soul
tumble out,
expand like a vulgur lung.

Maybe its just exhaust,
but I can hear it
snarling.

The wind and the rain crash on weak leaves,
tearing them down like women's skirts,
or the Berlin wall.
Winter is coming!

Blue-eyed old men haunt well-worn paths
and stare sharply at passers-by.
The cold air hones mens' souls
to a bleak cutting edge.

I know a whirlwind.
She is dangerous and beautiful.
She makes me worry
and she throws me to the ground.

She is spread too thin.
Her life surrounds her,
disparate and far-flung,
but she snares it in her hand
and holds it to her chest.

Her body is a vessel filled too full;
she spills out at her edges.
She paints everything around her with vibrant colours:
her reds, and yellows,
and blues.

You were running from a killer,
leaving tracks in the dead forest's snow,
animal in your terror,
all miserable adrenaline
and white hot sweat.
I saw you rip through branches,
throwing powder clouds into the air,
and I heard your raw-throat screams.

And as you burst out of sight,
the madman turned to me,
and he had your face
and his hair was long and brown
and stuck to his face
the same way that yours does
after your afternoon jogs.
His nose was crooked,
the same way yours was
ever since the second grade.
You chased me down,
crushing the ground beneath you,
enraged,
leaving craters.

I fell then,
my foot caught in the grasp
of the forest's trickster roots.
I felt my ankle crack apart,
as I tipped into the snow.
You walked calmly toward my broken body
and you brought down your knife,
and then I saw you on the ground,
your blood blooming red on your breast.
You looked at me,
scared,
hurt,
and lost.
How could I?

How could I?

Ich bin gefährlich,
you whisper in my ear,
achten.
You took a class on German last year
and you think you're pretty.

You giggle, a handful of bright high notes,
as you hang on my arm
and pull me to you.

I succumb,
sometimes easily,
others after a fight,
and join you.

I'm so easily taken by the collar
and shaken
and thrown.
Sometimes I don't know what's good for me.

A man's soul is three birds,
circling in the air
and crying awful cries.

One is a vulture,
gross flesh dangling
from its bulbous chin.
It preys on the weak.

The second is a songbird,
loud for its size.
Its red chest heaves
as it calls to everyone in sight.

The last's a bird of paradise.
Its heart is struck through.
It screams for the death
of its beauty and its pride.

Three forgotten birds,
with heavy wings
and raw throats.

Pick yourself up by the front of your shirt
and shake yourself around.
Maybe punch yourself a little.
Take your own lunch money,
and then throw yourself
into the trash

Sit on your bed
and smoke cigarettes.
Get ash on your sheets and think,
"Oh no, I will have to sleep on that tonight,"
and then
keep going.

Get a children's coloring book
and color it all in with a black sharpie marker.
Name it the Book of Shadows
and hold rituals
worshipping its dread terror.

Look at your dog
or your cat
(I'm not judging,
although dogs are better).
Find the gleam in its eyes.
Show it the gleam in yours.
Have a gleam-off.

Ponder just how strange the word gleam now feels.
Say it aloud a few times.
Roll it around in your mouth
like a bright marble
or a piece of rock candy.

Consider taking your life,
the consequences,
what people would say,
how you would do it,
and how bad it would hurt.
Then stand,
sniff at your room's cold, stale air,
and go make yourself some breakfast.

You pull the wedding band off your finger
feeling its soft weight in your palm.
You had the words "together forever" engraved on it,
because you were stupid.
You could have spent the fifty dollars
on lottery tickets and beer.

Standing on the pier, you remember her,
and her hair, and her nose,
and her long creeping fingers.
The dead curves of her cheekbones
and the curl of her hair.
It makes you so mad.

Waiting for words to fall from the sky,
instructions on a holy scroll,
you are angry
and worried
and you don't know.
You just don't.
So you close your bloodshoot eyes,
and walk out on the water
like Jesus,
or Peter Sellers,
and no one ever sees you again.