The needle-tip,





a bee sting





giving rise to a hive.




A sickening delirium
coursing mercurial under eyelids,



tapeworms and tendrils
weaving wildly:



teeming, churning tides breaking over
greedy teeth (a needy mouth


flaying flesh ferociously,
a fevered wolverine
whipping through a petting zoo).

Each agonizing second
sliding slowly by,
tacky molasses on cloth
covering a table in an innocuous
American home
bruises on mother's face
fade (eggplant to jaundice
to the crimson of the setting sun
dying behind the horizon
line {chopped across a counter-top
like a broken promise...}).  




All the lives we compromise



trying to cage a swarm.

The grace of God was painted
on the canvass of your soft skin,
but you don't see it.

I try to touch it,
but you secret it away
like a scar,
or deformity.

I pray for strength,
but the devil propositions
where God charges admission...

no one knocks a free ride.

Reflection
will distort this moment—

(an oasis
in the desert of memory)

the simple
wonder of the instant diminished

as gemstones
depreciated by display upon

a gold band.


Focus fades
in inching instants

(a shutter
slowly closing over a lens)

and we
imperceptibly surrender

clarity
to these evanescing essences of

youth and reminiscence.

... ravening wolf's
blood-caked maw
     explodes
plumes of condensation
    to evidence exertion.


He guards his kill
with a dogged dread,

for I
am an
unfamiliar
predator.

My eyes fly
to the swatch of sack-cloth
abandoned in a corner of the floor,
no doubt considered
for use in a patchwork at some point.

I wonder if it mourns
its shortcomings.

A querulous cry
from my peckish feline
failed to rouse me from sleep:

thus,
teeth entangled in the meat of my palm,
this hideous beast
bucked conventional wisdom in
deciding to bite a hand
to prompt a feeding.

Concurrently
I am considering the adage
of there being more than one way
to skin a cat.

She spilled lengthy prose,
      believing words would
bandage her inadequacies.

Enrapt,
   I tussled
loose threads
     of her rhetoric
in a feeble attempt at intimacy–

not realizing
   Andromeda would love anyone
     who had pried her free from the rock.

Millions of matchstick men
   brought their hot heads
     to an ocean of kerosene.

     Who's to say who sparked the inferno,

   when we all show scars
from standing over the flames?

You speak of salvation.

After the chaos I've caused,
  my redemptive acts

merely clear a few stones
  from the path of an avalanche.
   What sort of deity

would deign to
  sanctify me? Where is the sense
   in granting forgiveness
    when I still hold myself
      accountable?

She held her project aloft,
so assured of her supremacy
that she would challenge
God himself
were he an 8th grader.

Eyes averted,
I slyly slid my box
beneath the table-
absconding with my dignity
to aid in assailing some distant windmill...

She writhes
   as though her soul
were battened by bra-straps...
  
   The only sound
that ever
      mattered
was a
   breathy moan
beside her burning earlobe

while her eyelids
   squeezed tight enough
to envelop her.

An introduction of the eyes—
without a word
I knew her

and,

familiar enough with
myself, know
that will be sufficient.

A membrane of black ice
obscured
by a fog-bank
porcelain gaze,
he loves her with

Gein's focus—
gluing glamour on the ghastly.


Her urges
are a cleft lip-
reconstructed, not
repaired.


They make a lovely couple.

I sold smack on a playground today

    biding time to scrounge the rent--

Two months ago I had never even seen the stuff.
    I'd never procured it for personal use,
    let alone sold it.

Now I'm a full-time pusher of prescriptions
for problems that can't be cured,
a modern-day snake-oil salesmen
schlepping panaceas for every conceivable ill.

Trying to cope with depression?
    This'll give you a shot in the arm!
Your boyfriend just broke your heart
mere weeks after breaking your hymen?
    Here's a prick that you can depend on...

I thought I was better than this,

but who can afford scruples
                      with bills to pay?

Internally
I struggle to compete
with people who would never deign to take note of me.
My revenge is in undermining their immaculate lives,
a pill-peddling Socrates
keeping creditors at bay.

I'd always envisioned being someone's hero--
at least being remembered for an act of creation.

Instead I'm an enzyme for eradication.
A cancer cell at best--
    A bloody wrecking ball.

                 One day I woke up a sidekick
to a heroine that's never saved anyone...

72 hours in
I'm giving serious thought to
drinking the Listerine.

The bitch is it's citrus flavored.

I can't even rinse with that toxic concoction, let alone swallow it,

but I'm running out of options.

I finished my other MacGyvers--
the Nyquil was first to go,
followed by a Dimetapp chaser
  (the cherry,
     not a refreshing grape-flavored one)
and a shot of Wal-fed
that induced indigestion.

My kingdom for a belt of whiskey--
maybe a snifter of rum.

You know you're bottoming out
when you wax nostalgic
for drunken days
when soiling yourself was justifiable
due to your general state of disarray.

I'm the shit that adheres to the bottom of the barrel—
pissing in the shower with my shoes on,
pants removed as a cautionary measure.

Not that life can get worse;
nothing trumps waking up miserable,
sore,
   jobless,
     alone,
       queasy,
         woozy and
           drooling uncontrollably

and lacking booze to blame it on.

You can identify your own flaws by scrutinizing strangers.

I watched a woman
     from across a platform
at the subway station:

Straight, dishwater-blonde hair
glimmering in the subterranean fluorescence;
         striking posture—
     a dancer's figure—
and a thrifty ensemble that bespoke good taste
in spite of budgetary constrictions.

She pulled a circular compact from her purse
the way people in films exhume a pack of cigarettes.
   Then, in deliberate fashion,
she removed a pill and swallowed it.

             Birth control is like receiving a governor's pardon
         in the process of planning a crime.
             I resent her having that kind of indemnity.

I pass judgment on assumptions of character,
       high on the blissful soapbox of bigotry.


As that pill crested the ridges of her teeth
and met the soft tissue of her tongue, then esophagus,
my mind conjured a phantasmagoria of lewd images
on the surrounding subway walls--


         more a reflection of my character
              than hers.

I erased your voice-mail today--
     the only remaining evidence
     that we ever loved each other.

     Notes I could part with--
       penmanship doesn't encapsulate you.

       E-mails jettison into cyberspace
         without fanfare.

         Pictures were trashed
             before you left the parking lot.

Flames of rage
         consume indiscriminately.
     Like a bruise,
         black will fade to blue
     until it looks worse than it feels.



       Strangely,
       the voice-mail gave me pause.



Your voice exited that ear-piece
     like a sucker-punch to a glass jaw.

             It took me twenty minutes to punch 7
                 and put the defibrillating pads to my amnesia.


Whoever coined the phrase
     easy as the push of a button
never used one to erase the only
                 "I love you"
      that ever sounded genuine.

I found a statue of Christ amidst detritus
of a burned-out bar on High Street.

The Savior scorched to a cinder:
the state of faith in America.

I crossed myself and stowed
the King of Kings
in folds of my old windbreaker

(buried beneath the hardened exterior
I've projected to protect myself
from the tyranny of evil men)

to spare him the indignity
of further exposure to the elements on
our exodus through these city streets:

a trifling attempt at reciprocity.

She writhes
as though her soul
were battened by bra-straps
and the only sound
she'd ever
heard
was the
breathy moan beside
her burning earlobe,
eyelids squeezed tight
enough to
envelop her.

Discarded matchsticks
(blackened heads
like
frostbitten flesh):

road flares tracing
the path of an accident.

We live

between

the silences

and after
      every kiss
we part
    embarrassed adolescents.