1.

A horizontal fall
from the high-up slide
made for big kids was not
what I expected as I screamed
“Push me down, Haley!”

Unexpected, too, was the destruction of your wounded butterfly days later–
revenge is sweet, yet unsatisfying.
And then you left for six years,
turning up again as hormones
were in full swing
in our freshman year of high school.

2.

you said



"i'll teach you to love,

just draw nearer to me.

draw nearer to me

and i'll make you mine."



as you



laced up your best heels

put on your best face

and applied another coat

of liquid vanity.



as i


made an effort to


concoct a new way to say

"no"


and


ignore the 
rotting

carcasses of

hearts

that strewed the floor.


i'd seen your kind before


"but losing you would be a chore

my darling detritivore"



i said

3.

focus of a new kind sheds a big difference BIG DIFFERENCE upon your face bright yet shadows consume both it and your body like a prophecy. since when did that happen? so what if it never did? so you came to your senses; perhaps that was it. perhaps the realization of “you sure do know how to pick ‘em” broke you and now you’re left with a twelve-and-one-half-inch phallus in your big box of board games. we hardly speak anymore. i am now your temptress, detritivore and you’ll never escape never escape the howls of agony and desire releasing themselves from your joints your muscles your heart aches for fresh meat and you get it, damn you. you get it daily for viewing pleasure. dear heavens speak of shabby apartments and televisions that don’t work. they never knew how to comfort me; so why should they now? falling down the stairs into the pitch black night irreversible womb child conceived on camera and carried to term on God’s watch. do you remember pushing me down that slide in the second grade? it’s your turn.

4.

Unexpected, too, was the destruction of my wounded memory
of an innocent girl from second grade
now in chains and leather,
used and watched and seen and lusted over and masturbated over,
but for a hefty sum.

And I still see second grade Haley
and we still talk
and we share the occasional cigarette
and we tell of our conquests.
But I am no savior–

5.

Feeling vibrations in my palm is finding decaying matter on the forest floor to eat–
the words they carry are a substitute for nutrition.
The nearest bounty of corn is a thousand miles away,
for God places us here and our placement is the source of life’s cruelty.
And second-grade Victor would happily take a beating
for gas money; desperate detritivore–
feast on decaying matter, get your fill
and one day substance of corn will fill your stomach
and you will hibernate indefinitely.

Deny it; it makes no difference:
the American government pitches its deceitful realtor-reality to the world:
flaunting our flag as the banner of the free, but avoiding
our faults and failures as a country.
“Oh yes! We’re rollin’ in the (borrowed) bucks!
We’re a proud superpower capable of chaos; calamity!”
Well, kudos on your catastrophes: we all know it’s a hollow show.

See, we’re slaves to China, bound by China’s chains
to billions of dollars, the deficit deepening daily.
And who’s to blame?
“Not I!” says the Democrat.
“Not I!” says the Republican.
“Not I” say I, but we
weaved our financial woes together.
It’s not stupidity; if we could see into the future, we’d be shakin’ our money makers.
But have you seen the current fiscal guillotine
whose blade looms low and approaching our throats?
Oh, irony of ironies: the American government isn’t free.
Oh mah gee.
Freak out!
Calm down...
Forbes informs me that federal spending spurs private sector growth.
But when fifty-four thousand buckaroos from you
and you
and you
and me too is just enough
to cover Congress’ butt until the dimwits there do another... (insert something dumb),
it’s time to draw the line.

And time to erase lines previously drawn:
George Washington warned us once before:
“...the common and continual mischiefs of [political] parties are sufficient to make it the... duty of a wise people to discourage... it.”
Yet here we are: the media’s reporting majority wars
that serve only to sail us further offshore from Pristine America
and a time when things really seemed to matter, especially when they did.
Deny it; it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t change
our chances of escaping another Cuban
Missile
Crisis. If we waged World
                               War
                                            Three, what would we
                                                       do?
                                                               One
thing: debate, procrastinate, our fate
a fragile plaything fought over
by infantile, full-grown fanatics who never quite phased out of high school debate.
They never learned to lose, and so they play the inane blame game,
I say quite frankly: gurl. Dat cray-cray.

Dear Democracy, when will my words hold water?
When will the weight of a rainbow OREO or a
monogamous monotone monotheistic chicken sandwich
on my guilty conscience be lifted?
Must I muster a hungry lackluster life in the land of opportunity
to oppose tyranny
and uphold justice? I turned eighteen last December,
but for as long as I can remember
I’ve been voting with the dollar bill, my ballot
traveling through the bloodstream, fueling the body of big business, who fuel the daring charities, who fuel their bills in congress.

Democracy, do you know me?

For this faux-democratic nation where the population waits for the government to lay itself to waste, the Founding Fathers sob, disgraced.
                                                       Oh, God Bless America!
the nation where when faced with any
[man, woman, child, intersex, genderqueer, etc.] who dares defile the status quo,
accept the stigma like a crown of thorns, on top of all the scorn
                                                                    We The People
donate millions to “charities” who dare to speak for
Jesus,
the meek and mild. John chapter eight, verses one through eight:
he drew a
fine line in the
sand, man:
it’s where your rights end and mine begin. Irony, irony: they are as good as
mine.
For this faux-democratic nation where the population waits for the government to lay itself to waste, the Founding Fathers sob, disgraced.

I put little stock in counseling, simply because it doesn’t work for
me. That’s reasonable. right?
That’s why I’m not
going back.
Because contrary to the initial irrational paranoid belief held by
not me, I was not
raped by anyone this last July, I am not
an altered boy.

Repression? Obsessions? Depressions?
You’re right, in a sense. I was not
raped by one man this last July, I was
raped by the whole church for the past 18 years.
I learned, or perhaps deduced, from Sunday School
that all sex is sin
that inanimate objects had a goodness or badness about them
that Satan was in my head (by this I was terrified)
that all my friends were going to Hell (by this I rebuked them and was never forgiven)
that its true: my parents would have gotten me stoned to death in biblical times
because they love me
that I could choose who I was attracted to (apparently by watching straight porn)
that God needs money
that the Internet is of the devil >mfw intellectual open market
that I could only achieve orgasm once in a lifetime >mfw I came
that God’s love is conditional
that electronics are a sin if they make noise and are inside a specific building
that all Muslims are terrorists
that I’m worthless because I’m a sinner
that I’m inherently evil.

And I still miss it sometimes.
I miss the taste of Christ’s cock.

this may be immature and boyish
but i'm breaking up with you
because you won't put out
or maybe i'm a pig,
an instant feminist,
just add guilt and water to the mix
I'll be fine;
no no i'll be fine
you bitch.

playing snowball fight with myself as a child;
now i'm taking the lower ground
as he curiously rolls a snowball down
the hillside.

accumulating
piss and sticks
and grass and dirt–
for Oklahoma, the land of my youth,
never sees more than twelve inches of snow–
it overtakes me.

and from the nucleus of that humongous ball
i curse the child,
wishing death and hellfire upon him.

he only cries harder
as the black avalanche consumes reality.

an exercise in trust:
her white nisan maxima speeds down the roadway.
speeding away from my sixty-dollar loan?
speeding away from my repayment?

i say:
check your pockets!
                                             check your purse!
              check your wallet!
                                  check between the seats!
                            there it is.

why am I here anyway?
choose one of the following: (desperation/generosity)
__

the maxima now wanders aimlessly
through unknown city streets
far from home
on the laziness of pet merchants:
an exercise in trust.
__

a fib is told, biding for time
two
three
a hundred fibs for the hundred unwary,
an exercise in fate.

A book of Shakespeare
being used
to prop up a television antenna

Mindy takes a seat opposite me,
as if we're about to engage in some serious conversation.
Christmas carols would make the background stale
if there was no twist to them.
"Thanks for buying the ice cream," she reiterates for the fourth time,
her potential lover-girl Jaclyn repeating the sentiment half-heartedly.

"It's no problem."
I reply with my usual comeback.
"I'm sorry Daniel couldn't come.
He had excuses
akin to my last three boyfriends,
and you know how long those lasted.
It's enough to make me want to go straight."

"I can make you straight."

"What?"

"What?"

And we continue as if nothing happened.
Jaclyn eats her ice cream as Mindy shares hers with me.
It has a twang to it, a strange flavor she made herself
that you wouldn't expect to be so good until you tried it.

Deep in my core, that ice cream sent a chill through my body–
a chill of uncertainness.

I was hungry
so I made myself a sandwich
with bread (from a bag)
and meat (from a bag)
and cheese (from a bag)
and in the sixth or seventh bite, found
a bit of bone crushed up inside.
I ate it
while why screen played out
my life
my friends
my sex
my dreams in front of me–
a portrait of Utopia.

I needed to move,
so I sat
in a car, cursing the wind.
I drove down Main Street
to see the park, Illuminated.
I needed expression
so I came back
to the place where I waste my life
to write a poem.

I require exercise
and so I will run
on a treadmill
and go nowhere for twenty minutes.

Pink: the color they hid from me in the days of dewy youth.
But what I see as pink may be a yellow, green, or blue.
My eyes don't deceive me;
I think yours do: you have not the slightest clue.

Pink: the aid in love's elusion.
Pink the way and pink the means
by which I loved at last!
Still, they all insisted on my blueness
while emboldening dividing lines
dividing most of human kind.
Open minds will quickly find
that nothing and yet everything is pink.

And I loved him as a human,
not an object of desire.
His knees must be weary:
sore from bowing.
He found god between my thighs,
but I found Love between his lungs.
It's okay– at least I felt something.
And now he just abandons me
and -silence- ends my fantasy
and I can see reality.

Could I, would I sacrifice
a stable mind
for one last night?
Would that I could sleep so fine as to
not rely on him beside me,
emboldening dividing lines
dividing most of human kind.
Open minds should quickly find
that nothing and yet everything is pink.

Everything is pink (and yet nothing).
Is it too revealing?

the bathroom stall
where two new lovers gave it all
away,
left,
and never spoke again

the stage lights in high school auditoriums
that burn out
within the minute you turn them on

Just a little makeup
and that way they won’t know–
some concealer on my cheeks
and my hair placed just so.



Perhaps a little more,
so I can feel who I am inside;
to distract myself from chest hair
and bruises to hide.

But everywhere,
on my neck: brown
on my body: purple
on the wall: red,
no makeup can hide.
God knows I’ve tried;
he just doesn’t listen.
I’ve longed to confide
in a word from his book
but the text suggests
his infallibility.
I know that’s a lie.
He is imperfection– just as I
am imperfection
on the outside.

the condom dispenser at the mall
that now dispenses
children's toys

Alyssa moves like she’s being watched
and watching me,
but the white-walled room, despite her husband’s presence
is empty.
Everything echoes.

Alyssa and I have serenaded the dead and dying weekly.
Today is no exception.
She performs, I just sing–
are my songs really any emptier than hers?
We and the dying clasp hands in a circle
and mimic a psychic raising of the dead.

Alyssa and I have sat through the same
cut-and-dry
hour-long condemnations
all our lives,
but she bought in and now moves
like she’s being watched,
at which I scoff.

Alyssa is not allowed into Business Meetings
because of sexist Paul,
and I make this known to a friend
I trust now more than Alyssa,
now happily chatting with the guy I was eying.

Alyssa’s father takes me aside
for inquisition.
I confess of my sin, but I do not repent.

Alyssa found out, and now my existence is pornography.

Are you a lie?
Are you ashamed?
Have you given up?
Who drowned you in that murky water,
saying "Nobody has to know?"

Step in, step in!
Your weary eyes don't match your expression;
let me help you stitch up your style.
Rid yourself of this black concealer!
Are you even there?

Why do you torture yourself in the corner?
Your eyes glaze over when I walk by;
sometimes I wonder if you have gone blind.

Dig, deep and wide, the void that you try so hard to fill,
and bury the past that has possessed you;
bury the loved ones who molest you.
The enemies of the empty closet whisper,
"Nobody has to know."
But everyone has to know
because you torture yourself in the corner;
your eyes glaze over when I walk by;
sometimes I wonder if you have gone blind.

Why do you torture yourself in the corner?
Your eyes glaze over when I walk by;
sometimes I wonder if you have gone blind.

Virginia and Maxwell are the skin that will grow
together to cover the wound,
and I am the IV.

“This will only take a few minutes,”
I reassure them as
the vein is struck.
So much blood fills the bag
in five short seconds.

I remove the needle
and trek across hospital halls,
up and down elevators,
through pristine rooms,
to the Intensive Care Unit,
to a dying man
named Anthony
in dire need of a transfusion.

“This will only take a few minutes,”
the vein is struck.
The jealous blood exits the bag
in five short seconds.
But I wish they were at least years.