I hate
that your peach lips
are still
peach;
all that glitter
still to
eminent on your skin
both before and after
I laid you down
and played in the cosmos
of your belly button.

Stop calling me at night.

Can you hear me?

Stop calling
and reminding me
of the wilting fronds of flesh
on your lips
and the groves of light
on your abdomen
still too
fresh to me.

I have begun to say your name
too much
with
too little
to bare.

You are a ******* drunk,
you *******,
*******,
*******
horrible person,
you.

God,
when the time comes
it will be like
redemption.

The tipping will tip over,
and the balancing
will balance out.

Go **** yourself in a corner,
go drown.

Fine. I will take all of this with me,
into a torrent,
I will consume and consume,
distill and distill,
spew and spew,
me,
that *******,
*******,
*******,
drunk.

How am I deserving?
A dog to have an angel.
A drunken mongrel, lapping up his drink out of the sewers,
stumbling and mumbling and howling his way home.
Smoking cigarette after cigarette, eating his fill of what's in his bowl.
A liar, a thief, a beggar, a cheat.
A homeless dog, screaming, baring his teeth at the others,
until his cowardice overcame him and he whimpered into the woods,
crying with his tail between his legs. Nothing but shame to clothe him
and even that hung loosely.
And how now, am I deserving?
A dog, to have an angel.
An angel, whose song is hummed so softly, it could be the twinkling stars whispering. whose eyes, light and caramel and emerald, ignite waterlogged embers into competitive thrusts of red-hot atomic energy. The energy to move. To grow!
TO EXPAND!
how now?
Am I deserving?
of an angel with a fabric
of a million hurts and echoing pains,
laid so gently upon her shoulders,
that it is royal,
and she is not ruined,
but exalted.
Am I deserving?
The mongrel.
The angel.
The drunkard.
The farce.

I swear girl
you've made me want to
take all your ****
and throw it
out on the steps
these past days;
thou shalt not steal.

Lately
I've been wanting
to chop your head off,
but I'm a moralist
so I do it in my head
but sometimes...
thou shalt not ****.

But I love you....
thou shalt love they neighbor
as thine own self....
and I love you in the agonizing way a man's heart can be caught and snared.

I've had to sleep in my car
for six days now,
because of you yelling and screaming
and just hating everything about me
until you wake me up in the morning
tapping on the foggy glass
in a bathrobe, them pink, ***** slippers,
and some scalding black coffee in a mug,
and I look at you and I just want to....
thou shalt not ****,
again,
thou shalt not ****.

And it all started with you
waking me up with a bible to the head,
thumping me awake
at 3:15 in the morning,
standing over me reading
"thou shalt not covet another man's wife."

And everybody's a sinner.

I want to write
a poem,
about myself.

Of death,
and exquisite joy.

Weeks on end
with constant pressure,
small breaks,
and no woman to talk to.

This poem,
this life is filled
with unfulfillment,
and then when it isn't,
it haunts you.

Drinkers drink,
smokers msoke,
most of the time
it goes hand in hand.

Sometimes I hate
being the man
to bear the dead weight.

And no, I am not alone,
but,
because of myself,
I am alone.

Having not seen much,
everyday that I grow
is an explosion,
a catastrophe
and then heaven.

And not always heaven,
never when you expect it,
when you need
it.

But heaven when you're being selfish;
when you is me,
vice versa,
and it washes over and you spend
all week
trying to atone for not fully enjoying it.

How much should I wallow in the peace
that sprung from the muck of deep sin?
how much should I allow myself
to feel lowsy for not
enjoying respite?

How many people push
against themselves,
only to realize they're wrong,
and wrong and wrong?

I am always realzing;
always a realization
of myself, of us
through me. And I am trying to be
less arrogant. But
I know things are right;
I know the evil I have
perpetrated against me,
and you,
and I know that isn't always the case.

I know the good.

So, I am tired
of bone and dry,
and full of milk
and honey.

But even though fatigue
settles,
like dust,
I am fine with
this.

I know that this
is. And I am at home
in
this.

You have lunch
with a fly.

Standing in the street,
you allow the breeze
to take over.

You watch the mountains,
as much as they watch you
standing still in time.

At a garden, you sit for hours
in unperturbed silence
as the finches inch closer and closer,
your eyes becoming
more and more
like bark.

You pass everyone on the street
with a small smile on your face,
without saying hello.

Anger comes to you
but you do not answer the door.

It becomes easier to breathe,
easier to laugh,
easier to be.

The high that fills you
is non-narcotic
but the air is clear,
the sky dazzles,
each cloud mind-boggling,
and each mountain peak
a tiny heaven.

Your lover long gone,
is a recent memory. And she returns
to you with an electricity.
She becomes
all that she never was,
but always was.

It is saddening,
but it is also beautiful
because it existed.

Even your enemies
take on a certain glow,
and emanate eternal qualities.

There is no reason
for all of this,
it just happens to you one day
when you finally begin to make
all the choices in your life,
even the ones
you thought
you couldn't
make.

Have you ever noticed
how you don't have anything?
Not that girl
you pretend to put
in your glove compartment
when she's in your gloves?
Or a car?
Or a job?
Or real, feasible hope?
Or **** all?

Put yourself in my position,
I can't stand looking at you,
your head caves in at the middle
like dough with a thumb print,
and you could fit
two *******
or two *******'
in that nose of yours.

All you think about is ***, companionship and pancakes.

A lack of hope,
that's what's missing,
I'm talking
feasible hope,
that's the one you really need.

If you could feel it
like yesterday's bile
still on your tongue,
maybe it'd be easier for me
to work with that head.

Or
those gloves,
if you actually put them on
instead of pretending to put them on,
instead of playing with that girl.

Tell her what's really going on,
even though she'll laugh
and laugh
and laugh.

Tell her you're actually going insane
every second.

A shish-KABOOM
that slows down faster
than accelerated Swiss particles speed up.

Tell her about your heart,
that underneath the ink across your chest
there's something else tattooed.

Or maybe she won't say anything
and you'll be talking to
fingers in a ***** glove.

A car would be good too,
you could go places,
use those free passes to Puregold
your friend gave you.

Then again,
you'd want to save every woman alive after going there;
you'd think you could do it,
some hero,
some fake,
some male with a complex.

And finally
the job.

You have over $10,000 in outstanding loans,
either you get a job
or I do the right thing for the both of us.

So do you really want all this?
Want to be young?

Want to know what it's like
to have this ******* heart
and keep it forever?

A heart that doesn't shut the **** up
and goes off calling angry everybody's
at four in the morning
because it's drunk?

Want to know about fear?
I'm not talking wise fear,
I'm talking fear-of-death;
tiger-in-a-bunny-suit fear.

Once you turn those lights off
and can't handle yourself in the dark
then you'll know my fear.

Across town, there’s no across. It’s just the town.

The dogs being fed by master, master toys,
Makes dogs bend, cower, quiver, then shoots dog
Out of the bow. Dog gnaws air through gritted fangs,
Finalizes his stupidity, gives up on his own self-confidence,
And lets it roar with a hand up his ***.

The pigeons coo, cluck, ****, fly,
Coo, cluck, ****, fly,
Coo, cluck, ****, fly.

Foxes run around the yard chasing tails,
Motives based in circles,
Saving slowing down and puking for death
as they Yap like pups.

Master watches from a high gallery
of Windexed windows so clean,
That you can see master’s muscles tightening as master laughs.

happiness and darkness.

Cars, trains, automobiles,
Flying machines, high ideas, fulfillment,
Continuation, carbon and all things irrelevant,
Master loves you.

In town, Pop tells the kids he’s on his way,
Mama shatters into a million brilliant pieces,
And Grandad’s sigh comes out his mouth with the care of a habit.

The kids are corralled into the basement to play,
mess with each others genitals, and put on azalea dresses
And heavy suits with black ties.

With all the venom of moths
They let their little mouths flutter in the dark,
as Mama and Poppa hurl everything they can.

Master gets drunk on equilibrium,
High on acid, perks, dipped bud,
Brushes teeth with alcohol
And spits out his/her teeth in the morning.

Way after the dogs were put to bed to tuck their tails in their legs,
The foxes following suit, the pigeons in the middle of the mess, somewhere.

Mom, Pop, Kids, Grandad, finished talking in low voices around 11:16 pm.

As they shredded the charade, ashamed at all its pieces,
Their mouths watered; I have no hope.

Across town, it’s not a town,
It’s a random house.

I saw Ada,
In New York. I hit her up,
and she wanted to meet up for breakfast.

The next morning:

She had on slate shorts, a ruffling, loose white t,
And chucks falling apart at the seams
in scythes of fabric.

Her hair bobbles
as she bounces over.
It's so frizzy and curly
as if it’s been through electroshock.

She gives me a hug and as she pulls away
her lips hit my cheek.

A grey pigeon lands in my sight behind her
and pushes a white **** out onto a starbucks lid.

The best thing
Is seeing exes that you haven’t
talked to or seen in awhile; and hearing
them talk about the great things they’ve done
In your time apart.

It’s almost as if I was right there with Ada
when she was experiencing
her new love of Brooklyn.

I am
A  ghost in her life,
And in that piece of my heart
That misses her,
I like the feeling of being
as free as a spectre;
an unobtrusive observer.

Foolish roiling Krakken,
go back to your basin. old-timer,
No wit, no heart,
just energy enough for that last breach.

Old timer, schemin'
in the swirl,
wrapping those loose arms around me so tight.

It's hungry again, thirsty.

Krakken crackling through
all the fluid in my body
And making my lungs
howl in hatred.

I've seen your eyes in the mirror
again
not to deep below.

Hungry for oxygen.

Loves
meek-mongerers,
calls when there's
no alcohol left:
no more balling
today.

****** on you in the morning
and walks out the bathroom
laughing like a pig.

A response
and a beginning,
now in a blanket,
my blood boiled when we were closer.

Had so much fun,
those times,
when love
asked you to stick a lime between
your teeth
and pour salt on her *****.

Cats howling at night, right
outside my window,
and I call and call and call
a whole bunch,
until every single one
asks from the brawling fence:
"you still talking about that ****?"

"get off her."

"she's not the one."

"no need for all of that."

"keep it chill."

And they still--don't know.

This is how you squeeze
a dollar
outta fifteen cents.

Cut the bottom of the tube
of a toothpaste
and lick the mint jelly
onto a toothbrush.

Writing is the truth,
love.

The woman who's got your heart,
won't let go.

You'll run, but she'll own you,
always.

On everything else, your energy's
wasted.

But this *****, she's *****,
plays nasty.

"She'll con you into thinking,
she can save you."

"She'll ******* 'till sunrise,
leave you empty."

"She'll **** your brain,
leave the pain."

On the way out, she deposits
a couple something's.

Something for you to maintain
'till the next time around.

But with each go of it, less and less of you
remains.

Writers are useless things,
perfect slaves.

Horrible lovers,
melodramatic *******.

Walking home,
a girl in an orange
of a shirt and long
bell-bottoms
with a small protuberant
***
turned around to look at me.

Her eyes were large,
and the way she looked at me
was a question almost:

Are you dangerous?

Maybe, she wasn't looking at me,
maybe the breeze kicked up,
and she just wanted to shield herself.

But I don't know,
something in the way
she looked at me,


The quick stoicism
of her large blue eyes,
shocked into a quick
heavy moment of recognition:

black guy.
hoodie.
black baggy pants.
the scowl.


I knew that soon her eyes
would wiggle out of there sockets
and dangle behind her
always looking back
even as she kept moving forward.

The illusion of moving forward.

I felt like the black guy
the news tells you about,
the one that's dangerous
to all lonely white females
at 9:00 at night,
as his tongue lolls
and his head wags.

Maybe,
I'm being too sensitive.

Maybe,
I'm being hypersensitive.

Why is it
that whenever I see a white female
walking towards me at night
I cross the street?

Just another black man
Just another black body
Just another black tomb
A bullet pushes itself
Through a skull
Pops out the other side
And skids
Along the asphalt
The gun is still in
His hand,
He can’t release it now,
He will forever
Have a clenched fist
A ball of fury
A chamber of memories
A prison inside the palm
Shackled to the ground
They don’t even have
To snap on the cuffs
He’s somewhere else
But that doesn’t matter
Just another black body
Black bag
Black tomb.

For the first few months
you just want to **** yourself
and
everyone around you
in a machete mash-up
or a shotgun divorce.

I remember the girl
I started messing around with
after
the
thing.

She'd get on top of me
and reach down into my pants.

She'd do this
mechanical yanking real hard
until I started
getting friction burns.

Until I had to come
or else my **** might've singed off.

And when we ******,
she wanted everything hard
and she kissed real masculine:
aggressive
and her lips
braced against my teeth.

I hated her.

But what really ****** me up about her,
was that I only told her once about
Gnat,
and she didn't seem to hear me.

All the yanking and hard kissing,
she seemed there just to burn me down.

Not to destroy or anything malicious,
just that when she hopped in her car
and drove around in la-la land
I felt charred and empty.

Sometimes I'd call her over
to ****
and I'd just stare at her naked body,
closing my eyes
picturing gnat.

It never worked.

I always came hard
and it burned.

Eventually,
I stopped calling her.

Maybe she's dead or something.

I don't know,
at that time
she was just that inanimate to me.

I barely remember what she looked like,
I spent so much time
trying to super-impose.

I told myself,
while we were in the subway
that i wasn't gonna have a beer
or grab a pack of cigarettes.

I had a beer up here

and it ran me 7 dollars.

I bought a pack of Marlboros

and that ran me another 13.


I spent twenty dollars
and didn't even get a good
buzzzzz.



New york is a good place to go sober.

Isela
takes it in
the mouth.

She'd get on her knees,
positioning herself
half-in,
half-out
of focus.

Just enough for Joe,
behind the Cannon,
to capture
the whole thing.

Eric,
the producer,
was on his hands and knees
beside Joe.

'Come on Izzy
work it,
work the ****.'

'That's right,
stroke it,
make him sing.'

'I love it,
Izzy.'

Izzy wanted to bite
down.

She hated each and every ****,
she ever saw,
but she had a few things to do.

Her **** had to be new
and renewed
on the daily,
her ***** had to get wet
on command,
and her stroke had to be
so fast
they'd burn the dude
as her mouth
cooled.

After her mouth
was littered,
and her face was a mess
of spinal glitter -- You could make a man
come out of his
brain, Eric would say.

Izzy would get in her car,
wiping her arm
where'd she'd gone
to the clinic
to get pricked
and tested,
and pull a long haul of Virginia Slims
down her throat.
'
It was always the first sweet thing
she tasted.

Izzy would pull into the Terrace View apartments,
all that long black hair,
and wipe all that make-up off,
three napkins-worth,
so she could kiss her baby.

Because Rocco was in for a bid,
and not coming home anytime in
the forseeable future.

Her microbiology degree was somewhere
in her closet underneath those pink stillettos and
more fishnets than fish.

And Izzy knew
that with those double d's;
*** like a backseat,
mouth that could grease
a ****,
and her hands
Eric liked to call his own,
that she could pay the light bill
and maybe
put Romeo
into a daycare center
that wasn't full of roaches
and
angry *******.

"Someday I'll get out,
but it's illogical
to say
with all the money I'm making,
and it's just a job
when you get down to it,
I've ****** a lot of *****
and never gotten
paid."

Rocco Jr.'s cheeks were always the second
sweet thing
she tasted.

"I know a lot of girls
that got defeated by this game."

A collection of sadness
is the heart
when it swims
in a pool
of madness
waiting for success..

Have thoughts and prayers
like
the thoughts and prayers
of a CEO.

Think of yourself
as successful and important
as them.

Our society says it can only be men,
as a woman,
work twice as hard
and be twice as passionate
as them.

It shouldn't be that way,
but it is,
so you've got to make it
and want it worse
in every way.

Is this where it happens?
Is this the where
and when?

On a bus going through
nowheres stocked with burned-out houses
and Chevys idling on empty axles?

I have passed so many of them,
that I don't know
when it'll stop;
all this quiet and oblivion.

We could always say
that it was almost us
that it was almost forever
that it was almost right
just the wrong time
and this fated life ain't right

I took your love
and cheated on you with time
I took all your pain
and threw it in your face
You could almost say
our love was the color
of the tears in your eyes
and it was just so perfect
only half the time
The other half
We 'bout lost our minds

But
we had something special
and it was almost us
it was almost
forever
it was almost
life
I just kept telling you
it was you
and that was almost
always
halfway
right.

Iamstillheartbroken
overyou.
Possiblyi'mnot,
possiblytherearethin­gsambivalentandjumbledandstucktogetherinsideofme
maybeyouareoneof­thestucktogetherthingsinsideofme
comingoutofmebecauseofacoreintur­moil
avolcanotappingfromagiantmagmachamberof
love.

Amelia
with the
tender
Tom Hardy lips
picks
at things.

Scabs.

The peeling leather
on her
steering wheel.

The frayed edges of the hole in her denims
that's as gaping
as a zipper mouth,
and looks
just
as
vicious.

Boys she likes
and likes
not at all.
(Men that call her "sweetie.")

Amelia's delicate fingers
and the ballet of her fingernails
warp bruises
into rose vaginas.

And make hurt
smell
good,
and decay
taste like
the wet of your first girlfriend
and the sweet odor of fear
she let off
when your tongue searched
and she lay there--
legs cocked on your shoulders--
quiet,
never sighing.

Amelia hasn't found anything
that scares her good and healthy yet.

When she does
she'll know love,
and I'll stop thinking about her.

"I will eat your ******* **** off
in your sleep,
this is just disgusting"

We had been conversing proper cleaning methods concerning the latrine.

"Who does that?
Just ****** all over the toilet seat and doesn't clean it."

"Who leaves a ****** ****** in the toilet
and doesn't flush?"

We resolved the situation amicably like adults.

After a while
it tastes like sweetwater,
and I can bumble through a bar crowd
with haletosis.

The heartless jest
is this,
I call you
and call you
and call you.

This is the heartless jest,
and in the pantheon
of the heart,
I am minor Hermes
ferrying messages of love
across the brutal galaxies
to a lover
that will never hear me
in the suffocation of nebulas.

The nebulas where i was reborn
and died in an instant
of fire so rapid
that it could break a pulsar
in two.

I have found the vaccuum of space
to be comforting,
it hugs me with a feirceness
that I have never known
and a love for my oxygen
that is downright flattering.

Andreya,
will you marry me?

Will you let me make
nests of sticks
and bubblegum
wadded together by spit
in your arms?

Please say yes,
I have drifted
into *******
of your voice,
and spurn the day,
when I  cannot hear your voice
that rips my heart
to
peices.

Lord Forgive me,
I have talked about love,
I have talked
about love,
I have broken commandments
on my skin,
I have killed a thousand
dogs
in my mind,
I put arsenic
in Jesus' cereal,
I placed myself
at the center
of the world
and lit a match,
I have put my heart
in precarious positions
and called women
demons,
I have stolen $3,000
from my family:
credit cards
maxed out,
private stashes,
blacked out,
I even asked my own momma
for a few dollars
for something to eat
when you know where
I went; how I fed myself,
Lord Forgive me,
Lord
*******.
Lord Forgive me
for ******* the You
in Me,
no born-again **** here,
I'm just placing a collect call
out to the galaxies,
please accept the charges.

She’s got her
Legs wrapped around
My thighs
Like blood-filled vines.

She pushes my ******
In and out.

Kisses
Me
hard,
like she wants
To bite off my jaw.

“sometimes I hate you,
Really,
Sometimes I love you,
but not as much
As I hate you.”

she says.

Before,
The first time,
When *** was just a game
And we were kids
Who didn’t know which hole
Was which,
it was good.

Now it’s a witch’s brew.

When I look into her eyes
She spews poison,
Like it’s her passion.

And her mouth won’t stop
Exploding, because
She talks in artillery
And thinks of me
In games and warfare.

How did we get here?

Was it something
I said,

probably what

I did.



It was so dark
And cold the night
**** went downhill.

And there was no one out
It almost felt safe.

Nothing left but intimacy
a hungry phallus
And drunk love
for the tired young man

*******

his girl

In the back of his Camry.

He was Tired
already, ready to die,
Too much romanticism in a
165 pound kid.



He tried to maneuver himself
So that she sat on his ****
and he could check the rearview
For creepers,
and at the worst,

Cops.

but all he could see

In the mirror

Was her going

Up

And

Down:

Naked; Beautiful.

Her Brown skin burned

against his.

Her *** looked like
It was going to fall off
She was going so fast.

Her black eyes punctured

through him like she was taking
core samples.

She was

going to take everything

and leave nothing behind.



Wiggling like broken
Cogs, he and her scrambled
As the lights flashed
Blue and red
And he scrambled
To pull his **** out of her,
as he
Came, and some got
On his legs
And even in her *****.

And for a moment

He feared and hoped
He would be a father,

A proper father.



The cop shined
His light, and tapped the window.
She snapped her bra On
underneath her shirt.

The boy zipped his pants up
like he had a gun.

The cop really thought he had one.

the cop backed away

and started yelling
“GET OUT OF THE CAR!”

The boy didn’t say anything,

He just sat there.

The girl was crying silently.

The cop was still yelling.
“GET OUT OF THE CAR,NOW!”

He just sat there.

The cop was still yelling.

The girl was
Still
Crying,
Silently.

“DO YOU HEAR ME? GET OUT OF THE ******* CAR!”

He hops out.

The cop wrestles him to the ground.

There’s broken Coors bottles down there,
And cigarette butts.

Some left-over
Beer gets in his nose
And he inhales a *** of asphalt and alcohol.

The cop is pushing his face into the ground,
It feels like a car crash.

The boy feels like his nose
Is about to break,
Little blood vessels
Burst as red streamers
come out of both holes
And drip onto the refuse.

He can barely breathe.

Each breath is full of more blood
Than left-over beer.

He can taste the iron in his
Throat.

That was once a good drink
And a good smoke.

Now it’s nothing.

Now nothing is finally nothing.



The cuffs snap
On cold,
colder
Than the way his body
Felt when he saw those blues
And reds.


She remains in the car,
Like a woman in confession.
Her penance will
Be over shortly.

She will be taken home,
and her parents
Will forgive her.



But the boy will not be fed.
The cop will forget.
And the girl will sleep
As silently as a knife
In a drawer.

This is how it ends.
This is where I am
When she has her legs
Wrapped around me.

She loved rolling L's,
I'd plop down on her bed,
she'd have A$AP or some
OFWGKTA on,
she was a New York girl
in skinny jeans
and camo Jordans
with them gold doorknockers,
a transplant
both from there
and into my life,
she'd run her pink nails
long as needles along
the Swisher,
and I swear
she had to know something
about internal anatomy,
cause she'd do that ****
to my belly button;
how long have you been practicing?
How many bodies have you split open
and left for dead
in the ashtray?
You rolled a tight L,
and I hemourraged
for five minutes,
it became a local anesthetic
until the procedure
was over.

The woman could do more
than just lick the insides clean,
she was humane,
she'd fill it back
with something you could burn.

She could roll L's
to Webster
all day,
not even the big L's
like love, lust, lascivious
more like
loner, longing, and live.

I swear to ******* God,
you eat my Oatmeal one more time
without asking,
and I'm going to cut your arm off.

Every morning I wake up
at 6:30. Ann wakes up
at 7:00 for work.

So I take her Oatmeal out of the cabinet
and pour a shitload in a bowl.
More than I will ever need,
just to **** her off.

And she wakes up at seven
and I'm just smiling there,
wolfing down her oatmeal;
anything to get a win in the morning.

There is a
home
someplace
for you, peopled
by the niceties
of a lot of time.

You don't have to fear,
this is heaven,
we are gold there.

Don't tumble
in your covers.

Sleep, child,
there is dessert
in your dreams,
and you can tangle with the spider-women
later.

But,
mother goose,
I do.

I do tangle with them,
their loving arms
embrace me,
and their mandibles make my flesh scream.

I hope I dream a dream
so beautiful
that it destroys earth,
and god,
and heaven,
and you.

I hope the spider-women
come to you at night,
lowering themselves into your bed,
and whisper into your head:
"this is nothing,
this poison shall pass too,
in heaven,
you will be free."

as they say lastly,
"I am your saviour,"
while sinking their fangs baring sleep
into your soft neck.

It's hard to come out of a three-day drunk,

4:16 in the morning.
Went outside for a smoke, the world is always silent at these times,

and I couldn't handle the return
of my emotions
there were so huge and strong.

And that anvil
knows every angle
of me.

They fell on me en masse
as I lay on the concrete letting all the blood rush
back to its proper places;
in a bitter state.

No one to hold my fears.
No sanctity for my tears.
When I cry, it goes deep
into my system, lays down
beside my visions; oils my dreams, powers the machine
of my body.

God
allow me the strength to survive,
to strive,
to struggle,
to climb, to love,
to live a breathless life.

Even though I feel
sadness, I know
it wells from a good place
in my soul.

Uncomfortable without my tears.

So,
I may not be a blaster,
or a boxer,
or a firefighter,
but I've learned
to control my explosions,
take my punches when they come,
and let my eyes fall
to water the fires
that lick on all sides.

From the hole
in her acid-wash jeans,
she calls
her ***** a prophet,
from that hole a whole
new world
will be born.

She will push
out
****, ****,
but lastly
she will push out
a new world.

She will push out my fingers,
and my clawing
at her,
she will push out the concealed evil
and the suffocated good.

Slap that ***.
Slap that ***.

Make the evil and good scream,
give birth to a new black
humanity, a breathing wheezing
baby of equal parts good and bad,
king and beggar,
prophet and pessimist,
criminal and revolutionary.


From
her acid-wash jeans
and the hole
that I dug my fingers in
countless times
and made swirls
of mud against her burning
insides and wet flesh,
she will give birth
from a well-rounded hole,
to a well-rounded whole.

She is with him and,
I am here alone,
about to get kicked out
of my house.

He buys her sketchpads drawn
in love, while I weep
in the flourescent night.

I drink
enough to make you hurt
enough.

I'm young
and no one loves me.

I think I'm suffering from something. This morning I woke up feeling a weight on my chest. I felt like a compass at the core of the earth, it was like all that iron was just throwing me for 360 degrees. And I realized what it was, like, I'm just trying to be successful, you know? And that hunger couples with fear so much for me. I'll wipe my eyes, and lay in bed in a scared stasis. A feeling drops through me *******. First it's a desperate feeling for action, to do something, to be productive. Then this desperate complacency washes against it. A rock, a body, a me.

When Me and Ashley fight
it becomes a contest
to see who can yell the loudest;
vis a vis
who is angry enough
to go crazy
and chop the other's head off.

That's the only time either of us
will shut up,
when we know that
we will both sleep
with our eyes open
tonight.

Sometimes we ****
when we get bored
around 2 am
with keeping our eyes open.

I can’t really tell you
About love,
You.

I’m interested in *******
Till I’m raw, and holding
You like the universe you
Are.

Sometimes I go around
With hoes,
Smoking blunts till we fume
And sing and laugh
And start getting handsy.

Sometimes they have their kids in the other room,
And they yelp and laugh; when I look into these hoes
Eyes, all I see is aggression. I’m not seeing myself.

I’m not saying these things
The way I want them to be sung.

Most of my money
Runs out the door. Like a bandit,
Trouble likes to peep me when I’m at my worst.

The cops have never been so *****
As when they see me, and they ******
Holsters.

I go alone a lot. To a lot of places.

Hoes, Money, Depression, Debt,
Bad Credit, All kinds of Addiction,
****, Alcohol, ****, Codeine, Nicotine,
My brain is a Chemical Frenzy,
Most days I’m hovering like a mote.

I graduated,
Look at my degree: **** Me.

I have come home to a confining place,
A spit-swallowing place, full of half-breathed people
And tight-lipped sorrows.  

I can only
go
when it’s convenient
And necessary.

I can only
be
when it’s part of a digression,
Never progression.

Food tastes like paper,
I’ve taken a likening.

Lights are fastened to the sky,
The glue wears, washes my eyes in milk,
The jewels drop,
The world ends.

Then it all snaps back into place, eerily,
So clean I never saw it.

Ask me if I can tell you about love,
When I can remember your body
And
It’s casual thump,
Clothed or not,
Drunk or sober,
Speaking or silent.

Ask me if I can drive home and peel back the sky with my left hand, while steering Earth into oblivion,
As I lean across wind-swept galaxies of dust, ash, and settled nicotine
To kiss Florida Orange lips, sip the nectar of insanity, and
Swerve on universe eyes.

That tiny
red brick townhouse
somewhere
away from London.

Bathed
in fogged sunlight.

Watery air.

rays
in penumbras.

At the window
she is
a conflagration
of
soft yellow lasers.

The ivy creeps up the windows
from a
bottomless
rug
seeping
out of the basement grates
in
green
scrambling
capillaries,

they want to be burned
in the sun.

What joy
a snake
like me
feels
in a daydream
set in
his innocent London,

to be supplanted
by fear
lazing
with her legs up
***
open,
***** smiling
vertically
and
her
red-pink ****
an apple
on scratchy bedsheets.

And when the time comes,
what will be left,
will love be left?

hatred as well?

Will the protuberant
gestures
of a worn-down society
still stick up
like bruised,
but not broken,
pimples?

Of what discharge
will humans finally be made of?

We have told ourselves
that we come from the *****
of God, and the ovaries
of Mother Nature.

But God drinks too much
and comes home wasted
far too often,
far too drunk
to ****.

And mother,
well,
mother does the best she can.

So what we come from them
is spurned love,
of untruths often told
over bed-time stories
when God was talking about
his drunken outings
more than
morals,
and we listen
with beady little eyes,
because God is drunk,
and try as we might,
we cannot stop loving him.

So we come from love
and hatred,
addiction
and
hopefulness,
Mother giving us as much as we can
until we betray her.

Germel had the dead-eye stare like he was
going
to
puke.

"Bruh,
smoke this,
let it
cool
down,"
I said.

"You're on it right now,"
Germ said.

But he took a hit.

Germ and I were smoked
and drunk,
we'd been at it
for the last hour.

And over that time,
love had reached
it's *******
into my heart.

had pulled the hurt
right
out
with a single knuckle
and a single
digit.

Sometimes bud
will
do
that.

I wanted Germ to be all right,
as I dealt with the tornado
inside.

So much pain
on a sunday night,
so much
anger.

I wanted to punch
everything,
especially
those dumb
happy
lovers.

I watched Germ puke in the bushes.

And
I felt awful
because I knew
she'd finally dipped on me,
and that
was
puke
enough.

I miss the drunks. The y3lling.
The inhalation of beer and cigarettes
Chased down by ego and godlessness.

How many times
hqve I written to this song,
and never heard beauty once?

Like the sweet pinch of a grapefruit,
before the sunset of sweat,
the same sunset that hailed warfare for boys.

I loved you so much once,
I still do, but you are like mist,
and  I am blind.

I miss backstabbers, creeps, catfish,
vampires, crows,
an angel.

When I was young I would screech down the hill
in my toy truck,
plastic chassis a powerhouse,
canary and howling,
I'd crash into the same cherry tree a million times.

Call me Avalanche.

Call me Indisputable.

Call me the Powerhouse.

Call me,
I missed you.

It's better to back
into you
with all the lights on.

The headlights
swerving
like
doves.

The taillights making devil's eyes.

The **** in the ashtray
and
its
ruby.

It's better to pull into the driveway
while your husband
is
asleep.

He doesn't get up to take
a ****
in the night.

It's better to back into your guest bedroom,
with my back turned,
the boogie man in the closet is a
****** psychologist,
and may just spoil it
if we go looking for him.

It's better to back into the bed,
because I can drink the coffee
in your eyes.

You can sober yourself
over mine
if you want to.

It's better
not to back into
saying goodbye.

It's better to dismantle the brakes
and **** ourselves
over it,
than this constant reversing.

So,
over a slow goodbye
you grind your teeth
because you are no yellow light.

I would like to think
you have thick skin,
but you wear a perfume
like burning rubber,
and I know the backing in
is not your speed.

It's not mine.

An army
in flower-print
dresses
resides in our backyard
on a guilty clothesline.

Their bloated bodies
float in the water
of the wind.

In our tiny gestures, we tell potential buyers
that we had two beautiful daughters
who left their clothes everywhere,
and we have finally killed
them.

In small voices
they sing for justice
on the clothesline.

But the dresses
are our own childishness,
and not our fake childrens'.

And we tell our buyers these things,
because we want to leave this place,
but on our own terms.

A fortified wall is nothing against a surfing barracuda
during a bad dream full of bad intentions:

Wave-action makes you look drunk,
stumbling in the water, lazy as a jellyfish carcass on shore I stare at you.

I am with that girl
the one in the silvery bikini
and wet hair,
fanning on her clumsy shoulders in thin strands.

I'll be with her till the end. I'll make this stand. This stand against the wave coming in.

Turning around in the barrel of a wave,
you wave me in with you;
smiling up to your incisors. How cleanly
you are able to bite off chunks of meat.

The wave womps the **** out of you.

Thunder is under there, thunder
of waves, lightning of jellyfish,
brutalized clams,
hard-pressed sand,
all confused in the barrel of betrayal that is the wave,
while the wave yawns and grins.

Nothing can stand the wave,
I hope you ******* drown in there;
I hope that others just like you,
eat you,
that you become seafood.

The guy just kept swinging his lunchbox
and it kept hitting Shakira
in the stomach.

I had to say something.

So I did, I told him to watch where he swung
that ******* cooler.

And his boys got into it.
And they wanted to fight to.
And we were near the beach.
And the clouds were edgeless.
And the sun was pastel.

And I just wanted to **** all of them.

Shakira held me back.
My girl held me back.

And then I felt something sinking
cold, deep down in me.

I sat on the beach
and almost cried;
depression hit like peppermints.

And I'd never felt so afraid in my life.
On the beach, all those people laughing
and their fat ******* kids running into the surf,
I just wanted to **** myself right there,
I was so afraid and scared.

I'd never been scared.
Or afraid.
I'd gotten my nose broken
my jaw bruised a few times,
and I knew to put vaseline on
cuts over the eye,
but I was scared
and I can't explain the kind of fear
that's made me weak.

I've gotten into fights since then,
but I feel fear growing
everytime.

My fingers go crazy with twitching
and after it's over,
the ball gets bigger inside of me.

Lisa Nelle
had two names
like a pornstar.

She'd put her makeup on and stick all this blackness on
under her eyes
like she was holding night
in bags.

We watched Hey Arnold! DVDs at five in the morning,
and smoked the whole place up.

Sometimes her and Alexis would go in the back room.

Alexis never liked me.

Lisa Nelle had this way of looking at you
where she'd take her eyes
and she'd work her way
down to your stomach.

She could find a star in my intestines,
a dwarf light could warble in my stomach
and she'd see it through my belly button.

She'd pull it out
wings and all
and tell me
that Khalil knew the answers.

Out of this two-ton purse she carried around,
she'd whip out a compilation of Khalil Gibran.

One time she told me how her father
used to pull her hair
and thighs.

She didn't say anything about it again.

When we tripped shrooms,
she took my hands and put them on her neck
and asked me to feel for the nebulas
underneath her skin.

When I read
some of the stuff you send me,
the emails,
texts
or poems,
I can't help but wonder how many words
I now know as a result of you
that I wouldn't know
if I hadn't been looking
around for bud
and someone I knew
that
knew you.

I'm sorry Lisa Nelle,
that things didn't work out with you and Alexis
when they did
with you
and
Sabrosa.

Sometimes I hate myself too.

It begins on those humble mornings,
Where wispy clouds linger in the sky
the color of white oak.

When the leaves collect in the gutters
and are soggy like corn flakes
and their color is markedly indistinct.

A morning for the birds to make
their shrill calls
And enhance the feeling that
you are at a low, cold altitude.

If the coffee is hot, burnt, and stale,
then it is a coronation of this morning.

On the highways
People listen to news radio with the windows cracked
and a ribbon of cold air and sweat on their faces
and know that soon
They will be home.

When the time comes
will you have
an open ear
for a closed mouth?
or an open mouth
for a closed
ear?

What did Orpheus say?

What birds left his mouth?

Was there anything left on them?

Or did they fly naked?

Their feathers had been taken
to tar and feather.

The heart, bitter and bruised
broke through his chest,
in the furious night
of those
cold bird's
wings.

What did you say?

Did you say you'd be right,
that I'd be wrong?

Because you only
ever let me
hold your body
in stillness..

I could never hold you
like death.

So when we see each other
again,
in the blue balm
of day,
what kind of salve
will we choose?

will it be coffee?

or tea?

or whatever the **** people have?

Will we look in each other's eyes
instead of devouring our birds
one by one?

what is regret
but a bitter berry
that you suffer
through the day with.

What is it
but a place
in the heart
that opens
and closes
like daylillies.

Because I think
about you so much,
even as I walk to the liquor store
I count
hashmarks in the road
in as many times
as I held your eyes.

There are too many
hashmarks
and not enough
of your eyes,
perfume,
cheeks,
tiny fingers
in mine.

I miss you so much
and it's wrong
that I spend time
with my boys
and different girls
knowing
that they can't tread
the asphalt
like you can.