Curious habit you've got, Doctor,
Being proud of only parts of people.
I think if I had to choose, I would want
It to be my neck. My neck has
My throat, you see, and out of that
Comes the words you seem to be
So proud of! Well,
Thank you for all you've done,
But thank you more
For everything I've had to figure out
Alone, shambling, fingers numb in early Autumn.
You were never there
When it mattered most:
When the townsfolk came for me,
Torches and hayforks outstretched--
Where were you then, Victor?

I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my cells mitochondria nucleus DNA a disease)
Whatever is done by me was your doing.
I am never without it:
I still have those poison thoughts
It has taken me years to even begin to unlearn.
I cannot let anyone in.
They might trace their hand along
The parlor wall of my heart
And find it bare of pictures.

I liked my body when it was with your body;
Now it is a crying naked thing,
Bare in the wrong ways,
Muscles shouting, thousandfold nerves
Screaming, crying, loud.
You flayed me open so skillfully,
Parted flesh from firm-smooth bone
With your words sweet like grave goods(I carry it in my heart)
So I am soil I have reclaimed
From your charred earth policy.
I am undead: alive again
With the tomb all open so quite new.
You must not have known:
Burning it down only makes it grow back angry.

I carry your heart with me(I carry it heavy head lead weight round my neck etched into my synapses ground into the layers of my skin like sand from a broken hourglass wailing and gnashing of teeth)

like pigeons around any fountain in rome

i ran away from you at first, instinctively, because

i knew that you were larger, stronger, a natural predator

but because of the bread crumbs you scattered on the ground for me to pick at

i overpowered my urge to flee

and i came back anyway

step one: you must realize that
villains are the protagonists of their own stories;
ergo, everything does revolve around you.
you really are not worthless.
why should you care
what the people trying to overthrow you think?

step two: use your anger to create.

step three: or use it to destroy.

step four: allow yourself to feel.
allow yourself to
hide.
you are not wrong for shining in the light or for shying from it.

step five: you must realize that
this too shall pass.
in one thousand years louisiana will be underwater
and new landmasses will rise from the sea like individual venuses.
geologic time will march on, inescapably slowly, on clocks you cannot read,
regardless of you.
we are still only in the holocene era.
the universe doesn't care how many times you try;
the universe doesn't care if you try; but
someone has to, and i believe it should be you.
on the word-a-day desk calendar of existence,
humans only arrived on earth on
the last minute of december thirty-first:
whatever pain you're feeling is temporary.

my heart beats to the thrum of the surf on the hull
the rain patters on the slats of the ribs in my back
water everywhere and i would drink it all

my eyes are like the ocean--
not stormy
or gray-green--
full of dead things
and like a rip current

you could be my time machine.
i think of you and
i am instantly transported to another time
and
place.

if i think about it hard enough,
i start to think about how,
once upon a time,
our shadows were practically sewn together.

we could have been lost boys.

i
wanna
split my knuckles
punching you in the teeth
so that
a part of me
will remain on your lips

tengo
un monstruo en
mi cuerpo
él es
muy
pequeño
pero
él echa
una sombra
muy
grande

quand je porte mes chaussures rouges converse
comme si j'étais de nouveau un jeune garçon
à l'école
avec
nos
amis
je veux être dans une aéroplane
au-dessus de chicago
mais
seulement
avec
toi

hey,
peter pan, you
come in through my window and cast your shadow across my bedroom
and i trip over it
every time,
so maybe i should tidy up
around here.

the last poem i wrote was about you
do you ever
write about me or think about me at all i wonder ?
do you still listen to
the bands i fell in love with because of you ?
are your
eyes still green and
do you remember the color of lake michigan with the navy pier right there and
how i wouldn’t go on the ferris wheel
(even with you) ?
i think i am in love with my memory of you
would i
be in love with you proper i wonder ?
would i go up high with you (even though i’m scared) and
would we talk about how that band
changed our lives together until three in the morning

(and remember
how we were both terrified of growing up and
in my mind you never did) ?

i have not spoken to you in

four or six years but

the hex code for the color of your eyes

i could determine from:

strawberry-kiwi juice, thumb tacks

CD rainbows

softball (

and kickball, hours of it)

chicago in 2007, white pebbles like teeth, and converse shoes—

yellow sodium
lights
(the same color
as your hair)
over a parking
lot
goldenboy

the flesh
of your neck
is mottled purple
like
blackberries
in cream

a toss of the lion's noble head,
a slip of the serpent's cunning tooth,
could dull the rosy cheeks of Youth--
were he not already dead.