when the tree bark snags my winter coat
and tall light posts flicker coded pleas “come
home, come home”
a police cruiser surges onto the curb
lumbering tires spit loose gravel and leaves
“JUST DON’T FREEZE”
megaphone boom from a crack
in the door, ka-chunk a boy proves
he belongs to these bricks
with a clever piece of plastic
clutched in fingers of leather gloves
squeaking tight against the
heavy metal door handle, heavy
boots tramping snow from the soles
my head pinned to the earth by a half-globe
of knotted tree branches and scarred trunk
(KJ + DL, fuckGETpussy, rm 122 4 ****)
clawing me back for old obscenities
i wish my crossed legs under this cold-smoothed
picnic table could stop knocking to the beat
of the third floor’s 3am rave, knocking to
come home
ka-chunk, you belong to these bricks.

but with a liquor tongue & sober head
drafting and redrafting the words stuttering
on my teeth to keep you here
falling backwards on my *** will
prove nothing but that i’m not content
to be anything but in the table of contents
not a side character
in your favorite book
but god i can’t stop tripping
over air and chalked-up asphalt
am i first?
am i the only one? i growl
apologies & maybe’s
but honest to hell i am
filled with vice
glittering with ill-intent
dented craniums
punctured fists
bitten up pen caps

oh sure, you’re inked up pal
but those tattoos for the weak
aren’t going to lift any skirts
her lipstick ain’t gonna paint your mouth
for you
“rosebud”
hah

we walked with ghosts that one time
kicking trash, dodging dead squirrels, singing
punk rock---betting quarters & Arizona cans
to run fast against traffic
(this was back when) we wanted
to look for truths in picture books
and lies in the law
chubby fingers & a BIC stick pen
tracing imagined cartoon lives
our speech planned in bubbles

timestop: fastforward
snarling, “oh baby she’s a classic /
          like a little black dress”
with opened siamese mouths /
          rolled out tongue
fingerpainting bruises on skin
with pixie stick smudged thumbs
          “she’s a faded moon /
          but you’ll be faded soon”

between muffled dashboard speakers
streaming swears came the stillness
of carving numbers (each other’s
biography pages)
safety pins hinging on rawed knuckles
forever scarred visual bookmark

waiting for words to cause earthquakes
and fault lines in lungs
what was painted across the wall
in looped ‘*******’ cursive
timestop: graffiti
          i fear the human condition
don’t look at me or i’ll shatter
a powder touch would ****.

We sat blowing shapes in the smoke
and twirling insubstantial rings
around our fingers like wedding vows
I do, I do, until the end of this cigarette
Til ash do us part, my flame-ridden bride,
my raspybreathed king---still

and quiet in the little
cruelties stacked between us
wooden-faced as Russian dolls
growing smaller and meaner
in cold smoke curled round shoulders
space between shivers
contrary wispcat, blueblack cracks
in the universe and veins of a wrist

black to blue
rubber to glue
you’ll always keep chasing me away
and I, like a rubber band,
snap back because I’m

sorry
I spilled cereal on the floor
and crunched it up with bare feet
cracked the martini glass
into so many pieces it didn’t look
like danger
but hard raindrops on scuffed tile

sorry
redwhiteblue America strobes
are scary, you’re not in the club
it was dark and you wanted
to go home---you still want to go
home---but without the blue-uniformed stranger
or the guy who bruised his fingerprints on your waist

sorry
for wearing dreams of romance like perfume
on pressure points, curling my tongue
around pain pills with wishes that
can't put out thunderstorms
and mend the gaps in a sidewalk

sorry
(and this was back when i cried for a
bandaid, any at all, for surface cuts)
we wanted to look
for truths in picture books
and lies in the law
because life is so much better as a cartoon
with our speech planned in bubbles

sorry
that when we were little
I thought rivers were small
because the blue veins mapping your wrist
were water to me
then I let you fall into, y’know,
that real emotional condition
where life was written in rules
chubby fingers & a Bic stick pen

sorry I didn’t leave a post-it
just a crumpled up coat
and the smell of smoke
when my footsteps burned a river
blazing outside and away.

ignite the cold, slick lump in my stomach whose
body is dread, tell me i’m pretty and
then hide my makeup---feed
the red-tubed lipstick to the dog---praise
my muscled calves.
          (my you’ve done a lot of walking in your soul today.)

do not notice the slight limp or pale puckered lips.

do not weep and then claim it was joy, it was fiendishness
all along i know it, and so does your cloven foot.

i crawl naked to my bunker, fortress of fleece blankets, leave one foot exposed.
it cannot split
leave me the hell alone.
so just leave me all ******* alone.

but with a liquor tongue & sober head
drafting and redrafting the words stuttering
on my teeth to keep you here
falling backwards on my *** will
prove nothing but that i’m not content
to be anything but in the table of contents
not a side character
in your favorite book
but god i can’t stop tripping
over air and chalked-up asphalt
am i first?
am i the only one? i growl
apologies & maybe’s
but honest to hell i am
filled with vice
glittering with ill-intent
dented craniums
punctured fists
bitten up pen caps
oh sure, you’re inked up pal
but those tattoos for the weak
aren’t going to lift any skirts
her lipstick ain’t gonna paint your mouth
for you
“rosebud”
hah
we walked with ghosts that one time
kicking trash, dodging dead squirrels, singing
punk rock---betting quarters & Arizona cans
to run fast against traffic
looking for words to cause earthquakes
and fault lines in lungs
timestop: graffiti
          i fear the human condition
don’t look at me or i’ll shatter
a powder touch would ****.

let me be prophetic
let me romanticize bones,
pearls embedded where teeth should be…

i am smoke and blood and poison
diamond chips for eyes, hard,
colourless & cracked facets
she is unstained
my skin every possible colour
every pockmark visible and ugly; every sacrifice
          carved in lines below my chin
ticking down the breaths
counting them, holding them lovingly
in the hollow of the throat
that they may blur together and strike a sickly rainbow
that she may find her salvation at the end of mine.

i sit cross-legged in the grass
highlighting quotes in my book
a girl she sits
down next to me
flips a cigarette from her pack
flicks the lighter once; burns her thumb
hisses softly
her hair is the ***** sun
one, two, three she smokes
determined mechanics of an assembly line
i choke on the smoke,
i choke on her concentration
the pages of my book are yellow with her smoke
yellowed as her hair
i breathe, breathe the cloud
sweetly now
draw fluorescent puffs
highlight the smoke that stains pages
i am focused on my task, she on hers
we sit together and breathe our cloud
small suns wrapped in a halo of smog.

you know?
sometimes you think
          i am the only one
          writing the whisperings of the world to eager pages
          they strain their lined ears.
but the lines fall flat
hang limp as clotheslines
wait for the next dull batch of words to droop on the line.
hanging the writer out to dry has a completely new side to it.
you are not the first to shiver during a goodbye kiss
taste nostalgia in an ice cream cone
marvel at a shattered beer bottle on the blue-black asphalt.
and you’re not the first to believe you might be the only one.
but you know?
you know?
you are the only one
          who makes me shiver
          i remember to eat between spoonfuls of you
          admired your aim and laughed when you missed the trash can.
i’ll pick up the words when wind blows them off the line.
i’ll pick you up
my ears are eager.

you are not in your room
i throw up the things i want to say
all over your bed
they are messy and violent
will you sleep tonight?

i have not slept since that time
under the monkeybars at the old playground
your mouth held the taste of old love
when i wanted something that was entirely mine
i was selfish and a child
i did not understand
how she ate chunks of your heart
and left only poison
my stomach cannot digest leftovers
not yet.

i burn in fires
but flames do not scorch my bones.
i walk over the ashes---quietly, invisibly.
i am not the type people would look at and say,
          juvenile delinquent.
          that’s a bad, tough girl.
          there’s a girl with grit in her mouth and a tongue coated in ash.
they see quiet and good; i wear glasses.
it is two-thirty
the darkness outside makes me itch.
earth blisters under bare feet
face wholesome and clean
no char marks on my cheeks
lungs burned to the third degree
and i cannot stop. do you not see the pyre i’ve lit?
go away before i brand you too.
kick down the doors on your way out; they're crumbling anyhow.

I think I have gone quite mad at times.
People with vague faces in the walls, in the
Trees laughing, swinging on the set no longer there...
You there, you! Prove to me
Your reality.

Crush your pinky nail for me now, sweetling, let
The white material spread softly as a cloud
Under that ridged keratin, smash it
Gently with the rough love of the snakemother to her young.

Who are you, who stares with pleading eyes of insanity
And trembles open-lipped with devils stuck
To the backs of your molars---bite down,
Crush the ******* already.
By god! Only do not
Bite your cloudpinky off.

Save it for an ungodly sunny day.

he was so alone
standing under that tree in the dark
scuffling at the wet leaves with toes of unlaced sneakers
one earbud in, no music playing

i wanted to reach out and touch him, walking by
dig my shoe into the leaves by his foot
make a tunnel for he & i to escape
          ---run from dripping branches and the crushed smell of autumn
          that constricted the air above us---
but i passed the boy by
and pressed myself to a tree twenty feet from his

he dug up the dirt with busy feet
my feet itched, they twitched with his
we deepened our tunnels...
i guess you could say?
would it be right to think,
we are alone together.

Full of cliches,
My words are trapped---twisted
Around and under thick slabbed
Tongue that fumbles
Unconvinced of its syllables.

Smokethoughts cling
Sullen to enamel backs,
Graveyard angels
That smirk at those heavy
Tombstones;
Monument to language’s death.

i keep on discovering words, finding them stuck
fast in tight corners and under dust
on the top of a bookshelf, they gum to my shoe soles and rub
against my pants when i walk.

they are everywhere, they are in the air
i breathe, they describe the inside of me perfectly going down
swallow and choke and burp words
they will not leave my mouth alone.

when i apply lipstick they wait eager
little children on the cap
          can we describe, can we describe?
firetruck sin apple-picking stopsign pomegranate candyred.
red red red?
          ---but it can’t be just red!
let us name it for you, let us
stiffen your lip and curl your tongue with the perfect word.
scoff. red?
we can do better than that, my dear.

I’ve planted a garden of words in these pages
and plucked a few flowers for you.  

They are awkward and tiny; I only hoped
to make them right when they reeled
          drunkenly off my tongue.  
My mouth makes them ugly, brutish, plain…
speech that stains the air.  And I hope
for my mind to grow roots in yours
and make its home
together with you;
there will be time for every strange, beautiful thought.

It is not my favorite book
but it reminds me of things prickly
          and those things ***** my mind
          with flung dreams and stars.  

Do you think?  

I think, though I am
a paper cut-out doll pasted into
the clothes I’m wearing and scribbled over with inky stars,
smeared curlicues on the back of one hand.

My teeth feel funny to-day.  
They will rise up straight
like the hackles of a dog and
warn away people
of an anxious nature who flutter
with worried hands by the door.

I am not a good person.  I will not be good,
cannot ever be good, she who bleeds
midnight scribbles to an alcohol-stained notebook.  

I once had a dream
my greedy mouth

ate cement from a soft-serve machine.  

It cracked down my throat.  

I held jagged mirror pieces in my clenched fist.  

It squeezed blood from my hands and I ate that too.

The smoke curled in my yawning mouth
          and I choked.  I am clouding my lungs
and surely the poison is flowing

freely through each blue vein; this is merely damage control.  

It is not beautiful
or romantic
or tragic, or any of that horseshit.
It is business and impersonal and clinical.  
It is the art of dying slowly but it is not for display.

There were words---
          scribbled on your skin in blue pen
they looked angry and bruising; they sulked
under the sleeve of your loose black shirt.  

I drew lightning bolts on my notes
but the lightning flashed darker
in your eyes.  I drew clouds
          and raindrops
and they blurred from the storm
that broke across my face.  

Your ink makes me cry.

Coffeebooze does little
but make one shivery and shaky
          and full of regrets.  I believe,

after a long day of dizzying uncertainty
and tapping fingers,
that I am sober.

I drank cold coffee and wrote with a sticky pen; clearly headed nowhere good to-day.

They rolled their **** in mango-flavored papers.  

I stood small and center
in the dark room, hands clutching
mesh straps of a fuschia-pink littlegirl backpack.  

I stood

slightly slumped

to watch dim orange light outside the dorm window set fire to my shoes.

I fell out of time
into wavery scarves of seconds
glittering of snowflake anticipation, and
minutes of quiet purring joy.
Tonguing thickening clouds of breathsteam
he has always been a familiar stranger;
every joint is a champagne cork, white
marble smile that bubbled

over wooden lips. Tell a story
in ten words or less, tap fingers pointed like guns
twice against her hot temple, smile
and half a tooth still ******. Tell a story with one
word, bang, and sock away the other nine.
Turn to a cat and say, I’ve got your tongue.
We sat together on our heels in the smoke
and snowfall, the plumed weapon of breath

melting. Cars slide into the lot, ice over easy.
The alcohol tasted like soap. It is not enough
for maybes and not-know-hows---grating
cheepcheap common sense, fail me now.

Maybe you didn’t write LOVE on her
battered wrist but LIVE instead,
maybe you stole all the magnetic a’s
off the fridge, you’re not the one
who highlighted instructions on a macaroni
box, so you broke all the chalk and wrote
the name of your childhood dog above the sink.

Maybe “hostile” is a fuzzed blue comforter
three months past laundry day, every lint
ball sharp as the word “cut”, the word “*****”,
the word “scream”. Maybe I’m naive, sentimental, but
I believe in a common kindness
like the common cold running thin
in threads of worn-out heart chambers.

she stomps her feet into the earth to fall backward
but the swing drags her back
snaps the thin neck harsh and warm
narrowed eyes into the wind
feet flexed to crack the wispy sky in white wafer pieces
they melt on my tongue.

remember when you made ******* sounds
and said what about the end of the world?
whispered soft and close:
would stars hurtle to burn the distorted landscape
consume the people left screaming clinging to this discarded crust
          we once believed was our whole world?
you were morbid but laughed; i frowned.

kick and kick and kick
defy gravity; chip away at this atmosphere
bring the astronauts and satellites home.
          (we’ll crumble together, you said.)

i wrote another neat bundle of words
knotted them with coarse string
caught my finger in the bow; snarled
packaged my hurt efficiently and quick
licked my lips but
          the guilt made them dry.

i saw your paper cuts
they were raw and red
my mouth had ripped into your skin.
i made you a gift, see?
it is not much
but i do not know how to bandage the wounds that will scar.

Her mouth, hot and wet, breathes lies and ***** secrets.

Your mother warned you not to use those words.

Gutter language gushes innocently from the slight part in those glossy cherry lips and teases diamond reflections in the top ridges.  Talk is not cheap.

The dim light swings closer over your shoulder. Are those jewels in her lips, or was that thrill through your body the white panic of a police spotlight?

Pouting lips now slashing through words and trickling filth from the smeared corners are the only thing existing outside this honeyed haze. Your chest rises and falls in the shaky rhythm of those lips crashing against each other and bruising the air.

She will melt into the air and take her disturbing, wonderful raving with her as you are drafting and redrafting the words stuttering on your teeth to keep her here.

Slam your fist forward to those dancing, jerking lips and crack your hand on the mirror. Blood snuggles in the smashed glass lines, the same color. Insane, frothing, living scarlet. Her distorted mouth in the reddened glass crater. Her flared nostrils and thin purple bruise across the bridge. And your eyes. You stare into the mirror and her eyes narrow back. Your mouths stretch and scream in the same piercing wail. The police siren shrieks in commiseration as the strobe touches the mirror and blinds you both.

Stressed depressed repressed undressed obsessed nonsense.
I am unimpressed.

My rhyming and dark chuckling humor is atrocious, I'll admit.
But I'm so determined this will be the one thing I do not quit.

I wrote another neat bundle of words
Knotted them with coarse string
Smoothed the slick label over the bow
And licked my lips in guilt.

My heart has never thumped so hollowly in my chest.

Will you forgive me?