My death will be liberating.

And I do not say that in the sense
that I am going to find a cliff
and take a good jump off.

No.

I am just trying to find a
clever way to tell you

that I do not know what is going
to happen next.

You see,

there is a
fine line
between
dreaming and
mortality

and

I am finding out for myself
that being in love
does not always
involve

being awake.

And for my sake
I fall in love with daydreams,
nightmares,
hazy realities
and

the hung-over idea

of not being enough.

It is all out of my hands.
                 It is all out of time.

And the only thing I have left to do,
now,


is decide.

The waves crash and
the ship rides on
into the dock
between the velveteen piers
as the wind sighs and moans
and the old wood creaks.
The sun beads the moisture
in the air
of the swaying harbor
as the rough sand
tries desperately to grab
the hips of the shore
and the boats all move
to and fro
in endless motion
against the bay side.

Cheap tattoo gun
"Will you be my canvas?"
Never your fault,
It's never your fault?
Always what's done and never what you do
I don't know if I want that tattoo.
What happened to your cars
Is that their fault as well?
Matching Grand Prix
Red, white, white, red
Two 'kickass' Nissan Maximas
And a five speed Dodge Neon that's falling apart.
What happens to plans when you cancel last minute,
How come it is that you never make time?
Work, work, work,
And then you're always late.
She told me to fix it or we couldn't date.
You need to be on time, is that too much to ask?
But whenever I do, I just feel like an ***.
I feel so terrible when I get upset
But I know I have the right and I know that I'm allowed.
I get so ******* when they complain that we're too loud
As if they have to listen
As If I really care.
As if they have no choice but to stay there.
The other day, he said you spanked me
But more of the time,
It just feels like you yank me
In different directions, so many directions,
Angry, sad, sadder, happy.
It feels like I don't know what to do and it feels like neither do you
It feels like we don't know each other, but am I lying to myself,
Do I only love the thought of you?

People only ever want to ask me about
the poetry -
those verses about
busted up noses in outer space;
about the pros working
way down passed
the corner of Broad and Main;
about fistfights and hard, hard drinking.
But I built a flowerbed this weekend...
Twenty two tastefully irregular stone blocks
in a crescent moon shape,
filled with the blackest of soils.
The sweat of toil.
The digging.
The planting.
Exotic grasses. Asian maybe?
Purple and yellow flowers.
Zinnias or some **** thing.
All covered in a thick blanket of brown mulch.
It's a fine thing to have dirt on your hands
instead of blood.
No one ever asks me about flowerbeds.

milk warm and
child rotates backwards in womb

clouds become the drums

angels in the front row cheer
as men fight over screaming throat

woman smokes with dragon—
never before corked *****
and the ash that settled over

this is my innermost truth:
a dwell of birds inside my body

and I think so little of myself