when we found him barefoot in mid-july
he was standing on a four-day drunk
tap-dancing in shoe-horn colored chinos
rolled up to his cyclist's calves on the
sun-punched hood of an '04 nissan altima
with shot-out windows salt
in his skin hair & eyelashes
silver bubbling spittle clung
at the corners of his mouth
sparkling dry in the sun-heat

he laughed & said she had a mouth
like a grizzly bear or cheese grater
she was thin-shouldered dressed
in a curtain-and-couch-cushion ensemble
had yellow button callouses on her palms
& lacked the instinctive manipulative prowess
other girls her age possessed
the whole performance only lasted
7 minutes huddled in a bedroom closet
in a blathering forest of unkind giggles
he still has acid flashbacks watching
cutthroat kitchen because she had
alton brown's teeth & tonsils like spun glass

that night he was a heathen
on a mountian made of mandolin
stiff yearbook spines & shoeboxes
full of faded polaroid mementos
he was tank-topped but still sweating
as he stumbled & stood
on black stilettos & soiled blue
cork-soled wedges like
sharp rocks dancing underfoot
dodging the mothball heat-trap
of cotton blend blouses
& corduroy coats overhead

joy division warbled slimy through
the white wooden slats of the closet's pocket door
as she knelt demurely &
took it between her thumb & finger
brought it up to thin lips pursed
above cleft chin & ****** it in
like a big thick j-bird
but she never exhaled the expectant
white plume of smoke he said
when she grabbed ***** as they
swung like pendula below his navel
he almost pulled out a swath
of her honeynut hair
his injured impatient breath
cracked like thunder
in the cashmere sky
above her undulating head

when the mighty chasm fountain exploded
she said he was the flavor of a blue sky burning
her throat sounded shallow & grunty
as she spat him out into a pair
of her favorite aunt's imitation
jimmy choo pumps &
enjoyed a brief nosebleed

when it was over finally he forced a sympathetic
fistful of tramadol down his saharan throat
& tried to stay hidden under the tarpaulin
in the moving blackness wandering alone
through the waning moon's ceaseless maze
behind the perfumed aphasia that kept him high
biting the brittle tassel of a graduation cap
like an adolescent ocelot
feeling like fleeing

& when i asked him
i said well these experiences probably
helped you build some character right

he laughed & assured me of the
isolated nature of this watercolor
snapshot event & said
one day david

he said maybe one day you'll
learn to not measure your self worth
against the traumatic mouth mistakes
your pants have made