Your life may never be the same,
but there will come a time when I don't
drive you to distraction
occupy your mind
engulf your every moment

but I am not here for the conception of new memories:
coffee
arguments
commercials
Sunday dinners
shared cigarettes
pregnancy news from family
getting high
getting sick
car ride album listens
dark room hair pulls
bright room eye locks
glances across the table because
          everyone else is so stupid, aren't they?
squeezing into a too small bath together

They are all disintegrating
moments break apart
fall away from you,
left only with the clichéd sand through your fingers
like the memories of the

sme l of my b eath
f el of my tou h
so nd  o m vo ce
s  h   f  y fa e
  ve I h    y u

The sight
of you,
bled out
in that bath
steam rising
like the soul
from a corpse
will haunt me
until the day I die;
I'm sure it will be soon.

My fat, fleshy pale belly
pushes the inside of my shirt out,
and I'm ripping off Bukowski.

The sign for the travel section was far too obvious
for me to have noticed.
And you can tell you are by the woman's magazine section
by the perfume scent that burns your nose.
Strangers watch me type these notes into my phone notepad
thinking how superficial young people are these days
texting all the time.

And suddenly,
I am shooting **** into the current.
tossing my wedding band into the ocean waves
reflecting the moon like...
trying to write fast enough to catch up to my thoughts
and the words come crashing into them
a train going off a cliff.

And suddenly,
weaver ants are carrying eggs,
devouring albino widows.
Ochroma flower licked by Kinkajou,
insects lapped up from their grave of
sugary water.

My Brittle Star arms detach in the acidic water of you.

I stir, and try to escape the gaping tremor or your teeth
uncovered face
free of meat.

Roaches crawl inside your skull,
the bone powdered with the years,
all that remains:
Toskavat.

You are an Incan Mummy, the sack pulled off,
as rosy-cheeked, young boys stare through misty bus windows
still spackled with flecks of mud from your wet road.
They smile -
their microbes shared unintentionally,
a condomless foam party.

This love burns and drips

an unclean **** knot
******* and *******
at tailgate parties in basements
where everybody is satisfied
except for one...

The sky is painted static:
I can't find the channel.

A frail cherub descends
gossamer threads of maize splay out about its head
brings the sky back with it
and in hues of pink and life,
restores me.

Hypnotized by your blank kaleidescope
caress you like a Kwashiorkor belly
rotund
smooth and round abdomen, empty and
covered with flies
an allegiance to parasitism,
supported by the skeletal mass
too thin to pull the body along,
ground-glass ground
ochre earth,
away from the feathered death
stepping lively behind you
hooks pierce the sand,
soon your meat.

you scream at me
with colic voice
cut you open
I have no choice

Today I was driving in my car, looking at my notepad
shoved without care
corner of a page bent
spirals grasped for life on the edge of that dive.

I thought that I felt I wanted to write,
but the glass inside my head was empty.
Forcing it full just causes it to break,
and so I wait for it to fill, fill, fill,
overflow and
capsize.

It comes suddenly:

a stroke in the section of the brain that biologists
have yet to identify.

a phone ringing at three thirty-eight in the morning.

a cat leaping from behind the corner, hitching a momentary ride on your calf.

a rush of amniotic fluid from a pregnant woman's crotch as
she stands over smooth tile.

How many pens have come apart in your mouth?
How much
redblueblackgreen ink
have you ingested in these pen-cap chew moments of inspiration,
trying to steer without looking,
shift with only *******,
scribble without seeing,
glances from concerned motorists in adjacent lanes.

How many
slips of napkins
notepads
envelopes
bills
book covers
receipts
skin
have you marked in fits of...