is it possible to feel more than the tepms built
     the night that you ignited
and illuminated my brain
as a shape
human hands can't recreate
         that hearts can't fake

     a space we dream of inhabiting when our souls create a safe place

     just something we cling to
when we learn who we are whist we scream
and cling to the images we sling
as we clutch each other's bodies

     a heart-felt blockade between who wish to be
          and who they see

if looks could ****
     i'd be slaughtering the masses
and if these walls could talk
     they'd probably never stop laughing
but if that ***** of a mattress should crack
and leak the secrets of mine that she keeps in her chest-
like tightly bound metallic coils-
     so help me lillith

i'll burn this house to the ground

     i'd rather see all that i've built turn into ashes
than to hear her voice rehasing all the whispers i'm slinging whilst fast asleep
     or how i cry in bed for weeks
     or the way i flinch when the sun crosses my face
like a shadow i can't name

     i'm a mess
a natural disaster with whirlwind hair and a lightning strike pulse
     in a second-hand dress that doesn't fit right
          i'm fine
     i'll survive

but should you be the boy i find
     and i bring you home tonight
just know that i'm better than alright
          know how very much i feel alive
regardless of the subconscious soliloquies you unleash in your half-silence
     divulging secrets whilst you slumber

          i wake like the waves lapping at a fallen empire's shoreline
     and quest to test your lyrical limitations and the possible personification of your breath
     and your chest
          heaving like the sea himself

they've been sitting here since the night Christ died
     sharing stale conversation
     and lukewarm beer

i leaned against my mother's kitchen sink
crying
          six shots of whiskey deep at half passed noon

     and both mutts came running
leaning their limber legs against mine

a heart-felt interspecies hug

ready and willing to catch my salty tears
upon the bridge of their snouts

     so this is true love

i've written a grip of confessional love poems on beverage napkins
strung them together with a dissociative understanding of time (like dental floss)
     wrung them out and hung them up to ripen on the line

mama always said not to name things that are only going to die
and i lied to her face when i told her i wouldn't

          i gave it a name

and i was going to send it your way
as if maybe seeing it all spelled out
would make you change your plans
     and stay

alas
     i'm quite certain that i blew my nose on the winning sonnet
and burried the rest with what was left of my tears

now i don't even write
     i just scream at the stars all night
as if my life's become a sailor-song
and this desert
          my decaying cabaret

some women call their bodies home to something greater

     me?
my body's a burial ground
for dreams i found
     and lost
just as quickly

i'm a canvas
void of my own expression yet riddled with scars
left behind by precious little ghosts
     and their lack of confession