Sometimes you wonder
how things can get so ****** up,
this happens
whenever it's about time for you to come home
and I'm watching Sportscenter.

Bodies flashing across the screen.
Commercials.
People cheesing over paper towels so hard they could be having aneurysms.
More bodies moving faster than I'll ever move.

Just bodies.

I loved you so much, I thought about you all the time;
just hot with you.

now when you unlock the door
around 6 in the afternoon
and walk in jingling all your annoying jewelry
you sniff at me, audibly, as you huff to your room.

But I'm watching you like a tiger,
out of the periphery;
you're just a body to get by and get through.

Apples and Oranges
means
that I give you something
of lesser value
and you give me something
of even
lesser value.

Like Natalie asked for the rent money
and picked at the lint in my jeans pocket,
formulated a ball of it
worked that little ball through the hole in my pocket,
to my *****,
they smelled horrible,
I knew it,
massaged that ball around my *****,
pulled it back through the hole,
out of the humidity of my pocket
and put it in her palm.

"You *******,
either you get me the rent
or I'm calling the police
and having you taken out of here."

"My name's on the lease too."

"I don't give a ****,
you're not paying it."

Apples and Oranges.

I swear to ******* God,
you eat my Oatmeal one more time
without asking,
and I'm going to cut your arm off.

Every morning I wake up
at 6:30. Ann wakes up
at 7:00 for work.

So I take her Oatmeal out of the cabinet
and pour a shitload in a bowl.
More than I will ever need,
just to **** her off.

And she wakes up at seven
and I'm just smiling there,
wolfing down her oatmeal;
anything to get a win in the morning.

I swear girl
you've made me want to
take all your ****
and throw it
out on the steps
these past days;
thou shalt not steal.

Lately
I've been wanting
to chop your head off,
but I'm a moralist
so I do it in my head
but sometimes...
thou shalt not ****.

But I love you....
thou shalt love they neighbor
as thine own self....
and I love you in the agonizing way a man's heart can be caught and snared.

I've had to sleep in my car
for six days now,
because of you yelling and screaming
and just hating everything about me
until you wake me up in the morning
tapping on the foggy glass
in a bathrobe, them pink, ***** slippers,
and some scalding black coffee in a mug,
and I look at you and I just want to....
thou shalt not ****,
again,
thou shalt not ****.

And it all started with you
waking me up with a bible to the head,
thumping me awake
at 3:15 in the morning,
standing over me reading
"thou shalt not covet another man's wife."

And everybody's a sinner.

Things had already started trending downward for me and Natalie. We'd talk about new people. Old people. People like old boyfriends. Or a girl I'd met that was different in a way that no girl had been different to me in awhile. And we hurt each other like that. Or by pretending not to hear each other. Or by just ******* when one of us didn't want to, but we felt we had too. Because it was normal. And per usual, we started arguing and throwing things at each other and smoking on the balcony by ourselves late at night listening to the dogs bark and sirens.  And we grew. Grew in cancerous separation. Once it started we couldn't stop it. One day she told me something final, she'd hooked up with an ex, and he had said something about "having changed" and she seemed optimistic. I didn't give a ****. My pride was nicked, but she wasn't **** to me then. I helped her move out of the apartment, boxed everything into that tinyass mini cooper she had, put some of her stuff in my car, and drove her to her new apartment. It was that easy. We hugged at her door. She said I'll call you later. I said okay. She never called me later and I moved back in with my parents. I think that what did it is that being in love is like being a parent, the love becomes the baby, and when two people stay together for the kid and not because they love themselves as much as the baby, then it goes from bad to worse. Then they really start to hate each other. Then they don't talk for years. Don't even talk about that grown-up elephant in the corner ******* on its own nose.

The chaos of my childhood haunts me.

Daddy's fist, mommy's ****** broken nose, streamers of blood, lawnmower catching on fire and the firemen trying to cop a feel of my mother, mommy yelling, me getting kicked out of pop's house, living nowhere for awhile, dumpsters, stumbling drunk into an old sewer, sleeping on ****, ******* in my sleep, waking up smelling stale like ammonia, car accident, fighting the guy who hit us because he called Josey a *****, pop slamming me into the refrigerator, me knocking him unconscious, levelling a knife on him once, fighting everybody, feeling like life was a fight, like i couldn't trust nobody. Even my new friends, brought beef to my house, a kid brought him and a whole bunch of other shaved-head ***** over in a jeep. I came outside with a butcher knife.
now i've got this flock inside of me,
because whenever I feel someone talking ****,
i just want to fight,
just want to react.

I hold all the good things inside of me
deep within,
even the little lambs
with pink, innocent lips
who are suckling and hungry for the thing i was really missing:
love.

I see Demons
in my sleep.

Their fingernails
scratch my eyelids until
little loose licks of skin
bleed
and the tears
come down
in torrents
the color of fingernails
and hell.

One descended
on me
one night,
landed on my chest
as a black raven
with green, wilting eyes.

I'm going numb, I can't feel
pain, or hatred,
or even love.

And if I do,
I let the demons devour it
until
hell is senseless
and the black-footed,
white-winged
demons
return
to flip me over
and eat what's
left of the meat
inside my rib cage.