Lisa Nelle
had two names
like a pornstar.

She'd put her makeup on and stick all this blackness on
under her eyes
like she was holding night
in bags.

We watched Hey Arnold! DVDs at five in the morning,
and smoked the whole place up.

Sometimes her and Alexis would go in the back room.

Alexis never liked me.

Lisa Nelle had this way of looking at you
where she'd take her eyes
and she'd work her way
down to your stomach.

She could find a star in my intestines,
a dwarf light could warble in my stomach
and she'd see it through my belly button.

She'd pull it out
wings and all
and tell me
that Khalil knew the answers.

Out of this two-ton purse she carried around,
she'd whip out a compilation of Khalil Gibran.

One time she told me how her father
used to pull her hair
and thighs.

She didn't say anything about it again.

When we tripped shrooms,
she took my hands and put them on her neck
and asked me to feel for the nebulas
underneath her skin.

When I read
some of the stuff you send me,
the emails,
texts
or poems,
I can't help but wonder how many words
I now know as a result of you
that I wouldn't know
if I hadn't been looking
around for bud
and someone I knew
that
knew you.

I'm sorry Lisa Nelle,
that things didn't work out with you and Alexis
when they did
with you
and
Sabrosa.

Sometimes I hate myself too.

Have you ever noticed
how you don't have anything?
Not that girl
you pretend to put
in your glove compartment
when she's in your gloves?
Or a car?
Or a job?
Or real, feasible hope?
Or **** all?

Put yourself in my position,
I can't stand looking at you,
your head caves in at the middle
like dough with a thumb print,
and you could fit
two *******
or two *******'
in that nose of yours.

All you think about is ***, companionship and pancakes.

A lack of hope,
that's what's missing,
I'm talking
feasible hope,
that's the one you really need.

If you could feel it
like yesterday's bile
still on your tongue,
maybe it'd be easier for me
to work with that head.

Or
those gloves,
if you actually put them on
instead of pretending to put them on,
instead of playing with that girl.

Tell her what's really going on,
even though she'll laugh
and laugh
and laugh.

Tell her you're actually going insane
every second.

A shish-KABOOM
that slows down faster
than accelerated Swiss particles speed up.

Tell her about your heart,
that underneath the ink across your chest
there's something else tattooed.

Or maybe she won't say anything
and you'll be talking to
fingers in a ***** glove.

A car would be good too,
you could go places,
use those free passes to Puregold
your friend gave you.

Then again,
you'd want to save every woman alive after going there;
you'd think you could do it,
some hero,
some fake,
some male with a complex.

And finally
the job.

You have over $10,000 in outstanding loans,
either you get a job
or I do the right thing for the both of us.

So do you really want all this?
Want to be young?

Want to know what it's like
to have this ******* heart
and keep it forever?

A heart that doesn't shut the **** up
and goes off calling angry everybody's
at four in the morning
because it's drunk?

Want to know about fear?
I'm not talking wise fear,
I'm talking fear-of-death;
tiger-in-a-bunny-suit fear.

Once you turn those lights off
and can't handle yourself in the dark
then you'll know my fear.

Hometown girls
are real with you.
If they don't like you,
they'll even make their *****
look ugly;
pulling them in all the way
to the tops of their thighs
through their buttholes
and you can smell the stench
in your brain.

But when they let you in,
when they let you sit on their ears,
it's like warp-drive.

They smoke virginia slims,
because that's what their mom's smoke,
and the bags under their eyes
are filled with nicotine,
but they're pretty bags,
purses of flesh
full with the kinetic beauty of coal.

Hometown girls are mostly black,
mostly white,
fifty-fity,
but nobody's checking
and when they whisper something nice in your ear
it's colored with a microbrew
or a wheel of Jim Beam.

Sometimes they'll take you by the wrist
into the bathrooms;
sometimes they'll take your drink
when you're not looking
and smile when you catch them
with it on their lips.

But that smile is good even,
on par with a supernova
in its ability to crush
and make beautiful.


But most of the time,
they stand around
outside Casbah
and Motorco
--if they're bougie
it'll be West End--
in the middle of the night
under the porch of the sky
looking out with amber
slitted eyes
like cats,
their legs twitching thoughtfully
as they wait for cabs
and pick at the night.

Hometown girls
are ****/beautiful
because they'll watch your every move
from the gallery
out of empathy,
knowing they've been that ***** before,
knowing they've been that lonely,
knowing they just want to get drunk
and want to be around randoms
that aren't so random.

I'm not one to hold on,
when I know that I am being let go.

Don't cry and act like I've wronged you,
because you know that's not right.

When I reached out for you countless times
you burrowed deeper into the mud,
and I do not chase crayfish,
because we are not crayfish.

Pretend that I am evil and malicious,
but you know that you can only act that way.

I have a heart and it doesn't lie,
even when it finds a mattress of magpies.

I never had intentions to get you in bed,
I just wanted you to come inside
for some coffee and some sober.

I cannot speed up like a high contrast mix,
I cannot slow down chopped and *******,
I can only operate on what my heart feels
and what your heart tells it to feel.

And your heart is telling me to move on,
to churn on the exit ramps.

I have not wronged you in the right way,
or righted you in the wrong way.

Is caring about you the next left?
Is that where the houses knock their feet
on the concrete and the guardrail
at the dead end?

If so, hate me for good,
**** the engine
and idle with your lips on the guardrail.

Her voice is sweeter than its path.

With so many berry leaves latticed
into the chain-link fence,
it sounds like millions of feathers
tinkling.

Her eyes are in Arizona,
in impacted zones of clay knuckles
punching their way outwards
into the redwood bone of the earth.

Her smell is wet limestone; baked apples; hungry petunias.

And the sound they make is a train,
a reveille
moving away.

Heather tells me about a recent trip to Los Angeles;
about forms of travel
that don't move on tracks,
where there is no discernable distance.

I tell her I have been here all along;
I know where you have been
and how you sound there.

I know the heathers of the world
by the berry in your mouth.

the older generation
thinks we're all ****-heads,
ritalin-riddled serial killers,
serious ingesters
of buckets-of-blood thrillers,
they look at me funny
when I sag my pants
look at me funny
when I've got my girl in my arms
and her hands on my zipper
moving slowly
to the biggest dipper, too loud,
they say,
too loud,
too much cursing,
too much blood and gore,
too many games about getting money
and running over grannies to get more;
Ren and Stimpy,
and
Bert and Ernie,
two homos
that need to burn
for their sin,
the world is going
to hell in a handbasket.

Walked up to the store
for a little more gin,
caught a car passin,
jumped in front of it,
"WHAT THE **** IS WRONG WITH YOU?"
All that honking aint nessary.

****,
Imma have
a few more drinks.
Found a ditch;
an empty
drainage pipe;
had a few more hits.

Lit up a Marlboro
and I'm back at it again,
jumping in front of cars,
yelling at *******,
stumbling the whole way,
falling like frogger
in the ditches,
passing out for awhile.

I'm just tired of being
here,
tired of being,
so imma get drunk as hell
and tell my ma
that when I'm gone
I'm gone.