With a few strokes'
He drew a crazy boat
Full of perverts and lepers
In the middle of the desert. The lepers
Were picking at their skin and the perverts
Were getting drunk and pulling their *****.

Some hung over the edge
Of the boat like they spotted water. Some climbed the mast and
Hung themselves looking like ripe peaches
From the distance. A red, red moon just
Sits there in the background
At the top of a black sky
staring at the whole thing
Fall apart.

The painting stops. The painter
Coughs up some blood and his heart,
And shakes his brush like a maraca,
Making his music over blood, perverts
Lepers, and a red moon.

A girl stands behind him,
Beautiful and horrified, because she
Is witnessing a nightmare, and she wanted
To feed her head full of it, full of dreams
And demons, droughts and terror,
and wake up a
Prophet.

You have
my
heart.

It's not
eloquent,
but
eloquence
is
for
roses.

I don't need
a thousand
words
to say
how much it
hurts
when i mix
my emotions
with
whiskey.

There is
no
nectar
as sweet
as the
spilled soul,
and I hunger
for
more.

Even as
I puke
up my stomach
with a thousand
stings.

To the lake
is where our prayers
were air.

We dipped
our poles in the water
and bobbed
with our floats
in the bladder of blackness.

Nelle and Sabrosa
laid down together at the edge
of the still body
as the beasts of night
laid down at their feet.

Me, Dang, and Matt
took sips straight
from the mouth of Kentucky.

The night
creamed me.

Burst into a thousand
remembrances and I wanted to cry
with the fish.

I got angrier and angrier
and eventually we all left,
because I was yelling too loud
and the fish burrowed deeper
into the stomach,
a stomach I had yelled at
as love.

With so many poles
and so many fish
I slipped into the lake.

Let my body
wilt in that sink
where babies were made
with dead bodies,
dead ******* and dead *****
and spasmodic fish bodies
that were made for one thing.

I thought that thing was love,
that's what got me yelling.

The beasts let their whiskers get wet,
even their paws,
as they tapped at me in that water,
hoping for me to rise,
a flotilla of flesh
upon which they could feed.

And so we walked away
from the lake
wet,
and drunk,
the windows down
feeling the paws
and gills
in connection with life.

Nelle and Sabrosa
holding each other
in beach towels.

Me sitting in the front on a plastic sheet
Dang had previously reserved
for the fish we would some day
broil and eat.

So,
I sat on a plastic sheet,
made for love and loss
of the lake.

I sat on the bladder and
upcoming womb
from which night ******
and then made love
with the dead beasts
and catfish
of a shallowness reserved
just for me.

I just wish no one
would know
that I'm crying.

That i'm inside
this lonely house
and I'm putting on different suits
just to get through.

I just wish you'd take me back,
just wish you'd give me one more chance
because you've got a hold on my heart
and it just won't let go.

Touch me with a kiss
or hand print on my soul,
I don't know know what it means to love,
but for me,
it's defined by the threat
of this super-massive black hole.

You **** me in,
and I want to let go of my light,
for the last second
of my life.

Love fills me up
and I water the garden
desperately.

With dead petunias on the floor
I crawl on my knees
just wishing for them to grow.

what is regret
but a bitter berry
that you suffer
through the day with.

What is it
but a place
in the heart
that opens
and closes
like daylillies.

Because I think
about you so much,
even as I walk to the liquor store
I count
hashmarks in the road
in as many times
as I held your eyes.

There are too many
hashmarks
and not enough
of your eyes,
perfume,
cheeks,
tiny fingers
in mine.

I miss you so much
and it's wrong
that I spend time
with my boys
and different girls
knowing
that they can't tread
the asphalt
like you can.

Nelle says
like too much salt
there's such a thing
as too much love.

When it wraps you up against yourself
and you become the wall against which you are trying to force
through.

You become the line of fire
and the angling arrow.

Sometimes too many slings
reach the heart,
and everything tastes like wood
or lead.

A good rabbit can go bad,
with too many arrows
or
too many bullets.

Like hunting
love takes patience;
like salt,
a person can get stones
inside of themselves
when they get too full
on love.

The kind of stones
you can't **** out.

Lisa Nelle
had this cat
Suki.

A calico.

Suki would wiggle his
******* in your face,
a black hole of fur,
then plop down on your belly.

We smoked that cat up so many times
while the TV was on
and the volume was way up.

Then we'd turn on her amp
until her house buzzed
and we couldn't hear the neighbors.

They'd knock their brooms
against the ceiling,
on a ******* Friday.

We watched
that cat twitch
across the floor
and twirl in the sun
by the balcony door.

He'd pass out
when we
passed out.