I have headaches.

Maybe I drink too much,
and my family thinks
I'm an alcoholic;

put too much sauce in the venom
and it becomes
a pasta of destruction.

How little
we value
each other's hearts,
when they lie
in oak fingers,
so old
and
so known
that it's hard for us
to know
their beginning.

When compassion
lies dormant
like the dogwood
with no lavender,
it is easy to forget
that we are human.

Because I love you,
and I should have more pride,
I should never say that,
it is unbecoming.

But it is easier to say,
than I have forgotten you,
that you are broken
and twisted inside of me.

Kaleidoscopes
pushed the music
through our bodies
in triangles of ebony,
purity,
hope
and confusion.

I could lose you
in the music,
you could lose me
in the bass
and destruction
of ear-dums.

What thumps
inside us?
as we thump genitals,
and ride
against each other
over interlocked
thighs.

Put me in your lips
more than your
put your own tongue.

Wet me
with a burst
of love so jarring
it could break my mind.

Because I like to put
*******
on your breastbone
and pull down
your shirt
so that I can see more.

And you like to grab me
harder
than
anyone
has
grabbed
before.

And the pain
of love
is all about grabbing,
about having
possession
in the middle of a club
hopping on mushrooms.

We get closer,
judging our distances
by how little we see
the kaleidoscopes
of broken light
and reformed blues, reds, greens and
yous.

We judge distance
by our stale Colgate breath
and drunk tongues.

We judge distance
by how close
our hearts have become
when we know nothing else
but drunk love.

Heart's burst into a thousand
brutal glowsticks.

The vase of the body
pulsates
with shoots of light
and in the night
You can be seen
from space
a head a thousand filaments wide.

when i put my hands
on my chest,
thinking of you
and lick my lips,
thinking of you,
I can taste
black,
I can feel
black,
I am blackened
and dark
in my bedroom.

Touch that orb inside me, or mercury,
that loneliest lover slipping
off the cuticle of the horizon.

Reach out with your hands
to that compilation of so many lights
that seems one.

Become the glove that traps
infinity and bridges gaps
that break bodies into particles.

Make love to an earth of oblivion
an earth of nonsense,
an earth of pointlessness,
make love to the years of youth,
the years we waste
not making love.

After a while
it tastes like sweetwater,
and I can bumble through a bar crowd
with haletosis.

The heartless jest
is this,
I call you
and call you
and call you.

This is the heartless jest,
and in the pantheon
of the heart,
I am minor Hermes
ferrying messages of love
across the brutal galaxies
to a lover
that will never hear me
in the suffocation of nebulas.

The nebulas where i was reborn
and died in an instant
of fire so rapid
that it could break a pulsar
in two.

I have found the vaccuum of space
to be comforting,
it hugs me with a feirceness
that I have never known
and a love for my oxygen
that is downright flattering.

I've got a date
with the devil,
she never wears stilletos,
just a pair of chucks
and them lee dungarees,
if I order a drink for myself
I have to order one for her.

"Are you going to drink that?"
I ask.

It's just been sitting there for awhile,
so warm and hungry.

"No,"
she says,
and her eyes are already pocked
with burst blood vessels,
already glassy with my soul,
she's got it now.

So I take it,
and take everything she's got to give.

Which is a lot,
considering.

don't drink
like you don't mean it,
drink like you want it,
like you want no more
sorrow
and a ****** is in dire need,
put your lips
all the way to the cusp
of bitterness
to the very vector
of unhappiness,
let your tongue
loll in
the shadows
of your mouth,
let it droop and kick back
against the acid wash,
but don't hold it too long,
sorrow is a monster that likes
to creep in
at high tide,
when everything is under covers
and restless.

Kick that **** to the back of your throat,
kick it to the bottom of your heart,
the top of your soul,
the end of your salvation,
the tipping point of your love
and the blasphemy
of your hate.

Don't call out to her now,
she isn't listening
and you're not even close
to being finished.

Some things are sadly poetic
Like the cougar whose boyfriend
Won’t come back outside and she’s alone
At the only table in the cold
smoking a pall mall,
Having a beer.

Some things are refreshingly poetic
like leaving the office for a bit with the boss
and going somewhere
where there are domes made of pure gold
and priests who pour milk on them from
helicopters.

Some things are interestingly poetic;
like the poet, turned novelist, turned artist,
who does landscaping to cover the spread.

Some things are courageously and nostalgically
And hurtfully poetic,
Like not seeing your family for nine years
Because the money’s good where you're at,
And plane tickets and passports are outrageous.

Some things should not be
poetic, but they are, because they are truthful
And that is verse;
like the waitress who was *****
when she cashed her check at a grocery store
after the night shift
and she wasn’t the only one in her car
when she got back.

Some things are poetry because they come
Into this world quietly
And bleeding internally,
and yet they survive
Even though their lungs are full of fluid,
And they can barely breathe.

Some things are poetry because they happened
And nothing can change that.

And because
Poetry is
unchangeable, immovable, and
grotesque, beautiful, uncomfortable, calming,
disfiguring, life-giving, ****** up,
Possibly ******, possibly a nectar
That God
or whoever the ****
allowed to be put on paper,
Possibly a way to talk about pain,
Possibly roided up with someone else’s words,
Possibly a way to talk about
the pure dream of a girl’s body
Without being  a ***** *****.

Poetry is love in the worst
and most unimaginable ways.