Temper tantrums everyday,
the baby
I have become
is the same one that
pukes up mommy's love.

See,
lil ma
got me
on the switch,
she questioned my intentions
thought I was up to no good,
but all I wanted was a single parent love,
something
that could withstand pain
and nourish
a broken heart
like mine
all by its lonesome.

I just wanted you to see the other
side,
because I spend to much time
on mine.

I dictate how mean I can be,
but as always
we got into arguments
and consequently
you took the baby
between us
and held it away from me.

Not a baby
of flesh,
but a baby of love,
morphed into an adult
of
scorn.

So now what do we do
with this wild child
in our midst?
do we throw our hands up?
or do we put our middle fingers down
and hold each other's shoulders
like lovers should?

When I eat my words
I eat them
with bitterness.

A whole
grape
of wine
couldn't encompass
the
sour seed of my soul.

I make promises
over the phone,
that I love you,
that whatever I did wrong
can be made right.

Just like those withered
scuppernogs
I think,
I can climb the vine
again.

But there is no
remedy
for a broken heart,
except pain,
and letting go.

So over dried tears,
I tear myself apart
over the thought of you.

Even in the burgeoning
night
full of fat storms,
I am malnourished,
and waiting by the phone
while my friends go out,
for your call.

Love isn't right,
or logical
or even compassionate.

Love is hateful,
but love
is
also love,
and the well-spring
of humanity
stems from that deep
acquifer
embedded in rock,
where you are the
drill
and
I am the spring-loaded
limestone
full
of
nourishment.

So bae,
come back someday,
let me climb the steel stairs
of your blue eyes,
because I've been out
and
about,
and other eyes have found mine,
but they have found nothing.

You have found
and mined
everything,
and I don't love them for finding nothing,
I love you
for your scouring
and
discerning heart.

So dismember me,
make me human,
I'd rather die mortal
than immortal
and
inhuman.

I think
your back still arcs
like a feather.

But I still called you *****
from time to time.

When you put your eyeliner
on, I thought of different dreary places
where darkness could reside
peacefully.

Dream catchers litter too many of the beds
we have occupied.

When I hear about your new best friend,
I want him to know that you
know how to pull teeth out with your tongue.

The creamy bowl of the clouds
laundered the sky, pulling pollution
against the washboard of our love;
and your legs were always open underneath the table,
waiting for my fingers
jaundiced by nicotine.

Sometimes u didn't know if
no
was the right word.

No
was the right word.
it would have retained
both of our
sanity's
even in vanity.

It seems that
no
is the better kind of stain
than
yes
and all of its incumbent pain.

No
would have been better
than twenty-five feet of intestines
being tugged constantly..

Better then
the peeping heart
and
broken warbles.

Better than matinees.

Better than
runways
and
leaving landing gear
on my heart.

Better than
love itself.

Temptation
all around me,
I want to hug it
with a *******.

Place your hand
on my stomach,
feel the wash
of digestion.

I slide my fingers up
her
rib cage
strumming
them
like chords,
until I hear a giggle
of music.

I let myself
in
that night.

As you waited
in the backroom
bedroom,
with all your backroom
sexuality.

All the latent
passion
that crept during the day
is let loose
when I unlock
your neck
with my tongue.

Shivering
neckbones
make a noise
like ornaments
caressing
on a christmas
tree.

The gift
of your body
isn't lost
on me,
but the gift of love
can't make it through
this process of unlocking,
unraveling
and
*******.

Love
straps her bra
on,
pulls her ******* up
and closes her legs.

And I don't even miss it,
because love speaks
with a tongue for talking
not
*******.

Isela
takes it in
the mouth.

She'd get on her knees,
positioning herself
half-in,
half-out
of focus.

Just enough for Joe,
behind the Cannon,
to capture
the whole thing.

Eric,
the producer,
was on his hands and knees
beside Joe.

'Come on Izzy
work it,
work the ****.'

'That's right,
stroke it,
make him sing.'

'I love it,
Izzy.'

Izzy wanted to bite
down.

She hated each and every ****,
she ever saw,
but she had a few things to do.

Her **** had to be new
and renewed
on the daily,
her ***** had to get wet
on command,
and her stroke had to be
so fast
they'd burn the dude
as her mouth
cooled.

After her mouth
was littered,
and her face was a mess
of spinal glitter -- You could make a man
come out of his
brain, Eric would say.

Izzy would get in her car,
wiping her arm
where'd she'd gone
to the clinic
to get pricked
and tested,
and pull a long haul of Virginia Slims
down her throat.
'
It was always the first sweet thing
she tasted.

Izzy would pull into the Terrace View apartments,
all that long black hair,
and wipe all that make-up off,
three napkins-worth,
so she could kiss her baby.

Because Rocco was in for a bid,
and not coming home anytime in
the forseeable future.

Her microbiology degree was somewhere
in her closet underneath those pink stillettos and
more fishnets than fish.

And Izzy knew
that with those double d's;
*** like a backseat,
mouth that could grease
a ****,
and her hands
Eric liked to call his own,
that she could pay the light bill
and maybe
put Romeo
into a daycare center
that wasn't full of roaches
and
angry *******.

"Someday I'll get out,
but it's illogical
to say
with all the money I'm making,
and it's just a job
when you get down to it,
I've ****** a lot of *****
and never gotten
paid."

Rocco Jr.'s cheeks were always the second
sweet thing
she tasted.

"I know a lot of girls
that got defeated by this game."

This is crazy,
having to re-define
everything.

What will my mother
think?

My dad already
thinks I'm crazy,
and I don't even stay there.

Sometimes I have black coffee,
and that's it for a day.

When I walk to the ABC store
on bland nights,
I pack
a pack
of Marlboros,
and I leave breadcrumbs of butts.

At night
I suckle
the lick dry,
right down to the bottom
of the breast,
until there is nothing more
it can give me.

During the day,
I work out
haphazardly,
and **** in the toilets,
like a big boy.

I have to learn how to speak again.

I've got a whole new dictionary
and it's got the same word
on
every page.

Can I be human,
with one word?

*******,
hoes,
crazy,
*****.

Catch me on a friday night,
and I might
say them all.

But what I say
and what I feel
is a different
thing.

Because *******,
hoes,
womps,
don't have vocabularies
like boulders.

They can't destroy.

And with a new mindset,
I can say
a few things.

A ***** is a girl
without hope.

A ***
is a girl
that likes ****
and doesn't
like
love.

A crazy one
is a girl that gets by.

A ****
is a girl
that doesn't know the difference
between the three
and operates
on a thin line;
because *******
have treated her like ****
and no new ******
can make her think
any different.

But a girl,
alas
a
girl.

A girl
is full of love
and platitudes.

A girl
has her hands
on your heart
all the time.

She has a vocabulary
and says **** a Webster's
because she's got a new dictionary
that didn't even exist
before she let it out her mouth.

A girl
makes you re-define
the word
love,
with all its
futile resentment
and
disenchantment,
because she'll keep you coming
back
for more,
even as she says
"no,
you're talking crazy,
you gotta
go."

So trust me when I say this,
I could **** with a girl's head before,
but this girl
she's maneuvered me into thinking
about how ****** up
I
really
am.

And that's as smart
as
I've
ever
been.