Worst comes to worst,
don't go crazy
on a Friday.

Don't lose it on the train tracks,
you will get reamed.

If you decide to lose your mind
at the bus-stop
don't forget that there are some irrevocable
hurts
in this world.

Maybe you will go
to a seafood spot,
at Southport
and stare at the gulls
and scream
from inside the sound studio
of your car.

The kind of sound studio
that could deaden
sound
itself.

Maybe you will hammer it out
in your garage
and destroy your entire face
with a buzz-saw,
because insanity is your husband's love.

There is a bridge
where cars stream
and make
river-noises,
jumping from pearly concrete
to volcanic asphalt,
you might feel how it feels to
go from heaven to hell,
maybe you're always at that place,
but if anything
don't
do
it
on
a
Friday.

Mondays are better for self-hatred
and
suicide.

An army
in flower-print
dresses
resides in our backyard
on a guilty clothesline.

Their bloated bodies
float in the water
of the wind.

In our tiny gestures, we tell potential buyers
that we had two beautiful daughters
who left their clothes everywhere,
and we have finally killed
them.

In small voices
they sing for justice
on the clothesline.

But the dresses
are our own childishness,
and not our fake childrens'.

And we tell our buyers these things,
because we want to leave this place,
but on our own terms.

I have dreams
of taking
friends
on suicide missions.

Missions gone wrong.

We place ourselves
in the arms of destiny.

We pit
hope
against
Hades.

When the bullets
are let loose,
and their voices
are as blurred
as tears
it makes sense to say goodbye.

But to **** the evil?

The ignorance?

It seems we die
against the murmurs
of both of them.

A dark night
where the reaper
gets his fill,
where my ribs
are picked dry
until the vultures circle
the ****.

I don't know if pain
is eventual
or just a residue.

IF love
is a black hole.

Because I bring my friends into it,
I take them down
to the blackest deeps
where Ahab still stirs
crying over the white whale
as he disintegrates
into krill.

So,
I
have
dark dreams.

I dream of Judy Greer
and ******* her
until she's dead.

Dream of covering it up
with plastic tarp
and love
that won't return
even when it itself
is so ready,
it's almost magnetic.

These are nightmares.

This is waking up to sweat
at
3
in
the
morning.

Just another black man
Just another black body
Just another black tomb
A bullet pushes itself
Through a skull
Pops out the other side
And skids
Along the asphalt
The gun is still in
His hand,
He can’t release it now,
He will forever
Have a clenched fist
A ball of fury
A chamber of memories
A prison inside the palm
Shackled to the ground
They don’t even have
To snap on the cuffs
He’s somewhere else
But that doesn’t matter
Just another black body
Black bag
Black tomb.

a man like me
needs you
because his heart
is broken.

Sometimes
I like to think,
that what we had
was part of
a dream.

I just want to hold you
even though
you've travelled across
broken bridges
before.

I like to come back to you
in the swirling clay
of night.

When purple clouds
make my pain
seem all right.

So, I drink
to you
constantly,
because if I don't
I'll forget me
in place of the breeze
that rustles
over my rattling lungs.

I could never sing
you a song,
and I could never
drink
for
so
long.

Oh,
touch me once more,
let me feel your tiny hands,
those black fingernails
and their jaundiced
finales.

So much smoke
was wasted
over
our love.

And it makes one
go crazy.

Angela,
would you ever
come back?

I've been asking
this question
as the licquor
subsides.

I've been
sleeping
on it,
just to take
its weight down.

I ate
three tasteless burgers,
and rummaged
through their tomatoes
looking for your lips
red as cherries.

Hopefulness
is a disease,
a cancer
because it spreads
in violent fingers.

The **** of my heart
has begun
before the burgers
settled.

When the time comes
will you have
an open ear
for a closed mouth?
or an open mouth
for a closed
ear?

What did Orpheus say?

What birds left his mouth?

Was there anything left on them?

Or did they fly naked?

Their feathers had been taken
to tar and feather.

The heart, bitter and bruised
broke through his chest,
in the furious night
of those
cold bird's
wings.

What did you say?

Did you say you'd be right,
that I'd be wrong?

Because you only
ever let me
hold your body
in stillness..

I could never hold you
like death.

So when we see each other
again,
in the blue balm
of day,
what kind of salve
will we choose?

will it be coffee?

or tea?

or whatever the **** people have?

Will we look in each other's eyes
instead of devouring our birds
one by one?