Oh, hope
make your mess again.

Hope
don't keep asking more of me
than I'm willing to give.

Forreal tho,
I was in trouble before the boat sunk
and the drowned
finally let loose their blood
in bouyant droplets.

Because I was a little boy,
on the ship,
and you came in to my room,
and laid beside me
with a watermelon smell in your barrettes,
and a "I'm forever"
in your  siuking voice,
as the ship tipped.

So much of me shrieks;
you make me.

Sometimes I hate myself,
when i'm lonely
and no one's around.

When I was younger,
Mommy used to call me a ******,
Daddy used to call me dense
and then punch me harsh as an addict, addicted
me to pain.

I Used to wrap cords around my neck,
take lines to an addled brain:
crazy with masochistic Peter Rabbits,
tangling up their ears,
in mangled mesh wrapping.

Take sleeping pills till
I couldn't sleep ever again, from all the nightmares I was having.

But Mommy still laughed,
Daddy still hawked.

******* cry.
Don't tell your mother I'm drinking.

So no,
I can only love in one way.

I've got this ****
in my arms,
cuddled tight.

I could have it forever,
cold and beatless,
my heavy love.

Maybe there's no place to go,
but I feel like there's a place,
that only you know
about. That
seems so long ago.

Don't you know you've got a strong tongue,
and a whiplash heart?

This is why
you always have a boyfriend,
and I lay with you
in a bed that's not mine;
I never tell you I'm hurting.

Way past delusional,
I drove, forced down
into ******* by noon,
almost ***-***** by that suppressing sun-God.

And I saw something
confusing, but all to truthful.

A Boeng was coming in for a safe-landing,
strafing the sky,
when a Raven dropped from dim heaven
and got ****** into the turbines.

Crimson-mist, across the sky,
and my car as black as a feather.

I rumbled down this carbon-dioxide tunnel,
crying over love, heartbreak,
too drunk to be alive and
still trying to live,
and you know what,
I have nothing
and I wished that somebody
would hit me.

I don't know
if I'm gonna make it back. I need to be more tipsy
than just this.

There's a girl
gonna be in my bed tonight,
who's boyfriend used to strangle her
something crazy
when they'd fight.

GOD,
I could die in her
red-black hair with its pulverizing smell.

I wish I could offer her something more
at four in the morning, when she cries
and I just grab her close--
never knowing a thing
about anything.

Leaden stars crossed her eyes,
and she has told me
she will only love him.

I have had a few hidden tears
in that stolen bed of dreams;
and she sleeps with my kisses:
a reminder of betrayal.

It is six in the morning,
here,
and I am lazy drunk.

I get out the bed '
and leave her
krunk
on maddened sadness.

Leaden stars crossed her eyes,
and she has told me
she will only love him.

I have had a few hidden tears
in that stolen bed of dreams;
and she sleeps with my kisses:
a reminder of betrayal.

It is six in the morning,
here,
and I am lazy drunk.

I get out the bed '
and leave her
krunk
on maddened sadness.

A bad, worming feeling in your belly
because
you've had nothing to eat today,
and
you hopped in your car,
giddy as a bird,
and rolled over there.

There being the magic store;
the store with it's keychains of glory,
bottles of distilled religion,
and a whole lot of prayer
that your debit card sings.

Tomorrow means work
and the evil dollar that drags Jamaican children across
intersections
as they scream at the Americans in taxis.

It seems we all need a break.
We all need a chance to forget
and say we're not culpable
for anything.

This is the magic that'll save you from your whiny conscience.

Sometimes,
you have slow nights,
and hate yourself
for being so lazy.

Other times,
it's an unleashing ****:
a riled-up badger
in your heart;
a\frigate on the best seas;
so much hope,
and the love of your life
hasn't ****** her boyfriend,
only you;
and it really comes out of you,
unspooling on the screen.

It's so much magic,
that your heart greases over with it; and all the little things
bellow.

You are too drunk, now.

But the ulcer juices;
and you know it's finally true.

Since you called,
I've been writing,
here and there,
truthfully,
skinning the night,
searching for meat.

I've peeled back
the clouds: crimson,
the sky: split,
the stars: lit like the mossed edges of a scab,
the cosmos: a ****.

I'm getting weary,
all of this beneath me,
the earth becoming
a speck of dust:
absurd.

The kind of hurt you like to dole:
still there.

Can't I be an astronaut in peace?

Do you like the flattening of me,
into a pancake
like the night:
hammered and nailed
across the hemisphere?

I am the gravity-crushed,
the soul-sored, the black-hole ripped.

Opened and steaming,
I'm under the sky.

The emergency room of the brinking night drugs
and
a story of gleaming scars is my heart.

The liquor doesn't bite anymore,
it comes over me,
in a flowering,
a thunder-wave.

I have dreams of killing him,
with a chainsaw and a rose,
the rose for you
to place
over the tendrils of his separated neck.

Or smashing his face
into a stone lion's mouth,
then forcing him,
inch by wriggling inch
into a granite maw,
trapped forever
behind the vicious wardens
of stone canines and cement incisors.

I usually dream drunk,
too wild in myself,
to roam the day sober.

So, work is drunk;
eating is drunk;
breathing is drunk;

Orange juice spiked,
ready to go.

Meatloaf dinner; date with milk, *****, and sweating
at five.

Can't you see the carnage?

The flotsam;
The raft of bodies
of stupid, pale men
who give out their positions
to hateful women.

Travelling down a broken, dark highway,
delight bending.

Cops pulsing behind us,
in the rearview,
creamed by streetlamps;
the cars
whittle to bad stars behind us.

No hot humans allowed on the road
tonight,
and it's foggy in the dashboard,
the dictum of the reepers.

You are a ******* drunk,
you *******,
*******,
*******
horrible person,
you.

God,
when the time comes
it will be like
redemption.

The tipping will tip over,
and the balancing
will balance out.

Go **** yourself in a corner,
go drown.

Fine. I will take all of this with me,
into a torrent,
I will consume and consume,
distill and distill,
spew and spew,
me,
that *******,
*******,
*******,
drunk.

There is a
home
someplace
for you, peopled
by the niceties
of a lot of time.

You don't have to fear,
this is heaven,
we are gold there.

Don't tumble
in your covers.

Sleep, child,
there is dessert
in your dreams,
and you can tangle with the spider-women
later.

But,
mother goose,
I do.

I do tangle with them,
their loving arms
embrace me,
and their mandibles make my flesh scream.

I hope I dream a dream
so beautiful
that it destroys earth,
and god,
and heaven,
and you.

I hope the spider-women
come to you at night,
lowering themselves into your bed,
and whisper into your head:
"this is nothing,
this poison shall pass too,
in heaven,
you will be free."

as they say lastly,
"I am your saviour,"
while sinking their fangs baring sleep
into your soft neck.

A whittled will
exiled from the cave-mouth.

A half-hearted goodbye,
a full throat
full of sorrow.

A doe
hiding her fawns
in the suburbs.

The sadness that I feel,
is a sadness bereft of refuge.

Do you love him more than me?
Is there something beautiful and indistinct
In him?

Can you bow like never  before,
A prayer of spine?

Do you kiss him like an angel,
And dole out your lips to the stupid others?

Does ignorance call your name,
And hope drive the nail?

When I see her again,
She hugs me casually,
And the smell of her hair
Is an ink,
On my wife-beater.
It soils, and oils
And stains.

Beneath the darkness of her car,
The shadows become loam,
And in the cabin she squeezes out a waving hand,
By the time she pulls away
I am working hard
not to pound her hood,
And demand a return trip
To the factory of my heart,
Where she could be a foreman
And wish things of me all day,
Working a hot sheet of my skin
Into a pliable mass,
And the body of my sins
Into the image of God,
So much so,
That the mere dream of that forge would make her stop
Her car
In the middle of the street,
Hop out,
And walk up to me, repeating a sentence in this gist:
She doesn’t know anything anymore,
Not even how she feels about him.

Make me that God of your
Life
Once more,
Deliver me from evil
And the hands of wickedness that render my soul.

I must be a God in your midst,
a love of the mist.

I know my sins,
I only call you when I'm drunk,
hollering your name
in hurtful epithets.

There is some genie
in our house, curdling poisonously.

I stay in the house
with a freckled old lady;
we're roommates,
unlucky enough to meet each other as life abated.

He does not live in the attic,
like a ***** ghoul; or in some
rubbing bottle like an amnesiac.

But we call the spirit lady, because the genie is vicious.

She comes to the house and says we need to move
things
around.

Her eyes are circled by some creamy mascara
into these black, skin-tight, **** rings,
like absurdist ****** targets.

Things are moved,
the genie stays, gets more vicious.

The mongerer is blamed
for bad things:
broken pots, fights over rent,
**** on the toilet seat,
lost keys.

We call the spirit lady,
this time her fingers jingle with golden rings,
her wrists sing with wrought-iron rainbows,
and says rain will send that sucker running.

So, we build little smoke pits in our house,
and take the most important things:
bills, and alumni letters from my school,
and birthday cards for her,
and burn them until it rains.

The genie calls us falsifiers.

The spirit lady comes back,
a necklace of grimacing clams around her neck,
and knocks around dancing, dancing,
a frenzy, a wildness, a knee-knocking,
throat-throtlling, dismantingly,
limb-ecstasy,
until she poops out and,
breathing heavy,
saying finally:
"there is nothing I can do for you,
I don't think I ever could,
some things are just bad luck."

She turns,
walks away,
and one of her clams drops from her necklace,
it says made in America on the inner lip.

The genie left a few weeks later.

A fortified wall is nothing against a surfing barracuda
during a bad dream full of bad intentions:

Wave-action makes you look drunk,
stumbling in the water, lazy as a jellyfish carcass on shore I stare at you.

I am with that girl
the one in the silvery bikini
and wet hair,
fanning on her clumsy shoulders in thin strands.

I'll be with her till the end. I'll make this stand. This stand against the wave coming in.

Turning around in the barrel of a wave,
you wave me in with you;
smiling up to your incisors. How cleanly
you are able to bite off chunks of meat.

The wave womps the **** out of you.

Thunder is under there, thunder
of waves, lightning of jellyfish,
brutalized clams,
hard-pressed sand,
all confused in the barrel of betrayal that is the wave,
while the wave yawns and grins.

Nothing can stand the wave,
I hope you ******* drown in there;
I hope that others just like you,
eat you,
that you become seafood.

The throne of a metropolis is on the far side
atop the lake
that wrinkles the sun,
beneath a mountain
green with sickled pines;


The people use their boughs as scythes.

The people use trees to cut down
more and more,
and burn whatever's too pesky
to stick around.

In a backyard of a house in the suburbs
people get bored playing cards,
watching tv,
getting drunk in the evenings.

They party like pagans going crazy
over a peerless future,
and an impermanent past.

Sometimes a new bonfire is started
where the old one died,
sometimes the old one will flare up
and scorch the sky beautiful;
a smoky curtain on which the tongues of stars
can make good on all the promises
made on them.

And people kiss around the fire.
Hug,
make up,
joke.

The sealed souls of the people open.

At the end,
they regret it.
This newness of life.

They swing their wooden scythes at the night,
still furry and wet
with bark and sap,
cursing god in fury, fury, fury,
trying to cut down the stars too.

These people that take and destroy,
they whittled the throne of the Metropolis
out of ivory from Africa.

Night twinkles,
winks,
with cross-dressing jets.

I catch a thousand spider-webs,
until I'm home. Caught up
with all this silk, tickling my arms
it's a trap.

I've never had
more than I've had, a share of
love that loses money every day
is the only investment I've made,
and I'm poor in her hands.

My caretaker
might be meeting the undertaker
soon, the gingersnaps baked
until they burned, but she served them
anyways, and she made me feel good,
because she was as heavy and reassuring
as an indigo-less night,
she was my black night.

But I'm seduced in the night,
caught up,
held down
force-fed debt,
and reassured.

A night is heavyness.

A night is a ceiling,
in whichever way you think of ceilings:
either in your home,
your job,
or your love.

I could have  a few more pints,
pass out,
and still be in the same place tomorrow.

That's the thing about it all,
man,
I'm stuck here on a planet for neanderthals and minute-men.

And it's gracious like that.

Giving in plenty of normality,
conciousness
and stupendous
felicity.

Like we could all have three bedrooms,
xanax(enough to **** ourselves),
and a few appreciative kids.

Ever felt like you had the one
for you, and
you just let her duck out?

See, I got this girl.

See, I had this girl.

See, this girl really ****** me,
see?

This girl was an island girl.

This girl ****** in torrents.
Argued in cannonball barrages.
And hugged like a linebacker.

Those island girls are thick:
all thighs,
all ***,
all fire
like the volcanoes we all come from
and forget to remember.

But they remember.

And they live it.

See, this island girl, was a bigger, thicker one,
and I could throw her around any way I wanted.

And she liked it,
and I liked it,
and,
I'm telling you,
this island girl could take an ***-canning whooping
like nobody.

I mean, I'd make sure her ****** became
a bruised rose
and she felt it.

But,to talk about love,
the *** was a good thing,
but she could argue,
and I think I like that
more than I'm beginning to realize.  

Just like a short poem on a ***** day.

That cheap stuff
will run through you.

It'll give you a hard time
going down,
and then,
it'll hold your belly like a baby's hand,
soft and sweetly,
then it'll smack the **** out of you,
because you trusted it.

This cheap **** is a bad ****.

It tastes like molassess and *******,
it kicks like a jalopy,
turns over in bombs,
slices your belly button,
and pops its little head out of your stomach.

I like the cheap ****,
it makes me feel this way.

This way is the only way.

Kind of like
how they say
alotta love
is
good love.

You want to love me.

You want  to ******* fear,
and cure
my insecurity.

What you hold about me
seems dear
when it's in your pocket
and
close.
as a child
when the ice-cream truck rolls around.

The looping rhythm
of every day
is a clear sign
that you
need to move
and hold me more.

I **** your *******,
lap at your legs,
crumble in your words,
erupt in your anger,
and you think I need you,
and I relish
in you needing that
needing.

But then the need bites,
rips,
destroys,
and the black hole of our apartment
is reality
when you sleep
and hear me snore.

You know that i will get fat
when I am older,
and I know that you will slowly
become bitter
as raspberries;
Me thinking you're ripe
and perfect,
when you're holding in so much
and don't
even
know
it.

Don't touch
those broken stars.

Don't try to cup
my nebulas
in your hands,
or grip
my exploding novas
into concrete baseballs.

They cannot be hurled into oblivion
to make a sizeable dent
in eternity.

They burn
and crush you.

And I whiff
at your beautiful pitches.

Your words crumble,
and slither,
when they are meant
to soothe
and restructure.

My love
is horrible,
stupid,
and placating,
because I made ramen noodles for two
and you ate them
because it was a sweet thing to do
and that was the only reason
you ate them.

On the way down,
those noodles say that my love
is the best love,
but poison
in your gut.

Sometimes it's unclean
as cheapvwhiskey
because we don't mean it
and didn't p;ut the effort in.

Or maybe there shouldn't be effort?

Sometimes your body
feels so weighted
that I could crash it.

Taste the curtained night
and know
there are things
hiding behind it.

Know that there are burning,
blazing,
bitten
things behind it.

Know that I have a special hiding place
for the ride home,
and that I reach into it
and take a few hits
just so that I won't
**** you
when I get home.

The ocean teams with life,
but when I am at the beach
it seems robbed
and
empty,
and I hate myself
for being a part of it.

When he is home,
it seems like he shuts off
and
and I'm frightened about
how I can get so used
to a routine.

When she kisses him,
he knows she does it for show,
and the showy part is what kills him.

Alice had to clean out the ******* today,
and almost got into a fight
with her boss
about how ***** they were.

Romero, took two teens across town
in his cab,
and they laughed at him the whole way there,
not knowing his jokes
were canned, but thinking
they were original.

Romero hated those rich people
and his car
stank of it
if you knew the smell.

Today people did things
they had no business doing,
but did them anyway,
beacuse they had to.

I am them.

So much time
has passed
since you grabbed me by the shoulders,
and yelled
at me
about stealing money from my parents.

You are the asphalt.
You are the reflectors.
You are the speed limits.
You are the road.

I came to visit you,
when you were laid up in the hospital,
and I felt all right
about crying.

I have been in love
by now,
and you know about it.

Bojangles tastes like happiness
when we sit in the lobby,
over cajun fries,
and you tell me about
my grandmother.

Because she was so strong
in her love
and you
were so weak.

"You are my hero,"
I said.

And meant it,
even now
when I am
restless
and unsure.

Bills
are not paid in full
by the end of the month,
and I have a thousand loan checks to fill in;
but I will pay them in your stern and gentle voice.

I think
that there are some things that I am missing on,
so,
I will never plan
your funeral.

Thai China
buzzes
because
we
buzz.

It quiets
because
we
quiet.

I'm at the end of my stamina,
me and you,
we've had a few beers;
got to talking;
and BAM!!!:

WE"RE MOROSE.


The business crowd
goes crazy
for some Thai China.

The tempers
calm
over hot bowls of white rice
(costing $5)
that steam up into
hooked noses.

Our lips,
juicy by now,
are so numb
that
we gave up talking a minute a go.

And got into a *****, male mood.

We just stare at the girls,
the waitresses,
wanting to **** them
in our nasty dreams.

Wanting to stick
our *****
in EVERY HOLE,
but we just get drunker
and drunker
and stir over
our bowls of rice.

The business
of business
commences;
our suppressed urges
and office angers
dull
by the mouthful.

There is no home to go to;
there are cigarettes still burning
in the ashtray we made
out of a Folger's can,
and you have forgotten
to put them out.

Forgive me,
I'm bitter now,
and I think it'll be hard for me
to love again,
because you are my teacher.

Do you believe in heaven?

I still think about five years ago,
and I know you do to.

I still think about
being horrific
and you getting red in the face
and crying
over the past.

I remember pregnant anger,
and you hitting me,
and me
hitting you,
because I said I hated you.

I think there are good things that last.

Sometimes I mow lawns
and try to make the straightest lines possible;
I am afraid you will see them
and be angry with me.

Sometimes I have nightmares
about not being able to fix things.

I have kissed you tenderly on the cheek,
but because I'm not young anymore,
it seems stupid
and
wrong.

But there's a bigger question:
Do you even like me?
Do I
even like you?

And we manufacture love,
because you are always sad and hurt
and
I am shy
and scared;
afraid
that you will say something
that will make me leave
and be scared
for a lifetime.

Tonight,
the drive took longer
than expected.

I was just going to the store
for four dollar whiskey.

We have argued for some time now,
and hold our breaths
when we crunch our food
in the morning.

We work: 9-5; and come home to laze
away from each other,
or to roar
about unkept promises
in the shared den;

We work: 9-5; and come home to laze;
to glisten in the beedled glow
of TVs
in separate rooms,
on separate couches,
on separate floors.

I have faltered,
and you have quoted.

I needed to get out of the house
because we have worked too hard
to shake it;
and screaming is a discomfort
we can bare
and that's no good
I've realized lately.

And the highway,
with its litany of bruises
and the brutality of a billion
dandelion reflectors
seemed like a blackening pavilion
for catharsis.

There  was no one beside me;
the roadway pummeled
beneath.

It was a terrible silence.

I screamed in the ***** odor of night,
and whistled
in the hushing door;

paid for my little bottle of godliness
and took hard swigs
in a ****-laundered parking lot
of an abandoned Food Lion.

Crabgress crept up through the concrete--
breaking and burdening--
and drifted in suffocating meadows.

The empty grocery store has an opaque facade
and a shimmering tiny lion;
I am home.

Amelia
with the
tender
Tom Hardy lips
picks
at things.

Scabs.

The peeling leather
on her
steering wheel.

The frayed edges of the hole in her denims
that's as gaping
as a zipper mouth,
and looks
just
as
vicious.

Boys she likes
and likes
not at all.
(Men that call her "sweetie.")

Amelia's delicate fingers
and the ballet of her fingernails
warp bruises
into rose vaginas.

And make hurt
smell
good,
and decay
taste like
the wet of your first girlfriend
and the sweet odor of fear
she let off
when your tongue searched
and she lay there--
legs cocked on your shoulders--
quiet,
never sighing.

Amelia hasn't found anything
that scares her good and healthy yet.

When she does
she'll know love,
and I'll stop thinking about her.

Not seen or heard from
you
in awhile.

I sat on the bus today,
with the strength of vinyl,
and a girl slinked by me
in a flower-print sundress.

Her plastic bra-straps stradled her shoulders,
akimbo
and slippery wet.

And the man in the front seat
almost lost his head,
when the bus rolled.

Not seen
or heard from
by some other woman.

Took a drive this morning,
ate my cigarettes,
inhaled gasoline,
put my feet on the curb
leaned on my hood,
and not seen or heard from
I waited for the movie to start.

The bobcat yowl of an NSX
pronounced the night
as quick,
and your serrated memory
cuts
like it should.

Not seen or heard from
you
in awhile.


I bet you smoke
with the other waitresses
and waiters,
busboys,
hosts,
hostesses,
managers,
line cooks,
and
chefs.

I bet you have a good time
in that tiny cafe,
where you run
from table to table
with that wild hair,
and can abandon yourself
to short-term memory
and long-term

loss.

Not seen or heard from you.

a tiny woman
has hips
with a thousand mouths to feed.

her little feet
are
acetylane-based
and her philosophy
is
a
by-product
of a lack of faith.

"It's going to be a good night, for a little while,
but let's not spoil a night
by thinking about it,"
her hips
say
to your fingers.

The thousand tongues
lap at your fingerprints.

Her tongues
make rollers
of passion,
and bury love
deep beneath the ruined sand
of a nimbus-warped beach
blackened by pain,
x-rayed by fingernails of lightning.

She makes you think
of such a beach.

The tiny woman
wraps her long, lean
arms
around your tiny
hairless neck.

Her breath singes
your uncovered Adam's apple.

Little man,
she calls you,
this old cougar
with rat teeth
and **** eyes.

"Little man,"
she says,
"I know how men
get down these days,"

Her body is verve,
electric skin
and loose, vibrating fabric.

Her legs are muscle
only,
as tight as a horse's quad,
you can see all the veins
and their tributaries
in her thighs,
and how they wiggle
against olive muscle.

"Little man,"
she says,
beer like a Titan
on her breath,
"I'm hungry."

And you are too,
and she will lead you,
holding your arm
by the drunken,
half-holding,
half-forgotten
vice
of her fingers
and you and her
will eat at Waffle House.

At 2 a.m.

She will dry out,
and become salty.

You will dry out and finally be hungry.

Eat,
Little Man,
she thinks,
because you're walking home
tonight.

I come back
for promise.

The tea leaves
told me it would be
all it should be.

My bags were packed
the same way a child packs a bag,
everything vital
was left
on
the
bed.

I took satisfying trinkets
because pollution
dulls.

Oh,
I
am
at
your doorstep
once
more.

The lady in the techni-colored
shawl
with eyes like a rainbow,
brought the water to a boil,
dropped in the leaves,
told me
my future
would be ready
in a second,

I'd know everything in due time,

and it was.

The tea leaves told me
in a raspy, Pall Mall
voice
that everything was going
to be
all it should be.

So,
here I am,
at your doorstep,
and everything vital
hums through woven lips
on your bed.

I have come for a teddy bear
that I have hugged
too long.

Lovers trapped
in flourescent corners.

Skin shimmers underneath
loose tees,
beige with the kind of sweat
that blackens
Levi's in the crotches.

Her fingers *****
at his mice-sized ears
which hunger
for the acrylic traps
she lays with her fingernails.

If lips had tongues
his lips would say:
"I've had plastic flesh
and mercury is in my veins
cooling me
until I'm frozen
in the arms
of death."

And his lips never touch
hers:
neck,
breastbone,
cleft-chin,
chapped ear lobe,
crackling scalp,
fracturing spine,
splitting abdomen,
scarred heart.

his are never touched by
hers:
lips.

They finger the hills
of each other's skin:
velvetine,
innumerable,
wet.

Starships beep in the night.

Beep through receivers
from a place against the earth,
but not touching it.

THeir voices are intimate
and not there.

Cries are heard from space
and cradled as breathing
treasure.

Intimate,
but not there.

Their fingers touch each other,
infinitely
and not at all.

He feels her
as the earth feels
remote beeps
in remote intimacy.

E.J. pulls the last one out of the box,
slowly now,
with his forefinger
and thumb.

The fore
is square.

Almost cut.

Like he'd taken a box-cutter
to it after inhaling
all that BUD Light
in that dangling,
shimmying
hose in the truck.

The thumb is normal.

He lifts the Pall to his lips
with the deliberateness
of a crane operator
laying the last brick,
before the whole thing
burns to the ground
in fluttering, liquid ashes.

The fore is useless,
so square
that the **** dangles
even when he pinches it.

And E.J.
looks down at it with those watery
fire-choked dog-blue
eyes
and
exhales a
spectre.

Carmen's legs
are pixilated cerulean.

Rubbing beasts
that itch at untouchable
bruises beneath her skin.

Her computer is on.

She rests crossed legs
on its desk.

There's something sticky about her skin.

Carmen's date is calling,
her speakers make a sound
like **** plopping in a toilet.

The webcam blinks
like Sauron's eye.

Carmen has never had
any of the cards
in her hands.

Not a whiff of a queen of hearts
or a jack
of all trades.

It seems she's been slipping for awhile now,
in her black room, colored
by the glow of some
techni-cyclops'
cavernous mouth,
crimson, heart-shaped teeth,
and scythe tongue.

She has never known the war machine
of love,
or the war machine of self-determinism.

Now she does,
her compudate buzzes on-screen.

Tiny sprouted pixels
jump into a constantly
buzzing whole.

He's got a bored face,
and Carmen knows this is the look
of the generation.



Carmen lifts her legs from the desk.

Puts her hands on her lap.

Licks her lips.

She wants to know
what lowered human beings
do when they are restless.

She is seeking something
moreso
philosophical
than
******.

"Bored, much?"

Carmen asks sardonically.

He took it literally.

He jumped at attention.

"Oh, no,
now that I've seen you."

"How do these things work?"

"Well, I guess we talk to each other,
and if you like me
then we go from there."

And to Carmen this was reticence,
this was blasphemy.

She had the cards in her hands,
finally.

Carmen's legs are pixilated  high cerulean.

Cerulean the color of
a tiger ocean,
****** cakes,
slushies,
a sun-****** sky,
a corpse. Skin against a computer screen.

We dine off of  hearts
goaded from the sea.

Hearts drawn to dead promise
and
cold hooks.

The gills
taste metallic
and the flesh is sweet
with mercury.

The haul is yanked overboard,
and the tuna fly
like angels of vengeance
to our dinner tables
where wine
condenses the poisoned bodies
into forkfulls
of pleasure.

The meat is sweeter
than anything we have ever tasted,
we hope that it puts us to sleep.

Not wanting to ****
or cherish
the bones of each other's bodies
has led us to gorge
on these fish,
these harbingers
of comas
that we are too awake
to realize
are the dreams of the stars
filtered through the
diamond-studded
rollers of the Pacific.

The blue and cold Pacific
it pumps out
the fuel for restaurants.

Restaurants
where we gnash our teeth silently
against oily meat.

Restaurants
where I have a drink
and you have a drink
and we have our fill
on vicarious oceans
that decay in the parties
of our bellies.

Tonight we will sleep
because we are drunk
with poisoned meat.

Robbed meat.

Catastrophic
is the grinder of your mouth.

A goaded heart
is an atomic bomb
and we have our fills on them.

Until we no longer want to ****.

The mercury
courses.

The waiter
dashes back and forth.

The cook
slices and dices.

The fishers haul in a line
ten-ton lines of bycatch.

All for a single forkful
of the most sugary
thing
two people can share
when their bodies
are useless
and wheezing for the oxygen
of a purified love.

There was no time
there was never
enough.

It was hard enough
for me
to sit beside you
and not stroke your leg
like a crystal ball
and feel you beneath
your trembling skin.

It doesn't make sense
to have all this religion
and nothing
resembling
truth.

When you got up to go
to the bathroom
I took notes
on your hips.

How your thighs swayed
against the weight
of a poverty of faith.

Split apart skies
by lightning
bolts from some
jealous gods
seemed to crack
your iris's.

Mistrust from the past
pain kept you
held in a barricade,
a battalion
against your better will
to gather my
unchained love.

When you sat back beside me
I was afraid
that you would look at me
like a stranger
that had studied
every line of your body.

Your lips remain unknown,
and the thunderous crack
of breaking steel
withdrew inside of me
as I wanted
more.

As I wanted to know
what had happened
to make you so vicious.

Vicious love
made for a vicious lover
for a vicious
interpreter
that took notes
on a ****-poor notepad
yearning for a faith
in the spirit
that leapt up against my fingers
underneath your skin.

As we ****
our souls
touch the bottoms
of the river
where pirannahs lie
in wait.

You know What?

You're going to go

outside

and have a smoke

and think

you'll feel better about yourself
and the direction
your life's headed in
for once.

For once in your life
you'll be proud
of yourself.

And then that nicotine
hits you quick.

Get jumpy.

Get agitated.

And you realize this
whole love *******,
you realize this
whole career *******,
you realize this
whole happiness *******
is just

TOURETTE'S.

I freaked out for
bout
five minutes.

My bottle was gone,
and I couldn't find
it,
and
*******
I'd climb Robert Plant's tongue
to get to heaven
to **** god
if  my bottle was gone.

But it wasn't.

It was at my feet,
and I'd freaked out.

I gotta get warm
in any form,
or else
my stomach
sinks
to my intestines
and my heart
gets a lil weak.

I need WIld Turkey
to keep me going,
I need you to know
that I'm insane
in some ways
and it feels like
nobody
knows what I'm saying.

My brain is stagnant horns,
just fat as Louie Armstrong's cheeks,
and
I'm a sardine
on your tongue
waiting to be spit out
to plastic oceans
instead of
acid chambers.

I decide it's better to live like a hang glider,
to look down at rivers
snaking towards hips.

Better to hold handlebars
like cold lips.

Better to take the tongue to teeth,
than try to guess what's
in her coffee.

I'll be high
in the morning;
still a speck in her eyes,
as she pukes in the Cheerios
and tells me not to look
because it's unbecoming.

But I've seen her puke when
we're watching the Dog Whisperer.

She'll be staring up at me

and I know
that
she'll
be thinking about hanging a motherfuker
with a tight rope pulled
from a trapdoor
hinged by her
lavender *******.

Let me fall to the earth
through that opening.

Crush me
with the nails
that hold you together.

I
think
"I'm sorry,"
is what she said
to him.

She'd broken down
all lines of communication
and he was hungry
as hell
for her taste.



And what he said to her
was the most
bitter of all the greatest cover-ups.

"It's okay."

Bitter like scuppernogs
in North Carolina
when the sun reaches down
and burns sweetness away.

It was an assassination
of faith
that day
they lit two cigarettes
with one lighter.

That day
they sat outside on park benches
unearthing each other
while trying to hide.

"So," she said
to him.
"Did you know
that I can roll the tightest blunts
in the universe."

And he said something,
something
falsified,
something
calcified,
something
ha­rdened.

"That's dope."

Because the love drug
had taken all control over him,
and rage
couldn't come out of him,
he didn't have the spirit
or the *****
to say
that he'd drank himself to death
all day long
because he thought
she'd strapped on an oxygen tank
and flown to the stars:

Distant
as
a
supernova
burning holes in that
murky
purple
night.

I saw her
walking from the bodega
and it was hotter
than a tick
cradled under my *****,
and from there the fire
spread.

I was listening
to life
after
death,
had that **** on BLAST,
and she was carrying groceries
in the crook of her arms,
plastic bags
swinging
in response to the weight of each other.

Back and forth,
until I thought they might
just get ideas
and run away together.

And right there,
with my windows down;
my eyes on her,
hers on the concrete,
I wanted a forty,
cause forties clear my head
and my conscience
was banging me in the side of my head
like two bags
full of loaded groceries
on
frail arms.

Pac would tell u
he waz gunna
throw a riot
and he'd tell ya
y.

Rappers nowadays
throw a riot
and don't have the inteligente
2 tell you why,
see now it's
about
mizguided bravado
and *******
it used 2 be about
all the old homies
and
G.I.R.L.S. u used 2 know.

**** isn't the poison,
the poison
is
what you preach
from diamond-studded
constructs
of impermissibility,
you trace the path
of the ants across
the earth
with your finger,
telling them where
to go
and when,
so when we have
a new king,
he will dream of dreams
on ocean planets,
with the stars
swimming,
the galaxies
breathing,
the cosmos
deeming
that all
is right
although not altogether
good.

When I place my heart
in hell,
I place it in your frying pan.

When we ****
I see the listlessness in your eyes,
and I'm not hurt,
because at least you're there,
and you're letting me enter
you
for
a
moment.

At least your letting me be a part of you,
and that's what I think *** is,
more than an entering of the body,
it's an entering of the soul.

So when I push my *****
I push
my hopes
my regrets
my hurtfulness
and my
******-sociological
*******.

Can you take me,
because I'm crazy
and I've got a few ****** up
idiosyncracies.

So when I catch
this love **** quick,
it's on a whole 'nother tip.

I might just fall in love,
and Natalie might come calling
again,
so don't be hurt
when I resume with her
and I chase every single girl
I could have loved
into the distance.

Don't be hurt,
because
misguidedly,
I think I'm meant to be with her.

What does a grown-*** man
do?

Does he wear a suit
and
tie?

Does he fish on the weekends?

Does he go to work in the morning,
and deal with constant pressures
on his head?

I think a grown-*** man
kicks his kids out
when
they're not acting correct.

I think he cries
when they sleep
in places that aren't home,
and scrounge
pennies
from their pockets
to get some Micky D's.

A grown-*** man
loves his life
because this is the only one he has
no matter
how
bad.

When he goes to work
he listens to jazz
because the trumpets
remind of him of his
baby's
gurgles
and
that child going hungry
isn't an option.

His wife and him fight
because he thinks she's not
raising the kids right,
when she really is,
but he's really got fear in his heart,
the good kind,
the kind that makes him compassionate
when he kisses his
baby daughter's
lips
before the sun has come up.

When I think of a grown-*** man
I think of my father,
even when he's ****** up
to the nth degree
and I can say I love him
because he is the tree
and he has carefully
tended my plot of earth
even when he dealt with a dearth
of love.

I think about my death.

The seed of life
is so
profuse,
and that
is
my demise.

I might live,
but I will die.

When I dream,
I dream
of Judy Greer.

She's been there
talking
about
love and *******
and death
and hurting.

So what can I say now,
when bulletholes
of lightning
people my dreams.

When a couple
shots of whiskey
have put me on the edge
of missing you
over memories.

I moan
and dream,
because dreaming
is a moan
for hope.

And being in for a bid,
is the same
as your lips
to
my
lips.

So I evade promises
and dribble
into traps
of
depression.

I've had this problem
for so long,
it seems inconsequential
that I might
wring my neck
by an electrical cord,
or by the chords
of your heart..

Because i miss you
and that
type
of
thing
never lets go
to much.

I stare at humans with an anchor in my hands.

I don't know if I should break
their noses,
or
tell them how it got there.

Don't hate me,
just be grateful;
that I told you I'm so sad
and worn out.

My drunk dreams
are astounding.

I wake up
at four
in the am.

have a smoke.

Then go back to sleep,
still tipsy.

Judy Greer
makes it to the farthest
reaches of my imagination,
and I must save her
from
a
man
with a hundred
groping hands.

A girl with a spirit
full of the ripest sunrises
in their peaches,
pinks
and plums
must be told
that it is ok
to be this sad
in the morning.

When there is no reason,
and night is crying
over
its demise.

I must take her from the sky,
to take her to my bed,
where we lay naked
having never ******,
but because it's much easier
to tell the truth
when skin is touching.

It is much easier
to feel human,
when you are touching
them
unadulterated.

I must rescue
the world in my dreams,
I must eradicate
disrespect
and
cat-calls.

I am the defender
in my dreams.

Why is it that I dream of saving women,
because I have been told
to do so?

Or because
I am doing what comes natural?

Or maybe
I am just hurt,
and when I am hurt,
I want to save people.