Why am I in this month-long
heartbreak?

Why am I starring
down the barrel of a night
the color
of shadows in the sewer?

Because I'm taking shots
at each and every one of them.

But the shadows reach out for my soul,
and their population
grows.

I'm still thinking about her,
for some reason,
realizing how much I cared,
when I used to think
I'd get away from this one
scot-free.

We weren't even together,
but I have these crazy drunk dreams,
and she's walking away
in every one of them.

So I smoke a bowl,
and take sips straight
from the bottle,
and she's still barrelling down on me,
making booms in the night,
making the shadows go boom,
making everything go boom
inside of me.

She used to run
her fingernails
down my sternum
all the way
to the bottom of my belly,
one little snake
tickling me
as she split me open,
and her jelly-smelling hair
coiled in jet-black
against my shoulders,
and her
amazonian lips
made my heart muggy,
so what I did
after she stopped splitting me open,
after she stopped
making trips from my heart
to my lower intestine,
is that I went to the coldest place
in the world,
but even then
I was warm with her constriction,
warm in the coldest places
warm without distinction.

So much sadness
resides
in my palms.

I rest my head there
in a pose of thought.

I position the gun of my mind
against the bomb
of my heart.

Pleasure
is demise,
pleasure
is a plea,
pleasure
is the last reply
of the day,
pleasure
is
what it isn't.

Because what really happens
when those endorphins
start grinding on the thighs of your veins,
is that you are feeling
pain that makes
the softness of her skin
hurt your lips with happiness.

So this is a poem of love,
didn't start that way,
just like pleasure
begins with bruised
wrists
and dehydrated lips.

The beat
for the party of pleasure
bumps in the heart
timing itself by a melancholy metronome.

I'm patiently waiting
for a gift
from Satan,
or the heaven's above,
something to get me
through this,
this little pearl
of wisdom
makes me push for it
through self-derision,
so when I say
that
I got the seed
for the next
demon
in my sack,
I'm telling you
that I'm at the lowest
point
of the world,
the deepest
heaven,
a heaven
of pain,
and malicious
thoughts
birthing
something vicious,
I want you to understand,
that I need
a few wishes,
a genie
'needs to start doling
out pearls
instead of blazing palaces
and
some federal loans,
I can do nothing
with the biggest houses; the biggest debt
I have to pay
is my pain
which is boiling underneath
my skin,
and it doesn't feel
like God is listening
or handing out grants
with my name
in gold ink.

Touch me with your love
and I might touch your temples
with a fist
and in its grimy depths
there is salvation
that can get you and me both
out of this
heaven of pain.

The way I memorialize
a woman's heart
against my own,
is by pointing
to the scars she has left
on my heart
in my moments of solitude.

Like the wounds
on sharks during
mating,
I hold close
those moments
when I sank my teeth in
and when she sank
into me.

So
when
they
ask
me:

"Would you have done
anything differently,
now that you see how it
turned out?"

And I say:
"No."

I cherished those moments
when your placed your mouth
on my heart
and squeezed with
perfect teeth.

Man I *******
hate college,
only reason that I'm here,
is because I had a choice,
Marines?
or
College?
So I made the decisions,
most before me
have taken.

Taken on
the burden
of the
"free world"
and leveraged
our futures
against
loans
against six percent interest,
so what do we know,
what are we trying to
become,
don't we see
the ill-fated futures
of our televised
and re-digitized
lives.

Get them to hate me,
that's how I get
over heartbreak,
that and drinking Wild Turkey,
smoking Marlboros
and ******* off my family,
is how i make it through every
one,
even the real sun-filled days
with girls of skin made of coffee-colored ultra-violence.

when me an Gnat split
we kept our eyes open,
cause we could close them,
behind blindness,
and I could take her soul
for nothing,
and I could keep it forever,
so now what we do,
is set fire to those
in the same situation,
we put their hearts
on our grills,
and tell them to wait
until they have regained
the fire,
so then,
society wasn't ready
for the realest ****** alive,
becuase by then
society
had told them
that ******,
emos,
true-*** emos,
them *******
could just drop
everything
to keep you on the low-low,
and they were the realest
I ever knew.

does everything change
window washers
door openers
now
top suite pimpin’
used to think the life
was about big, tall buildings
and suite offices
was it all a fairytale in the wind
was it all a memory
gone bad
did we imagine
our greatness
take it to another level
only to be wooed
by cake
and free beverages
work
aholic
mentality
fogged out
by love
and
freedom

You touched me on the shoulder
as you ran quickly by on your phone.

I was in such a hurry
to climb those jenga stairs
that I didn't realize it was you,
until I saw that tiny body
and that frenzy of tousled blond hair
swishing in the wind.

I turned around and ran
to you,
as you walked away.

I ran to you
and grabbed your arm.

"Don't touch me," you said.

Diamonds falling from your eyes,
I picked at them with my pinky fingernail,
searching for the loam beneath.

"Where've you been?" I yelled.

"You don't know what's happened to me!" You yelled,
and you lifted your shirt and felt at a pink scar;
a trench in your belly,
a wound that I had infected.

People stared,
but I just wanted to yell,
there was so much yelling inside of me.

I yelled like a lover yells,
yelled with my heart.

The yell sounded like this:
"Can I hold you one last time?
I just want to hold you," I said,
like a loon,
but it was the only thing
I ever wanted.

To hold all of you
in one moment.

And so you came to me,
and let me hold you a while.

but the skin between us
was better for separating,
and I told you
to call me if you needed me,
even though I knew you never would.

And you walked away,
that tiny body of circling movement
and head full of giant clams
with their swirling pink pearls
moving farther and farther.

Until you were in the distance
and invincible.

Cyclists whizzed by,
phones beeped onward,
taxis rode highways of clouds
beneath the bridge,
and I thrummed quietly,
picking at the diamonds in my hands,
searching for the loam
that I could put into the planters,
food for the flowers
I had always wanted you to see.

When he was seventeen years old,
your protagonist
asked his father
a question about heartbreak, his own perhaps.

The father
answered:
"Why would she love you?
I can see why?
You're acting like a *****?"

Each line a question,
demanding an answer.

Answers your protagonist
did not have.

So your protagonist
ventured out into the
world,
and became a rambler.

Rambling off nonsense
with the rapidity
of lemming chatter.

He became
the great Rambler,
mumbling about
love,
until even his dreams
became ****** up streams
of language.

He caromed off cliffs of reality
bumping against those barriers
of his fatherland
until he was hurtling
into the rambling ocean
to drown
unconsciously.

I have run down
broken stairs,
I have twisted
inside
twisted showers,
bent backwards
on five-fingered clocks,
in the fray
I rumbled
with a spider
of a woman
as she crawled on eight legs
over my sternum
to my lips,
at the top of the bridge of the world,
the world
turned
rightside
up
and the sky
was peopled by
clouds the size
of goldfish,
and the sun
was a dappling bowl
in which people put their
hands
to wash them of pain,
and so the world was all right,
but I couldn't handle
so much happiness,
none of the other
fish
looked like you,
even as I looked up
out of my
apartment
made of jenga blocks,
so I travelled back down
the twisted
showers,
broken
stairs,
and over the underbelly
of the bridge,
until I held you in my arms;
your tiny body
whole to me again,
I could touch the sky
when I touched your body
and told you to call me
whenever you needed me,
but you walked away,
and so I returned
to that hell
of perfection.

I hate living in the sky,
the ocean where the fish
look all the same
and there are no real clouds
to speak of.

I hate taking twisted showers,
and rumbling with spider-women,
I hate bridges that bridge
worlds.

Firstly, I hate love,
Secondly, I hate heartbreak,
Thirdly, I can't live without those two things.

I ate two omlettes
this morning,
had a few cups of coffee
as you let me go
over grits.

When I walked around
I pulled myself along
by ropes thrown down
by the clouds,
and helped myself
to a full helping
of blue sky as salty as lobster,
and still I walked,
with too much sodium
in my veins,
I walked around
passing the others
as they were to me:
others.

In this alien world,
I pluck my blessings
from the sky,
as it darkens with thunder,
I place
my hope
in lightning and it's frenzied slapping of the earth
because it mimics my frantic heart
in its crazy destinations.

So I put you in tiny places
inside of me,
the box labeled toys
is where I put the buzzing
apparatus that is you,
in the kitchen supplies
I lie
and say there is nothing there,
when there is everything I have hidden
that is you.

So as I move,
I carry around storage
spaces
and boxes
marked in the wrong names
carrying heavy things
bearing you
in their heavy wake.

I swear,
Gnat
had two moods,
crazy
and angry,
one time
she punched me in the face,
and I smacked her,
and smacked her again
until we were spooning
on the couch
and she cried
as a lavaflow of tears
fell on my wrists.

But then
she had this mood
where she'd
clutch me,
through my ribs
to my heart,
and we'd love each other
so hurtfully
that I'd die
every time she touched me.

She grabbed my heart
so viciously,
and consequentially,
that I just wanted to die
in her fingertips.

Gnat
really did love me,
she cooked soup when I was sick
and came over
and listened as I told her flu stories,
I held her
as she cried over lost loves,
We glistened
in the sun
as we laid in the sand
of a contaminated lake,
she put her hand on my ****
like she was holding
love in her hands,
and I played in her pelvis
like a child, innocent
of anger and resentment,
so many of the lies
that we attribute
to adult relationships
occur
after love.

I hate that Gnat and I
no longer talk,
hate that she can't make me
pancakes in the morning,
or that I can't put blueberries
in her waffles.

I bumble down the street
to get some Wild Turkey,
remembering her last call,
our last talk.

It'll be ok,
she's gone
and I can find
place-holders.

This will be easy,
right?

Love is easy,
right?

Heartbreak is easy,
right?

But it's not,
it hurts like nails
in my forearms and palms.

i eat my soul
out,
eat my heart
out,
eat everything inside
until I am a wolf creature
outside
in the dark,
howling at the sickle moon,
raving at some girl
in a bar
who I could ****,
but don't want to,
I can't erase
the stain of that other star
and the nebulas
of bright crimson
and hushed cerulean
that flourished
in the disturbing galaxy
and it's black holes
*******
away at light,
so I come back home early,
stumbling
through the girls that talk about raw *******,
while there is one star of knowledge
distancing itself from me.

It really was a great time,
me an Gnat went to the planetarium,
and watched the stars
swimming above us
in the Olympiad of useless love,
we had calzones
across the street
after,
and laughed at each other's jokes
out of politeness.

I took her back home
blowing a Djarum out the window,
when she asked for one.

I wanted to ****,
she wanted to ****.

So we ****** on the fouton,
truly bored with each other,
but having nowhere else to go,
no other ***** or *******
on the horizon
and comrades in our loneliness.

But it was good and tight,
and I ate her out,
because I'd always loved the maple syrup
of her ******,
and I don't think
her
or me
coming
was out of lovelessness,
I think the rawness
of her and my *******
was pure.

Love is a universe of sorts,
in many ways
two people can become
galaxies
on a collision course,
their arms waiting to wrap
and warp
around each other,
or one will be smaller
and less bright
hungering to be consumed
by the supermassive heart
at the center of its lover,
or one lover
is a comet;
the other
is a sun.
the comet burns
against the corona;
it lets off a trail
sweet and cooling,
and against the sun
it feels like the beginnings
of a nova,
the final cool-down
and planet-consuming explosion of it's outer layers,
but instead,
the comet uses the sun's gravity
to slingshot into deep space,
and the sun screams
in engulfing bursts of light
as the comet trails off,
leaving behind a dissipating gas trail
in its wake,
tugging less and less,
forging an ice-road into eternity.

Writing is not only an inspection of the world, it is the inspection of the self-contained world. The self realizing it's own purposelessness, and the seeming fruitlessness of the fight against the battering ram of its conclusions; so the self fights for freedom against this self-oppression, fights for a galvanizing truth with its self-contained ball of fire that burns weakly inside of it as the world outside goes bumping in the night blindly. Writing forces you more inward than outward. It is the inner world that re-lights the outer world; against all the blighting anvils in this tiny green universe.

There is something about her
that's not good
for letting go,
so I say this here
on a muggy winter night
as she lays on crags
in the wind,
pulling me closer
to those lovely halcyon stars
but a valkyrie of gin.

so I must say goodbye,
to this war machine of love,
I must lay my heart
back in it's proper place
against those soft cheeks of hers
where my lips were boarders
and my heart became wily.

I hate this letting go,
it'd be easier for us to hug,
searching lips buzzing
for the growing rose of the tongue,
I would rather
have things be easy,
and never have to
not see you go,
but whatever we had,
let its skeleton of love
grow old in the murk,
let its bones be recast
into something of worth,
let my heart reside easily
in the oilyness
of iniquity,
someday soon I'll meet another
and start this war machine
with its grandiose sacrifices,
and subliminal pains,
all over again.

So maybe this was your plan all along,
the great general
pushing the arteries around
like so many toy soldiers,
until the whole thing
was gone,
and there was nothing
to remember,
I really don't think so,
but maybe I'm wrong.

I hope you meet him
somewhere nice,
where you are warm
and flakes of yourself fall into
him like glaciers,
I hope he can become
the beast of love to break you down
again
and make you love him insanely
with only the best kinds of sin;
the kind that make you burn warmly
and feel young and wily again.

I saw Ada,
In New York. I hit her up,
and she wanted to meet up for breakfast.

The next morning:

She had on slate shorts, a ruffling, loose white t,
And chucks falling apart at the seams
in scythes of fabric.

Her hair bobbles
as she bounces over.
It's so frizzy and curly
as if it’s been through electroshock.

She gives me a hug and as she pulls away
her lips hit my cheek.

A grey pigeon lands in my sight behind her
and pushes a white **** out onto a starbucks lid.

The best thing
Is seeing exes that you haven’t
talked to or seen in awhile; and hearing
them talk about the great things they’ve done
In your time apart.

It’s almost as if I was right there with Ada
when she was experiencing
her new love of Brooklyn.

I am
A  ghost in her life,
And in that piece of my heart
That misses her,
I like the feeling of being
as free as a spectre;
an unobtrusive observer.

It's hard to come out of a three-day drunk,

4:16 in the morning.
Went outside for a smoke, the world is always silent at these times,

and I couldn't handle the return
of my emotions
there were so huge and strong.

And that anvil
knows every angle
of me.

They fell on me en masse
as I lay on the concrete letting all the blood rush
back to its proper places;
in a bitter state.

My mind is a tornado,
trash whirls in the attic,
temperaments
change
and
rain
like mercury falling through the cracks.

Little pools of glass
shimmer
and then vibrate madly
in my ears.

Where is that ******* riff,
whimpering up the scales?
where is that glacial voice
that used to break
in my ears?

What's better than the heart?
Nothing
can replace
the tree
of ripe fruit.

I can try and write
and say
something
about beauty
and tenderness.

BUT,
I am not that tree
of tenderness
and beauty,
those are your words
and the dictionary
of the heart
falls in soft  and meaty flesh
from you.

I will add a poem
of love.

I will tell
you
in words,
that missing you
is the deep end
of the pool.

The part
I can forget,
and not
forget.

Jump with me.

Run around the water
with me
and my black heart.

Teach me
about torture methods.

I remember you
in the things you said,
like teaching me
about the flying eagle,
and I remember it
when I'm playing basketball
and cant get you
out of my head.

Trust me when I say that
I'm not a mongrel.

Trust me
when I say
what is on my heart,
and it may sound feverish
or
even
part of my game.

But it's true
and simple
like my heart.

I want to supply
the distinction
of the world.

I want to be your bench,
sit down on me
tell me what's going on,
because I'm so selfish,
so much do I relish
in your remembrance.

I love my mother
like the prodigal son,
she introduced me
to activism,
and where I'm at now
I can't release it,
even as we went
to the Lincoln Homes and Estates
to set up computers,
to give people that look like me
a chance.

I remember the older
dudes would tell me
to keep my head up
even when I was down.

There is a heart
in
"da hood"
as the white people
around me put it.

There are fathers
pushing strollers.

There are mothers
making it
against all odds.

There are families
decreasing,
but
increasing.

There are computers
full with words
and poetry
and novellas.

There are black children
picking up books
more than guns.

Picking up basketballs
more than guns,
and why should they be
labeled
as less intelligent?

****,
they just want to get
out
and achieve
and it's wrong
that you say that's the wrong way.

I hate going to funerals
for faces
with cheekbones still heavy
with baby fat.

And don't love me
for telling you this,
don't love me
for being that "black guy
that talks about problems
in the ghetto,
da hood!"

Change it,
go there,
help people,
hand out books
to children.

There is nothing scarier
than ignorance.

In the middle of weekends
of drunkenness
I cry
over what I see.

I cry
over the man
I gave a marlboro
too,
as he bumbled
and shook
to get it too his mouth,
I leaned in
and gave him a cover
for his light.

I cry
over the deaths
and vigils
in the projects,
cry
over the fact
that there are men
who have been
killed
over menial ****.

I cry
over my mother
and grandmother,
because my love
tools away
in the darkness
of my soul
and I am not useful.

I cry
because I have not
seen my best friend
in years,
and I will perhaps
never see him again,
even when
we kept neighborhood ******
away,
back to back
swinging at the world
just to keep our
heads clean.

I cry
over love.

I cry
because there
is something warm
inside me,
as warm
as this gin.

So keep me in your prayers
I am a man crying,
because it roils
inside of me,
because I can't keep my emotions
in check, and don't want to.

I was raised around
a strong woman
with even
stronger emotions
that could be felt like
velvet
and pebbles,
and she taught me
how to be a man
and not lose my heart.

There is a man
who writes signs
for the homeless,
puts different lives
on display,
spends his time
night and day
over squares of cardboard
or triangles of vinyl,
he turns them into
war vets
or leukemia survivors,
he slaves away
so that they'll get
people to listen,
he wants people
to hear the heart
of the world murmuring
as it cries,
because we have left
them,
their lack of a place
to reside,
is our society's dark side,
so he is not a man
of the people
he is a man for the people,
he wants that spare
nickel,
dime,
or dollar
as much for them
as his words
are for himself
and his own sense
of redemption,
because this world
has gone cold on the surface
but it's heart
still burns,
still makes you uncomfortable,
when you see his signs
in the hands
of men and women
in the grassy medians.

**** it,
imma go to the store
and get a few more
beers and some marlboros
im stumbling
all over the place
making circles in the hardwood
with my feet
and swing doors in the air closed
with spaghetti in my veins,
but imma make it,
imma shut that *******
dog up
too,
keeps barking,
shut the **** UP.

"That's Rob's dog,"
Elcie says,
spit ripples at the corners
of her mouth,
and some baked ziti
is rumored to be
in the toilet.

That ******* thing
is getting six 60 milogram
perky sets in his morning kibble,

right after I puke
some more baked ziti
and wodka.

Oh ruinous apple,
the flesh
is too much
and sweet as hell,
sweet as
chicken meat
dripping off the bone
to swim in pureed flesh
on the tongue,
oh ruinous apple,
your stem
is no longer a caterpillar,
there is no tiny butterfly
of a leaf
on your dorsal.

Oh ruinous apple,
you say
"I have grown old
and
hate my skin,"
hoping that it will finally
be shredded
and given
to my belly.

Oh ruinous apple,
you are not so old to me,
you have become
a cougar
in your old age and
the seeds
still make tambourine noises
in your *******.

I am a man at
odds
with the sun,
my body
runs
away from me
and my shadow
has seashells in it ears
and wet, floppy, dead gull feathers
hanging from its mouth.

The sun makes
a man
a shoreline, a landfill
when he was once
an
ocean.

I've been playing a game lately.

I stole four or five plastic eggs
from the dollar general,
and when I'm drunk I place
them
around my room,
and look for eggs
in the morning,
hoping to find sobriety or at least
level-headedness
in plastic air pockets.

Your love is hard
like rocks
in my belly
in the morning;
like starting the countdown
to a three-day drunk
a week later,
at every turning point,
every shadow
of an angle,
I am taking roads
I have never
crossed,
I am watching
water run
in crystalline rivers
toward alleys
I've never known.

When they ask me
for money
or Marlboros,
I say yes,
please,
I would like those too.

I would like to eat
bagels
in the sun
with crinkly paper in my teeth
and sour cream cheese
sweetening in the liquor.

My landscaper's shoulders
and granite deltoids
are now green with lime
and lichens.

Girls like to run
their
hands over them;
but they are hungry
for your hands
and the lavishing footsteps
of your fingernails.

When I wake up
I put enough water in the
coffee-maker
for about
twenty cups,
and enough
***** in those
twenty cups
for a three-day drunk.

Your love is hard like ice-cold *****
and boiling coffee
that
mutilates tastebuds
and
makes my belly feel real good.

But not talking to you for awhile;
it's easier to warm up in the morning
so I can cool down at night,
and by the pink dawn
of darkness
I could get back to working my belly
with *****, rocks, and
Marlboros.

there's a blunt out back,
that's got my name on it,
i need this time
to chill
and remember the goodness,
the parties
where girls danced up on me,
their ***** on my ****,
and their hips in my fingertips,
the girls that smelled like coconut
when their ******* smelled like ***,
but they were good,
****,
they loved me
for me,
and i'd curl their hair
in my fingertips
like a sadist
twirls hearts.

Me and the lil homies
chilled in the back,
smoking
while their moms
screamed at us,
talking about cops
and ******* **** up,
we just chilled there,
passing the L
and feeling ourselves
because the **** was good
and the girls
were around
to let us know
that we could touch
something
inside another person.

i'd come home
and my ma
would start in on me,
i'd end up in the hospital
with a few
neighbors
in my icu crew,
so maybe i'd end up
a **** up,
but me and the lil homies
liked to fight,
we'd go in until
one of us was ******
then we'd get drunk
and rowdy,
trying to put to sleep
the fear
inside of us.

The way
we used to handle it,
was through bars,
we'd rap
and I'd start
throwing fists,
I catch a ******
in the hip
quick,
catch him in the hallway
or
anywhere else
he chose to spit.

I swear, my face was bloodied
so much that I couldn't see,
a ****** six-foot three,
tried to put me in a headlock,
said i was a *****,
so i started going in,
i got my face
messed up,
my cheekbones are high
because they were punched
up there,
but when i was a kid
i'd never do ****,
i wonder what my legacy will be,
will i be remembered for the love
that i was afraid to show,
or the hate
i was too ready
to make plausible.

I TOLD THAT ******* TO SWING ON ME,
TAKE A CHANCE
MOTHEFUCKER,
TAKE A CHANCE,
I WANNA GET MY *** KICKED,
LET ME
CHILL HERE ON THE EARTH
WHILE YOU STAND OVER ME,
SPITTING
AND
DISSING.

BUT WHEN I GET UP
IMMA  BE MAD
ENOUGH
TO SCREAM
AND ****,
IMMA BE
A MANIAC
ON YOUR DOORSTEP,
IMMA BE
A ******
WITH NO CHANCES
WHEN I'VE GOT THREE.

SO WHEN YOU SWING ON ME *******,
SWING ON ME
AS YOU TRY AN CALL ME A *****,
JUST KNOW THAT IMMA COME AT
YOU
WITH A THOUSAND GRENADES
IN MY FINGERTIPS,
AND WHEN YOU DON'T SWING,
AND DON'T DO ****,
I'LL KNOW HOW YOU'RE MADE,
IMMA KNOW THAT ALL THAT **** YOU TALK
IS JUST A MISNOMER.

MY FINGERS GRIP MY HEART
AS MUCH
AS THEY GRIP FISTS.

KNOW THAT IMMA CATCH YOU
WITH A RIGHT HOOK
FULL OF VEINS
AND A MAGAZINE
WITH YOUR NAME ON IT.

CHECK ME,
IMMA HIT UP SOMETHIN TONIGHT,
IMMA BRING MY FISTS
LIKE BURNERS,
MAKE YOU FEEL THE FIRE OF HELL,
CAUSE I'M ON THE EDGE,
AND THIS GIRL ****** UP MY HEART,
MY GRAMMA IS AT THE END OF HER ROPE,
MY MAMA IS STILL POOR,
MY SISTER STILL DOESN'T KNOW HERSELF,
AND MY HOMIES
ARE FAR AWAY,
FARTHER THAN YOU CAN SEE,
SO IMMA CHILL ON THIS PULSATING LEVEE.

For instance,
I could just stop
right now,
and dress like a thief,
or take everything
and
drape myself
in mauve robes.

Sing your praises,
wish me a good demise,
empty those heavy bags
full of treasure
and drench the world
in silence.

Oh, I could see it now,
if I tried,
I could see it now,
if I tried.

The velvet quadriceps
and thighs,
the spindly fingers
and their amber warmth,
the tiny crimson tongue,
and it's legs striding across my chest
in conquest.

But then,
I am not stupid.

I am an instance;
a t-shirt flapping
on the clothesline
with all its infant sounds.

Think I'll wash you out,
I'll drown an ocean
and I'll milk the moon,
I"ll think about you
at the wrong times,
I'll eat ice cream
from melting tubs,
do your lips taste
like sugar?
I don't know anymore;
don't think I ever knew.

Could you just be one of those things
that never goes away?
could I be one of those things?

I've been eating too much for a morning
and too little for an afternoon.

Coffee is good
for turning barrooms
into bedrooms,
and girls with boredom on their tongues
into oracles.

Sometimes I just want to eat
my soul
until I"m full and nothing,

To finally be
impoverished
and ***** again
would be the best breath
my lungs
have ever ushered in.

Eat me.

I'm tired of seeing dudes
get killed
over some *******.

STOP THE GUNPLAY.

Stop the role of the gun
and misused bullet,
it penetrates
too much.

Too many kids
getting strangled
in the dark,
too many mothers
left behind
in the acrid past-tense;
too many of the homies
seeing blinding lights
and useless flights.

The Supreme Reacher
was a watcher of dreams.

The Supreme Reacher
was an inclination.

The Supreme Reacher
was the instantaneous
and the forgettable.

The Supreme Reacher
could recede into the shadows of a thought,
only to emerge from its triangles
clean as a remembrance.

The Supreme Reacher
had veins for hands
and could reach across the mind
like lightning.

The Supreme Reacher is not
a person,
place,
thing,
or God.

The Supreme Reacher
had thighs black with feathers
and shoulderblades
hairy with time.

The Supreme Reacher
could talk and talk for days.

Lazing on dreamt-up
park benches,
green in their concrete holes
with algae,
and become green
as well.

The Supreme Reacher
could lay her heart on your
heart
and
place her lungs
in your palms.

The Supreme Reacher
could never be reached,
but only dreamt of and felt
like heavy fog on a tongue.

If ever there was a time for the Supreme Reacher,
to be Supreme,
this was the time,
the time of limes
and wicker minds,
of transposition
and aberration,
the time of larks
and loons
and goons,
of thugs in power suits
and kings in jumpers
and dreads,
of revolutions gone stale
in their infancy,
crunchy and pale
even to their cores.

The Supreme Reacher,
could not be reached,
but it could reach out itself
with lightning hands
firing up the whole earth of minds.

Really?
Why don’t we just
Break it off?

This must be a test
Of endurance
Or self-sacrifice even.

We both don’t know
the waters around us
anymore.

There are no safe coves
or humble islands.

So we drown in the
fishbowl of our little whims
And tiny gripes.

That keeps us together.

I know that every-time
You get into bed,
You think
“****,
this guy,
again?
I hope he chokes
on a cheerio.”

And I’m thinking
“****,
this girl,
again?
Why can't it be socially acceptable
to **** someone
with a spoon?”

So why are we still here?

Why do we remain
When everything else has left
in boxes.

We eat our sorry cheerios in silence.

In bed
you keep mentioning a bowl,
that separates the milk
from the cheerios,
like I'm not good at code.

And I feel us growing closer
in scales.

Beer:
All gone.
10 bottles each.

Twenty in all.
Crowding my desk.

White foam
covers the last film of beer,
and looks like the top of ****
in a toilet gone sour,

but at bottom of the bottles.

Stomachs:
There are no shirts on our stomachs and they heave and sweat.

Arms:
One Underneath her back, hers on top of my chest,
fingers splayed like peacock's feathers
and cold as freeze-dried hot-dogs
dripping thawing oil on concrete.

Legs:
Hers are a trellis. Mine are the base beams.

This is a trellis made of loose bones and loose limbs,
loose lips and and sweaty, tired thighs burnt out
from repetition
and stupidity.

We are stupid
because we like to **** each other,
and we don't do anything else.

Stupid is when you delude yourself.

Stupid is feeding
off the final boredom of your corroborator.

I get off on her looking disinterested,
it really does make my **** harder
and I can feel it pushing up against
her walls.

It's the most truth,
this truth of disinterest,
we've ever
shared.

The gravel crunches
as we walk
and it's cold.

We push our breaths out
of chapped lips, and wipe
away dried spit, with nicotine
fingers.

Pigeon feels the baggies in his pockets
full of vicodin,
that's gonna get us ****** up.

His fingers look like earthworms through his jeans
as he gropes for the baggy.

I get that jolt, just thinking about it;

that jolt of happiness you feel right before you get
real ****** up.

I look around and pull out a Camel Light,
because that's all we smoke.

And light up. It's real
white out, white and cold.

The moon's fat as a snowflake
and foggy up there too.

I move my toes,
and can't feel a thing,

****.

We crunch through the woods,
catching glimpses of the moon, and the lake
through the trees.

I want to hit this fifth of Henny
jerking in my backpocket,
but I'm saving it.

Pigeon stops.

Me and Gus keep walking.

Pigeon coos.

We turn around.

He whips out the plastic baggy,

In the moonlight the Vicodins look
like those tiny, candy skulls you get on halloween.

I have hope for the little black boy and girl.

These Mars to universe-colored,
golden-eyed children of the sun.

Some of them sprout up
out of cracked earth and concrete.

Their root-minded growth being spurred on
by the nourishment of the sewers.

These are tiny black flowers
pushing out their pistils like tongues,
and licking the unsanitized water
like nectar.

They
take everything you throw away.
Watch them make tree houses out of
trash cans, and spaceships
out of discarded cardboard boxes
that smell like beer, and *****
and sweat.

The sprinklers are on
and they slide down a hill
covered by a plastic sheet
the size of a whale's tongue.

Their smiles
open wide like zippers,
and their teeth are coconut flesh.

The milk of their laugh contains enough calcium
to mine happiness
out of overly-injected fructose bones.

When they tug at your pants
and ask you questions,
they just want to know
where the moon came from,
and how to get there.

love doesn't end
like piano keys
across an array,
the dream of a body
and a mind,
across the spray
of the ocean
and a memory
of kisses
shared in the screen
of a heart's blinding display,
i have hoped for a long time
for a bridging of time,
a feeling of the stomach
and it's dramamine
against hope.

Once the levers are pulled down
squealing and removing themselves from silence,
once we become noisy
and our baritones are barges
across rivers that separate us,
once you become the Rock of Gibraltar
and I can point my nose at you in the fog
to gauge not only distance,
but time as well,
then I think
it will resume.

But as the night holds your tongue
on its own tongue, moving you around
inside its mouth in a *** of dense
violet clouds, as so many cities burn in the sky,
I will never hear a thing.

I will only see
your eyes running the gauntlet
of a dense violet night and its violence
of lighthouses revolving quicker than pulsars,
increasing the walls of space.

They scream in the void
for some empty barge and its horn
of compassion.

The wheels trample over hope,
they ground human minds
until they crack, until they exude
diaspora, and become sidewalks again.

The feeling
of freezepops icing the tongue
has been relinquished
because of the engine's lion moan,
suitable
for flesh and vitality.

We rumble over a bridge, the brakes reveal
their mouths and the hurt inside of them.

We lumber to a stop beside a park,
beside a bridge,
beside a river,
beside oily waters and
fire slapping the beach.

You and I,
are across the river.

There is a fountain filled with marble men
grabbing the thighs of marble women
with eyebrows wrinkled
towards their pelvis'.

If our souls could be soft again,
malleable,
we could wrinkle them in our laps
at pitstops.

I look across the aisle,
at a girl in a black pea-coat.

She knots her hands in her laps
and scratches her knuckles
with white nails.

I am
looking for the soft ore of hope
still nimble in the water fountain
of her lap,
your lap.

The engine,
this bus filled with bobbing eggs,
can break yolks.

This engine
can grind love down to a talcum,
a dust able to resign itself
to knotted hands and the jewelry boxes
of flesh.

This engine
works child's tongues in its wheels,
churning out adults,
churning out civilization,
churning out nothing.

Our cries for hope and peace and stability were usually the signposts for an innate and cultivated bitterness. From birth we had planted ourselves in the middle of a struggle for both hope and a good hold on realism. We chose pessimism as the avenue to realism. Once we began to hope and hope only, we couldn’t look at ourselves fully in the mirror. We’d start smiling and thinking that goodness was as easy as smiling at the other person, whoever that was, who was on the other side of the mirror, bus, or classroom. But as we got older, we saw this hope as stupid. It contaminated our bodies. Hope is a wound that festers. Hope not only festers, but it grows even in the worst conditions. This is why we grasped for realism and pessimism. Because hope could so easily grow and wrap around us and make us stupid with its poison.  We had been hurt too many times by this stupidity. No, our philosophical doctrine was to **** or be killed, to feel hurt constantly so that we could despise the poison of hope more acutely. We still cry for hope and peace and stability, but we hate ourselves for doing it.

She says I have a ness
about me,
a sadness,
an angriness,
a hatefulness,
a loch ness.

I haven't washed my hoodie
in a week, the toothpaste splatter
on my shoulder
looks like come,
maybe it's laziness.

I'd like to be
Bukowski today,
I'd like
to get a good **** in
before
dusk,
and a good drink in
at some point,
I've wanted some Wild Turkey
more than anything.

A good ****
when done right
without
the spring-loaded
traps of love,
just *******
until your body swells,
can make you come
for days,
and a good drink
is good for washing out
sadness as it pukes dramamine
in your stomach,
and Bukowski for a day
would be a lemon.

This is pretentious
as ****. I am a
pretentious ****.