I never put
eggs
in my ramen noodles
to boil
before.

Never
let the yolk
break
and
dissolve
like cells should.

I never even thought
about Eggs
and Ramen noodles
in the same
sentence.

What's next?
You gonna tell
me
we can have four course meals for dinner if we just
try
and
believe?

God, Yukimi.

God Yukimi
give me some of your new morals.

My aunt passed away

almost a year ago.


And I was never super close with her

but the things I remember

are important.


My whole family

Aunt Florence

Uncle Rodger

Aunt Debbie

and Romy

came down

and Stayed with Me, Ma, Joci and Grandma

when I was a kid.


I remember she kissed

me

and hugged me

in our living room.


And I felt the love

without words;

it just came out of her body

in waves.


Her small voice

was loud with it.

I am beginning to learn
Yukimi
like a backstory
and
her body
teaches me about love
in a different
but completely nostalgiac
way.

Smelly house party.
Smelly people.
Beers got tipped over.
Loud people
yelling
happily
all over the house.
And we just stayed in that
corner
all close
and kissing.

The fake tree right beside us
glittered with christmas lights
all night long.

Your eyes burned
and twinkled
giving life.

I didn't want anyone else
to ever see
how reflective
you can be.

"YUKIMI!"
someone yelled.
"THAT'S SO GROSS MEYER,
GO SOMEWHERE ELSE
WITH THAT ****,
YOU TWO ARE GONNA START *******
OVER THERE."

THEY FORGOT US
AFTER THEY SAID IT
AND WE
KISSED
DRUNK
UNTIL WE WOUND UP IN A CAB.
WOUND UP SMUSHED TOGETHER IN THE BACK
KISSING MORE AND MORE;
LIPS JUST STUMBLING FOR REST.
WOUND UP BUMBLING UP THE STAIRS.
WOUND UP IN THE APARTMENT.
WOUND UP TAKING EACH OTHER'S CLOTHES OFF.
WOUND UP KISSING NAKED ALL NIGHT LONG.
wound up closer than clowns in a cannon.
we were hot all night long.
woke up sweating.
woke up feverish.
woke up with more love to give,
after puking
and brushing
teeth.

"People
.characterize themselves in relationships
like idiots,
all they do is refer to themselves
as 'We' and 'Us'.
That's ******* stupid.
Love is the most
individual
thing
any human being
can take part in.
It's much more selfish.
There's no altruism
in love. Only the selfish survive
in love."

"That sounds bad,"
I say.

"No,
It's good,
so good,
that means
that when I tell you I love you
it's because I do,
not because I feel pressured
to be a part of this 'We'
or
'Us.'"

"Love is being
able to be
this candid."

I think of videos
of big-haired moms
dropping birthday cakes
on the birthday boy
or
dad tripping
over the bride-to-be
as she falls for seven minutes
in a dress as long
as the beanstalk.

I think about this candid
scene.

How stupid
and bizarre
you and I could look,
but how 'we' don't.

I now realize how hard it is
to not use
'We'
in these situations.

"Sometimes I feel haunted,
and I don't know how to tell people,
especially people I'm intimate with."

"It's not really intimacy then."

"I guess your right."

"Do you ever run,
do you want to leave?"

"I usually do,
but now it's different,
I like being here
with you,
I like the way you smell
and touch me
and put on your eyeliner
in the morning
and
you make me feel stupid
without
feeling stupid."

You stare at me,
and staring
has never been
so warm.

Usually fear
would creep in by now
hauling
it's bag with it.

But your stare makes cold things
go away.

"There are stupid things
I love about you,
but even more than that,
there are real things."

"In my life
things are built on
and compounded
on and
I like to think
I'm pretty deep because of it."

Black eyes bore holes
taking
core samples.

"And I like to think
that when people hear me
sing,
they feel a little hole forming
inside themselves."

I say stupidly:
"Water needs holes to fill."

Sometimes
the wind screams;
you whistle
away.

Teach me someday.

You like to say:

"I get baby guts
in the morning."

This means
you're not going to be drinking
for awhile.

I hold your hair
while you puke.

And you bring me Tums
and ginger ale,
as I hemorrhage
stomach acid
in the perfect acoustics
of porcelain.

There is
a star
named
us.

From
us
to
fusion.

Today
we ate flowers.

A petal
fell into your coffee.

"You know
what's crazy babe?"

"What?"

"You scare me
with your love."

"That's such a waste,
come here,
I want to tell you something."

You scooch
over to me.

I just want to
know
your sticky skin.

You just breathe close to me,
all night long.

Our words
use our bodies
for mouths.

I'm not ashamed to say
that we really know
how to ****
each other.

And for all you *******
love is so physical
that words
and eternal sentiments
break it down.

I am afraid
I could exhaust myself.

But then
little tiny dots
of rain dribble
basketballs
on my cheek.

And the sport
begins
with a buzzer
and a knock
on my door.

There is a melancholy
piano,
with a whole bunch of dust
like a film
of fear
in your corner,
that you like to play
every night
in the purple dark.

But I sleep,
holding you,
and I don't seem fragile
or under
some
formal demand.

Maybe
there can be
two types of will,
one for fear
and
one for
contentment.

You win the day,
with your ability
to will
certain things
into being.

Purple dark
ravishes.

We lay on the bed
and I can smell your hair
not fragile at all.

Bacon.
Eggs.
Cheese.
Bits
of
chicken parts.
Lion
teeth.
A feather
from a king's headdress,
given to you
because you told him
"Isn't this just a stupid ritual?
I was just wondering that."

I like the way your fingers tighten
around my fingers
when you talk
and I happen to be close by.

It's funny,
this poem was supposed to be about
breakfast,
going to the zoo,
and going to see the "Mayans"
and their stupid
fake kings.

We are becoming
a
very
stupid people.

I hate abstract art,
right along with you.

I like the impressionists,
and pointillists.

You will be
my Camille
and I will be
your Oscar-Claude.

Wear that green dress
to bed tonight
and I will make you
bashful,
but confident too.

You will make me
humane and
delightfully weak
inside of 500 square feet.

Eats gummy worms
like
Flintstone's vitamins;
popping them in her mouth
wholesale.

She puts away brussel sprouts
delicately,
leaf by leaf.

Sometimes
we read quietly
and go to sleep
body to body.

Our hearts beat
tinily
like squirrel hearts.

WE APPRECIATE THE SMALL THINGS.

Did you know you look at sparrows
weirdly?

You look at them like
murderers
of insignificant things,
things like
cars,
towers,
pyramids,
love,
hope.

I love the cynicism
of your eyes.

Even the way you criticize
the flowers.

Are we in trouble
again?

Tonight while I lay in bed,
hold me
close to your stomach.

Matter of fact,
hold me
in your stomach.

Take a few bites,
will you?

Let me know I'm substantial enough
to be your human feed.

Tomorrow
we'll turn the tables.

I'll be pregnant
in my infintesimal
intestines
with you.

Nibble off that vein,
thank you babe.

It feels good
when your teeth sink,
and my life
is held in your teeth
like Allstate hands,
because there's no such thing
as love insurance.

I love you.
Your lips
and how you
put your teeth first.

How you tickle yourself
silly
with your incisors
as you think.

I love your depth.
Your black eyes
and curly
animal hair.

The things you say
are too important
to be remembered.

They are better for
cups of coffee in Mcdonald's
while I perform
necromancy
over a small cup
and need
some higher power
to call upon.

You said:
"Some call it coincidence,
but I like to call it fate."

I love you Yukimi,
love me forever
my little woodpecker.

Dusk,
And the city is purple.

Maybe it’s fall;
Or spring.

But it’s some in between stage,
closer to winter than summer,
I know this because
The streetlights look like trapped snow
As white as they are,
and the only way to trap snow
Is to burden the world
with royal purple;
only seen when the world begins
To tilt away from the sun.

There is no one
Else on the street, just the buildings
Looking soft at the edges
And their windows barely visible
The sky touches their tops
with a smear of red,
God has stuck this night in between
Her lips like a napkin
And folded it over onto the top
Of my head, her lipstick is a quiet orange
Not neon, but a diluted color
The streets stretch out like they have been
Pulled,
Almost breakinig apart
At the seams just to tighten
Against the gutters.
And the titans of the sky,
The ones who take over
Are not out yet, this is the time of the gods
The time of the she-gods and the
Angry warlords of the sky,
Because only venus
And ****** Mars are out on the horizon
And there is no moon.

The raven
descended
last night.

Flapping black wings
opened up a hole in my ceiling.

Spackle rained
in drips
of sweat.

The raven opened its beak,
laid down
and spread its wings on my chest.

A black man
was shot to death
on a clear day.

With his hands up
and nothing in his  
spread fists
they still shot him.

The raven came to comfort me in the loudness
of a coughing,
suppressed cry.

Moment
of clarity
in the devil's voiced belly.

In the
fog
of
stomach acid
and girls.

A shivering slick
of beer
held strobe lights
in a sad way.

People bumped into me
and maybe
I bumped back,
but the
religion of the slick
was
greater than human.

The fog
swallowed
me
whole.

distilled me.

energized me.

focusing only on the slick
on the dance floor.

I knew loneliness.

I knew hollow.

I finally grasped
the inner lining
in my teeth.

Finally
I was alone.

And truthfully, unimportance is
the lowest feeling.

I shoved some guy
into the dj booth
and
started swinging.

This is the beat
for the future.

Slow.

Continuous.

Quick in paces.
Slow in the right
places.

The bassline of the future
should be love.

Let's make it as slow and continuous as our ideals have said it would be.

In the last moments
of the world
let every man kiss every man
every woman kiss every woman
every love see love.

Fuhreal,
let's take love
to a whole new level.

Let's make it so beautiful
that we stop killing cockroaches
and poaching
the god's green broaches of branches
full of howler monkeys
howling for conservation against the parasitism
that man has become accustomed to.

The first time
**** all the money
I don't have.

****
all the clout
i never earned.

I'd take her in my room,
feel her *****,
give her a tingling
of my tongue.

I'll put my whole mouth
in it.

I love eating
*****.

I love eating
her fears
for the first
time.

Like I'm the first
that ever did it.

I take  it in
mouthfuls.

Drunk love is the best love.

No inhibitions.
No dispositions.

If a girl is drunker than
me
I believe
in taking her back
to
her crib.

I'm not some male feminist,
but she gotta be
on my level
in order to ****.

Kiss her on the doorstep.

Tongue and all that good ****.

Lead her back to her bed.

Lay her down.

And leave with a whole bunch
of not actualized *** in my *****
because
I got standards.

I don't know how to get close to a girl.

I can look at her"
Listen.
Remember.
Regurgitate.
Affirm.
Re-affirm.
Console.
C­onsort.
Combat.

But I can't get close to her.
Tell her things like
Meyer's definition of
Fear:
Being too much of something;
Something that the female didn't previously realize was in
the Meyer.
Something that makes the female smile in an
awkward and puzzled way,
a smile previously used in different contexts,
but she has never smiled at
the Meyer
using it;
the female never thought she could come close to
or
would have to
use it,
the Meyer previously seemed
transparent.

You see,
there is something in
the Meyer,
something
crawling
and wet
and in a cave right above
his pelvis
but
below
his
rib cage.

Sometimes
the creature
comes out
of
the Meyer's
mouth
and let's its name
be known.

Me and the homies
built
up
a foundation of beer bottles in the corner of the living
room
that slide
down
when we play our music.

It's a pyramid
of transparent brown
******* bodies.

We stick our tongues into mouths
that will never fully be
ours,
and throw each new brick in the corner
with a clink,
*******
our
pants
and waking
up
in
entrail pools
of their digested innards the next morning.

A brown shimmer
like flashlights on the lake
bounces off them
bumping against our hips
and
mesmerizes
our upper thighs
and
inner groins.

I had a dream
about
Contact 16.

We were above
the green planet
and the two moons
watched with us
as
the black flower of death
spread
over
Uris
like
agitated silt
in a slow
murky cloud.

We reached earth
and there
were a thousand yous.

A thousand people
that looked just like you
and
the thousand yous
destroyed me.

A thousand
of them
so close to me,
and those thousand people
didn't notice
that I was devouring them
slowly
taking
vital peices of them
and incorporating
them
into me.

Becoming
an amorphousness.

I have devoured sixteen already.

It's not the
"I'm going to be a failure."
that I worry about.

It's the
"Am I going to be a failure?"
that I worry about.

A failure
in the sense
that I never get my ****
together
and take my writing seriously.

I could really be something,
but I could get stuck on a
could.

I am afraid of myself
and the swallowing monsters
capricious
within me.

My people
are the kind
that were
sharecroppers.

From the dirt
of North Carolina.

They pulled themselves
up
by
tilled mounds
with boots
always pressing down
on their knuckles.

Somehow they rose.

The sky turned its
bluest
with
punches rolling
in from the west.

Punches
cold
and
steel.

But somehow
they didn't
escape to the rivers
and no
new nooses
found their necks.

With
small crumbles
of dirt
clinging
to their backs
they shook off
that universe
of roots
and
boots.

But I am not of them.

I realize that now.

I do not
have the resolve.

When I think of the generations
of powerful flowers
before me
I look in the mirror
and see myself
clean
with no memory
of fingers
that used to know
black gold.

Constantly searching
for that
patch
of tilled black earth
inside of me,
I am dying
with a new noose
around my neck.

She played with the sun-gods
in shadows
under the poplar.

Thin leaves
made even thinner shadows
and her face
was the face
of a leopard
underneath.

When she finally got up
after her fingers cramped up
from playing
in the hair
of the sun-gods
she had a brown smear
on the seat of her dress.

She'd slipped on the dress
without *******.

Her cheeks pulled
the dress into its mouth,
closer to her *******.

The
eggs crackle and ****.
I stand over them
a
god.

My son
used to write me poems
when he
was little.

Poems about
how much he loved me.

Now
he's 21.

And I leave his Christmas gifts
wrapped hurriedly
on the
dining room table.

I turn off the range.

Ladle the eggs
in between
two slabs
of toast.

Zip up my track suit.

The gym is always open
even on Christmas
for a few hours
as the fried whites
hang out
of the sides of my sandwich
floppy
like
dog ears
and my son
sleeps
to find
the soft bundles
and a quiet
house.

"She talkin
about quittin me,
she said
'I'm tired of you coming
over here
sweet-talking
just to get in the door,
then
you go upside
my head
once you inside,
no,
not anymore,'
I said,
'baby,
I apologized for all that
before,
why you keep bringing
up
old ****?
You need
to learn how to forgive
and forget.
You know
I don't mean nothin by it,
fuhreal.
But all you ever do
is talk about
what I am
doing wrong
what I have done
to you,
can't we just be cordial
and sip on this thing
I brought over?'"


"So she let me
in
and
we sipped that night."

I picture them glued hotly to each other
on a couch;
a bed;
scrambling
together
drunk out of their minds
on
the ***** tile
in the kitchen;
two plaster figures
stuck together
by
bad chance
and
some fault of fire.

Paul Masson.
Hot sauce.
Colgate - old and stale
as puke.
Grease.
Newports.
Former head.
Recovery.
Country dirt.
Pecans.
Cotton.
A black fist held high.
Hope that one day
he'll be able to fit his ex-wives
into a nice,
cordial sentence.
Love.
Real love.
Man love.
Type love that kicks *** when it has to.
Sears cologne,
OG ****.
Some Christianity,
but not a lot,
not nauseating
and obnoxious,
more like
quiet
and
almost not there.
More Masson.
More Newports.
Gold fillings;
the Midas Touch
on his tongue;
the ability
to blind you
in the glow of his breath.
Rotten *****.
Real rotten.
Rotted to viral nostalgia
because it tastes
like ****
and makes him lick the roof
of his mouth
to get that smell
out,
just to make
room
for it
again.
Chitlins.
Obama's saliva.
Collard greens
with all the vinegar
and red pepper
in Satan's *******.
Herman Cain's armpits.
Fear
for
me.
Love
for
me.
Power.
Former riverboat
porter.
The smell of rich white men
that talked about
*******
while he stood
stoically.
Strength
like
you've never
smelled before.
Human.

A crazy *******
got in my face
the other day.

"This is my shop!,
I put the work in this *******,
see ya'll young people come in here
trying to mess up my shop,
this is MY SHOP!"

"Mmhmm," a fat ****
in the corner affirmed.

Crazy *******
are often your
barbers.

He's pulled this **** before,
I've seen him do it.

He'll just throw the clippers down
and get in somebody's face,
while they flip dumbly through
Sports Illlustrated.

It's funny as hell.

He had spittle
in cakes at the corners of his mouth
that wiggled
like eggs on an unbalanced beam
and fat lips that looked
like rotten peach slivers;
all brown and ugly pink.

He's in his forties and stumpy.
But all he ever does is yell.

I punched him
right in his lips.

His teeth were hard and scratched my knuckles,
but he backstepped,
gave me one of those crazy people
"I might just cut your head off" looks
and walked to the bathroom to clean himself up.

Crazy *******
think
they're the crazier than everybody else.

For the first few months
you just want to **** yourself
and
everyone around you
in a machete mash-up
or a shotgun divorce.

I remember the girl
I started messing around with
after
the
thing.

She'd get on top of me
and reach down into my pants.

She'd do this
mechanical yanking real hard
until I started
getting friction burns.

Until I had to come
or else my **** might've singed off.

And when we ******,
she wanted everything hard
and she kissed real masculine:
aggressive
and her lips
braced against my teeth.

I hated her.

But what really ****** me up about her,
was that I only told her once about
Gnat,
and she didn't seem to hear me.

All the yanking and hard kissing,
she seemed there just to burn me down.

Not to destroy or anything malicious,
just that when she hopped in her car
and drove around in la-la land
I felt charred and empty.

Sometimes I'd call her over
to ****
and I'd just stare at her naked body,
closing my eyes
picturing gnat.

It never worked.

I always came hard
and it burned.

Eventually,
I stopped calling her.

Maybe she's dead or something.

I don't know,
at that time
she was just that inanimate to me.

I barely remember what she looked like,
I spent so much time
trying to super-impose.

Christmas
makes you realize
how lonely
and pointless
you are.

Everyone's at Jared's,
laughing with the overly made up
thirty-ish
forty-five year old
behind the counter.

Making jokes about
how
the bride-to-be
"lets him get away
with certain things,
but he knows who's boss."

While the groom-to-be stands beside her demurely
as she flexes that nice glinting rock.

"So when's the wedding?"


Or seeing people
going to Micheal's
for some string and
beads, and wood-carved letters,
to make a homemade
necklace
for her,
because commercialism
ruins love.

Real love comes from the heart
and necklaces made out of heartfelt twine
glistening with green and red beads
that enclose her name
in wood-carved letters
that have probably been chewed on
by a progressive four year old.



I think it's the whole idea
of togetherness.

This feeling of closeness brought on by the cold.

The need to be warm and vitalized,
while realizing
that you are rubbing your own shoulders.

you are shuddering against your own pillow.

you are curled up inside your own covers.

you simply are

and there is no one else around
to affirm
with love
and ***
and ingenuity
that
you are.

Sometimes
I check up on her.

(I believed it to be
Some masochism
deep within
me.)

Over facebook.

We're no longer facebook friends,
but I gather snapshots
of her life
through her profile pic.

I
now
like to think of it
as a healthy breakup.

A way of communicating
while not communicating.

But before it was horrible;
before I'd get depressed
just seeing her hair.

He is wearing a tux
and holds her around the waist.

Her purple dress is ruffled
at the hips and where
her tiny ******* nip outward.

Their eyes are closed full
of something that only they could explain
between each other.

Lips are smushed,
her very red,
red giant red,
lips are softened against his.

He is taller than her,
but not by much.

And they seem happy
at whatever wedding,
gala,
or whatever Bourgeoisie **** they were doing.

And
before now,
I probably would've raided my stash of Wild Turkey;
cried in my room for a few days;
skipped meals.

But now,
I feel content.

Happy.

Not so alone
and wishful.

I don't miss her anymore, or love her for that matter. And I'm happy that she has found someone to begin that journey all over again with.

This is how we atone for things.

A ritual
of constant pain
ending
in
contentment.

Your first ****
is very important.

If you don't get that first **** out of your ***
and mess up the good routine you've got going
then you're headed for trouble:

wake up.
scratch *****.
feel *****.
feel ****.
smack stomach(listen for the sound of new fat deposits)
burp.
wheez.
get up.
go to bathroom.
look in mirror.
hate self for not exercising.
brush teeth.
begin formulating exercise plan.
****.
feel 10 pounds lighter and label self
idiot
for talking about diet in the first place.

If the **** is not taken
between brushing your teeth
and breakfast,
your whole morning
is ******.

This is how it goes
without the ****.
First:
you forget to put on enough deodorant.
no biggie.
but you sweat a lot.
that extra cake-clod of speedstick actually does help.

Second:
on the way out the door
you forget your ipad.
no biggie.
except it had those quarterly numbers
for your sector's growth on it.

Colon gurgles
as you jingle the keys
down the stairs.

Third:
You forget your wallet
on the counter
in the kitchen.

Your ipad's still on the bedside table.

Colon gurgles.

You run back up the stairs,
grab the wallet,
give your apartment the quick once-over,
steadying on that $300 couch you bought in college
thinking you have everything.

Now you're going to be
five minutes late.

Should've taken the ****,
but you don't realize that now.

Fourth:
You get to work
five minutes late.
Everyone's in the meeting room
already,
nobody says anything
but mustache-face
aka
El Jefe
gives you the look.

El Jefe asks for your quarterly numbers
as soon as you settle into your seat.

Colon whistles.

"Was there any sizable growth,
do you think there are areas
we could devote more time and energy
too, in favor of others?"

You don't have your ipad
in your computer bag
with all those numbers on it.

People have been getting laid off lately.
"It's just the economy."

But really
"it's who doesn't **** up."

Colon screams.

This is how your morning got ****** up:

Usually when you take your ****,
you go back to sink in front of the mirror
to wash your hands.

After hands are washed and dried,
you go under the sink
and pull out the speedstick.

You put on a healthy dose.

Not only because you sweat
a lot,
but because you think the ****-smell
will follow you like a pervert.

After the speedstick,
you usually go into the bedroom,
because while in the mirror;
staring at the excess fat;
thinking about how good you look,
lighter;
the thought pops in your head,
"don't forget the ipad."

You don't know where it comes from,
but it comes.

Since you take the ipad to work
everyday
you count on having this thought
everyday.

You look on the bedside table
and there it is.

Quiet, black and glassy on its surface.
So placid like a lake contained within
the reaches of a pool.

No monsters.
No forgetfulness.
Just routine.

You should've taken the ****.

Whenever I come home,
I think about Ellie.

There's a gym
right beside the community pool.

The gym is small.
The pool is glassy.

I think about us
bumping each other
in that unbalancing
green pool slime,

*******
in the most ugly
and lame way
in the purple darkness.

While I run on the treadmill,
I think about
how young
and useless we were.

The best buzz
is that one singular moment
right after the first forty,
when you've got a Marlboro
hanging with its fingernails
to your bottom lip.

And you're so lazy
and warm
that you push the smoke out
without lifting a finger.

One time Heck found me in a bar bathroom, lying unconscious.

He carried me home,
even as he stumbled
under his own weight.

"Mane, that girl's so fine,
I think
I might **** her," Heck laughs.

I don't know how the conversation
dawdled
to this.

I don't know where we came from.

But it's here now.

The bones are loose,
the mind is loose,
the lips are loose.

And we end up saying things
without knowing
that we're saying them.

We here ourselves talk,
and the hurt
is numb.

When Me and Ashley fight
it becomes a contest
to see who can yell the loudest;
vis a vis
who is angry enough
to go crazy
and chop the other's head off.

That's the only time either of us
will shut up,
when we know that
we will both sleep
with our eyes open
tonight.

Sometimes we ****
when we get bored
around 2 am
with keeping our eyes open.

At 21,
I am the scaredest
I have ever been
in my entire
life.

More scared
than I ever think
I will be
ever again.

And it's not that concrete fear,
like the kind you feel
when someone's yelling in your face
and your tip-toeing sanity
with them.

Naw.

It's the kind of understated,
weightless fear
of being in a plane.

I make
stupid decisions
when I'm drunk.

I drink whiskey without food
and puke up yellow bile.

I put my hands on girl's *****
who have protective boyfriends
and get into shouting
and physical
matches
with dudes I can't remember.

I talk about love
and stupidity
in the same
sentence.

And I yell
like a *******.

Sometimes I yell some incoherent
*******,
while Josh drives back to the crib,
****
about how
I love the girls I can never ****,
**** the girls I could never love,
and don't know ****
about love
in the first place.

That's what I mean by stupid.

I'm a smurf that doesn't know it's blue
when I'm drunk.

Blue smurf.

SO
high
we ******
up
right
NOW.

ALL
we do is
YELL AND LAUGH
in the crib.

I BROKE
the xbox
a couple times,
so
WE BOUGHT MORE,
MACK
came through
TALKING ****,
so I hurled
THE LAST BOX
in a splatter of shiny
FRAGMENTS.

SOMETIMES
the neighbors
come up,
come through
for a little purp.

WE
on the
COME UP.

A lucid mind
is bad for this.

For this
you need to be
broken
or
bruised.

We are just one
big conflagration.

One hope
for oxygen
as we spread over the earth
in fire
hoping to burn
forever.

How much time
have we spent
'staring at the foam
at the bottom of the bottle,
trying to figure out a way
to work that last
****-tasting bit
down?