Heart's burst into a thousand
brutal glowsticks.

The vase of the body
pulsates
with shoots of light
and in the night
You can be seen
from space
a head a thousand filaments wide.

when i put my hands
on my chest,
thinking of you
and lick my lips,
thinking of you,
I can taste
black,
I can feel
black,
I am blackened
and dark
in my bedroom.

Touch that orb inside me, or mercury,
that loneliest lover slipping
off the cuticle of the horizon.

Reach out with your hands
to that compilation of so many lights
that seems one.

Become the glove that traps
infinity and bridges gaps
that break bodies into particles.

Make love to an earth of oblivion
an earth of nonsense,
an earth of pointlessness,
make love to the years of youth,
the years we waste
not making love.

Walking to the bodega,
I think about those sparrows
that run in the wind,
even when there's a cold blow
going,
and they work
like freaks
with sin on their mind.

Once I clear myself
of you,
I will write
like I used to,
I will be free
of the breakwaters
to read,
write,
and create
again, but love
or whatever-the-****-it-was,
has put a stop to
everything,
and I walk
to the bodega
with a head full of nothing;
no thermals,
no heat for me to ride, but I'm sure
I'll be okay,
I'm sure
you don't care.

I'd rather
be safe on some branch
lapping acid rain out
of a lead saucer,
than trying to ford
this river in the air
with nothing, not even a pair
of wet wings.

When I get
to the store,
I buy a pack of Marlboros
and ask
for all the lead
in the world.

He looks at me
with a screwface,
so I ask him again,
and he
says
"No loitering."

I was gonna fly home,
gonna try and test my
shoulder blades and see if maybe
I could make something happen.

But, I go to the garbage barge in the back
and sit, beside it, gravel scratching my *** with stingers,
as light scissors out of the sky;

little needles of sun in
the little oceans
in the little asphalt craters
making little,
if not any,
noise,
and I lean
drinking something slightly mean,
a forty and another in the bag,
because it usually helps in these situations.

I left my wings somewhere
and I cry there,
cry because I'm
stranded
in a place that I have never been,
with all the light in the world
and no place to put it.

I murked out,
at some point.

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.

Truthfully,
being alone in bed
*****;
I hate waking up
to myself
and nothing like you.

Nothing like your hair.
Your sweet and sour smell of ripe peaches;
Morning breath of cigarettes.

I think about
living in Alaska a lot more
now
than I did then.

I think about trailers with furniture
made by stacking old mattresses
and oil-burning lamps
and suns that die forever
and live forever.

Wild Turkey doesn't get wasted
here, not today;
I've had too much
too fly,
I'm just a man
with a little peice of my heart
left to use
for consumption,
so when I put my soul
into you, I sweated
a lot from that little peice;
It'd been
putting on about 100 pounds of weight
lately;
but I lost about thirty pounds
and a suitcase
since you've gone away; I feel
that thirty pounds and
that **** suitcase
found me sitting here
and pulled out a peice
and tickled me
at the airport bar,
a muzzle ******* at my ribs
as I sat watching
the planes
take off;
I am right beside the avenue of windows
and look
like a dark spot against the sun,
I think:

"I want to blow up a million planes
because
I'd hate for you to be able to fly
and put your pinky on me,
I'd hate for you to be able to point
and shout:

"THERE HE IS, RIGHT THERE,
DON'T YOU SEE EM?
HE LOOKS SO STUPID DOWN THERE,
HE MUST BE CRYING."

And I sweat more,
shaking off
pounds by the gallon
until I feel the muzzle of the gun
less and less,
and the apparition finally evaporates
in a sizzle
and
it becomes just an oil spot
I could wipe away
with a thumb
and saliva.

I sober up
enough
to fly again
and not **** myself
when I pass out.

I like to think
that when Oscar painted
Camille,
it was their best time.

Afterward
Camille
becomes a blur on the beach.

But in all her detail
and naivete,
Oscar paints her
the last time
he really sees her.

They had coffee
and played with each other's feet
underneath millions of tables
during that time.

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.

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.

My soles are wet, or at least one
is.
I have played in the puddles
too much
and eaten the rain
until even the lopsided clouds
have gotten sick of me.

How have you found one,
one droplet
for
one fire?

How have you found one
dimple in space
and laid down like a child
and given birth
without oxygen?

How have you found one?
one of everything
in one of one thing?

How have you found one,
even in decay
as you walk in my pain as a vagrant?

there are two dimensions
to this living.
One is the surface,
the ethereal,
the light to the dark.
The shadow to the skin:
The depth of pigment.
But then, there is the deeper sin
the battering within.
The judgment of blackness
based on skin.
It has hounded us,
through our history,
from House to field.
from basketball court
to court house.
From boardroom
to dorm room
to class room
to living room.
Granny used to say,
ooh girl you've got good hair.
Nice and wavy,
like your grandpappy's.
Used to say,
see you're the pretty one.
Running her fingertips
along our cheeks,
mired in awe
of our caramel complexion.
while like tar,
it stuck to the minds
of our classmates,
cohorts,
coworkers.
With jealousy
they said light-skinned,
not black enough,
not us enough.
not us enough.
when one day in class,
the teacher had asked,
"what do mommy and daddy do?"
Janitor.
Works for the state.
Garbageman.
we piped up proudly,
"my mommy and daddy have college degrees,
one creates houses
the other works in network security"
all the while,
our classmates had laughed,
made fun of us,
"so, that's why you don't talk black"
Two smart ******,
bred a smart *****.
And so the story of us,
had morphed
from the days of Angela Davis,
to this new form of self-hatred.
the valley between us
suffered a cataclysm
and became a canyon.
Continued to grow,
our skin a stain,
and as actors we had to train,
mellowing our dialect
just to make it seem as if we had intellect,
cause we all know a succesful black man,
has two distinct voices,
and not through his own choices,
it is bred from necessity.
can't sit in front of white man
and talk like pickaninny.
got so comfortable out of our own skin,
that we felt we were the ones
digging out the edges of the canyon.
So far thrown from blackness
that maybe this is how they separate us,
make us hate ourselves
and love they wealth.
make us hate our hair
and love they locks.
Cause like superheroes
we switch from day out
to day in.
Being dark, light or caramel complexioned
we stay hounded by
how close we get to whitening.

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.

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.

I hate those mornings
when all I have
for breakfast
                            is a
Marlboro.

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.

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.

A collection of sadness
is the heart
when it swims
in a pool
of madness
waiting for success..

Have thoughts and prayers
like
the thoughts and prayers
of a CEO.

Think of yourself
as successful and important
as them.

Our society says it can only be men,
as a woman,
work twice as hard
and be twice as passionate
as them.

It shouldn't be that way,
but it is,
so you've got to make it
and want it worse
in every way.

It begins on those humble mornings,
Where wispy clouds linger in the sky
the color of white oak.

When the leaves collect in the gutters
and are soggy like corn flakes
and their color is markedly indistinct.

A morning for the birds to make
their shrill calls
And enhance the feeling that
you are at a low, cold altitude.

If the coffee is hot, burnt, and stale,
then it is a coronation of this morning.

On the highways
People listen to news radio with the windows cracked
and a ribbon of cold air and sweat on their faces
and know that soon
They will be home.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Where do you find
these
broads?"

I don't know.

But i find them
so that I can love them.

So that I can love them
until it hurts
and I am left with a stinging
pain.

So many wasps have stung me
before.

I have placed the royalty of their stingers
in the waste
of heart break.

The knives are finally out,
I swipe at a million hives,
until I have finally cut the wings
of one.

A woman's beauty
is in the flickering
essence of her
heart,
like the virtuosity
of De La Tour
her face is fading,
yes,
she is beautiful
but against the odds
I am enraptured
over what she told me
more than her lips,
hips,
and
finger tips.

I will forget her face
that's part of a controlled burn,
but I cannot
control how much
fire
will remain
as a result of her thoughts
and how they engulfed what was
hackingly breathing inside my ribs
when they burned me.

I keep having
these war dreams.

A soldier
stalks my yard
cradling
an
M4.

The bullets ring in golden hiccups
at my head.

So,
I die.

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.

Nelle says
like too much salt
there's such a thing
as too much love.

When it wraps you up against yourself
and you become the wall against which you are trying to force
through.

You become the line of fire
and the angling arrow.

Sometimes too many slings
reach the heart,
and everything tastes like wood
or lead.

A good rabbit can go bad,
with too many arrows
or
too many bullets.

Like hunting
love takes patience;
like salt,
a person can get stones
inside of themselves
when they get too full
on love.

The kind of stones
you can't **** out.

I hate
that your peach lips
are still
peach;
all that glitter
still to
eminent on your skin
both before and after
I laid you down
and played in the cosmos
of your belly button.

Stop calling me at night.

Can you hear me?

Stop calling
and reminding me
of the wilting fronds of flesh
on your lips
and the groves of light
on your abdomen
still too
fresh to me.

I have begun to say your name
too much
with
too little
to bare.

Shut up about it,
quit tripping,
give me a sec,
there not gonna see us,
you're more gone than me
I can see you fading,
all right
imma turn here,
I'll pull in and park
before they see me,
if it's a checkpoint,
shut up,
they didn't see us,
I'm sure
because I'm sure,
let's just pull in here,
**** the lights
and let our seats back.

Breathe, breathe, chill, breathe,
breathe
a little less,
I've had too much
fear
for tonight.

Imma sober up on your breath,
Imma ride out
only when the sun rises
and I can wipe your residue
off the dash,
Imma worry about
the birds in the back
in the morning,
just breathe, chill, breathe, chill,
go to sleep
like ice.

Irritable and hateful
at the computer.

Coming fully down from a good buzz
when the whole world
was a jar.

I could hold it in my hands.

Now
coming down
and not buzzing for ****,
not even a beer
in my crib,
I get lonely
and I feel like Atlas
again.

That jar
being
too big
for
two hands,
and feeling my heart
taking scalpels
to my arteries.

It's trying
to find some new space,
new strength,
new alleys
for new blood
that'll be able
to handle all this
new pressure
of a planet-sized jar.

So now,
I'm irritable and hateful
at the computer,
and telling you
about being
broke and no longer
drunk
with nothing
in sight.

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.

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

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

I cannot get into ******* rhyming poetry.

I just can't get into that ****.

I'm not trying to down anybody
who does it,
or loves it,
but the only time
I can take it seriously
is
when a bass line kicks in
wrecking my heart and head to pieces.

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.

I have dreams
of taking
friends
on suicide missions.

Missions gone wrong.

We place ourselves
in the arms of destiny.

We pit
hope
against
Hades.

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

But to **** the evil?

The ignorance?

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

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

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

IF love
is a black hole.

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

So,
I
have
dark dreams.

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

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

These are nightmares.

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

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.

I would like
to understand holy things.

I pulled up to your trailer,
and parked in the gravel.

The pebbles crunch
the same way under my feet
as they do under the wheels.

You are not outside,
like you said you would be.

I lean in the window
and honk the horn.

I hold onto it,
until you come to the door
with the baby,
and you both stare at me,
blurry behind the screen.

The horn is too aggressive
and you know it.

Will you teach me
with kisses
like you teach
the baby?

Things have gotten hard,
and you're just poor
and out of the currency
that'll really make these problems
go away.

But you hope

that maybe you can will certain things
into being,
off the power of the feeling
alone.

Maybe you've got it in you,
to shake somebody's head
so hard
that the brain pops loose
and falls out the skull
into your hands.

Then you could
do some real operating,
really change them.

But you can't,
and that's what keeps you
from getting too ****** up.

Because if you could do all those things,
the only thing stopping you
would be yourself.

And that's pessimism for your ***.

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.

*******
i miss you.

*******
I wake
up
and
it's the terror
of a famished
heart.

Could I cry
a thousand
times?

Could I have more
eyelashes?

Could I learn to play the banjo
and finally
make a sound
like
raindrops?

Randy was drunk and high
and skipping school.

She'd sipped on a few too many sips
of crown royal,
and that wasn't the reason
but she says,
"that didn't help."

Javaughn picked her up
beside the chinese place.

"You want to go back to your place?"
he asked.

"whatever,"
she said as they passed
a fat blunt,
fat with the demise
of depression.

They wound up in her room,
him taking her clothes off,
her saying no
in her mind.

So drunk and high
she couldn't say anything
but saying no
in the asylum of her mind,
the peaceful place.

But she said no.

"I gotta finish," he said.

NO she yelled.

But it was colorless.

And she receded into a space
of novas,
a space where bodies exploded
into a web of elements;
a web of objectivity,
of lost usage.

He pushed and pushed
and it hurt her more and more
as she saw his nostrils bending
more and more.

He continued his huffing,
no she said,
placing his hands on his chest,
no,
she said,
placing her hands
on the echo of his heart.

But he continued,
he had to finish,
and he did.

laying there huffing and puffing
human
he did,
as she lay
with a t-shirt still on
and ******* wet with pain,
crying in her mind
of the cosmos,
the paint of objectivity
and lost humanity.

He left,
and she stayed,
locking the elements
in her heart,
like the trapped carbon
of earth.

And so she cried
and I held her
as she told me,
because I did not know
what else to do.

What are we doing?
Why must she cry?
Why can't everything
be all right?

Because it is not.

There should not be
a fiddle of pain.

The chords should not
strenuously
vibrate up the line
from love
to highs
of depression.

Touch them
feel the strings,
feel their strength
and breakability.

There is nothing
more touching
than empathy.

And when the final reside
becomes a resurrection,
put it in your place of empathy,
not hope.

I want to write
a poem,
about myself.

Of death,
and exquisite joy.

Weeks on end
with constant pressure,
small breaks,
and no woman to talk to.

This poem,
this life is filled
with unfulfillment,
and then when it isn't,
it haunts you.

Drinkers drink,
smokers msoke,
most of the time
it goes hand in hand.

Sometimes I hate
being the man
to bear the dead weight.

And no, I am not alone,
but,
because of myself,
I am alone.

Having not seen much,
everyday that I grow
is an explosion,
a catastrophe
and then heaven.

And not always heaven,
never when you expect it,
when you need
it.

But heaven when you're being selfish;
when you is me,
vice versa,
and it washes over and you spend
all week
trying to atone for not fully enjoying it.

How much should I wallow in the peace
that sprung from the muck of deep sin?
how much should I allow myself
to feel lowsy for not
enjoying respite?

How many people push
against themselves,
only to realize they're wrong,
and wrong and wrong?

I am always realzing;
always a realization
of myself, of us
through me. And I am trying to be
less arrogant. But
I know things are right;
I know the evil I have
perpetrated against me,
and you,
and I know that isn't always the case.

I know the good.

So, I am tired
of bone and dry,
and full of milk
and honey.

But even though fatigue
settles,
like dust,
I am fine with
this.

I know that this
is. And I am at home
in
this.

what is regret
but a bitter berry
that you suffer
through the day with.

What is it
but a place
in the heart
that opens
and closes
like daylillies.

Because I think
about you so much,
even as I walk to the liquor store
I count
hashmarks in the road
in as many times
as I held your eyes.

There are too many
hashmarks
and not enough
of your eyes,
perfume,
cheeks,
tiny fingers
in mine.

I miss you so much
and it's wrong
that I spend time
with my boys
and different girls
knowing
that they can't tread
the asphalt
like you can.

She's gone
Little dove.
Gun
Little love.
Done
Little love.
Done gone
Little love.
Done done
Little love.
Gone done it
Little love.
Done ****** it
Little love.
****** up flew away
Little dove.
No love from the glove
Little love.
Nothing done done it since like my
Little love.
Nothing quenches, nothing touches like my
Little love.
Oh, how it hurts to think of my
Little love. Lovely dove.
Dove with blood on the wingtips
And a tear for each eye
Little love.
How oily little love flies now
A paintbrush of pain in the evening sky,
Oh how she smears the heavens
And in my eyes the colors of the rainbow
Blur,
Lovely painted dove.
How i wander naked, these streets at night,
My shame and rage my only garments, and i can barely stand straight.
Oh, little love.

This
is how you tell a story.

From the beginning
to
the end.

When you told her that you
liked her and wanted to hold
her soft lips.

To the moment
she smacks
the **** out of you,
and your face burns
with your heart.

Shaking hot fingers.
Shaking hot stomach.
Shaking hot lungs.
Shaking hot
veins
bubbling
with the beer
running through them
as the soft bed
lightens
under a new
lonely weight..

My fear is
of looking over and being
alone and drunk.

They said:
"You on a path to get shot."

In the form of a bullet,
straight through my head,
pink mist and all.

How much is a life worth?
or how much does lead weigh?

In forms underlayed with venom,
I have perpetrated goodness.

In ways misunderstood
I have appeared evil,
and maybe this is so.

pain
be the body of grace.

horrible grace uttered over
and over a
                  gain
                           ful waste.
you and i told lies for fear.
we were never really there
in love.

but now we're here.

prayer can't stop a thing,
I try bending a knee
or a wish.

but na,
I ain't to religious; so talking to god
becomes addictive too quick.

you have found something new,
I've found the old foundry.

all night pouring cauldrons of liquid hot into a bad cast.

sparks so **** and comforting,
i see them jumping from the window of my belly button.

god,
there's hell in me.

i'm being disposed of as i watch
a new lava
being poured in an old way.

****,
im asleep,
drunk,
tilted,
restful.

i'd suggest you go now.

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.

What's left in the world
For the woman in the burning house
Except pain and sorrow?

She meanders through life,
Picking things up
Here and there
Where
Here is darkness,
There is nothing,
And tomorrow never comes,
And each new thing
Is something to hold
For just awhile.

She must watch
The house burn down,
While still inside.

First the drapes.

She clutches onto the past,
In the falling ashes and huffing heat,
And can't let go,
Even as her skin peels away.

Black tears stream down her face,
And the inner workings of her own soul
Become even more confusing to her.

The walls crackle,
The windows shiver and burst,
And the world rushes in upon her.

On the braided rug in the living room she kneels,
Holding her things underneath her *******,
Praying that everyone will see
And that no one will see.

Her life,
Ruined.

Her family,
Gone,
Long ago.

Her hope,
The match that lit the trashcan.

And now, flames all around her,
Her black tears a residue,
And the world watching,
She knows nothing.

She has nothing.

but
Pain and sorrow.

Know that my
heart
is
quick.

Understand
that it has movements
like a fish,
spurring
to the next
bubble
of oxygen
in an ocean
deep
without it.

I move as soon
as I know the love
of that bubble
has been ****** dry
by ***** gills.

I want to know how you're doing
because I care about you
deeper than love,
because friendship
is greater than love
in my book.

You can choose your friends.

Not your lovers.

So,
I hope
someday you call
to talk
about writing,
because when I said
I loved you,
it meant,
I love our friendship,
and I ****** it up
that night
we made lips
into gestures
of companionship.

Take a second
and remember
what I said,
that friendship
is greater than love.

That the bubble
is never
greater
than
the
ocean.

I want you to be all right,
because a second
in the library
is greater
than
love
daily,
to me.

I want to hold you tight
in the palms
of understanding,
and not
let you go
in the discipline
of youthful breaking.

Hers are the awful kind of lips,
like a flounder split down
it's flat middle,
with it's tiny intestines
licking outward for more salt.

This is the broken sea
of love.

Your love is the kind
that makes a fish out of her.

Her lips are mercury-colored
and mercury-shimmering.

Inside that fat head of yours,
while she kisses
your belly full of hair,
you are constantly
swerving and shivering
looking for the sharks.

But you are comfortable,
in a way.

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.

We are just one
big conflagration.

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