don't drink
like you don't mean it,
drink like you want it,
like you want no more
sorrow
and a ****** is in dire need,
put your lips
all the way to the cusp
of bitterness
to the very vector
of unhappiness,
let your tongue
loll in
the shadows
of your mouth,
let it droop and kick back
against the acid wash,
but don't hold it too long,
sorrow is a monster that likes
to creep in
at high tide,
when everything is under covers
and restless.

Kick that **** to the back of your throat,
kick it to the bottom of your heart,
the top of your soul,
the end of your salvation,
the tipping point of your love
and the blasphemy
of your hate.

Don't call out to her now,
she isn't listening
and you're not even close
to being finished.

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.

Battalions of rust
make war
on the Old Ford pick-up.

It becomes a sculpture
of
sunrise.

Bit down,
****** up tongue.

Little eavesdroppers
run from my windows;
pretentious *****
go vegan
as the world turns;
coffee ***,
cigarette ***,
love ***
all become one;
a lot to say
in the moment 'fore the big bang,
but daddy forgot to pull the trigger,
and
none of us are on the run;
nobody loves me;
nowhere to go,
no-one to be.
Take it.
Be ****** by it.
Love it.

Take that *** of despair,
bite down,
rip away the ******,
and **** up your tongue
on all that up-chuck
because if you don't
you're the one that's getting ****** up.

I've seen cops
way too many times,
too many times
to go through my ****
ripping apart pillows
with switches
and against my better judgment
I did nothing
as I heard the glass of
my grandmother's picture
being tossed around
in the back.

Too many times
asking me questions
about this
and that?
Him or her?
If you help us out,
we'll help you out,
understand?
in their rooms
where no love is grown
and no help is on the way,
their eyes were filled with the fire,
they were finally
gonna get this ******,
make him pay
for crimes he didn't commit.

Too many times
when i was asleep
in some old sewer,
and rolling up
asking me if i was on drugs
or drunk,
and if i didn't leave
they were gonna shove
a nightstick up my ***;
get me used to it.

Too many times have they slowed down
at a light
and turned slowly,
keeping their eyes on me
like I was a wolf,
when they had blood in their eyes
and teeth
in their holsters.

"Where you going tonight?"
as they surrounded me,
another inmate
inside the bounded
bars of an external prison.

Cops never helped me,
never asked
how I was doing,
or why I was doing it,
or why I felt trapped
inside my own body;
all they saw
was another ******
making problems
for the civilized people.

God will remember them,
just as I can't forget.

And most of the time,
it was other black men,
some fruit bred strong in them,
to hate them bottom-rung *******
because they had escaped
and remade themselves,
apparently.

In truth,
I have killed many of them
in my sleep,
but when I step back,
I see that they are a product
of the same system
that says the guns, drugs, and violence
are part of the ****** condition,
that only shows a ****** on tv
when he's *****, or killed somebody,
another mugshot for you to put in your
scrapbook of fear.


So, no I don't hate them,
I hate seeing people that look like me
getting killed
before they come to fruition.

I hate that
:"black"
is used as a term
meant to engender
fear.

I hate that I walk down the street,
and a white girl
walks ahead
turning around
to
check for me.

I hate that when me
and some of the homies
walk down the street,
our hoodies pulled over our heads,
people look behind us
for the grim reaper.

There is hope,
but without
it being fostered,
The fruits
die on the vine,
noosed up
in a new way
as they drop.

Hello there
gruesome stone,
blood flowing over you,
making you lifelike
once more,
I can see your limbs
escaping your nothingness
like the useless appendix.

Your beautiful thighs,
and loveless algae-green eyes,
your senseless fingertips
and heartless glow,
your tiny brain
with it's one-track philosophy.

Gruesome stone,
you grow from wantoness
and neediness,
fed by the blood of those less fortunate
in love,
you harbor an innate greed
to be found again,
to caress the excellent jest
of unrequited love.

You are an out-of-this-world high
when you speak,
and you are not meant
for the
human heart,
and yet,
you follow the rivers
till they empty into the ocean,
and finally become stone again.

Until the last drop of stolen blood
has been washed away,
you and your beauty and horribleness
taint the very spirit
of love.

Taint the very problems
you intend to solve.

So, gruesome stone
like Dracula,
when there is nothing left,
you remain,
lifeless and pointless
a stone's throw away
from the human heart.

A pebble waiting for the wash of the slightness of a droplet,
to mar the warmth of the heart.

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.

The first time
I saw a ******
I saw it in the open legs
of a smouldering woman
pockmarked by bullets,
and her curly black
hair
was pink
with brains like worms.

Her knees shook
spasmodically
like spider's
when you smush
them under your thumb.

The first time
I saw and
held a gun,
I yanked it from my father's
eternal fingers.

His head was open too,
and it buzzed
in a black rain of flies.

They were shooting,
and little plumes
of dust
exploded all around my feet.

Whizzing, Banging, a roar
of warfare, and I burned myself;
the shells kept falling against my skin
as I held that AK
squeezing
and falling
as the gun
pow'd
and recoiled.

Little bubbling lakes of skin
hurt my arms for days.

Love is growing
From within.
From the bottom of my insecurity,
Taking the worst of me,
Building it into eternity.

Eternally, we sit on broken thrones
Built up, on the past.

Feels too much like home
Our pain, can’t see how far
We’ve come.

Obscured, because we’re too wrapped up
In ourselves.
****** up
How we treat ourselves.
Tells us,
That we can’t be
A you and me,
Won’t make it through a year,
Much less eternity.
Don’t you worry,
I understand what’s happened,
I know the past is hard
To understand.
I don’t demand,
I just try to revitalize,
Both myself,
You,
And I.

Can’t heal nobody,
It’s hell to try,
But this is my story:

In a city like Raleigh
I rumbled down streets,
With a couple beers and a few shots in me,
The New Year’s coming,
But I just couldn’t see,
had to get out,
just for me.

Hit the big city for a couple days
Driving down avenues
Littered by Christmas lights and Christmas trees,
Christmas in New York,
Spent drinking and stumbling,
Spent away from you
Broken and mumbling,
My pain dripping into the sewers,
As I ****** away the anger and anguish,
And I ****** a pretty little Ms.
Who never could love me,
and I could never love she.

In the spring, I spent,
A lot of time,
With a pretty dime,
she wanting my child,
But in the end it wasn’t meant to be,
The choice of life,
Ain’t up to you and me,
I said to she.

In the midst of fall,
When it all falls apart,
I met a woman,
Twice my age,
Willing to have *** for days,
But she couldn’t handle her own pain,
Demanding all the love,
But her, I just couldn’t save,
Fights and fights and fights
Until calls to the cops were made.
No hands put on,
No hands displayed,
No hands up,
No call from the soul to say,
"Let’s let it go,
It’ll be best for you and me,"
No, we hung on,
Hanging onto the precipice
Until the love in us died.

Winter comes,
More Hennessey shots taken,
Taken for days,
For you I don’t know if it’s easy to say,
But I was lost,
So lost in those days.

Spent cold nights
In a car,
Cold mornings in a Mcdonald’s
Biting bad meat,
Tainted with an unloving scar,
Couldn’t even love myself,
Felt that would take too much time,
So I found help
Drowning, drinking, soaking
Thinking that would help.

But in time,
At the right,
I found you driving down the parkway,
Down the right line.

An accident brings us together,
Love, ain’t no beautiful story,
At least not then,
Kind of ****** up, a horror, sorry,
Ours littered with skeletons,
But from the ashes and bones
Gardens grow.
And now, roses bloom
Where once the earth was dead.
Dead as death.
Heavier than metal,
Now lifted as a breath,
Warm as the kiss of a petal.

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.

My dreams are full
Of skull-*******
And ****-*******
And ******* all night long.

******* girls I loved
And girls I came to hate.

They are full of that driving hunger
like being tickled
By the queen wasp's stinger
Until the syringe went to deep

And the want became a need

And
the *******
became

A plague,

so that I couldn’t dream
Of anything else,
but sticking my ****
into some pink *****
And driving it all the way into
Her
until
I could see it in her eyes,
forcing the smell of her
reddened, limping *****
out of her ears
like a bloated body
excreting excess venom.

I wake up
to a hard-on,
fatigued,
limping,
famished,
humiliated.

Every night I pull the power cord out of the digital radio beside my bed, the one with the lime-green numerals, and I wrap the cord around my neck until I can hear the muffled hammering of my heartbeat
inside my skull.

Take off your shoes,
drop your bags,
I know it's been a long journey.
The coffee's almost ready,
and I put the kids to sleep.

I'll carry you up the stairs,
****** to hell, let the floorboards scream.
I'll undress you button by button,
and hold you close to me.

Don't worry about the money,
or what the neighbors think down the street.
Your pride is your pride.
Your shame is your shame.

I'll get a bath going 'till
the water is bubbling and warm.
I'll crush you some wine,
and light a few candles.

But, please baby, don't cry.
It's okay to be us.

When I lift you from the tub,
your body
shivers.
The candles
flicker.
The whole room
shakes.

Baby, don't you worry
what the neighbors say.
Your pride is your pride.
Your shame is your shame.

I lay you down,
and your hair is wet and sweet.
You cry as much as you can,
then blubber away to sleep.

I walk to the window, and pull away the curtains.
Out in our backyard our wayward dog wanders in,
licking every single paw before he hops the monstrous hedgerow
and lands in our sweet-smelling rose garden.

The world outside
and the trouble within
he weathers it all,
as he limps back to his house,
licking his paws.

It's okay for you to be you,
me to be me,
and him to be him,
we all have our jobs to do.

You want to love me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don't touch
those broken stars.

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

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

They burn
and crush you.

And I whiff
at your beautiful pitches.

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

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

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

I only smoke
when you're around
or when I'm around you,
I don't know which is which
just that a consumption is going on
within me.

You reach down into your pocket book
and pull out a few killing sticks
hopefully,
I'll die of consumption.

That little creature
inside me,
the pink satyr,
jumps
in between my ribs,
whenever you go rummaging
in that golden shimmer of stripper's purse,
and **** out the Marlboros
with a wet-lipped,
wide-arcing
smile.


The creature,
the real me,
plays with his
satyr ****
all day
and bites his nails
and soft cuticles
until the blood runs
and pools in
little
red
pearls.

I am love-starved,

and the satyr is afraid
when he jumps
because that means you're around.

When I'm around you,
or you're around me
something smells,
possibly the iron
of the ******
left-over finger flakes.

The satyr picks up
the soggy,
spit out nails
and shingles
my heart with them.

The satyr shingles my heart
with the fear that you will leave
and that I will have no one
to consume
or be consumed by.


You are my ******
nails and cuticles.

What a ******* emo
you
make me.

I am uncomfortable,
even,
with the notion
that you have an effect
on me.

That's why I dismiss it,
with that whole
"What a ******* emo" title.

And that whole
"What a ******* emo."
last line.

i know I could've been the one
who caught
the bullet
instead of you.

I could've been in the crossfire
of hate.

Trayvon
will you forgive
me
for walking up to the ABC store
in a hoodie and jeans.

I hate that the world
has become a place of suspicion.

I wish that love
could
conquer
stereotypes.

I wish my love
could
conquer
racism
and
misplaced
suspicion.

i could've been the man
shot down.

That's why it's so important
to don
a hoodie
in 80 degrees
because the degree of separation
isn't that much
of
a
degree.

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.

You have
my
heart.

It's not
eloquent,
but
eloquence
is
for
roses.

I don't need
a thousand
words
to say
how much it
hurts
when i mix
my emotions
with
whiskey.

There is
no
nectar
as sweet
as the
spilled soul,
and I hunger
for
more.

Even as
I puke
up my stomach
with a thousand
stings.

The whole world
is washed out,
the drunks ramble on
far past the point of preminiscence,
to the reaches of ignorance.

We hold on so tight to our jobs,
our jobs,
our jobs,
our humanity is gone,
and I can't mourn.

When the sun sets
on a Saturday,
we crest and valley,
we return and serve,
we hold tight to our own souls
like we feel the skin of the dancer's hips,
in our fingertips,
everything is not really ours,
and yet we believe we can never be wrong
about anything.

The bouncer bounced out all of them
at 2 am.

Even the incoherent,
even the lost,
even the hopeless,
even the wonderlust of a brilliant night
peppered by sodium stars
and ignited moons,
and wonderful galaxies,
and incomparable distances,
it was all not enough.

Why is it never enough,
what bluff are we standing on,
camping out on?

She sent a package
tied in this biege tweed cord.

It turned out to
be a picture of you two
at the lake,
that day it was cold
and she wore that beanie with the flames,
her hair all curly and escaping,
your lips all red and chapped.

A folded note tucked on the inside
of the frame reads:

"I have Connie,
*******

Love always,
smiley-face,
smiley-face
smiley-face,
smiley-face,
me."

­Connie: your/her rat terrier.

You put the picture
in its black frame
on the tv table.

The tweed
you nail
to two spaced planks
on the wall above the tv.

It's like abstract
modernist-expressionist-
constructionist-art.

It's just one string.

A taut cord
of brown tweed.

The black night comes,
over and over,
over and over,
she doesn't return,
but the tweed remains
as taut as a fingernail
or an exposed artery.

Somehow
it's so human and obstinate
that the woven vertebrae
seems to curve minutely
and femininely.

As time passes,
the tweed moves
from beige
to golden
and gravitational.

A call to a friend goes something like this:
"Come over here, I've got this amazing thing on my wall."

The friend, Eric,
calls more friends.

The friends come over,
all piling around this golden tweed
after they've taken stock of the kitchen
and Wild Turkey.


They take turns
plucking it,
thumbing it,
putting their ears to it,
and studying it,
all
at your insistence.

Somebody,
******* Eric,
coughs in the room.
More people begin to cough.

Eric walks up
to the the string,
that is nailed at top
and bottom
on two spaced planks.



Eric gives it a final hard tug,
snapping it like a belt.

the tweed hums and shivers off a few flakes
of dust and amber material.

"I've just wasted five minutes
with this thing,"
Eric says

to the string,
and you.

Eric speaks for the group.

He turns and leaves,
taking the whole group of
twenty
with him.

They trail behind Eric
like a great, long tail
flicking
and knocking things over
in your apartment
out of sheer agitation
on the way out.

The golden gravity subsumes you.

You do not close the door behind them,
you can't even hear their tiny, black voices
as they all clamor into the elevator
and ding.

Because there is an opening
fire all over your body
the tight space in your pants
being its nexus.

"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.

Because before they meet each other
they accentuate the bad in themselves
that want someone
to say
that there is bad in them,
to validate that fact
so much so,
that they intentionally push the good down,
They want to feel evil and ugly
and horrible, because those feelings are safe.

So,
I think, when a lover meets another lover;
meets their residual and their main source,
they feel something beautiful,
something inexplicable,
something they can never put to words,
and so the ugliness returns because
they look at their lover
speechless,
they can't say what they truly feel,
it is the encroachment of everything modern
and fleeting that holds them mute.

But when they see a flower,
they see
something that grew
from a seed,
out of the dirt,
and out of sewage
and ****
and ugliness,
to a stem
climbing against
forces whose entire reason
was to bruise it;
to a bud
holding optimism in its womb,
to a budding,
to the final bloom
to those naked petals
luscious with the perfection
that is watered with pain,
they feel beautiful
because the flower is natural
it remains unspoiled even though
that is not to say there have not been attempts
to spoil it
because the flower will decay.

But
that instantaneous, and inexplicable oneness
they felt when they first encountered the flower
and the beauty it encapuslated;
that moment of clarity,
that moment of pure euphoria
so wordless it became a hurting void;
that feeling will never die.

So, they give each other flowers,
because that memory of instantaneous
and irrevocable beauty, in all of the work
it took to create;
inasmuch as it seems spoiled
and hidden underneath
a canopy of weeds
or in the millions of commercial growhouses;
returns constantly when
they are together,
because humankind has created nothing
when it comes to love,
we have classified it,
objectified it,
destabilized it,
even destroyed it,
but we do not truly know it,
only the unnameable
and inexplicable forces
inside of us
can name it.

You are harmonious
and
catastrophic.

You are both
Pandemonium
and
Avalon.

I wish to understand you;
more than just the parts.

Both the disharmony of your beauty,
and the orchestra
of your imperfections.

I want to have a few drinks,
so I slide up to the bar
and put something
on the paper in my pocket.

When I run out,

you throw a paper towel
my way,
placing my straight shot
and a pen beside it.

I could see myself
rubbing your hips
as you rub
my traps.

We could press our sticky bodies
together
for a moment of holding,
later on
too much liquor
could put us in a closer position.

"What are you writing?"
You ask.

"Anything."

So I take that pen
and paper,
and talk about Iowa
with you: A girl with callouses
even on her pinkies
hailing from a little farm town,
with a voice
full of the South somehow
and ideas on how to get by
the pitfalls of religion.

I talk about
wanting to find places
to go
where I could write
and drink
until forever in the morning
in the city.

"I'm not supposed to tell
anybody this,
but there's a bar
over on 110th,
that stays open
all night,"
you say so close to me
that I could pick out your lipstick
at Sear's.

"What are you doing
after this?"

"I don't know,"
saying as you wipe the bar
down.

So I don't know's
become eventual
movements
between our bodies
to the door,
bumping your hips
against me
and me sliding
my hands
around your waist,
trying to get the bumps
closer.

And so maybe
with love from New York
I'll write somewhere
else
about girls
that understand
my obsession,
who throw paper
and pen
my way
instead
of fear
and unknowing.

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 am a lovesick puppy.

Wanting so badly,
to let my nose rest on someone's ***,
and stick my tongue
in their stinker.

Aren't we all lovesick puppies?
don't all our fingers
smell like the unloading dock
where we were first castrated?

I know you got a lot on your mind
to tell me.

Hell love,
we fell love
in so quickly.

How feelings of shame
rattle up the game and scare the rat
in its cage.

But please,
be mad today.

Tell me what's inside, everything;
your stupid dreams,
dreams of enough, not it all,
but enough to pain the walls,
make this un-sturdy prison fall,
make me happy enough.

I don't want to change personalities
from day to day.

This letter, sent to you
over airwaves; through the gunplay,
past funerals held today;
I hope it revitalizes the feelings
we shared, over moonlight blunts, so loud,
they had us scared.

So, little miss sunshine, wake up from night,
wake up from this place of pain
holding us tight.

Write every chance you get,
there aren't many.

Write when you
have a quiet moment
by yourself.

Write when you
are
in
the
queue;
life is about waiting.

Write when you are in bed;
take your pen
and
close your eyes.

By morning
you will have forgotten
more poems than you have written
but
you will still be a writer.

Write when you are getting a haircut;
all that hair has a story.

Write while you watch a woman.

Write while you watch a woman
lugging a rolling suitcase.

Imagine what is in there,
what is so important to her
that she must roll it around
in the darkness?

If you get the chance,
write in New York.

New York is writers writing about writers.

Write when the
most
beautiful
girl
turns around
and
gives you
heaven.

Write because heaven is costly;
heaven is elusive.

Write because heaven is rich
and know that you will be there
again.

Write because of anyways, well-****-it-thens, and don't-call-me-ever-agains.

Write when there is nothing
to write about,
there is always something
to write about.

If your writing is ****
feel freedom
instead of
disappointment.

We ****
to make space
for
reason.

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.

You don't even know
what a love poem is.

I'll show you,
here and now,
a love poem
is a rose
and a rock,
a love poem
is a robbery,
a love poem
is dropping Neruda to your girl
and thinking about the next caper
when she's not there,
a love poem
is thinking your girl
is yours
that she's a girl
in the first place,
a love poem
is a lie
just like
me saying I'd never leave
was a lie,
a love poem
is remorse,
a love poem
is hatred
of both the inside
and the outside,
a love poem
is me seeing through you
right to your heartbeat
and punching
you
as you sit exposed,
a love poem
is **** in an *******
all of me
made to hurt you,
a love poem
is ****
and the ensuing
yeast infection.

A love poem
is like trying to put a band-aid
on an ulcer,
a love poem
is a lot like love,
if love was watching cartoons
on ****
and thought
it saw the Holy Trinity
as Ed, Edd, and Eddy.

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.

You remind me
of a wet New York,
a summer of oily
lights on the roads,
of concerts in the park
and the white, loving claustrophobia
in the sky,
you remind me
of standing at a window
fourteen floors up
watching cars on FDR
in the darkness,
hoping that one of them
is yours,
you remind me of
sirens
always, you remind me
of
a confidante
in an alleyway
stale with garbage
always,
you remind me
of subways
and dark knowledge the length and width
of a city
always, you remind me
of crossing a bridge
over grey water
and pewter boats.

It is hard for me to let go
of the city
even as it dampens
in the slate rain;
and the stretched clouds
are pulled down
over the highrises of love.

When you put your lips
on mine,
I just love the sound they make;
a quiet fleshy sound,
the temperament of flesh
is softer
than the temperament
of even the soberest buddhist,
especially yours.

I just want to pray at your lips,
just want to fear the enlightenment
that your tongue
unfurls.

Your lips could be the second coming.

Your lips were
at the bottom
of the shot glass
in that dim
blue bar.

Disembodied.
Bluish pink,  
and swimming as I swished
around the last
of my drink.

Usually when I drink
I try not to think about girls,
because I get depressed
easily.

You rub my body
in moving beads
and your lips
and the bluelight
are usually the last thing I remember.

Maybe if I
take a girl in the bathroom
and ******* her
on the sink
as the oil in her hair
greases the mirror
and the flies watch,
maybe I'll be able
to blur myself out,
and not even go back
to you
as you stagnate
in a blue glass
full of
blue fluid.

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.

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.

Laugh all you want,
but when I was a kid
I didn't watch
Thriller after dark.

But I danced.
I danced my *** off in that lit living
room
with Joci.

All night long,
popping
and moonwalking.

Now that I'm old(er)
I know how to build spaceships
and I can put
the popcorn
in the microwave
myself.

I can take the popcorn out of the microwave
and watch Thriller all night long.

But
then
my little woodpecker
came.

When I was
Cynical
with power
now and then,
I became
Raw
and uncarved
again.

We dance over the graves all night long.
Our tombstones are smooth
and we make light
together
with our feet.

Little woodpecker
what are you beginning to etch
in me now?

"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.

Heartbreak is a crazy monster
that trembles
when it fights.

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.

Today
we ate flowers.

A petal
fell into your coffee.

"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."

Sometimes
the wind screams;
you whistle
away.

Teach me someday.

"Twice
I've turned my back
on you."

Sometimes you scare
me
with your words.

So scared
I dropped my cigarette
twice
on your balcony;
shivering fingers
letting go.

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.

Man I hate when a girl gets in your head,
because she stays there,
just squats
on your hypothalamus.

But even more than that
she takes over the left side of your brain;
sleep
takes
awhile.

Sleep is no longer
inevitable.

When I start feeling a girl,
I feel her hard,
and I feel her jumping
on my brain for fun,
even though she doesn't know it hurts.

**** my heart,
she'll make her way down there
soon enough.

Mysterious
mirrors
in the bathroom,
Those hollywood
lightbulbs
flickering
making
faces
look so young
and old.

Strobe lights
make your shoulder blades
look like wings
when you
dance.

Spread all over my chest,
I can feel you flexing,
little dragon
burn me up
with your wings,
leave some of those flaking
scales
behind.

Let the music
drip
like hot metal
in a **** rain.

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.

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.