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.

You and your gold doorknockers,
those two rings
of golden milk
in your ears,
I love you for the things
that go into your ears,
for the Odysseys
and Onegins
and all the love letters
of Abelard and Heloise
that make all that milk
into a cream.

Your hoops
hang high and tight
until you forget to take them out,
I like when you forget to take them out,
and in the mornings
I wake up
to your low-tolling jingle
in gallons
and the liveliness of your jaw
saying things
that wake me up
with a natural cheeser on my face
and questions galore
in my dry mouth
and lungs.

I don't know
how to miss somebody
in the right way,
I can wake up
in a bad state
still bitter
over things I said
or didn't say,
hungry for brine
and salt licking
my open chest
and curved spine.

The ribbons curling in the sky
move out across
the bluest bay,
I have fished so many times on the rocks
overlooking the military base,
the carriers roll by;
the submarines hum in the deep
there antenna in an operatic frenzy
and the captain is to busy to sleep.

I wonder what is moving
inside of you
just beneath the breakers.

Each time
'I throw a fish back into the fray,
I hope the bombs of their bodies
make noises that you can hear
even where the ribbons
can't tie up your soul.

I always leave around noon
my gills burning
and the air crashing
with all those sonic booms.

I gulp,
and gulp,
and put myself to sleep,
with some bottled ocean,
and a few good memories
of your heart,
that trembling, silently scared
deep.

So let me know how to be right again,
take your line and weight and
squirming bait,
and teach me how to miss you
in the right way.

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.

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.

The kind of cars
that I like,
are those 87' monte carlos,
subs
big as aircraft carriers
in the back.

Gold spoke
wheels,
able to turn
holes in the sky.

Chameleon
paint jobs,
green
and full
in the sun,
fading to black
and
glossy
in the shadows.

When I was a teenager,
the kings
used to ride by
in the
monte carlos
with open
windows
letting loose
a humbling roar
so loud
that it
put
ubiquitous vapors
into
the air.

The neighborhood smelled
like the thumping
and the hard hum
of their vibrating
windshields.

The kings
always
let the car slide slowly
in neutral,

and as they took
stock of their domain,
Their glossy gold fronts
made you realize
why gold
was
so important
each tooth looked like
a tablet of commandments.

Our wife-beaters
were
stained with ketchup
and other things
that bleach could never
get out,
and we smelled
funny.

But the kings
wore hawaiian shirts
and smoked
cigars.

The kings
were the preachers.


One of the kings
was Luke's brother,

whenever he stopped at a corner
we'd pile around
putting our fingerprints everywhere
until
he told us
to
"*******,
don't you have any
home-training?"

Luke would stand closest,
squinting
as he leaned on the driver-side
window,
all that bass
hammering
his bones.

"How much
did you pay for it?"
Reggie would ask
from the back,
peeking his head over,
trying to see
the king.

The king would smile,
and say
"enough."

we'd all be rapt.

He'd get a call
on his cellphone,
and we
would come up
with crazy numbers.

Luke didn't even know
how much
was
"enough".

The kings held the secret
of god
and power.

I wanted to be as close to god
as they were,
I wanted to know the secret
to contentment.

I wanted to come back home
with money like
the kings with gold teeth.

Last night
I had a dream
that
a kid pulled a Mossberg
out of his black
Jansport.

Pulled it
out by its ears
and flashed
its shining
black pelt in my direction.

He let loose
two
thumping shots.

No pain,
no nothing.

Just a dull, pushing thump in my chest.

Death will come to me one day, and it will be like magic.

I will exist,
and then stop existing.

I woke up this morning crying,
because in the evaporation of a dream
I came out of it
sweating, shaking, hot,
and
knowing death was close.

Death will come,
Death always comes.

When I was a ****** up kid,
I used to draw skulls
in the margins of the bible.

I used to laugh
and pick
at squashed squirrels;
while the girls
stood at a distance
crying.

I don't know
who they were crying
for.

I'd take an eraser
to the wrists
and
rub my own tombstone into my skin
until it burned.

Death will come,
Death always comes.

I'm paying for the ****,
leave me alone
and let me sleep.

"You're not just here for yourself,
Mr. Willis,
you're here for your classmates,"
Mr. **** said.

"I'm here to get a degree."

"Well, I'm sorry"

Yea, "Well",
now get your *** out my face
and let me sleep...

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.

When I'm not back home
in the city
where the bulls cry
in fumes,
**** goes awry.

The girl
that
I loved
once,
calls
twice.

And then a third time,
I pick up,
and it's war
from the first
breath.

D-Day on a tuesday night,
the troops storming the shore,
the bombs blazing
in the infrerno of night,
my ex calling me
talking about
compassion.

So what did I do?
really?

I just tried
to be
civil.

I tried to tell her that my heart
was in another place,
that it was bending
and finally
broken.

Compassion doesn't live here anymore,
because so many questions
about cheating with white girls,
the same kind that her irish-italian blood
resembled,
boiled down
to
self-hate.

I tried to tell her
that I was in love,
that I was over her,
that these arguments
were the mute points
of her politicism.

She couldn't sway me
with a thousand dollars
or a million.

I was in love
and it hurt to argue,
because I wasn't talking
to the one,
I wanted to.

I was ******* with heathers,
when I wanted to know more
about  flying eagles
and the depth of feminism.

I wanted to know how deep it reached
her heart,
and how.

So now,
I'm angry
that you called,
because it wasn't the number I wanted,
not the voice
so clear
and liquid
as
truth.

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.

I want a Monte Carlo
with woodgrain
that drips
lacquer
like liquid
metal.

How sweet is the sound
of droplets
of wetted desire
and my chucks
dotted
by the bark
of a melted,
condensed,
glossed
and
digital
earth.

My Alpine's
make bus-drivers nervous,
with their hallways
full of a thousand faces,
staring down
at me
as I crack holes
in the concrete
big enough
for a squadron of buses
to fall into.

My Carlo
should have two things
in bunches,
it should have
the smell of a woman.

The smell of her
stale mouth
that lets loose fumes
in grated vents.

The Carlo's
smell should rattle me
like fences
that jingle when I brush against them.

Secondly,
my Carlo
should
be serious
and black.

All black.

I want my Carlo to have
opals for headlights
like the smeared *** of a firefly
or the eyes
of a panther.

My Carlo should be so beautiful
that it takes me back to the forest,
to the forge,
to the hotel,
to the hospital,
to the altar,
to a place of peace so loud
that I could take it between my fingertips
only to break it in a purr.

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.

I had a lover,
who was beautiful
and kind.

She grabbed the sun out of the sky
and grinded it into a powder.

She blushed her face with it,
and each time she passed
she would turn the flowers.

Her hair was a river,
it flowed for days and days,
and ended in a single teardrop.

Her hair
made the world
wish for more rain.

When she called me,
I answered.
Her voice freed me.

Her pupils
were the nexus.
Her iris'
were a foundry.
When she blinked,
everything darkened
and I wished she would never do it again.

When she slept,
she snored
peacefully.
And I drew her close to me
just to be closer to nirvana.

It is only fair
that such things
cannot be sustained.

That is too much beauty
for only one man
to hold.

She is a gift,
to the earth.

I have taken
too many shots today.

one.

two.

three.


four.




five.

And I was gone.

Cheap **** on my mind,
drunk as ****
at six at night.

I stay drunk.

And I hate myself,
so that's why
I stay drunk.

Where is the little marshall?

Where is that kid
full of romanticism,
and hope,
because my mom's
had me watching
the way we were
and
dance with me.

I tell girls the truth,
and I guess so many times
they've
heard
it
as the opposite.

But my heart is full of that ****,
full of taking in love
and on the assembly line
of my
arteries
trying to hold them,
protect women,
keep them from guessing,
becuase all along,
my romanticism
wasn't *******.

It was a process
of my mother trying to make me into a man
that wasn't him,
wasn't my father.

So yea,
my ****
may sound played and irregular
but me
caring for you
is nothing
but
regular.

I can't lie to a girl,
I can't fib
on my heart.

Because romanticism
has been there
from the
start.

My mother is to blame
for
my shotty game.

Game
is when you're trying to ****,
and
I can't knuck
with that.

I tell girls how I feel,
truthfully,
even if it sounds dupey.

This poem has turned into another love poem.

It is a black spot
as cancerous and consuming
as those wandering black holes
that squander life
like poachers.

When I return
to heaven
and all those angels stand at the gate,
I hope they've got their magazines
loaded,
because God told me
that depression is when
even pleasure
will seem like my pain,
and I might have to die
with the feeling that bullets create:
fire.
And that fire in my belly will drop
as hope riddles it with all them magazines.

I come back
for promise.

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

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

I took satisfying trinkets
because pollution
dulls.

Oh,
I
am
at
your doorstep
once
more.

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

I'd know everything in due time,

and it was.

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

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

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

"You're drunk
you
need it." - Lykke Li.

Don't puke
this time,
make it the seed
instead of the giving earth.

The earth pukes in fire,
and that hurts the belly.

Trust me when I say
I'm stupid,
and that I'm staying.

I have been with Heather,
I have been with Carolyn,
I have been with Gnat,
I have been with Yolanda.

I have ****** all of them.

Every single one
has not touched
as fatally
as you
and you have undone
the ropes
inside of me.

The unbound package
is
disaster.

It signals the death of promise.

But it gives in the lighthouse
of love.

I cross the fog,
I trample
the destinations
of rain,
I laugh at thunder.

No storm is greater than
you.

So replace me,
disown me,
hate me.

I love you,
and that will not leave
in the night,
like werewolves
after dawn.

My uncle left
his body for awhile,
he took on the
body
of a hungry man
and a traveller,
he became gaunt
and sold all of his
jewelry,
all that gold
that once made him
a king bloated with knowledge,
when my uncle left
he left for Arm & Hammer,
a few dreams
and the oncoming
swift of nightmares,
coming to the house in the morning
in his new body:
a bird
to grab in its
feet
all of its belongings.

The love
that fed him,
slept on its side,
and there are some things
worse
than death.

One day he flew away
like he would never return,
one day I loved him
and the next day
the sun rose with hate.

Now he sits at the table,
eating the food,
as God gives him a lapdance
or a beer,
or the love of his family,
everything returned,
everything sold
seemingly saved,
but in some ways
the hatred remains
as a reminder
that love will always
be stronger
than pain.

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.

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.

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.

Your eyes flower
out of the black
into the dark blue
and ice
petals.

I climb the rough stem,
cutting my palms
and bleeding from my cuticles,
just to say to you
that you are beautiful
up there
in the night.

'Night babe
are what my lips
say to your eyelashes.

'Night babe of the black womb,
tiny body,
and hair like hydrogen fusion,
I hope that I have not said anything
that will make you blot your eyes
and stifle your lips
and enlightenment
from me
forever.

Night twinkles,
winks,
with cross-dressing jets.

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

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

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

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

A night is heavyness.

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

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

Better to hold handlebars
like cold lips.

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

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

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

She'll be staring up at me

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

Let me fall to the earth
through that opening.

Crush me
with the nails
that hold you together.

Today is a day,
for nostalgia;

For the reaper to finally and momentarily be
beaten.

Even in all of his infinite wisdom,
in which the past becomes just a laugh,
and the lurid poisons of our love,
have the shallow touch of a feather.

When the snow begins,
we relive all those duldroms,
all those meaningless nothings
seemingly so meaningful and wrong,
long ago.

We retell our stories,
silently,
to ourselves,
feeling less bitter as the words
litter our minds,
powdering the pain,
and covering with joy,
our sorrow.

In dementia,
they say,
our love goes stronger every day.

Grows newer
in old ways.

I hope to be like you someday.

Today,
we will beat the bitter sandpaper of tomorrow,
that which rubs away our definition with every brutal blow,
with the soft tapping of our fingers
against our skulls.

Puzzling over what made us beautiful and purposeful,
instead of what crowds against us like a box,
instead of what destroys us like a skipping cd,
instead of what sings against our mind like a harpy
with it's constant verses of regretfulness
that grow stronger with every fatal flaw
we rehash in ourselves.

once more,
you will be as beautiful to me today,
as that swirling suffocation.

I watch you fall outside my window,
covering each and every lichened rock,
in a linen of newness.

In silence,
I stop listening for the return of your love,
and instead marvel in the present satisfaction,
that you are,
and were.

I revel in your presentness,
in the swiftness of your presentation.

In the delicacy of your touch,
and the humility you drive me too,
as you take me too my knees with
each
quiet
drop.

And yes,
you will melt.

And yes,
I will remember.

And yes,
I will see the snow melt,
driven away by the erosion of the sun.

Maria
kisses
like she wants
to take your head off.

The top lip
is an umbrella
all the way to the bridge of the nose.

The bottom
slobbers
the
cleft-chin.

When I kiss her,
I want to push her away
and
tell her
"quit that ****."

but she's green.

she's never been with a dude
the way that I want
to be with her.

And so,
the kissing
I tolerate.

The way she takes her tongue
to every black surface
that the shadow of her mouth
creates.

I shake it off.

Or
how sugary my mouth gets
with all the extra saliva
she wets my teeth
with.

I'm cool with it.

But one night,
she gets down
on all fours on her
sofa-bed.

Her skin:

patchy black
and white
from the moon coming in
and scattering
against the leaves
of an oak
outside the window.

Her jaw
working
in square motions
as she swallows
down
all that extra
saliva,
from all that
extra kissing.

And she said to me,
her eyes
placid,
glassy
and black
as leather,
"**** me like those **** girls."

Ever have one of those moments,
where nothing is beautiful
about anything you're looking at?

A taste in your mouth,
gets sour
like you've been chewing copper
and
nothing is beautiful.

We rise,
on ocassion,
to drink the blood
of our brothers.

The original vampires
drink the blood of youth,
and bring about the
wandering
and
ill-placed
musings
of old age.

With bitterness
we control our own destinies,
it is not fate
that is cynical with luck,
it is us,
cynical because of fate.

When we take control,
finally
in the last days of men,
we will see compassion
for what it really was,
the Jesus,
the salvation,
the temptation
that we never wasted
our energy on.

I still think
that demons crowd the plains
of our thought,
like gazelles
waiting to be gorged upon.

Demons
keep us down,
keep us in the waterfall
of stupidity
and
self-loathing.

Don't look back,
the demons take control then,
they hold sway
when the juries of our souls
let them talk
without consequence.-

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.

Easy to say,
that I was just young.

It was back in the day,
but,
back-in-the-days
make it back to us
always.

I had a problem
with cheating,
couldn't meet you at your point of need,
had to take a breath
especially
when
we
were
fighting.

had to step out the house,
with a half-bottle in my hand
had to take a breath,
had to give it a second
to sink in,
what you'd said about me,
how i'd grown worse,
gotten the worst of you,
and you,
the worst of me.


Fighting going on,
in the house we called home,
so far from,
though,
more like a prison
we called our own.

Spent nights sipping
a bottle
at the dinner table,
no blessings made,
no prayers said,
no good graces,
just bitterness over spaghetti
and that white girl
you thought i'd laid.

We Sitting down
to take a sec with the Triple-Sec,
you said to me,
"can't believe you ******
that white *****"

"Baby, i'm flawed,
just like anybody else"
couldn't say with the last breath
of the dying relationship,
that this conversation
signaled death.

Couldn't say,
that white ***** was much more than that
to me.

That a year's worth of lying
and go-betweens
was the last gush of fresh air
to an evergreen
whose air
no longer made its leaves turn green.

We'd left that precious place
a long time ago.
Adam and Eve ******* the juices
out of a rotten apple.

My Adam's apple stuck in my throat,
my belly filled
with an emptiness
that made it bloat.

Said, I was sorry so many times,
it burned my tongue
to say it before bed,
every night.

Still laid you down,
but the *** was getting so lifeless,
I looked into your eyes,
you looked into mine,
the anger was so tireless.

So much hate,
spread in a two-bedroom
townhouse,
a playhouse in the backyard,
where your kids played,
and we fought inside,
while the sun cast shade.

Fighting about the dishes,
how the bills were never paid,
the lights turned off,
we slept in the dark for days.

In the mornings you'd go to work
before i awoke,
so easy to go
it was easy to say,
easier to go,
than easier to say,
that it was done
we were just hanging on
because we had so much going on,
taking up the responsibilities
of a full family and home
when really
we were cradling a dead child,
the newest baby between
you and I.

Still don't know
how you faced it,
so gracious,
with my ungratefulness.


Couldn't face ourselves
to face ourselves,
couldn't say well enough
that we were left to hell.

****,
you pulled a gun.

Remember that day
in the Thursday sun?

Right after work,
caught me pulling a chick
on facebook,
and somehow it came to you to reach under
the sofa, that's all it took.

Grab the piece,
and shake it against my temple,
saying,
"can't believe i fell in love with a *****
so simple, simple, simple."

And me,
through gitted teeth,
"Baby, put the gun down,
you gone crazy?"

Baby,
i don't know where you're at now,
know you got **** going on,
i'm going on,
you going on,
got a lotta **** going on,
'cause we held on
way too long.

Baby,
I've grown.
I Know my past
made me better
and
yes, you were the last,
but yes,
you were the last,
the last time that i had to cast the dice
and throw it in with the worst of me,
way back then,
not too far back,
cause every now and then
i go back
to way-back-then
wishing i'd been a better man.

Wishing that baby had made it.

Wishing your kids still knew my name.

Wishing i'd pulled less *******.

Wishing i'd pulled less of my ******* game.

Younger back then,
no longer still the same,
but every now-and-then
the back-in-the-days
come back with their hapless passion,
make me think of my old ways,
how you pulled a gun,
how we fought through the night
just for fun
until the kids cried quietly
their tears lit by nightlight,
and we still loudly fighting.

Finally
letting out our anger
cause we couldn't do it during the day
the only way:
drinking at night,
burying the days
just to burn the stars,
moon
and violet sky.

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.

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.

During this time
of looseness,
my heart
or anyone's heart
might just
thump itself
so hard
that it breaks free from the ropes,
breaks free from the ribs,
breaks through the epidermis
in a wave of slicing
with it's newly evolved
animal hands
and a knife.

The **** does a heart
get a knife
and animal hands?

"If i'm gonna make it out of here alive," heart says.
"I gotta have hands."

So it breaks free,
scissors right through the sternum
and crawls
in a trail
until it falls from the counter
and the front door opens
a crack.

I look out a window
and it is hailing a cab,
although there aren't cabs
like that
around here.

It'll find it's way
where other piece-of-**** hearts
reside.

It will make it's way,
and I'll make my oatmeal in the morning;
that grey ****
that I shovel into my mouth.

Iron's good for the blood
you know.

My heart had a knife,
you can't tell me a ******* thing
about the iron
in oatmeal
being a blessing.

the older generation
thinks we're all ****-heads,
ritalin-riddled serial killers,
serious ingesters
of buckets-of-blood thrillers,
they look at me funny
when I sag my pants
look at me funny
when I've got my girl in my arms
and her hands on my zipper
moving slowly
to the biggest dipper, too loud,
they say,
too loud,
too much cursing,
too much blood and gore,
too many games about getting money
and running over grannies to get more;
Ren and Stimpy,
and
Bert and Ernie,
two homos
that need to burn
for their sin,
the world is going
to hell in a handbasket.

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.

When I'm drunk
I think about you.

Ironic.

I just want to purge you,
but I'm not that masochistic,
because missing you
will never be harder
than not missing you.

For the first time,
after the last time,
one feels
independent
and sure.

But this could quickly become a last time
too.

My Marlboro is moving
back against itself,
and as it burns
the smoke it dangles
like a wet string
becomes
a second hand,
and I think that we are constantly ticking
down
until the first is last,
and innocence
is just a matter of time.

There's this cat
that moans and moans
like it's going to hell.

It starts up
crying around 4 a.m.,
this ugly, pronounced
violent and deeply intonated
yowl.

It wakes me and Heather up,
it just comes into my dreams
and pulls me so hard
that I stumble back into this world
against this wall of sound
so ugly
that I'm tip-toeing insanity.

I want go out there
and strangle the ******* thing,
I want to find it where it yowls
and silence it.

heather says I'm the meanest person in the world
for wanting to strangle an animal
to
peices.

But the thing I hate is when an animal
lets the whole world
know
that
it's dying,
it won't let anybody get any sleep
until everybody in the vicinity
is standing around it
in pjs, boxers, doo rags, scarves
slippers,
gowns,
that pink thing Heather
got from
Walmart
watching the light of life being reduced
until this dying thing
begins burning
precious oxygen,
oxygen that we all need,
and it just becomes a waste
and a nuisance.

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

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

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

You 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.

"Have you talked to dad,
since you've been at school?"

"Nope."

"Are you coming home
for thanksgiving?"

"I don't know."

Josephina
breathes in a crackle
over the phone.

New York,
a cacophony
in the background.

A background of cold,
and
people talking
while walking
while hailing a yellowcab with a left
and slow-rolling heads locked
onto the phones in their right.

These people enter taxis,
not knowing if they're ever
going to reach home,
or the airport,
or union square,
just going
on the promise
that they won't become
road-****.

I can't feel it in my yellow apartment.

If anything,
my yellowcab
idles.

Through the receiver

A squad car
rings nervously,
then
after a lungful
of garbage-smelling air,
it becomes a full blare.

A pause
of
noise
always ensues,
just for a second,
the entire corner
becomes a silent silo
of human beings.

"How's new york?"

"you know,
dad called me
and asked about
how to get on a diet,
can you believe that?"

Yes,
I can
dad is a fat ****,
a pink, white belly
of a man. And a few
sandbags for chins.

"That's good."

"So I'm not going to see you?"

"Probably not."

"Well, you should call dad,
talk to him,
he loves
you."

Some conversations,
acheive nothing.

The same
tired, dead things
get run over.

Road-****.

Josephina believes she is the spatula
that will bring back
pancake squirrels
and
pancake relationships.

As much as you don't know
about me and dad's relationship,
I can give you a kodak moment.

A snapshot,

of a hovering man,
pointing at his son's neck,
searching for the misplaced vertebrae,
the lack
of fear for the world
--"the right kind of fear,
the fear a man
should have
of himself"--
and a son,
hunched,
small hands in fists,
a heavy haul of muscles
pulled into a dark brow
right over black eyes.

This picture
will suffice.

****
a love jones,
or some
Tyler Perry *******.

I want a chick that pulls knives out on me and jokes while she's doing it, because that's how we joke around.

A knife
like:
"You're not the kind of man I thought you were
when we first met.

Pulling out knives
and
putting little dimples
of love
into
each other.

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.

I used to see my death everyday,
when I made it out my door
I was worried,
that I might catch it
quick
while all the remorse I'd stored
would remain.

One time I was tripping shrooms
and it wasn't a bad trip,
but God came down to me
carrying a baby in her arms,
an ugly baby
with big eyes and even bigger ears

God said,
"this is your baby,
it has seen everything
and heard much more."

"All the evil I've done,
seems compounded
by all the good,"
I said.

God said,
"when your heart is compromised
all else
is failure;
hold to your compassion more than anything else
and this child
will grow big and strong,
bigger and stronger
than that tumbleweed
tumbling
through your soul;
so when I come to you like this,
know that this is not the way
that I would have chosen to come."

I've never been into the bible
too many humans with their human endeavors in mind,
but I believe God was giving me
my own personal Jesus,
not a messiah;
just something to make me turn around
and see that the fork in the road
was not that far back.

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 ***.

l cradle my palm
at the basic
knot
of her skull.

A tiny mound
forcing against the flesh.

So I give it a little pressure,
just to get her to go deeper.

Just a stem
of movement.

she looks up at me
with petal-green eyes,
"grab the back of my head again,
see what happens."

She murmurs it,
because her white teeth
hover
over my
red-headed ****
like a guillotine.

We place our wishes
in the canines
of spackle.

Above us the teeth
wait
to be broken.

While we watch
the Dog Whisperer
breaking
mustangs,
I wrap my arm
around the eternal flatness
of your shoulder.

We say nothing,
we don't even whisper
as our dreams fall around us,
in an automatic spray.

I get on the coffee table,
to fix the fan.

You arc your neck
around me,
like a diamondback
you coil until you feel the heat
of the tv in your eyes,
on your cheeks,
on your lips.

As you watch Cesar
more than me,
I dust our dreams off
of the fan.

I am a sculpture
that you must break your neck to get around
as I fidget with the monkey wrench.

There is nothing eternal,
we burn our love
like shoots of wheat,
so much beige grass
extending over your shoulder
into forever.

What kind of dogs
are we?

The ones that no longer
know the plains
of each others' fur,
the fire in our teeth,
the sun of each others' eyes,
the rain of our lips.

There is too much heat between us,
too much dryness now,
not enough calcium raining
from basalt clouds.

What I'm trying to say,
is that I do not explode
like a force of nature,
I am rock.

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.

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.