I wish
I could have been alive
that hot summer day
when that yellow dress
clung to her
by surface tension.

My mother said

they sweated alive.

Sweated
arm to arm;
elbow to elbow;
limb to wet limb;
all crowded into
Mount Morris Park
waiting to see her.

To smell her.

the tacqueria's
and fish fry's
were going
and the air was filled
with grey smoke
to make eyes sting
and noses clench.

Babies
that looked like black marbles
bobbed
to the surface of the crowd
escaping their mother's arms;
perched on shoulders
screaming
into ears
not listening for new life.

"it seemed so far off."

people fainted.
One woman
fell down beside her.

A hole opened up
to let the paramedics through.

A long ****,
where her fingers,
hanging limp from the stretcher,
slid across thighs
in the closing crevice
in her wake.

"She was old anyways."

The hole closed.

The new world
formed
in her place.

Onstage,
a yellow dress
warped
in the sun.

From the back
my mother
heard a voice
like thunder,
close thunder,
thunder
like the roar
of the universe.

Nothing else was present that day. Nothing.

Just the yellow sun
and it's yellow birth of black
spinning,
sweating skin,
and a lilting thunder
like the roar of a universe
coming from
the black earth
at the neck
of that yellow, clinging dress.

"Hello."
the thunder said.

Her voice is sweeter than its path.

With so many berry leaves latticed
into the chain-link fence,
it sounds like millions of feathers
tinkling.

Her eyes are in Arizona,
in impacted zones of clay knuckles
punching their way outwards
into the redwood bone of the earth.

Her smell is wet limestone; baked apples; hungry petunias.

And the sound they make is a train,
a reveille
moving away.

Heather tells me about a recent trip to Los Angeles;
about forms of travel
that don't move on tracks,
where there is no discernable distance.

I tell her I have been here all along;
I know where you have been
and how you sound there.

I know the heathers of the world
by the berry in your mouth.

Today there were two
people talking too much
and too loud
in the library.


Guy says,
looking down
nose moving with his eyes
over the Times New Roman legs
of a book.

"He broke up with her because
her ***** smelled like ****."

The girl across from him
has tiny fingers with no knuckles,
fingers that make tacking noises
on her Macbook.

She smiles,
in aquamarine
as the screen dazzles her pale
face.

"She probably had a yeast infection,
or something."

There are too many people talking,
but what rights do I have?

The right to laugh with them,
to be a part of it,
to be a comrade
to be mad because they're talking
while I'm pretending not to listen
and agree?

I broke up with a girl
because her ***** smelled like
an *******.

There are too many people
full of double-entendres
and irony.

Driving down a North Carolina road
An hour after dusk,
A nice buzz drifting through my body
watching the fireflies dancing across two-lanes,
and the smell of grass a delightful hint on the air.
A warm breeze with a slight chill at the end
drifts through my open window
Like a cool kiss laying you in a warm bed.
And mac miller croons
His soul full of understanding
Of the messages that stem from depression.'
A couple of the quaint homes I drive by on these winding roads
have already strung up Christmas lights on their quiet porches,
because we Carolinians love a peaceful joy.
And I just know
That this is heaven.
And I know I ran from home
to escape my pain,
but to return
is an inescapable epiphany.

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

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

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

Posted up,
Trap Keeper's
what
my girl call me,
a few baggies
near my belly button,
and my 6-inch demon
below it,
when I hand you something,
I hand it from the bottom of my stomach,
imma make you love yourself,
for a few moments
Imma be the most beautiful thing you've ever seen,
you might even love me back,
might even love my shirtless
breast, the way my tattoos
swirl and alligators pop off the letters on my chest,
I might just swallow you whole
and make you another part of my arsenal,
another inch to the sixes.

When things were going great
we'd eat transcendental dinners,
we'd take livers
in rainbow saucers
and ladle them
in tartar sauce
until our mouths
were full of salt,
sometimes we'd go to Thai China
and make interstellar fighters
out of the wise guts
of
cream-colored Starships.

But the nights when we went
to Burger King were the greatest,
we'd have simple dinners:
99 cent burgers
and fries like elephant ears,
we'd sit in our booth
in the corner,
you farting ketchup
out of like
twenty packets
into a red **** pile,
and I farted
like
twenty farts
out of my ***,
but I like
simple things;
they are natural
even if they don't sound
that way.

I would like to go to a place,
where people want to be,
the roads running
and bleeding notes
in the gutters,
a place
where people
want to remember they've been,
and fold their music
to be pushed across a rivulet
to someone across the street,
a place that could be called
a lime of abundance
or a lemon
of love,
someplace bitter
but sweetened
with just a dab
of sugar, a place
where I could become
a crystal
and dissolve
without pain,
I would like to move
out of the US
to a place
where people
learn how to talk
again
because they don't know how to talk
when they are at home,
I would like to live
in a place
where I could talk candidly
in a bar,
where I could yell
about the things
I want to yell about,
I could go somewhere
and stand in the street
and read poetry
and you would walk by,
I would be invisible,
I would be
unknowable.
I want the wheels  to come off,

I want to expect
to be blindsided by a bus
and wrap my arms
around broken headlights,
as I feel
love in her arms
in a place I have never been
and a creaming love that does not fit
into Jersey dresses
or bleached Jordans.

Now he left you with scars, tears on your pillow and you still stay
As you sit and pray, hoping the beatings'll go away
It wasn't always a hit and run relationship
It used to be love, happiness and companionship
Remember when I treated you good
I moved you up to hills, out the ills of the ghetto hood
Me and you a happy home, when it was on
I had a love to call my own
I shoulda seen you was trouble but I was lost, trapped in your eyes
Preoccupied with gettin tossed, no need to lie
You had a man and I knew it, you told me
Don't worry bout it we can do it now I'm under pressure
Make a decision cause I'm waitin, when I'm alone
I'm on the phone havin secret conversations, huh
I wanna take your misery, replace it with happiness
but I need your faith in me, I'm a sucka for love
sucka for love, know you ain't right G but yet I'ma sucka for love

I will rip
you
the **** out of me,
go through my chest
right to the back of my rib cage,
rip that ******* string out
like God yanking the lights out on the world,
I'll ******* make you dark
and hateful,
I swear
I'll just rip all that love
just to get to the naked
emaciated soul.
Rip whatever shreds
that thing's clinging too
with bony, skin-loose
fingers.

Make it all wretched,
ripping the string of you
out of me,
like the ****-string
of a shrimp,
for the world to see
I'll rip you out of me.

It's not going to be pretty
or romantic
or tragic,
it's going to be the ugliest ******* thing you've ever seen.

I make trips to the corner store, at 12 in the morning.

Calling all cars to get the **** out of the road,
I'm swerving.

Calling all lights,
blink and be gone. Streetlights,
stoplights, lamps, lighters,
blunt tips, cigarette butts,
all lights be gone.

Dear Earth, get low in the darkness.

On my first trip,
I was accosted by rabid dogs who drooled shoelaces
and I could tell they were being hounded
by the kilter of their angry maws
and sawed-off minds.

They barked like guns.

And they saw me--completely irrelevant---
popping caps off Lokos
taking sips that could **** up an Orca,
completely swimming.

I had to kick them home.

At work today,
Someone got caught stealing five pesos worth of food,
and got threatened with a felony,
but they've got some lint in their pocket,
and knew how to keep it cool.

My girlfriend operates in ideas.

I've been at work for so long,
that I yell and walk around,
like I'm in the shower.

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

Love is the hardest drug,
it stings the veins,
singing the whole way.

nothing beautifies,
nothing screams
quite the same.

The abused and the abuser,
The drug and the feeling,
the same.

**** her, **** him,
that's the delirium
kicking in.

This is gonna ****,
the way it ends.

During the come-down,
the delirium will bend you to every whim.

You'll say **** it,

then come running back,

the urge killing you.

But the store's closed.

Your veins will throb.

It'll carve out your soul.

This is not a bar
for the optional. This
is not a place for the unknown.
This is a place amongst the fire
and iron. This is the home
of tumbling mongerers
and life-dulled addicts;
of the hope-filled dull
and drone of life.

I have taken the drink of spasm with you,
and tasted the wine of dehydrated breath
and loss.

I, in my hopelessness,
was hopeful
and angry.

We were.

And i've drowned it all, with the racists
and nubients, rednecks,
how I love you *******.

Take my calming down
as love.
Take my Wilding out
as truth,
and hear the scream of my useless crush.

We will sober,
we will long to ****,
we will long to understand,
we will long too long.

When you boil it down,
really get down to the flesh,
bone;
marrow;
mitochondria;
I am nothing but a fizzled
thing
pushing
third-rate
pulses
out of a fourth-rate heart;
that's why when I ***** you to me
in an impermanent cowgirl;
chest
to
chest;
a good, running thump
is answered
by a
descending blip.

I freaked out for
bout
five minutes.

My bottle was gone,
and I couldn't find
it,
and
*******
I'd climb Robert Plant's tongue
to get to heaven
to **** god
if  my bottle was gone.

But it wasn't.

It was at my feet,
and I'd freaked out.

I gotta get warm
in any form,
or else
my stomach
sinks
to my intestines
and my heart
gets a lil weak.

I need WIld Turkey
to keep me going,
I need you to know
that I'm insane
in some ways
and it feels like
nobody
knows what I'm saying.

My brain is stagnant horns,
just fat as Louie Armstrong's cheeks,
and
I'm a sardine
on your tongue
waiting to be spit out
to plastic oceans
instead of
acid chambers.

This is the time of year
for lovers to break,
for rounds of applause
to burn
the
lives of millions
into a caucophony
of happiness
and unity,
for the sun to turn
over
in the sky
and get closer
with the Earth
becuase heat
is drunk love,
for clouds
to fall
and get skinny
as they writhe on the earth
and the earthworms
wiggle to the surface
for a drink,
this is the time of year
for maggots,
for destruction,
for putrefaction,
for decay,
just becuase it's getting hotter,
doesn't mean its getting cleaner,
the vultures circle
when the smell of meat
travels on thermals.

This is the time
to make plans
in order to break them,
when we make love on the beach
and get sand in our genitals,
it is because we cling to each other
far too easily,
and this time of year
will remedy
our attachment.

Spit it out, why don't you,
say that this time of year
is better
for self-loathing
and hatred
than sunny skies
and ice cream that drips
for days.

Not seen or heard from
you
in awhile.

I sat on the bus today,
with the strength of vinyl,
and a girl slinked by me
in a flower-print sundress.

Her plastic bra-straps stradled her shoulders,
akimbo
and slippery wet.

And the man in the front seat
almost lost his head,
when the bus rolled.

Not seen
or heard from
by some other woman.

Took a drive this morning,
ate my cigarettes,
inhaled gasoline,
put my feet on the curb
leaned on my hood,
and not seen or heard from
I waited for the movie to start.

The bobcat yowl of an NSX
pronounced the night
as quick,
and your serrated memory
cuts
like it should.

Not seen or heard from
you
in awhile.


I bet you smoke
with the other waitresses
and waiters,
busboys,
hosts,
hostesses,
managers,
line cooks,
and
chefs.

I bet you have a good time
in that tiny cafe,
where you run
from table to table
with that wild hair,
and can abandon yourself
to short-term memory
and long-term

loss.

Not seen or heard from you.

The sadnessss$%!&!!
Inside is barely assuaged
By the makings of a new day,
The sun filtered through the river of clouds,
The love curtain hanging from my window,
To my cheeks is barely alive,
Barely breathes morning,
The room shrouded in this lifeless glow
A gray, drowned pallor
And i didn't get drunk last night
And blast the night with fury
But my sadness$!@@#$!!! Kept me
Up
All
Night.
And a true friend doesn't just keep you down,
They get down with you.
And in the morning when she is gone,
The sun does not greet me,
Merely a showing of face.
A courtesy. A head nod.
A flip of the hand.
Flicka da wrist.
A wraith hanging back in the mist.

the heart is not an easy
thing
to
devour.

The black of darkness
is a black
that's not easy to conquer.

And you have
brought troops
with superior artillery,.

**** the *******
And all the noise
That harrowing guilt
It holds you down
Flowers!#@ always wilt
Always lose patience
For the sun
Love me now
But love me not
:] :]
We truck through
Just to truck through
:l :l
Love just to be loved to
???
It's easy to love
Uneasy to be
Loved.

:l
:l

Nights
And brain cells
Wasted.
Twisting and turning
Down roads
I know won't lead me home.

Why can't you hate me openly?
That would help me internally.

Easier to be the bad guy
Than the beloved,
But worse to be the abandoned
Than the forgotten.

How many nights
Did I pour myself into oblivion?

Shot after shot,
Burning my half-lived
Half-lifes
In this radioactive wasteland.

How beautiful,
A glowing, broken heart
Always ready for fission
And you so safe
Behind that picket fence
With Mr. Right.

I'm older now, and getting older quicker
And yet,
I still lapse into the days of
Late nights and burnt pancakes,
Love songs and flea markets,
Ferry rides and indigo sunsets,
Whistling wind and your lovely lips.

I've been stranded on this island so long.
I hope you've been getting my messages. I hope somehow the abyss has a voice for me and that you can hear it and be broken too.

I miss you
like the tree and the leaf.

It is inconceivable
that I have been given to you
and you to me
without the generosity of fate.

i thought you were
just a pretty white girl
and my ignorances
was dashed
upon the rocks
by your voice of freedom.

nature could not conceive
of a purity of a secretive love
more than you
have given to me.

There are a lot of yous
in the world,
and yet there are none.

I have tried to propagate
the same seed
in you
as I have
in black girls,
puerto rican
and irish
that I loved
who fell for my rico suave ****
so easily.

And that is not to say that
you are as easily
enforced
by the landscapers
of love
as them.

Love is love,
but I have not
felt a seed so
irrevocably
as your seed
that burns
the root
so easily.

And in me,
I have never felt so crazed
because i have learned the bias
of flesh
that wraps my heart
deeper than your skin.

Trust me
in the depiction
that I have
constantly visited,
that your flesh
is numberless;
your cheeks
so
fleckless
yet with so many scars.

I can eat a thousand
worms in a day,
I can devour
the whole of the earth
with the roots
of a player.

But there are girls
and there are women,
there are leaves
and there are seeds.

The leaves browning
in autumn,
the seeds giving in spring.

And the colorless
gender
of night
knows no bounds,
because there is not a race of love
but an insanity
of love.

So to the black girls,
white girls,
puerto rican
and italian
that I have loved,
I am not color-blind
but blind
in the dank night
humid
as your voice
with no name,
no race,
no label,
no gender,
no reputation.

I think
your back still arcs
like a feather.

But I still called you *****
from time to time.

When you put your eyeliner
on, I thought of different dreary places
where darkness could reside
peacefully.

Dream catchers litter too many of the beds
we have occupied.

When I hear about your new best friend,
I want him to know that you
know how to pull teeth out with your tongue.

The creamy bowl of the clouds
laundered the sky, pulling pollution
against the washboard of our love;
and your legs were always open underneath the table,
waiting for my fingers
jaundiced by nicotine.

Sometimes u didn't know if
no
was the right word.

No
was the right word.
it would have retained
both of our
sanity's
even in vanity.

It seems that
no
is the better kind of stain
than
yes
and all of its incumbent pain.

No
would have been better
than twenty-five feet of intestines
being tugged constantly..

Better then
the peeping heart
and
broken warbles.

Better than matinees.

Better than
runways
and
leaving landing gear
on my heart.

Better than
love itself.

All the things that make a person
Feel home, not unamused,
Not Bewildered, not beholden
To another place and time,
They did not come back with me on that plane ride,
Maybe i thought i'd dropped a peice of me,
Over the atlantic,
And i'd get it back coming home,
But no, i am there
Not here,
My stare is blank sometimes
I know,
there is nothing there.
I laugh, for all the wrong reasons,
I am not here,
Not present,
I'm laughing at tragedy,
The tragedy of  self left behind.
I drink, to get drunk
And let loose let loose of everything.
I drink to rage it out,
To yell, to cry through madness.
To fight and be fought.
To lose and lose again.
To not have anything,
And think i'm deserving.

*******,
The spider said.
Evil, evil thing to say,
To the fly stuck in your web.
I'd be gone in an instant,
If I hadn't been bitten,
Paralyzed,
Paroxyzed,
Entanglyzed.

Those shimmering beautiful eyes
And delightfully sweet and spicy aroma of your juicy *****.

My lips
Knew a thousand ways to make your legs curl and your body shrivel. To make the web bounce and thrum.

But it was you,
Charlotte,
You who knew the fool in me
That loved to love.
You, Charlotte,
Whose beautiful shimmering eyes and plump body
Fattened me up for slaughter.
And I loved you for every minute of it.

Even as you devour me now,
I close my eyes to the sound of your poison coursing through my veins,
Thrumming along,
Music to die by.

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.

We dine off of  hearts
goaded from the sea.

Hearts drawn to dead promise
and
cold hooks.

The gills
taste metallic
and the flesh is sweet
with mercury.

The haul is yanked overboard,
and the tuna fly
like angels of vengeance
to our dinner tables
where wine
condenses the poisoned bodies
into forkfulls
of pleasure.

The meat is sweeter
than anything we have ever tasted,
we hope that it puts us to sleep.

Not wanting to ****
or cherish
the bones of each other's bodies
has led us to gorge
on these fish,
these harbingers
of comas
that we are too awake
to realize
are the dreams of the stars
filtered through the
diamond-studded
rollers of the Pacific.

The blue and cold Pacific
it pumps out
the fuel for restaurants.

Restaurants
where we gnash our teeth silently
against oily meat.

Restaurants
where I have a drink
and you have a drink
and we have our fill
on vicarious oceans
that decay in the parties
of our bellies.

Tonight we will sleep
because we are drunk
with poisoned meat.

Robbed meat.

Catastrophic
is the grinder of your mouth.

A goaded heart
is an atomic bomb
and we have our fills on them.

Until we no longer want to ****.

The mercury
courses.

The waiter
dashes back and forth.

The cook
slices and dices.

The fishers haul in a line
ten-ton lines of bycatch.

All for a single forkful
of the most sugary
thing
two people can share
when their bodies
are useless
and wheezing for the oxygen
of a purified love.

I used to love
the ripple
of her.

I Cherished
placque suns.

I walked amongst
the withered oaky clouds
reaching to the earth
in capillaries
of lightning.

I made
****** on journeys
in the night
to the
licquor store.

I could take refuse
and morph it
in my hands,
because they were
her
hands.

She was the gravity of neutrinos,
I spun
and
spun,
and threw off layers,
as her bra
lay on the floor
and the laces
of her ******
lay
whitely
in the corner of the room.

I could've been anywhere
in those final seconds,
the club with it's thousand
orbitals of dancing brilliance,
the park
with it's millionaires
of hate,
the senseless
desert
of my
heart.

I was in the rainforest
feeling the universe
in droplets,
and my pores screamed.

Destruction
is something to reminisce over,
and I moan
like a cat in the night
with it's broken leg.

I moan
like a dwarf star,
getting smaller
and
smaller.

Heather,
I could fall
into
your
brown eyes.

I really could.

Time's not waiting
on
any
man.

So,
with that little ***
and littler
voice,
trust me
when i'm saying
I could talk to you for days
as your body became
nothing.

I fall in love easily,
let's hope this one
has a stamp
of truth.

heather,
with the long
brown
hair.

heather
with the long,
brown
voice.

heather
with the long,
brown
legs.

let me be redundant,
let me
be
unequivocal
in the recitations
of my heart,
when I say,
I'm feeling you
and my knuckles
could burn
as I grip
the soft limestone
holding me
from
your
eyes.

My
dreams
don't
dream
themselves
lazily
to sleep.

They
thrash
me
with
truth.

She's
been
cheating
all
night.

She's
been
crying
all
night.

I've
been
crying
all
night­.

I
wish
I
could
go
somewhere
where
the
sun
shines
the
whole
nig­ht
through.

Travelling down a broken, dark highway,
delight bending.

Cops pulsing behind us,
in the rearview,
creamed by streetlamps;
the cars
whittle to bad stars behind us.

No hot humans allowed on the road
tonight,
and it's foggy in the dashboard,
the dictum of the reepers.

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

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

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

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

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

I caught Gnat
cheating.

caught her in it.

Not in the bed,
but enough
in the heart.

She said,
"Yea,
I ******
Jose,
so what?"

And I said,
"so what?
I love you,
and you **** me
like this?"

I wanted to hit her,
wanted to say with an open palm
that my heart
was a closed ******.

That it hurt
when she forced her love in.

So Gnat left,
and I got bitter,
I drank
and drank
in that lonely apartment.

She had a good time
with
Jose,
but came back
when he was done
with
her.

So what is trouble,
but attachment?

Attachment that you can't
pry loose,
even when the loosest nails
are easy in a crowd of girls,
when the heart
is a rigid baseboard.


So, I felt happy
for a second,
then depression hit again
when we ******,
and I knew
she
was
gone.

I'm saying this a thousand times,
but bitterness grows,
and when I find a good one,
I let her go,
because she might cheat,
so I cheat on her
and in conversations over verse
I let it be known.

But I miss
companionship,
true love.

Now it's ruined.

The graying home.

The graying home,
night to dawn, dawn to hazed day,
back to dusk, to murky night.

The air is rife with the stench
of burning trash, pungent as a just-opened orange,
just as spicy, heavy as cigar smoke,
but dim, imperceptible.

The world turning, while we notice,
from our thrones in the shacks
where our discontentment brews.

You fall in love with a man
who's in love with his disguise.

He wears a black suit, black tie,
covers himself in glory, his eyes the starry sky.

In his bed, the book is written.
faithful lover, he authors your prison.

You cling to the book of his love,
singing its melancholic words.

In his black suit, black tie,
his scorn covers you in bruises, blackens your eye.

But the book, you still read
even after he leaves, and the love is dead.

You're disgusted by those lines,
losing faith in all of mankind.

You'll find yourself in time,
but one day again, you'll become the man in the suit and tie.

If i keep with my stroll,
I might just
catch a crazy case.

I might just catch
crazy
in the worst place.

In love,
the worst humans
debase
themselves
even lower.

So when her love
reaches me,
it make me less human
to the point that I don't even
know her.

I begin
to only know myself
in my episodic returns.

The episode
of kissiing.

The episode
of loving.

The episode
of breaking
over *******.

I wish I could pull ****
my way;
have gravity
in my palms
and the sun
in my arms.

I want to  feel heat in my biceps again,
I want the mountains
to rise up
again,
I want volcanoes
instead of pimples.

Why am I in this month-long
heartbreak?

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

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

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

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

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

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

*******
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?

This is not a bar
for the optional. This
is not a place for the unknown.
This is a place amongst the fire
and iron. This is the home
of tumbling mongerers
and life-dulled addicts;
of the hope-filled dull
and drone of life.

I have taken the drink of spasm with you,
and tasted the wine of dehydrated breath
and loss.

I, in my hopelessness,
was hopeful
and angry.

We were.

And i've drowned it all, with the racists
and nubients, rednecks,
how I love you *******.

Take my calming down
as love.
Take my Wilding out
as truth,
and hear the scream of my useless crush.

Hectic breakneck of the chopped up music.
beautiful wilt and hungry wither of the hips.
Drunken fingers grasping a drink and shaking so feverishly,
its like the adrenaline of war.
Knowing there is something past the moon,
past darkness. The freshness of sweat.
A black skirted woman dances.
The fabric squirming up her hips
as she drives her thighs,
whipping them back and forth.
Dreams bellow out of hollow bellies,
the bottom of the roar,
a squeak.
The bouncers in bowties and charcoal suits
look nice.
The opaque lights and streamers of brilliantly lit people and huge parade of bodies
washing and bouncing inside are like fruits in the dryer,
Tumbling and tumbling until they are fully juiced and induced.
But you can never find a willing partner
For good rough ***. Or even
love: the canary in the mine.
A pink, throaty croak
Emanating from its black lungs.

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.

Noisy
Noisy
Nosey
You hate to know
But
Love
          It


               Still.

When there's that couple
Sitting in the bar next to you,
And they are
Yammering
Yammering
Yammering

:0 :0

You want to scream
IT IS NOT REAL!!

...but don't
Because you have pushed away all that is real...
And don't even know anymore.

I am a **** writer
when I'm sober,
too much thinking.

The liquor
lets me get a breather;
gives me a chance
to process
the haywire;
the game slows down
when I've got even the cheapest ****
in me.

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 think
you are so beautiful
Heather,
that I could search for clams
on the beach
and only find fish.

I am unhappy with fish,
they are too stupid.

But your open mouth,
and the pearl
of its tongue,
is just too much.

You have a ******* boyfriend,
with a ******* mustache,
and flannel
two sizes
too small.

My heart is big enough.

I could eat you in a gulp.

Your heart could be dinner
for days,
most likely years,
and if I could just taste
your complexion
I
might finally know heaven,
even as I talk about it
too much.

If I go to Hell soon,
I would tread the fiery waters,
fight the three-headed dogs
and a burgeoning Cerberus,
for the touch
of your skin.

Aphrodite is not beautiful,
neither is
Zeus,
you are the goddess
that puts
all else to shame.

Last night, a thump.
A body hurled, third floor.
Second floor doesn’t do that kind of thing.

It’s 2 am.
That time of night when people when wake up anyways.
Blue-dark like antifreeze.

I was hard trying to go to sleep.

My bank account’s been throttled by loans,
Bills, Coronas, Blunts, Girls.

They shut off the water.
I walked to the store and saw a friend.
Ashamed, I laughed,
Said I liked water. “Water like liquor
like Koolaid like fun. “

What I really meant was:
“Water like survival like broke like stupid.”

This girl operates in ideas,
Dances like a ballerina,
Acts like an actress,
And will probably get bored soon.

There’s one across town that knows her way
around a lollipop, calls me sweet,
wears red just the way I like it,
***** **** with both hands
and doubles over to her tiny knees to laugh.

The actress is less sustainable,
but I sustain thoughts about her more.

The thump, it interrupts,
Distorts a globular fantasy into a brilliantly skewed
Pixelated awakening.

Pixels drain out. Room
Clears of smoke. Velvet embalming begins, purple night quickens,
Halogen streetlights invade in battalions.
**** me.

There’s a girl with a rancid *****
I still love.

The electricity thrums.

I’ve never been humble;
Super-conscious.

I can hear second floor:
footsteps light like *** fear,
tipping to the nexus. To the spot
where some hurled
lies,
above even them.

Third floor gets down like that. I can’t be a hero.

I used to think it was second floor.

But they don’t get down like that.

If we shut off the power,
You’ve gotta pay.

I know, I know,
How much?

180.

Carlos used to live on third.
Wife took the kids and dipped,
That elephant footed baby,
And the mouse-footed teen.

Carlos brought all kinds up after that,
Muffin women with huge, roach eyes,
Emaciated blondes with seamounts running their spines,
Thick, buggy black girls with ***** I wanted to stick my **** all the way into.

Then he quit. Broke one day. Told me everything was mine if I went up there,
and he was gone.

Third Floor was there in two days.

Bruh, they caught u stealing.

How much?

Don’t know, they were just talking about it at work today.

****.

I watch way too much ****. Tonight,
I get ***** enough to burn holes in my palms.
Maybe it’s the fear and anger.

Third floor is not my problem.

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

The horn moans
inconsequently
like a train
baring
down
on a car with no wheels.

A bass
can rumble
across my heart
like thunder
rolling across the sky
in circling f-16s.

The trademark of war
is loss.

The trademark
of peace
is complacency.

I would rather
drop bombs
on your heart,
than rest in the obesity
of redemption
and graves.

So when the jazz
begins
in the jazz club,
I feel nothing
but war,
no peace,
no knowledge,
just a war of teeth-*******,
mind-*******
drenching
limb-*******
hope
that
I
will
see
you
again,
when I know that no peace treaty
has ever been signed
without a loss
on
all
sides.

What peace is there
for a love-sickened heart?

What dreams reside
in the memories
of kisses?

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

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

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

There are fathers
pushing strollers.

There are mothers
making it
against all odds.

There are families
decreasing,
but
increasing.

There are computers
full with words
and poetry
and novellas.

There are black children
picking up books
more than guns.

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

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

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

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

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

There is nothing scarier
than ignorance.