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.

***
was so
cold,
silent
and hard
by then.

When I pushed into her,
I could feel
the weight
of repetition.

And by then
the weight
was normal
and safe.

A high, almost silent
ring;

like echoes of steel,

swung through my head
like a pendulum
and when I came
the ringing
stopped
mid-swing.

It shook
my head
with
its
high
gong.

*******,
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.

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.

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.

pain
be the body of grace.

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

but now we're here.

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

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

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

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

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

god,
there's hell in me.

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

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

i'd suggest you go now.

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.

Once he's out on the open road again,
the glittering lights
devastate him.

Reminds him, too much,
of the woman who's left behind
nursing a half-glass of wine
on the porch,
eyes glossy and red,
mascara the gauntlet runner.

She's finally saying goodbye
to his sorry behind.

She hates him. Cut and clean.
"Get your ****, you need to leave."

"If you stay here, I'm calling the cops."

She whips out the phone, taps in the number
shoves it in his face.

She plays no games,
no ***** given today.

A baby bump, bumped its ugly head
into him.

Sleeping some nights, on the soft shell,
he could hear it too.

A murmur here, a murmur there,
a murmur everywhere.

She dreams of the days on the beaches,
the crystals on the clear blue,
the screeching silks careening through the sky,
the canary diamond cradled by the waves.

The good ole days
before disgust
ruined her heart against him.

The gorged days of Fall,
burning, passionate nights of Winter,
glorious victories of Spring.

One night, he flipped out,
left the house heaving
and didn't come back
for awhile.

But the nail driven
couldn't be un-driven.

Before he turned the ignition--
for thirty minutes--
he picked a blister on his thumb
until it bled.

Droplets
of rain
on the leaves
make synthesizers
of the earth.

Echoes
begin in the brilliance
of
destruction.

Walking through the morning
in the decreptitude
of missed dreams.

I have been drunker
than any of you;
but you have all hated
yourself
enough
to
think
of
ending it all.

The drunkenesss
of suicide
is enough to understand
my pain.

In the night
you have contemplated
a thousand ways.

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.

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.

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.

I have headaches.

Maybe I drink too much,
and my family thinks
I'm an alcoholic;

put too much sauce in the venom
and it becomes
a pasta of destruction.

How little
we value
each other's hearts,
when they lie
in oak fingers,
so old
and
so known
that it's hard for us
to know
their beginning.

When compassion
lies dormant
like the dogwood
with no lavender,
it is easy to forget
that we are human.

Because I love you,
and I should have more pride,
I should never say that,
it is unbecoming.

But it is easier to say,
than I have forgotten you,
that you are broken
and twisted inside of me.

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.

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.

My drunk dreams
are astounding.

I wake up
at four
in the am.

have a smoke.

Then go back to sleep,
still tipsy.

Judy Greer
makes it to the farthest
reaches of my imagination,
and I must save her
from
a
man
with a hundred
groping hands.

A girl with a spirit
full of the ripest sunrises
in their peaches,
pinks
and plums
must be told
that it is ok
to be this sad
in the morning.

When there is no reason,
and night is crying
over
its demise.

I must take her from the sky,
to take her to my bed,
where we lay naked
having never ******,
but because it's much easier
to tell the truth
when skin is touching.

It is much easier
to feel human,
when you are touching
them
unadulterated.

I must rescue
the world in my dreams,
I must eradicate
disrespect
and
cat-calls.

I am the defender
in my dreams.

Why is it that I dream of saving women,
because I have been told
to do so?

Or because
I am doing what comes natural?

Or maybe
I am just hurt,
and when I am hurt,
I want to save people.

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.

In the alcoves I hunt for mystery
and pleasure. Seeking your joy. I hope
to break you to the core,
and make you crumble to all my love.
Id hope your days are perforated silences,
my voice a trickle of whiskey.
I treasure your absence,
thinking to myself, with a cigarette.
I sip down evan williams
Pretending not to hurt,
but with a hurricane
your surge through me.

Maybe
it's *******.

maybe
I'm
confused.

Maybe moving onward
and upward to the next one,
is just a way
for me
to hurt
gracefully.

To feel nothing
as I have felt
so many times before.

Because I've had girls before
that went back to old boyfriends,
and it's easier for me to say
WELL, **** IT THEN,
and **** HER TOO,
SHE NEVER CARED.

Instead of uttering,
I care too much
over too much coffee
and too much Evan Williams.

Stay away girl of the Eagles,
find a new one,
a one
that will
love you
as beautifully
as I did,
but didn't say.

I was afraid
you'd run
away
if I told you
I think
about you
constantly,
because I'd wake up
at
four
in the morning
and still tipsy
mourning
over
if
I can
be of service
to your heart.

I thought you'd leave
and I'd be stuck here
with a licquor heart.

I'd be stuck here
as I am.

This is poison,
"Statistics show
that one out of every
three black men
will spend time in prison
in his lifetime."

This is the remedy,
"I sit alone in my room drinking."

I feel like
society has tried to castrate black men,
because our *****
are so harmful,
especially to white women.

We break them,
make them unfit for society
right?

Statistics make us inhuman.

My skin color
has to be more than a distinction,

**** this *******,
Imma move to Alaska
and forget the girls I loved
and the ones that loved me
even though it was detrimental to them.

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.

I know she ******* hates me,
She says so,
In so many words,
Being just nice enough
To hurt me deeper everyday.

I know she wants me to leave her
to whatever she wants.

I get the message.

I say,
I will.

She says nothing.

I’ve gotten number.

Starting to feel less.

A plastic plant.

I think I'm insane,
returning to my youth again,
the same cycle of fire and ice.

I am
a memory,
like the sweet sugar
of justice.

The tiniest droplets of my presence,
raining down from this frozen sky,
are so insignificant to your tongue,
as to make me important.

And I wish I  was.

Wishing like
a flower,
a seedling underneath the permafrost,
hardened against winter,
harder for summer.

I just want to meet poets.

The ones
in
the clubs
not
made for poetry.

The one's who
reside
in places
where
their thighs are places
for grinding.

The one's that push dudes off
without malice.

I want to meet the poets
at the bar,
taking in all their ears can handle,
because someday
they will
write it all down.

I want to meet the poets
in the middle of divorce,
becuase the pain of separation;
is a fissure of
love.

Poets in their cars
at five in the afternoon
with the windows open,
because carbon dioxide
builds in the system
and a greenhouse
of hope
may
be
feeding
unborn seeds.

I just want to meet poets.

a man like me
needs you
because his heart
is broken.

Sometimes
I like to think,
that what we had
was part of
a dream.

I just want to hold you
even though
you've travelled across
broken bridges
before.

I like to come back to you
in the swirling clay
of night.

When purple clouds
make my pain
seem all right.

So, I drink
to you
constantly,
because if I don't
I'll forget me
in place of the breeze
that rustles
over my rattling lungs.

I could never sing
you a song,
and I could never
drink
for
so
long.

Oh,
touch me once more,
let me feel your tiny hands,
those black fingernails
and their jaundiced
finales.

So much smoke
was wasted
over
our love.

And it makes one
go crazy.

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.

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.

"Where do you find
these
broads?"

I don't know.

But i find them
so that I can love them.

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

So many wasps have stung me
before.

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

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

Carmen's legs
are pixilated cerulean.

Rubbing beasts
that itch at untouchable
bruises beneath her skin.

Her computer is on.

She rests crossed legs
on its desk.

There's something sticky about her skin.

Carmen's date is calling,
her speakers make a sound
like **** plopping in a toilet.

The webcam blinks
like Sauron's eye.

Carmen has never had
any of the cards
in her hands.

Not a whiff of a queen of hearts
or a jack
of all trades.

It seems she's been slipping for awhile now,
in her black room, colored
by the glow of some
techni-cyclops'
cavernous mouth,
crimson, heart-shaped teeth,
and scythe tongue.

She has never known the war machine
of love,
or the war machine of self-determinism.

Now she does,
her compudate buzzes on-screen.

Tiny sprouted pixels
jump into a constantly
buzzing whole.

He's got a bored face,
and Carmen knows this is the look
of the generation.



Carmen lifts her legs from the desk.

Puts her hands on her lap.

Licks her lips.

She wants to know
what lowered human beings
do when they are restless.

She is seeking something
moreso
philosophical
than
******.

"Bored, much?"

Carmen asks sardonically.

He took it literally.

He jumped at attention.

"Oh, no,
now that I've seen you."

"How do these things work?"

"Well, I guess we talk to each other,
and if you like me
then we go from there."

And to Carmen this was reticence,
this was blasphemy.

She had the cards in her hands,
finally.

Carmen's legs are pixilated  high cerulean.

Cerulean the color of
a tiger ocean,
****** cakes,
slushies,
a sun-****** sky,
a corpse. Skin against a computer screen.

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.

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.

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.

Angela,
would you ever
come back?

I've been asking
this question
as the licquor
subsides.

I've been
sleeping
on it,
just to take
its weight down.

I ate
three tasteless burgers,
and rummaged
through their tomatoes
looking for your lips
red as cherries.

Hopefulness
is a disease,
a cancer
because it spreads
in violent fingers.

The **** of my heart
has begun
before the burgers
settled.

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.

Can i tell u
Can i tell u
That the loneliest
I feel
Is whn im deepest
In my own mind
Tht the loneliest
I feel
Is so deep
That id rather reach in
Thn reach out
Rather feel u
Than me
Rather be ecstatic looking
:) :) :) :)
:)
:)
Than say whats going on
Deep inside of me
Wish i had u hear with me
Wish u could be the eventually
To eventually see
Whats ******* with me
Wht makes me wnt to push away freends
Of yrs
In sake of solitude?
Rather than love
I seek inner sanctum.
****** up
Push away friwnds of yrs.
Im so gone now
Wondering
How
Long
Now

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.

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

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

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

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

I am searching for
equilibrium.