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.

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 put you
over my shoulder
like a spooled
rope.

Twisted too many
directions,
a little tug
and you might go
anorexically
thin;

too taut for me
to yank anymore.

And when you come to me
drunk,
a *****
of yelling,
I think of those times
when we sat close together,
barely touching.

In those days,
we were both drunk
and bitter over forever.

Beers chased liquor
over steeples;
we dropped dimes of pain
over smoked ****
and bleeding anger.

Time languored,
and eventually
or anger
stymied.

When you cried
twisted beyond
compare,
I held you close,
sniffed your hair.

People hurt each other because they can,
and we lay
on a mattress of your canned hopes.

I would never be a prince charming,
even when I groped
you;
when we were tossing each other,
fighting like ghosts do:
bad jabs,
quiet knives,
softer moans.

So, I curled you
over me;
beneath my earlobe,
as your whistled tears
drained energy.

Our synergy was syphoning
each other's
pain;
coiling nooses around our hearts
and kicking out the chairs
holding up our underneath souls.

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 had so many purses
of night
that i couldn't sweat her.

I couldn't feel warmth
even in the embrace
satan
made
when he held me
in his sweater.

Hell could catch me for a thousand reasons,
I might be a sinner,
I might **** a man if need be.

But my heart
is made from a century
of hate.

A century of racism,
telling me that the white girl I loved,
was probably getting *****
when we ******
and made love
on the side.

So what can I say,
when I go on journeys
against Hades,
trying to pull life
from the depths
like Orpheus' stupid ***
couldn't do
for
Eurydice.

I'll never do it again,
this is where
the heart the begins.

In hell,
trying to make
sense
of the devil
and calling her
to make amends
for my sins
with girls
with a ***** smell like vanilla.

Blandness is a disease,
I can **** a thousand of them
with ease.

Ease is the son
of lazyness
and I've gotten careless.

**** 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

Like pent-up rage,
a demon
in its cage
hungry for
a mouthful
it has not
had in days.

a mouth not
its own filled
to the brim.

worked on

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.

The words of a heavy
heart,
are replaced
by the resplendence
of life.

I think about her
constantly,
but truthfully
you have been my only friend.

I call
and
call.

I place hope on Hermes,
I place hope on my messages
and their ability
to convey
how much I care
over telephone lines
and the truth
of my heart's reminiscent eye.

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.

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?

Randy was drunk and high
and skipping school.

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

Javaughn picked her up
beside the chinese place.

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

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

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

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

But she said no.

"I gotta finish," he said.

NO she yelled.

But it was colorless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because it is not.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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,.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As we ****
our souls
touch the bottoms
of the river
where pirannahs lie
in wait.

Leaden stars crossed her eyes,
and she has told me
she will only love him.

I have had a few hidden tears
in that stolen bed of dreams;
and she sleeps with my kisses:
a reminder of betrayal.

It is six in the morning,
here,
and I am lazy drunk.

I get out the bed '
and leave her
krunk
on maddened sadness.

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.

We have seen
and called for misunderstanding,
But I have seen our future children,
mulatto genearation,
Ticked off,
I am at our confusion,
Foggy like the farts of war,
The bullets continue to fly
even in silence,
From my brother's gun,
*** can you call youreself,
When you hold tight to the chains,
We must let loose,
We must see the sun and its morning fog
As the dew of renewal,
Because I have seen you witb oure
Mulatto children, and you looked at me,
I was a father.

Leaden stars crossed her eyes,
and she has told me
she will only love him.

I have had a few hidden tears
in that stolen bed of dreams;
and she sleeps with my kisses:
a reminder of betrayal.

It is six in the morning,
here,
and I am lazy drunk.

I get out the bed '
and leave her
krunk
on maddened sadness.

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.

Little lady,
your comforts are poison,
you never return my love
and I am constantly hurt,
wishing you were here
in the birth of my confusion.

In the midst of a moonlight ****,
I lied to myself,
and said we were making love.

The universe unfurled,
and your body liquified
in the heat of the moment.

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

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

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

In forms underlayed with venom,
I have perpetrated goodness.

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

It is not enough
to stomp on our hearts;
It is worse to stomp
on the ground we find beautiful.

Even when I think
of you,
I think of you.

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.

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.

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,.

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.

The impure line
of your 1950s body
is all curves and no nonsense.

No holding back those valleys of flesh
the pools of sweat lambent in your thighs
with the reflections of a thousand firefly's eyes.
No pain in that extra
on your pelvis.

A few pounds more,
is a few roses less, less bulllshit.

Sometimes your lips become chapped,
caked by the dryness of conversation
and the impropriety of self-consciousness
and I like to kiss them,
because mine are chapped,
and i'm so self-conscious,
so worried about that other couple
in the corner.

When we are in the dark room
of each other's arms,
and I could kiss you but don't,
or when I could grab your ***
but won't,
I keep my arms around your waist
and pull you tight, warm, and close,
just to taste the sourness of
stale deodorant,
washed away perfume,
and your old milk breath,
because you're gaining some weight
and I want to savor this heat
for licking away those lambent pools of sweat
on your tiny back,
grand piano waist,
and the crack of your ***.

Ecstasy. Ecstasy. I'm losing it
just thinking about Cosmo burning.

I swear,
Gnat
had two moods,
crazy
and angry,
one time
she punched me in the face,
and I smacked her,
and smacked her again
until we were spooning
on the couch
and she cried
as a lavaflow of tears
fell on my wrists.

But then
she had this mood
where she'd
clutch me,
through my ribs
to my heart,
and we'd love each other
so hurtfully
that I'd die
every time she touched me.

She grabbed my heart
so viciously,
and consequentially,
that I just wanted to die
in her fingertips.

Without you,
I am alone again,
and each moment
feels like a dry fever.

I go to sleep
in fits of time,
a few hours
here
and
there,
scattered like bouys.

When I feel happy
its because I'm in the desert
and
that's the kind of happy
you feel.

*******
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?

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.

***
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.

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.

Today drunks got up,
on an upended axis.

And wobbled
on driven souls,
driven to ****
and let the hate loose.

A drunk walked in mud
to work,
and his boss sported a smile
of sad pride.

He had done a great job,
and no one knew.

When they were sitting down
on the couch,
cracking the air with laughter,
the country man
looked up
and saw
a daughter of light on the floor,
slitted through the blinds.

He wanted so badly
to cry.
But didn't.

An imp limped
upstairs
and down, back again
to the basement,
and his old ma
heard him sparingly.

So much happened to day,
so beautifully
sad,
clear, and azure,
that the masks
of nails
spiking our faces,
slowly wore down
against steel skin.

When the sun went down,
aching for pain again,
they took the first swig,
then a second.

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.

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

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

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

Know that my
heart
is
quick.

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

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

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

You can choose your friends.

Not your lovers.

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

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

That the bubble
is never
greater
than
the
ocean.

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

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