Temper tantrums everyday,
the baby
I have become
is the same one that
pukes up mommy's love.

See,
lil ma
got me
on the switch,
she questioned my intentions
thought I was up to no good,
but all I wanted was a single parent love,
something
that could withstand pain
and nourish
a broken heart
like mine
all by its lonesome.

I just wanted you to see the other
side,
because I spend to much time
on mine.

I dictate how mean I can be,
but as always
we got into arguments
and consequently
you took the baby
between us
and held it away from me.

Not a baby
of flesh,
but a baby of love,
morphed into an adult
of
scorn.

So now what do we do
with this wild child
in our midst?
do we throw our hands up?
or do we put our middle fingers down
and hold each other's shoulders
like lovers should?

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,.

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

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.

You could take
thunder apart
with your teeth.

Lightning
doesn't know
the light
of
your
mouth.

When we finally talked again,
me and Gnat
were cordial.

I was finally happy
that she
was
happy.

She said,
"I really am in love this time."

And it felt good
because
I'd known she'd finally
found it.

And that the verses
of my poetry
couldn't reach her,
like the symphony
of the exquisite
symphony
of his
could.

I love Gnat,
because
she is in love
and
happy.

I find happiness
in the fact
that a girl
I constantly ****** over
is now in for the ride of her life;
a ride full of ups and downs
highs and lows,
but a love
that can resist
a rollercoaster.

I am finally happy for the love
of my life,
and they don't tell you in the movies
that you can be happy for the love of your life
when they're in love
and staring down the
barrel of eternity
not thinking of it as a gun
but
thinking of it as true
real
love.

And that's what Gnat has.

And I'm so happy.

*******,
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.

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

It becomes a sculpture
of
sunrise.

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.

I miss you
girl
with the hair that smells
like sweet beer
and
breath
like iron.

I am anemic
and brutal
without you.

Saw a ******* on the border.

Looking for fireworks and something
To keep her busy for the rest of the night.

I was shuffling through black cats and m-80s.

She was in a pink spaghetti strap shirt
and  a black ***** belt.  

Brown eyes
like cut-down bamboo.

When she walks by, a little kid
steps on my chucks and trips.

The kid was trying to squeeze in between
Her and a dude who was trying
To talk to her.    
                                                                                                                          
The floor
Is littered with plastic broken fuses,
M-80s and a texture sticky like
It had been mopped with *****.

Too me she was beautiful.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

And she looks at me,
and I know,
it's done.

And she looks at me,
and I know.

The worst part of it all,
is that her eyes look the same
now
as they did
then,
but she just doesn't look at me
the same.

What a shame.
A **** shame.

And She looks at me
seeing all the things I've done,
and there's no going back
now.
And that's a shame.

Love is a shameful thing.

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.

I saw her
walking from the bodega
and it was hotter
than a tick
cradled under my *****,
and from there the fire
spread.

I was listening
to life
after
death,
had that **** on BLAST,
and she was carrying groceries
in the crook of her arms,
plastic bags
swinging
in response to the weight of each other.

Back and forth,
until I thought they might
just get ideas
and run away together.

And right there,
with my windows down;
my eyes on her,
hers on the concrete,
I wanted a forty,
cause forties clear my head
and my conscience
was banging me in the side of my head
like two bags
full of loaded groceries
on
frail arms.

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.

There was no time
there was never
enough.

It was hard enough
for me
to sit beside you
and not stroke your leg
like a crystal ball
and feel you beneath
your trembling skin.

It doesn't make sense
to have all this religion
and nothing
resembling
truth.

When you got up to go
to the bathroom
I took notes
on your hips.

How your thighs swayed
against the weight
of a poverty of faith.

Split apart skies
by lightning
bolts from some
jealous gods
seemed to crack
your iris's.

Mistrust from the past
pain kept you
held in a barricade,
a battalion
against your better will
to gather my
unchained love.

When you sat back beside me
I was afraid
that you would look at me
like a stranger
that had studied
every line of your body.

Your lips remain unknown,
and the thunderous crack
of breaking steel
withdrew inside of me
as I wanted
more.

As I wanted to know
what had happened
to make you so vicious.

Vicious love
made for a vicious lover
for a vicious
interpreter
that took notes
on a ****-poor notepad
yearning for a faith
in the spirit
that leapt up against my fingers
underneath your skin.

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.

**** 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

"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.

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.

New things,
New emotions,
New places,
New,
New, new.

So old to you.

All I'd wanted to do,
You'd already done.

No magic in flipping through
the pages of last year's edition.

I just hadn't read it yet,
No spoilers babe,
Please,
don't ruin it.

But you did ruin it,
somehow,
The way that lovers always do.

Without words,
But even more brutal.

You laid beside me,
As our bodies burned in the tumult.

You stared at me glumly,
As I hooted and hollered,
Energized and convulsant at the pleasures
Of the newness of each moment.

Not knowing that I was being seen through.

A placeholder.

A parenthesis.

An interesting afterthought.

That I was the means to an end.

The work-around.

That you were thinking of him.

And the countless pages ya'll had written.

But, I eventually got wise.

I saw the blank awe
For augurs:

The listless staring,
Limp kisses,
Lonesome nights
Too easily won fights.

It was written.
Written like this poem
And
Meant to be erased.

I want you to always think of me
When you think about what you've done.

And I hope it makes you smile.

I've still got the dog, *****.

I've got a date
with the devil,
she never wears stilletos,
just a pair of chucks
and them lee dungarees,
if I order a drink for myself
I have to order one for her.

"Are you going to drink that?"
I ask.

It's just been sitting there for awhile,
so warm and hungry.

"No,"
she says,
and her eyes are already pocked
with burst blood vessels,
already glassy with my soul,
she's got it now.

So I take it,
and take everything she's got to give.

Which is a lot,
considering.

I am searching for
equilibrium.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.