the
      smoke
         fills his lungs
           like a smokestack.
                   the butts litter
                             ashtrays like
                    little potholes of ash
           throughout
                        his room.
              stacks upon stacks
          of the disgusting things,
brownish yellow- just like
           the **** on his
                            teeth.
                              
                                 his
                            breath
                                smells
                               and tastes
                                      as if you were
                                 lying facedown
                            on the hot
                              pavement, tongue
                            to the ground
                      gravel, dirt and gasoline
         on your tastebuds.
                  he burns
                             he yearns
                          for the fix.
                   when he works on his car
                       in the hot sun,
                             his fingers shake
                   unless he's
        holding a smoke.


                                           And every day when she comes home
                                            she kisses him full on the mouth and
                     breathes
                            
                          it
                              
                           in.

Take a word.

Take any word,
write it backwards,
say it with a smirk.
Take a word and then
take another.
Roll them across your constellations,
tickle them 'til they squeal and surrender;
take your words and breathe them,
against them,
through them,
with them.

Take a word and peel it apart.
See if it floats.
Unravel its nucleus and strip it of charge.
Pound on its door at three a.m.,
yell its name against the grain,
don't stop until it comes out and steps on you.
Take a word and marry it.

Take a word and make it bold.
Sleep with it on a drunken Tuesday;
leave before it wakes up.
Handle it differently.
Write poems about it,
write essays that don't fit,
write like words are all that matter.
Use few.
Use far more than you could ever possibly need to explain what you're trying to say.

Take a word and beat it to death,
nurse it back to health.
Show it to your friends,
hide it in your freckles,
live like it's not judging your movement.

Take a word and never give it back.
Take it hostage,
a pet for a game you haven't named yet.

Take your words and coax them into order,
let them fall apart.
Rearrange and unscramble your words,
forget about their meanings.
Use them for good and evil,
a sword to smite ignorance.

(But for the love of god,
speak up.)

Sweetheart,
there is a star
cut out from my heart

I would give it
to you, hold it
outstretched
and let it fall
into your hands,
a warm and glowing
reminder of something
I told you, years ago

I would hold
galaxies, swirling,
up to your face where
you could watch them
turning  --

I'd leap over train tracks
and lay my hand close
to the flame at your core
just so I could
brush this white-hot
pain away from your chest,

I'm watching it
blistering there, and
the flames are licking
at the piece of me that has
always been connected
between us, veins weaving
together in tangled knots, I'm stuck
so close to you it hurts

And tonight, this holy
darkness closing over
your head, I hope
you can think of this,
and touch your hand to
your heart --

I hope you can smile
thinking of the ties
that bring me sailing
back to you.

Lisa Nelle
had two names
like a pornstar.

She'd put her makeup on and stick all this blackness on
under her eyes
like she was holding night
in bags.

We watched Hey Arnold! DVDs at five in the morning,
and smoked the whole place up.

Sometimes her and Alexis would go in the back room.

Alexis never liked me.

Lisa Nelle had this way of looking at you
where she'd take her eyes
and she'd work her way
down to your stomach.

She could find a star in my intestines,
a dwarf light could warble in my stomach
and she'd see it through my belly button.

She'd pull it out
wings and all
and tell me
that Khalil knew the answers.

Out of this two-ton purse she carried around,
she'd whip out a compilation of Khalil Gibran.

One time she told me how her father
used to pull her hair
and thighs.

She didn't say anything about it again.

When we tripped shrooms,
she took my hands and put them on her neck
and asked me to feel for the nebulas
underneath her skin.

When I read
some of the stuff you send me,
the emails,
texts
or poems,
I can't help but wonder how many words
I now know as a result of you
that I wouldn't know
if I hadn't been looking
around for bud
and someone I knew
that
knew you.

I'm sorry Lisa Nelle,
that things didn't work out with you and Alexis
when they did
with you
and
Sabrosa.

Sometimes I hate myself too.

My hands look old.
I don't know what happened to their previous beings,
their soft, pale, younger selves.
My hands are cracked from the dry humorless days of anticipation.
I have hangnails, my skin so dry it's splitting from itself.
And they shake.
They shake along with my voice and my thoughts.
Trembling with excitement and worry.
When you're in the room,
especially when you're not, though.

I have stretch marks.
On my inner thighs, and on my sides,
they remind me of roads, of maps, of going places.
Each goosebump is a hillside,
each little crack in my dry skin is a riverbed, waiting for rain.
My body is a terrain of  imperfections,
and I'm just trying to keep still enough
as to not disturb the world that I harvest.

I would love to learn how to waltz before I die
because that will make my dance into the ocean
that much more unbelievable, remarkable, dramatic.

I'll be most endearing as I move against the tide twirling with oxygen
as my beautiful partner; she acts with finesse and is unbending in the moonlight,
predicting my next moves and graces into the ice cold dark of the sea.

The water is soft and encouraging at first, supporting my moves without question.
As it deepens to my legs then chest then chin it fights my gentle rhythms with ferocity
Oxygen keeps dancing on the surface. Why won't she keep dancing with me?

She bids me àdieu rather harshly as my head finally goes under,
and the music blaring from my phonograph on the shore is drowned out.
I hear the rushing of a billion bubbles, yet my open eyes see only black.

What was once a dance is now a march without beat as I continue ahead
the iron shackles I wrapped my legs with seem to be the only glint of light
in the shades of blue that ought to be black that envelope all of my sight.

When the music died my will to ended as well.
I want nothing more than to drink tea on my patio
my record player off the shore and near to me.

I wretch and I turn, my eyes set direct on the surface
where I see the moon filled to brimming with jade milk.
I reach to the greened moon, but never come back up.