There was nothing plastic
About the way your smile showed
Or about the way your arms felt
But a voice in the back of my head told me so
And last weekend
I melted a carpet I thought was wool
You could have fooled me
Except now there is a hard, shiny, iron-shaped mark
Plastered into the carpet's soft mat
To be honest, I was a little disgusted
When I pulled the iron away and found
Strings of green and red clinging to it like bubblegum
And to be honest, I felt a little disgusted with myself
Not to mention you
When I left a handprint in your soft back
And strings of skin still sticking to my palm
Prove you, my little plastic boy, are just a doll
By all the tests that matter
A human illusion too easily destroyed
By an excess of warmth

There are power lines
buried in your wrists,
barbed wire fantasies
dying to escape

You and I,
we were fingerprints,
we were the ink stains
left behind

We were the frost left
aching on the windows
after winter has gone,
we were feathers drifting
down from the sky after
the geese have flown

We were the song
played during the credits,
we were the silence after
the storm, we were the glow
at the end of a perfect kiss

We were the hearts
that had never been broken,
we were the breeze that had
never been touched,

You touched me like
a sandstorm, like the flames
licking up the pyre on the day
Joan of Arc died, you touched me
like a fingernail moon,
longing for the sun

We spent our days in the sun,
our chapped lips turning red
under the sky, the paper dreams
you never gave me, because

if there's one thing I know,
it's that my waiting arms were
always waiting, you never
let your hurricane heart sweep me
up in the storm, I never knew
your mother died until I saw it
on the news, you had a life

outside of this and I never knew.
But if there's one thing I know, it's that
my heart stopped the day you let me
brush your freckles across your face
like wayward strands of hair

That little mouth
open,
soul escaping
through your lips

July 29, 1976*

Eighteen, skinny
as a whip, all curving bones
and freckled knees
Your curled hair, that timid
smile balanced above the
pearls of your jaw

The city is dark at night,
you were never afraid but the stars
were diamond-sharp that night
and you stopped, shivering in the cold

I can hear your last words
frozen on your tongue,
"Now, who the hell is this" -
your hand on your hip
voice a knife

A bullet to your chest
breaks the silence, folding
yourself in half, a paper crane
crumpled on the pavement

The papers said you were killed
instantly; I don't think you were
I think you knew, a bullet buried
in your best friend's thigh -
did she watch you die?

The petals in your hair,
they've fallen, years ago
This woman lying here,
the scarred pavement of a
New York City street -

She is someone else, not
the starling you were
in your father's eyes
Wings outstretched on
a fire escape, waiting
for a breeze to pull you
over the edge

I want to stumble into you
Like the locked door at the end of the hallway
The one with the sign that doesn’t say
DO NOT ENTER
As much as it says
I ****** DARE YOU

And I dare
I dare to devour your deviance
Like a grungy punk rocker on a microphone

Head shake tongue wag cartoon coyote horn howl

What?
I have no discretion
Leave the lights on
I want us both to see why we taste so bad

I mean
Let’s pound like pistons
Until the oil dries up
And our engines seize

I have nowhere to go

I do not want to go home tonight
I want to sloppy seconds myself
Before passing out
With my head in the crook of your neck

Even drenched in sweat
You smell so sweet

I want to kiss you
I want to taste your body’s attempt
To cool what I do to you

I want to heat you up again

I bought the clapper and unplugged everything else
Just so you could tell me to ******* like a strobe light

Well
Gorgeous
Now I can

Come place your lips on my throat
And I will sing for you

You are so much more beautiful than I could ever be
Let me know what that feels like
By wanting me back

This gentle ache
Of dancing
And drying joints

I wonder if you’ll still be this **** when you’re old

I ask because I have lost any desire for grace

I have fallen from it

And want to stumble into you like a locked door

Fumble for the house keys

Might actually make it inside

If you took your hands off me

“I think I’m a coffee table,” I whisper as I lock the door. My hands are cold as I slip them into my pants. Tonight, my icy hands are yours and though I am alone beneath my sheet, I can will you to be here. All I need is the slick of my spit and the broken borders of my mind.

Welcome to Gomorrah. A nation built on depravity.

He is The Coffee Table. No need for names or personality. So long as he spreads himself thick on the stained furniture, he is stained furniture. It’s an art, and he takes it with stride. "Take it," the chandelier cries in the most meaningless of tones. Money for *** never did mean love. The camera is watching.

She is The ****. Nobody knows of her children twice never born, nor do they care to listen to her tales of men who swear to love her as they beat her with their fists. But, like the author, she would rather be loved with a brutal, manipulative passion than to not be loved at all. So as long as those legs are spread, and there’s a chandelier between them, she is content with being nothing but a ****.

She is The Victim. Born forthright into this world under the name “John.” How can God forget something as vital as her *******? I understand He makes no mistakes, but He made a mistake. So she stands on the corner waiting for johns. (Ironic.) Raising some money. (For what?) To fix what God ******* up on the first time around.

He is That Little Boy. No longer searching for answers to why his piano teacher gropes as his fingers dance across the keys, and hers across his lips. Confusion and anguish are washed away by a tide of childish reasoning: His father works. His mother drinks. And somebody loves him.

Funny way of showing it. Depraved, really. But this is Gomorrah, a nation built on depravity.

Turns out The Coffee Table is a romantic. Likes to slow dance to nothing, stare at the stars, and cook dinner for you to the tune of Bing Crosby. He’s not a coffee table at all. The **** is a mother. Third time, she carried the baby, lost track of the deadbeat, and found her independence. His abuse was a rhythm she never cared for anyways. As for The Victim? Cost thousands of dollars, ten STDs, and her family but she is a woman. His mistake is fixed. How about That Little Boy? He is now just as much a monster as the woman who taught him to play E flat. Turns out they have a lot in common: At age 38 he likes little boys too.

That is Gomorrah, no that is America: An explosion of pure sexuality displayed for all the world to scrutinize, slander, and wholly enjoy. Pleasure has no morality, so let's watch the show.

The summer began with a cigarette:

She was the hottest dude I had ever seen.

‘Bulldog’ we would call her late in the night
as she danced the northern soul in her Trucker Hat
that fit a little too big, and her boy shirts that wore a little too baggy
to hide the fact that her bra had skipped town.

In an instant she was my best friend
and after a few nights of staying up a little too late
smoking a few too many cigarettes
Bulldog and I had become a little too close.

Near her house was a monolithic parking garage
that we began sneaking out to each and every night.
The orange lights flooded each level,
painting our rescue mission clothes yellow.

“It’s nice,”* I remember thinking,
“Now we never have to buy anything yellow.”
When we got to the top we would peek over the edge
and see who could spit farthest.

Bulldog won.

I’d see who could *** the farthest.

I won.

We would laugh about all the people we loved
and how they’d never love us back.
Then we cried about all the people we loved
because they’d never love us back.

Hours passed, and each night was radically different but always ended the same:

We would sit on the edge of the fifth floor
surveying the city that hated us most
and holding each other's hands because we both wanted to jump,
but neither wanted the other to die.

I loved my Bulldog like I have never loved any man, woman, or person
and like I never will again.

She was my soul mate.

And the summer went on.

the joyful dancer of my youth
prances about my room, whispering
truths to my all but deafened ears.

'go away,' i respond.  'you belong to a time
i am no longer a part of.'

she takes my hand, but the skeleton of
my existence pulls away from her.

'did you think it would be so easy to get
me out to the dance floor again?'

i am a stubborn woman,
lost to the steps of dancing ways.

no, i choose now to sit here and watch.
the tango of life dances, her fluid body
pouring itself across the floor.

i am a poet, you see, and i set myself
here on these sidelines because observation
and reflection are the only things that keep my
heart beating.

participation?  she speaks a language too foreign
to my ears for comprehension.

His finger fidgeted with the small hole in his jeans
Right above the left knee
It caressed the rust of a healing scab

He knew boyhood was sitting at the tense end of a slingshot
While balancing on a thin branch
Creeping in through the window
Of his tree house

His shins were permanently bruised
From hitting the edge of the bed
After jumping and missing
In order to avoid whatever may be living underneath it

Ten years from now he will regret
Not being in enough family photos
And for placing too many boxes full of old clothes
Underneath his bed
For anything to truly live there

He will know manhood sitting at a red light
Begging the breaks to go out
So his only option will be
To go

When he is old
And so much a baby again
He will beg time to be patient
Long enough to understand

Why when he was a boy
The slingshot band never broke from the tension
Before releasing rocks to break windows
He had to spend the summers working off

But as a man
Trapped at a red light
Why not once
The breaks ever went out
So that he might have an excuse
To go

He thinks about the grocery bags
Crawling around the sidewalk
Like dying jellyfish

Thinks about sheets
And how cold the other side of the bed can get

You know most days I stand like a windmill with my mouth open
just trying to catch my breath
And I am just trying to get some sleep
And I want
You
To leave me alone

She kicks her feet into the air
Not knowing what feet are
Or why they move that way

Bits of white are breaking skin in her gums
Like a compound fracture of the jaw

Her fingertips are ****** from chewing

Her tears settle

He realizes we are not ones for not hurting
As much as we are ones for transferring pain

Your mother wanted me to get a goldfish
Or some plants before we had you
But I never saw the purpose in caring for
Something that is trying to die on me
As quickly as I am
And now
All I have is you

Her eyes are wet and glassy
Chin dimples like moon craters
She is so much softer than he is

He places the tip of his finger to her gums
She bites down
It hurts

But for whatever reason
He finally catches his breath