beware when you fall in love
with an artist
be it a painter, a singer, or poet

for the artist will
paint you
with strokes and hues
in shapes of every kind

sing about you
with heartbreak lyrics
and feelings which rhyme

write about you
with the simplest words
and a secret message she wants to say

beware of the artist,
and her love
one wrong move
and you're an artwork in her display

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to **** you.
You died before I had time ----
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My ****** friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You ----

Not God but a *******
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the *****.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two ----
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagersnever liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you *******, I'm through.

Never try to trick me with a kiss
Pretending that the birds are here to stay;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

A stone can masquerade where no heart is
And virgins rise where lustful Venus lay:
Never try to trick me with a kiss.

Our noble doctor claims the pain is his,
While stricken patients let him have his say;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

Each virile bachelor dreads paralysis,
The old maid in the gable cries all day:
Never try to trick me with a kiss.

The suave eternal serpents promise bliss
To mortal children longing to be gay;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

Sooner or later something goes amiss;
The singing birds pack up and fly away;
So never try to trick me with a kiss:
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

1) 12 thousand tweets and none of them are substantial. They're becoming less and less about you though. Maybe that's what is substantial about them.

2) Something in the way you wrap sin in worship.

3) I'm an arson waiting to happen, is the funeral pyre really necessary?

4) Writing about you angrily isn't doing it anymore. I want to smash bricks through windshields that used to hold flowers I bought you.

5) Looks like you're not at the bottom of this one either. ****.

6) My love has always been leprosy.

7) You're the interlude, not the chorus. But, that's okay I'm a terrible vocalist anyway.

8) She wants to date boys that are self aware and boy did she hit the jackpot.

9) You smile with the grace of grandmothers and I'm a bad boy like your grandpa after the War.

10) Can I cut out your grin and put in on the wall next to my framed poster of Bob Dylan and Charles Bukowski?

11) Trace my outline in chalk when I finally drink myself to sleep. I'm euthanizing the pieces of me that belong to you.

12) If I find you in Heaven won't you be in his arms? If I find you in Hell won't you be my torment?

13) You make me feel as insignificant as God does and I think that says something about prayer.

14) I quit paying my phone bill so I'd quit dialing your number like a suicide hotline.

15) My teeth are rotten like the lies that spill out of my teeth. You find me beautiful and I've never been more self-conscious.

16) Your silence fills my abdomen like daggers and words clot where crimson should flow.

17) Loving you is *******.

18) My heart is at a crossroads and you're drowning in dust in the rearview mirror.

19) You prefer the subtle burns. The flames so hot they sever nerve endings when they lick your fingers the way I imagine I would.

20) She sings the body electric and I'm forced to worship her through computer screens and the scratch of needle on vinyl.

You're a starlight I caught myself gazing at,
I can paint you with colors of the night.
Looking out the window
You're that star in the sky
That shines the brightest.
So elegant, I can see your slight twinkle
Like you're doing your own dance.
I can almost see it now,
How when I see you,
My self, deep inside
All I want to do
Is join you in that dance.
Behind these walls I'll stay
And fall into this trance .
I'll gaze at you and weep
My soul is trapped,
No wings of freedom
No joy to make me leap.
With every passing moment
I paint you with the colors of the night.
I know every star that adorns the sky
Every diamond that dots the nightscape.
But in this cage I'll sit and watch
You're the one star I wish upon,
Every night.

I flick my cigarette into the fuel,

Awe-struck as its embers glow --

Its pyrophilic fireflies occupy the darkness.

And summon from my chasmal abyss --

An inferno of  icy, cold-hearted abuse --*

And scorch you who have yet to hurt me.

But,  when you leave,

My tears will quell the flames --

For in truth, I only burnt this bridge,

*In the hope you would swim back to me.

I locked myself out of the apartment,
so I find myself sitting in the stairwell.
The same place you left me days ago.
Weeks ago.
Months ago.
The air is a little warmer but it still bites
wintry and frigid like your teeth on my neck
when you were biting back the screams I made you
scream.