I've been reading quotes all day
Under tags of adventure and passion and purpose
Wondering if they're perhaps too pretentious
In their declarations.

Am I to believe
They're so much wiser than me[sic]?
It is not a word less
Than what I have traced on my pillow sheet
with drool in my sleep.

When we form a microcosm
Underneath the sheets
I am your peasant people
You give me the word kind
Little thing
I do not give you the word tyrant
Although
You were already wearing
Blindly
The crown I had given you
Kissing the brow
Granting mute fealty
Under an unrelenting sun
Out in a wheat field
Heart blistered
But a king's got to eat
Even if he doesn't know where the bread comes from

Do you still
Not understand love?

Write,
this time...
          detached.
portion prepositions
punctuation
camels.
back to the sternum bone

where
colors like
blue
don't mean nothing,
don't feel nothing,
but a thing.

hangover strawberries
on new year's morning
from the hand of a boy
whose name
I don't recall
but who
held my hair
with recognition.

the sugars
rubied
on the toilet seat

I've never had to do anything I didn't want to.
I've never had to do anything.

hesitant tenderness
when strangers kiss goodbye
testing the flutter when name passes through threshold lips
     this was all
     years ago.

I still get my news from my hometown.
And I do not respond to my new friends.
And I cursed November when he came.
And I told myself my existence was feeble.
And I got all the movie quotes wrong.
And I was coughing all the **** time, craggy inhales and spittle in my tea.

They were all phonies then.
Except the boy
I met who
ended every sentence with
"I don't really know,"
so
everything he said could be true.

And I was running all the time in my sleep, then.
And *******, too.
And the same boy was always in my dreams - but not the right boy - the boy who was important to me only ever in sleep.
But dreams seemed important then, too.

Oh, I remember!
5 a.m.
when I yanked you out of bed, come, I am going
MAD!
(you were going mad, too,
just last week.)
The fog was not rising at all
     chain smoking in respect to my lungs
     and their strike on air
     my strike on a way of living whose sole purpose was
     to stay alive longer
     what's all the yap about?
I was not sure I wanted to live
     you kept on talking about dogs.
I do not want to live
     you started talking about cars!
I have death in my fingertips, you fool!
You supposed heaven was real
     and I thought over what I had heard:
     heaven is all around us
     (yes, we were in a cloud.)
And I supposed you were right
     but I kept silent,
     I could not put my world on you
     and its godlessness.
There was a green flashing light
on the other side of Cincinnati
     but you did not understand that reference yet.
But we counted all the
     churches and rainy cars
They couldn't grasp at God either.

Godlessness!
     it will make us all mad, then.
but it was science who spelt of protons and electrons;
and when I am GOOD
     he shows me his twisted, gnarled little black heart.
and when he, angelic, comes--
     I am the Darkness.
We supposed this was how God talks, anyways.

And the sun curled up again
we drank coffee
     in bad lighting
     over silence
     the insanity
     soggy waffles
night shakes leaving me and...
It took you hours to respond!
Grappling with insanity for hours!
     the kinds in wavelengths
     static
     feeble
     hours
     glowering hunched electric clock in the corner
     cracked windows
     pane
I could not stop thinking over forgiveness
     and if I forgave my father for forgetting my birthday
     nine years ago
     so mundane.
And if it mattered anymore
And if I forgave God
And if I would ever apologize to Him
     there was a green flashing light in my baptismal basin, too.

I do not call myself Gatsby anymore.

In a basement
There are nine people
-hands in pockets
-eyes on skies
-on the backs of eyelids reminding them their tries at ordinary, are lies nonetheless.

And I am the tenth.
I do not know where to put my hands,
so I cut them off.
And everyone else out.
And pay mind just to breath, teeth at a reality that is not ordinary.
And college kids getting ****** up
Is not a rebellion.
And college kids getting ******
Is not substantial enough for a love poem.

But I'm still waiting on rebellions and love poems,
hoping I can be a part of either.
My fists are on the ground
beating on the corning
--every **** thing I say mumbled or ignored
--"that's me in the spotlight"
Puppets and puppies, both
strings and kicking at things

I've staggered off in my thoughts again
drunk rumbles through the trash
And you've staggered off in your mind again
I'm trailing far enough behind that
you don't think I'm following.

But the smears
of
red
and silver
and light;
Magnetic, baby.

Wobble, wobble
The boy's in trouble
Again.

Trouble, trouble
The icy way of December has heartbreak on his lips
(Again?)

Put this
On your tongue
And catch the snowflakes too.