Every morning plays over like a silent black-and-white film.
You wake up and somehow you’ve forgotten how to speak.
Your throat feels raw and congested from the disuse of night.
The sunlight strikes your eyelids,
affecting an obliterating blindness,
forcing them apart,
drawing you from the velvety embrace of a dream.

Your feet sink into dirt-smudged sneakers;
they drag across tiles and floors and grains of cement,
across blackened splotches of gum tacked to the streets,
pressing them ever deeper into earth,
into tar.

A young woman in a fitted red pea coat stands near you,
leaning against the steel column by the edge of the tracks.
She is tiny,
her olive skin stretches tight across her bulging cheekbones,
her eyes are pools of grey,
her shoulder-length hair is the color of molasses.

It happens slowly:
the woman in the red pea coat leans further over the ledge,
tilting her head to the side,
searching for life in the roaring darkness.

It happens briefly:
a low rumble beneath your feet,
a glint of light,
a yellow-white rectangle splays across the tracks.
It widens and expands,
oppressing you,
swallowing the woman in the red pea coat,
as she looks up and stares back at the brightness.

The train does not strike her –
it consumes her,
it ***** her up like a vacuum through its sharp metal teeth,
and she vanishes,
or she becomes a refractory beam of light,
or she explodes.

A screech hovers above the crowd,
shrill, high and clear – the rawness of terror.

You cannot help it – you peer into the gap
between the platform and the subway,
absorbing the darkness.

You wonder what moment, precisely,
her life left her body,
or her flailing limbs surrendered to their inevitable consumption.

The paper bag she had been carrying survives,
strayed on the platform,
an afterthought.

At the peak
It felt like diving into nowhere
Endpoints nonexistent
All I saw was her, then celestial white

And in the hazy aftermath
This flurry of creation
This jagged promise of newness
Everything real coughed up in our numb faces

But it doesn't snow in Texas

the body shook uncontrollably,
the road dropped out from underneath us,
streaming cracks of frightened light,
steel grey sky, the high-line
illuminated by a faint breath of heat
the dark shame had me full in its fist,
dead light simmering now on a fallen rock
lift the lifeless face.

the planet waited but no one rang,
the heart stopped curtly,
stuck in the pain,
I waited for no one, so no one came

Sea drop sea shell eyes
I reckon she's for the taking
Sells her body while it's
Broken open

The words taste funny in my mouth
like tin
School. Escuela.
The place we go
to rip our self-identities to shreds
and force big thoughts out
through holes too small
with languid, careless tongues

"You're ambitious,"
he says with disdain,
spittle collecting
in a corner of the unfed
mouth

and he falls,
drumming his fingers on
her bare knees
like pick axes
tick tock down
the body goes
falling fast
like a drainage system
***** life from organisms
clotting in the sink

"We cry too,"
she says loudly,
but no one seems to hear her
except for a sorrowful
trombone whining
noisy and rambunctious like
the wind and *** and
pain only really matters
if you're there
to witness it

It seems strange...
The voices of the TV on-set screen switch to channel nine STOP play it back again
far
it goes

What is worth recalling of yourself before the age of eighteen?

You could mention, briefly,
the various rises and falls and manias and
melodramas cured with forties of Old English
in various public restrooms and upturned furniture
pieces and feigned illnesses and ringing eardrums and
refurbished tractor parts and secret purchases of
gigantic reptiles and alternate personalities and
obsessive yet unnecessary rituals and
self-inflicted sacrifices
all of which
invisibly
governed
you

You could picture, vaguely,
a youth enmeshed in greenery and
the swelling chorus of cracked wails from
dust-faced vagabonds who, in your memory
are somehow perpetually draped in scarlet
and earthy patches of torn fabric
and of course
the unmistakably
poisonous
stench of
need

But in this moment
these topics
seem irrelevant

If we become thick
and syrupy with love,
we'll suffocate
and my utmost
thunderous roars
shall be muted
by the honey glaze

I'd rather crawl
on callous palms
through wilted flower-beds
caked in dirt
and wait and look
out and up into
cauliflower clouds
and create
my own extraordinary visions
of what It All should look like--

drowning and throbbing
and motionless forms in my mind
savage
silent wanderings
devilish and perverse

and I'll add them to the list
of things I'll never do
while in the background
through an anonymous window
"I" make love
to "you"

I can't
Decide
Whether to stay
Or to leave you
Bright eyed and naked gleaming faced
And breathless in
The white tiled room
Flueroscent lights burn brighter when
You're bored out of your
******* mind
No regrets
No looking back just turn
And walk away
****** handed
Aghast faced
Shock dismay
Me
I can't be swayed
Either way
I am livestock
Paralyzed and frazzled
In perpetual panic
And no one can save me

I can't
Decide
What to do with my eyes
When you streak across linoleum to
Kick over the garbage can
When you tell me I look tired
What can I say?
We line up like soldiers
I tell you things on a post it note
I put my hand on your shoulder
Awkward comfort
Where to draw the line?
I say it'll be ok
Mom and Dad problems are not ours to bear
But I am the adult here
Isn't that insane?

You're only nine and I can still gape into
The blackened flames in your eyes
I cannot let that extinguish
Please my precious babies don't
Give up oh! let me plant the seeds of self worth in your self consciousness
Ah, no
I can't
Walk away

I can't
Decide
If it will be today
Or some tomorrow that
I'll just crack up and die
You tell me things will get better
I promise, and so
I swallow my heart and drink the panic back down
Too much to feel too much to regurgitate

I teach.

I am in the throes
of a force beyond
my cognizance though
we haven't known
each other long
me siento que
I've already met you
in a different life

como un destino
binds us together
tan poderoso
these ropes of desire
so raw and primitive
they ache me, like
you felt so
inevitable to me y
a veces it seems
we are only vaguely
aware of what we
surrender to so unquestionably

emociones tan surreales
como sueños
washing over me
gently until they are more
than they were
when they were born
more than dreams
estás fisicamente
taking over me

and yet it does not feel scary ni
como un sacrificio
it does not feel like I am any less
of a Self

for I am más de mi when I'm contigo
I am whole and
renewed,
I feel Found,
porque me encontraste,
al final
I am home

I wish this
is always what we could be
pero me siento que
fueras tan precioso que
I can't possibly be allowed
to keep you forever

so in preeminent defense I think
no puede ser
this cannot be
so sacred a gift?
not meant for me

i am sick, mad, crazy
still in love with you
always thinking about not thinking about you
and whenever you incessantly creep in-
to my thoughts i scold myself
it's too late--
i haven't crossed his mind in ages

and i drive myself to tears at night lying awake,
feeling far too naked next to him
(who i can't stop comparing to you--
how mediocre he seems after you,
how everyone likely will be)
and i suffer in silence
from the dreadful
chill of lingering
hope
a hope
that maybe
you and I
just might...

it's like
how i can't forget
that summer afternoon when we were
sun-drunk and
bleary-eyed in your hammock and you
put your hand on my stomach and said,
one day, we'll have a baby in there
and i was stilled; i loved so profoundly then
i had thought,
one day
we could be magical

and every part of me hates how cliche this all sounds,
and how our stupid tragedy has turned me into a cliche
but it's true
every single day
my raw hungry love, still alive
looms over me,
plagues me,
decays me,
i try to push it away but
it lingers like a nightmare
that will not go away

i know we exploded, turned to
shattered glass,
smoky ash but
i still yearn to know why
and so every time
someone dies in the newspaper
or i read a line in a book that moves me
or our song
comes on the radio
or someone mentions your name
in passing, with painful casualty
or worse-- nauseating familiarity,
i feel a sharp pang, with every
accidental glimpse of a photograph
i still can't bring myself to throw away,
my heart sinks deeper down
into my stomach
and once more,
i am sure
i will never truly feel again
without you

sometimes i have the urge to stand on a
pedestal somewhere,
high and tall and proud,
in front of a
bustling crowd like
in the movies
and scream to the universe
i would still do anything
to be with you
and wait for you to run so fast towards me that we
crash and then you pull back, hold my face and say
shut up, i had you at hello, or something

i've tried so hard for so long not to feel any of this
to numb the breaking-away pain with
blue, white, green, orange pills and
sweet smoke
i've tried so hard to detach myself from the reality
of our tragedy
to avoid responsibility
for feeling anything at all

but my new year's resolution is to be clean
so now i am finally letting myself
feel
it
all
from my mind through
my cold meaningless fingertips
all the hurt

now i know
the darkest face of sadness
is regret

and i want you to know
that even though i pretended not to,
i heard you and
i'm trying to change
and that i hope one day you will actually
forgive me
for doing that awful thing i did to you
last spring
and that
i'm scared i will love you forever

but if there is a chance
you feel something too,
why have we wasted
so much time
not together?

I rediscovered you under my bathroom rug
I was rendered artistically silent
Blindly fighting
Fierce winds of consciousness and
Eternal sadness that
Tastes like ***** bathwater

Now I’m glowing
Aloft and permeated
The ***** dishes are right where we left them,
unfortunately
And you’ve gone and
Stolen all of my rosemary linens and
Devoured them
One by one
Plus –
I’ve overcooked the Dali Llama
Oh when will love’s agony end?

Don’t harden your eyes at me
Or lock me in the back of a limousine
I shall pour
liquid charcoal
methodically
into
your
moonlight
eyes

There are certain things you shouldn’t ever think too much about
Math for instance
Math,
Death,
and the reason you decide to get naked with someone

What if
everything got all crunched together?
We’d go deaf from all the noise
blind from all the light
our organs would burst and flatten against each other
everything condensed
into one small round ball
and the only ones to survive
(not even the ants, for they are too delicate)
would be the tiny little atoms in the air

All of our atoms, floating around
like pure elements,
unbroken
unfazed
by all the diseases of the world
the disasters
the heat
the freeze and the condensation
everything that has ever wrecked
and ravaged our earth
and the world would begin anew.

What if
in every breath you take you’re inhaling everything else that has ever existed?
the rough dirt patches on the surface of the earth,
the ozone,
the warm UV rays,
the cheese that has broken off of the moon?

What if
the blood of Adam and Eve
is in your glass of orange juice?
or
the prehistoric stony eyes of a dinosaur
hides in your pup's timid glare?

And what if
every water molecule contains every
feces that has ever existed
and has been swept inside of you?

go anywhere but to the movies.
show up to a party,
sip ***** in the kitchen,
at midnight let lips rest for an instant
                           --then draw back.

the boy in biology class
has wild curly hair
                           --be careful.

when lips brush against cheeks
                           --tremble.
when pale timid fingers trace spines
                            --sway.

never stray too far from home.
never sacrifice anything
but once
make a journey.
turn away from civilization.

shake the sweaty hand of a bald, tan man
wearing sunglasses,

claw through the huddled masses,
yearning to breathe free,

step out
onto the cool gray platform.
feel awkward in your brown leather
jacket amongst black windbreakers,
lean back against the rumbling doors,
search drawn,
blank faces for reactions.
find nothing.

exit on the wrong end, the far end.

do not to walk on the left side of the street
-- that’s where the bad **** happens.

do not to look anyone in the eye.

do not think.

if you must think, think only
about lips and brown eyes and star-shaped sunglasses.

look around and realize
that this elevator's button don’t light up anymore,
and the number thirteen has been scratched out by someone’s keys.

let your footsteps echo against tile floors.

let your eyes catch,
briefly.

and inhale deeply
because you like the smell of his deodorant,

just this once.

I have so many things I need interventions for.
Like not taking enough showers,
Definitely.

Q called me an eccentric genius yesterday.
What a label. It might be my favorite one yet.
Better than ****,
Said R.

My life is a disaster.
It’s perfect.
No one knows me.
I have friends.
They don’t know me either.
I don’t know them.
They are strangers.
I love them all.
But I can’t help them.
I can barely help myself.

Sometimes I just want to stop breathing, but it’s too much effort to hold my breath.
Sometimes I just want to scream at the sky, but I don’t want it to scream back at me.

And don’t try to tell me that dogs aren’t people.
Of course dogs are people.
They are more like people than we are.
We are not people.
I am not a person.

I am a little bit of a person, a sliver of a person.
I am a mug, maybe. Fill me up with caffeinated beverage.
Brown sludgy liquid. Let’s all pretend we like it.
It makes it easier to accept that
We don’t want to get out of bed in the morning.

What if we stayed there just,
Forever?
What if we lied on our backs,
Pressed ourselves between our
Sheets like people-paninis
And waited and waited
Till we starved half to death?

It would be the new crazy
Weight-loss miracle diet
And everyone would suddenly want to come over
And take pictures of us but
We’d too proud and dignified
To allow them to publish the pictures in magazines.

Only we wouldn’t be able to stop them
Because we are technically considered public figures
Which in this country means
People are allowed to take pictures of you
And make up stories about you
And print them on sheets of paper
And hand them out all over the world
And then people read them and think
That the words on the paper are little bits of you,
That they are true.

And the funny thing is they are,
But we try to pretend we’re not.

We all do it.
We all say we aren’t things.
We’re not judgmental.
We’re not mean.
We’re not worried about superficial aspects of our faces and bodies.
We’re not going to go on a diet.
We’re not going to stop smoking and drinking and hacking all over the place.
We’re not.

We’re independent beings.
We are women!
Men!
Androgynous beasts!

People get so angry about things. It’s hilarious.
Things that are
so
so
so
so
small.
Like the color of a shoelace.
The time on your watch.
Countries with arbitrarily sketched borders.

Why not just erase them?
Who would care?
Certainly not me.
I think
We should all be more sexually active with one another,
Or without one another, and that
We should all start wearing helmets.

You are a fox, she said.
I looked down and saw that indeed, I was.

Your hair is pretty and red, she said.
I looked behind me and noticed that indeed
The red from my hair was dripping down my bare back
And sliding down my shoulders and forming
Pools of vivid red beside us.

Suddenly everyone wanted to touch my hair
But I began to cry and said stop.

Fay found a frog.
It was green and bumpy and shined rainbow in the sun.
It was actually a toad.
I cried because I thought it might die
And if it died the world would most definitely be over.

I held it and I felt its heart beating in my hands
And I thought there could never be a more beautiful precious thing
Ever
In the entire world
Again.
The heart was beating louder and faster and I couldn’t take it
Until I began to cry again.
Fay came and the frog disappeared.

My heart felt heavy.
My mind went “Hm.”
It went “What should I do now?”

I should eat a cherry, I guess.
So I did.
I ate a cherry.
I didn’t feel satisfied, so I ate another.

Meanwhile Melinda,
My golden haired friend,
and I couldn’t talk because of my purple shirt.
She said, I can’t talk to you while you are wearing that purple shirt.
And I said, Do you want me to take it off then?
And she said, You look like a grape.

And when I laughed I couldn’t stop
and I couldn’t stop stop stop
until I was crying again with my head in my hands.

Then my heart felt heavy again so
I went outside and looked at some trees.
The sun was hot and my arms were getting tired.
But I wanted to get burned.

At nightfall I went upstairs and looked in the mirror.
Makeup dripped down my face and I wanted it off.
I began to scrub.

You are drinking yourself red-eyed and crumpled
on an unmade bed meanwhile I
am hating the world’s promiscuity and signing
autographs that serve no alternate purpose
subsequent to their ink-blotted conceptions and silently
my heart scratches and claws and penetrates
bone, muscle, and choked fat
to get to you

How will we know
when we’re no longer
young enough
to inconsequentially
rot our bodies
from the inside
out?

If I could
I would search for a space
impenetrable
by ants molecules and medium-sized atoms
that exists between
my pale finger tips and
your freckled
bare back moving
slowly up and down

If I could
I would be somewhere where nothing
is the tarnished byproduct of anything
where no one will remind anyone not to
clog their throats or minds or eyes
when they
shiver and choke on scarlet inkblots
and chug gasoline
and wipe away dirt stains
and drink each other’s shame
and form cuts on the soles of their feet
after rushing barefoot through beds of sharp stones
to reach other

It unraveled slowly
turned us into
broken lamps and upturned end tables

My birth equaled the demise of all his pretenses
They dissolved in the spaces behind walls
They filled the cracks of the yellowed plaster

Once I was small enough to hide there too
Concealing myself among the decay made sense
When ugly truths burst forth they swallowed us
I cowered unseen and thus forgiven
A silent witness to my own life
I wish now I could do the same

I do not miss the brown faces of sun-dried Marlboro men or the mall, or the
Empty soccer field or those lonely black streets that echoed weary
Footsteps or our faded green awning nor do I miss the smell
Of your fifth floor apartment or how my knees would
Tremble and disintegrate and I do not miss your
Taste anymore or that your lips were large and
Soft and swallowed me because I’ve
Concluded there was no choice but
To leave our pile of muddy
Laundry and bloodstained
Sheets in a dusty barren
Apartment on the lower
East side where
***-filled brains
And metal poles
Collide

I came to the rocky shores of Greece
To stand amid the rows of stark white houses
To find your face in a mirage that spreads across
These seamless gray skies

And even though you are gone
I felt you
In the pin ****** of sand on my soles
I felt your heart
Breathing deep beneath the earth
I heard the crash
Of your head against hot metal and
I tried to stop the blood but
It seeped between the cracks
In my fingers and I shuddered
And plunged
Into the icy green foam
And my thoughts converged like clouds

I have oft wondered
Why we clutch
The calloused hands that strike us

And why our blushing cheeks lend such
Easy passageways for
Graceless tears

I was sitting next to you on a ledge
overlooking the Hudson River
and the orange sun seemed to stare at us
as it fell, like it knew something
sad and terrible was about to happen
maybe a joke was being played on us

in the back of a dimly-lit Japanese restaurant
we cowered behind white makeshift walls
and sipped crystal blue sake, and you whispered something
and I smelled you and the smell was strong
like crushed feathers
and dead roses
such a lovely fragrance
and my heart swelled in its wake

and then a snapshot
and a white fist
and a heaviness
and a fleeting thought I’m too ashamed to disclose
and soon, you
were in between me
and your rough voice was crying
it was crying dangerous things
and then I watched you
drive your hands through worn walls

and now you are cracking
and I am weeping and I am running
through beams of lights and buzzing highways
and I am watching your hulking form disappear behind
a metal barrier, and my eyes roll back
to the orange sun that stared at us
as it swept beneath the same river
you are about to plunge in

Dear Prodigy,
I confess my eyes take photographs
(of parking lots or jeans with **** stains on knees
and my face caked in dirt) and
I never wanted your face to ****** the earth brown.
I never wanted Cracked Bone against Rough Stone.
I even star-dusted my eyes for you.

Dear Prodigy,
I’m sorry I talked to the boy with
black eyeliner for fifteen minutes while you were
on the train to nowhere. Our eyes were bleeding
out of our ears and we couldn’t stop wanting to
understand everything.
There was blood in our head and our hands
blood in your eyes
vapor in our lungs
and the transparent sun was making
my arms fragile and boneless.
I’ll never forget falling asleep clad in ripped black stockings
on your unmade bed.
Do you remember when we tried to swallow everything?

Dear Prodigy,
I dreamt last night that the whites of your eyes had been
dulled by the Indefatigable Reality of Time.
I confess my eyes take photographs
(of floating bodies and tight crisp jeans and my face caked in makeup).
I confess that my eyelids cracked open to receive light.
I kissed you but barely felt it
and there was scattered glass at our feet. The gleaming shards soaked up the silence.
My heart was sold.
I even star-dusted my eyes for you.

I know we haven’t talked in a while. Not since
I recognized the decisive crack of your voice
like a crinkling plastic gum wrapper
and I let the phone fall. That was
five years ago and I don’t know where you are now.
But I’m writing this
because I can’t stop writing
about you and your shapes and your smells and you
and white powder and you and religion
and religious books neatly stacked and you and every piece of you
and a rickety black tram bursting forth in the darkness and you
and pockets of light that sometimes shine through in cocoons or at elegant dinners
and you and aftershave and blood and muddy river water and you
and flowers in porcelain vases and couches encased in plastic and you
and I am endlessly backtracking to silent violations
and black midnights riddled with hunger and confusion and
I don’t know maybe some other time
and it’s like our hands and wrists are bound together as though bandaged
and the whites of my eyes are permanently reddened by an
invisible fire’s breath
or the glow of your face
and even now everything won’t stop shaking
and I just stare
at my hands
and tiles
and patterns in carpets
and I keep staring and staring forever
only at things that won’t move away from me
like inanimate objects but
I’ll leave you here
with a letter I’ll never mail
because I’m no longer the quivering little girl
beneath you
and I’ll get ****** up again and think
this is freedom, isn’t it?
churning sweetness and liberality into my
empty stomach?
but then why does my mouth still
taste like metal?

in a picture trapped at the center of my iris
you are a beautiful cataclysmic disruption,
come
closer to me, brown eyes
set in a porcelain face
for these feelings cling unto us
like sacred dreams
i know i’m simply me
but please let’s leave
a blackbird will dream
us into life and the sun
will smile hard at us and
our house will be made
of violets

before we fell silent
you said, “I am going to die”
and I couldn't tell if you were being serious
and maybe you couldn’t either
and with each cigarette
those fumbling fingers tore from the box
your eyes flashed
jagged streaks of shame

and now that silence seems endless
because you are in Kentucky
and you’ve blown everything
on making sure the feeling never went away

and your dog died two weeks ago
in your new L.A. flat,
his discarded bones nestled upon a stained grey mattress,
and gnats and flies crawl over his
accusatory eyes
and blood-tinged matted fur,
and the stone mouth drips a
yellow stench that seeps through
the newly wooded floor,
and there he dies,
again and again
still,
raw,
indignant,
because you cannot go home
and look death in the face

and your drum set plays without you now
the awesome thuds still reverberate
through the earth’s worn plaster walls
and abandoned mahogany cabinets
and also in your room with the upside-down bed
and in crowded subway cars and passenger planes
and in the dusty basement where we once
made you drink the whole thing down, then hushed you up
with blank towels and sedatives,
and the sound is deafening