Are you content?
Not happy. content.
There's a difference.
I want to know if
You can get
Through a day
And get by with
Enough gumption
To rest your dark, Irish head
And not think about my last words:

******* ******* *******

I didn't mean it like that.
I WANTED to *******.
I SHOULD HAVE.
But it came out
I hate you
Please don't contact me ever again.  

I didn't mean it like that.

I didn't know what to say.
I mean what is there to say
After he tells you

1. I don't want to marry you.
2. I don't love you anymore.

Are your gray suede shoes in tact?
Is the freckle on your hand dancing with anyone else?
Do you think about my dog?
Have you learned anything?
Are you content?
Not happy.
Content.
There's a difference.

I liked the way the bourbon on your lips
burned mine stop
I had to keep drinking stop

Sometimes I get drunk enough to
remember the smell of pomade,
the way the muscles in your back flow
across an anatomically perfect skeleton stop

I can hear you breathing through
your mouth, your heart
that always seemed to beat faster,
more sure than mine,
until it
stopped
altogether stop

Everything was
all together
until it
stopped stop

If I am Earth then
you are sky.

I met a man a year ago
who was so sad
he said he'd **** himself
if he couldn't find
a reason to live
when they let him out
of the ****** bin
we both inhabited.
I check the obituaries
every day
for a little town called
Coffeeville,
and I haven't seen his name
yet.

Sounds like crucify.
My hands are bound by his grip
on the plank perpendicular to my toes
that start to curl backwards now.

I binged on memories
of the words words words
and when my ears burned
I imagined you cradling her
on your chest
softly brushing her hair back
and talking about me.

At the summer camp where
Jesus saved me
I picked up a pre-packaged
cereal sealed in a factory
long before my selection.
I peeled away the plastic film
and there where my bowl
of cereal was supposed to be
was a colony of silkworms,
squirming around like
a bunch of tied hogs
in a swimming pool.

I threw up because it grossed me out.
I had no control over it.

When I think about her hair
around your stubby, little fingers
I throw up because it grosses me out.
I have no control over it.

I'm no Will Shortz, but this poem is about you.
There's your clue.

Call me already
set me straight
do what you have to do
to get me to
notice
you
from across the room
with your
perfectly manicured
sideburns.

Out of all the thoughts
in the world
you had to occupy mine.
We're the difference
between holding hands
with fingers interlaced
or platonically placed palms.
I want you to know, though,
that I would leave
Victor Laslo's sorry ***
for your alcoholic one
in two seconds flat.