and there were days when your kisses left hot imprints on my skin, smoldering.
     i would shove my head under covers and hope to keep the glow effervescent, my fingers tracing the pieces of you left in me.

a deep sleep would try to pull me through soft linen, it whispering
      "chase dreams here and not while you're awake."

but a hum in ears and a missing dip in a mattress,

cloth pressing against my skin, wrapped around my ankles:
a reminder that you were still not there.

and now i still shove my head under covers, chasing a heat that envelops the places between my thighs and shuns my feet from frost-

yet,
I can never find the warmth that you'd provide.

Suddenly, it's not love anymore, it's a memory.
I'm alone, drunk in a bathroom and my thoughts don't crawl to the section of my brain where you are located.
You don't have a place in my blood, I can count on one hand the times I've said your name in the last year.
Does that make a sinner because you were once my God? I'd swallow every syllable uttered in my direction, scripture licked from my lips, and wipe my face clean with your affirmations.
And I was clean-bogged down by a perpetual hangover and hands that won't ever stop shaking and hair that never smelt like anything other than your cologne and cigarettes- but I was clean, I was saved.
And every time I knelt before you, I was saved again and again.
So call me unfaithful because I have forsaken you, though long after you did me, and you did, you did.
You've been gone so long, I can't even remember what your voice sounds like.
All I have is a memory of a grin plastered on a face, all teeth and a head reared back: gleaming, mirth incarnate.
But that image can't force me to perform ceremony in your name anymore.
My eyes will only water, no streams fall down my face.
The earth you walk on now is scorched, by women who no longer see your face any time they close their eyes. You are Moses in a desert with no followers, just an endless mirage: a girl who will never love you beckons you further and further. And I am sure you are thirsty.
Then, call out my blasphemy, I swear I won't hear your accusations over the litany of curses muttered along with your name.
I am Judas, I am Brutus, in the last circle of hell, for I am betrayer of the only religion that ever made me feel whole.
But I couldn't spend another prayer on my knees.

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit-
man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees
with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
     In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images,
I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of
your enumerations!
     What peaches and what penumbras! Whole fam-
ilies shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives
in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you,
Garcнa Lorca, what were you doing down by the
watermelons?

     I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old
grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator
and eyeing the grocery boys.
     I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed
the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my
Angel?
     I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of
cans following you, and followed in my imagination
by the store detective.
     We strode down the open corridors together in
our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every
frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
     Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors
close in an hour. Which way does your beard point
tonight?
     (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
     Will we walk all night through solitary streets?
The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses,
we'll both be lonely.
     Will we stroll dreaming ofthe lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent
cottage?
     Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-
teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit
poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank
and stood watching the boat disappear on the black
waters of Lethe?

                                   Berkeley 1955

I didn't have the guts to be a rebel
All the counterculture called at me
Asking me to join
In living rooms with Goodwill couches
Owned by a friend of a friend of a friend
They reached out to me
Hands and hearts so open that they couldn't stop bleeding
Asking me to join them
To make what I felt
To do what I wanted
Regardless of whatever the rules said.
They asked me,

Passing the tokens of a shared insobriety
That sought out the essential truth beneath
A thousand and one layers of culture and biology and social pressure
That only ever manages to turn diamonds into coal

I don't have the testicular fortitude to forsake the gifts of my birthright
My middle-class hope
Of a sliver of land beholden to an HOA
Of a wife who loves me kind of and children that will hold me to an anachronistic social standard that will leave me wanting
But it could be mine
It could be a world of my own making
With love and joy and plenty
And the mediocrity and turmoil
That is essential to life whether it is good or bad
It could be mine

The true face of the world is violent
And life struggles unconditionally to enact it's will on a world
That has extinguished more species than are alive

We are mayflies in the cosmos waxing and waning
And no one cares
And no one guarantees that I will eat tomorrow
Let alone find love
Or persist in the presence of my ancestors.

I don't have the ***** to wager my little bits of happiness
Even if there is a slim chance to change a million minds or more
Call me a coward
Call me a pragmatist
In a century call me dead
Right now you can call me mostly happy
And I don't know if there is anything better

i was so [angry, jealous, d e v a s t e d]
when you choose her over me.
i couldn't stand to see the pleasant calm that
settled over the two of you.
you were quiet with her, your eyes held
soft looks, shorts glances. disbelief in your face
like you couldn't believe the prize you'd won.

and i guess i'm wrong again because the word is broken,
i was so [broken]

you wouldn't even breathe
in my direction when she was around
and i was always around, a victim and witness to unrequited love.

i wonder if she hurt you more than you hurt me because
she always thinking of how she couldn't
stand to be with you,
even one more time.

i watched the way she'd brighten whenever he smirked
and she never smiled with you, only at.
maybe i feel a little better about this whole mess
because her heart was breaking in two,
too.

it doesn't really matter because she had him
and you and him and you
and sometimes I don't think
there was any distinction in time.
maybe it was all blended together
but I know she knew the difference because
she loved him.
and didn't love you.

and those words are vindication enough and I know our love wasn't real because it feels good, these words feel good, you hurt feels good.

her hurt feels good too [just not as much]
she loved him and loved him
and he didn't love her back,
not with the soft kisses and that sun-kissed hair.
not even with the way she said his name,
kind of like how i say yours.

but now he does and
i always thought i was the odd line segment in this love rectangle because she loved him
and i loved you
and you loved her and nobody loved me.

but I guess we're both losers in this stupid ante highschool ******* because you could **** her brains out
and she'd still whisper his name
and when he ***** her i don't doubt for a minute
you've never crossed her mind
and I know so many stiff socks
on your bedroom floor are sponsored by images of her.

so it feels good. being less x feels good.

i know, i know i'm a *******
i love the sting of your spit on my face

you open your mouth and let words fly.
open your throat any wider and i'll see your tonsils.

every moment, you can only ever be angry with me,
maybe in love the next.

but i envy you for it, the truth's never been mine
though I can't find honesty in the way you say
you've had enough of me.

you won't ever apologize, but I see "I'm sorry" in your eyes,
every time you open the door again

i guess i'm just in love with the way you say goodbye