your
fingers have
                    a mind,
                     evident
                                             in their
                                             ****** intent.

blunt tips of bent cigarettes
were incisive as razors -
sliced wrists weeping
bright red sentences,
spattered unborn to blank paper
and turned into statues
so the dead would always remember
what they did,
never safe in the graves
in which they'd took refuge

but blue on blue
was ever her color;
blue on blues
seeping from old sins,
deep, hidden within spidery veins
that traced pale, soft *******,
finally filling mute lips as she slept,
subsumed in oceans of color,
blues that gave stories, as waves to shore
subsided, reclaiming their pain,
and cleansed sand once more

What end to life!
a collection of furies like stone turtles
arranged on the mantle -
just a few dozen last words
tucked among ads for
Old Spice and Polident tabs
unread, used to line
litter boxes in Cambridge
or wrap fresh fish at Hay Market;

then, someone pausing to wave at the sky
missed saving the drowning woman
by years, if he'd tried,
finding questions in every answer;
child curled in hard lap of his mother,
her cold affections of words
blew from dead lips like old wishes
without tender touch or wet kisses;
but that life continued,
if lived only blue on blue

For the first few months
you just want to **** yourself
and
everyone around you
in a machete mash-up
or a shotgun divorce.

I remember the girl
I started messing around with
after
the
thing.

She'd get on top of me
and reach down into my pants.

She'd do this
mechanical yanking real hard
until I started
getting friction burns.

Until I had to come
or else my **** might've singed off.

And when we ******,
she wanted everything hard
and she kissed real masculine:
aggressive
and her lips
braced against my teeth.

I hated her.

But what really ****** me up about her,
was that I only told her once about
Gnat,
and she didn't seem to hear me.

All the yanking and hard kissing,
she seemed there just to burn me down.

Not to destroy or anything malicious,
just that when she hopped in her car
and drove around in la-la land
I felt charred and empty.

Sometimes I'd call her over
to ****
and I'd just stare at her naked body,
closing my eyes
picturing gnat.

It never worked.

I always came hard
and it burned.

Eventually,
I stopped calling her.

Maybe she's dead or something.

I don't know,
at that time
she was just that inanimate to me.

I barely remember what she looked like,
I spent so much time
trying to super-impose.

Oh yeah
I once saw a tomb
In some silver moonlit corner
Of a dark garden

A young girl had died in the year of our lord
1852

Scratching on stone walls
A terrible chill


A murderous mother  
Began to leave tear stained letters
On full moons

One blood red rose
And three long and painful letters
Each sealed with a wax seal
Signed in blood

They began to print the notes the next summer in the local paper
The heart breaking lines
Printed in smeared black ink
And sudennly the letters stopped

Story goes one night some kids were going out to the tomb
To try and catch her but ended up having ***
Well they go up to the tomb
And layin against the tomb was a beautiful black haired woman
In a pool of blood

But thats just legend
People still leave letters on moonlit nights on the tomb
Confession letters
Of ****** and ****
You name it...

The police leave them alone
......I myself visited that moonlit garden one night
and placed a letter in beneath a rose
I fear that I can't let it take over my life
It takes me from all love
Boiling hot water up to my eyes
and just like that...I never wanted another lover
but the maiden of ******

Life's the longest distance between two points:
Doggy-paddling through the present backwards
Understanding words already spoken
Right hand on the wheel, torso twisted
(As in standard reversal procedure),
Looking out the back, advancing slowly,
Careering backwards down the motorway:
We see ourselves in car windscreens becoming
Reflections of ourselves in passers-by.
Decode the numberplates, look out the sides
For chaos, chance and consciousness to coincide
And tell us that we haven't missed our turn,
Forever facing where we can't return.

i still think about you
every ******* day.
feet flat on the tile floor
eyes locked with myself in the mirror
foamy lips and the bristles of my tooth brush
methodically scraping memories of you,
residue of our relationship,
white plaque off white teeth
like it makes a ******* difference.
i grind the back ones down
each night
in an attempt to forget you, i think.
hopefully one day i'll wake up
just gums.
but now, as i gargle
i can see the face you would make
as i rubbed the head of my ****
against the inside of your belly button
trying to get it
to come out the other side
and sometimes i would
press on your belly
to see if i was close to breaking through
and your eyes would disappear
and you would open your mouth
s  o      w  i  d  e
i could see you still had your tonsils
and i would go to kiss that
gasping mouth of yours
and you'd act like
i wasn't there
at all.
so i spit that ghost into the sink
and watch it linger there before
it has a chance to spill down
the pipes clogged with your hair
and i think..
...i'm gonna go ahead
and take down all the mirrors
in this apartment..
...as i blink at my reflection.

How did I get here?
What did I do?
Tell me it can't be true!
I decided on chemical happiness,
but I didn't think it through.

I didn't think I would survive,
let alone be able to thrive,
without some sort of pill
to drag me up this hill.

I've been stuck at the bottom too long,
and I thought that I could be strong,
but now it turns out I was wrong,
because I guess I just don't belong.

I tried to call you for help,
I was doing the best I could,
but the only thing you got from that,
was that you never do me any good.

You know,
that pushed me down farther,
you knocked me down with your words.
"You should have been able to cope..."
You said,
and I replied,
"I'd be better off dead."

So from here on out,
I'm all alone,
and I don't know what to do.
These pills, they take a toll on me,
but I guess I should thank you.

Thank you for your words of hatred,
they showed me how to love,
and thank you for your acts of violence,
I fight well, and that's what I'm proud of.

I can hold my own against you now,
but I can't win against myself.
These pills destroy unwanted thoughts,
but those thoughts were my morals,
now placed on a shelf.