If we were books,
I'd be spineless
and you would be a paperback
with a hardcover head.
Page turner pretense turns to
kisses and fifty shades of
sequels.
My life is an open book.
You read?

When the pills stopped working,
she wondered if it was because she couldn't taste them
or because she'd run out
of the house with her heart on fire
and nobody had seen the flames.
Her manuscript men marched above her mantle in little inky rows
like birthday candles, like promises from childhood made in redwood shadows and crimson-weeping cuts touched like jumper cables.
There was heat, there was warmth
and it was ugly, ever changing
like opinions and faces and the way it felt
to be touched.

Boys.
Boys.
Boys will be boys.
Boys will be done on her,
for she is heavenly, and
Heaven forbid he reaps the
one who sews and
supposedly
makes sandwiches.
Sometimes you have to stand back
to appreciate a work of art, but they
skip class and
have no class.
There is no art; only **** lips and
suddenly thrashing limbs.
This is wrong, says the dust speck
clinging to his soul.
You crave her, says the evil louder, go, go, go!
Boys, boys, all the noise with their toys
and every point raised is wrong
and mothers are ashamed.
The game of life was not meant to be played
with broken pieces, let alone broken rules.

Reach beyond
the beyond.
Pluck the heart strings
of violets and violence,
pull back the bowstring,
launch Eros' error arrow
into weaker men than I.
Watch them become
what they swear against,
rail against like trains
slipping from their
on track lives.
They crumple like
failed poems in my hands.
But as Pompeii proved,
you don't have to fall to die.
You only have to breathe.

In this land, in this world,
In this time, in this place
Behind these glasses
Beyond these fingers
Lurks forever now
The subconscious beast.
In this fortress, in this tent,
In this steel scaler of skies
There is no safety.
There is only sadness and
Sadism and ***.
In this realm, in this womb,
there is only death,
But no so strong a brew
As in that old place of blue.
There is plenty of time to
Linger between the notes
And the ceiling tiles
Where they store bodies.
In this book, in this song,
choral choirs sing past pages
and pages of long legs and
headline barcodes and
hairline calendars.
There is no peace here,
No last dedication to mark
The passing of Father Time
or Mother Season.
There is no monument to
White and black;
All sins are marked in
Black and blue,
Like Earth, the brighter side
of a black eye or a
Black hole.
In this landscape, in this plays cape
There is no escape.

Pity party, pity poison,
pity is pretty *******
at your Pompadour proposition, your Pompeii proposal.
The judge and jury blame  your execution;
you thought the tri in matrimony meant three
in love when it really meant that you're the third wheel.
You hoped I'd kiss and tell in your world of wedding bells.
Go to hell.
You smiled as you beguiled with false feminine wiles the
boy of miles and miles away, hoping that he might stay
with you instead of her.
Well, this is his answer, and, dear failed romancer,
you won't get that last dance.
Her love was pretense in past tense,
events not recorded in your history book hips.
Ah, a novel idea: you, John Green with envy,
tried to bend me to your whim.
Tried, but your pride died when I sighed
and said that I loved her, so you booked it
from the floor and seemed gone forevermore,
a footnote in the lore until you...turned into a *****,
came to me and said that you loved me more.
That is wrong.
Strike the gong.
This is a correction.
Your insurrection of our connection turned
affection into an infection,
and don't interrupt with your **** interjection--
were you expecting an *******?
Because you're getting a rejection,
so keep your confection objection to yourself.
You hoped to trace my face, take first place or third base,
leave no space for even lace, and half of lace is empty space.
I should have brought mace.
You are jelly in a jam, so your ham-****** attitude
led the lamb of love to slaughter;
the s leads laughter on, standing for ***
(check male or female),
stimulation, squabble, ****, ****, sext--
a wrecked relationship sinking, sinking,
and being nearer, my ******* God, to thee
makes me sick between my bulkhead bones.
The iceberg of your persistence
puts up its last resistance,
but it melts, melts, melts, in water hot as hell.
Is it not plain as you the pain you put me through?
You, with two left feet, hope I'll cheat the day we meet
on the girl who was your friend, and you've done this
once before.
Your dainty hopes that you could go two for two
with hearts and minds disgusts, and your lust broke my trust,
and I must, must, must ring the bells.
Class dismissed. I hope you've learned.

There are worlds we haven't crossed
and things we haven't lost.
There are dreams we've never shared
and hopes we've never dared.
There are hours yet to come
until our time is done.
Don't leave just yet
before the getting
is good.