The day I got birds tattooed on my hips was the day you inked cages into your wrists  so you could capture me.

Whether you intended to catch me falling off the top of a tower or to drag me to Heidnik's basement

I'll forever be unsure.

50 years ago, you and I couldn't hold hands in the street
and here we are checking into hotels, leaving secrets between sheets.

I would be a mullato,
foreigner,
alien.
The mixing of worlds and tones.
I'd be scared to walk down the road at night, or to bat an eye or take a breath or look twice
at the wrong man

You would be strong and proud and from the gentry,
drinking away the demons who have learned to love your poison,
using women like tissues,
breaking them like eggs.

And yet here we are, a clashing of worlds clinking our glasses, our bodies aching for one another behind table cloth

i /lie awake and /stare at the ceiling like it’s going to do a trick
i /wonder about how many jobs i’ve run as a thief
and /count sheep until i /count forty-four, or forty-five, or maybe forty-six and then /decide, that is quite enough sheep
i /wonder if i /brushed my teeth
i /run my tired tongue over my teeth and /remember,
yes, i /think i did brush my teeth
You (moan) a sentence half-English and half-Dream.
i /turn to see You, and nearly /go blind in all this midnight.
i /think of how many stars had to hiccup some dust to donate to Your cosmically beautiful shape
And decide it was maybe about five or six
So, i /get out of bed and /try to peer through the cloud cover into the stars
i /gulp down two or three or four glasses of water and /feel like
a boiler, and the pressure is cracking my bones.
You (stir)
(sigh)
(clench) Your teeth exactly 3 times.
You (remind) me of Your star-breath
You (draw) me close and i know
You (have) precisely seven shooting stars inside.

We trudged through
a hidden ravine
just below the ridge line
smoking and joking
about a wishful stay at Club Med.
Granite boulders
blocked us from the wind
and the coming storm
creeping up the valley floor.
Clouds came and went quickly,
like zephyrs watching our progress,
there were too many to count,
but we knew they were there
to guide us.
And when the rain started,
it did melt us,
it froze us to our very cores.
The whole place
seemed like
a portal into
a time and place
long forgotten.
And when
we finally made it back
to base camp,
a full day had disappeared
in just ten minutes.
That's what mountains
do to you.
They make you lose your mind.

It hurts hiding inside myself,
    I won't do it any longer...  

I need to be free
      To show the true me
          
   And finally escape
          This life filed with
     **Misery

I'm emotionless
Yet full of hate
But I don't really care
I'm heartless
Cause I've never known love
And it's not really fair
I'm expendable
Yet I have some value
Cause I lay my lies bare
I'm worthless, stupid
And I've never found the truth
If only I could remember where
Then my life may have some use

Until then...
I guess I deserve the abuse