call me an architect with shaking
hands, building buildings built
to crumble --
     if that what it takes to
     keep you, so be it;
     i'll find you in the rubble

We sit three stools away and can not talk
bold enough to understand
one another.

She moves to the seat next to me and asks
if my bacon is crisp.  I say more
or less—want a bite?

There is a tattoo of a cross on her forehead.
My cousin Beryl done that to me when
I was 12, horsin’ around, he was 19
and no good.

She goes to *** or powder her tattoo; I pay
my bill and walk outside under a sky
so blue I want to cry.

I realize  that when you asked me to  feed your two calicos
while vacationing, I wasn’t given title to  pluck four large
tomatoes  from  your perfectly trained  vines.

The tomatoes were Christmas red, unbruised
and husky. It seemed criminal and unfair
to my palate not to devour them
by dusk the day I stole them;

in my shallow defense
both of your cats
repeatedly hissed
at me when fed.

This isn't about you anymore.

          I'm starting to see a pattern. It's kind of like, staring at the tiled wall in the shower. You want to slip and fall, maybe break your head, but you can't seem to stop looking at the wall. The art.

             The faces and the places on the wall, they talk and breathe, and the more you see, the more you know. And the more you see, the more you want to know, but it all seems to stretch out into nothingness. Everything blurs together, and the more you know, you find you actually know nothing at all.

          That's where I'm coming from, I've always known where I was coming from, but I have never known where I was going. This isn't about you anymore. I've come to realize that my life is a lot like that wall. Winding and endless, like if Satan was a snake and he made a home around my neck. Coiled tight enough to make me see stars in your eyes, but loose enough to make my head pound with pain.

              So it's all about me, and I'm endless. I'm sad and I'm tired, and I have no answers, and I'm all alone. I know that I'll have to keep going, but I also know that I think I'm going to leave you behind. This isn't about you anymore. I'll take my heart back and leave it for someone more special - maybe my dog or my best friend, Carolina.

      I think they'll take better care of it, and I can focus on what really matters: living a life that doesn't involve drowning. Drowning in thoughts, drowning in tears, drowning in possibilities. I think I've had enough of that.

I think I can swim.

The mailman dropped a letter in our box
for Mrs. Tovia Durkan who has not lived

at our address for forty four years
and is now buried in a small cemetery

surrounded by a black wrought
iron fence and glorious mums,

we are now the caretakers of
a letter sent to a Jewish widow

leaving us to feel responsible
to attend the Bat Mitzvah of

12-year-old Sophie Bravermann;
do we bring a gift?

I'm pretty sure I die with you every night. Miserable souls always seem to last the longest in this sent from hell world. Here comes the manslaughter, the impending doom of it all, the sideways games and glances that leaves my seat wet and my neck hungry for your hands, here comes the tragedies, mistaken suicidal attemptants at kisses that stream tripping in between sets and hollow stairs painted down my hips with the fire of you. Here comes the luster that doesn't lack. I think. Today would be a good day for everyone to disappear, including me, into you but you won't incline your hips into me 'cause last night I told you I once tried to **** a real good song so that I could own it's rights and lefts while spiraling into your lungs like a jail's black tongue. Here comes the poems and cults that Shakespeare shot down my inner thighs as you tattooed my lungs with the **** of your cigarettes. Here it all comes to ridicule me deeper into the middle of this crisis, here it all comes to take a toll on the planes of my mind as I shoot up high into sage tainted milli-universes. Here comes folded dollar bills cupped and lined against the tusks of my milky breath toned to the centerfold of your abdomen, here comes the part that hurts just a little bit more each time you come around. Here comes knowing you.

The sound of utensils being stored
'just so'
A second cup of joe
A post card Dusk soon to follow
Red sky traveling West
Fir Trees begin to shadow our
little 'Brick Nest'
Hummers relish their final feast
The Harvest Moon takes over the painted East* ...

Your love, oh God, is
The foundation of my life,
Bedrock to my soul.