**** poor, dying for a dream,
or a drink, one more cigarette,
the landlord comes around, asking for rent
and the money is gone, it was never there,
so you smile and bat your eyes,
one more week, I promise

soon he'll be at your throat
with eviction notices that scream
louder than stereotypes of poverty
louder than your baby's growling stomach
louder than all of your meticulous schemes.
are you uncomfortable yet?
I've barely scratched the surface.

the stereotype that you fell into
doesn't suit you, single mother
wiping off tables and smiling your hardest
to make tips, bend a little further,
hike up your skirt, show some leg
some ***, let them see your ****,
generous patrons love that ****.

you go home and scream into empty spaces
and curl into cold corners thinking of
Bukowski in cockroach rooms
eating candy bars to survive
and dream of an end to a means.
you play some Tchaikovsky
and hold your own flesh and blood
close enough that they can't leave you,
drink White Russians until your hands melt
and write **** that nobody wants to read
about your struggles, knowing that
you will be gifted with rejection letters
and apologies.

**** poor, it is a way to live
but if you prefer sanity, not one
that I would suggest.
it will devour you
destroy you, upend your hopes
and shatter your dreams.
god will not help you,
nor the state or the politicians,
but if you make it out alive
you could be stronger than
diamonds, harder even than
your own resolve.

he told me,
you are the strangest creature
that I have ever laid eyes on.
and what could I say?

I am a curator of slick thoughts,
cigarette thin and clinging
like mad to my small sense of resolve.
a stranger in a house of ghosts,
writing phantom epitaphs and
combing through scientific journal articles.

I am no mystic, but a logical anomaly.

stranger things have happened.

I lied when I told you
that I was okay, that
colors were still colors
and that my thoughts
were still pure.

you should've known better,
dear, that I am the dirtiest
form of clean, gritty smile
and the inescapable nature
of a poet.

don't look so surprised
at the words that bounce
off the roof of my mouth.
I know you shudder at
my carelessness, at my
inclination to destruction,
but don't look at me that way,
darling.

don't come around,
if you can't thrive on decay.
don't think twice about leaving,
I never promised you a martyr.

wake up, the sun is cold
amongst the din of mourning doves
and impossible airwaves.

breathe, are you ready for
the apocalypse of silent words?
stuttering silver mercury
and glimmering plasma
tracing paths in your brain,
and the sun is cold,
so cold, and the coffee is black

and, my lover doesn't even know
who I am anymore.

I wish that I
could fall in love
with a female,
for she would make
a far better muse than
the gruff sailors and musicians
and drunks and men
in general that I am
inclined to crave.

to write about
a painted pout or
skin that brushes against
your own like nylon,
sunlight shining through
the window onto a Cupid's bow
and dancing down to
a delicate clavicle, or
black eyelashes that bat
and blink remorse
into your cavernous heart,
to muse over such aesthetic
delights, would be
ecstasy for my poetess heart.

I linger, staring, at beautiful
women, androgynous women,
delicate, feline women,
stringing words
together in my head
over long legs and
hair that flutters like silk,
and they think I'm crazy
or in love with them.
well, maybe I am crazy,
but I crawl into bed each night
with my snarling, gleaming,
mahogany gentleman,
and I love him madly,
my rugged muse.

alone, there are worse things,
like being an artist
trapped between microcosms,
unable to make eye contact,
or wasting away in suburbia,
stuck on photographs
of Venus and Cetacea,
or reading Bukowski to
a room full of preachers and
PTA goddesses,
or mourning the specimens
spread and pinned to a board.

yes, there are worse things
than alone; did I mention
slithering black nights
and the touch of bare skin
when you've forgotten
how to love?

it's too late to realize
such small truths,
we simply adjust.

days like this, gray sky
over coastal grandeur,
I sit and look out across
the rubble of a city,
the rubble of our souls;
what a ******* mess
we have made.

the gulls loop and dive,
screaming, into the
winter lake, and all
the classical music
in the world couldn't compare
to the dull sorrow
of this moment;
such a beautiful contrast
of trash and gold.

we are all, every one,
searching for something
beautiful, something
to hold that won't turn
to stone.