I want to be beautiful
the way a car wreck keeps your eyes.

I want to be a detonation.
I want to be what's left after a riot with guns.
I want to be gauze on burn victims.
I want to be blood spatter.
I want to be teeth marks.
I want to be the burn in the retina.

I want to be that beautiful
and terrifying.
So that you'll never forget me.
And even if you do, you won't.

The candle stores
can't candle
fabric softener on your clothes
or the bit of alcohol
on your sleepy breath
or your chest after a shower.

I checked.

It is not enough to exist.
It is only enough when your existence leaves a kind of crater in a person.

Then you know that you are real.

Pure love
and hate
as weapons.

Reminiscing of the wife that drowned in the oven.

Experimentation on ourselves is our only identity.

So she cut herself open and pinned back the folds
to go over the formaldehyde
with her eyes closed
and made herself a body without organs.

And when she choked

she dreamt of being on a plane.

I finally knew what you meant
when she said she wanted to keep your eyes.

I want your eyes back,
I want your hands back.

I wonder if you knew that being in the same room would cause us to gravitate and dance together even if we weren't allowed.

This parachute is crushing my ribs so that
my knees buckle when I land.

I feel sick.
I ***** up post-its and
menthol cigarettes
and pages of a movie script.

Inside jokes drip off my chin
when my eyes
roll back inside my head.

There's too much sweat
on my upper lip out,
out without warning doubled over
come collaborated lyrics that ****
sticking to quotes from books that speak to us.

I put a message in a full bottle of
gingerbread schnapps
so you won't know what it says
when you get drunk
and this parachute won't come off.

They thought we were like the fallen street lamps on the interstate
who fell fighting
so everyone was looking at us saying
"maybe it would be better if you leave each other alone."
But you are my heart

All my friends asked if I'd gotten busy
and I high-fived, yes indeed.

We met him on a party bus on the way home.
He talked to my friend the entire way, but she had a boyfriend.

The night before I had brought home a ******
who cried
about cheating on his girlfriend and that his **** wouldn't work.

They were bodies,
eyes to watch watch me
and I just wanted.

He ****** with his shirt on.
He cuddled me with one arm until he thought I was asleep
which is the exact physical embodiment of how it feels when your boyfriend stops looking at you.

"You don't really want my number"
"Wha-what?"
"You don't. It's okay. I don't want yours either."

So simple.
Reassuring.
Nuanced, intricate, sly,
perfect.

It would've been perfect.

You are seven years old,
a machine that makes babies,

bought for 21,000 pounds of tobacco.


You live in the 5th line
of the
 75th page
of my 
civic government textbook.


I will never know what is to have

owning hands in my mouth, 

owning hands around my waist, 

owning hands up and down my legs,

to be sold.


You will never know what it is

to sit in the back of a lecture hall

and take your knowledge for granted.



And this is the only moment I will ever clearly see you.

I'd like the skin of my teeth to bleed from straining, thank you.

My jaw lies broken open from the punches
and if I'd have been tied to a chair,
it would have been more fun.

All your dreams were screaming kids in a car wreck on fire.
So, **** the ******* gun already.

I'm a flying high dive broken vertebrae disaster
go ahead and try to take my marrow out.

I made my bed I'll lie in it.
I made my bed I'll die in it.

I granted you the ability to know me better
so I could look into you like you were a mirror

We always want people to tell us the truth
unless it's about us.

I declared from a soap box in my room under covers
that I would start holding people accountable for their actions

but the mumbled clause was only if they'll still love me afterwards.

"Get some new friends"
And I didn't listen.

So now I'm stuck inside of this old love
burning alive
because I didn't jump.

I spent drunken walks
saying I love you into a made bed
into a moving train
a locked gate
like the mortared bricks could hear me.

The Christmas lights shone on wet face droplets
happy tears of nothing.

And if you were never coming back
I would never cry out loud
and it was the first time a love would never feel crippled.

The white noise in my ears just turned off and it was the first time I looked around for you and you weren't there.

It was the first time I noticed.

I hadn't been able to hear the emptiness in the room, but it's louder than I remember it.
It's going to keep me awake all night.
I'm going to blame you.

There's a bug stuck in between the window and the screen
and I think about how he got there
and how ******* ******* he must be,
and if he's even a "he".

But even if he got out,
he wouldn't go anywhere important.

And I wonder if bugs know that glass is glass.

A person once said to me,
"Love guides you."
I don't know about that,
but I know I can't sleep
because the outline of you
is still traced into me.

And every time I try,
my eyes
burn, wet socket fire.
And I drink to sleep a dreamless sleep
because in my dreams
I feel your head in my chest.
My bones are your bones
and we dance.

My face gets close to yours
and I whisper from a movie
and everyone in the theater
cries when we kiss at the end.

You must've been a supernova
because I can't see anything else.
You must've fallen from heaven
and right onto me because I'm paralyzed.
You must be a drug,
because I shake when I take you.

And I can't take you.

Love guides you.

Off a ******* cliff.

It had begun to take on a slow
aching, mile-long, groan --
one with a backup battery.

A kind of hysteria set inside of her and gave her venom.

She would destroy him
and everything in him
one way or another.

There's a certain mix of alcohol on the breath that reminds me of a hug.
So, drunk *** doesn't bother me
as much as it's a preference.

My father drank himself into hospital beds
floating on his shattered tibia
believing it would carry him home.

But all good memories are ***** christmas lights.

Now, everything is more or less the same
except I sleep with you invisible.
I can't feel your heat
or smell the whiskey
but if my eyelids are tight I can feel you next to me
miles away.

Pretty as revenge.
So pretty their knuckles are always bleedin' cuz they knock you out
and you speak defeat ten times every time you open your mouth.

The girls in short skirts, man
they're sharks
and if you could swim farther, you should

But that perfume makes you feel funny and helpless and drunk
cuz *******
where did they ever get that stuff?

The kinda bite that feels like a kiss, thinkin'
there's something you missed
Where did you get those eyes, thighs, hair like the sunrise
and baby, make me a fool again.

And then it's the morning.

And you're a fool again.

By the hand shy of my chest
By the bated teeth-bared breath
By the mirror looks brushing teeth
By the casual fingers on my thighs at rest
By the grip
By the spit
By the yes of the fingertips
But mostly to me

By the straining of the neck muscles when it looks like I might leave.

Be careful.

Stop
don't move.
Keep away, stay away
keep away.

Be careful.

*"Don't you know
it's dangerous to play with fire?"

"Not for me.
I'm insured."

I open pre-approved credit cards like love letters.
Growling under bedsheets.
A twitching right eye inside of blue screens.

I think my bones are going deaf.

My insides are lava
My outsides are lava
I am fractured and glowing
I am killing natives
I am slowly swallowing.

Quiet
not calm
boiling.

She said he had a mathematical elegance. She said he held her bones up. She said in the fall they went a month and half without talking and that was what withdrawal must be like. She said he has an excellent ****. She said he liked music. She said she dreamt about him often. She said he would be this way. She said he had favorites. She said he talked about the government. She said he went on long drives, sometimes with her. She said he was a real man. She said they ****** in a hospital bathroom. She said he would beat people up for her. She said he would chop down trees for her. She said he liked candy. She said he liked to flush condoms down the toilet. She said he makes her laugh.She said she doesn’t know. She said she doesn’t know. She said she dreamt of him often. She said he waltzed the wrecking ball. She said he spoke between mornings to her when she pretended to be asleep and he would kiss the back of her neck afterwards. She said she remembered how he smelled after a day when they didn’t shower. She said she liked it best when her spit smelled like his spit. She said they ****** in his car. She said she saw him but he didn’t see her. She said she wanted to call. She said she watched him with his eyes closed. She said she couldn’t understand what he was saying sometimes, even though he was talking to her face. She said she thought it rained on days when she missed him. She said he must have loved more women than her. She said it was hard. She said it was hard. She said it was hard. She said they ****** in her car. She said they were never thinking of the same song. She said he asked her questions. She said she couldn’t sleep. She said he broke a mans nose in the street. She said they ****** in her bedroom. She said they stared at each other. She said he couldn’t sing. She said he was a car crash. She said she was a car crash. She said she would rather.

Are you a master?
Are you a mess?
Are you a lover?
Are you a test?
Are you a past?
Are you impressed?

Did you get your wish?

Oh… hey.
Fancy seeing you here.

Please slow down.
I'm worried about them.

I see your babies
and I know they'd like you to watch
even though they don't say it.

In the end they'll be okay
but I saw that wreck
the truck
the glass.

I heard it.

Mother's never scream so hard as when blue police officers pry open a car and she's the only one in it
who can scream.

Yes,
I'm the one who gave the sign
that went unseen,
my only job.

If I could only be yellow forever.

And all the others, they stare,
wondering if I'll be taken down because of it.

But I'm not broken,
not yet.

His **** is too long
but she can't complain.
Not because she is pleased
but because who complains that a **** is too long?
A lot of girls
not out loud

that's who.

Cash register chimes
same beat
every time
and my hands are full.

I owe ten cents
and the Invisible Creator
calls for a price check.

Out to the car and tonight
where you stand
with many different someones,
but I can taste your stares on my almost empty bottle.

I don’t happen to meet your arms goodbye.

I tried to stop you
like a baby deer tries to stop a freight train
so

I am grinning blood and guts at 70 miles per hour.

But it happened so fast

I still think I'm all here.

Why do you look at me that way?
Like I'm a bird that turned porcelain and fell out of the sky?

I thought I could tell
by your laugh, but
maybe not.

Sorry about that.

I thought I could tell
by your clothes,
but that's shallow.

And you make me nervous.

I thought it was your taste in movies.
You mentioned one of my favorites.

Sorry I assumed you'd like me because we had all the same interests.

Then I thought
I should talk to you,
but you didn't seem like
the type of person
who was good at talking to strangers.
I'm not that type of person either.

But if I did, I would've asked you everything.

I get off how I get off.
Who cares?

Obviously my wife, since she was so ASHAMED
at finding me suffocated by by own belt on the bedpost with my **** in my hand
that way.

In this way you remind me of a dog fight:
Snarling or
shattering my ribs with silence.

Everyone is holding hands,
makes me miss you.
Not because you had hands,
or anything.

“I forbid you”
Which seemed to ask you to find something to do.
Odius,
Huge,
And Terrible.
Aren’t they your duties?

Discovering you talk like a cage.
I pretend like a renegade.
Nobody quite remembered, but that’s the way you wanted it.

In a flare of temper,
In a moment you could trust me with.

Nothing broke the fall like the pavement broke the angel bones, caught by the crater she made.

What’s that
Professor?
Sorry, I can’t hear you.
I’m wasting my $20,000 education
so I can get drunk
and sleep whenever it’s feasible.

Ooohhh… right, slaves.
Got it.

If  had a nickel for every kid in this neighborhood who got shot on accident

I'd have a pile of dead kids.

It does not make my death less tragic
although it does add me to a pile of bodies
whose faces are all starting to look the same.

Riches in
Fifty-cent flying saucer vending machines
I got a ring
and a note from the future you
explaining that everything will be okay.

Only three windows open
and everyone is smiling about it.

This road has no lights.
My hair is in my mouth, past
empty parking lots
Let's be quiet for this song.

I was right to run away and lock the door on you after I passed out in the kitchen and I wish I woulda known then.

Broken bird who listens like chimes.
The way you surrendered your neck
twice
first a lover
then a sacrifice.

People will tell you what they are,
you just never said battleground.

I need someone to see me,
even if it isn't you.
I swallow
and hiccup heartbeats.
This is stuff that I've always wanted to say
but never did.

You have become a song, a dance,
a phrase.
I miss you,
but only what I remember.

I don't have words, just carousel music.
You have become my memory of you
and everything you've ever wanted
wants you, too

Standing in line waiting to see your aunt
who looks like your grandma
because the last time you saw your grandma she was in a box
like your aunt's.

But the box isn't really your aunt's.

It belongs to everyone in the room.

Yes

Even you.

Then you felt so small
even though you were bigger than me
and always would be bigger than me,

I held you like you weren't and I was more scared than you'll know.

"Well, you know what happens at the end of the story."

But since you're going one way or the other
it might as well be in a gun fight.

One, two
Ben is coming for you.
Three, four
run for the door.
Five, six
This is what happens when you call someone who is mentally unstable a ****** and a freak enough times and nobody does anything about it.

Your mustard gas lungs would
fill up this room.

There is only good
on top and around you,
ointment that is not yours
that you do not appreciate
that keeps  
your tar stomach from
eating your shell.

I don't look at your teeth when you talk.

You are guilty
and you will never be better.
You can fall
to not climb back up,
comforting that
you don't have the tendons in you.

There must be
a flame somewhere
to solve this.

There's something in a kiss.
I've never been.

The quick cheek
or the lovers racing me to see
how many they can give before I turn green.

And even though I'm not,
I'm always green.

Hands out windows, lips blown.

A soft one,
carried to a small, chocolate-ed mouth
so mom can steer.

On the corner every day, waiting at my red
at 3:30 or 3:35,
not as practiced
but meaning as much as a kiss can mean
at thirteen.

But it must be the hopeful one that gets me most, stuck on an envelope, paused at the box.
No one else waits on toes like she does
or kisses paper
like a person.
Deliberate,
and I can almost see it kiss back.

She lets it go and goes herself
and I wish I was every light
to make sure she was safe.

And there you are walking around
with no blood in you
desperately running into everyone
and never sticking.

You've got a beautiful soul, you know
but you need more love in your bones.
I can't help but notice, you're starved.
Your mouth waters and your lips crack
in fact, I feel your heart grumble like a stomach.
And it's not my business, but listen,
this kitchen is big enough for a dance.
And I'm not sayin' me,
I'm just sayin'.

Love
*****

I say
"I forgive you"
But knowing you want me when I don't want you
is the sweetest land-mine
I have ever buried.