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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm sorry everything I did was just sweet way to make you leave,
surfing on waves made of maybe I'll kiss you again
getting high off disappointment without knowing that's really how all those movies end.
And all you wanted was my heart on a plate
and baby, maybe I said no,
but I'm still bleedin' from the hole.

And I backtrack all the slanders for the moments you got me to believe in you.

I may have made up a lot of dumb excuses
but they were exclusively to your benefit.

Blacked out again,
unsurprisingly,
swallowing the room.

Spinning in a lucid dream,
blessed to consume.

Breaking into.

Ash shadows
drill bit chest
I am not your savior
I am a suitcase bomb
I only devour
breathing fire

and I will apologize to no one
for doing what I said I would.

If you wanna leave me
then you must be smart.

You must know
I pick fights with my lips when I kiss
That there's barbed wire at the end of my tongue
That I get into your spine when you sleep
and stay in your lungs after you breathe me in.

If you wanna leave me,
it's because you're a little scared to **** me
because you're afraid I won't like it
And what will happen if I actually do.

Like,
maybe I shouldn't kiss this girl
because I'll either break her
or catch something.

You must know my eyes will close up your throat.
So, baby,
let me make you bedridden

Or you can go.

I'm trying to send you letters in the air
the way the pirates did it when they were in love with the sea.

Writing letters to you is like throwing paper on water and hoping the ink doesn't bleed and you see, the sea, she's always in love with somebody else.

But she dances like she's single.

You are such a beautiful ruin
as if you dropped bombs on yourself.
Ruined like how Atlantis was ruined
and no one saw a difference.

No one bothered to look for a lost thing once so excellent.
Excellent enough to make people say “it was her time to sink.”
We’re a sabotage,
like the song I’m listening to.
Like moths listen slamming their faces against light bulbs.
So dim from standing outside for too long.
Standing and waiting.

Talk to me like
Minimum wage.
Three kids in different grades
happy to get sneakers on Christmas.
Two to a bed until puberty
hoping bus fare doesn’t go up.

Talk to me like
I’m sorry I can’t hear you
I’m scared that I’m pregnant and what my boyfriend will do
because I don’t want to marry him
but if you’re pregnant you keep it and you marry him.

Talk to me like
Can I help you?
I’ll trade you for some tuition money.

Talk to me like
Let me go check in the back
My brother’s in jail again
because he broke into our house to steal money
and he’s high again and it’s his fault
but it’s Dad’s fault for leaving.

Talk to me like
I’m sorry
I apologize
What can I do
Here’s a discount
Like she cheated
Like he’s dead
Like I’m you
in my shoes.

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.

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

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.

When I was 18 I learned a lesson in jewelry:
A pocketwatch that taught about loss
that was never mine to lose.

I borrowed the euros I paid for it.

Most loss is something felt by ranchers
and bankers
and stock brokers.
Because they own the things they have.

You are not mine and so I cannot lose you.

That's free sadness
and free happiness, too.

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.

I like the way you say my name.
When you call it, I listen.
You say my name like
you know what you're talking about.

My name,
it feels safe in your mouth.
It was born and raised there.
It's whole family is there and
it had block parties
with all seventeen cousins there.

My name spent bathing suit summers
running through sprinklers
just behind your teeth.

It's comfortable there.
I know my name always has a bed
under your tongue.

Even if you couldn't
say my name ever again,
I know I'd still like the way you say my name.

I like the way you say my name.

Some days we are passive,
but nighttime must be filled with kinetic terror.

Given or gotten,
like a rash.

It is how we sleep
or don't.

Getting pretty for no one.
Standing in
the bathroom mirror
and the clock
ticks backwards.
Mascara smears
on painted hands and
that hair
will never
shine
so bright as it does
as on top of a cold city.

High in a penthouse
but, still
no one
can sing the sky to sleep
the way you
used to.

So,
Let’s continue to pretend
we are people
we are not,
wearing clothes that don’t fit
and tucking our wings
into our suits.

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?

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

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

This elevator makes me wonder:
Could we be best friends forever?
Cords breaking overhead
knees shaking, breath breathing
Could we be best friends?

The time it takes for a train to derail
is the same amount of time to kiss a stranger
on the mouth.

Toast our ten second anniversary when the plane hits water.

Forever started when this bank robber put a barrel to my temple
and guided me down to you.

Spend the rest of your life holding my hand.

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 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.

I like to watch Letterman.
Not that **** Leno *******.
And so what if I have a gin and tonic?
I'm 67 for Christsakes.
So what if I have a cigarette?
It's my ******* house.
So what if I fell asleep in my chair?
So what?

Blush in a shade of bruise
leaving trails on collars and bones.

"Siren, siren
Body language me.
Concave me in wrong angles.
Sift through my sand and prospector me."

Every man wants to be saved by an angel
but heaven's just a mirror of hell.

She liked to feel like she was drowning in him
the hard way.
Because it made her love her lungs.

"My love, I don't want to hurt you"
sounds like a promise
the A-Bomb made to Nagasaki.

*"My love, I don't want to hurt you

but I will."

I felt nothing when you kissed me.

Only your paper lips
moist with words you said to get me here.

But it's just the words I want
and all the rest feels like chalkboard dust on my hands.

I remember what this excitement was
like the memory of grabbing a sparkler that just went out.

His ear-to-ear smile infects everyone,
too big for just his face.
It cracks the strong jaw of anyone who doesn't know
to open their throats and give them a taste.

Laughing is like music
from his broken open mouth
and it drowns out sounds that threaten to calm it,
contagious enough to bring tears to eye sockets.

Oh, but, oh you see it in her now, too
and soon the whole room
full of it, bursting

Fully Cooked Steaks.

Except she’s the one who brought it here
tenfold like a wildfire virus that lights him up and lights her up
and they’re two standing lamps, the old kind, with clocks in ‘em to wind and keep the time
forever.

And in the ravaged swirl they are glowing.

And we’re all clapping.

and I remembered the line in your shoulder
and the wine I had out of a water bottle last night
and how everyone around me was on acid
and how I was 22 and if I got cancer this early
at least I didn't know about it yet.

and I wasn't scared
and I wasn't scared
and I practiced what it felt like so I could remind myself later.

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

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.

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.

It’s always super you
saving every girl
held up at every jewelry store
or thrown off any bridge.
You and your windblown hair
and those beautifully deceiving eyes,
looking down and sparkling darkly
as you smile a kryptonite smile.

But your arms
so strong
could carry me miles
and never feel the heavy that lives in my chest.

Capes do get stuck in jet engines.

I am window shopping missing you
clenching my teeth for something I can't afford
that could live without me anyway.

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.

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.

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.

Before you die, promise you won't warn me.

When you die, just die.
to take everyone with you
or quietly
but do it.
Later
but not before.

If you tell me,
I'll know if we die together.
It won't be any fun if you tell me
before the building catches on fire
or even before I give up smoking or
even before I realize I'm not looking at the road.

I want to remember your face the way it looks on my wall.

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

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."

The TV told me it was over,
so our troops were coming home to read books and meet their babies.
The TV said,
"The guns are gone, the kids are safe,
the girls and women, they're safe, too
and no one's bleeding alone anymore."

I pulled up to your house and you said I love you
and we took a train to the mountains.

On top of every curve I heard you drawing plans on the window
of all the things we'd do
and where should we go?

And whenever we got there, we danced.

The girl I talk to in my class

so eager to tell me about her boyfriend.



Is this how girls make friends?
So polite,

most girls don't laugh when they don't know you.

It's unbecoming. 



But when I see the cracks uprooting your eyes

I know there is something there that runs deeper
than your jeans
or your shirt
or your cute purse, 
cute purse, cute purse, 
cute purse.

Today,
A woman in Afghanistan walked into her bedroom.
She poured a gallon of gasoline
on herself
and lit a match.
She set herself on fire
and collapsed on the bed
burning her husbands sheets
and melting her skin to the mattress.

She was screaming
and hoping
he would smell her death long after she went up.

Oh… hey.
Fancy seeing you here.

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.

Cutting, like rings in a fist-fight.
Jumping, flying, drowning, floating

She said trying to fall asleep was like jumping.

Promises like traps:
with bills
and utilities
and watering bans
and road construction
and mixed district schools
and mall-fires
and field trips
and infomercials
and unaffordable abortions
and MTV
and Show and Tell
and homeless people
and freemason bolo ties.

You’re sick
You’re sick

She said she just wanted to know what it felt like.

I'm the worst at flying.
Sure am good at screaming, though.

I know, I know.
"She doesn't sound crazy."
but believe me
the crazy person
when I say

we never do.

Your distance felt like how it looks when cops break up a riot
with pepper spray.

I kept saying I've been here before.

I went through all the old poems I wrote
and I realized I was afraid to write some about you.
Because you know the rule:
Whatever you write becomes truth.

I kept texting my friends about the light pole sticking out of my chest
and they all said things like
"I think you're just making a bigger deal out of the light pole sticking out of your chest than you need to be."

The moment I felt you leaving I beartrapped you
so no wonder you're bleeding
I started seeing visions of the amount of time I would spend crying in my bed
divided by trying to remember everything you said
and what tone you said it in and what time of the day it was and what I said before that and what tone I said it in and what time of day it was and what it was in response to and why did I say that But in the middle of my trench warfare...


I heard a lightbulb on the top of my head
that sounded like me, but smarter, and she said

"You gotta give love to get love and you gotta do it for free."


So this is how it feels to stop drowning.

Learn to love the fall,
to disappear like a radical ghost
shaking chains as a forgotten name.

Make your nests in piles of broken mirror glass,
court heartbreak like a 19th century candlelit lover.

Smile at the No,
bring it into your chest,
breathe it in warm.

Collapse the roof,
blow out the window,
cradle your shattered legs and kiss them like sleeping children
when they try to drag your broken body from the burning building.

And get your blood all over everything.