Are you done
making waves in
my body yet?

It doesn't like
to be upset. My
heart can't take it--
in the literal sense.

It's like why I can't really
listen to heavy metal music
even though I can listen to pretty
much anything else. There's something
about the vibrations that make my heart hurt,

and it's the same with you.

Two vibratory frequencies
complement and intersect
and turn jarring like:

a tendency to say mean things or
hit me—like a school boy crush—and
sniff me on occasion while I rub
my face on yours like a cat

Because I was one in a past life
and you were a dog

Settle down, now
no need to steer a course
already laid out

Hush, nevermind: drink
white hot light wine. Only
say yes— if you’d like to
you can walk away

if you’d rather not
have nothing

He spoke with his nose against mine.
He closed his eyes and hesitated to kiss me gingerly
and when I did not deny him, he kissed me again.

And when I returned his affections
he gave a sigh of passionate relief,
his fingers imploring tenderly to
find the skin beneath cloth

within the sheets, and I
allowed him to. “I want you
to understand,” he said against
my lips, pulling me into him,
and so I tried to.

Where the thought thinks
first of itself is where the Universe
first ****** itself into existence

The old ball and chain
tethered to the ankle is not enough
for me, but it's fun to skip with

The vibrations of skin
friction beneath the fingernails
must be a sounding of the ankh

Another few days tacked on
with hardly even a thought

Nothing has changed.
Everything happens to stay
the same in an inane way.

I ****** up when I said
I love you after a careless laugh,
but you waited and then said it back
like you hoped instinct would be intact.

Every kiss stains
where you leave it,
and it changes nothing.

Every kiss fades
when you leave it.

No hasty decisions
should’ve been made,
so you say.

Is it habit or some
other innate thing drawing
in the opposites?

You remembered when I said
love could be like that thing inside atoms:
A force between the quarks and current

with no real will of its own,
but to pulse and pull

Some relief
from the
breaking bond
of oxytocin

I can feel
by myself

I feel clean hair
because mama always said
to wash it when you feel sick

No tear shampoo was a
******* lie and so
were we and so we'll be.
Sick from unwashed hair.

You say my name when
you see my face, but
you don't know me.

I shied away--just
in case-- but you
couldn't see me.

I spell your name
like a song, but you
don't hear me.

You don't know
me at all.

I am one
but I feel like
four- the stable
Form on all legs-

How is it there in tomorrow?
It is good and I am
well and the legs of
the table don't wobble

In three there
is no resolution.
A compromise exists
and connects the opposites.

But no one sits
on a three legged chair.
No one fits in a trinity
excluding humanity

My four is my
Lord and the
Three is in me

Is it needy
to need more
than what you
think is enough

Relationship or responsibility:
Not mature enough for
either or anything more
than the bare minimum

I need a real love
waiting for me
when I'm gone. I
need a good friend.

I still want
to talk to you

I **** with
you heavy

Why else would
I be here?

But we ain't locked in,
you make sure of that

I thought of
breaking up with you about
a hundred times tonight.

I imagined you
cheated on me in
one scenario- nothing
too lewd, but enough

To make me nearly
hate you. It seems the only
way I'd ever go through with it.

I'm some real
thing, but no
real poet.

It's getting awfully
blank in
here.

I don't want
to waste time with
unsatisfied lines.

I need a new, sound
love. No use in chasing
poetic chord progressions.

If only
the youth knew

We do not last,
this is not our life

What came after and
when comes before

My smooth skin akin to
a knowing or lack thereof

I **** like a fairy
on funghi

One guy happens
to come by, and waves
ridden are quickly riddled with  

Wastewater that nobody wants beating
against itself, with wings going like mad,
and the kid's shout in the street still
the God of history, or so it goes...

If luck lies fairly
on the fun guy

"Regular-sized Rudy?
Why do they call you that?"
"Just look at me,"

A touch of incongruity,
like a rogue ****** in
the parking lot of Rite Aid
that's like really close to the entrance

He said: "I want us to
be happy, and normal,
and I want to treat you better,"
Just look at me.

Like some thread
upon a line,
I can't let go

Cast seaward then
reeled in- but not for
lack of trying

The spool too taut,
a knot in twine, to
set the thing unwinding

The worst part is
not that I love you

It's in how you've
become some routine
within the familiar
comfort of us

The nature of disintegration
is erratic, and inconsistent, and stilted.

How many ties are there
exactly and when does
the schism occur?

At some point, a
stance is taken and
a yell is given

“Look at it! Look at it!
I want all of you
to look at it!”

The **** of some text
is not in the ******
or the lips of a lover

What pleasure resides
in the text? Is it in its being
written or read or dead?

It radiates from the turn of
the page, the rest of some
sentence forgotten in sleep

What the actual
****. I sit like a
sit if sit were a noun.

Where are the words
to write? If there's a
muse, then *******.

Backslide like the sting of
belt hide against my
black backside

**** so small
that **** look like some *****,

******, ******:
one, two, three

Tough ******* like
rough kitties with
soft—but mangled—fur

I'm not looking for someone
to marry, but should I be?

What kind of excuse is 'I'm a piece of
****'? Are you stuck the way you are?

What type of end is beginning?
No need in talking of known knowns.

Pat, pat pat: what am I?
A puppy, a shoulder, a mammogram?

What makes me what you think I am?
A feeling, a line, a telegram?

Stay here or
stay the night

Say you're at my place
and our shadows are aligned

What wild culture is
that of our kind

I can't wait to be
loved fully

To be worthy of
excess and effort

Upon arrival it smells
exactly as it should,
or only slightly different
than how it ought to

it should be
equal too; not you
like a morning mood
it can be a fickle youth

A poem lays:
a floor
It asks: what
am I naked for?

~
Beauty the incunabula
—first traces—of poetry

Feelings—known but unnamed—
spurned from the sublime


~
So fine
the lines
widening

like child’s
eyes before
fruit

ripening,
before it’s
known what
right is

any
good for you
—as mud for
elephants—

Snacks at
noon

She said I feel like
he's only going to really appreciate who you are
and what you guys have like years after you've broken up.

And I agreed that I'd
shared the same sentiment.
In the end we tend to only be practice.

I added, however, that we have a lot of fun
and get along so well, and she said
But he talks as if you don't exist in his world

I closed my eyes
and let my muscles
go by memory

What sound does
wild emotion take
when transferred?

Keys blindly pressed fall
as leaves in the fingers
like fission in autumn

I pluck her *******,
like a bouquet

Tie that *** up,
call me Christian Grey

Flow so hot,
I got Satan sweatin

I got ****** more strung up
than a cotton gin

Candy flippin, cross faded-
chase it down with gin

What am I doing?
I am washing dishes

I am nowhere else but
where I am now

My muse, where are all the
poems about cheese?

Where is your infinite material?
Is it somewhere in the
memory or tangible space?

Does it come from me
or do I reach for it as it falls
like gravity pulling dust motes
not quite heavy enough

I go where I have not
been once inside where
I've gone, but did you lead
me here? Are we tea before
steeping?

Does the water leach color from the tea,
or do the leaves happily oblige?

There is an I beneath every
made decision despite my environment

My I exists and I notice
its being doesnt take up much time

Memories—like things we
call stories behind the darkness
of shut eyelids—arranged themselves,

and I'm in choir,
and the song is in a key
too  high for me,

so I mouth
watermelon all the while.

It's years later now, and
I can't remember what brought
on the subject, but

he said he likes to spell
fruit—after a girl caught him
with the alphabet—and

says his favorite is
watermelon and slurps and
I think it's funny

Flatterer (n).

Bits of silver whispered
from a well-polished tongue;

a certain flexing of fondness

Embouchure (n).

A certain lemon-*******
puckering of the lips pressed
against a moistened surface;

a sure fire way of producing
some string of singing sounds

Cheap (adj).

How your mother thinks
you look in that outfit

Bananas (n).

The things with a curve,
a little thick and firm and squishy;
durable outer cover for protection

The view
before me:
a sky
comprised
of sky like
Attenborough
sea side

Rice krispies
and water
between us

St. Petersburg
3-6

Blue shifts
bluey pinks
meet clementine
licks violet
amidst the creatures
swimming in the
deep of the fermament

Details and pretty things
the strongest of foibles at hand

And on the other some amount
of certainty about the self, and
how it should be run and
perceived by others

She walks and
they watch:
a detail herself,
a pretty thing

A poet must produce some
type of lust in their words

To slurp up sloppily some
light red meat juice

I let you do to me
what winter does to forest trees

But I suppose they don't
have much say in the matter

Baby got thighs
like she ain't afraid of gluten

Way she put it down
like a law, like Newton