all i've been able to think about lately
is a poem written by fingers on a keyboard
attached to a left hand not yet responsible
for being blistered with cigarette burns
or lifting can or shot or handle to lips
with which to stain -- barley, hops,
potatoes, rice, and alcoholic love.
and i've been thinking about how i felt
after i read a poem written the night
before by a left hand now singed
and swollen, and guilty of lifting
many such apparatuses bearing
many such inks to blot out
mistakes and scribble over
all the misjudged words
that have spilled from
lips stained with barley,
hops, potatoes, and rice.
and i've been thinking about
the content of that poem,
and about how differently
i thought of it two nights ago,
before i got my own matching
business card with a followup
appointment for next week,
and a matching warning
to allow 24 hours notice
before changing the day
or time of an appointment
in order to avoid being charged;
and with it came the opportunity
to write my own poem about it:
Christina M., LMFT,
Wed, 4-17-13 at 4:00 PM,
and it has a sacramento street
address with a phone number
i have no intention of calling.
and i've been thinking about
how i met with her today,
and what we spoke of,
how i told her about drugs,
and how i told her about drinking,
and how my grades have been slipping,
and how i realized that
my poem is his poem,
just eleven months too late.
and that's why i told her about
this party i went to this weekend,
and how i'm passive, and i have trouble
speaking up for myself when i need to,
and how we sang until i left the room,
and how i went outside in the cold
after i came back inside to notice
something i wasn't expecting
to make me sad, but did.
and this person with whom
i have another appointment next week,
and most likely the week after that,
for however many weeks it takes,
told me that it helps to tell a person
how you're feeling without
gluing strings to the information,
or getting upset, or lying,
and so i guess this is an attempt,
albeit one made out of cowardice
and impatience, and some desire
for there to be an easier way
to tell a boy i've loved him
ever since i found this stupid website,
filled with his stupid words,
and his stupid poem about
a stupid girl he used to date,
that clinically broke open
my amygdalae and upon them
tattooed every feeling
of which i was never sure.

mornings are better
when wrapped up
in strawberry kiwi
paper and burned.
-
like gene wilder
and roald dahl
with lickable wallpaper
cut up into skins.
-
a mile took more
effort than i thought,
and i'd rather replace
the tar in my lungs
with love,
but no one
likes to shotgun anymore,
and the man i've written
so much about
has pulled a move
more fitting me
than him,
-

when made a designated drinker
for a designated driver.

when stomaching stale pabst
and rationed sweet cider.

when frat boys fulfill
stereotypical homophobia.

when twenty grade A reds
can't last me longer than a dream.

when old man nightclub and triple kills
usurp the crown of moderation.

when you fall asleep
with so much in your blood to spill
like beans,
or milk not worthy of tears,

and i keep a loom in my heart
where i weave a string of everyone
[with myself]
and every fray in warp or weft
is mimicked by the splinters
shuttled to my hand.

she was the first
to act as though
she wanted to be my beretta,
to hold a holster to my thigh
and accept the badge
of partner in crime.

she spoke without shelter.

pool days of marination
in monsters and taurus,
a kiss for pity
as i'd yet to be corrupted,
and she stole some joy
in taking what wasn't hers.

she was bigger than me.

she showed me
how shattered touch screens
can look like dried petals,
but cut like cold *******,
and when you're in a field of dandelions
how they come in handy.

she wrote the book on flagellation.

she promised it was all for me;
calloused fingertips from
loving me with lighter fluid,
scratches for feral adoration,
and the damocles' above my head
or rather hers, and hers to drop on a whim.

she wrote a chapter on manipulation.

i wasn't ready the first time
she pushed passed denim
and plaid as easily
as she waived my concern,
nor the second --
nor the third.

she had daddy issues.

i still didn't know
how tampons worked,
or vaginas for that matter,
and so to be forcefully
and viscerally introduced to both
behind a tree in Henessey
****** up my brain a little.

she called it "mad week."

ear bud cables
became garrotes
around my neck
in the suspended
movement of a pulse
through my aorta;
and as every day with her,
i felt she crossed a line,
and as every day before,
i never called foul.

-
if i wrote a poem for every time
i felt like checking out indefinitely
i'd have six collections published
and the means to build myself
a cabin in a river valley,
tucked away between
two peaks of the andes
that are as lonely
as the singing/screaming
dual facets of the inner mind.
-
and ironically, i'd use the space
to fill the necessity i ran from
anyways, but --
-