I do not bite my fingernails
at the thought of you
crawling back and infecting me;
I refuse to be your host.

I will flick you away
like ashes
and you will burn
and crumble
in the wind.

I will not let you touch me.
I will drown you.

You will be gone.

I am here. I am here. I am here.

THE SMELL OF YOUR HAIR MAKES ME WANT TO VO
MIT BUT THEN AGAIN SO DOES EVERYTHING. IF I BRE
ATHE IN ANY MORE OF THIS FILTERED AIR MY BILE W
ILL COVER THE CARPET. AT TWO IN THE MORNING I W
ONDER IF THE PORTLY MAN WHO ORDERED A SALAD
THAT HE DIDN'T REALLY WANT AT MCDONALD'S COU
LD TELL THAT THE GIRL HE ASKED TO SUPERSIZE HIS F
RIES PERFECTLY RESEMBLED A TEACUP WITH A CRACK
JUST BIG ENOUGH TO LET YOUR PRETENTIOUS ******
G BLACK COFFEE SPILL THROUGH. SHE RAN HER HAN
D ACROSS THE STAR TATTOOS HIDDEN BEHIND HER EA
R BEFORE SHE HANDED HIM HIS CHANGE AND I WONDE
RED IF I COULD OFFER HER A CIGARETTE BEFORE THE GR
EY VAN THAT LOOKS LIKE CONCRETE COMES TO TAKE HER
BACK TO THE JAIL SHE RESIDES IN. MY SKIN IS TURNING
THE SAME COLOR GREY AS THAT VAN AND I AM SEEING
NEW VEINS IN MY ARM AND I AM A SLOUCHED WITHER
ING ENSEMBLE OF DECAY DESTINED TO DIE IN A POOL OF
***** AND BURIED IN THE VERY EARTH THAT KILLED ME

the peonies in the front yard are just starting to bloom.

the only thing i lust for anymore is sleep.
my fingers are aching to touch another human being,
and when a woman lugging around her child
in a stroller asked me the time,
i dropped the package i'd been collecting
from the post office
while fumbling for my phone.
i cried on the way home,
and applied a thick coat
of red lipstick.
thinking perhaps the camouflage of confidence
would hide the fact that i am merely
wilting husk of vapidity.

the peonies in my yard will die
in six weeks.

i kissed nine people on the mouth last night
but i wish i'd been kissing you.
i danced for hours last night
until my feet were numb and my head was spinning.
i wish i had the courage to tell you
i'd much rather have been watching you.
so many people shared their physical
free love with me
but all i could think is "do you still love me?"
and with each beat of the pounding bass-line,
over and over i thought
*"please miss me"
"please miss me"
"please miss me"

A person can only trip so many times
Before they fall
Effortlessly
Down the rabbit hole

Most of the time,
I find it difficult to harvest
the proper words from the curve of my neck
where the skin dips down
and shakes hands with my chest.  
The fine hairs raise and fall,
the color of wheat,
exhaling what others want and inhaling what I need.
In,
out,
in,
out.
Using my primitive tools,
I rip
the necessary parts of speech
from my throat
and use the so called precious arterial mud
that is equatable to manure
to fertilize my lungs
so that although I am dead,
my voice
is
not.

Sometimes,
I can pluck
proper phrases
from my eyebrows;
I can hunt them
through the tall grass that sits
upon my livid plains.
I imagine my pencil
is a spear
and try not to look
when the graphite
pierces their pure bodies,
killing the meaning
as yet another mediocre artist
paints them upon the lines of his notebook,
wounding
the effect words have on the world
because if they are used too often,
they mean nothing at all.

Occasionally,
my ink pen
forms a circle of deep blue
into which I can cast my line
and retrieve the perfect letter from a sea of ephemeral pieces.
I am merely part
of a larger industry
that traps
the delicate curves
of spines
and sharp points
of serifs
nestled between ascenders
and shoulders
into nets
made from blue lines on bleached paper.  
I desperately cling
to the descenders
that hang past the edge of the cliff
because by God I will not die
even if it means shooting something as beautiful as that
which I rely on to keep me afloat.

However,
there are times,
when that is too much effort -
too much exertion required of my small, inadequate equipment,
I am left
to abandon the ink-laden sea,
to discard my fields of words and phrases
in search
of a way
to pull the plug
at the bottom of the bathtub in my brain
and watch as the opaque,
grimy,
filth-ridden water circles
around
and
around,
exposing things
I never knew were there.  
In those milliseconds
where the contaminants drain away
and there is complete transparency,
I find what I am looking for
before I am even certain
what I needed in the first place.