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the body man is coming for me
in his sweater vest
in his dockers
'Business Trousers, I keep hemmed high, so the river doesn't bog them down!'
the body man.
He is gentle, soft spoken,
my friend
my guilty conscience
and after he is through with my broken toys
i know he will come for me
Losing control
******* in sin
in amber shot glasses, beer glasses,
goblets red like blood and twinkling in the fire

I try not to mind it
I love him and he just turned twenty one
the age of no more
I try, I promise I do

But I watch a woman drink herself to death
Every
Single
Night
And it occurs to me that I cannot see
the difference
between out of control and completely sober

It has gotten to the point where I see horrible fires at beer commercials, lighting them all up, eating away their sin in explosive technicolor
And I want to hurt the woman in the Spirits Store
even if she has done nothing wrong
but sell my mother the evil
No, it's not actually evil,
but still, I want to choke the life out of her body and keep squeezing
until I feel vertebrae pop
red grapes in my hands
will you partake of that wine?
The pleasure is still there, a kick of adrenaline.
Will you partake?
My sin, though worse than yours, is still sin
Waste not, my friends
**** it in like rats
and I will fall upon you like an avenging angel, reaping

But then I realize
that's crazy.
That's unreasonable.
I should just go to bed.
Her hands were so sticky and started to swell
Ugly, red, burgeoning paddles
convulsion nervously at her sides and then at her mouth as she held back a whimper
(The neighbors were still fighting
so no one would have heard anyway.)
Anyway
Her eyes bulged
as heart heart felt heavy, then light again, then heavy
When her eyes began to swim, she tried
she did
she tried to get to a telephone
but instead she collapsed
like an egg from the carton
and laid there
until the neighbors stopped fighting.
The days are shining simple
(the monsters only come out at night.)
God, are you there
or are you listening from behind my own eyes?
Watching, waiting for me to sin
and shame myself.
Do you hear me?
I have sinned.
Do you have it to do
to strike me down, to burn me?
Or are you too lazy.
Or are you a hypocrite.

Or am I  merely screaming into a mirror.

If that is the case
I will be an Old Testament God
one who devoured ***** and Gomorrah
and who will drown herself
her sinning form
in blood.
So often at night, I find that there is nothing better to do than to curl up in a ball
surrender to the terror in my mind
curse my own paranoia
and weep.
I cry until my bones are shaking
and the bed is too
until they fall apart
like shattered stained glass
and form new patterns of the ground
glittering, ready,
to slice my feet.
One day, like an island, you showed up
out of the great blue nothingness.
Like a Venus born of an SUV, clad in hiking boots and jeans.

One day.
That was all.

The smell of you lingers, my love
on my shoulder, where you leaned your head.
So now, if I tilt my own,
I can find the ghost of you
as though you were standing just behind me.
Instead, you are being dragged
every minute
away from me
so far away from me.
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