She drew each suit
Of a deck of cards
On my arm with a
Black ballpoint pen
We nursed our shared glass
And took ice once
All the customers had taken
Their motorbikes into the night
We made love beneath
The fairy-lights and
Cleansed ourselves
In simple, beautiful poverty

I knew that the ink
The glass
The ice
The fairy-lights
And the ***
Would all burn out
Or wash away

I knew that the poverty
Would lift
Eventually
And expose
Our rushed
And reasonless
Foundations

I hold onto love
Like sand
It scatters easily
In my hands
And I will attack it
Probe it
Interrogate
Intimidate
Isolate myself
Until nothing remains

All this
To prove
To those who love me
That I am unlovable

I
am
******

and not in a clawing flesh, body convulsing, banging headboard kind of way

that kind of ****** I can rock the **** out of.

No
I am more the
twisted mess of forced misconception
enlightened by time innocence forgot
forced into a life guided by trust in the lies truth told

Yeah,
it's the end of life as I know it
that's the kind of ****** I am

I knew joy
it was based on trust in what was true

I knew love
it was built on that same foundation

So yes,
I am ******
this mess of **** crumbling to pebbles while blinding me in the dust of my own ignorance
is anything but blissful

and all I hear are the cries of beautiful dying
not that dying is beautiful, though it can be
but of the death of beautiful things
of things I found implicitly lovely
the painful dying of all I believed was good

I am so ****** sideways

protected by others
I can no longer say for certain who I am
or who I believe myself to be

****** hard and unrecognizable
***** into truth by the kindness of others

No more questions because I am ****** that way too
no one wants to hear their old news and ***** laundry

I knew love once
now all I love, I question
reliving my choices in reasons why
trying to piece together my life had I always known
trying to define how I love by my own definitions
and not by what I knew love to be
because that love never existed
only in my ******, shattered memory

So, hey
guess what
I used to love you
now it's tainted with yesterday's **** streaks

I'm still me
But boy
am I ******

trapped beneath a fitted rubber sheet
a lump in the mattress
suffocating on
rancid latex sweat
and yesterday's dried fluids

who were they
the nameless in the dark
this one smelled of popcorn
that on howled in delight

a collage of senseless noise
scented by cats and Ajax
leftovers always go bad

Chuck-will's-widow
in the tree by the window
it must be after midnight

though noon looks the same
in this cage that gives just enough
to torture with possibilities
of breaking free

freedom is overrated
roses stain glass
with the bloodletting
of thorny mishaps

blurred by smeared wounds
ain't life grand
when love ceases to be a goal

how can one find what is
utterly indefinable
if it cannot be decisively named
it cannot be concretely attained

then again, love's fluidity
is its charm
no hard edges
ebbing and flowing
elusive and longing

**** me latex blind
unseen and used
by those who never did mind
a lumpy mattress