The FORCE;
is strong
in you

he spends his time
rowing through the
rugged, blockaded channels
of my catharsis,
the bitter staccato
of ****** habit.

his love
can be as jagged
as gashes in an
Elvis Costello record
thrown against the wall--
the frayed words of the last love song
Billie Holiday ever uttered.

he is two
exclamation points lit on
fire, kerosene pumping through
tautly wound muscles and
caressing our funny bones with
sandpaper.

he is
dulcit woodwind melodies
and jilted viola strings,
epic poetry and grindhouse theaters,
McQueen gowns and thrift store bargains,
the kiss on the forehead
and the nudge for a *******.

he is a double helix.

he is the beginning
and end of every sentence.

If I listened to every advertisement
hollering through the static
of my cable-hooked television,
I'd have a mammoth bottle
of Hidden Valley Ranch
sitting with the ego-quenching sheen
of recommendation in my fridge,
a Weight Watchers membership
(it told me to join as soon as possible
with the speed of a steroid-devouring treadmill),
Children's Tylenol
(despite being situationally barren),
and a Bowflex-shaped elephant,
ivory tusks slumping uselessly in the corner.

My living room would be the fraternal twin
of the American Smithsonian,
a faux-genuine quilt
of our Founding Fathers'
present day descendants
draping over my popcorn ceiling.

I return to the latest
sacred cow in the flea store
cartel of Lifetime Movie heroines;
it's "Vengeful Vixens Sunday"
and Elizabeth Berkley shooting men
and stabbing women in the back
all while eating buckets of Ben and Jerry
and getting addicted to crystal ****.

The dialogue is as freshly
packaged and slovenly edible
as the Minute Ready Late Night Dinner
with a cartoon grandma plastered on the logo,
all to remind you of down home,
or in the case of this Lifetime screenplay,
a time when the brain wasn't fully developed.
Same difference.

We all hide our guilty pleasures
as if our tolerance for the
secondhand existence of these favorites
were deemed malignant
by a cardboard kingdom
of young adult sophistication,
but I ask you:
who hasn't slipped into the comfort
of a mind turned to mush?

As the exhaust spewed its mourning glum
onto the whimpering porcelain snow,
the chauffeur looked up and desperately prayed
for an Academy Award winner.

"Novelty tears shall spout at all times!"
And the thespian will charge through those double doors,
beginning his craft from the moment he hears the ***** *****
singing the deceased's pleas towards the golden gate of Heaven
and crunching through an audience of bawling admirers
of a man he barely knew.

He was chosen to give the eulogy.
Designated to speak on the behalf
of man he never thought to glance at twice,
besides the intervals of days spent
despising the realization of his existence,
resenting the scars created in surplus quantities,
stomping down the darkest layers still oozing from the coffin.

For a handful of hours, it must all become a waning spark for the
method actor giving the most crowd-pleasing breakdown of his life,
delivering a perfectly tailored recital
cloaked to all the front-pew viewers
as a heartfelt elegy.

"Just a few hours," he thought as the double doors creaked,
and the scene will end with him sliding into his car,
a dead weight off his shoulders,
driving victoriously into the sunset.

A new set of tears rolled with the end credits,
along the face of the son,
liquidating the thespian with their bleak sincerity.
They were drops of remorse
for a bond that was never born,
with an abortion in a wood encasing
for all those people out there in the dark.

sweeps across the floor
like the hem of a rag
on a doll-faced *****
as the lights are dimmed
in this picket-fenced Attica.

To him, the raindrops taste like whiskey
so who's to blame him
for being a drunkard?

He will not take such condescension,
and so he shall pass it onto you
like a hot potato;
just say the third-degree burns
came from hugging the stove.

For you, life is not a Lifetime movie
looking at your bruises in the mirror
to a Celine Dion power ballad;
the days are a beach of intenstines
set alongside waves of toxic waste,
the moon now a mood ring
sitting atop the knuckles
of your vengeful king.

This decade of brutal purging,
atonement for sins not yet committed,
has felt as consuming
as his figure those Thursday nights
when he's stalking for his property,
and you're close-mouthed
under the bed,
looking through barely a slab
of this virtual reality,
at the iron-****** giant
who would nurse your neuroses
if he'd stop bashing your face in.

Your expectations for the outcome
laced with Disney Princess satin
arrange themselves in a cross-legged noose
(the "O" stands for optimism),
for all this atonement
must be the beaten path
to the Garden of Eden.

You should just remember.
The men still pulled the lever,
licking the flames
as Joan of Arc sang her finale.