maybe you were right: i never brought
home flowers or chocolate
cleverly arranged in the
shape of a heart and
i couldn't afford a day at the spa
but i'd always sit with my bare ***
on the cold bathroom tile for hours and
feed you toasted bits of cheese on ritz crackers
while you cried in the bathtub i'd
braid your hair as you
let your fingers wrinkle until
the water cooled off too much your
******* got hard and bubbles
stuck to the cut of your shoulders

because you were there when
my mom's little car died on a backroad
under the old black tree
that scratched up the sky
you pulled your pants up
over ruby knees and asked
me to fix your bra
smoked a cigarette lying upside down
across my damp chest
facing my feet and
made me make a promise
while i traced music notes into
the soft flesh of your back with
my ***** fingernails and found
the cracks in your porcelain ankles
with my tongue

you said my love for you is
something that will never make sense
and you never know what to do
with your hands when i'm kissing you
but you moaned the chorus while
i sang verses into your bellybutton
and tied a couple fingers to the
soft web of hair behind your ears
we were like two locusts
fighting in a gossamer heap

two weeks later you were dancing
in my kitchen like a daffodil drunk
on robotussin wearing only striped
peppermint legwarmers and
authentic dreamcatcher earrings
so i bought a theremin from
your favorite pawn shop
and taught you how to tickle it
and as the wind picked up
whipped your hair into a
crucial comet's tail and rustled
the caterpillar from the windowpane
back to it's home in the wormy grass
i could hear the warm whistle
it made when you played with it
alone in the bedroom

i am crying now while
driving down highway one
recalling how your nose crinkled
when you smoked crushed roaches
or the way your hair tasted in the morning
and how you used to spit a
little bit when you laughed
and i can still hear that haunted echo
even as the saltwater swells
and splashes past the rocks

that sun machine is just
a distant memory now
but it left burn marks on my skin
and the floor where we tumbled
and fought the first time
i called you beautiful

write at midnight. edit in the morning.
write on a mountain. edit on a beach.
write inside a dream. edit & exist in reality.
write in a fever pitch as starlight kisses your cheekbones.
edit in the cold dawn light without excuses.
write loudly with Bjork screaming into the curtains.
edit in silence.

write as the clouds gather around the gibbous moon.
edit as the sun crests the hill & burns away the fog.
write inside, cozy under a blanket.
edit naked, cold on the front porch.
write asking questions.
edit demanding answers.

write blindfolded with your fingers waltzing across the qwerty.
edit bespectacled or with a monocle.
write like a mass ******. edit like a suicide.
or better yet
write like a homicide. edit like a detective.

write toward the open sky with your legs outstretched before you.
edit facing a clean white wall with your knees against your chest.
write because you are innocent. edit because you are guilty.
write during a fit of hyperventilation.
edit during mammoth exhalation.
write with complexity. edit into simplicity.

write, as Hemingway did, drunk.
edit, not sober, but hungover.
see your flaws in the sharp mirror of a headache.

write during sloppy explosion. edit during precise implosion.
write with your head in the clouds gnawing at the cumulus.
edit with your feet firmly planted in the ground.
write during violent collision.
edit during calm separation.

write with a pencil on soggy paper in a hot shower.
edit with a red pen sitting in tepid murky bathwater.
write among raucous laughter & banging skillets.
edit in secret while the kids are asleep.
write like a sadomasochist.
edit like a psychiatrist.

write while running on your tip-toes.
edit while lying flat on your back.
write in several languages with abandon.
edit beside a translator dictionary.
write as you are engulfed in fire.
edit with an extinguisher.

write with careless fluidity.
edit without assistance from amphetamine or coffee.
write with a full bladder,
standing up,
jitterbugging,
squeezing the tip of your *****
closed--urgently
squirm & trickle
your ideas onto
the porcelain page.

tonight is an
old-enough-to-vote-scotch-in-a-coffee-mug
kind of night i'm in one of those moods
where it's hard to communicate anything specific
i'm delving deeper into the vast emotional cavern because
i haven't found someplace open yet to flourish
& i haven't reached my usual vibration so i'll just bolt
the door wash my hair with hand-soap
because i'm a ***** guy with a ***** shadow body
i'll sit down in the shower to relax the muscles in my legs
watch the tears streak down the clear shower curtain
& accept the same marvelous sensation of wetness
tumbling across the skin of my face pooling in my top lip dimple
& soaking the soft yellow flannel splayed open on my chest

when the ball drops & the piano coda to Layla kicks in
i'll melt under the sweaty first-last moon of the year
as it sneaks up behind me bathed in the creature light
of the television shining out from the silent second living room
of my sister's house the one with the chandelier
& it's no surprise i turned out this way

last year i felt as cool as raindrops gathered together
in the shade of a wide tree & now i've never felt so alone
in my whole ******* life at least then i had roommates
to not give a **** about me because i'm nothing
i've come so far but sometimes
i'm still so scared i can't breathe
sweat trickles down my rib-cage as i re-inhabit myself
& next year i'll continue to dig myself out of this concrete hole
of low self-esteem this deep urban well of trembling
amateur sadness & feigned calamity maybe learn to not
blame them or make the tree feel guilty for blocking
the small bright sun from shining on my puddle because
i am no longer defenseless against my own racking fears
but right now it's too hard to see tomorrow's sunrise
from the wan of today so i'll just sleep out by the pool tonight under the stars to wait for it's richness & apprehend it's depth
if i get champagne drunk & can't
slide open the glass door i'll shiver my shoulders
& cry soul-struck blubbering in my sleeping bag as the
fireworks or flashlights cut
a Morse code dirge through the thick elm trees

the smell of spent powder or snuffed out candles
hangs like a noose around the throat
of the street with the fog in the morning as i brush
my sleepy-eyed teeth with my finger
i'm remembering the only summer you & i spent
together between college semesters
as you were getting over your ex-boyfriend i helped
by keeping pictures of you hidden in my room until spring
you said he took steroids & you liked a guy with muscles
so i did push-ups every morning before anyone else woke up
i did whatever you wanted in bed all night
but it didn't matter because you always left
as soon as you came

the weekend you got your wisdom teeth out
you made me promise to kiss you everywhere
except the bottom half of your face
starting with the swallowtail butterfly cocoon
of your collarbone or your belly-button at the bottom
of the neighbor's swimming pool
& you held your breath for me between
your swollen catch-me-if-you-can smile as
billows of your flaxen hair
floated into my open mouth
i was pretty sure i was the only guy
you hooked up with that desolate summer
but i was wrong

honest, the ones that hurt the most to write
are the self-love poems because
they remind me no one's around
to do it for me. they're also the most rewarding
to finish for the same reason. sometimes i sit at
the hickory writing desk my grandfather built
waiting for clarity to be chirped out of the bulb of a
trumpet or true love honked longingly from the
fever nose of a saxophone but it never happens that way.
instead i write my feelings -- veined hand curled
around a crude pencil with gnawed erasers at both ends.
or idly scratch the flowers from the wallpaper
while the moon looks down like a twisted bottle-cap
smashed in half by macho fingers into the gray
asphalt sky primping its reflection in the pond,
i think that someday i'll learn to love myself the same
way, by facing all my bad parts in the sharp mirror and my
friends abandoning me. each time they do i hold church inside
my own individual heart on sundays or saturdays,
huddled tight on the first frozen december morning around
a hymnal fire altar, only standing to **** or light another
stick of peppered citrus incense. but right now
i've got a crumb of real turkish hash
and only spittle left in the wine bottle reciting Keats
to the empty moon-painted cow field across the brittle fence
and laughing with lilac bulbs pasted on my face, watching
a low cloud thread itself between the skinny
barbs of pecan tree fingers as i wander through
the orchard. the stars hop restlessly like chigger bugs
and sparkle raw in my
swimming-pool-blue eyes but the ones that
blink back really aren't stars at all.

last night i stayed up late after the sun kissed the horizon's eyelids and wrote poems as letters to all my exs and some to my one night stands lying to them about not being scared of the dark anymore and that i don't recall the exact shape their outline made on my bed sheets.
this morning when the sun rose pink through my window i
did not lick the envelopes instead i lit the corners with
matches and shouted out their names to the walls in
my bedroom. my feet did not take me to the
mailbox instead i'm standing on cold toes
naked in front of the bathroom mirror
waiting for enough warm water to
collect in the tub for me to bathe
in. tonight i'll drink the star-
light that spills out on
the cold kitchen
floor tile and convince
myself i've never truly been
loved by anyone; that i've gotten
here by sheer force of will. that i'm
fearless and invincible while my fingers
fumble with the heavy pistol and my tears
write her name in the folds of my favorite shirt.
tonight is another late night holding sepia pictures
of her because i'm scared to go to sleep alone now. my
whole body hurts when i think about the new empty closet
space she left and how her hand would find a nest in the soft
crook of my elbow when we were walking anywhere or the fresh
shock of electricity when my fingers first found her fingers and her
fingers tied my fingers to my other fingers tight around her waist. my feet ache, because the first time we danced it felt like i had swallowed
a gallon of violent purple hummingbirds and my earlobes are
burning swollen because her painted lips aren't here to cool
them down. her finger nails found the place between my
shoulder blades naturally and i feel so foolish because i
gave my whole self to her but it was an unwanted gift.
it's three in the ******* morning again and i'm
writhing under the thick down blanket but her
velvet toes aren't tucked deep into the small
of my back for warmth. before i choke on
my mistakes and crush my fat tongue
with a bullet i just need to ask her
why

why did i lose you to him?
why are his hand prints on your hips?
why does he get to wake up next to you?
why can't i think of a good excuse to call you?
why did my right foot disappear when you left me?
why does his morning breath get to tickle your eyelashes?
why can't i remember what your nose looks like when you laugh?
why isn't my pillow as comfortable as your bellybutton?
why do you have nothing to say to me anymore?
why does my mouth still taste like a bird's nest?
why did you take my cast iron skillet?

to-night is one of those long nights
where i have a moon conversation
tell it my dreams & fears--it just spits cloud-wa-ter
back down in my face

where i climb the roof & clear
my throat--close my eyes
& pro-ject my melanchol-y toward the stars
punching the empty sky

it happens occasionally
some-times under a gibbous moon
(i don't have a choice)

where i lay on the cold grass in sweat-pants
shout & sing to the sky --or--
run a-round getting dirt in my toenails
swatting pine-cones out of the hands
of low-hanging branches

my ears & nose tip shine
under the feather orph-an
clouds

where there's still wi-fi no matter
how hard i tried to escape it

i get twitter-pated on a pretty girl's facebook
but never introduce myself in person

where i listen to mahler in the dark &
receive spectral messag-es

write scattered dew-drop poems like
ginsberg did

rock back & forth

maybe cry a little

rub one out--

finally
go to sleep a-round
dawn
----------------------------------------------------­----------
& wake again
snug as a bug
sleepy numb--reluctant
to find a ****-stain poem
w/ my last conscious fingerprint
expand-ed into cyber-space