when we found him barefoot in mid-july
he was standing on a four-day drunk
tap-dancing in shoe-horn colored chinos
rolled up to his cyclist's calves on the
sun-punched hood of an '04 nissan altima
with shot-out windows salt
in his skin hair & eyelashes
silver bubbling spittle clung
at the corners of his mouth
sparkling dry in the sun-heat

he laughed & said she had a mouth
like a grizzly bear or cheese grater
she was thin-shouldered dressed
in a curtain-and-couch-cushion ensemble
had yellow button callouses on her palms
& lacked the instinctive manipulative prowess
other girls her age possessed
the whole performance only lasted
7 minutes huddled in a bedroom closet
in a blathering forest of unkind giggles
he still has acid flashbacks watching
cutthroat kitchen because she had
alton brown's teeth & tonsils like spun glass

that night he was a heathen
on a mountian made of mandolin
stiff yearbook spines & shoeboxes
full of faded polaroid mementos
he was tank-topped but still sweating
as he stumbled & stood
on black stilettos & soiled blue
cork-soled wedges like
sharp rocks dancing underfoot
dodging the mothball heat-trap
of cotton blend blouses
& corduroy coats overhead

joy division warbled slimy through
the white wooden slats of the closet's pocket door
as she knelt demurely &
took it between her thumb & finger
brought it up to thin lips pursed
above cleft chin & ****** it in
like a big thick j-bird
but she never exhaled the expectant
white plume of smoke he said
when she grabbed ***** as they
swung like pendula below his navel
he almost pulled out a swath
of her honeynut hair
his injured impatient breath
cracked like thunder
in the cashmere sky
above her undulating head

when the mighty chasm fountain exploded
she said he was the flavor of a blue sky burning
her throat sounded shallow & grunty
as she spat him out into a pair
of her favorite aunt's imitation
jimmy choo pumps &
enjoyed a brief nosebleed

when it was over finally he forced a sympathetic
fistful of tramadol down his saharan throat
& tried to stay hidden under the tarpaulin
in the moving blackness wandering alone
through the waning moon's ceaseless maze
behind the perfumed aphasia that kept him high
biting the brittle tassel of a graduation cap
like an adolescent ocelot
feeling like fleeing

& when i asked him
i said well these experiences probably
helped you build some character right

he laughed & assured me of the
isolated nature of this watercolor
snapshot event & said
one day david

he said maybe one day you'll
learn to not measure your self worth
against the traumatic mouth mistakes
your pants have made

there's a secret place i found to keep my fear
to hide my tenderness & be vulnerable --
it's next to the smallest bones in your inner ear
the fluid skin blanket of your swooping neckline
lily-soft & somehow stiff enough to break
open my seed-pod heart

the one i thought no one could pry apart
but with rosebud ******* -- lips --
the figure of biblical magdala takes me
away from a lone satsuma tree raising its
shriveled offering from the crippled earth
on sunday strolls through duckpond parks
kicking cobbled streets of augusta block
or scooping water at me smiling in cutoffs
on a hot hometown riverbank

you came to me on barefeet out of the smoke
& rain silence where i was invisibly sobbing
where heat-lightning waltzed
sneaky-pete over the prairie
& what are you if not a rain -- a zephyr
flowing through stone temple
just as the dry-mouth dog days of summer
brought hell's fire across the southern field

so i've abandoned the hermetic existence
& buried my old dead shell with a
harp song hail glory to the contortionist god
vaulting off the balance beam in the
back of my mind beneath the
rain soaked topsoil of dawn
among the mound palaces
of ants & mourning mud hornets
while the gray shadows of the magpie
dance & writhe on the mosaic faces of
the trespassed lupine forest

& the sun still comes up on time big
gold fluttering like a delusional cicada
over the empty pink street
i'm still fidgeting because
clouds with tails like jellyfish sting
with rooted memories of azaleas but
you kiss away my all my latent
restless gypsy fears & keep the harsh
light dimmed or wrapped in heat-foil
in your front dress pocket & you only
give it back to me in brief drips --
pinches -- wet tongue kisses --
we talk with our eyes as only animals
can our butts in the damp sand
beside the breathless sea where streaked
clouds seem free to finger the horizon
but are cut by the city skyline --
a switchblade

she was a peregrine
& appeared to me
shimmering in the
primordial morning
between purgatory & hell
talons like a crucial valve-handle
carrying me outside the gaudy dream
my heart's vagrancy
the latent tendency i had
of putting chemicals into my body
despite the ugly consequences
one man's poison
another man's high

now sunlight fractures into spectra
wind blows thru century-old oaks
becomes tangled in my
******-length blond hair
as we march hand-in-hand thru
these narrow streets
the pinched labyrinth
the last dusk light
this swamp

she was a peregrine
the hungarian turul
genteel brown eyes watching me
howl at the midnight moon
& yip like a fox at the first dawn light
now she shares her own
breathy yelps with the pillow
like fumes of lavender
sprayed in a strand of oaks

i know for a fact she has claws
she swore she'd never use them to hurt me
but sometimes i let her anyway
i need to feel those
dead fingernails buried
in my living shoulder-blades
propelling me into a new kind of manhood
redeeming my weaknesses
weaseling into my shorts
pains & insecurities
melting like cloud's spit down the windowpane
lazy & safe on a warm sunday
morning wrapped together in the skin
of this gyrating palace

this is no longer casual desire:
joni mitchell sound-tracked
our first makeout sesh
as stars bloomed fat
behind a surly multitude of clouds
over a tar-colored lake
so if you think i'm ever letting her go
you're a *******

pants-on-fire