I.  In the past you were stale and sticky like old beer and I could not peel your hands from my hips.  I know I couldn't look at you when you kissed me, but neither could I close my eyes.

II.  Sometimes now you are a black hole that pulls me in at the top of the steps.  Your shirt is two sizes too big and my hands pull it close around your waist, calming the air and closing a vacuum.

III.  When you put your knuckles to your mouth to laugh, when your sleeves are rolled up just above your elbows, music is peeking out of your corners like light under a doorway and your eyes are a robin's egg on the sidewalk, cracked open to spill a feeling that has no name or ending.

Wondering where it came from, this obsession with threes and trinities,
And there you were,
My third deity,
My third sainted portrait,
The halo around your hips:
A new Orion’s Belt of dark blue current that spills from this night
This night that looks so much warmer than it feels
And feels so much closer than it looks

I remember that the grass was damp
And besides that I’d kicked off my borrowed shoes.
And there were hands on my waist,
Hands in my hair,
And the smell of summer idiocy on my fingers and lips.
This bright red coal in the night
Against you, dressed all in black.
I can still see my breath ringed out
Around the dome of the church
As I held my wasted money between *******
And wound two more through your belt loop

I remember the two of us laughing
At the emotional lives of our friends,
But even as I’m modestly filling out
My libertine’s title,
We have to admit that we have our own problems,
Even if we refuse to name them.

Sometimes I think all my problems are etymological.

And whatever there is in the attack,
I can’t help but miss it in the retreat;
Maybe it’s the way we refuse to let go.

I want to live with you in a shotgun house
   open the doors and let the breeze roll
   through
I want to lie with you on a bed of clean
   white sheets
   and trace the contour of your skin
   against the reflected light
I want to hear your bare feet pad softly
   on dark wooden floors
I want to pass the night with you in front
   of open windows
   and talk about the patterns of human
   emotions and the naming of things
I want to build a fire on a beach with you
   and burn driftwood with old memories

all good things will end, like the morning
   light that grew to light our
   bodies, hip to hip
and you told me you wouldn't say goodbye

the way an overhead fan blows stray hairs across your cheeks
you offer a bite of something to a friend with occupied hands, and you
   accidentally press your finger to their lips
you are pale and purple-eyed in computer screen-light on a tuesday
   midnight but the reasons in favor of going to sleep have suddenly vanished

one of your knuckles cracks louder than all the others
you are ashamed to admit that mistreatment simply fails to stir your anger
you wanted to make origami boxes out of huge sheets of newspaper at 4am
   but you were alone and couldn't think of anyone who would appreciate the
   activity

the hand on the small of your back is barely reassuring
you wished you could speak slowly but all your thoughts are flitting flashes of
   still-lifes, bursting with inconsistent voice
your touch makes my skin bristle and I want to own you, if just for one
   linoleum-floored, whiskey-strange moment

across the table

you were

fingers laced

eyes on my neck

and I was

barefoot

still ******* the switchblade in my pocket.

of slight stature
your shoulders are beautiful in the sunlight
you couldn’t not know that
your eyes are dull as gold is dull
and green reflected by the grass

if you are tired as I am tired
of vampires and che guevara and parkour and girls
in going out skirts, of movies you forget the plot of
and new architecture, of streets with sidewalks on
only one side
if you are tired as I am tired

along the top of the wooden cabinet
a large carpenter bee
left feathered imprints of its legs
in a layer of white insecticidal foam snow
made tickmarks as it wandered back and forth and slowly
died

You’re not the kind
who stops to think
when I’m leaning on your car door,
folding what looks like a question in my hand.

Memories always feel like summer,
hot and ethereal,
and I suppose there’s more left to you than memories,
but it doesn’t feel like it.
You have no winter in you.

And that folded question
looks like a piece of paper,
but it is warm
and my legs are bare
and its crease is the hem of your t-shirt,
held between my fingers.

I.  I am the reason I never had more than a minute’s chances with anything.  Sitting on steps with you became the same thing as being in love, because we were together--you, me, and cigarettes.  Strange became anything, holding court in a playground planetarium and I took closer to be a state of mind.

II.  Nothing ever dies, and I have beautiful sore spots that flower like fields in blood and lymph and bruises.  Your fingerprints were black on my neck and it was nothing short of spectacular that heavy silence and the same song on endless repeat even failed to slow you down.

III.  My greatest love is the possibility and words that mean nothing to anybody except someone I used to be.  I was the stranger and I shot myself four times to spend eternity in purgatory here with you.

I don’t know much about love
but I would pay to smash you
on a hard tile floor like a cheap porcelain doll.
Because there is something about
the way your t-shirt rests on your collarbone–

and it has always been that way–

that makes me want you collared and tethered like a dog

I was rolling in your current
with eyes open,
Slight and threading downstream.

My eyes were slipping closed with your sleep;
lucid dreaming of real things that had been
and how alive you used to seem.

I was lying in your bed
and wrapping my arms around an idea of you,
visions on my eyelids
of all the better places I could be.

I.  Life was like alternating tides in your hands.  I spent my time in crushed nausea between your currents, confused and longing, and calm waters slow and disappointed.

II.  You seemed so delicate, almost like a girl with your shirt hanging off one bony shoulder, and I wanted to imagine it undone, but you were so easy to underestimate.

III.  All your windows face to the east, and our evenings never saw you in direct sunlight, so tell me why the present seems so bright, and the future so dim.

The calm is blinding
and becoming almost indistinguishable from the buzz
I could speak to you in tongues
and your eyes would stay the same shade of wide
ringed with blue and buzzing with the same rhythm
If I could dig my nails any deeper into your skin
I might turn your irises black
You could call me by any name
and I would answer to it
to break the silence that vibrates with your touch

Your words reflect off each other like blinding mirrors, amplifying your small interior sun.  I sputtered out with those dying bursts in our so recent history, and maybe any glimmer that can now be found is a lost remnant, lightyears-old, reason not enough to strike out matches for me.  Despite the dark, you do fine all by yourself.  Your words, bounding off each other one by one by one, marking in relief with sharp cutting shadow my failing flame.  On my knees, a tribute to what felt like fomer glory.

The sweetness in your laugh
Held all sorts of things
Like dandelion mornings and afternoons
And the way sunlight filters through those estuary clouds
A hope of a hint of normality

And I know I laugh like a harpy
And at times I don't even smile
I laugh with the irony of fluourescent lights
Blinking so unnaturally in comparison
Obsessed with the imitation

Your laugh was full of light
And lit your skin with that quiet sunset
That slanted onto your back and shoulders
Forgive me if I was silent
If I was inexpressive and staring
Forgive me my inability
To step out of my shadows

In the cross of a catharsis
Clasped in hands too tired to understand
Here sit my mother’s worries
Waiting hopefully
For you to open them up like chinese takeout boxes
Put your feet up and break out the plastic forks
And dream of all the ways you could fail to make your mother understand the calmness of the gesture, the inside of my wrist against the back of your neck
And afterwards, I was too tired to make you understand
Too tired of all the little things that became big ones to break up the boredom
And all the things you said that made even the reality seem ridiculous
Pronounced as universal truths, where you are the universe
Pulling those sticky oversweet noodles apart and watching those little strings of supposed damnation snap back into hopeless fatigue
I expected something more from my sins

I found Jesus at the end of the street, up on steps moss-spotted green,
hung on stylized barbed wire sculpted oh-so-sincere.  Of all the things
to pass through my mind, the first is Martha Stewart’s favorite color
combination, its steel grey set against the mint green and beige of the
trailer across the street, alone between the trees.

   I.  Everything is green, even the skies, and it reminds me of you, and
   the blue of the night that ringed itself around yellow-orange
   streetlights.  When you’d walk me home, barefoot, and you’d give me
   what was too easy to be a hard time, with an air that I have failed to
   find in anyone else, and I’d always wonder, I still wonder, if you
   would let me know if I was hurting you.

   II.  And the road twists into chalky grey gravel in construction, and
   the dry dust fog that forms keeps my mouth shut.  It’s sand in my
   lungs or your ridicule in my ears.  And I knew a long time ago that I’d
   met someone who played this hate-game better, the way you lifted
   your eyebrows above your sunglasses.  But we were accomplices
   then, and now we’re just playing alone.  Even as your skin changed
   colors in the morning light, I could see the way you were changing the
   rules.

   III.  And I’ve always loved the way rows in fields unfolded
   themselves to their vanishing point when you looked at them rolling
   by at automobile speeds, and right in front of you is the part in the
   sea, a meticulous divide.  And maybe you are two people:  you are the
   person I came to believe existed, and you are the sterotype I tried
   not to see.  And maybe I am two people as well:  the one who laughs
   when you make your mistakes, and the one who wishes I hadn’t let
   you make them.  We are the same as those green rows:  one day we’ll
   be dead, dry, and cut to pieces.

Lots of houses are orange-yellow peach.  The real color of peach flesh,
bright and acidic, not the milky orange of your peach-flavored
whatever, or the pale pinkness of that crayon that Crayola was too
scared to name Caucasian, but an assaulting yellow, slightly less
aggressive than mango-orange.  The others are soft pink and off-white,
sometimes lazy cement colors.  But there are purple-and-white flowers
that cascade down the walls and over the fences in their May effort,
and it’s ironic to think how thankful I am for the masks of vines hiding
the ugly monotony.

I.  You know I resent you for a thousand things,
like how she and I don’t talk anymore.  But most
of all because you didn’t love me.  Like how you
made everything seem so simple when it wasn’t.  
But most of all because you fooled me
completely.  I resent you for a thousand things,
but I still don’t know what I’ll say when you decide
to come back.  You’ll come back.

II.  Twisting my thoughts around you has
become so simple to do, become a habit.  
Twisting them around you, through you,
drilling into your skin.  But it gets harder and
harder to hollow you out like I would before,
making you into an empty shell that I was much
less afraid of.  I love this ball and chain; Stockholm
syndrome has never been this fun before.

III.  And you’re an entity that doesn’t have a
name.  A mix of so many spirits that excites me
in a way I didn’t know something could.  You’re
a list of intoxications that renders me so
readable it’s dangerous.  I slur my words and
you take my hand like I’d never been so
articulate and charming.

I.  Eventually we forgot your myth because I saw
nothing in it.  An epic’s just opinion, and I couldn’t
find the rhythm, so I abandonned it.  We all have
our own heroes, and it’s for you to write your own
ballads.  You can’t count on me, I have so few
words for you.

II.  You have a knack for the epic:  everything
that comes out of your mouth is pure legend.  
I jump right into your river Styx and know I’m
believing fairy tales again.  What finally surprises
me is how far in I really am, neck deep and still
kicking.  I have all this enthusiasm, only for
getting twisted up with you and your myth.

III.  Tragedies are told for the tears at the
end, and I sing your song with guilt because
it doesn’t hurt enough.  And when it does,
will I be satisfied?  Take back your horses;
go tell Charon that Pluto and my pomegrante
are waiting.

A steady hand against my back
was something I felt like I had won,
Sitting around a table worn smooth
By restless adolescent hands (as we were, always)

Warm to the touch,
The fire that she painted
was slightly pungent like cinnamon
And made me slightly nauseous in the same way.
A sprinkling like cinnamon by the sun
Made a freckled face that pressed against my shoulder.
We felt warm again;
When just days before
We were outside in halfway melted snow and short sleeves
To immortalize ourselves;
Picking apart a radio that was the color of a dusk sky.
Cold blood has always run in my veins,
And my fingers melt and freeze at the slightest provocation.
His blue sweater shocked against a gray and brown wall
Enough to freeze my hands, I thought permanently,
But I melt again with warm water and radiators.
This season I live in constant fluctuation
And my fingers have begun to crack and fall apart
the way that asphalt does.
What was black and certain is now gray and rough.

There was nothing plastic
About the way your smile showed
Or about the way your arms felt
But a voice in the back of my head told me so
And last weekend
I melted a carpet I thought was wool
You could have fooled me
Except now there is a hard, shiny, iron-shaped mark
Plastered into the carpet's soft mat
To be honest, I was a little disgusted
When I pulled the iron away and found
Strings of green and red clinging to it like bubblegum
And to be honest, I felt a little disgusted with myself
Not to mention you
When I left a handprint in your soft back
And strings of skin still sticking to my palm
Prove you, my little plastic boy, are just a doll
By all the tests that matter
A human illusion too easily destroyed
By an excess of warmth

Since our lives were complicated
By outside reason
Our house has been loud with voices
We pulled the bits out of our mouths
And now we will never put them back
And our house has never been quiet
And our house has never been neat
A scream has always followed a scream
Like the roll of waves and the sea is never still
But for the first time in years
I sit alone on the swept floor
Of a silent room
And the cold winter wind rushes through our house
Through windows flung open to let in more breathable air
But it makes me think only of my warm spot halfway up the stairs
That I was too afraid to go to when I heard the cold coming
Now a scream echoes without a scream
And my heat is lost to a room
With nothing to hold it

I had slowly grown so tired
Of your macro photography
And the way you used it
To take pictures of my small crises
And put your face so close to mine I could count your freckles
Your pictures of insects and petals
That no more saw depth
Than the little puddles you splashed me into
When you smelled smoke on my hair the last time
And you have so quickly passed me over
For someone more photographable at close distances
You threw out my favorite exposure
Because of the brown at the edges of the leaves
And I never once suggested
That the sun underneath your lens was what did it
I kept my mouth shut
And let you move your warmth away
When you thought I'd finally fallen asleep
And lamented to myself
That you'd never been one to enjoy
Developing the film

I was a flower once
An open corona of petals
But I cannot remember why or how
Or if I was happy

I was beautiful once
But there are no photographs to remind me
You probably remember
Better than I do anyway

I was in a novel once
But it seems like such a dream
That only colors and feelings
Have any vividness left to them

I was small once
So small that you
Would play with my hair
The way I do yours now

You loved me once
But it's hard to imagine
What that felt like
The story's not worth telling
Because I've forgotten all the details

Sign of a night
With streamers of sky
Undulates moving
More than alive

Fingers of cloud height
Follows a line
The sting and the shining
It moves us like time

Ink will be sight
Rolls back your eyes
Through indian summer
The hum of your mind

I am one of those people who collects bruises like old bottlecaps.
I count them from time to time, but I can never remember where
I got them.

Waiting for bread to toast, I slapped a knife against my thigh,
marveling in the way it rang like a tuning fork.  When the toast
popped up, I looked at my leg and saw there was a huge red welt
just starting to bruise.

They only hurt once I've discovered them.

You poked the knife-bruise and asked, "Who beat you up?" but didn't
wait long enough for me to summon the laughter to say that I'd done
it to myself.  You moved on to the next one, dragging your finger like
you were following some yellow brick road, playing Candyland and
winning.

A Pleiades's above my ankle, a crescent shape below my knee.

There was one small circle in the middle of my toe that you wondered
about, and neither of us could imagine how I'd done it, so you just
laughed at me and tickled my feet like some old husband.

Soon you get bored with the bruises and you move on to the tic-tac-
toe grids on my knees from the pool tiles.  You write your name in my
arm with your fingernail because of the way even light scratches
immediately become red and raised.  I made up a word for it and
you believe me like it was some sort of real medical condition.

Somehow my face hovers in between a real smile and an aching grimace,
so when you look up at me, you put my face in your hands and repeat
my name.

I must be your favorite curiosity.

The glow of a city night comes in through my window
And keeps awake my always-empty stomach and heart
Night skies look sick with green
And don't take well to light pollution
Sleep doesn't come easy to someone so restless
Though I need the fullness of oblivion now more than ever
There is no right way to lay a restless head on a pillow
To twist a hollow body under sheets
That it will lie still in comfort
Because emptiness folds painfully in on itself
And I untwist, I unfold
To accept defeat
Propped on elbows,
On a yellow legal pad in the yellow light
I hold the sign of a night spent slowly:
All forms of unhappiness are, on the inside, loneliness

I.
I'll rechristen you, probably something that
I'll later regret, even later forget.
I'd like to tape record everything you
say, to think about the symbolism
later.  You know, if you talk for long
enough, you'll rhyme sometimes.
And I don't think that's anything
to be ashamed of, because good
accidents happen all the time.

II.
I always waste the happy accident,
afraid someone will try to tell me that I
did it on purpose.  I think it was an
accident when you held my hand, but
I'm not sure if I could call it happy.  You
always smell sort of smoky, and so do
your hands, and it gives you a sort of
accidental air, like you were falling
lightly through life, letting moments fall
and break, splitting open like flowers.

III.
I want to twist my hands over the rest of
your body to find the place where you
keep little hateful things that you pretend
you don't have.  Press down ******* the
spot with fingers and maybe it'll hiss out
like sickly steam from a kettle.  I'll cup
them in my hands and you'll refuse to taste
them, acting like you never knew they
were there.  You pretend you're incapable
of a lot of things, but you know the tastes
too well.

Felt so sticky
I got up in the middle of the night
With swollen eyes and swollen resentment
To hum restless music
And change my sheets

I imagine the scene
Where I'll stand, stubbing out
An old cigarette on grey gravel
With the toes of my shoes
And finally dig my nails into
That sweet and thoughtful persona of yours
That lets me eat your mistakes
And the restless music buzzes through the gravel
Outside the hookah bar we go to
To pretend like we're sitting still
We stand in silence for the song to end
But restless music never seems to end

Weeks later, I'll sit up nights
And tell myself I was nothing but sweet to you
Nothing!
Sprawl out nights
And stick to my sheets
And absorb restless music
And nothing ever seems to end

Our hollow tidal pools
Wash back and forth between
Stagnant and violent
Timed like clockwork
And like somehow the ancients knew
The ocean to be in love with the moon
I know I am in love with disaster
There are no other ways to explain
The way the laughter gave way
To the sound of my body hitting the carpet
Kicking and yelling and grabbing at hair
To the sitting and waiting alone
For footsteps to come and strangle the silence
"You're a mess," was all she could tell me
In the soft voice of the lull between
Except that I make her sick
And waves will break on our startled hollows
Made only of sand and salty sickness

This was the last time we had a routine.  All the way back then, wearing ******* rubber boots and cashmere scarves I can’t even think of wearing in the near future.  It was a routine.  You could count on it; guaranteed to inch you closer to handsandknees and sleepsixteenhours every time we saw each other.

It’s been a while since we had a routine, and now we just sit together sometimes and don’t know what to say.

I’m not like most people–I’ll admit to loving a good routine.

I was just silent.

And maybe it was mean to be so silent, but the weight of the future is just a little bit too heavy, and maybe I like you a little bit too much.

The best things were happening, but they were happening all at once, so that they were worst and all the colors were running together, making me feel like I was soon to need new glasses, or a new brain, or a whole new perspective.

And your words aren’t enough; I have all kinds of words, and you wouldn’t believe how many it takes to make a difference.

I realized I'd never really visited a hospital bed.
I'd been once for the birth of my sister,
but all I remember are the boxes of krispy kreme doughnuts
and my aunt, who'd not yet had a child of her own,
scolding and snapping at my brother and I
just four and five
to stop playing with my mother's adjustable bed.
And I remember the face of my grandmother,
joyous, though not quite smiling;
but perhaps I remember her that way
because I was always a little bit afraid of her,
and still was when she died six years later.
But it was sudden, and she didn't even make it to the hospital.
I don't even remember my sister herself,
or my mother,
just her bed and trying to climb into it.

But now here I was,
filing past the numbered blue doors
in the halls that didn't smell like sickness
or loneliness or anything poetic at all--
just cafeteria food, close and a bit *****.

In the room, there are two women
lying on their beds, each watching a TV.
They are watching the same show,
but they are each wearing a set of headphones
and watching separate screens.
It looks a bit lonely
and I wonder if maybe they'd like to watch it together.

I kiss her hello
and her eyes are watery, her voice broken;
but I am assured this is not her normal state.
but it's the only way I've ever seen her,
so it's hard to imagine her otherwise.
There's a kiwi and an empty yogurt cup on the table
and I start to zone out,
probably wondering whether they're from her lunch
or already her dinner.

But I let my mind wander
and soon I'm picturing everyone I know in turn
lying in a hospital bed.
One is missing all her hair,
another has an IV,
and I ask myself which ones I would visit.

The woman in the bed is smiling crookedly;
I've been told the tube in her arm is morphine,
and she's speaking about the dinner she had at our house
while my french sister assures her that we'll do it again
when her four days of rest are up.

And I go back to my game.
It's a bit cruel, maybe,
but life, I think,
is all a story of sickness
and who would visit you,
brave the stale air of your hospital room
and tell you stories of the future.

I keep trying to move my mind up the ladder rungs, following the logical successions, but they don’t follow you.  Sorry.

I remember that breakfast we had of yesterday’s coffee and a chunk of yesterday’s bread, and I was thinking about what we were doing and why and whether I could do it without you.  I know you think about that too.

Sometimes I feel like a little sprite winking in and out of people’s lives, leaving (I hope) a little spark in the wake, but you can’t quite remember what the spark was for.  Sometimes I can’t either.

And the road gets dusty and we get ***** and we start to cough, for last night’s cigarettes and last night’s arguments, and something in the air makes us forget that it was ever any easier to breathe.  Why go back?

Motivation is a hard thing to preserve.  You could try putting it in the freezer, but I’m not sure that the cold would help.  At least it’s doubtful that it would help me.  And you never know what you’ll have when it thaws.

I know you said you weren’t promising anything, but I’m counting it as a promise anyway, because in any case, that’s better than the metaphorical freezer.  Don’t break it and I won’t break you.  Got that?

I saw you bloom in winter,
bright, luminescent, the silk of fresh petals.
And I never bought any gloves, though I said I would;
hands all but frozen,
canvas shoes damp through
in the mud and wet of a french winter on the coast.
But you looked hardly discouraged,
fresh and new under the rain.
You amaze me still.
And I am never prepared anymore:
I left my pocket knife across the ocean
and my hat in a friend's purse in another city.
I wasn't ready to see you
arrayed in all your enthusiasm;
wasn't ready to pick you,
place you next to my bed
and tell you all my midwinter thoughts each morning.
I walked past, left you in the park,
asked myself why I thought you'd opened for me.
I'll think of you at Christmas, and at New Year's,
and there will be others, poinsettias and orchids.
But you showed yourself to me in the park, in that cold rain.
You
you amaze me still.

One day I will find my way back to normality
With a glass in hand, holding the swills of selves
Whether I’m loose or on my toes
I swing back and forth as acceptable
If anything feels balanced, it’s blasted
And you like a crooked smile before I scrap all scrutiny
And so do I, washing up on mornings like I’d practiced all my life

You were light like tissue paper
Crackling and brightly colored
Falling in layers and tinting my space

I wore you like a dress
And never got more compliments
Though barely wrapped, lacking expertise
I stretched you out in the sun
To keep the grass from sticking to my skin
The weather’s been dry, and the dust felt unpleasant
I held you up against the rain
And invited someone under
Smiling to have you between us and getting wet

And I ruined you like tissue paper
Easily torn and crippled by moisture
Stuck to walls in pieces
The rest of you makes grotesque confetti
To celebrate whatever I have left to celebrate

the idea was quiet, the first time it passed behind my eyes
and here it drums, it drums, it drums
pulsing like a
like a heartbeat, pooling up in capillaries
pressed against my skin
just like you, pressed against my skin
pressed against the inside of my skin
pulsing like this blood-dream
all this pressure from within