I'm going to love you like the floorboards do. I'm going to touch you like your bedroom walls never could; lay your forehead against me like the shower wall and try to recount every lie you ever told laying down. Your nails will hold me against the headboard in a dark act of crucifixion; I have been dying of your sins since before I understood that they were not the kinds that I should love, and perhaps this is not the kind of love that ends well on glossy pages but it is the only love I know. I was a nearly dead stray on your doorstep and you fed me pretty words from your hands like you knew how to take care of things that had no home (despite having never had one of your own). You know too well how your name sounds when your hand is on my knee, you know too well how your name sounds when you are coaxing the life out of me, as though my trachea were the back door of your apartment, and you know how deadly you are with a look on your face that burns like the candles in a chapel but never melts - I sit vigil over your dead body but your ghost is always touching me, you are always bringing out the worst in me and stretching it out like sheets over a ****** mattress and I cannot take care of myself and I am incapable of breathing until you are watching me.

Never had a single
Sang to empty clubs and bars
It seemed our music came from Venus
While the crowd was all from Mars

We've been doing, well...a comeback
Though we never went away
We've been here, though no one knew it
You know this band is here to stay

No one knows our music
Now we have a different crowd
They don't care what we play them
As long as it is loud

No faces look familiar
Although the bars all look the same
I guess we should be thankful
If at the end they know our name

We knock off songs they've never heard
We play them just for us
They ask for stuff we do no know
And they rarely make a fuss

It's not the same as it once was
And neither then are we
We're doing well, a comeback tour
Though we've been here since sixty three

Some kids think we're the shadows
Hermans Hermits, or the Pips
We don't care that much though
If it gets us bigger tips

We missed out on a contract
When glam rock knocked us aside
We wouldn't wear the makeup
I would rather go and hide

We still play clubs and empty bars
Done it now for 50 years
We make a bit more money
We don't waste it all on beers

We've never gone away though
Even though folks always say
We're glad you're back together
We never ever went away

We're a band that loves it's music
Never made it big
We're out doing a comeback
Me, Ronnie, Bart and Stig

U no, eat sins two mee,
u guise knead
two loose wait
sew hear, aye woosh
two
offal ewe sum add vice

Ewe can star art
**** ditto menation
aunt u knead too exorcise
Moove eat, keep mooving
moove mulch;  doe nut ****
down two mulch, move you’re *****
inn smell poorshuns
Ant walk two da shups
in stayed off you sing da carr

Dee impotent ding
hiss da wheel
four wear they’re’s
a wheel, they’re’s all weighs
a weigh
goad lick
loose wait
anne stain hell tea

1 ***** your finger, describe it,
but never use the words,
red, flow, blood, dead.
Post to HP as My Finger Pricked:___

2. Post an Elizabethan Sonnet to HP

3. Think of a sad thing to make yourself cry, write what it was, how it felt, and are you now afraid/unafraid to admit it was so hard/easy to stain your face.
Post to HP as Cry Myself to:___

4. Get a stopwatch, pick your time limit, (max 7 minutes), write a poem, stopping when your time is up and post to HP as Seven Minutes:_____

5.  Pick a poem of mine and why you don't like it. I am not an idiot, send it to me in a private message.  No penalty for being right (or wrong)

Each question worth 20 points.

Winner gets a pizza with any topping delivered to his residence any where in the world (or the local equivalent).  Or, if in NYC, dinner!

It was times like those,
When I could get drunk on your words
And swirl them around on my tongue
Like fine wine
You were my tall champagne flute
Lean and see through
But I loved you all the same
We became a drunken stupor
And the hauntingly lone nights became my hangover

it is Little Amy’s
first set of crayons
and so she grabs one
and scrawls
like mad and crazy
on the sketch pad
on the floor and on the walls;
and the crayon discovers
in a matter of hours
what humans take years to understand:
*life is short

I'm sitting on the edge
of my bed, trembling and
     flash [I'm huddled in the
                kitchen corner, she's
                advancing on me, blocking
                every way of escape]
wishing I could be ok again, wishing
I wasn't damaged beyond
     flash [I'm on the
                stairs, crouched over so
                she can't reach my
                stomach because I'm already
                crying hard enough to almost
                be throwing up, gagging
                around screams]
any kind of repair that I
can foresee, praying that
     flash [I'm curled on my bed like
                a foetus, I ran away until
                there was no further
                to run and still
                she followed me. Hit
                my back, it hurts
                the least there]
the terror will pass, and I
won't have to remember
     flash [I'm thinking desperately
                around the thumps of
                knuckles on flesh and the screams
                I can't contain that next time I
                will hit back I won't
                be frozen in place, wishing
                bitterly I wasn't shamelessly
                lying to myself]
this.*
     *flash [I can't breathe.]