i put my fingers in my mouth
salty
honey soap tasting
i can feel the pulse in my upper lip
desperately beating

i can feel my pulse uneven
when i jab my fingers into my neck,
like a dancer slightly falling offbeat,
distracted with the smoke

or maybe that's just my imagination,
my father had arrhythmia,
so did my grandfather.

both of them abused substances
and drank irish ***
and black coffee with sugar,
both of them wrote about things
like "passion" and "sunset",
both of them had troubles with commitment,
uneven smiles
and
bad teeth.
both of them ate too much sugar,
and laughed really loudly,
both of them liked arguing
and letting stories fall from the caves of their mouth,
leading armies with their teeth
their tongue a home for dragons.

it only takes a skip of a beat,
the dancer to fall completely
for me to become
another carbon copy.

how do you know if our fate
all comes down to a single date
to fall and fail
or to succeed, and prevail

I fell away from myself for just a little while.
Creeping through the rye
and sleeping in the foxholes scattered through the hills.
I pushed away the ideas
of satisfaction
and romance.
Wafting through the air,
I was a perfume of the mountains.
Pine and wet earth, I let nature reclaim me
while I waited,
slumbered inside my skin.
When my mind had cleared,
the fog of the valley,
lifted,
a stranger found me sleeping beside the brook.
And with a calloused hand
and a rough voice
he lifted me from the dirt.

A friend for the spring,
possibility lies just over yonder.
Sing with me a while,
while we find our way.

You are kind, my flattering friend
So sweet you are to me
In your admiration
You often fail to see
How harmful your praise
And exclusive taste can be

You, my friend, are sweet
To love me like you do
For you seem to realize not
That your words are often untrue

Kiss one:
And I’m left thinking,
“Have I found him?”
The one
Who can love this mess that I've become?
Have I found the one
Who can repair
This broken vase
I call
myself?
                                          No, it can’t be.
                                          He’s only drunk.
                                          There is no way.
                                          Not me.
                                          No.
                                          No.
Kiss two:
And I’m left thinking
"Was I wrong.
Was it not
Just the alcohol.
Have I found him.”
                                           Yes.
                                           I have.
                                           He can love me.
                                           He can.
                                           He is the kind of man
                                           That can care for something
                                           So broken.
Cold December night:
I discovered
He was no man at all.
He was a boy
Who made a broken girl fall.
                                          Fall.
          ­                                  Fall.
                                              Fall.
Until she hit the bottom.
And then buried her.
And her hope.
And her love.
6 feet under the ground.
Because he was a boy.
Who found it easier
To go back to what he knew
Than to try at something new.
So he buried
That broken girl.
6 feet under.
That cold,
Hard ground.

The gutter is lined with a thousand neon lights,
flickering in the morning's rising sun
We tied rockets to our wrists
and repeatedly committed a fantastic cosmic suicide
Our legs were bound by masked oppressors on government soil
and we were stoic the whole time and still embraced
Together we watched Pierrot le Fou
but I could only adore her hands in the movie theater dim-light
She always looked as if she'd been crying,
maroon nose sniveled and her pursed lips did glow
And we stood catatonic in low slung dance halls
Satiated.

The crowd went quiet
As a tomato flew toward the stage
Cutting through the spot light
Like a solar eclipse
The man who stood alone
With a book open in front of him
Buried his gaze as he kissed the microphone

It came spiraling for him
And He caught it effortlessly
As though it were all a part of the show
But everyone knew it wasn’t
Then he casually spat on it
And shined it on his tux

Through the dead silence you could hear a
                Cling
As the young man winked to audience
Briefly blinding them with the twinkle in his smile
Then he opened his mouth about half way
And bit into the Fruit/Vegetable

He didn’t say anything
But I’m sure if he chose to, he’d say
**** ALL OF YOU!!!
But he didn’t have to
I think they got the idea