i. reward ten thousand dollars
it scares me to think you will drive me home one day, one night, one night when i am very drunk and the stars do not glisten because there are no stars left! i am sure of the reason:
upon being conceived you swallowed them all whole. this is not purposefully clandestine so much as misunderstood knowledge:
in our lifetime these celestial objects will be mistaken, much like a well-intentioned teratoma, for
cancer
countless times you will be plucked, yet unripe, from the fire that will as soon liquify your flesh and cleanse your soul

ii. wanted, dead or alive
psychosis is not a watershed.
it is an amalgamation of the bugs who have crawled up your legs and gorged themselves on your fruity blood before hibernating
it is a room of walls plastered with ******* of nauseating pale cadavers, of empty homes, of longing hands, of breast buds and tied legs and virginal lips and bare ***** and stained sheets
it was in you forever and there is nothing to blame but an imbalance, for
you are the duality of...girlhood.
you are soiled ******* and unkempt hair, abused plush dolls and sticky hands, infected wounds and sunburn sting, stale cereal and coloring pages
you are satin veils and vain slumber, tired tears and starving entrails, hesitant touch and static vhs, shrill laughter and breathy song
you are itchy bug bites. you are snow in my eyelashes.
you are a lissome angel pregnant, god bless you, with a fetal (fatal?) evil; perhaps my fear begins here, or perhaps it greets me when your aura bites my eyelids...alack!
it must be so. **** orange light suffuses my thin veins. the sun exudes apprehension and abruptly the car is totaled and
this is why you cannot drive me home. even when i have become quite inebriated:
it is not natural for the air to be so warm; only ere our galactic body closes her eyes.
surely you will **** me. you are no creature of the night. run me over; crush me between your toes; let my nectar grow trees in the cracks of this, our, every godforsaken town.

iii. have you seen me?
her neotenous thighs stick, like sap, to the concrete floor, water seeps beneath the cinderblock. dust collects between her fingers in which she clutches, with the brutality of youth, a softened - if garishly colored - carton of apple juice. four-o'clock sun pierces the thick glass window (if one will call it such) and she feels listless; rather than squint she pores over the illumination with intent that, in her unsuspecting naivete, she is not yet aware she holds. before she ***** in enough light to blind her she hears a voice that feels familiar:
come upstairs
soon enough it will be ruefully forgotten
soon enough she will realize she was bagged and thrown in the trunk
too late she will wish to exact her revenge

that's all you are, he said: love addiction.
everything is a drug these days but it's all
pluh-see-boh, haven't you heard?
keep grinding the sugar into the carpet.
keep telling yourself it's not the amphetamines making you jumpy.
all the scabs you're carving out hook themselves onto me and they're
rah-vuh-ness, can't you see i'm getting oh-so-thin?
my skin is healing over the ants.
yesterday i picked them up because i saw them drowning
i was almost distracted by the dandelions, you sneaky *******, because they look just like your freckles dotting the lawn
but they were suffocating under the ice-cream i dropped
it melted and crushed the flowers too. they're swollen and ripe and bowtie boy says it's
feh-cun-duh-tee, can't you give that to me?
i know your hands are starving.
i know you're empty and all you dream is to lick the sweat from my slick thighs
holding my virginal knuckles tight in your callouses
take me back home when you're sober,
roh-mee-oh

here lies, too, his lover still
doting from the daffodils
shrieking, hot and virile; shrill
caressing flesh she's soon to ****

so goes, whence?, the evening train
as she, longing to love again
lust as deep as sugarcane
howl at me between the rain

enter, now, the corpse of faun
carved from wet, unsightly lawn
lithe and nubile as a swan
murky eyes look further on

at last, rise from the netherworld
'round her fearsome finger curled
soul diffused and newly pearl
kissing the form you call a girl

red checkerboards collect dust and fade but brown eyes are steadfast

unravel strings of my soul
static newscasters float through the floor like pennsylvania snow into the soil
it is easy to say your soul will rest there but to do so is to forget.
as surely as coffee came with every meal i can say that a soul with roots so deep and leaves so broad never rests
as wisely as a principal gives his life for a child's i know that such a soul's essence does not dissipate beneath the force of mourning
as purely as minted coins glistened in your young palms i can feel that a soul like yours never ceases to grow.
you have forgotten more than i will ever learn. you have given more than i will live to take.
for now solace comes in a full man's full life
shine on me until we meet again

i have been allergic to silver since the first grade.
should a lock fall to the floor i do not hesitate to seize obediently
she alone hears wind chimes; she alone construed the new york vigor as youth
but there is no youth to be had. not for an inamorata of a perfect stranger whose bountiful flora precedes memory
she has plucked his fruit
she has fed it to the children and the vapor is hot on their breath; they have chewed away the pulp
their smoke fills the chamber with syrup, a lachrymose miasma who ripens her essence so quickly as to expedite her decay
alack, she sees the hazy curtain in her drunken state yet it will not suffice!
forty years she has suffered the slow bleed
voices into lungs
lights into hearts as her alveoli freeze diligently
they welcome the intonations with resolve tantamount to her hands' abstinenence
so she repeats her mantra and the paint is preserved

another incarnation
freedom remains elusive

languid touch oozes from small claws; they do not yet know the wonder of keratin
my body is no temple. it has been harrowed by years of disillusionment
racked by anticipation
oh, the notion of some epagomenal redeemer to lift my vessel from damnation!
tears stream heavy and hot
soul is devoured
what remains is a moon-sliver; a sylphlike cadaver, an effigy of a bone ****** dry of marrow
from the rib came life

water drips steadily into the black sink
there is no warmth here
some breathing relic of a bygone era speaks lively volumes on death;
rigor mortis racks the bodies of intent listeners
there is honey and dirt on his breath
he has been in the apiary
round eyeglasses grow brittle and their lenses blurry, closing the window of his soul to a loving corpse who cannot smell the dirt on his breath
honey and cologne
where has he been?
water drips steadily into the black sink
he touches her arm;
fleeting warmth,
bitter cold,
here again