There you are
               The warm whiskey falling off your forearm
                                       Falls into her mouth
                         It will transform her
  You’re already done changing
                                  Her hair will turn red
                                  Her eyes green just for you

There you are again
                        All you ever wanted was
                                 The un-devouring fire
                        The amber more black than crimson
  You pick your skin from under her nails
               You suffocate the burning in the sink
Oh god

There you are
             And you meant to tell her
                      You’re sick in the head
            But instead you scared her away
                    While cooking breakfast you cut your hand
And lost even more skin

Dear Hidden, Ignoring, Empty Lover

I will fake my death and become famous
I will leave blood tracks to my resting place
Ants will eat my blood like sugar
And wolves my bones rare
So the story will go

People will run around finding secrets in
Between my words, they’ll make billboards
Advertising the movie, it will be called
Diary of a Planned Exit and people will
Think I’m a poet

They will make books with blue corners
And a bright red title, it will be a picture
Of my hands (not really but people are dumb)
Holding a Barbie doll dipped in ink
Black ink even

You will not change. Your lion’s mane won’t
Go gray. Your heart like the boulevards
Will move but not always, you and the other
Pretty dancers won’t hide in the hills
You won’t even put an X on the calendar
You’ll mourn with a self-inflicted sigh
You’ll mourn like you’re eating stale cake
You’ll mourn like you're painting your nail
You won’t even paint them black
I imagine my heart would burst
So I’ll keep it in a hotel bible.

The twelve people that still love poetry
Will forget about me because I will
Resuscitate, crawling out of the city sewer
Evil flowers in my hand
Business ethics in my hand
I’ll call five or six times and leave a message
Saying
“hey, it’s me, I’m not dead, your hands, your tongue look like the innocent flowers…”
Hang up. Slide down the wall like I’ve been shot. Defy god
And hold my mouth with both my hands

I’ll read my own books and be sick
I haven’t eaten in days; I won’t have eaten in days
I’ll go find witches
Doctors
Witch-doctors
They’ll give me fate-pills and I’ll finally
Stop daydreaming because I know
What will happen

You will get a C-section and your children
Will break you down, you’ll get a heart transplant and get a nun’s heart
Because Fate love Irony, you eat pudding in old age
You never think about me as a diversion in your tracks
But you hate magic and I need  to believe in it so
I don’t have to fake my suicide

Love,
You know what

I’ve made sure the windows are painted
That was step one
I have to open my metal door to see
The world, the dying summer
Because it can’t leak into here
                   I am so broken I make myself believe this
And that
Love conquers the weak too

Step two is ignoring the bony girl and her crystal ball eyes holding
The pit-bull with the
Bleeding leg
                    And I believe, because my soul
                     Has been left in some purse or backseat
                     That the dog doesn’t know anything about pain

Step three is admitting that I’ve set fire to sunflowers
Because I thought, I knew, they could take it

Step four is putting God inside of an air-seal jar
For 3 to 6 weeks on my bedside table
While I tear into thin laughs

Step five is pretending to know
                   Pretending there was life in the dead leaves
                         Burnt orange and burnt red

Step six is climbing from under the bed trying
To be oh so quiet
                Because it’s midnight and that
                Glass-cut boy you’re ******* on
                Isn’t making any noise
Step seven is collecting dust

Step eight is sharing a pillow half-heartedly
Reading about bedbugs at night
Trying to chase the visions of your bare neck
    Glowing
Stirring her awake
And go south to fight off winter

Step ten is spitting pesticide on the spring dandelions
   They (you) are flowers, they (you) are sycophants
    They (you) are beautiful, they (you) are weeds

Step eleven is burning the bridge
Where I had to pull off
your dress to
Keep myself on

Step twelve I’m half-awake
In a puddle of my own fake blood, in everyone’s blood
Calling the doctor for blue-black sleeping pills
You won’t come looking for me
You’re busy
Sleepwalking away from misery

Sometimes in the night
            When I wake up wet
                       I want to claw against the nonsense
            When I have seen you
                                           placing kisses where they shouldn’t go

Sometimes in the breaking day
            When I come back to consciousness
                       I want to pretend you can scream
            When I snap out of it
                       I act like talking to white-washed walls is full of red passion

Sometimes in the heart-shaped almost-night
            When I am curled onto myself fighting ghosts
                      I want to wash you clean of your dreams
           When I push against you and them
                     I act like the little pieces that are left mean so much

Sometimes when I haven’t seen a clock in years or the moon
                            I want to fit my hands in your stomach
                             When you are sleeping
                            I act like I am half-doctor half lunatic
                              When you couldn’t care less about your bloodline

Whatever I find I’m keeping, even if it’s just enough to be the **** of a joke.

If it’s true that I’m stuck with my hands
Even after I’ve dumped my sadness down the drain
Then I’ll hold on to it.

If it’s true that when I kissed you I cut your lip
And tried to **** you dry
Then I wish you hadn’t stopped me.

Memories stain and it might be true that I’ve been six months clean. Give and take a few.

The mind is its own place and you left ****** finger-paintings on the walls.

There’s an old folks tale told by blind witches
And if it’s true, the myth, it goes like this:
“There once was a boy who fell in love with a plastic doll. She would stare at him and he never felt seen. So he injected that neon fluid inside his veins so she would notice him. he glowed brilliantly like a motel sign, like a phosphorous mannequin.
All for nothing”

I had replaced the blood I ****** out
With mine
Well whoever put that blood in me, in there,
That blood I put in you

If I did dump my sadness it would go to the river
In the big fish tales, in the sirens, in the spoiling
River bed

And after rolling off of you, stiffened by some ***** of pleasure
                 It’s the only time you feel real
I would go to the sink, dip my head under
The rushing water
Fill myself up on it
Feel it fill my stomach and my eyes

What have I fallen for?
What have I taken in?
People have survived on sadness and emptiness
                                   on stories and truth
                                            forever

    Who am I to refuse that?

I have a fever
And you came to me
Understood in a bubble
Of thought
In high heels and horns
You brought medicine
Made of
Hell water, burning cars,
Lipstick and the old feeling of butterflies
You really ****** me
I feel so much better but at what price?

You had a fever
And I had nothing to do with it

(Go to sleep lover)
(I’m not talking to anyone)
(or about anyone, no, no one’s on the phone)

Everything will mean as much as dreams

(we won’t make it)
(I love Barbie dolls)
(I love candy-truth)

You were intrigued
Tried me out like a riddle,
Read me like a magical spell
Gave up
And left me in the bottom of a plastic bag
With all the trash on the ocean floor of your car

You see spots of blood while you sleep
I diagnose you
But I never tell you how much
It breaks me.

You were born better than me for now
More prepared, your skin smoother, even,
Your black boots that look like
They’ve been licked by junkies
Your oil-eyes are able to divide the images
T.V. orange and a tangerine
One is not the other
When I will seep inside the hole in you head
I’ll pick and pull to get you
Really get you
Before your full mouth moves
I’ll nod and tell you
Quiet quiet, I know I know
I am an idiot, I run scared
I hide in cars, I cry at celebrity gossip
The red carpet is the ****** scene
Your tongue rolls the same way
Unrolls, let’s the stars fall out
Then rolls, let’s me disappear inside
I hate myself
I reach for better thing than the sky
I grab your hand in mine and I reach for
Toy monsters
For romances written by wine and ****-buddies
For meaningless problems
For music carved in plastic
I let you unguide me, undo the zipper, unbreak my glasses, the ones that are tiny mirrors
But then you speak
And it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen
So
I make surgeries on myself like a night-doctor
I build a tree house in a pear tree that you can’t see

Yes, that’s me buried up to my head in your yard
Yes, that’s me telling strangers I am dying of sadness and lack of substance
Yes, that’s me trying to fit in your head
Yes, this is me setting myself on fire wearing nothing but your black boots
I win.
Keep ignoring me
I write better poetry (and we all know I hate poetry)

La. La. La. La.

The cursed and fated prince had prophesies, I’ve got soap operas
I’ve got night and nights of blank, blank, ****
I’ve got a freezer-burnt heart
And pictures of you drinking neon drinks
I’ve got the dichotomy and pungent mixture of art and ****, of God found in the gutter
You’re drinking anti-freeze aren’t you?
That would mean so much if you were
Keep ignoring me
I’ll send you my hands when you’re done with them
They won’t work
               But you can touch yourself with them
     They will be gray
Paint them red
A red that can’t wash off.