hes in good with the junkyard owner
and he likes that

they are both old men
trying to patch up their fractures
beer bellies coming along nicely
hands lacquered with paint
and modest discretion
and cigarette
blazing yellow

ABSOLUTELY NO SMOKING IN THE SCRAPYARD!
but he does.
killing time.
he does, fat eyes laughing
at blood on dashboards
metallic toe jam
and irony only he
finds
evident

he knows he can
stroke his vices
wherever
he so chooses
around here

the owner,
Dave
says so

and he makes sure he tells me
as he lights up
halfway out the door
Dave staring me down
with grease in his eyes

that 'not just ANYBODY
gets these
kind of privileges'

i know dad
i know

You are curled around your tattered, sky blue, chunky flannel
second childhood skins.
dreaming of that childhood as the sun stretches her slippery limbs
through a tear in the curtains
your mother made
and i am watching your body at peace with your mind and the bed
that suspends you
everything about the image is overly thin and threadbare and
crumbling coddled rubbed by the stories

that
hold you up and hollow you out
and **** you dry and stroke your bones and
kiss you again and again and again

until your heart is eroded


and the cherry dust settles

around your feet

they fill your mouth with light
and stones
they
illuminate you
here and now

before my slumber
tarnished eyes.

love poem.

eyes sink in skull quiver
lashes feather, hands reach/check yourself/hands reach
lip on ear, lobe all flesh and sweet little hairs
tastes like:

oh god and then we were on the street
corner and the light made skeletons out of
us
and he clawed at me! with his drunken limbs
he swiped. put his
mouth next to mine, over mine like a palm (for the first time)
breathtaking:
V-words-viciousvivaciousvolatilevent

tear away, fling off

slip through space: tumble up the stairway:
heart howling: leave him
swallowing darkness in

frantic gulps.

and you dream of: your bodies
made out of words-thousands and thousands of
minute black crumbling
compilations, language is the blood.

:wither:wasteland:clutch:sweep:swell:smear:grit:heave:

done.

you wore this shirt on the first day of red lipstick
lipstick in general
lipstick that created on your face a new dimension
fire around the mouth, metallic red smear, beckoning light and
darkness to enter at once
to
play in your mouth like foreign tongues.
paint that stained your stories pink.

I wear it now in your absence and there is
no colour on me
only within
the same slippery shade-
it keeps me alive.

I did not mean to but when I saw you,
in the flesh for the first time, I felt as if we had traveled together, I felt as if you knew.

I could barely speak because I wasn't sure where to begin.  You had filled my nights for months,
I was overwhelmed by your sudden solidity,
wrapped up in tricks of the light, speaking with a tongue that I understood.

I wanted to grab at you and dig my hands into you and feel everything.
You were not a fantasy you were real!
Can you treat them the same? Can you toy with fantasy as if it were replaceable? Kiss it upon the mouth,
swallow it like pulp, sew wings to it's white, quivering skin,
throw it off an edge, dance with it, shoes of fire, voices visual,

tongues unwinding like rope?

You can but it will change, it will warp, it will put on your clothes,
it will love you like any messy beating heart,
breathing blood,

it will envelope you.

her hair was like wild fire
her eyes laced with charcoal. intentions bold.
her legs were dressed in purplepleather
her hands dipped in tar, candied looking in
their
impossible black gloves. she told me
over pink drinks that
she had grown up a lot
since the last time we met
and tears danced their way down
her apple cheeks
and she didnt bother to wipe
them away
burning holes in anything and everything.

i took two steps back.

with your tender resolve
and head full of theory

you pry
open my faith
like an oyster.

god and all
of his friends,
the weightless skeleton of
my soul,
and watery bodies
of love

pour from the split
and into your
eyes...

(having been plunged into
the sea

little fingers, laden with salt
inflict unsung pain
onto docile, faceless creatures

with such innocence
it could make you cry.

wild eyes that don’t
yet know
the fragile difference
between the living
and the not.

and their
treasure

these
rugged pockets of mystery
retrieved from the surf,

do not protest.

delight streams through
the gaps between
their opal teeth-
spaces
as dark and
warm as sorrow-

at the feeling of
jumbled
organs against
their hands.

they do not know
what
it is that they
touch
but the ******, grey
silk inside
feels like all
sorts of heaven
to them.

it is just yet noon,
although the sky
swings low,

the old
titter from afar

and the children
have
several buckets
full
of everything they
need
to keep going

until

they know better

)