it's not even noon, but
my thoughts are drenched with
***, bound and gagged.
you're dancing around the kitchen, clad
only in a pair of
lace ******* you paid
too much for at Victoria's
Secret liaisons by the
seaside, sand sieving through your hair:
all forms of metal-backed currency taste
like ***** on your fingertips stuffed
roughly in my mouth,
call me a ****
pretty please?
promethazine slathered over
watermelon sherbert and
soaked in Sprite; put a lid on it and
shake vigorously until well mixed.
Xanax exacerbated migraines mean
naptime for me, and I forgot to tell you
the Gatorade is spiked with *****
(or maybe tequila; I've well and truly
forgotten) and all of this
is just another means of
replacing you.
you're wrapped in an
ecru trench coat,
cinched at the waist over
concealed weaponry:
unlicensed pistol and wet coral *****
constrained by a black leather holster and
cobalt cotton.
you kissed me with
******* in your nostrils and
nosebleed on your lips;
you killed me with
contempt in your mouth and
venom on your nails.

poetry isn't just for white people, Vivian
isn't a girl's name, and I will
wear these white jeans past Labor Day.
we forget that we could
touch the stars if we *******
tried, but instead we are
here, drowning in atmosphere,
choking on our inhibitions.
there are ten pills tucked
in the very back of your desk;
you love them but
they're about to become a
crutch, and you are frightened.
I don't **** with that
new ****,
but it's not like you care.
I'm still the same *******
idiot, total trash, I
deleted your number
and I won't send you
snapchats,
I wonder if you
deleted my dickpics.
lost intimacy, windowsill
cacti, a Ziplock full of ******* stuffed
inside your pillowcase;
I went for a run, your
name traipsing about my
prefrontal cortex, smashing
memories, beheading roosters,
screaming incoherently about
subprime mortgages and
credit derivatives.
the government is lying about
9/11 but no one really cares;
the government is arming oppressive regimes in
Missouri but white people don't care;
would that I had such
willful ignorance, the right to
ignore the slaughter on our
front lawns.
my parents started from the
bottom, they survived in
America, decapitated birds on the doorstep.
I do not have their strength and I am
washing Xanax down with Gatorade and
refusing to apologize.

It took me one sleepless night of writing
poems about you 
poems about us
of quietly suffering under the sheets of my bed
of letting the darkness around me enter
of letting desire consume my head.

It took me one sleepless night of writing
to promise I'll always put myself first
to hold my own hand
to lift myself up 
when I'm at my worst.

Because darling, you may have the most tender fingers
But who got me out of the sheets today?
It was myself
because I'm here alone
and you are so many miles          a w a y.

You
                    look at me and I sigh,
                    my world filled with a
                    pure haze and fully
complete
                    now that I know the
                    power of your smile.
                    You have brought life to
me.
                    A life I never dreamed of,
                    but now is real, too real.
                    That is the power of
                                                              ­             you-
                    the ability to bring about
                    dreams so big my stomach
                    flutters in fear. I get a
                                                               ­            scare
                    from your optimism, and
                    every bit of positivity you so
                    painstakingly draw out of
                                                              ­             me.

merlot gnat bites
quivering from collar to
coccyx, a carapace of
swollen skin.
I rub myself
raw, aching for release;
is this
how it's meant
to be?
être, pas être,
it's all the same:
I am; you are
under my skin.

shuddering: throbbing head
mirroring throbbing sonics, floor
ashudder with stampede of
après-teen feet.
tonight you are
out of your depth,
not a fish out of water or a
drowning man, rather
an exercise-averse astronaut,
muscles atrophied upon return homeward;
you knew this was imminent, yet-
yet.
you weren't ready for
this, and there is sweat upon your skin and
tequila upon your tongue:
you have attained nirvana, and
a huge ******* to the Dalai Lama.
you are
self-immolating in your sorrow,
and no one can help you
because you won't let them.

the death
of self, exhaled, borne upon
wafts of
air, and
I, with my self-conscious
prose and pretensions
of intellectualism,
and I, dreaded I -
there is a beauty in
ideology; even wastrelism,
being the muck of the earth and
much reviled by Proper Gentlemen,
has its allure and adherents
those disciples of Dionysus,
bacchanalia becoming banal by
sheer repetition:
*****, *****, *****, shotgunned beers, and then-
TEQUIIIILA!!
crowed at the top of their lungs,
memory expunged by
hepatic-processed organic compounds.
of course, these mannerisms are simply
beneath you, disdainfully
catalogued by keen eyes:
no, your form of forgettance
is much more forceful, much less
fanciful and romanticized:
your amnesia is
absolute,
it required nothing less than
total dedication, mortification,
death of self as you
expatiated lusts, loves,
aught but ambitions remain,
and now, you have triumphed:
you stand solitary, skyscrapers
shining for your personal
pleasure, yet you can find,
none.