I did not hesitate when I boarded the train,
caught between the salt and German time;
with fingernails yellowed with cigarette grime,
to come to Paris for it's tepid, sweet rain.
Nor I did tremble with with fear and strain,
flexing my pride in Prague with the prime
that only is granted to the young, at nighttime.
I left nothing back by or in home, but I feign--
for crookedly placed by the cold Danube,
I felt a finger of hurt despite my endeavors;
for as water pooled in those iron shoes,
I felt everything that I didn't wish to remember.

You can spend years, tears, and fights in unmatched white sheets of your dreams. Or rattle in an train to Istanbul, under their arm.

His curls smell like sweat and he tastes like sweet, touched with hair and a scruff of a beard. He mingles Arabic, English, and French and you feel obsolete.

But do not fall in love with a boy from Lebanon
because sooner or later he will me gone.

Answering to no one, and
obligations do not exist, if unanswered.
I want plastic tubes of garishly pink lipstick, with their
greasy glitter soaking in the folds of tissues.

I'll take the hard edge off of my face,
dust off my gilded tongue,
and promptly kiss a bathroom floor
after consuming something illicit that tingles my nose,
before dying with your blade buried in me, inelegantly.

old makeup spilled on my floor
***** clothes strewn on my floor

You can hardly see the carpet for all the clothes carelessly being trodden on.

Blue holiday lights are strung around the mirror.

I am watching Andy Warhol eating a hamburger
I am watching Andy Warhol eating a hamburger
on a new, thousand dollar laptop, slick-as-a-whistle, paid with a magnetic swipe.

For the past six months,
I have had less than four hundred $
combined in checking and savings,
and that number dwindles by the day.

I have no groceries,
but I've got fistfuls of orange prescription bottles,
and I was handing pills out like treats and candy.

(but they are needed, much and every day)

Where did all these bills come from?
Money is paper, but it means things.
Suddenly, it costs money to breathe.

Eating? Oh pshaw, that costs money, time, and the store's six blocks away.
We can subside on government cheese, beans, and the fiery licks of whiskey.

I pout on my throne of ***** cotton, thinking
"I get what I ask for, when I ask, and it always comes--at a price!" I sigh.

It's always over a hundred dollars more than I could spare
and brings bad luck, moreso than a couple broken mirrors would,
smashed over a the front of your mother's blackest cat.

"Quick! Let's do designer drugs with the paltry change given by our parents, given as allowance!
I wouldn't feel like I wasn't nothing, nothing at all," I say, batting my eyelashes, "Wouldn't they feel proud of our feelings of entitlement to the greater things in life and consciously responsible adult-like decisions?"

I crack open my father's checking account with that swipe of a magnetic strip,
it makes me seem responsible when he sees I just use it for pills and foodstuff.

(I prove I love him, and he loves me in this way)

Now, together, we will buy strawberries with his money, until our lips are pink.
They must be four dollars, at the very least, then we eat like the bourgeoisie (!)

I kiss the cheeks of my reflection in the bathroom
"Como ca va, darling? Comme si comme sa. . ."
I lick my lips, put on red lipstick and then blot,
tousling my hair, tipsy, as I touch up my face by
licking the tips of eyeliner up like a cat's little tail,
the ends of eyes, coated with eyeliner as black as
my tightest velvet pants and dark, dark heart.

We go together. You and me.

Lying on the floor, holding hands, in vinyl bliss
listening to the crooning of sweet Francoise Hardy,
and the addictions of the near-dead soul of Lou Reed

You should move to a big city
and I'll come call, prepaid, with
a voice that is thick and ripped,
from expensive French cigarettes
chattering of sugar-white beaches
as I cross the seas all on a plane,
burning money all along the way
all the while drunk on red wine,
twirling my fingers around, with
bags under eyes, a little anemic

(I think it adds to the glamour)

We will go out to a dimly lit place
We will go out dancing then after

I will put on dab perfume under my ears and on my wrists,
I will wear black tights for pants, but first, do a little *******
and you will fasten the clasp on my silver necklace tonight,
while I smoke, before helping me put on my favorite fur

And we will go see Andy, at the factory
I hear he's doing something
with that Basquiat fellow (!)

I will go follow false luxuries, come with me.
I will gamble with you in Monte Carlo or Las Vegas,

just as long as you pay my rent at $695 per month,
and keep pretending,
until I die, or overdose, or something.

poor, slumped over and broken strangers
for a penny, share their paltry stories, one by one
snippets and scatters of half-truths and fables,
so raunchy they'd make Aesop blush.
don't deprive me of your salacious souls.

rented sea views with mirrors and doors,
unlocked drawers and white ***** floors,
with freshly dead ***** in claw-footed tubs.
rich luxury rich luxury rich luxury rich luxury
does that second home taste too sweet?

ears swallowed by bubble bath suds
head underwater, eyelids crushed and
stinging from the acrid chemical perfume;
drinking the bathwater in an unclean tub,
tasting notes of freesias and ***** green-blue.

plants do not require papers that state from where they came

they are caught and pulled by the bite of birds,
        seduced by the between-legs of bees,
            seized on the legs of the wind and animals by thistles and burrs

and the blessed are pollinated by the hummingbird

I do not know where I came from (really?) (really.)

or where nature and nurture intertwine within me, precarious balance from discipline and my genes

I twist bunches of grass between my fingers, feeling the good in a strain

racked on top of white bones, pushing sheets of freckled skin
out, spreading cancerous aluminums under my arms because
an artificial flower smells better during *** than human sweat,

what a pity, we are unable to reveal with the bursts of Walt Whitman (!) in
our own organic mechanism's ability to produce salt. The ultimate flavor.

I grin. Inhaling deeply while alone and unwashed, Whitman would've been into it.
Maybe I can find someone into it too. Someone who'll read me Henry Miller.

But instead I'll wear expensive perfume. I grin, again. Sardonically.

And I've been told I have a beautiful smile.
I should,
that smile cost blood and five grand for something cosmetic and quirky,
train-tracks over teeth, I now stain yellow with obsolete cigarettes.

I wait in the tropical heat, languishing while I bake, a freckle factory
and tan--adrift--awash with memories recalled by the smell of green
and the fearful hum of bees.

Why did I start smoking again?

I look at the red hummingbird feeder, and wish I could trade
          
             standing still as a hummingbird, I lie and say I cannot wait.

Composed of the opposition,
I am too afraid of the meanings
within the reasoning and
extremities of polar ends.

Ex.
steadfast vs. capricious
sincere vs. contrived
sadism vs. masochism
expansive vs. nonexistent

(circle one)

Frankly, between my want to know every
     cloud-breaking peak and sunless crevice of my animal, me,
        on this circular search for a emotional enlightenment,
    
      I am exhausted, from the in-between.

sugared fingers, the smell of Chanel
and I am flushed on red berry wine

and the charms of someone, dear,
who I would like to call "Valentine"

la vie en la rose
this red stains lips pink and
I see in pink, everything around me

as I dip my nose to my wrists, inhaling

Sicilian oranges, Calabrian bergamo
Indonesian patchouli, Haitian vetiver
Bourbon vanilla andd white musk

I giggle coquettishly and I am blushing,

For these sweet nothings
mean very much to me

Hail Mary! A pseudo-Buddhist
practices pragmatic paganism
with the guilt of a Catholic,
due to their samaric duties
handed from the true-blue Krishna.

But soft, through yonder window
a star collapses and light
is ****** through and destroyed
in a black hole foretold by
Hawking and, why not, Hubbard.

People are polyamorous
for their mono/poly theistic god(s).

But, how dare they be so bold
as to think they know about
anything about any-*******-thing.

Waiting on Haight, ******* the gold beading of a thrifted 80s shirt inside my purse,
I listen for the 71.

He tells me, from under a nose cherry-red and with a cantaloupe and a spoon resting in his lap,
of how when he was 25, he holed up with an 18 year-old girl.

One night she leaves for an ex-boyfriend's, saying she felt compelled to him, like there was a magnet between them. And he said he went to the closet, he smelled her sweater and knew what he wanted.

He got some cardboard and fashioned a fake magnet, the classic horseshoe shaped and silver-tipped kind, out of cardboard. He turned it into a necklace and waited for a day with some red roses for her to get back.

She came back and said she couldn't remember the last time someone got her flowers. And then she called her mother, and her mother asked him sternly if he was planning to marry her.
He was bewildered a little, but he said yes (this was the sixties).
And he finished the call to her mother and she was standing with her hands on her hips, "Well?"
"Well what?"
"Aren't you going to ask me to marry you?"
(I laughed at this point)
"Oh..."
                                                  ­                                        . . .
"Will you marry me?"
"Yes!"

I asked what happened and he said they were together for three years. But it was a blissful three years.

He asked me if it was a good idea for a movie.
I said yes. But I probably wouldn't see that movie. I left that second part out.

I'm sorry** that I hadn't met you sooner
I'm not sorry that I've met you now

I'm sorry that you feel pain from guilt
I'm not sorry that I pulled you in close

I'm sorry you don't know what happened
I'm not sorry you then kissed me back

I'm sorry that I don't want her to know
I'm not sorry that she doesn't know, now

I'm sorry you have a girlfriend
I'm not sorry for kissing you goodnight

I'm sorry you aren't single now
I'm not sorry I'll see you again, one night

The curtain opens, and I am lit alone.

Chagrin is my monologue.  

On opera balconies, giggling wraiths shield themselves from my humorless improvisation.
Served on a platter, I am on stage, eyes squeezing out precious salt, holding my hands over my red-tipped ears as they still roast from the taunts of my imagination's cruel gossips, who sit, deliberately carving into my breast, intending to cut out my breath. Jabbering, with ***** claws clasping at tarnished silverware.

I stammer and my throat begins to hang itself with a velvet string and cat-gut noose.

I sweat, clothed by the filth of makeup, menstrual blood, and leftover food stains. Palms held up, dramatically surrendering on the condition that mercy be extended, for they have seen my miserable condition and that it is me. The cloying stench of uncertainty and greasy hair envelops me.

I cannot kneel, for the coals on which I stand,
make me suffer more from the pressure.
No water in my heels to soothe this felon.  

I cannot provoke or endure, my performance is to be left early. Hume would not grant me fame.
If you have a heart, do not waste ink or time or money on me. I am a clot of blood, clogged in the sink. I will die in a ***** bed and no one will care, not even myself.

I just wish it will be swift and fleeting if it is painful. 
Hoping harder, I am not remembered as a miserable girl, the way I am.

So, sing violins, and let me swing for the cannibals.

There are many limitations sometimes. Of course these are only restrictions we place on ourselves, but we groom certain communities to fulfill a certain appearance and dismiss the breakers of unspoken rules. Don't drop the status quo.

Paradigm.

I want to write and not write about things. I don't know.
No, I do know. I want to write without the stigma that these topics bring.

I want to write a poem about Facebook. See how much appreciation that gets.
Poetry about Facebook won't be liked often.

Write about how it ****** me off that your ex boyfriend (that I dumped, by the way) has a new girlfriend with better taste and better photography skills than me. Remember how I made fun of his ex's for that? They're doing that about me now, I stomped on his heart. I teem with insecurity thinking about it. ******* selfish, I feel like a *****.

How I'm tired of being self-depricating because I don't want to seem like an *******. I've come a long way as a person and I'm not allowed to brag about it. I'm barely allowed to take a compliment or I'll look like I'm preening.

Write about how I'm tired of being kinda ugly sometimes.

Write about how I had *** with someone, how when I told someone else, I could see them and society drawing a big "****" crown of judgement, and how that's ******. I wish we could all grow up.

I wish I could explain that my apathy is, to a certain degree, purposeful. Because looking at feminism articles every day made me feel like ****. I felt like a victim constantly, and I alienated myself from making friends with normal people because I was an extremist. I got tired of constant misery and misinformation. The feminist community was cannibalistic too, and I don't think I wanted to make friends with such hyper-aggressive people.

Write about how I want to be a writer and how I can only write three sentences and then I look at the screen hopelessly. How lame.

I'M SO ******* NAIVE BECAUSE
I want so badly to be different in a better way, but I know I'm just the same.
I want to be able to change the world and I know I can't,
it doesn't matter anyway.

I haven't been able to cry in three months. I'm tired of trying to find my brand of catharsis.

they want me to be serious, to take it seriously. To look at sunrises calmly and seize coals and watch over red-blooded, man-fueled wars about bravado, integrity, and land. To look at money, a simple representation of labor, and see what it drives other to do, to do for me.

to crush cigarettes and testicles under my boots,
to crawl through mud and barbed wire, smiling

with grit in my grimace
salt rolling, sweaty brows
twisted locks of dark hair
tobacco-brown spit, ground
and filthy, caked in mud
teeth bared like an animal
white eyeteeth crunching

Scorching earth where my feet touch down.
A cigarette put out on a tongue. No more talking.

They want me to see and that, in the dark of the night, in the light of the day, when the sun rises and sets, there is pain, always, elsewhere and everywhere. So I will not tarry or joke or be frivolous with the battered souls of others and to think, to think about applying anything I know, to run along with the vigorous social constructs they ask me to dissect and then revolutionize, because I am young, and I will sprint faster, against accusations, and only briefly.

They want me to look at the world like a runner looks at the red track,
with their toes and sinews coiled as hard as steel, a pinnacle of human
at the height of athleticism and possess the ruthlessness of a rabid dog
drool rushed into foam and mad from dehydrating, my brain swelling

with my hormone driven
red, hazy, athletic rage,
gunning my ambition
for some organization.

No.

I will fight, yes, but I will not fight for a name on a card, shield, or building.
I will fight for the sake of fighting because I am contentious and I am wrong.

I side against hero and villain, because I am the ambiguity,
that languishes, resides in no-man's land, antagonizing both.

Being disliked in purgatory is sometimes more easy than chomping at the bit,
for blood and the power of cracking a black bull whip, so I can avoid this terrible avarice and corrupting beauty that comes with working hard, especially for the greatness
                        that I did not ask
                                       to be ****** upon me, while I wished to remain enigmatic.

my bed is an altar, undivided, and
a table, a desk

and seemingly somewhere
   where I cannot rest.

I am curled around your back, you breathe out of your mouth
I slip an arm over the north of your shoulders,
my fingers trailing to the south
I can tell how you feel by the way your lips pucker
You’re just my friend, I am the sucker

If you don't want me,
don't taunt me
don't flaunt it
I don't want it.

I don't (love) (touch) (be with) you
You are (a terrible person) (boring).

I will heal with (time) (opiates) (*** with others) and it'll be okay, really sir.
I hope (you die) (you go **** yourself) (be well) (think of me) (die in a fire).

You are boring.
G-o-o-d-b-y-e

replacing white lines with gray ash and sleeping in beds for sleeping in bathrooms and you wonder if you had any self respect in the first place because this afternoon you tried to think of your happiest memories in the past year and it wasn't when you were in someone's arms or thinking of your successes in the mirror while you flexed your kickass young *** it was when you were smoking bummed menthols and your friend commandeered a miniature tractor in the tenderloin and conducted two drug deals in less than 30 minutes and you watched her disdainfully with her girlfriend and wondered where on ******* earth you could get a three dollar old fashioned and let a forty year old flirt with you for coke and you wouldn't even have to do anything for it wouldn't life be nice like that

They say every seven to ten years you replace all your cells
you shed your skin like a snake, in the night, making dust

these dust motes swirl, a swirling in mourning of stirring,
light filters through glasses on a table, in another's home.

I think of you often, and now, presently, I lie wondering
if you are okay. If you will be okay, if you love me still.

I wonder how badly I broke your heart, and if I will feel it
echoing, if and when you cry out, for me, from little sleep.

I wonder if you will remember my name as good, as clean,
and whole in your mind, untarnished by devoted cynicism

I wonder when we meet for coffee, if you will ask me back,
I wonder what I will say. We said we would meet, will we?

Should we? Would it help us with anything? Will it hurt?
I'm afraid if you hear one word from me, you will unravel

like a spool of film, with you going over and over and over
every memory and analyzing what happened where, when.

I can't tell you where I stopped loving you. I remember one
night, and many of them, each all unforgettable secrets, that

I will tell to my own daughters, maybe, if I am so lucky, of
when we saw the shooting California stars. They were ours.

But, I will not tell them about the night we spent together,
you watched as I cried clutching--scarring--skin with nails,

you didn't know what to do. And then we ran out of things,
and I didn't know if I liked you, or even if I liked me, really.

But, I still hear you, sometimes, with a ripped and raw voice,
that screamed, like an animal, that you only wanted me! No!

I didn't know what I wanted, but, I knew I couldn't stay,
that is how I felt, after so long, with the city impending,

pressingly. I felt forced to stay. I left because I couldn't.
I left you, alone, because I didn't know if I wanted you.

I wanted what I have now. I wanted art. I wanted the city.
I wanted new boys, girls, drinking, laughing, and kissing.

I wanted to know the taste of others that weren't you, and
what it felt like to truly be unsafe, alone, and dependent

on nothing but my own wits, gumption, and self esteem,
I have it. It is rough, but it is more worth it to me to know.

I remember all the weekends in bed, sweetly spent tucked
in the crook of your shoulder, the smell of your neck, us all

talking and laughing, enamored with each other and feeling
of love and euphoria. We'd tell each other our futures, and

we said we'd meet in Paris in ten years, laughing bitterly at
what we all know; that our relationship will come to an end.

That's the thing about first loves, that you are sure of an end.
You were a better man to me than others, that I know surely.

I did not need the roughness of a cruel person to know it then,
and having felt the cruelness of others, I know the real sounds.

But I do not think I can return to you, and be the same woman
that you once wanted, needed, and saw. I am just not the same.

Something in me grows, feverishly, and maybe we will meet,
but I am moving fervently, and too quickly for your nostalgia.

You would be chasing a whiff from a stale perfume bottle,
and a wisp of a will that is just barely out of longing reach.

So my question is, still, will we ever meet again, and if so,
where and when will we each be, and will you want a we?

He isn't going to come, isn't he?

He's drunk, with his friends.
Nonplussed about a girl who said she cared.
Said she was sad and who asked him to come.

He told me
He told me he was depressed. He asked to come in the first place.

He said he would.

I told him.
I told him I couldn't say yes or no to him seeing me, but I'd say yes if he came.
If he knocked on my door.

I don't need a knight, but I require someone with a heart. I thought that wasn't too much.

I told him later I was scared he wouldn't come.
It's been two hours. I don't think he's coming.

I'm so stupid.
I'm so stupid.
I'm so stupid.
I'm so stupid.

I thought he was coming.

Acrid stenches of contrived action
stain his sloppy, uneven speeches

gallantry is unnerving, obnoxious
to me, even in the grandest favors.

I sniff with all my offended senses.
To a bloodhound nose, it's cloying.

He smells like he's trying too hard,
trying too hard smells sour, biting.

I prefer challenges from a cunning,
a silver-tongued fox. Let me chase.

Subtle while retaining the ability to
remain brazen, aye, there's the rub.

Chomping at the bit, the overeager
and easily pleased are not my kind,

the authentic and untamed always
give me more rise than an easy bait.

conceited and overconfident of knowledge, but, poorly informed and immature*

embodying the definition, I lie in bed, quiet, thinking,
face down, shirtless, in a pair of cheap purple *******,
breathing in a smell--cotton sheets, sweat, and coconut

I am not nothing, not miserable, but not happy
I am not frightened or bewildered by anything

I am an elder amongst the young
I'm a youngster still, to everyone.

all trash talk,
                not new news.

I just sort of quietly revel in the experiences
unravelling above me in a floating memory

adding up my mistakes,
until all pressed into me

+ that doing the right thing hurts, sometimes,
+ people are going to do things that you can't

and still that's okay, but don't get discouraged
if you work hard and get nothing out, that just
means something, that if you like it, fight for it

I don't know.

I also learned this year not to trust the bad liars,
that sometimes people are bland, but even still,
it doesn't mean death, and it's really going fine.

I learned this is as smart as I'm going to get,
so maybe I should try a little harder with it.

turning on my back, I flick an imaginary cigarette,
I put on a little blush + a long-sleeved black shirt
then I did what I was supposed to, maybe for me.

I want to smush my face in a big fat delicious frosted cake,
and blow out candle after candle and watch ice cream melt

as I dig through the moist sugary cake-bread with my fists,
and I eat everything I want in this delicious, nice restaurant

I want to pout at anyone else who makes grumpy faces,
I am the **** queen so it's my gosh **** party, dang it

I want to drink until I almost throw up and then do drugs
and grab ******* and scream with laughter and true fun!

I want to flash strangers and get birthday kisses and hugs
I want to smear lipstick all over my face, I want GLITTER

I want to roll in checks from relatives in far-off places
with the clothes and money and drugs that I will buy

I want to cry big crocodile tears over wrapping paper
and wear a pretty crown and take pictures, please yes

I want to smile so hard my cheeks hurt, ouch, and get away
with being a little ******* because I'll say sorry tomorrow

I want firecrackers and free things and fun fun fun fun fun fun fun
because it's my birthday, and I get to do whatever the **** I want!

Our quiet dispositions made for a double-edged sword, as we sat on blood-stained sheets, littered with stems and shredded tobacco bits.

Listening to "Blowing It" by Dinosaur Jr. I realized I, too, didn't know a thing to say to you. We seemed similar, in a way to a certain extent.

He had a stick and poke on his thigh that said "NO"
and we ******. Casually.

======================================================­==================
"I think you're cute and I like that you're tall."
"I think you're cute too and it's nice that you like that."
==========================================================­==============

We smoked spliffs and talked about how it was nice to be dating multiple people.

And what it's like to have a sugar mama,
And that crack is an underrated drug,
And that I should meet more people who like The Velvet Underground,
And how we both like beer, IPAs,
And how I smelled nice,
And how I shouldn't have chosen "Women" of Bukowski's to read first,
And that he should read "Slaughterhouse-Five", and I was willing to give him my copy

(The blood on my sheets wasn't mine, he had skinned knees.)

It was odd, but also nice, to meet someone with a similar disposition to me,
but there was nothing incendiary to hang on to, more just a slow warmth.

He's drunk on cheap power and knowledge,
stolen from his father's wooden drawer.
Now he's taken too much, too soon.
He doesn't know where to put his hands,
slurring, his words, spilling as he stumbles.

With the *****, it comes up and out.
A force greater than he is prepared for.
His overeagerness was embarrassing, he and it are ignored.
Florid-faced and flushed, his shame and he retreat to suffer,
snuffed out, sniffling in the stuffy, stifling silence.
His nose, once up in the air, is now in the corner.

Now you know, baby,
learn to hold your liquor and your tongue.

broken glass embedded in backs
causing blood stains on crisp Calvin Klein shirts
from wrestling limbs on kitchen floors

licking ears as sassy retribution
for passive agression
and acts of contrition

greasy hair
unshaved legs

fur
on fur

mouth
on mouth

on moleskin
on holographic jewelry owned by us

bougie bohemians
highbrow artists
     --with--
low-maintenance interests that include

blow, opiates, fringed scarves, "velvety",
all the pills you can fist into your mouth,
a wannabe lou reed, your friends' band,
and **** **** ****** **** gallery openings.

Take a picture, it won't last as long as this work day
but we have to have our money for the water--after the eight ball and taxi, of course.

A heavy-hipped roll busts out of my skinny skin
I am too thin and thingish to keep being so mean

I walk hard, long in stride,
having feet clad with iron
and black Chelsea boots,
stomping on hearts, hard

Deep, rushed, I howl into the city's summer fog,
like a hound with no home, no master, of his own
with all the flourishes of my cursive jarring scrawl

I am too ****** up, I am too ****** up dude
too ****** up to go back home. Toast?

For now, life,
but I will be dead by morning
still I am alive, awake, and sharp as a tack,
I die then six o'clock in the *******-morning-after
sober as the screaming birds, and I will rise again.

So for now, while I still care and can,
dance with me drunkards, but don't call me baby.
for I am sweet and clean, but belong to nobody,
with the exception of my dear vain reflection.

Then I have to kiss somebody that makes me laugh.
I have to kiss them because I am very compelled,
to do so now. I need to kiss you.

BAM.

Get in bed with me,
under the sheets,
but let's only sleep.

---------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­---------
IN BED, CUDDLING, WHILE HIDING HARD THINGS, LIKE HOW I WANT TO KISS THEM
------------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-----

Okay, well maybe, makeout a little
                                                          ­      but I swear I won't sleep with someone
as groovy as you because I like you
                                                             ­   and want you to stay a little afterwards
but oh, look, here we are, goodness,
                                                       ­         it's hard because it feels so ******* nice
when you, oh my neck and you, oh
                                                              ­  why are your pants and socks still on!?

-----------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-
YOUR MOUTH TASTES LIKE ME AND YOU FEEL LIKE I WANT TO DO ALL THAT AGAIN
-----------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-

All rumpled and giggling, tousled hair, smiling
Kissing your back, holding you closely, sleepy.

Light a candle, stay, pray with me, in our way,
through smoke and soft chatter, light touches

spilling secrets into the scruff of your neck
where I've stained you purple with kisses
affection for the aficionados, I love them
the boys and girls, who kiss me hard, back.

please do not judge me
for loving people before
you, if I love them a little,
and if I do not love you all

But

maybe I love you,
maybe I love them.

But

probably I love neither of them.
probably I love their memories.
probably from what I once saw of them, all made up in my head, from that one time.
probably, even though it hurts a little to talk about it.

But

I would bet my life on the fact that I am over all the individuals I have kissed before.
I would just say that I am in love with their embellished, immortal, and unblemish selves.

I painted all these romantic scenes in my mind, with all the boys and girls in my brain,
where we'd be in bed, frittering the day away, talking and joking, kissing every so often, unexpectedly.

They would look pretty and I would look pretty, both naked and all freckled, flushed, with smooth skin, holding hands and telling stories of ******* and bravado where they did some vandalism or something, and they'd be impressed with my tales too.

Then we'd just spend the day together making food and flirting, having *** in every way, and exploring each others bodies and listening to how everything we both say is endlessly fascinating.

My face would hurt from smiling, from how they'd make me smile, and from how happy I am from making them smile, and that they smile for me.

They would inspire me within every part of my being to not ******* them, but to truly be kind, and love them unabashedly, and show them the best of me, and be the best for them.

I can't force that, though, it has to happen naturally.
I had that, I don't love anyone anymore but I had it when I loved them emphatically
with new and whole innocence that transcended everything I knew about everything.

But
stop,
stay, please
because that was then,
this is now.

I miss them/that,
but I want you, here.
I want you to stay please stay
I will be yours, and care,
forever

till the end of this minute.
Kissing them until they comply, please

XxXxxXxXxxxXXXxXXXxxxxxXxxxXXxx

they stay,
a little while,
and I pray

that the sun will rise, again, on today
that we won't get too ugly when we're old,
that we will find somebody in the bed that is cold
that the sun will set in the east one day, that when we'll see it die,
that everything will be real quick and fast, and feel a little nothing.

repeat it repeat it repeat it repeat it
until I am scared and unless I am scared
and then until we're old and really that dead

until our youth is d-e-a-d,
then finally,
we can steal the contents of our heads,
that wouldn't go down on the paper
like my hands wanted them too,
so very badly

                                                          ­            then finally,

                                             we can curl up and we can sleep                                    
                                                                ­                  and we can

                                                            ­                            get some rest in this

                                                               ­                 very

                                                               ­               big city

wake up

desensitized, oversanitized

want
unsatisfied
want
unsatisfied
want
unsatisfied­
want
unsatisfied

Dab all over with aches, pains, and itches.

Struggle with gauche and forced interactions, coworkers and family. Friends?

No God.

                                                           ­   POSITIVE THOUGHTS
                                                        ­       POSITIVE THINKING

cloying, choking fear.

fear
Fear
FEAR
F E A R

Rub your face in the mirror.

Think deep thoughts that you believe are unique.
They are not. You are very uninteresting, probably.

want
unsatisfied
want
unsatisfied
want­
unsatisfied
want
unsatisfied*

drink until you sleep,
if not use the pills.

Use both.
Your room is warm.
You will have nightmares.

I finger the edge on a dull knife and don't cry over white hearts of onions
as I cut them silently, and more easily than I can cut through the white fog
that has maintained permanence in my head, daily-daily (maybe-always).

in the slow tempered, pull of a dry heave and tugging
slackened lines of sail being held up by beams of brown,
a ream of paper is spread, out, like a sheet over the cities
and the needle pulls through with thread, between beats

scratching my scalp
itching my shoulder

all for the meat underneath,
covered in barbecue sauce
come to me, so sticky, sweet

my words are hollow (a promise cannot be kept). my ears are muffled (this beer is warm).
my head is dead (I abstain from meat). don't come for me strangers (quickly, pulled pork).

"I don't know just where I'm going"

Arms encircled around porcelain, clean,
wavering strength, and eyes closing feebly

"when I'm rushing on my run, and I feel just like jesus son"

There are many more people than I want to see.
I pull up against the wall and, for balance, I lean

"and I guess that I just don't know, and I guess that I just don't know."

whiskey, for the Father
marijuana, for the Son
prescriptions, just for me

"I have made the big decision, I'm gonna try and nullify my life"

Still though, Lou Reed isn't dead, just clean
and so, this night, just won't bode well for me

"it shoots up the dropper's neck, when I'm closing in on death"

It is hard to remain dignified when in a wasted state, vomiting.

"You can't help me now guys, all you sweet girls with all your sweet talk"

It is hard to remain dignified when someone attacks my integrity.

"And you can all go take a walk"

It is hard to remain dignified when I am acting so senselessly.

"Oh, and I guess that I just don't know,
oh, and I guess that I just don't know "

I try to sleep through,
while foreign fingers swirl softly on my sides, to feel my *******.

"And that blood is in my head,
then thank God that I'm as good as dead"

I try to sleep through,
while a small ring lies atop of a postcard, with an Indian head.

"then thank your God that I'm not aware,
and thank God that I just don't care"

I guess, I just don't know.

"and I guess I just don't know
and I guess I just don't know."*

after the echo, I need to leave.
so I go, again, and press repeat.

throw fireworks at little brothers,
laugh, until they start crying, then hide

make mom cry, a lot. worry her, a lot.
make everyone who loves you cry, at least twice

run your ******* up a flagpole, steal a flag
smoke cigarettes at school

through bad ***** and insincerity
get drunk, then kiss everybody

borrow people's things
make them regret lending to you

throw up in such a way it'll ruin a party
throw up in someone's bed
leave it for them later

buy cheap drugs, steal cheap clothes,
exploit the good nature of others

spit at someone's feet

start useless arguments,
especially with bigots, especially when drunk,
especially when you need to impress people

get kicked out of something holy and sacred,
in the process, shame your grandparents

flip the bird, yell impolite things and trivia
at friends, strangers, anyone

set a plastic trashcan on fire,
leave it somewhere important
forget about it

pierce your face, more than once
pierce somewhere not on your face
show people you shouldn't

say trite thoughts, dress them up with $10 words
look pedantic, unsmiling, and snooty

put everything off, procrastinate
until it ***** you up, wonder what happened

finally,
stay awake at night, remembering all this,
then pity yourself, you ******* *******

Upside down is my right side up
With too-thin skin, splayed legs
and lips ****** of substance,
I lie quietly on rumpled sheets.

a word some say that I've said too much:
s-o-r-r-y sorry sorry sorry

It loses sincerity when uttered often,
but I am sorry, I haven't said it enough.

is my chagrin charming?
is my self-deprecation darling?

(no response)

I'm told (insert compliment).
I believe it, I have heard.
I both love and loathe myself.

******* and flagellation,
brought on by the same hand
penance, paid; insatiable, still

Just sit, ******
and watch a martyr at work.

Well.
Now wait, what, I feel dumb

not really, though. But still,

it's just all strange, this whole...
people vs people vs people
interlocked competition between bags of bones

(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))
           (((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))
                      (((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))

crosses fingers so I won't **** up

TOO BAD,
I probably will

I miss the crickets. I miss the frogs.
I miss the smell of my skin, my perfume in my bed next to wood and hot night air that speaks more to things of mystery than the dark of the night can.
I miss the sky.

No, I really miss the sky.
The crop of trees and the clarity that allows for you to look at galaxies and talk about what it is
and how small it feels to be human.

How mortal it feels to be willed to wants at the tug and pull of every emotion.

I miss them.
I miss them.

I miss their arms, tangled legs, and sweaty curls.

Their smell that differentiated from the nape of their neck to their cheek to their thigh.
The sweetness of their salvia. The unbounded love. The innocence. The fresh, sensitive pain.

I am numb. I yearn for something greater such that my heart aches and I tremble with premature grief every time I close my eyes and breathe. I think of your face. Not a day has gone by.

I love your memory. I pray it lessens in it's hurt, but that it never leaves me.

I miss those California stars.

I want to steal

the things

I want

like money
like knowledge
like talents

too hard
too hard

lamenting an absence of absolutes
I am standing
        no I am sitting
              no I am laying

with a cold one in hand next to a cold nothing in bed
thinking when was the last time I didn't **** up and get ******
and

**** with others' heads
   instead of just
fixing up my own

tell me the color of your *******

tell me the length of your ****

tell me the way your **** tastes
and if your legs shake around  my head

tell me if you're circumcised or not

tell me if you like pain

tell me if you're wet

tell me if you're *******

you're *******
you're *******

and I've got my tongue licking like a dagger up your walls, finger scraping
and I've got my legs wrapped around you while I'm rubbing your *****

cosmo never told you how I like the face you make when you say my name

and I'll tell you if
I'll put my tongue where you want
so long as you say my name

scraping my belly until it is raw
along the ground in a slow crawl

(road rash)

gravel, close, I smell the rain on the asphalt, crawling,
the grey and brown--pull--skin (away and away) now
it's embedded in my skin, while membranes grow off

brown splinters

sliding under layers and layers of thin skin
visible, when they puncture and break out

repiercing

Where is my redemption for my (in)action?
Why must I be such a sadist to all?

a light subsides on a waxed wick,
all blackhearted and brightly white-tipped

snuffed out under a bronze bell,
the wisps of smoke that remain,

blooms

under the duress of deprivation,
and escapes when released from the bell,

with a heavier scent and beauty
than that of the fairest rose.

new order
dancing alone
blacklights blazing

using my mother
as an excuse
for getting drunk

while thirsty for love
and holding an umbrella
while all around it's raining

I forget that my brain does not do __ when it should do __ and I slip under the coat of choking mustard gas that ***** the moisture from my lungs and eyes. A mustard seed of effort, small and yellow, cracked with no seeming dreaming thing of an eye has fallen like Hansel's crumbs from my hand and is buried with all my ambitions and dead dogs in the cold ground.

I hope it grows a kingdom of heaven, but prayers are wasted when they come from the wonton--and wayward kin of sinners who lead false farces and bring gluttony to dinner. I waste and want and cannot speak the language of those around me while we all whine and dine and **** and cackle

oh god
trite *******
*******
******* ******* ******* *******

I am not tired, I am bored, I am bored of lying and trying. Trying is the worst, and there is little reward for the cost of my dismemberment of ego.

Where is a pre-made empire for me when I need it? I should be handed down something, I cannot earn it on my own. I am a ruler, not a conquerer. I am a spectator, not an athlete. My narcissism cannot take the trying effort of building something of my own with feeble rewards and now I will die alone. Maybe. Maybe it's all hyperbolic.

I'm gonna say it. *******, I'll say it.
"**** it, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth?"

I swallow your story and

I WAIT I WAIT I WAIT

as civilizations collapse and--there's an uprising in Egypt!?!
and Kayne West releases another album and I listen to it when I kiss a girl and all I can think of is man,

I would make a great celebrity

I don't want you to **** me, I didn't know that-that-that text meant you were announcing you wanted to bounce back to my ***** and I

don't think I would say yes at first, to spite you.

KVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVK­V
KVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKV

I­'m a mess. I love it. Everything is going perfectly and I'm b u s y torturing artists and dancing with queer girls in Oakland because I like getting what I want

        because when I was younger I wanted to be a femme fatale
and here I am. Playing the villain
has been far more interesting that anything that I can lie up
and it's laughable that all my stories are true and that girls spread their legs and hold my hand after less than three hours of knowing me if I want to whisper in their ear.

KVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVK­V
KVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKV

I­'m desensitized. I like liking, I like lust, I like love. I'm capable of human emotion, just let me wrap the world in a thunderous revenge for the piety I have shown thus far and I will show you a good time out in the Mission when you text

at 6 on a Friday night when I smell trouble, decay, *****, and light
and ask me what I am doing
right now

and I get nostalgic for the view of a smooth set of shoulders between my white sheets
KVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKV­KV
KVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKV
I­ am young, I am alive. I will take advantage of those two things.

                                                        ­                           ^^^^

an anesthesia as quiet as

mustard gas
with it's creeping cloud passing through barbed wire with a magnificent yellow intangibility;
slow-moving and inevitable, unavoidable, and deathly--
--it's silent stalking is the breath of the Holy Ghost.

an anesthesia as visible as*

a mute scream
from the cracked beaks of all-black birds as they *croak outside the thin, thin, thin, panes;
birds ruffling and rustling like reptiles that knew better
and beat the game that the mammals never tried.

Pressing, muffling, a heat so harsh and deep I wake from my sleep, running away from the pull of a endless dark tide. So dark the breaks cannot be seen in the black gulf. I am haunted.

I am haunted.
I am haunted.

I cannot sleep, I cannot dream. There is no rub--all folly and hubris brings the death knell.

Where is the source?
To whom must I kneel?

I can feel are my bruised knees from falling prey to false idols,
                   but all I can hear are the creaking ropes of hung robbers.

cradle your head in your hands
as every barbed whisper in your head
echoes until it's thunder wreaks havoc

you are a jarring lance against the wall
while the buzzing breath of the world rolls

you are not here
you were never here

you can only pray,
only only only
wish you weren't

but you cannot just will yourself to die
with the fierce passivity that comes with nirvana

because you know that
while you can still convince yourself
there's something better in the future
barely
but barely is something still

even though presently

you are on a slab and you were Romeo
who believed he died alone, on the top

you are on a table dissected
metaphorically flayed and made raw

by the seeming death of passion, a lack of someone in your bed tonight,
and the slipped hand that pulled off your skin and made the feelings of the feelings that wound.

I click out of garish pop-up, eyes burnt from the white, and lick my lips.

Cheese. Grease. Onions. Oregano.

as I don't do the dishes and the beer bottles mount an army around my room,
holding their necks in an offended reaction to my distasteful behavior.

I sit here and try my darndest not to spend money because it seems
possession are the only thing that can fill my holes fully while I lie here empty

wishing I had something living in this room

and thinking about how I should take a poll
of how many boys I've been with that wear
old spice.

I am successful, on paper. But.

If attachment is suffering, then why does being desensitized feel so brittle and empty (?) .

Don't answer that question. I don't know how much of it is a lie.

Interpersonal relations strewn across the nation,
across my the country of my bedroom floor.
My sticky palms give me shaky qualms
as I feel too exposed and shudder

Cluttered and muddy, my mumbling mind speaks
in fragile fragments secured by black brackets.
Memories linger, held fast to my fingers
to help me remember what I want to forget

Why, or what, can you do that I can't?
Speaking slowly in a voice with a slant
I'll tear up and down what "it's" "supposed" to be,
if you'll pay for my presence with an bi-weekly fee.

The dashboard is melting into a thick slurp of plastic
Clicking of keys.
Turning of page.
My frustration has edged my voice, dark and as raw as obsideon.
this splitting headache from my frustration with procrastination
has cut me down, cut me open
again
and
again
and
again.
Every time, I say I'm done.
I am putting it off until tomorrow, until never,
and until it is no longer useful.
It is haunting and I am corrupted by my own misdeeds.
My lazy impulse has morphed into a useless ghost of promises to myself.