grown too big for my britches,
I run my fat, fat mouth until I
look like a fool--a happy one.

flirting up a storm with his friends,
antagonizing my brother, my friend,
until she yells, and he kicks my ***.

I went for a hug, and he kicked my *** (!) physically pinning me, I can't move
I rolled him over once, at least I got that, and he later apologized for be a ****.

I mean, he's got three inches
fifty pounds of muscle, and

actual fighting
training on me

How long could I really last?

I am a woman, I am weaker.

Kate told me that in Nepal, the men backhand the women and children, very easily, and she was backhanded for not remembering how to say her name in Nepallian. That must feel awful, to have a feeling of power handed over to big fists because of strength, not money.

I watch the trees, I break a beer bottle on accident
I flash the cars over the bridge, I wasn't even that
drunk, I am just sad--very tired of feeling nothing.
It's just sibling rivalry, and we'll both get over it.

my family makes a tall crowd;
my mother is 5'10", the shortest

we were raised to party, hard, and we entertain, flamboyantly
we were raised to clean it up, efficiently, to take responsibility

I might be a fool, but at least I'm going to be happy later.
That's not guaranteed though, I am sure of that, certainly

He might be too jaded to be as successful as he could be.
That's not guaranteed though, I am sure of that, certainly.

my grandfather has thin skin
he says
after I watched him buckle after a bunch in texture on the floor
a wire
a corner
a buckle in the universe

where man falters where he is confident to walk
and I watch the blood in a ****** mary leak into the corners of a white leather couch
a drink, spicy and cold
less orange than the purple that swells under his skin
and redder than the faded napkin I wrap around the icepack

he has eyes browner than my brothers
less brooding, more soft with an illustration,
a knowledge of all his children's lives
and I wonder, a tight cliched anxiety in my chest
would I ever be so lucky

to worry
about all my successful children?
or would it ever keep me up
to wonder
if they were happy
or after everything, all the gravel and grit
or after everything, in their lungs, in their brains, in their skin,
smoothing right, all their rigors
humming under their hearth of hearts

if I would just go to bed,
happy they would be okay
or
happy there wasn't a buckle in the universe

cheap whiskey and cheap sheets are made for the sad business of liars and thieves

you can't grow a beard
you can't grow a sorry

I can't grow a spine
I can't grow sincerity

because I stop hurting if you keep hitting hard enough

and

you hit
you hit hard
you hit constant

and we love each other

but

but we don't want to be together
but we don't want to be apart

                                      so now I am sitting with cheap whiskey and sheets

and you are off

and only God knows where

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

self-reflection churns out an image of a clicking cicada of an aggressively ****** young girl, who due to the pressing weight of a blue silk chord around her throat possesses

a shiny dark, green exoskeleton (refracting light and resistant to moisture)
(SO ******* KAFKAESQUE) (!!!)

who sings as she rubs furry legs together and has decided to spill pain whenever possible onto screens and sheets, throwing up wherever she lands, without true cause in a careless disarray, breeding narcissism (let's throw a party)

biting into shattered satin, like a moth feeding off of human wetness and stains while punctuating words with mispronunciation and self-absorbtion
because she is deathly afraid of being boring and a daily routine, how predictable

(the crowd looks on miserably, fanning their faces with paper plates, sweating profusely)

this poem is predictable;
sorry.

I never have tried to **** myself, it would be silly to think that not killing yourself or killing yourself would have an actual influential impact on most of the world, except in rare cases.

Death is looming, I am grinning, I have not yet seen it so I guess I will live forever and subside off the hearts of men (no, not really, I'm kidding).

Her blue eyes--used to shake
those roars turned into a hot, low chuff

Now it's her head that shakes
Now it's her hands that shake

Cracked, peeling palms
she picks with worry,

no        No          no

-----don't do that-----

Wiping away tears like she used to, her voice crackling on the phone. She hides.

I'm am too young to help her.
I have an empty head and empty pockets,
shrugging with pleading eyes, I'm sorry.

So sorry.

Her mother
Her sister

**Her

curled up with La Dolce Vita
and all I'll admit to is how I missed holding your hand at night
and your seeming naive affection for Tarantino.

And how you got offended that you weren't my muse,
baby (not baby) you rocked my world.

I came from your mouth and you inspired jealousy
we can be friends that **** but by God,

we are both too stupid to do as much
because I want to snort coke off your massive ****
and remember that you know nothing about Kantian ethics
from what I said
and what you did

and how I felt

from breaking up with my boyfriend'
to *******

and your expression
when you found out you were no longer my muse

My name is called through crooked finger
or sidelong glances that linger too long.
I am beckoned by the broken, blue boys,
who smell of naïve, of sleep-deprived sighs.
No matter what happens, I always remember,
they think they could know me, but,
no, I know better.

Oil slicks of sweat and grease are pushed up to the forehead in afterthought
Depressions under your eyes and cheeks are murky and dark and deep
made from too many days and nights
in a purgatory hell waiting for slumber
Mumble through the spit, you salivate at the idea of a thought
Your skin makes a scraping noise when you move and
broken-off hair lies in your hands,
blood is caked on your skin and nails and teeth
from a ferocity I cannot control or understand and
where did all these
scabs
scabs
scabs come from?
peeling and picking and flicking them off
undoes the perfectly sized wrappers on the wounds
and you are rawer than the day you were made

yelp and gulp, open your maw,
then scream as loud as you can
for as long as you can until
you are raw and rotten from the inside out

doctor words
doctor words

tiny white pills, the size of an iris
washed down after a hearty, final glass of brown burn

HOWL HOWL HOWL by Allen Ginsberg
                                          by Allen Ginsberg

A yearning for the hot press that comes with sleep deprivation and heartbreak, got my wish.

Cross my heart. Cross over my chest.
I pray to G-d my soul may keep, and (that all nights) I won't ***** and die in my sleep.
I'm not that ambitious or tortured enough to **** myself.

But I'm just lazy and heartless enough,
to spit acid at what I love, or let it rust.

I lean against the rail, to hold steady as Royal Gate reins.
I lean eyefucking a stranger, trying to remember the last time I felt a **** rub against my legs.

I lean on unanswered messages and unanswered calls as the sticky *** that holds this ******* social life together doesn't show it's protein background,

and I ******* own ***, trying to forget why it take me a half an hour to rub a half one out

thinking of their names.

thinking

those kids aren't worth it
while I hang up my *******
in the shower

to dry.

Call me Bukshittski

For I am no Vonnegut
For I am no Burroughs
For I am no Kerouac

and I am no good man
I am abusedive, corrosive

and hold all the talent in a rotten teaspoon of a dead, dear friend.

I look at my broken purple-tipped fingers, holding a cigarette drawling with ash
cupped around the ghost of a brown beer bottle, the smell permeates my fingers

painted purple with polish named with "no more film"

No more film. Huh. That's not a question.
I click the shutter, but nothing's there to capture the permanence. To project onto.

Nothing will be lacquered with a gloss
a painting of time with a smooth finish.

There might be a flash, but still nothing.

I might have disposables, they're costly to purchase, costly to develop. Same-o. Same-o.
They cost around ten dollars to develop, that's cheap, but expensive, in large quantities.

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

Feet on a sunlit dashboard with the wind ruffling my hair.

We're sleeping under the starlit sky, waking up with the birds at dawn
Sleepy eyes struggle, illuminated by the glow of sunrise as long brown lashes press against a translucent cheek.

I made you breakfast.
I kissed your neck when you weren't looking.

You slid your hand into mine and then we ran away
on the dollars of our fathers and the kindness of employers.

Where are you now and when will you come?
Who are you and why are you seemingly far away?

Aspirin sticks deep, hot in my throat
while I choke it down, up I cough,
speedily burning up all my thoughts
into the power of steam and smoke!

Pulling at hair, I must retract all I wrote,
all these scowls, and these scoffs,
the running, the running, and pushing off,
that came with the want to sow my oats

The pain, oh the burn that taunts my head--
for I took my trust from your hand,
now I am awake, with regrets, in bed,
for not seeing you--at once--as an awful man.

rainbows of oil
where your f ingers t ouch
leave mar ks on marble
leave ma rks on slate
leave waves in wa ter

and I know you can touch the surface bec
ause I pulled you back from goi
ng deep
before you fell too hard to rea
ch the bottom

--
--
--
--

I imagined your fingers reaching up

Slip a quarter in the lock,
it tricks into/with a key
The money pays and paves the way
to purchase what I need.

The sky is stuffed with the cleanest clouds you'll ever see
Carpet tacks and cut up glass launch into your knees
Sink to the ground as crumpled as a paper plane,
discard your feelings before you ever feel again.

The chips on your shoulder, off the block,
have filled up all your pockets.
The feeling you had when you stepped through the door,
well now, you've lost it.

Enter the exits, watch, you're on your way
Never to regain what you felt in any way
Touch your body
Touch yourself
You've been touched, it's okay.

After entering this exit, remember what you know:
every wall is a door, it depends on where you go.

do you become a bad person when you start snuffing out half a pack of cigarettes in your daily six pack of beer

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.

I say, "hunger"
you say yes and I want to show that you are art.

I want to watch your compassion radiate a phosphorescent glow and your untrained talent play out in shaking droplets over plastic keys and strings

and honey,
you look like a god tonight

what's your name

I walk the fine lines
between
by choice
more often
than I really should

it's more enjoyable
than being strictly defined
by all these -isms

and there's a bonus
of having the threat
of extrem-ism
hanging over your head

the world is grey
my moral compass
is questionable/ing
and wavering

black and white
how boring is that?

I am lucky to be able
to afford more than
two colors

I forgot and now
I am stretched and exposed, a taxidermied specimen against the wall.
Pins punched through my achilles heels and wrists and
everything hurts so much, constantly.
What's the worst is the fog that's implored my drunken brain to circle
like a cat near a hearth, and s u b  d  u e itself.
It only stirs to blink m u g  g  y and gooey eyes at me before
it yawns and eats away at my body.
I am embalmed, alive, with no protest.

I forgot to get more pills. I forgot, I am so sorry.
I called them and they sent them and it's been three days
It should have been here by now.
I should've been able to move, to breathe, to think without being frustrated
by every insufferable task.
It will never get better, it will never be better.
I just want my p i l l s to be here by now I can't e ve n t h i  n   k

dark paint           your  l e g s

"The upper lid typically has about 90 to 150 lashes on it, while the bottom has between 70 and 80 lashes. Most eyelashes grow to be about 10 mm long."

Your eyelashes are p e r f e c t l y  straight and dark.
They really look beautiful resting against your cheek.

Hawaiian Electric Industries (HE) -0.25 (-1.05%)

he He HE

looks even better in my bed when he is made up in my head
but he's sleeping at his home and I don't think he misses me.

all I can thin k about is touching my index finger to my thumb
to make a circle

the three left extended

where
where
where did the appeal of everything go

?swept down the river of fermented potatoes and unanswered text messages

and the time differences between me and your arms.

You couldn't say sorry enough.
You couldn't say sorry enough.
to make you remember not to do it again.

I'm over the concept of a tumultuous relationship. I'm winded. Spine wounded around my bed.

Grasping for air.

You couldn't say sorry.
Enough.
I'll be kissing somebody's else's freckled shoulders when you call next.

he has hair like
an anime character

and

perfectly straight
eyelashes

and

I like it when he's sweet to me
but not so much when he's mean
-----------
but I deserve it, the littlest bit

we're both very mean

In my imagination
I look at your mouth as I sit, glaring darkly
at you over my peach-flavored-***** drink

you sound like one of those screaming goat videos
and I
would li
ke
to kiss your little mouth.

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?

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.

it wasn't all about
the proverbial lighting of the post-****** cigarette
the white sheets wrapped around inseparable sweaty bodies

holding hands, tangled legs

staring
at the ceiling

these sheets all tucked around my *******, his waist

it was the mediocre
it was the scurry across cold plastic floors
to go ***, quickly,

so I wouldn't start ******* blood 20 or so hours later

and forcing myself to ***
and splashing water to stop dripping *** across the floors

while I looked in the mirror
nonplussed
but
hair mussed

sticky with sweat
dripping with goo

thinking

man,
that felt really good
and reveling in that brief, delightful feeling

of a man's weight
on your chest

breathing heavily after ******* inside you

I lick the tip of my paintbrush and dip it into the black
I line and curl the tips of my eyeliner with a flourish.

Mismatched.

Art.

And my eyes have forgotten how to read with avarice.
And my lungs have forgotten how to breathe in smoke.
And my lips have forgotten how to form good lies.
And my fingers have forgotten how to wield a brush.

And I try. And I try. And I try to remember.

And it is not easy to remember every step and so many others are better.

I am weaker.

What happened to me?
I don't remember.

tedious, tedious restraint.

my grip is bordered by white knuckles
that crack and strain under pressure.

arms locked, teeth bared, and jaw clenched
flexing against my self-imposed limitations.

distractions?
  insufferable.
activities?
  intolerable.
stress level?
  incendiary.

I called. Once. Today.

a snap shot of the dark:
I deleted your number.

do you ******* remember me
do you ******* remember me
do you ******* remember me

??????????????????????????????

if you call me, if you return,

I will answer you
like a stranger, "Hi?"

It is only fair
because you keep pretending.
as if we don't know each other.

Please, stop.

Please.

****, dude, help me
I don't know any better

Stop it. Call me back.

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.

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).

It is so foolish and too dangerous
to care for much these days.

I dream dreams of living in a skyscraper and having a shark tank
and then the whole building is turned upside down,

and out dumps gallons and gallons of water and then comes a crowd of

biting
flopping
ravenous

monstrous fish.

Then I wake up.

the roots, ripped from the earth, with veins hanging like hairs
curl, without the touch of dirt and water, from exposure to air
the red hide of bark hide whorls from burrowing black beetles

I am brushing my mother's hair with a plastic-bristled paddle brush, and
she closes her blue eyes. The very same ones that would shake in anger.

her mother, her sisters, her brothers, a red grove old
the survived burns and poverty is slowly collapsing,
under the weight of age and illness from what is new
and they stand silently and watch each other just fall
one-by-one they fall, surrounded by helpless others,
that can only watch with barren arms, little movement

She used to be, so strong
but, age makes all weak.

She had howled and screamed like a wretched tiger at young, quiet
me, who would keel over. I'd shut down at the sound of her gold car
as I shakily held red-marked papers that proved my name was mud
and I had finished nothing except a hollow swallow of deceit, found

when a tree collapses it gives a fragrance and a life to decay, then it
is the mother of life for all the creatures that need sustenance from
to every insect and fungus that feeds off it's fibrous flesh, that bores
into the bark until it is stripped clean, dissolving, into where it once
held prominence, where it once darkened growth that it fosters, now
it is gone, it has given all to plenty and needs nothing more to hold.

I wonder if that is how she is now,
she knows she is sick, succumbing
to the loss of energy that comes to
with a too-swift fall, scraggly roots

she is the mother to the decay that
feed him, feeds me, feeding us all
until, she returns her other grove.

I just want
some body
to think
I am

the

              cat's pajamas

and for me
to think
they are the

                dog's tuxedo

and then we
show off

our all

Split me op en,
In eve ry
mean ing.
It would be
just.
*please

scorched
       singed
by the moon's hot rays
soaked
I wait,
drenched in a sea of salty sweat
choked by the twisted sheets as big as sails
my screams are lost in the folds and
valleys of white
that stretch tightly around my legs

hot sticky breath rolls out of my nose and mouth
I can feel my heart beating in my face

no anesthesia for the intolerable discomfort
of being
alive
when you
only
wish to sleep

I dreamt, curled in the thick cut lines of "The Starry Night"
and I forgot what an old city feels like when I look out at the streetlights with neon flickering glasses

I forgot how to feel somewhere in September;
my lips pressed on a boy's from the Ivory Coast.

Face blistering on the Champs-Élysées, thinking of nostalgic songs I should be too young to feel

-

I remember how it feels to rub my hands into redwood bark
and how I wished for something real.

I squint down into the empty bottle of wine

"Is a relief from embarrassment here?"

No.

Shame.

Swirling what's left,
I drink to poor memories.
I drink to forget.
I drink to soothe.

I don't love you
or you
or you
or you
or you
or you
or you
or them
or them  or them  or them  or them  or them  or them  or them  or them  or      them  or them  or them  or them



where's the intimacy gone when I **** nowadays?

I
sleep

and

drink

and

brave dark nights


I
cope

and

seek

and

wish for fights

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

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.

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

The world has jumped from east to west
My fingers can no longer reach out of my window and touch trees
They reach out to grasp the air
up thirteen miles high in the sky

I sit in my white tower alone
"She will be better because she is here." the people below say.
"It is better..." my sage said.

Show me why.