So i, maybe, sorta,
like you?
Oh wait, you didn't hear that,
I mean…
Unless you feel the same…
But that could be irrelevant,
I mean what would that matter.
Do you?
I mean, like share the same sorta bubbles I got going on,
Like for me,
My heart sorta goes a flutter,
And I can't help the palpitations and the eruptions you've been causing within my little drum,
Is it just a crush?
Or could it be at all love?
Whatever the hell that is…
But come on,
Dear…
I've never called anyone that,
Is that weird?
Or am I mad,
I just look at you, and my brain goes insane, craving you without caution, or thoughts of the repercussions that I ever wanted you to be mine,
I mean maybe you never will be mine,
Not that I mean to possess you of course,
But I wanna hug you, and look at you every day and call you pretty,
Ugh…what's going on here?
I mean I never have ever wanted to do that to anyone…
Once again a thought of you comes up, and I cannot suppress that thought,
I encourage it,
I enjoy it,
A thought of you makes me smile uncontrollably,
I don't know if that makes me unmanly, or anything, but for some reason I don't give a ****,
Unless you do of course…

It's two am.
It's snowing outside.
Cars drive by more frequently then they should.
It's Christmas morning.
I'm at the 7/11.
I'm standing under the awning outside.
I'm smoking a cigarette.
It's my 19th since my shift started.
My shift started at 9 pm Christmas Eve.
I'm getting paid time and a half to enjoy the snow and the cars and the cigarettes.
I hear the bell ring.
I'm alerted to a customer.
I put out my cigarette.
I step inside.
Inside it is warm.
The customer is a young man.
The young man has dark orange hair.
He is wet and he is not smiling.
He asks me if we have any one gallon containers.
I tell him no, we do not sell those here, we have a payphone out back if you need one.
He says no, thanks.
He walks over the soda machine and grabs a 72 oz cup.
He asks me if he needs to pay for it.
I say no and ask him if he is broke down.
He says yes, about a mile and a half down the highway.
I tell him I'll give him a ride.
He appears to think about it for a moment.
He says thank you.
While I lock up the station he fills his 72 oz cup with the cheap gasoline.
I finish up and walk to the car.
I unlock the car and sit down.
He sits down.
We drive and he says stop, there's my car.
I pull over and he gets out.
He pours the gas into the tank.
He starts his car.
I drive back to the gas station.
He follows.
I open up the gas station.
He purchases $36.79 worth of gas.
He says Merry Christmas and drives away.
I go outside and light up a new cigarette.
It's now 2:24 am.
The snow is coming down harder.
The cars appear unchanged.

bracelets
around your wrists
ruby drops against white skin
gifts to yourself
testimony to a fragile beauty
they fade

you shine

“I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.”*
Charles Bukowski

Her soft, elegant lips
Form a happy smile,
A sharp contrast with her moist eyes.
A magnificent ruin.
It was her impassioned spirit that led them through
As they hovered on tiptoe
Into uncharted waters.
Sooner enough,
Innocent affection flowered
Into overwhelming passion.
The candle of love was lit,
And as it flickered
He was able to look into her eyes,
Not deep inside,
But just enough to see a reflection of himself-
Look at me. What am I doing? Is this right?
With that same light
She was able to look in his heart
And see him as nothing
But an apostle of pleasure.

She forever drifted off into reverie
And when shaken up from it,
She got up to chase a mirage,
Pulling and tugging and urging him along too
But he only made token efforts to find it.
And it finally made sense-
Those many, many nights,
Where there were more drinks and less lights,
And the grey plume of smoke from his cigarette constantly rose up and clouded his vision,
He only saw the real him,
Never the real her.

I am the emptiness that exists in the kitchen
at such hours, late and lonely.
I can operate only in this space,
at night when the answers become irrelevant
and the present tense becomes the past.
I rely on the sporadic sounds of movement of traffic below the window.

I am the scratchy sound of death cab
on the Buick’s aged speakers.
I claw at the insides of the aluminum
and seep out through cracked windows.
I shore myself against a distant past
despite better judgment.

I am born of the vivid summer heat.
I ride the train to the loop
and back out to the city’s extremities,
like blood through a body.
I sweat under layers of wool humidity.

I am the concrete paving the boundless suburban streets.  
I exhale tar and forest
as the rain begins to fall, long after dark,
cooling the still-hot surface.
I crave the tires and feet that brace themselves against me.  

I am the slow moving clouds at dusk, the color of tea.
I ignite as the sun slouches toward the horizon.
I consume the jets that depart from O’ Hare in every direction.

I am familiar laughter, striking ears in palpable waves.
I move most freely though vicious August heat,
But even in such passive chilled air, I proceed.

I careen toward what has been named peace,
though it’s been forgotten over the years.
I have fled the immortal city for one more ageless.
I crave the smell of the death of summer.

I pass into a state of suspension
like the bodies that surround me, never born but built.
I trace the veins and find no flesh,
but only bones beneath them.
I stretch willing to bridge the gaps that exist.

I am the tangled freeways moving among one another
in the heart of a city accused of being heartless.  
I am guiltless in the face of isolation.
I hold blood hostage on a daily basis.  

I am lethargic, gold-soaked afternoons
Bearing such spacious skies.
I lie beneath gilded light
like the lazy palm lined streets.
I am the trembling airwaves,
And I disarm the distance itself.

Girl, around 27.
No, woman, rather.
Her youth walked through and hung there, dry, as mine did in exchange
so we pick and choose a role and sidle along the bar where
I am with a perk in the feet, lifted by the ***** of,
but a lot easier than you can imagine as
she lays her words out like warm hands and with a blue bird of compassion,
asks me how I am.
I gripe and she listens in a knowing way then reverse
in very clean queues and open mouths

She says, “They say today is going to be the busiest day of the year”, with a fire lit
behind an eye where she does not smile of her face, but through a grit in the teeth

I laugh inwardly, towards myself in a search for appropriation and then spit heavily onto table, “well, it looks like we both have something to look forward to, then”.

Then angelic laughter where my cheeks couldn’t follow and I am ****** in.

There was a moment then, which I wish could be brought to plate and silver.
a sort of cunning lock between a soul and my own where I hope only to god,
that I’ve thrown a key down river.

She walks out after our matching eyes and mirrored moves
So I watch her,
not her ***,
not her chest,
not her brown, burning hair,
but the still skin of her neck in an open sense where I want to take it in
as if she had the happiness and I am jealous
like a tearing gabble of a baby.

When Mother's on the telephone
she tends to leave us
on our own.
Distractions she will not permit.
Her phone call has no end to it.

His hand lightly floats above her back,
Seeming still to the rest of his moving body,
Tips of fingers gently touch, stroke,
her bare skin.
She dances closer,
They move to her hips fit perfectly along her warm flanks,
hip bones protruding under her thin dress.
Shadows tremble across the ceiling,
together they move bathed in green light,
Red on closed eyes and open mouths from which the sounds crash into music before them,
Yellow illuminated empty bags strung on the wall,
and baby christmas lights flash above their heads.
The shirtless drummer slams the beat, pulsing through the wires out the speakers into waiting ears,
gushing,
like a hose whose knot is suddenly uncoiled,
as his super-sized slushy melts.
Big boots bang the floor,
arms pump,
she wails into the microphone.
Through throngs of laughter, body heat and cigarette smoke outside the door, hidden in the darkness the saturates the parking lot,
hunkers a ***** truck.
Mud splatters like exploded glow sticks.
What are you sitting on?
Bass Nectar throbs into the seats,
is absorbed into the tires,
one window is open a crack.
Inhale. Inhale. Again. Again. Exhale.
Still, through the smoke, and the ***** windshield,
the stars still glow.
Dance with me?
No.
Let me play with your hair.
No.
It's mine.