He looked me in the eyes
The other summer night
And told me of the abominations men of the world
Impose on women of the world
As if I didn't know them.
As if I weren't the ******
That time had ****** so,
So,
So ******* many times.
He told me I would never find a man
Who would treat me better than he.
But I found my hero
Without having to run away with Proud Mary.

And I may have found him
A midst empty days
And a longing to fill a chasm I found deep within myself,
But I found him nonetheless.
And as I sit here,
Awake for days and
Sick,
I hear his words echo
Like back blows
Administered
To the lungs of a Cystic Fibrosis patient.

He told me men on Craigslist
Look for women to ****
And women call their vaginas "oceans"
To try to pick up men.

But my love wants only a partner
To participate in a round of Super Smash Bros. with.

I. I thought you were her world;
   Her paperback novel
   She could ponder quotes in
And crack the spine of.
   But you’ve now got police orders against you
And the pain of missing you
   Seers the seams of her striped-sweater heart
   And though you’re trying to get into Green and Ginsberg,
   She can’t see what the big deal is.
   You were the Holden Caulfield
   To her Jane Gallagher
   But Holden never took Phoebe
   To the mattress so
   I guess that makes the two of you
   Sid and Nancy
   Instead.

II. I suppose she never believed you
   When you told her that you were an alcoholic.
   Because alcohol burns
   And though you lit her fire,
   You couldn’t keep it burning.
   You told her that you didn’t read
   And she should have
   Backed away then.
   But she didn't.
   Because you played accordion
   And dressed like Gatsby
   And she adored that for a good while.
   Until you told her that you despised the Rolling Stones
   And may have committed a ******.
   Even then she did not back away
   Because you bought her cigarettes
   And hit on other girls
   While she waited for you
   To give her the boot.

III. She liked your accent
   But it was just a sweet, endearing cover up
   For a mind as empty as a gypsy’s wallet
   And a rich man’s soul.

IV. You liked to give her drags
   Off your E-cigarette
   Because it tasted like cherry Pez
   And you wanted her to see
   Or rather, taste,
   The magic.
   Kissing you was like magic
   Until
   You moved on to an older broad.

V. Everytime
   Her lips met yours
   You tasted like heavy *****
   And she was too desperate and twisted
   To really give much of a ****.
   So she accepted it
   And moved on.
   Because you called her pretty
   And made out with her in the forest,
   Denim scratching denim,
   Hearts hurting hearts.

VI. She didn’t know you were homeless.
   Or, rather,
   Maybe she did
   But she didn’t accept it.
   Like an elderly doesn’t accept death at first
   And attempts to bargain.
You smelled horrible…
   She believed it to be a natural thing.
   But you were neglecting your hygiene and with that,
   Her as well.
   And the only thing you cared more for than ***
   Was the *** Pistols.

VII. You asked her to take off her glasses one day
   And with one look of her freckled,
   Pimple-shell ridden face,
   You told her she looked like Ramona Flowers
   And upon googling who that was,
   She nearly crapped herself in glee.
   She should have taken it as a sign
   When you began to find
   And tiny reason to touch her in as playful a way you could.
   Through tiny nudges
   She should have seen the possibility of romance blossoming.
   But you were 29
   And she, 17.
   Twelve years, practically
   Three Presidents
   Between the two of you.
   But your undivided ideals
   Brought you only closer together.
   You were an English education major,
   With a III mark after your name
   And Megaman on your walls.
   She took one look
   At the astounding possibilities,
   Drew a breath and fell in love with
Every little thing about you.
Every single,
Unnoticeable thing about you,
From the scar
Stretching down your spine
To the scruff on your chin…
She fell
Deeper in love with you
Than she ever had before.
And she saw a dream,
A future,
That came in on a hot summer day
With Taco Bell
And destiny.

When you kiss him,
You taste Blistex.
A million drops of envy
Glistening in the summer light.
You taste his cigarettes
And girls in cotton,
Polka-spotted dresses.
You taste the fractured spine
And shattered mirror
In his skull.
You taste Incubus
And Brand New;
Music you aren’t into
But for a while,
Pretended to be.
You taste his torment,
Years of the abuse
He suffered
At the hand of the infamous innocence-taker.
The brown, caramelized
Hand of fate
Reaching down to wring the neck of justice
And all that is right.
You taste the hypocrisy;
How he tells you that he loves you
And then takes photos of another girl
In her bra.
You taste David Fincher.
Fight Club, Zodiac,
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,
All coming to a head
To come and strangle you.
When you kiss him,
The fairy tales are gone.
All that’s left…
Is the taste of Blistex.

We writers are insane.
All of us.
We revel in our own sad mess
While picking green grapes
Off the wallpaper,
Smecking away like mad
At the wondrous juices
Of the imaginary, judicial
Forbidden Fruit.

We, like Hemingway,
Take our scotch in the morning
And our gin at night
And try with brutal, lashing effort
To make it through
Everything in-between.

We have put ourselves in shoes
We will never be able to walk in.
We must walk miles as
Linguists, as
Assassins, as
Outsiders, as
victims, as
AIDS sufferers, as
Brutalizers of women.
We must deal with their pain
As if it were housed in our own entity of being.

J.D. Salinger wrote that
His literary son, Holden,
Wore a “people-shooting” hat and
Made it **** clear that he suffered from wild
And erratic fits of overwhelming depression.
Writing from a bunker
Far from his wife, kids and home,
His stories sparked ****** in the hearts
Of already oppressed men
With “people-shooting” hats of their own.
We must toil with language;
Put it in the corner,
Love it, hate it,
Shift it and slave daily with it.
We must lose hours upon hours upon
Days of sleep
Before we find ourselves
Dangerously asleep at the wheel in front of us
In order to make the slightest change in our regular ways.
Even then,
Our handwriting only becomes sloppier
And our words,
Only fiercer.

Kaysen, alone in a psych ward
With women who slept around and
Tried to maul each other,
Wrote diligently
To try to release the the demon
Boiling the very blood inside her veins.
But demons do not disappear easily
And unfortunately,
Neither do the tortuous memories.

Even today,
They attempt to label me
With words of the disturbed.
Anxiety
Floods my synapses and neurons.
Depression
Happily urinates on my serotonin levels.
I bring myself to write
The effigy of the ******
Day by day
As my pen scratches paper
And the doctors expect razor to scratch skin
Though it never has
And never will.

Writers are psychos.
We all are.
We remain the mad, psychotic, literate monsters
Who worm our ways
Into your head.
We nestle beside your dreams and fantasies,
Waiting to strike
And tear them apart or,
If you’re lucky,
Build them up.
A woman writer named Sylvia
Once put her head in the oven
Because the writer-demons were driving her to madness
And they wouldn’t leave her be.

Handling us is a torture
Only the most eloquent and experienced reader
Could enjoy.

Love Always,
Salinger and
Plath and
Kesey and
Vonnegut and
Burgess and
King and
Sandburg and
Snicket and
Hemingway and
Palahniuk and
Kaysen and
Gaimen and
Green and
Trumbo and…

Holtry.

Pamela, I suppose,
Has taken one too many lines
And has given birth to a child
With a few extra mental arms and legs.
Green trees and
Vietnamese agent orange
Fell into her lungs a bit early
As she painted her portraits
And found her ideal of love in mine.
Women, I’ve found,
Have quite the strange way
Of making change.
We can’t all be  Elizabeth Stantons
And Sylvia Plaths.
We can’t all be the bra-burners,
The Vietnam-Veteran spitters
That this generation of tetosterone-enticers
Has emerged from.
Pamela, like so many other long-haired,
Nail-painted beauties before her,
Lost herself in an opus of *******
And promiscuity
That brought her down
To a level terribly under
Those of substantial criminals.
As Burgess wrote, “You were not
Put on this Earth just
To get in touch
With God.”
Pamela, I suppose,
Failed at just the same,
Became a Russian spy
And illuminated a flame of displeasing energy
In the heart of my breathless being.