1
This is the song of you leaving
It is the lead finally soaking into my brain
Dumbing me down
This is the de-evolution
To perfection
Turning me into the animal
I knew I always was
Taking us back to the state where
True communication is the sound of something primal
You don’t have to be human
To understand the sound of desperation
It echoes off of lead paint walls
When we are left alone
It is the sound of my heart
Used as a door jamb
A last ditch effort to stop you from leaving

2
This is the song of quaking
The rhythm of helicopter blades over head
Rattling my windows
It is the sound of a faulty foundation
Reminding me all things are breaking down

3
Break me down to beastly
Howl my heart to heaven
You never misunderstood the rumble of my hunger
After the deep breathed sighs of my lust
The salivation of sizzling fat on a skillet

4
I always know where to hide
When the crack of bullets go off again
It is the air raid sirens of ghettos
It is the goose-stepping thunder
Of misled solidarity

5
I always know to walk the other way
When I hear someone crying
To hide my head under a pillow
When I hear weeping coming from another room

6
These pleads for help are wordless
But tug at my heartstrings
As painfully as any music
Only now the speakers are speechless
And the sound is without pattern
And the dancers are still
Fear is the sound of the quiet
Listening for a reason to move
Waiting for nature’s echoing bass drum
Telling you to run

7
Scatter you new found animals to safety
And lose your need for love
This is the sound of my saddened clatter
Keyboard key’s snare drum
It is the sound of a final poetic solo
Because as for being human
I am done

8
This is the song of me leaving
Wordy as it may be
Living a lifetime
Thinking this body is the pinnacle
This body is the tip of the bell curve
Before the hourly gong of descent
This is the song of becoming perfection
The song of de-evolution
It is me
Finally becoming an animal
Again

This is after my fourth near death experience

And she came to visit me

I was still unconscious

So still I could have been dead

And she kissed me

So often we bring people flowers at funerals

But who brings soup to keep people alive?

My lips longed for your love then

As much as they do now

So in the future

Don't wait til I'm almost dead to kiss me

She kicked me out of bed first thing in the morning
I didn’t even have time to make us breakfast
Not that she was hungry
She seemed satiated enough
So I left
and later met a friend for lunch

He was kicked out of bed first thing in the morning
He didn’t even have time to make his new lover breakfast
Not that he would have eaten
He seemed satiated enough
So my friend left
And he met me for lunch

Our attempts at fuckery find us
Not too far from one another
It is the distance of a coffee table in a diner
After we make our way to the wayside again

We both have water
And it washes our pallets clean
Of the liquor
And the cigarettes
And her mouth
And his mouth

Still lingering a little bit bitter
So we sip some more

These are sheets we leave behind so stained
That you hope the passion will stay
Until there are so many it doesn’t matter anymore
These one night stands will never feel any less *****

The spots of sweat and memory
That still won’t wash out
So many
They look like constellations
As the sheets hang to dry

I imagine they trace out your body
Not just your body
Any body

So generic now
It makes The Shroud of Turin
Look the aftermath of Babylon’s midnight bustle

These are the ways that love leaves you
Hanging you wet to dry
Stained and *****
And equally alone again

Forgive me for the way my mind wanders
I am still with you
I just didn’t want to *** yet

These are the ways my body leaves me
And then you
The morning after I accidentally told you I love you
Even though we just met

I have found and lost love
Enough times to secure my spot in hell by now
I mean
My fear of death his hell enough
To love you as much as I can

Forgive my neuroticism
As I leave again
Finding myself where my fuckery leaves me

At lunch
With a friend
Who is equally awkward
As we make way to the wayside again

I barely went to school
And was baptized underneath a rain gutter
But I promise
Despite my upbringing
I will die a poet

Birds never studied music
Nature never rough drafted its deformations
Including me
I was born perfectly broken
With heart in throat
And head in clouds
And head in ****

And head

Head everywhere else but center
Hands anywhere but to myself

I dare you to stop pumping fuel
Into my mouth’s motor
Dare you to make fun of me
For my special education
For my short bus
******
My education was special

I learned to walk on two feet
When I should have had four
And I learned
How to stop myself from crying
When I found out not everyone is going to love me

I’ve learned the language
Of your laughter
And can translate your sighs
To mean anything
Right now they are the exhalation of ghosts
You no longer wish to hold on to

Let them go
Let go of your ghosts
And don’t settle for anything less
Than the silence of your soul
As it leaves you
Take this poem with you when you do
It is a love note
Sending Saint Peter home

All are welcome here

Especially you

I mean
Nobody’s perfect
Especially poets
I’m not perfect
Which is perfect
Because that means
I can die
A poet

I know I aint much for looks
And you might not disagree when I say
Statues have more substance than this
I know I can’t Stendhal you to a standstill
It doesn’t mean that I can’t make you breathless
Like when I make you laugh

There is so much beauty in your laughter
That while you are wiping tears out of your eyes
Doubled over like you were trying to find your breath on the floor
I forget that I don’t like the way I look when I smile
And I smile

I know the math of aesthetics is lost on me
But you can save your symmetry
For building blocks and butterflies

Bad habits
Scars
And an awkward affinity for lopsidedness
Made me

Come

Balance me out

Because so often I feel like a fat kid
Sitting on a seesaw
Alone

Or a ******
Trying on different sizes of life
In carnival mirrors

Or a Greek artist
Who has chiseled all the wrong parts
To perfection
Before he understood realism

Realism
Is a twin sized bed at 3 am
After the cold seeps through the window pane
It is cobwebs stained black from a house fire
Before
I never realized we had that many
It is a vanity
Reminding me how not to be vain
Unless you mean this poem
This poem is vain

Realism
Is this
It is me
And it is you
Perfectly human
And nowhere near beautiful
Unless beauty is symmetry
And symmetry is when you balance me out
By being the other fat kid on the seesaw
Or the person who makes normal mirrors
So I can see what I look like in my own skin
Not perfect
But that doesn’t mean I don’t have ways
Of making you breathless

Come

Let me make you laugh again
Let me make you breathless

Your heartbreak is as cozy
As the fishbowl I still get dizzy in
After you took me off the back burner
And placed me on the counter to cool
I have to remind myself that
It is not an earthquake when you
Slam the kitchen cabinets
Even though
My world shakes

The thing about fish is
If you don’t put a lid on their bowls
They tend to jump out
Not that it is an attempt at suicide
Just that some of us were born
Without the capacity to understand
Our own limitations
Don’t tell me I can’t breathe on dry land
*******
I am a man
Which means I am too dumb to understand that
Unless I try

How am I supposed to know
That I can’t protect you from everything
Unless I try

How am I supposed to know
That I can’t love you forever
Unless I try

How am I
supposed to know
That duct tape
can’t hold everything together
Unless I try

How was I supposed to know
That we would eventually be
Nothing but gasps of air
On a damp cutting board
When the lashings of love
Have denatured the thickest parts of our skin

Maybe I don’t know how to fix everything
Or love you like a normal person
Maybe saying every thought I have out loud
Makes you uncomfortable
It makes me uncomfortable
My face isn’t always this red
My skin isn’t always this hot
I am not always this dumb

But I am a man *******
And maybe I just
Haven’t learned that yet

I am pretty sure I should have been born a bug
These eyes have never been good for believing
But these hands
Stretch out like antennae
And will hold heartbeats till people make sense

I have never met a lap that didn’t look comfy
Or shoulders too bony to rest my head on
I have never met a bear
That I didn’t want to hug me

I am so much one man sized
Invasion of privacy
That I hand out **** whistles on first dates
Not that I’d **** anybody
I just need a painful reminder
Of appropriate distance
Even though
Distance is painful

I mean
I get lonely sometimes
And if you invite me to bed
And don’t ask me for ***
I will skip straight to the cuddles
Till we sweat salty *** puddles

I mean
Goosebumps is the human kinda Braille
For hold me
I know that
Because
I can read your skin with my fingertips
Every chill
Every pock mark
And scar
Has a translation

And If I were a louse
Or a flea
Or a lone cricket
Chirping cuddle-bug morse code
In the silence of your naptime
I’d take the time
To translate the language of your body

All you have to do
Is hold me