Show me your pastel shades in water colours

And hide your laugh lines in candle light

Please

Keep your grimace in your sneer pocket

No one wants to see your teeth

I know how sharp they are

I know your growl is so guttural

It is hunger

This canvas soaks up everything it touches

But can’t force anything to mix

There is no texture in your vibrancy

And too much in your shading

So much green in your jealousy

That no one is debating

I know what shades of orange to be

When I need to light a fire

What shades of grey to fill my mouth

When I need to be a liar

But you

Dear model

Airbrushed to centerfold

Show me

Your pastel shades

Where your humanity should be

Watercolour your water colours any hue of blue and green

Picturesque my sunset

And lay me on the grass

Between the fading of your daylight

And the dying of my earth

And don’t dandelion my locks

Because

I won’t turn to face your sun

Don’t dampen my clay

With whatever colorful tears you drip

Some things just never mix

Even though

They look so beautiful

Together

On paper

Come one come all

*** inside everybody

Please do

Fill yourselves and spill yourselves

Wet your dry spots with your wet spots

Don’t sweat the petty things

But please pet the sweaty things

Dance like a warped record stacked on a broken record

So you can gyrate over a Led Zeppelin ****** of

OOOHHHHYYYEEAAAH and it makes me wonder

Soak my curiosity in your nearly naked

Let’s walk away from this mutually *****

You cantankerous carnivorous man-eating jellyfish

Stumbling to engulf me in your morphine

Lying like amazing lovers do

“No

I won’t leave you in the morning

But it doesn’t mean I will ever love you

I just want you to feel me

You feel me?”

And you left at 4 am just after I passed out

Leaving me stuck with

The wings made of chain-link handcuffs and sheets

Going  from my wrists to my feet

Because you said you always wanted to make love to a butterfly

I thought I could be an angel

Or at least a stingray

So my venom might stay with you longer

But you left like I knew you would

Took the keys and I had to pretend I was wearing a white kimono

And because of the handcuff chain

I just started telling people I was the ghost

Of ***** lovers past

But you go ahead and go on back to your main attraction

I don’t mind workin’ side show

Standing like a man made *******

Pulsing at the thought of you potential

Waiting patiently like a secret

Verbal donkey show

Hollerin on the tail end of dawn

With a secret song on a broken record

When played backwards

“Don’t go”

I sent you an e-mail

But purposely got the address wrong

Just so I could see your name in my inbox

I mean

imissyousofuckingmuch@thiswouldonlybeeasierifyouweredead.co­m

You get a reply back

That says

“Being gone is beautiful

Try it sometime”

I don’t know where to go

The newfound balance in all the chairs I sit on throws me off

Put a level on my shoulder

Watch the bubble

It doesn’t know which way to lean either

I mean

Sitting up straight and proud

Has only even been for people who

Don’t have a shoulder to cry on

The density of your presence

Is big enough to make me walk funny

How I would have push back so hard against

Your shoulder leaning, I dare you to walk straight type, hand holding

So as not to walk into strangers

My left shoulder is boney bump bruise resistant

And I crash into the edges of things sometimes

To keep it that way

I mean

You’ve made me so much a slap stick version of myself

And I miss you

Because the world feels funny now

Because I am still learning what it means to have a true center

True balance

And I miss you

But I don’t want you back

If I were going to change for the better
I’d have changed by now
The end is a wasted incentive
A new beginning is for those who believe

I’ve cashed in all my second chances
And am burning up all my passion

I’ve derived my devils into
The salvation of saliva
When our sweat is not enough wet
To anoint our ***** sacred

Let me leave here without a language
Because my idea of living for tomorrow
Is found in the stories I leave behind

You can’t be chaste and live forever

I have learned in LIFE IS FICTION 101
The endings of all stories need closure
For the reader and the character

Let me leave my legacy
In the places you are afraid to touch

Because
I’ve always been that guy who went a little too far

Let me take you a little too far
Just to the tip of forever and I’ll pull out
I promise

I may not die at the end of this year
But I will be dead someday
And the fear of being forgotten
Is enough to make me stay
And car crash my mouth again

Take a good long listen rubbernecker
And later you can tell your friends
There is this guy you met
And he said some things you’ll never forget

I mean
Really really really
Nasty things

But you liked it

I mean
I never wanted to be the best poet/storyteller/dirtytalker ever
I just wanted to be someone’s favorite
Enough to not forget me later

Because it may not be at the end of this year
But I will leave someday
And the fear that you might forget me
Is hell enough to stay

Forgive me for my lack of articulation
I don’t speak as retardedly prophetic as I used to
Or welcome death because no one knows it
When the fear of leaving
Is hell enough to stay
And the finish line is miles away

We will all meet it
At exactly the right time

We’ll both come in first
I promise

And

You

Well mouthed
Keeper of my darkness
Forgive me if I war trench your back at night
I’ve just never really known safety

Surprised at the size a man can be
When pressed to someone’s back
As the night covers all fronts

I know
I got love’s lashings scarring up my liver
When I drink myself to sleep at night

This morning
I awoke shortly after midnight from a text message
That took me an hour to respond to

Forgive me
I was thinking in dreams again
You were there
Watching me steal a pineapple popsicle and a Dr Pepper
From a vending machine

We then hopped in an airborne submarine
Only it was really a long broomstick between my legs
And your legs
And the legs of two others I’ve never met before
And we weren't ever really airborne

Even the figments of my imagination have to humor me
At times

And my ghosts are kind enough to leave before I awake
Playing poker over my body as I sleep
As I dream
As I startle
***** Drunken Poorly Invented Modern Sanskrit
Into the thick air

So cold I have to chisel the sweat away

I don’t sleep as soundly as I used to
Or speak as well
Or think as thoroughly
I just know what feels good when I don’t want it to

And I don’t know any other way to tell you
To slow down and wait for me
Because I am sure that
We’ll get where we’re supposed to be going
Exactly when we’re supposed to

For Christmas

I want a bible with all blank pages

I want a butterfly butter-knife
For surprise attack sandwiches

I want a time machine
So I can go back to when I was a ******
To my first cigarette
And my first lover
And my first broken heart

To where my eyes didn’t have the green tint of jade
Lightening up this solid brown
My favorite color

I want a new harmonica inhale
And exhale
I want to breathe heavy into your wind instrument
CPR your song back to life

I want to slow dance on dying yuletide embers
And regift your laughter til I am not funny anymore

Don’t be mad that I recycled the stockings
You made me remove so slowly last night

They are stretched out now
And filled with crumpled photographs
And candy
And sticky notes full of bad one-liners

Like

“I thought I loved you until I loved you
And now I’m not sure of anything”

Forgive me
It was all I could afford

I want
More than just blankets to keep me warm at night
I want you to keep me warm at night

I want a type-writer big enough to run myself through
So I can rewrite the rough drafts my parents never finished

I want to bring the stars back west
So I can wish some more

I wish I knew how to be quiet
When beauty demanded silence
So her feet could echo proper
Drawing eyes to follow her sound

I want the trillions of miles my mind has traveled
To finally stop somewhere important

Like right here

Near the end of this poem

Where I tell you
I want so much
And need so little
Just the promise of tomorrow I guess
Until there are no more tomorrows
Then just a fair warning
Long enough to make you laugh maybe
That’s it