She laughs as I tell her how
The way she devours her stadium dog
Is so *******
I can’t concentrate

Only we are interrupted by
The crack of gunshot over an open plain

It is followed by a hoorah hurricane
So unison I stop trying to make her laugh

Think about the car ride later
And being stuck in traffic
And sliding gently into home

I want to tell her about years from now
Ninth inning deathbed passion
When my red seems finally begin to burst their cotton
About the splinters living inside of my hands
I was living with them inside of my hands

That’s why I was so rough sometimes
How the scotch guard kept the **** off of my knees

I loved to trace the outline of her ***** diamond
Until there were grooves in there
And my initials in her catchers mound

We are so much hoarse voices
Lost in the noise of ***** hands clapping

How I imagine
As I am sliding into home
In our shower
The soft patter of water on the curtain is stadium applause

Let me run grooves in your shapely pattern
Your laughter is a full circle homerun from heartache

Save me again sweet music
Open plain gunshot buildup
And then a noise so booming it is silence

And us
Ninth inning deathbed lovers
Gently sliding into home

The wind rushes the sound of
Horse powered hurricanes into his ears

He is silent as he drives to the beach
He is silent on the pier

He purposely gets himself lost sometimes
Tries to remember he parked his car at a nearby Denny’s

The boats bob helpless
But safe with their tethers

He eats a hamburger that he buys for 2 dollars
While walking by a company fundraiser for heart health

The man standing over the barbeque asked him if he was hungry
Neither said much else to the other

He eats slowly
Drinks slowly
Understands that everything happens slow when he is lonely

He characterizes himself through sighs that all say
Yeah I guess I should go now

He knows he shouldn’t be here
As if the salt air might rust his moving parts

But he sits on a bench eating a burger
And in his own silence creates osmosis
A space around his head so his thoughts dilute themselves
somewhere else

He plans on leaving them there
He thinks how this is an oil change for his soul
So he can slide back into his daily grind enough
To keep his pistons cool

How some days he needs the noise so much
He becomes obnoxious for laughter
And hungry for laughter’s love

He drives home perfectly empty

Gets lost along the way

Thinks about what it truly means for him to go home

Thinks he should have been there hours ago

Thinks of what it actually means to be better

And says to himself
People are never really lost
As much as they are
Arriving where they need to be
*Just a little late

The ****** tension between us is so terrifying
That if you were a praying mantis
You’d have eaten my head off by now

But you don’t
And maybe I’m mistaken

I mean
If we were naked mole rats
You wouldn’t care what I look like

Naked mole rats are blind

You can see well enough

And if I were an Indian Bull frog
I could croak
The same way I cough up cigarette smoke
When I see how beautiful you are when you smirk
At my burning dimple crow’s feet
And you would know
I wanted you

Turns out
I’m a gag reel of regrets
And should have saids

But if I could release pheromones  
From my butterfly wings
Like shaking dust from heavy clothes
After years of standing still
I would dance for you
And you would know

But you end our conversations the way sighs do

Maybe if the earthly population were at stake
I’d find words for this

Like the carnal cannibal black widow
You are eating up my insides
With all that goes unsaid

I might not carry your children in a watery pouch
But I would
Or I would Argonaut you a detachable *****
I would even serenade you with the cricket creak of rusty joints
A song that makes you whisper


I would do almost anything if I could
But I can’t

I just have this stupid poetry passion stutter

And you

I have you

Just maybe not the way I want you

You are so much bitter music you dancing devil
Like a last minute psalm for freedom
One that you have memorized so carefully
You don't recite it
You feel it
The buckle of your knees bends you beautifully in prayer
So many words in your perfectly timed gasps for air

Breathe on my neck again
Bitter sweet beer breathed passion
My fingers dance
Because I need so many ways to say unrequited
So many ways to say
Patience is something I can do without

And I stand still like a tree
Like the wrong tree
And I am barking up it

This is hot mess remix love
Through faulty filters
Burning up my coffee lung
Fingertip singe nailbite frustration

This is bitter music
Full of flavor for all the wrong reasons
A happy accident proximity
Of misunderstood gyration

Hands like dead tree branches
Fingertip curl to write
Sounds of late night windowpane taps

The songs dont match
Though the music ends at the same time
Shoulder shrug and careful backstep

My friends are waiting
It was nice meeting you I guess

You broken bone remix
Of passionate smile
Right foot forward fire
Perfect pitch like a ***** psalm for freedom

And bitter music

He wants to tell her of a story he read once
About that gorilla who could sign
And taught its baby to sign
How when the baby died
The flailing of her fingertips
And the movement of her hands
Said more about loss than anyone ever cared to know

She looks at him
Hot pho steam moistening her face
There is a man pacing outside the windows of the restaurant
It is a whole in a wall
In a small city
The city is *****
Next to the restaurant is a bar
They listen
Juke box bass hick thunder through the walls
She ***** a noodle into her mouth

“Is this a date,” she says
    If you want it to be
“It’s not exactly romantic”

He smiles
thinks about what it means to be romantic
Remembers the list with the boxes to check off
  Of will she **** me later

It’s all too generic
And we are so talented at romanticizing the trivial
That people forget how to be charming

He thinks of death-beds
And what she might say to him

Maybe it isn’t now. But later, you’ll remember this guy
And you’ll think of that weird place he took you to this one time.
It wasn’t exactly romantic.
But for whatever reason
You will remember me for doing things like this.

He wants to tell her of the gorilla
With the sad hands

His own hands tremble

He thinks of languages people spend lifetimes learning

She sips her water
Wipes sweat from her face
She smiles
It is beautiful when she smiles

He smiles too
Shivers as the doors open and the cold comes in

Maybe in some other universe
The words would have meant more to her
They would have made sense

He fills the silence with the sound of soup
She looks at him again
The thunder through the walls stops
And all he can think of
Is the gorilla who learned the language of love
And lost the need to use it

A cube of ice resting on my tongue

                       I inhale

                                    It cools my mouth

Press the cube against my teeth until it hurts
           Then gulp coffee and listen for the shatter

                                                        ­                       There is no sound

Only the understanding that pain has layers

                                                         ­           I can hurt in just as many ways as heal

Kiss me bitter devil

I know I will feel guilty when I leave you in the morning
                      
                                                                ­                   But I will leave you nonetheless

You loved the way my mouth tasted when it was cold
                                                
           ­                                                  You shivered

                                                       ­            From the kiss or the cold

                                                           ­                                                     I don’t know

But you shivered
               And I lied
                 So you would shiver again

                                                          ­   And you loved me like a liar


An ice cube on my tongue
                      I chilled you
                                   Killed you a little more than
                                                            ­                                 Le petit mort


Sometimes

                                            Cor­pses can have goose bumps

You cold again?
      Or did you see a ghost
                         After you found my side of the bed empty?

I never said I’d stay for breakfast

                                                   I never said I’d stay

                                                           ­                                                               Th­ere are just as many layers to hurting

As there is healing

                                                        ­         Sometimes I can’t tell the difference


Hurt me like a lover

Who is frigid and fearful

Until we temper our bones to burning

And listen for the shatter

It never comes

And I always leave
                                                           ­          First thing in the morning

I had never seen the truth turning into a graveyard
until it passed through my tombstone teeth to
sit in your ear like a ghost

These aren't sweet nothings
my sweet nothing

And you deserve much more than  the devil
living inside of my cheeks

This is the way truth sets us free

The same way a suckerpunch leaves us winded

I imagine that is how our souls leave us

But you try and explain that to a nurse
who is busy checking your mouth to be sure
you've taken all your medication

You know how you're supposed to live like you are going to die tomorrow
I say
How 'bout six months from tomorrow?

I really have tried everythin
including ******* down the backwash of a sunday baptism

It only tasted like fear

The kind of fear I don't need right now

We bought a casket

Plotted a plot

I got a tattoo of an expiration date on the bottom of my foot

No day or month
just this year

And you've been brave
saying
You are saving your tears for when I am not here anymore

And I honestly never saw how the truth could turn into a graveyard

Til we both started talking to each other

Like ghosts whispering all the things we never got to say in life

No matter how you look at it
I tell her
*The truth always feels like it's arrived too late