I don’t know his name
He is drunk
Eye bags swollen
Loosening jowls
And feisty

He asks if I am working hard

I tell him I am doing my best

He says I am a liar

Your best is for scientists to decide days after you die
And they map out your life until they find that one day you actually were
You can only be your best once young man
Do you really want it to be today?

I don’t want it to be today

I can be better

There is too much beauty in the potential of kissing

And I am still healing from the fighting

Am ready to fight some more

There are engines revving in my bones
A takeoff of fire
And the shaking of dust

I wanna leave this life so *****
From mud
I’ve been dragged through

Be ******* me dear life
Dear lover
Dear friend

I smile and sell him his beer

He nods his head
Puts a cold paper hand on my check
Tells me I am so much better than this

I am so much better

White painted lines on grey asphalt
The paint makes the gravel smooth
Andy knows them
Even at 60 miles an hour can count them
Like a stutter that is so fast it almost flows

There are humming birds
Beneath his breath
His breath is a sweet nervous wind

She wants to hold him
Like a nervous lover
Shivering in a warm room
Because her breath cools his sweat

He is skinny
Xylophone bone ribcage of hollow log thump

He counts the specks of rust in her green eyes
Without her noticing

Th th ththththth er’s th irty five five five five in your left eye

His hands play an invisible piano
Body a snake smooth sway in the wind

When she kisses him
She knows
By the way his hands move
And the nervous breath
And the blind sway

The only thing that’s really wrong with him
Is that there’s a song trapped in there

He looks out the window
White lines on grey asphalt
Andy counts them
And almost doesn’t stutter

He gazed at her face
In awe of her anthropomorphic beauty

He wants to surrender to her savagely

Come
Migrate your lips my way
Even if it’s just to devour
I want your mouth on me

He trembles
Skin tightens

More beast than human
Less beauty
More everything else

She is a dance floor
Splinter scuffed

He is so much sandpaper passion
That she might actually be smooth again

The way she howls scares him

The wearing down to perfect
Is painful

They both want something they can’t have

But press harder to find it

Teeth gnashing a ****** river

Her scars are ****
Battle bruises from lovers who have lost

He will not lose her this time
He will not lose

He wakes naked
Covered in earth

And the scent of her lingers
Something damp and warm on his mouth

He will not lose her this time
Not again

He thinks about the grocery bags
Crawling around the sidewalk
Like dying jellyfish

Thinks about sheets
And how cold the other side of the bed can get

You know most days I stand like a windmill with my mouth open
just trying to catch my breath
And I am just trying to get some sleep
And I want
You
To leave me alone

She kicks her feet into the air
Not knowing what feet are
Or why they move that way

Bits of white are breaking skin in her gums
Like a compound fracture of the jaw

Her fingertips are ****** from chewing

Her tears settle

He realizes we are not ones for not hurting
As much as we are ones for transferring pain

Your mother wanted me to get a goldfish
Or some plants before we had you
But I never saw the purpose in caring for
Something that is trying to die on me
As quickly as I am
And now
All I have is you

Her eyes are wet and glassy
Chin dimples like moon craters
She is so much softer than he is

He places the tip of his finger to her gums
She bites down
It hurts

But for whatever reason
He finally catches his breath

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