Radioactive warehouse of
****** up memories
stacked one on top of
the other, higher and higher
Threatening to fall
Down, down, down
Crash!
Close your eyes
Now, open them
You never left this room

Eagle claws grasp
eggshell brains of
polyester and light
Don’t drop them!
Soaring, screeching, speaking
in tongued syllables of
animal lore, resounding
through the heavens
Close your eyes
Now, open them
You never left this room

Fire-ache radiating
Hot
Snapping brittle bones
with rapid fury of noisy chaos
Touch me!
Don’t touch me!
Whisper my name like
you hate the taste
Close your eyes
Now, open them
You never left this room

**** me sweet
with bullets on your lips
and my lips the targets
Gleaming red in the center
of a nameless bull’s eye
in some ****-hole country town
Noplace.
Close your eyes
Now, open them
You never left this room

Bury me and tell
no one, leave me
underground, suffocating slowly
I will become one with
the consuming earth
Fading to ashes and food
for hungry, blind worms
Seeking, seeking, seeking
Close your eyes
Now, open them
You never left this room

You mocked desire
like it sprang from mother’s lips.
A Bible verse and ten Hail Marys
(for good measure).

Even slipstreams cross paths,
but we do not and
I am rarely sorry.

Floating upwards is simple.
Feels like emerging from the womb.
I wrote you twelve songs, and
waited underneath a train.

But
Are we ever clean?

You spoke to fill spaces
that were already full.
I sat in the corner and burned my nails.
Remembered why I left.

Lost innocence is a sad fiction,
yet you cling on.
Reading fairytales while
blood still drips from your teeth.

I met an old woman on Leander Avenue
who told me, “Don’t breathe or the earth
will swallow you whole.” I
stayed very still and didn’t move.
A butterfly could have landed on my nose
but I sneezed so I may never know for sure.
After that I remembered that my generation
doesn’t have to follow their elders, so I
walked to the corner store.
I bought three candy bars that I would
never eat and tied my shoelaces on the front porch.

My neighbor watches old films. He calls them
Lumières, and sometimes invites me over.
I watch the hand-cranked film flicker
black and white over his screen.
A troupe of acrobats flip about and wave
the French flag, large women kneel and scrub
endless linens in the still river, the gardener
punishes the mischeivious boy. I smile every time
they look at the camera.

The slats in the blinds yawn widely
and seeing them, the melatonin strikes.
Flowing, forcing, endocrinal.
The wind whispers Greek words in my ear.
Helios, zoetrope, khaos.
The trees outside of my window
spell out foreign letters.
They only make sense one at a time.
I can’t spell a word but I speak and
realize I can still make a sound.
I fall asleep.

I never wake but dream
of exquisite lavender pillows doused
in holy water from the lips of a
spouting statue. A Carnevale clown waves
at me in the corner and takes off mask after
mask. Confetti rains softly from his eyelashes and he
quietly laughs into his palm. I want to hold your
hand but remember that I am just
a raindrop streaking down your car
window in a mountain spring storm. I
open my eyes.