oh, to be young

she kissed me with the entirety of art contained within an unpopular pop-song
utterly graceless in the afternoon.
there was something.
it was not necessarily good

the radio that sits in your belly

fills you with ****.
uncomfortable,
in the yard



like the last information
taken from flesh burnt into the backs of
wallets and anything still stuck to the building itself
home at last.

i love you
egregiously.

i wonder where it is your ****** metaphors come from
when you say things like    "she tastes like strawberries."
i am disenchanted         miscarried
by what you are trying
to say, if anything.
this
social significance of a tangy fruit ripe for harvest- tiny for your convenience.   connotations of innocence   to sensuality, ***, lips

if it is literal. evoking a certain tube of tacky lipbalm that finds itself applied tastelessly and often-

a certain perplexing exclusivity of diet.
or at least a strong penchant for the thing, that.

or if virginal.
recalling imagery of children's clothing- characters and franchises similarly swimming in the same shared canon of bad symbolism.
if you try to push us
into displeasure. violence. or grunge.
to challenge the peacefulness or comfort of normalcy.
shock us.
bring me somewhere

that would be better poetry.

i've read you like: all of you-
a thousand times from anywhere. any time
some might say the universality is its highest honor-
sign of its perfection and
truth.
it is not.
lazy.never real
long bereft of impulse
it makes you feel good because you are told it makes you feel good,
brought up with it.
watered down by it
like many other things.

devoid of specificity or idiosyncrasy
and the imagery of the DD/lg goes wayside.

though fetishist art, at its norm, becomes insular and self pleasuring
(just as fresh strawberries)
it can still be used as a tool when used to break away from expectation
as long as you don't let it become itself.
for it is just as average as anything else:
falling into a bad creepy pasta.
reading the news on a phone app.
unjustly scolding a cashier.
telling a girl that her skirt is too short at her bestfriend's father's funeral.
parents driving offspring to suicide through religion and therapy.

they belong to you.

_                    trash.
like the   compost.   bin in the cafeteria of a school i don't go to
               recycling.

the best
is that which imagines to be seeping out of a cave.from some
deep. secret.
undisturbed
place. where things go on for eons that no one knows about.
like a green light that makes its way up but barely.
sick but
beautiful

like a picture of AIDS.
like morgoths and morlocks dissolving into fossil fuels down where you'll never get it. 
like quartz.

i'm falling asleep. here, at the wound of your eyes    
and if frailty were a promise: i would have you now- in actual bed of
flowers.
unburdened by metaphor
and symbolism.
on our own terms.
as the afternoon
tone rings
they chime on me.and bells slur their vowels as we
push around
the heavy air trembling behind our swollen tongues.speaking
out loud-                    in deliverables
you.breathing happily at me      as if that were
good enough-
for anyone