I don’t know much about love
but I would pay to smash you
on a hard tile floor like a cheap porcelain doll.
Because there is something about
the way your t-shirt rests on your collarbone–

and it has always been that way–

that makes me want you collared and tethered like a dog

Charlie Sorrow shattered,
And we scraped
His broken bones.

I tried to
write
a poem about you
but instead
I scribbled a
big, orange-ink blob
and I figured
that made
just as much sense.

One could never know the the heaven behind your eyes,
Or the stumble in your words
That generates the whispering of my heart.
It excellerates the jumble of my feelings
In my mind, in my soul, in the bones that hold me together.

One could never know the fractions of time lost,
Or the layers of hurt that built a broken home within my chest;
It surrounds and cradles the echoing worry that invades my heart.

One could never know the feeling of falling into holes
That seem deep enough, dark enough, to bury the world;
Or the sting of a dream,
That wakes me and escapes me, leaving me empty again.

But there is a sea of hope that drowns me in clarity;
It spreads over my skin and revives me, rescues me.
My heart has outgrown its shattered refuge,
And I find rest in the depths of forgotten emotions and forgotten smiles.

One could never know how it feels to pick myself up again:
For the sun to shine in through the windows of my soul.
Everything has been painted a color all over again
And the sky is blue blue blue -
Light blue, like you.

some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and ****** and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.

I stand above my bed
And examine the damage.
Blankets this way and that
Pillows all over
Sheets tangled up around themselves.
Proof of something that
Only hours ago
Left this place empty.
I take in the rubble
And breathe deeply.
I lower myself down to those
Tangled sheets
And backwards bedspreads
And fill my lungs with you.
I pull them up around me
And close my eyes
And wish for this place to be
The same kind of battleground
Again tomorrow.