Its swallowed me whole the blackness of it all. The winding roads of your heart. The drop and rise of your voice
Like butter
Like jam
Like honey

You smoke your cigarette on the porch of your rusted **** trailer
Curled up with your chin on your knees
In a broken spray painted plastic chair
Your veins run blue
A dark evening in which
The orange cherry glow around your lips cast shadows on the wall

I don't understand why I love you
When I hardly know you
Your black hair
Soft skin

The torn siding taps on the wall
The cool wind through the porch
The wind chimes make beautiful songs
As you blow smoke in constant notes of sadness

Surrounded on three sides by dark mist covered mountains
7 country miles to the nearest person

My head spins
As the old warmth grows from my stomach
You have so many empty pill bottles poking up from your purse

You sit quiet as you begin to float off this broken porch
Out into that cool night of nowhere
Her green eyes glow bright
Outshining the naked sixty watt bulb on the wall
Moths circle
And bump against the warmth

I never want to leave you
As you put up your hair
As the truck turns to rust in the yard


But you know
That I know I'm nothing special
And you have plans that don't have room for me

Southern Belle
With a head full of dreams
Your skin smells like fresh cut birch bark
Your hair like a warm summer night


*"You know
It gets beautiful around here
Once spring is in full swing
I was hoping you would at least stay til then"

ANCIEN REGIME

I

Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,
May gaze through these faint smokes curling whitely,
As thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy—
Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?

II

He is with her; and they know that I know
Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow
While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear
Empty church, to pray God in, for them!—I am here.

III

Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste,
Pound at thy powder,—I am not in haste!
Better sit thus, and observe thy strange things,
Than go where men wait me and dance at the King’s.

IV

That in the mortar—you call it a gum?
Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!
And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue,
Sure to taste sweetly,—is that poison too?

V

Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures,
What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures!
To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,
A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree-basket!

VI

Soon, at the King’s, a mere lozenge to give,
And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live!
But to light a pastille, and Elise, with her head,
And her breast, and her arms, and her hands, should drop dead!

VII

Quick—is it finished? The colour’s too grim!
Why not soft like the phial’s, enticing and dim?
Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir,
And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer!

VIII

What a drop! She’s not little, no minion like me—
That’s why she ensnared him: this never will free
The soul from those strong, great eyes,—say, “No!”
To that pulse’s magnificent come-and-go.

IX

For only last night, as they whispered, I brought
My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought
Could I keep them one-half minute fixed, she would fall,
Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!

X

Not that I bid you spare her the pain!
Let death be felt and the proof remain;
Brand, burn up, bite into its grace—
He is sure to remember her dying face!

XI

Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose,
It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close:
The delicate droplet, my whole fortune’s fee—
If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?

XII

Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,
You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will!
But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings
Ere I know it—next moment I dance at the King’s!

Unlucky the hero born
In this province of the stuck record
Where the most watchful cooks go jobless
And the mayor's rôtisserie turns
Round of its own accord.

There's no career in the venture
Of riding against the lizard,
Himself withered these latter-days
To leaf-size from lack of action:
History's beaten the hazard.

The last crone got burnt up
More than eight decades back
With the love-hot herb, the talking cat,
But the children are better for it,
The cow milks cream an inch thick.

I'm writing this because
I'll be gone in about two seconds.
I've decided I've had enough:
It was too much
or maybe too little.

I'm prepared to hang myself with the umbilical cord
of my self-hatred;
it was a diary entry, I think.
Oh, I'm dead anyway.

I am dead
has such a nice wring to it, doesn't it?
Feel like a ***** old dishrag,
used up and withered.
I wonder who will clean up my act.

I will lie in
a playful position,
akin to the Mannerists
or Fuseli
and the Renaissance men would look at me
like I'm crazy
for contorting smiles and stares
in a happy niche of browning lungs.

The punchline always ends with
your head in an oven.
I'd imagine it'd explode,
but it was not so.
It's sad to know he didn't love you,
but hey, we got poetry out of it, you know.
How is he?
Did you get your revenge?

You were beautiful,
but I was decades late.

while you were singing in the churchyard
i was sleeping in the ***** barn
beside a withered picture of an astronaut
and a long beard filled with street secrets

while you were burning up in sainthood
i was screaming into a melancholy leaf
wearing sweat on my miserable *****
and a liar's grin on my face

while you were murdering your wife
i was milking this dream for all the light
and i thanked god on bended knee
saying you're a turtle dove in an icebox

while you martyred yourself into the ocean
i carried you with me on my road to freedom
like an aligator stomped hard by a mockingbird
or a mermaid shot full of antibirth tablets

I wish I wasn't so crooked
Jumping and leaping over things
And keeping secrets to my dark heart

I wish I wasn't so flaccid
I feel sulphuric acid
In my throat
I close my eyes and I see photos of burn victims
Clinging to their only infant children as they
gasp for air, they are riddled with confusion

Unfortunate life.

I am my own baby, I cling to my ****** as if it is some product of the demon.

Suddenly your switchblade would slash the person's throat
Put the knife in the person's hand and write a suicide note
You would dance along tiled floors, and re-paint the red doors
You spend most of your nights shoplifting at dollar stores

Gaunt and pale, you still lurk in the stark distance
You have always scoffed at the conformist's existence
You'd rather walk along the busy bridges and highways
And contemplate suicide with a sad look on your face
You'd rather drink the night away, and complain
While other people are having fun and getting laid

But I see myself in you, this misunderstood shadow
We are variations of Van Gogh, everybody knows
Teardrops drip off of our noses, no one gives us roses
I wouldn't paint you starry nights, but a reflection of me
No one else, my cold blank blue eyes staring back at me
Your cold blank blue eyes staring back at me