parked like a limping jalopy on an amputee park bench.
watching young soft girls sell hard against the boulevard
so they can do smack out back with the white trash boys
who size me up.
hats crooked and backward like their mothers teeth and their own beliefs.
slouching and leaning in their stride like two drunken penguins
shuffling home from the ice bar, fighting over fish sticks--no real threat to any one but themselves.
their drawn out skinny arms with bad backs and barroom tattoos already turning blue.
this is our future--or part of it.
while a young couple breezes by both with their noses buried in iphones.
oblivious to anything outside their happy little bubble.

I have been in love since the moment I was born.

My mother was first and for a long time she held my heart.
At five she still had my love but so did Clint Eastwood.
That poncho wearing, cigarette smoking cowboy was the dad I never had.

In the sixth grade it was Stacy Smith.
She was my Wendy Peppercorn,
my Messiah,
my World Series Ring.
my love.

I made it to high school after
a few brief people put stars in my eyes.
In high school I met a girl
who took all the stars that had ever been in my eyes
multiplied them by all the stars in the sky
and put them back in my eyes, only for her.

Now, three years later,
a ******
excommunicated addict
I am in love again.

He is an author and he writes novels.
He is a novelist.
He is a genius.
He told me:
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

And I have figured that one out.
Until I have devoured him,
until I understand every single one of his literary pieces
I may not die.
I may not.
Until then,
I may love no other.
I may not die.

There is a never ending breed of bracteria livig in my bones
It
almost chews with the full intent of biting off but not quite, holds back just enough to leave me hanging
my joints, nooses of collateral damage,
they
almost wiggle like worms but burn with less intensity than pain.

There is a never ending wall of inter knotted muscle within my back

I call these things frustration
although alot of the time they feel like fury
make my neck ache like guilts burden.

I have ground my teeth to tiny sizable pellets and
picked at my charred white skin,
until there is no more youth in this body
all you will see is five foot seven of sallow eyes
pale faced
bloated frustration
corpse-like
if corpses smiled.

Untill my teeth are yellowed from coffee and cigarettes and the laugh lines around my mouth taunt me like the scars on my upper arm (if you are scarred just as painfully by laughter as a knife what is the point of it all)
12 inches of stitched back frustration that reads:

you cannot undo
what was done


   stitches I want i want to rip out in the company of polite
normal people and
smile at their disgusted faces

have you ever as a child
been so unhappy by what you put down on paper
you would scrunch the whole thing up after crossing it out in the thickest black marker
throw it in the bin and start over?

This is what living feels like
I am just a  canvas

I can almost remember what it was like to laugh

I crafted a painting to
hang on that wall of yours

Someday you'll take it down
and think of me

1.
you said falling in love would be
that breath before the fanfare,
that clap of thunder that starts
at the timpani and catches in
the space between the horn
and your fingertips
before sending soundsparks shooting
down the finished brass.
you said it’d be counting measures.
said i’d feel it at my core like
the first chord after two-for-nothing,
something crashing through me
same as a conductor’s stick;
one and two and one and two
and one, two, three, four.
instead it tasted like stale
cigarettes and the halfbreath
you only remember to take
after the orchestra has started
without you.
2.
i’ve been trying to remind you
of when we waltzed to minor chords
in our best friend’s basement —
his piano fingers were rusting away
so all we said was keep it steady,
keep it three-four.
you danced out of time
and stepped on my toes but
by the end i was still reciting
"i’ll do better next time,"
one, two, three, one, two.
3.
when you weren’t looking
i circled all the fermatas
on your sheet music.
you found out and said
i didn’t have to,
you could remember
on your own.

You'll occupy my bed,
for a day or two,
regardless of whether or not
I am in it.
//
Then you'll leave.
For a few days,
a week,
a few weeks.
//
While you're gone
the coffee will still be made,
the showers will still be taken,
and bed time stories will still be read.
//
However,
my body will shiver
without your heat,
and I'll go to bed earlier,
without your heat.
//
I may not play my guitar,
and I may not memorize my lines
while you're present.
But God ******, you're present.
//
//
The sun shines
and it will continue to shine
and the clocks tick
and they will continue to tick
and my love yearns
and it will someday cease yearning.
Cease burning.
Cease.
/
Just as your presence has
ceased.

the body you are is beautiful so
(erectly

                rushing)


and stings
'pon my lips a song

furred in girlness
it sings
so

and so
beautifully it

i


by it

burn

to leap freshly
mortal care
and my immortal soul:

                                                 bare

the world
(who shall by nothing easily break)
will eat the seed, my body
and of it forest make

where shall girls
in little nothing
wander

                  lithely


(a tiger amongst
                                )
and foals will
burst their mother's womb
and life will breath
from even dark-set tombs