Public Correspondence to A Man Called Death:

I have watched you from my window
every ****** day
for the past 3,
and I must have to ask
just why you seem to always
just be doing a tiny bit of
fiddling
beneath your long, blackened robes?
Could it be
that you watch me change,
slip from one post-industrial
piece of industrial garbage
to another,
fat bottom shaking and
curly hair quaking all about?
If so,
feel free to give me a yell,
for I am so very lonely,
Mr. Death.
So,
when is it, exactly,
that you're planning to come in
and stay with me?

Only 3 people in my life have seen me cry,
unless you count that one guy on that tailgate that one night that one time
but I don't because I was drunk and it wouldn't matter in the morning.
You are one of those three and for you I cried the heaviest.
In your arms, fog catching, trying to suspend myself
in the gravity that kept me clung to your chest with fingers in your hair
kissing your ears between tears saying how much I love you
and that I'll miss you and that
every night I Google map the distance
just praying and praying that
the blue line between your point and mine
becomes shorter and shorter in time.

But it never does.

You told me you really will miss me,
that I'm one of the only one's
who actually cares about you
which isn't true but if you want
to put me there I will be because you are
that security and you are
everything that is brilliant in my life
and to know that you will no longer be
that close to where I am is like pulling at my heart
and getting nothing back
but a 10 minute phone call and I
wish you were here.

But you never are.

So I cried.
I mean,
I cried and cried until it came down to
you holding me so I would stop shaking and telling me
that I was strong and that I'll be fine
and that
it wasn't a goodbye just a
see you then.

But I've tried to hold "then"
in my hands and I've tried to write it
on my calendar at home but I can't find it,
and I'm afraid that will turn into not finding you
when it's 2am but it's your midnight and there's no
commonplace where you and I can just relive
this moment where I cried and cried and told you that I loved you
and you smiled with your eyes.

But the comfort that holds me is you know I can do this,
you know that I'm worthy,
and you know that I'm strong.
So I tell myself that when I don't feel it and I recognize
that if you can believe in me so much than I must be able
to do this without you and to move on
without you
constantly being here.
It gets me through until I can say when,
until the next time I see you
until see you then.

My fingernails crave your skin
Hard red assassins
My fingernails sweep your skin
Texturizing our love

In every corner of your body
Your breath is twitching
Melodiously
You fill with air

Speak to me in tongues
On a plate like a breaded chicken breast
Marinating in a fine Italian wine and Balsamic Vinaigrette
Sauce craving an open flame
Homemade.

I'm falling asleep
I'm falling asleep
To the digging of a Disco party on a late
Friday night in yellow polyester baby blue You forgot
To pick me up, again but it's okay 'cause I'm
Stayin' Alive.
In a plexiglass life.
See right through it, it's translucent
Then never look at me again.

you stole my heart without permission
but secretly
I left the safe unlocked on purpose.
your love was a welcomed remedy
to the plague my life
was slowly becoming.
I adore you
I adore you
        I adore you

you stole my heart without permission
but left
quicker than I could stop myself
from becoming wholly enchanted
by your exquisite being.
I became addicted to someone
who ceased to exist.
I miss you
I miss you
        I miss you

you stole my heart without permission
and I wanted it back
I washed my skin with scalding water
to try to burn you away
but you are forever on my mind
and there is no known remedy
for your memory
I hate you
I hate you
        *I love you

I am clean.
I have walked home in the rain.
I've never done so before.
Hood down, chin up, pants sopping.
I've never seen what I looked like, dripping rain water and mascara, with a look of peace in my stormy eyes.

I am new
because I have walked home in the rain.
With every boom of crashing thunder, I was re-baptized in the purest of conditions.
I, myself, have been denied such a cleaning for so long.

But now that I have walked home in the rain,  my mind is fresh. I am acutely aware of all senses and emotion, like someone has cleared my mind's plate of old and set a new table of knowing before it.
When the drops hit my skin, and I felt my pores pucker, I was tingling in my very bones, and I no longer felt the need to crawl out of my own casing.

Now that I have walked through the emerald grass, wet with purity, over the hills of the silent past, and in the pouring rain of new, I praise my content stay.

I walked home in the rain, and I am whole.
I walked home in the rain and found the sun.

It was simple at first
I did it on a dare

There's a certain easiness
to difficult dares
when senses are dulled
by alcohol and fame

show me how
that color tastes

It was like
biting into the sun
it burned my tongue
and nothing else
would ever taste the same
or be the same
it calmed the storm
of daddy leaving
it was as if my
new found Catholicism
was a purgatory from where
I could see the bright white
pearly gates of heaven
and feel the chill
of their snow clad bars

colder than
the coldest winter chill

one night in a dream
my father told me
to meet him at the gates
and from that point
I went every night
but he never came
instead he died
and when he died
my dreams died
with him.

bury me softly
in this tomb

I continued to go there
night after night
I desperately wanted
to believe the gates
would lead to heaven
because in hell there's heat
and this place was cold
so cold with no sound
and no light only darkness

I would sit in the cold
for hours, losing all sense
of time, obligations
responsibilities, shivering
and sweating at the foot of
the gates, obsessed with the
furry luster of frozen pearls
the sound of silence and
the subtle shifting of
the weather

holding rare
flowers in bloom

a week, a month
a year would pass
the snow began to slip
in clumps and tumble
to the ground again
and again and again
and then
all hell broke loose
the heat was hot
the gates were gone
and I began to run
but

every path
led me to nowhere

the blue cold went red hot
and then turned black
I tried to leave that place
13 times I left and
13 times returned
there was nowhere else to go
no place to call home
I burned within my sick head

I wanted to peel
the skin from my face

so hot
I was bleeding for you
soaked in sweat
my calloused heart
would not ask for help

serenity
was far away

my hands were bruised
from breaking rocks all day
far from the chill
I couldn't remember
anymore anyway
so desperate
for a glimpse of snow
it all came down
to this

I could not live apart
from that place
and I could not live
within it

so tonight

I will marry the two
the here and the now with
the there and the then

mix the snow with the fire
mix the snow add the fire
mix   snow  with    fire
mix   snow  add    fire

snowfire
      
snowfire
      
snowfire

momma
I am burning
momma I am cold
mother please save me
don't leave me alone
I see you but
you've come too late
can you hold me anyway?
whisper in my ear
I'm so sorry mother
I haven't bathed in 2 weeks
momma come hold me please

I'm down in a hole mother
feeling so low mother

I'm so cold mother
come save me
take me home
mother
I am dying

mommy
I am dead
sit with me
in silence
sit with me
I am dead

mommy I'm scared

black is all I feel
so this must be how it feels
to be free

mother
I am dead