the days you have yet to claim

and the praise you swallow or let rain,

depending on the level of blush and locked knee,

or if you ran, or had room to.

do you pick it apart?

keep the pieces?

What can I say?
You didn't read the warning label.

Dangling from the ceiling, fluorescence like drunken accents dripping from the tongue, the fallacies we fashion into stars and let hang in our eyes, etc etc.

You know the story. You were there,

how in that light,
we almost looked human,

the city screaming around us, the dusty night engulfing everything.

I mean, even zippers have teeth,

so slam the window shut. Slam the door. Slam and slam and slam until my name doesn't matter anymore,

your eyes like the barrel of a gun, your eyes like headlights.

I'll be doing the same,

taking pictures out of their frames. It feels different that way, a naked memory.

doing the laundry, cutting up the furniture, spotlights for the spotlights. I know

you liked to think yourself a martyr for our love. I wish someone would've shut you up,

the skin in my teeth from chasing my own tail. You never forget the taste of blood.

*******, darling.
I have more important things to feel guilty about.

you bought your ticket,
year round roller-coasters

and a faded welcome sign,
hanging on by one lonely *****,

the most unamusing park
there is.

practicing screams in line,
"I'm not even scared,"

you boast, but I see your eyes
shifting a little in the slatted light.

chewy popcorn, almost squeaks
when you bite it, coca-cola like

midwest flat land. looking
around, it feels that way too.

pretty sad when you beg the
tumbleweed for some of it's time.

blows past you, unaware,
uncaring, uninterested

in anything but the wind.
startling clarity settles.

you have a ***** loose, honey.

I was talking to the ferris
wheel, of course, but

I'll take you high too,
scrape the sky even.

"why touch a storm cloud?"
because I can.

poke the sleeping bear.
I want to see where he hides

those claws, if he has any at all.
I've heard the rumors, but

some people have to find out
for themselves.

what's honey without a few
stingers in your shoulder anyway?

still honey, but that's
besides the point.

reminds me of the gas station
lollipops we got on the way here.

bee's honey, my honey, it's all
the same: all honey, tastes sweet

no matter who it belongs to.
still nothing on victory though.

more cotton than candy, more
squeaky wheels than you're used to,

this house of mirrors a revelation.
hold my hand on the trek up, and

scream for me.

dizzy in the shrubbery

lost in the manicured park,
this maze of many

I've never
           been able to
figure out,

something about the clean lines.

weeds can't help being weeds.
I wanted to gather the clippings

into my arms
and say there had been
some mistake,

that they were needed after all.

come live in my yard, sweetheart.

the bees won't mind.

I was going to write until it felt like the truth.

skim page, skim milk, skip
rocks and roll
into the water.

It's not sinking. It's a race.

This dance, this ricochet
roundabout remember.

Oh yes, the blinds flutter
like the wings of
a perched bird,

unable to decide where
it's off to.

Open them and we're in
the trees again,
closed November,

awake and asleep, too
black and white, too
beginning and end,

take a bite, right?

Nothing's cut and dry.
Dreams are proof of that.

Imagination doesn't follow
your rules.

The great empty plane
of this world. I'm
kicking up dust

just because I can, screaming
at the blank black sky
to show me a star

through all this smog,

meet the edge of the
world like I
always promised.

Can you see it?

The ceiling lights flickering,

painting the artificial over *****
sinks and grimy tile,
too harsh to be a halo,
more searchlight than anything.

I can see the dirt under your
fingernails, the lines of your tired
face, but I still want to push you
against that concrete wall,

kiss you stupid.

Thanks to these shaky hands,
this traitorous tongue, weak weak
spirit and give in, give in like
always, but you don't know.

You make me want to be cruel.

Everything ends in salt and sand,
the ocean swallowing the world
whole, fire and ice an afterthought.

I had you pegged for a fighter, you know?

You might have been, once.
The self is a slippery thing,
sweetheart. I spent hours trying
to dissect sunlight.

What do you do with something that can't be cut
open, can't bleed?

Flesh is the body and the body
is what holds the soul,
meat suit maybe, but it's all
connected somehow.

Cut me there and there, but the
sadness won't bleed out. Nick me
here and here and here, but the
love won't leave me,

just fills every particle of the room and fogs up the glass.

the heart: a place where it happens.

flesh to flesh.
blood to blood.
we made a pact,
you and I.

we made a pact.

cartwheels, sun skip
        skip,
              hop and
wow I need a scotch.

counting to ten, then 20,
phonics and the 50 states.
listening, listening. there
are spies everywhere.

what's mine is yours and vice versa.

sapphire sparkling under
the water and the ants
struggling on the surface.

pull me under and we're
mermaids again. pull me
under and keep me there.

keep me here. we made a pact.

we made an island, so
gather the coconuts. lead
the cannibals across the
mountainside.

I'd never let them eat you, promise.

pinky promise, glittering
promise, stick a needle
in your eye and all
that rot.

the reward isn't the gold at
the end of the rainbow.
gold means the game's over.

the reward is the rainbow.

the forever (implied), the
countryside (ransacked).
who likes an ending?

it was somewhere
after eyeliner, perfume,
words maybe,

something golden.