I’ll take the left side, you take the right
cause I’d rather not be the one who broke your parents’
“genuinely antique” bed
I heard the wood give way just now
when we sat on the edge
and I know, tonight, it’s coming down.

I should probably be more of your gentleman,
but I think that’s what put us into this mess
when we got to the cabin I complimented your ma,
“Natasha is such a unique name in this age”
Her reply, flat through the grimace
“its an old and ugly Russian name, call me Nat.”
Your dad invited me to walk in the woods,
where I tripped over a root, ten feet in
and threw your father head first into poison oak.
It’s hard to tell through the swelling,
but I’m pretty sure he’s still scowling.
Then trying to help after dinner I knocked their
“two-hundred-dollar, honest-to-jesus, Napa Valley’s Best”
bottle a’ wine
onto their “ten-thousand-dollar, straight from Andkhoy.”
Afghani carpet.

So, I’m sorry
but I can imagine you’d forgive me
your boyfriend,
who loves and adores you,
for sleeping this day off
and letting the night drop out from under you.

Then, she began to sing,
her voice limped out'uv the speakers,
crossed 'round my half-empty glass
and slid into the open stool at my side,
each breathy word was a breeze through my fingertips,
enveloping the space ‘round my heart
she sounded like rust colored leaves drifting down onto unbroken ponds
of a thick morning frost slowly melting away
of the first warm ray from a low winter sun's
and it was all I could do not to love her.

The music echoed off the walls
and caught in the corners
each note its own explosion of sound
erupting from her scratched dream-blue-guitar.
her fingers didn’t just pluck strings,
they caught a note on the edge of its sound
and pulled it into space, sending it through the airwaves
to float on through this dimly lit atmosphere
only a heavy breath away from falling back to earth,

She sang like the last lines a suicide note.
each verse felt vital and final
only to be replaced by the next
feeling vital and final,
each line a beautiful declaration that she belonged on stage,
the only world she ever truly felt alive.

and how I hoped the song would never end,
each little silence scared me
because I had not known how to listen until words left her lips
and I didn’t want to know if it could end.
until it did.
and I suddenly felt like the world was very much alone.

“Hey, nice show.”

         “Oh, thank you. Glad you enjoyed it.”

“That was beautiful. It was beyond amazing.  Can I buy you a drink?”

          “Um, sorry.  I gotta show in Missouri tomorrow and we’re driving
           there, tonight.”

“Oh. Ok. Well, good luck. You really are amazing.”

          “Thank you, again…”

“The common law has always been the deciding factor on such issues, controlling law comes from “Icklin v. Hatchet, 234 F.Supp.2d 574 (1992), where the court ruled . . .”

You know who gives a **** about the oxford comma?
Lawyers
it’s required in making a list
I guess Vampire Weekend never went to law school.
and they do their ellipses all weird too
“space dot. Space dot. Space dot. Space.”
Ignoring the common normal condition of the punctuation, “Dot. Dot. Dot.”
it’s coming on infuriating

I learned to write where look and sound was critical,
but all of this is just literal
it’s not emotional
I can’t feel the words, they’re not tactile
pressured to write in the analytical
keep it to the factual
it has to be practical
applicable
rational
language bordering on puritanical!

But in betwixt the archaic form
there is structure
a logic emerges that is hard to ignore
it builds itself like a Gothic cathedral
beautiful, strong, bearing the full weight of the authority it presents!
Note the list of adjectives and its **** oxford comma.

You have a boyfriend.
At least I think you do,
at least that what they’ve told me about you
cause facebook really hasn’t answered if that guy
you’re hugging in fifteen pictures is him or not
and if he is,
****,
I’m *******.

I’m ******* because as much as I think I like you,
he already loves you
he already knows what your favorite food is
and if you like the left side of the bed, or the right
if you’d rather wreck his face in Smash Bros
or get wrecked downtown with his smashed bros

We had fifteen amazing minutes in a crowded bar
where you left me with your name,
stitched on the front of my mind
and cutting off air as the lump in my throat
I want to shout it into open flames
so the fire singeing my heart, takes hold,
and burns across the world to yours.

But I’m *******
because he’s got fifteen amazing pictures with you
his name's  already branded on your mind,
already gilded on your lips
and my embers of uncertain emotion can’t flirt with catching hold
when there is already a bonfire, raging in your heart.

I’m *******,
because you told me your name
because one spark started a fire,
and it’s already going out.

She said “Describe yourself in a sentence,
We want to see what you do with constraints.”
So I thought to be clever and said
“My sentence will extend eternally, bound by infinite commas,
and perhaps, if I’ve very lucky; a semicomma or two;
you see the shackles that you’ve tried to impose are only a barrier if you let them be;
but me, I see opportunities where none should exist,
excuse me ma’am this may be and admittance interview but I see it as an investment opportunity,
my future, your gain… oh and period.”
She looked at her collegues, not betraying any amusements, annoyance, entertainment, nothing.  As if I had given the same answer as the last four people who sat where I do.
She rephrases, “How about a sentence with less than 10 words.”
I smile “I am worth more than a ten-word statement of intent.”
Eleven words. She noticed.
Twenty minutes later I am released,
apparently I’m not the right fit for their program.

Catch me a bus to the mental Joint
cause this one is burnt
and my high is already way past the fade
I’m beginning to fall in love with my stupid head,
my utter innocence, and the thought that maybe, just maybe, it’s ok to feel dead.
Please, do not let me touch  reality
at least not until I’ve relived my dreams of the last,
no the first kiss,
repaired my past so I won’t regret the thing that was, us
and forget how to feel lonely, again.

Feed me shots like its Saturday night,
instead of Monday at 3pm
Let me drink before I come into myself
and remember the reason I chose to become a full-time alcoholic
Don’t leave me alone with my sober self
cause walls become murals of memories I long to forget
of you, of us, in this bar, on that table,
of 3am shuffles and noontime romances
and the more the scenes mix the less I have to pretend not to see.
I’m scratching initials into bar-tops,
in the hope the M.J. and D.G. really do share one heart,
and that is tiny fantasy comes true before my next drink.

I’ve decided not to live in the now
because the last heartbreak
was the last time I’ve give my heart permission to ache.
But that’s just marker one of my twelve step plan.
I want to drown out everything my BS degree
taught me in the BA of Political suicides.
Somewhere, there exist a combination of depressants,
uppers, hallucinogens, and narcotics that make existence seem pleasant.
But this isn’t it.
This is the combination that makes me forget about war and genocide
and condenses the whole of human experience into the hazy exchange of
hushed compliments and hasty fluids.
This is the combination that makes me forget the year we were happy,
or was that the year we were sad?
Either way, it’s doing its job.

Let me count the days since you left,
because I don’t remember the nights.
A whiskey aftershave, if I remember to shave,
and Mary Jane’s premium cologne are what get me from 7am
till 2 am when I pass out again.
Someday I’ll stop drowning in a little of this and some of that,
one day I’ll start loving, no start liking, maybe accept people again.
but today, I’m going to crossfade fast and thank God for the drugs
that make today, at the very least, bearable

I raised the thermostat in my bedroom so you’d lose your last layers.
It’s a cheap trick, but I cannot stop the lust we’ve brought into this place.
It’s not love, no no, it’s not the sweet slow tune that stretches towards forever
we’re the rushed murky club bass that leaves you deaf and blind
but I won’t say dumb, because at least we used protection.

It’s been a lifetime since I pinned a woman to my canvas
and painted a series of moans and gasps across my bed
gentle strokes down her thighs
building color in her chest
mesmerizing forms and shapes created by her body on mine.
this is an art form I’d forgotten needs no practice
deserving of its own spot atop the Sistine Chapel.

At dawn, when we both list and drift towards the door,
there is no lingering last look, no awkward pause.  
We’ve both given up on the idea of a truly immortal feeling
preferring instead that sensational build to a beautiful ******
and a gallery of gorgeous midnight memories.