Character development
is truly an undertaking.
Perhaps an incomplete
person cannot develop
another, after all--even
one who is not real.

i don’t want to make art tonight.
i want to spray my walls thick
with blue, splattered skyguts
and beat my tears raw against my bedpost
(notch free because i count
with my fingers + toes)

love always happens by accident and i
never forgave anyone for stepping on my
red suede shoes just like my vinyl
told me to. the television is my real mom
the radio my nanny because i listened to
fake art all my life and now i dont know
how to not make it

When first I loved,
I listened to myself.
I heard it from
within my gut
that I should tell:
I loved.  I loved!
Oh, why did I listen
to myself?  Yet
how I loved!

First I loved, then
reasoned with myself,
and this I heard:
I love!  I love!
Oh, why did I not
listen to myself
when I did love?

Oh, why is there
another me
inside myself?
And how she loves!

Nothing here
and nothing there;
nothing then
and nothing now.

Should I return
or should I stay,
bleakness prevails.
And so I say,

"I am embodiment
of will;
I am alive;
I cannot be still.

Everything here,
everything now!
I am I,"
and hear it resound.

A tiny devil lands
on my shoulder;
having no counter-
part, she stands

                               and, as I walk
                               at rabbit's pace
                               to the old place
                               where we used to talk,

                                                          ­          she drags from
                                                            ­        her cigarette,
                                                      ­              flicking it,
                                                             ­       hum-drum.

"He ain't comin',"
she says,
and ashes
on my neck.

                               "Don't need him,"
                               I lie--should lie
                               down to die,
                               but light up instead.

Unconvinced,
she scoffs at me.
"Then what do you need?"
And a dreadful wind

                                             slithers through
                                             the fissure,
                                             icy, bitter.
                                             "I don't need you."

                                                          ­                      The woods, too
                                                             ­                   are dead, like us--
                                                            ­                    a Winter-sheared husk
                                                            ­                    through and through.

You'll come, I hope,
leaning over
the grove, or
maybe I don't.

                                      You'll come, I hope,
                                       leaning over
                                       the grove, or
                                       maybe you won't.

I should always be the X in tic-tack-toe
‘Cuz X marks the spot
And that’s where the gold is
And maybe I’m gold? Not sterling silver



...O’s are just  hollow and empty