Do you remember the first time you realized that there was such a thing as death?
It wasn't in the sad dog your best friend had hanging around in her backyard but it could have been.
Maybe it was in the ****** gums of the homeless you frequently passed on the way to the bus stop.
Avert your eyes, your mother would tell you but they were glued to the fleshy drops of fluids on shirts that used to be clean.
I started looking at the wrinkles on my hands as fun entertainment while waiting for my father to finish his physical therapy.
I also read the Secret Garden on down times.

It always starts with the  looking of  bouquets of dying flowers in the grocery store
they're always by the entrance and they're always wrapped in cellophane
Moody lilies, doe-eyed star daffodils, ******* lace-leaves
My grandfather's name was Hyacinth
It's symbolic somewhere, somehow
My family's name is buried neck deep in floral epithets
not that you would notice or care
There's an attraction to be named after beautiful things
From the side of my shoulder I hear
count your hands, they might be missing fingers
I look abrasively counting in rotund continuity
one two three four five
one two three four five
when I look behind me the speaker blasts John Mayer and I go home feeling nauseous
manic begonias, sultry sweet-tooth hydrangeas
you pick a rose and it stabs your finger so you set it on fire and take a picture of it, you call it art and the leaves wither
when I sit at my dinner table eating salmon
I cannot stop thinking about mercury poisoning
I lick the table salt off my hands
I wait for cardiac arrest but while that happens
there is that friend of a foe, that voice tickling the back of my ear with it's summer tongue
telling me, beckoning that the tap water I'm drinking is laced with LSD by the government and that I'm going to have a bad trip that I won't be able to get out of. I'll be stuck in that endless loop like a record player that keeps getting scratched by the needle and won't play anything but static noise now.
I go to bed biting my nails until they're raw and touching skin making sure that my hands are still my own
Moonflowers bloom at night and marigolds remind me of the sun
In the morning I dream of driving out to sea in a car that doesn't belong to me and wait for the coral to overtake my brain
When I wake up I do 20 laps around my house instead

It’s the telemarketer’s day off
he often calls customer service on the weekends as a hobby
he feels like a loaded rifle when they ask
“what can I help you with today?”
a jitterbug with a contemplative stutter
the jilted staleness of his apartment is suddenly
a garden of words
images of violence appear while he rips a hangnail
loneliness is a grown man’s burden, he thinks
“I don’t want you to listen but I do need to be heard”
he waits for silence and he’s spoon fed this attention
“I work with people and yet I do not know people
my mind waters for intimacy not in the sensual term of the word but in the
way hands accidentally touch on a crowded train”
2,000 miles away there is a woman with a headset
a chronic consoler at the tender age of 19
her hand trembles as she hears this man speak
she’s reminded of her grandmother dying in her tiny home
back in Kansas City, desolate like her location

there is a dream where i wear a white dress
my mother cries behind the shuddering trees
I don't know this but i am running, tongue heavy

My mind slips through a dungeon

my morning muse comes doused in drowsy eyelash
a soft spot in the heart of the bed
tattoos threaded in skin I've traveled often in lamplight
on tundra nights, drunken hands with too much to say
soberly sobbing with good intentions
truth swap in the tether of tongue touching
opulent limbs, an ode to you
swiftly I want to say
I've compared others to the hallowed moon
a sunset without an end
but you, the enthusiast to my affection
are a morsel of cold water after ***
the lush terror of a first kiss
a delectable fight of a god against his demons
my zest, my fever
the patient savoring of my exquisite savior
there is a violence to love something
to indulge in a deluge of tenderness
for you
my favorite friend
my sympathetic lap of luxury
this body of roses would like to confess
that it no longer feels empty between the ribcage
that the songs too sad to listen to before
fill me with a quietude of laughter
I used to think love poems were frivolities for the mediocre
but now I understand
this is a love poem

Suburbia greeted me with pale hands in my late teens.
She was a wasteland in a mini skirt; in its’ own right it could be called a Cave with Plato egregiously driving his brand-new Prius 90 miles an hour saying “this is really living as long as you don’t look back” and all you can do is nod your head vigorously because the twisted **** that had settled surreptitiously in your baby lungs was giving you daylight hallucinations. My endeavors didn’t end there when they should have.
There was something uncanny about the way streetlights gave you the eternal glare. Of creating ordinary neighborhood streets appear like you’ve been there before in a dream, in another body. In a dazed stupor the sounds of a television and a light coming from a garage is forgiving in your misguided attempts to be comfortable in a foreign space. It could almost feel like home when your repressed trauma keeps resurfacing while you’re trying to introduce yourself. Almost.
In these polite badlands with everything uniformed the people I met were always trying to stand out from the serene landscapes. Sitting in plaid couches I was giddy playing the nihilist. Rerun episodes of Portlandia playing but all I remember from that smoky room were brown pants that looked extremely crisp to the touch and I wanted to reach out my hands and see if they would crunch under the paperweight of my heavy palms. I didn’t but I’m sure they would’ve emitted the sound of potato chips being eaten in a frenzy.
When I wasn’t walking through dark rooms feeling through what could have been hallways, a family’s living room or the cool gates of hell I was meandering my way through drowsy parties where boys with the names like Dusty and Slaughter were prevalent. Each with their own bizarre story about how they stole their parents’ money one night and took off spontaneously. Driving all the way to Nevada with nothing but half a tank of gas and one pack of cigarettes. You could almost pinpoint their personalities by the type of cigarettes they smoked. Most of them holding different colored American Spirits. Had I been smarter I would have asked for a light and a smoke. Never mind that I was always deadly afraid that I had some undiagnosed lung disease and that asphyxiation was my biggest fear or that I had a pack of Marlboro black menthols in my purse that were over a year old. I found my corner sitting in a worn outdoors chair. The ones where the armrest comes built in with a cupholder. My beer ice cold sitting awkwardly sideways while I tried to consider why the host of the party was wealthy yet so hostile. My favorite party game was the one where I took hit after hit of joints being passed around until I was crazy glued to my chair and my brain started to feel like a lagoon that continued to melt into a Campbell’s soup I once had as a child. Everyone completely unaware of the horror that the house had become to me. Somewhere in the distance I was acutely aware of who I would go home with, why my ventures into the suburbs had sparked my intrigue in the first place. The only reason why I had endured feeling like a spider watching a **** film and why I had lost my virginity just a day before. I was a displaced specimen thinking about her ***** in a room of 30 people or more.

you’re straying behind, peppermint tongue
ocean head with eyes like the dirt you press into your palms
disturbing your blood cells from sleep
I knew you once before
I can know you again
summer of youth
summer of wine
being wept into the sweating of an IV
veins of sugar cubes and coca-cola bottles
the dead horse kicks twice
to let you know
to let you know
It’s moved on to grander things

Motion for the jury to bite your nails off for you, peppermint tongue
any answer you can give me
I assure you I’ve heard before
what a strange layout
to be the one to beckon you
from the hazy dream
of being nothing
but a candied sweet
found excessively in
chewing gum