morning dew drops on your collar
impressing me with the zealous way the seasons drastically measure the moment it takes me
to reach forwards and brush it off
liquid winter falling onto a ***** cement
the initials 'F T' written jaggedly into the cold stone of asphalt
i wait for it to disappear, for the flicker of everything gone to fade from my vision
but it passes too quickly
i look back up and there's no one around
the street is empty and the capricious wind has ceased
a sucker for patterns i walk into a fabric store and feel my hand linger on the erratic linens
fingers paused on the peach organza sprawled like a pink bubblegum sea
and i am swept into the manic fantasies of wearing the sheer tissue-like textile into
the abdomen of your sweaty palm and sinking like a sticky sweet stripe
until you put your hand in your pocket and i spend a year inside melting
into the every thread and curve of your jean until it is nothing but disgusting sugar
everything i could be when i am hidden from sight in the dark caverns of denim pants
who knew the tongue in cheek joke would be nothing but my tongue in your mouth
touching all the way up your gums  
find me sweltering beneath the uvula wondering if i could go back
to the time i found that girl with the mountain logo sweatshirt who whistled between her teeth and hummed all the reasons i should skin my knee and kiss the salty wound because there's no greater pleasure than knowing you don't have to wait for that morning dew drop to fall from their ******* collar

myopic frames on a stern temple remind me that once he too wandered recklessly and felt ardent
empowered by time on his sleeve
there was nothing he couldn't conquer and nothing standing between the open air and breathing it in
i suppose the difference here is i grab the breath of air and hold it in my pocket for when i stop being so nervous

marshmallow heart
the road only goes one way and the streetlights hover and coil eternally, you can never meet the epilogue
a drive-thru drink in one hand while you feel your hair tangling into a mess of a beehive, the one that likes to unwind in soft tendrils on a weak pillow
heart racing for the constant fueling of a near empty tank telling you to go further this time, this time
time isn't yours


holding in a cough
i too have tried to drown waterbugs
my cheek pressed against the tiles of a kitchen floor, hand perched languidly as my fingers make circles in the tiny swamp i made in the middle of the room
but i forget laying there until i hear my own soul walk in with bare feet addressing the elephant in the room, the one that hasn't left since i was sick with bronchitis that winter years ago
and i want to tell her to come here, to come back inside myself so it doesn't feel so cold this season of frost but she brushes me off with the temperament of a child
"i don't exist, i never did" the words dawdle back and forth from her back molars to her incisors  
and i remember when i felt like i was dying when i hopped from one state to the next but realizing a little to late that if i were to go back my dread would jump on the back of my shoulders and force me to look it into it's shiny face and show me the mild nuisance of what it means to be alive
so my soul closes the door and i hear the keys rattle and i myself sink into the warm arms of someone i spent my entire life with

silk blouses and cotton underwear
the nights merge into a sticky soup that falls into the pocket of a sweater i was wearing when they said that death is permanent
the voice echoing into the receiver of my first cell phone
the wavering tremble of someone in the middle of realms
sleep and consciousness turning the other side of the pillow
wondering if the smoke in my lungs felt comfortable
wonder if the moon sinks lower into your backyard
i was never good at distinguishing shadows and when i found myself on the dark side of the mattress;
my feet cold and feeble i wondered if you could hear my heart a thousand miles away
the fluttering of a drowsy bird, lethargically dragging it's clumsy wings into the plummeting stifle of open air
you said my lips were like the halves of a plum
i bit them until they bled but it was never as sweet
it was never as sweet

there is a wasteland
the abdomen of a swollen sea watching precariously as i bite into bits of dark chocolate and don't stop until the entire package is on the floor like a drunken dancer or a torn best friend
a candor that i sold auspiciously for a pair of high heels that i never wear, they just sit in my closet waiting for dirt to be pushed into the canvas of it's sole
i'll only wear them indoors when it's raining and i can hear the synchronizing of the drops on the roof top with each step i take onto the hard-wood floor -tap tap tap tap
i'll do this until the sincerity is gone from the momentum
eventually next summer they'll be forgotten in a cardboard box that has "free" written with a red sharpie and perhaps it's next owner will be forgiving, will take the loneliness of the esoteric feeling of wanting to be worn and introduce them to the vinyl floors of a cheap club or the cold linoleum floors of an expensive resort hotel
i'd like for things that I've known to have a continued story even after it's out of mine, and they do

there is a wasteland
a woman that constantly licks her lips because they're dry but they're only dry because of the constant moisture forced upon them
the reduction of catch-22 as if the joke doesn't fall smack into your clothes
trying to find something underneath the bra strap, past the skin
but you can never get through, can you?
she pulls your hand away and you're left feeling rudimentary
lacking, like the lackadaisical manner in which the lights never hit you the way you wish it did

my spine was assembled clumsily and with an erratic precision of a hand that knows the premeditation of everything
the swarm came in the shape of an air conditioner
it's the characterizations of overgrown lawns and memory foam on the side of the curb
like going to the laundromat instead of church on Sunday
I've said this before, repetition lives inside the brain that continues to step over it's own feet
foot slowly inching towards my mouth
i could kiss you with my ankle if you would
the air conditioner buzzes all night like i did that night that i couldn't find the entrance in a place that i wanted to leave
take me home in a Chinese take-out box
i'll sit in the back of your fridge until you forget
i'll grow my own colony, mold malformation on the creases where the warmth should be
Sweaty container and you throw me out before Monday's pickup trash along with the expired mustard and mayonnaise
oh the missed opportunity, the dedication i could have gone to have given you a stomach ache that leaves you at three in the morning dry heaving your memories
that electric buzz stays until it's unwelcome and still it persists
so the bees have started to congregate, digress and drink the synthetic honeysuckle it spits
they take off, wings of woolly yellow into a breath that i consume by lungfuls
i don't know where they're going but that's okay because they keep coming back
and it's the permanence of something so flighty that calms the hum

morning light is always the most beautiful
there's a kind of tenderness that borders on pure naivete
an inexperienced fracture of grace that
unfortunately the sunset does not contain
although i am never awake for it
i am acutely aware of it behind closed eyelids
There's an optimism I've never felt on the creases of my palms

i wish i could explain to you
how boring that art gallery was
i can't remember what color shirt i was wearing
there's a lot of things i'm only half there for
i'll drift to nowhere precise and my eyes will get that faraway glow of a look and you'll think i'm in love
but it's just my inattentiveness to stay in my body for long
i'm less devil may care and more jitterbug hiding it's own epileptic seizure

i guess it's all about forgetting things and then trying to find where you put them
sometimes you stop looking altogether and come to terms with the fact that some things want to remain lost
morning light is always the most beautiful

i've hidden a note in an old library book that i never returned
i ripped the sleeve off and wrote my name in red permanent ink
it smells of oak wood and dust
i felt a warm guilt that i haven't felt since i was 8 years old
when my shoe slipped on dog ****
and i went into class with muddled shoes that smelled of underdeveloped intestines twisting
i think you would understand the embarrassment
the itching sting that my chest surrendered to when everyone asked where it was coming from
this particular note was written in a momentary relapse of admonition
an answer to a question that wasn't answered
will you look in the rubble, where i told myself to stop talking about god all the time
the moon never replied to my letters so i drank my weight in wine
and when i woke up the sender's address was swindled between postmen whose hands were too crooked to open the mails slots

my belly grows the size of a bag of apricots
there is a will at the bottom of a lake that needs retrieving
the car sank but the body made it to the shore and changed her name by midnight
come springtime the ice melts and the water is back
crawling upon shy ankles
there are growing pains who find a home between nettles and
the hives of adobe wasps
i never could cohabitate with nature
when they ask at parties where i've been
things that are at rest stay at rest

there is scattered verse in tertiary reasoning
i am a vocabulary of one
my intensity is throttled into a
meek surrendering of gentle fastidiousness
surrounded by a momentary court
that announces there's only
you, your fingernails and the measured guidance of not accidentally choking
blessed am i in the house of good council
a concession stand of dried fruit
i stand in the ether

some people are born anxious
a tidal pool of dry-heave and spider bones
a conundrum whirlwind of seared tongue not tasting anything for days
i think there's a nausea that hides under my shirt sleeves
there's an unproven cluster of nervous cells waiting for my elbows to
suddenly start fidgeting
a dehydrated vocabulary of what to say
and is it appropriate to say it
autumn is forever around here

all the car toys i had to chew
just to feel like you
girl with no blood to bleed
be my Babylonian king
blow into the dusty empty
gamboy cartridge

tuck me into bed
leave the restless leaves
i know how much you hate crumbs
on the mattress
but please
feel the unpleasantness and kiss it goodnight
i can tell you the stories i harvest inside myself
like they were only yours to hear
and they are
my experiences are for you to bump shoulders with
covered in sweat in the train station
pardon the loud lights
these make up the skin that will eventually
hold me intact when the weather turns and slaps me again
over and over again
i could sing you to death

my favorite girl is honeycombed
a heart of bitter jelly locked
the ants crawl but dissipate
amidst, i blush coquettishly
i am her prince, blue and fond
stranded in abundance of wild grass
somewhere in Texas
my throat is dry and my mouth lingers
on the sunflower seeds i spit aimlessly
into the dirt
Waiting for seedlings to crawl, a spurt of
"this love will grow someday"
i can taste the spit of the tongue
that knows my name by heart
and wouldn't have it any other way
no i wouldn't have it any other way

i am a blade tucked safely in Tupperware
my lonely teeth hidden under clammy pillow
feel these nightmares like they were yours
i could blush with you all night
when my mouth feels dry
it is not from the absence of presence
but from the rotundity cascade
that your hair ebbs as it collides with mine
i'd like to think this folly is something
i can put on the centerfold
a gift too pronounced with an utter
of my masked gravity inside all the
beer you pour into a proud papercup
days shrink into nothingness

For the longest time I've kept my immediate family away from myself.
In retrospect my introversion and quietude as a child bordered on hostile. Most of the time i thought things but never said them. I now wonder if half my memories and excursions with people were all made up in my head while i sat there and said nothing. It's difficult opening up to people because no one ever asks and when they do it's never the right questions.
For a while i thought perhaps i had been autistic without even knowing but without proper diagnosis i am unable to say for sure and i highly doubt it now.
The thing is, while i very much enjoy words and nothing brings me pleasure like listening to my favorite people speak to each other while i pleasantly nod and wait for my turn in order to produce a monologue i had been preparing all the while with the proper pauses almost like i had gone back and done multiple revisions i find it difficult to banter. I am unable to jump from one topic to the next. I cannot for the life of me poetically jump from book commentary to the latest gossip as to why the barista at the local coffee shop wastes so much time talking about tattoos when all you want is your daily dose of caffeine. I must admit that this never really bothered me before. Yes, I comprehend that without dialogue it is not possible to keep relationships or even a simple job. I understand that without having anything interesting to say you will quickly lose friends and resort to whatever internet personas do all day. I've always been seen as the sensitive presence. Most of the time that I am zoning out people will agree that i'm just thinking about important things even though really i'm unable to stop myself from disassociating or even severe daydreaming at times. In fact, most of the time i am just there. However, when i'm alone without the impending life-or-death situations of being responsible for acknowledging the existence of other people there is a sense of liberation. I will go about my day hastily jumping from one task to the next. I am often bewildered by those that cannot bear being in their own company. They will seek any alternative rather than being alone and let me just say that there is a difference between being alone and being lonely and while i have felt both these with the same intensity i cannot say that which I am more perplexed by.

I am alive in a home-made dress that was bought for two dollars at a yard sale
there is domestic bliss in routine
in the inching of my hand on a knife that will be used to slice the
tomatoes growing outside
there in no harm in loving you eternally
I think about everything often
about the way I tried for years to soothe my fathers’ psychosis
and my mothers’ sadness
I think about the temporary loss of my body and the way I absorbed it in sweat
my bones constantly caught in bushes of bramble thorns  
and I wish you could see how far you have to go to come back home

the television sings
the satellite dish keeps twirling on the rooftop with no signs of slowing
I think I've meant to catch it, keep binoculars close
in case it gets too dizzy and ends up on the front yard again
the neighbors sunbathe **** and the sun
hides behind the trees of second hand embarrassment

soup in the spring
I can taste again
there's a photo of me riding a horse
but I wouldn't be able to describe the feeling to you
always the horse
never the horse girl
he kissed my hand like a gentleman
and I fed him an apple
coming back home they ask why my knuckles are bleeding
I say I got too close and a kiss sometimes involves teeth

there's a newspaper that gets delivered
when it rains it soaks & slithers on the front porch
melting into the cement
I never pick it up
I don't have an address
but it reminds me of Sunday morning
it used to cover a male face
there's a clearing of a throat and the sipping of black coffee
it's 2004 and the president is my father's favorite person
I'm used to living in tiny spaces
stir-crazy is reserved only for the *****-inducing extrovert
but as I turn on the light
the yellow glow reminds me of being inside an egg
I feel like I did in 8th grade when I was perpetually blushing
and all the girls in my classroom asked me why I was so nervous
I have flashes of a lemon tree
I was born nervous I tell them
the rest of the year is spent in silence

there's a bed-frame with names carved into them
slightly-askew and frail
a heart at the top of every 'i'
all my underwear has blood stains on it
it's a lovesick reminder of everything I can't control
I yearned for my mother to put my hair in braids instead of a ponytail
so I got a friend that could
my hands would sweat as I wrote about her in my diary
the one without a lock
the one that was covered in DIY glue glitter
there was a summer that I wore all pink
my strawberry ice cream melted all over my polo dress and no one could tell the difference
it was my secret, sugar sweet on the lapel
beating heart for all the Lisa Frank I didn't own
a boring folder with all the scary stories I had memorized
until I myself became the ghost girl
sucker punch me in the last bathroom stall
for neither liking leather or lace

I got braces when I was 16
that year I never kissed anyone
but I made boys steal things from pricy bookstores
I measure time by my teeth
every year they get more crooked
the older I get they seem to shift back to old territory
old habits
old

now even smoking cigarettes feels boring
when I walk into bookstores
I leave sticky notes with advice I wish someone would have told me then

they did
but maybe if I had found it somewhere I was looking
I might have paid more attention
my retainer sits in a shelf collecting grime

I drink pink grapefruit flavored drinks
my face smells like the citrus
when I lose things and people
I change my hair
it helps me cope with the idea that I can never finish a stick of lip balm and most of the people I've known only yield disappointment
no one is at fault here
but the blame is usually pushed into my intestines
and I spend five days throwing up
I used to be afraid that I would never see the entire world
now I'm afraid I'll never spend enough time in a place I can call home
every morning the smell of grapefruit grows stronger

the champagne tastes bitter
my head swims and I think
maybe I need a bathing suit

maybe i'll never see god but the
breeze keeps touching my face
and the insects **** my blood
disease my legs and that's okay
because there's a part in me that has difficulty taking my watch off and there's a part in him that has difficulty taking his shoes off
despite the harmony I feel there's a head in the back of my own
that tells me that solitude would not suffice for such a shy creature that only wants warmth from another
there, there
there

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

My best friend was fiction. The ocean where I lived was nothing but an enormous tank capable of sustaining the plastic we created in our own image. On odd days the electric lampshade sun would malfunction and the skin of tourists would turn moldy grey from calcium deficiency or rather a will not to see the fabricated sky for what it was: a cardboard cutout created with the sole intention of comfort.
My number in school was always 33
whether it was outside playing sports or being the 33rd person in line at the cafeteria or hanging that number on the lapel of my shirt like a cross at the top of a hill in a Roman crucifying.
For this my life revolved around that number.
33 reasons to go outside and witness the cruelty
33 socks missing their twin at the bottom of a washing machine
33 ideal mates that always say the wrong thing before the meeting takes place
33 witches hanging at the bottom of a lake for swimming instead of sinking
my favorite fiction is the one that tries so hard to hide under the bed
the one that lies on the front porch step of that man accused of robbery in his 20’s
the one that believes when it’s told the earth is melting
that it will just goop up at the bottom of the devil’s dinner plate

My Aunt Sue would strip violently in the back yard especially during a thunderstorm.
She said the flowers were watching her so they could learn how to live. I just remember scribbling madly into my sketchbook the weird contours of her; the pale ***** that was her skin coming into close proximity with the mud in the field. Each page was cluttered with the switch of her wrist, the scream of her torso lolling in drip-drip weather. This obsession led my lips to bleed and I couldn’t stop biting. The blood that streamed down the side of my mouth tasted like lead pipes.  Just like the ones in our house that creaked every time the wind whistled. Like a man who sold his manners at the gas station for a pack of those cheap cigarettes, one on top of the other so the roof of his mouth became the chimney that soothed him on cold nights. Rain droplets becoming shower sprit in a damp basement-like locker room where men stepped out of steam like in dreams. Feet sloshing on wet tiles and all I could think of were reptiles swimming through swamps, tails slapping the humidity for that sweet scent of coastal ****.
Laughter penetrates through hot breath.
“My favorite dreams are the ones where I wake up in a sweat. The ones where the sheets are as wet as the hand that I use to achieve success.”
The eyes all around go up in full swing and there’s handshakes tossed about.
There’s a secret here that’s reserved only for the ears that happen to hear it and it’s doused with pride.
This circle of jerks, this atmosphere of a citrus kiss laid upon only for masculinity.
This shrine for men that I’ve been so accepted into, so inclined a seat I’ve been given without even a glimpse makes one feel like being inside the small intestine or living inside the bladder.
I am disheveled nervousness as I think of women in a house full of men.
The condensation blurs the mirrors all around and another one finally speaks again.
“One of my biggest sins is not realizing that I only went to church to see the preacher’s wife. They sold peaches out by the highway but all I remember was the gooey goodness I imagined she tasted like.”
The torrent of wild shrieks that undulated out of the Adams’ apples of this congregation would have made Adam himself proud. An avalanche would surely follow as I stared up at the blinding lights of
this sweltering hell that was more a mother’s breast than a place where muscles flourished.
As the halls began to empty the door revealed yet another sunny day. My corneas unable to handle the brightness that was denied to me sitting there in the deluge of delusion I was reminded once again where I was. We walked to the parking lot all in line like a dam not yet ready to break.
There were women everywhere now and my cheeks flushed reminding me again of Aunt Sue slapping me in the face for recording her indiscretions inside a yellow notebook wedged underneath my bed.
Shame was not there with me that day though and neither was it today.
Until someone in our group bellowed “those legs could make a bad man good” to the lady walking on the sidewalk.
Except her response was not one I would have imagined or fantasized about. There was no girly giggle or ****** thankfulness. Only unapologetic annoyance and a slit of fear stuck between her teeth.
Everyone immediately felt the humiliation that came unannounced, felt the ferocious attack of a gratitude that was expected and yet not received. I can only imagine the hot steel of this man’s clock grinding bone to bone and the excruciating betrayal of all he was promised.
His brows furrowing together into his face that I thought they would get ****** into his brain was replaced by a stoic neuroticism I only witnessed in films and yet here it was just a couple of feet from my face. This remorse I had seen before disguised as indistinguishable fastidiousness.
“*******, lady. I bet the only way someone would ******* is if you were *****.” He pitched, like a frenzied cow in a pasture of green and as he proceeded to follow her we followed him. His disciples in
a war not even declared. I began to feel the trickle of what was to be a tropical storm. The rain here making the sound of our boots more echoed while the woman up ahead began to walk faster but not fast enough for the fist of a bruised ego; his hands making contact with beautiful features that did not deserve an audience of sadists. The sound of skin against skin in water is the most painful of all.
Like a shark feasting on bait infiltrating the waters with the sound of music. The atrocity was not in the crime but in the art of not being able to look away as something is turned into nothing more than mysterious meat.
I skip the deli aisle in the grocery store every time but
boys
will
be
boys.

When my hands were the size of apricots
my tongue always jumping through hoops
as I read words that were dusty
a book covered in pretty plastic
from the local library that smelled like a grandfather
if I had a grandfather
I read Corduroy, the story of a stuffed bear
in the Laundromat
the sun sweltering outside
melting the story with me
like a swirly ice cream cone on the side step of an apartment
or the slushy ingested combined with
the acid you were so prone to tasting in your throat
reflux, like a memory that just won’t go away
leaving the residue of remnants you wish your brain would just spit up
this ordinariness of abandonment
feelings washed away like the mud stains on your uniform shirt tumbling in the washer
the soap bubbles punching the glass window in unison with all the rest; a cleansing of spirits
a lot of people go to church
but for those that can’t afford it, the laundry is heaven with a vending machine
I felt for the stuffed animal rejected for missing a button
because I knew children with trembling knuckles
turned into adults that got lost in the escalators of the world’s mall
wandering ghosts with perpetual uncertainty whether they should
buy the coffee set or the patent leather shoes that will balm over the calluses of their feet
in the loudness of the fans redistributing hot hair
I was in limbo, the rigid seat sticking to the back of my thighs like caramel
sweat almost hard to ignore if it wasn’t for the luster
of all the women inside, their shoulders broad like those I
only thought of in lumberjacks
burly burlap sacks over their shoulders
swapping stories of childbirth as frequently
as they ordered a pound of red liver chunks from the grocery store next door
like animatronics that learned to harvest a genuine laugh
their nail polish never fading despite the gruesome biting teeth of Clorox bleach
staining the skin on their hands
they were warriors, lost and unsure of in a world that didn’t look them square in the eye
much like those camo toy soldiers you won if you gave the machine a quarter
unwrapping it from its’ plastic cage, growling for the neglect of their maker
who decided not to give them pupils at all
senile wrestlers sometimes forgotten by children in the middle of the walkway
so that they could be stepped upon, accidentally
these women with their chocolate complexion and romantic gold hoops, accidental
unrecognized by their country, banished by their family
isolated in a land that shows mercy to those that only help themselves
no refugee whose blood could compare to oil
these women who weren’t missing any buttons
would congregate inside this Laundromat hoping to remove the stains
wishing that their clothes would stop smelling of unpaid labor
that they could stop calling home a box inside a closet of more stacked boxes
they can hear those around them, elbowing the walls like multiple hearts in a rib cage
the world glimpsing in for a second, just another spin rinse cycle
repeat until all color fades
I too find myself  stuck inside that Laundromat, I realize
except I know that I can leave, I know I can walk out with my book in tow
open the door and become another spectator if I wished
which is more than that poor toy soldier can say

There’s a horror in the city
but it’s always Halloween in someone’s basement
in the suburbs the closets are inundated with skeletons
each dressed in friendly attire
but never opening the door
the neighbors always watching through sheer curtains
binoculars at the ready
instead of candy on doorsteps
there’s signs of beware of the maniac with the pistol
locked and loaded watching the 6’oclock news
no apocalypse is breaking into our windows tonight
there’s a hum and it’s making all the locals go mad
they still haven’t figured out it’s the cicadas
not demons in their trees looking for a discount lunch
the desert is a harsh place when the sun is
drawn sloppily on the right hand corner of a page
the houses all uniformed for the drought to come
each manicured lawn is a haunting for the
unemployed drunk in the nearby trailer park
the ghosts of those whose Christmas
doesn’t come in stockings but stalking
and restraining orders
the spookiest part is not the
slasher hotels or the creature feature
shows at the bars and clubs
but the calm, serene and unsettling
manner in which everyone congregates
on Sunday morning to be cleansed
of impurities, each smile stretching farther and farther
until the seconds drip into communion wine
until the hours dissolve in one’s mouth like god’s flesh
reinvented, resuscitated, resurrected

Arise, my brothers
for the pastor is watching
there’s a twinkle in his eyes
and there are boys missing after every ceremony
but no one questions why

I’ve walked on the tiles made for kings
many times I’ve been in the house of luxury
but it has never belonged to me
I am but a visitor in the palace of Eden
I could describe the opulence but I cannot tell you how it feels
to posses, to own, to carry your weight lightly in such states
I am not a beholder and I’ve never felt myself worthy of such affluent
and often unnecessary necessities
working class woman on the weekends
to clean the savvy bungalows of the ludicrous and almost laughable
wealth of Beverly Hills
it felt almost like trespassing, like jumping over train tracks
As soon as you see sight of headlights getting closer and the
earth beneath you tumble, shaking it’s veins
I would wear a uniform, a knight’s armor of invisibility
upon arrival, there was that shift in the air
That momentary feeling that you’re not in Kansas anymore
There are more trees here, the bugs even seem more alive than they did
down there below the hills
the pedestal of the hungry, greed sitting humbly on its’ throne
smoking expensive colored cigarettes
rings blowing in your face of cool breeze
Although every residence was architecturally different
it was always the same, the same austere patterns
the redundant originality, the commonplace pretension
The gates always had codes but the entrance was always open
Whenever you stepped inside the first thing to notice
were the Rorschach walls, the mirror image of whoever resided there
the hollowness it evoked, the sterility of a life that although lived
wasn’t honest
dare I say unhappy
There were usually film posters signed by movie stars long ago dead
Art that said nothing, whose lips had been glued shut by clean dollar bills
the brash ****** it tried to display lacked controversy in dusty rooms
the irony being that it had become everything it tried to displease
and yet I was envious
the violent comfort it imposed was far more inviting than
living in rations, in the poverty that ate at your skin
it was friendliness with a clenched fist, like the hostess at a
party that smiles too wide and moves her eyes too quickly
sloshing her champagne glass but never quite spilling it
I remember once stumbling upon one the owners of a house
she was sitting in a wheelchair, there were diamonds on the wheels
I thought I was meeting god for the first time
she looked like she had lived ten lifetimes, wearing fox fur around her neck
the paws resting defiantly on shaky shoulders
age spots congregating around her eyes like whispering spies
wrinkles weaving and unraveling from her forehead to her chin
small nose inhaling sharp gulps of smoke, dust, reason
she wore a translucent egg-shell colored gown
that cascaded like a waterfall down to her tiny feet
it was as transparent as her skin making her look like a
one of those see-through fishes
all organs and blood, bone with the marrow withering
her eyes were closed but she spoke, piercing the room
“so you’re the new girl. We don’t take kindly to strangers
so she must’ve thought you were trustworthy, but I know
someone’s true intentions. I can smell it. It’s a gift.
It’s always the foreigners that wear masks. That’s how
they survive and who can blame them I would do the same.
I’ve been all over the world; the tips of my boots have been
polished while there are others that fester like rats in their
own caves. I know the contempt they must feel, I’ve never
been held down by others more powerful than me and yet
I know that it only creates misunderstanding.
I didn’t ask for this. I earned this. All of this.”
She pointed around the room.
“I am the only one that can decide my fate. When you
want something bad enough it is given to you. Most
just want things for free. They want it handed
to them in a silver plate with a golden spoon. ****
will always shy away from the light because there
is a sickness in their brains that don’t let them see past
their disgusting oppression.
I assume since you haven’t interrupted, I take
your silence as a sign that you don’t believe what I am saying.
That this piece of advice has flown over you.
I very well could have written these words on a letter
at the bottom of a stack of mail that will never be opened and
that’s okay. I don’t expect you to believe to my truth.
But the emperor you see before you was not conjured out of dust
and thin air, I swear it.” She ended with an angry laugh.
I wanted to say that her environment was polluted with
cotton ***** and the furniture was contaminated with soot
and dead skin cells
that once everyone dies they turn into dirt, into
the sand from which we seemed to have been composed of
but I realized that she didn’t see herself as dying
Seeing her there in the dark room with the shades drawn
I realized if that’s what it took to become a god
I didn’t want to be any more than human
but all I said was
“ma’am your plants are in need of watering.”

Wash your hands before leaving.
Every afternoon the television would have a woman in tears
Spanish dialogue, pastel colored sets
Tongue in cheek, modern romance sipping iced tea by the pool
The antagonist wearing a suit and three rings on each finger
Pause.
Soap bars are made of fat, the grease found in
Breakfast diners and sweat off a teenagers face
The lipids turning gelatinous and all I can think of is
Jell-o; the strange colored dessert that doesn’t taste like anything real
My hands begin to itch and I stand up
Wash your hands before leaving.
My hands have become open desert, dry animosity
The skin around the knuckles is delicate, one clench of a fist
I am sure that it will tear, like the skirt of a girl I once knew
But there are creatures lurking everywhere
In the handle of the bathroom door, in the shake of another hand
In the touch of a frame, in the grip of a key
Wash your hands before leaving.
The scattered murmurs on the screen remind me its 5p.m
The women are arguing with their manicured hands
Their eyes all having the same spidery lashes, spiders
I feel insects crawling under my bones
Termites clipping at my heels as I sit in this couch of horrors
I didn’t know the last time it had been washed
It smelled of the 1970’s and I want to go home
The babysitter is on the other chair reclined
Snoring, letting out bacteria through her mouth
At 8 years old I should be on the floor with a coloring book
My lips are dry, the screen is too bright, I can feel the filth everywhere I turn
So I stay
I hear the door knock and it’s my mother picking me up after work
My lungs sigh of relief
Time to go
But first
let me wash my hands before I leave

“Have you been to the Melrose café?
I heard they have the best lunch there”

“I always go downtown for coffee
helps you avoid the goons
and the smell of trash coming in through the door”

Francis St.
The neighborhood with the crooked spine streets, the intolerable hunchback it was in the armpit of Korea-town.
The snake stealth slither you acquired to get to the 7/11 down the street without your teeth being pulled out by a gun. In the 80’s the back wall of that convenience store was littered with
no-do gooders, the typical teenage gangster with ironic ****** white shirts and a mouthful of *****. An army with no motive.
Buzzards learning how to haunt instead of hunt.
In the afternoons it was speculated that they melted into the hot cement, an intimidating presence that smoked marijuana and made their cars jump.
With fear?
warmth?
happiness?
Who’s to say.
But times have changed. The hungry graffiti on the wall became the emblem of what had been, and what had survived. It was no longer us vs. them, it was me vs. you.
There’s a hostility that sinks into the earth and made the children more aggressive in playgrounds that endorsed healthy living; a melting *** reserved only for the diversely attacked and passive aggressive scrutinized bunch.
I lived on that street in the peach palm, salmon slapped building where I witnessed a domestically abused woman with a shattered nose smear her blood across the windowpane of the front door while I checked for the mail. Her hair was bleached and it hung dead on her scalp like sun rays that had gotten seasonal depression. Her face was a gauzy mess of a nosebleed. I felt for that woman the same way I felt for the slugs that people threw salt at. A sadistic addiction for soft things; There were bruises where there shouldn’t have been and I felt like the imperfections on the wall looking but unable to be seen. And I wondered if she could see me. She crouched on the corner of the steps and waited. I didn’t know what for. I could hear sirens, I could hear footprints of her abuser coming closer and picking her up like a rag doll. Opening the door and disappearing into the night with the sound of high heels slowly going mute. I stayed there until the blood dried. The next day the stain was gone and I wondered about all the other blemishes around the building and if they had the same disgust to them. Were the discolorations on the carpet of the hallways just violent memories?
I could smell the poverty inside that apartment. It clung to me like it held on to anyone.
I was guilty of it creeping into the beds of my nails while I tried in futility to wash it off.
Despite all the books I read, all the times I refused to step out of my room in fear of experiencing too much I was not saved from observing a lot of things. There was a cathedral church a couple blocks away that you could see outside the living room window and when the sun set. It almost felt like the presence of god looming just beyond, always assuring me that yes, I had not been abandoned but it wasn’t abandonment I worried about but about becoming what was inevitably seeping into the tap water, into the people with the olive skin that can’t unlatch their own cages.
Of becoming the shadow of a civilization that revels in the darkness.
I wanted to be a pageant queen on television with the pink lipstick instead of a statistic on the news of most likely dropping out of school and hiding in the crevice of welfare.
I wanted the palm trees without the choke-hold. I wanted the cool California weather without the open fires on July 4th, the firework setting flames to nearby homes telling me that this was the hell that came with freedom. The American dream was served in the oven and why won’t you accommodate to these standards you ask me and I don’t know how to reply.
While other kids played in their backyards and learned how to ride bikes, I learned how to survive, how to walk the streets without being murdered. These are good skills that transfer into college resumes.
So the roots of trees would come out of the ground like fists and demand reparations, they would sneak into the pavement and break car windows with the intention of stealing radios that they sold for a good penny. They carried knives and cackled at the neighborhood watch because all eyes were on them and yet nothing changed but I want to change, I want to change you chant.
Nothing will be the same since I lived in Francis st.
Named after the saint with the smugness in his smile and the gluttony blistering out of his dress.
Will you comfort me in my hours of need oh gracious one?
will you drink these sins like Catholics drink Jesus' blood on Sunday morning?
Is this blasphemy a reason to instill death between the hours of 2 and 4:30?
I’m always chasing on my knees for the knowledge that is taken away from the destitute culture that the ghettos become. I wanted to go back to the mud and dig all those lives that crossed mine and tell them that they could run after their intelligence. Save them from the quicksand. That one doesn’t have to be shot at a party for being raised by criminals. That cars that drive slow at night don't always have bad intentions.

But if I do, I’m afraid I’ll sink


I’ll sink

I act dumb in the dirt
In the soil, in the middle of the flies
that lick their wings, bat their tongues
in the dirt
I act dumb
for all the reasons that I’ve had to keep my back straight
at dinner tables
with narrow chairs that clip at the side of my thighs
for the party tricks that leave through the door
I become the punch line
in the muck, in the slime
I behave grotesquely
for the crowded silences in rooms
the friends that mistook my alienation
as a stab wound to laugh at
all the fireworks that exploded inside
this head, this brain, this basket of fruit
nothing like retaliation with a kiss
In the grime, in the earth’s decay
I act like panicked swords under anesthesia
drowsy summer swarm for
the times I’ve had to be a mother instead of a child
where walking down the street meant carrying
your weapons close to your chest
but remember enemies closer
I act dumb in the dirt

In the dirt everything is sublime

Guns are always next to the old television sets.
The kind that are called
“the sets”
“the tube”
“lonely night comfort and clean tooth money spender”, you know, your childhood gathered in small dusty screens.
I’m not sure where I’m getting at, something about violence being next to fishing equipment. Maybe that’s where Sundays are stored. That we’re all pawn shop children wasting away in places with  streets that are named after trees, the irony being that there is no life growing between the cracks of sweaty cement. On the driveways where skeletons are buried underneath like they own the land.
Where the living haunt the dead and there is no expiration date besides the milkshakes you refused to accept from that boy with the lazy eye.
I'm sorry if I sound insensitive when I say that these wars are always fought in vain.
That no matter how many people you save, there's always someone
drowning in the dark corners where no one wants to look.
Look.

There was ink in his mouth and it was Monday morning, doomsday morning.
The comparison of both these seemingly random attributes could mean nothing at all
to anybody else but they came hand in hand for a man that always walked with his shoes untied
and while the rest of the world chewed tobacco; he chewed cinnamon sticks that he would grind
to a fine powder in his mouth spitting it out at nearby ant mounds and by the nests of bumblebees.
This nomad’s of nobody’s business would wander the streets of his hated town, the world’s armpit, the city of fire and angels and whatever the hell else.
He would walk Pico Boulevard all the way to Wilshire Ave., towards Venice and then crookedly stumbling to Van Nuys but he didn’t know his bus routes and his mind was always swarmed by imaginary bugs that he picked up from old soda cans.
What he loved most of all was stopping by the bridges of highways and looking all the way down to
the cars below swimming past in a hurry; the sky dark blue and the headlights like light bulbs
almost running out of their batteries. He saw this as cathartic as most people saw sunsets or a pianist
shaking his head violently to his own tune and it was true. This simple man was born, some say, out of dust, car exhaust and the lost ID cards of peoples’ whose wallets were stolen. However intriguing this could be it wasn’t so.  He was born in a hospital in Chinatown and his mother had gold teeth that glistened whenever she drank too much and how often they shone.
You see, I knew this man long ago when my hair cascaded down my back in fine strokes and my lungs
weren’t yet tired from the things I chose to inhale. For all my purposes, this was the only person I wanted to talk about, to spit and screech whenever I heard his name and I didn’t even exactly know his name; The poor imbecile. He went by different pseudonyms and I suppose I did too but I had a name that most knew. Carmen and Leopold. They chose to remember it because it rolled off, it clawed at your teeth as you said it.
But Monday mornings were a specialty. It meant that he could go and see his brother who lived across town, the one who sang at fancy pubs and refined restaurants, where people didn’t have to yell to admire you, but slowly clapped, a soft hum in a room where everyone understands and doesn’t have to make up for it in the way they whistle your name. He always shook his head at this profession.
“You’re an animal to these people, an exhibit they can safely see from their auditoriums and then go to sleep without having to take you home. Your last hurrah will come soon and then what will you do?”
He didn’t understand Leopold’s hostility. This art he was drawn to. This voice that could have been
given to anybody but it was given to him. Deep down he knew he would never be a big star, he would never leave the place where he born. He would die close to where he went to elementary school and what a big sham, the whole big world so big and he would never see it. Never unfold, instead slowly
crumble like the crust of cakes he stared at through shopping windows.

My father’s name is Adam.  As in apple, the core stuck to a throat halfway, jutting seed.
This is the middle name that the business world has no whereabouts of. It was bestowed upon
him, this name, I imagine like all things; deliberately searching the scaffolds of the bible with apprehensive sweat trickling through brown sugar colored foreheads. However there’s nothing
biblical about this man. He has six children, the most unlucky of all numbers.
Thus, I have 5 half-siblings. Each with identically strange sunken eyes and tired skin.
The same kind of shared headache. Like being submerged for too long. Like too many mistakes and too little oxygen.
I am unlucky number 6. An omen-child. Not the settling of dust but of the silent movement before
it was ever frazzled by frantic feet. The calm you don’t want to realize exists.
3 daughters and 3 sons because he was compulsively articulate and clean; a nasty habit of OCD that was coddled by the women that washed their hands twice and bit their nails until they bled.
You see, I never speak of them because they do not speak of me.
Memory is tricky. Sometimes you remember the smell of fried pork in hands that have known hard
labor and other times you recall perfectly the pirated DVD’s sold for a dollar down the street of your neighbor’s apartment. The distorted graphics on the front, the headline in Spanish and despite how many people are there buying these illegally distributed films you wonder why you feel ashamed and embarrassed when you tell your friends, if you tell your friends but you don’t.
I know of their existence, of where they are located and could be found easily, their names and what they do but if one was to ask me, I would not know their personalities, how they react to bad news or if they are fulfilled, whether they know that our psychological genetics are cloudy and erratic and that is why Sundays always feel sacrilegious. They are faces in a picture that I never had a need to frame.
Despite having the same father, we do not call the same man, dad.
There is a brother that lives by the beach with a guy twice his senior.
They share martinis and aged bottled wine talking about social movements and Bill Clinton.
You see, he chooses to cohabitate with a man he knows is living his last few years and not a person that tied his shoes until he was 7 years old because he was too busy making time for other kids, stretching himself for everyone else that he had time for no one. There are certain unforgivable things a parent can do, like leaving too early, taking off 5 minutes before when he could have waited 10, turning the lights off when they should have stayed on, always. Yet there is a certain kind of pressure that is put on someone that is no less human than anyone else. Someone that can draw architecture and buy ice cream on days when limbs are too heavy to go to school can’t be all bad. Despite the entire trauma, you still pray and rescue wounded animals and that is something that can only be taught and not learnt.
So as these estranged family members disintegrated and gathered informative pieces about me through loose lips curious to see if I would fail, ravenous to know inevitable tragedy.
I unflinchingly understood the arbitrary imaginative reel of what is to be alone. To grasp all things violent and horrific to witness and endure it with closed fists and well-aware eyes. To go on vacation trips and enjoy the sunburnt noses of tourists waving their flyers in the air like flamingos flapping off the insects from their pink wings. Instead of playing in the sand with a second pair of hands and having inside jokes there was a long inspection of scars and the way adults consulted with other adults by trying out different words like masks hoping to impress and even humiliate the other with their colorful lyrics but after all only jargon.  
My father’s name is Lazarus. As in open tomb, cheating death with the sweet victory of another pulse.
I often dream about his funeral. The day when there is no father to blame, no man to pin my overzealous heart of anxiety. To face a family that is neither welcoming nor reproachful but is always silent. Just dagger glances, fang and hiss.  I wake up in sweat. Sometimes it is because I am there and the casket is open but he’s laughing and no one showed up, there is no wind and my legs feel like a tube of jelly, microwaved honey. I try to say the things I’ve always wanted to tell everybody that has ever had anything to do with me, the apologies I shouldn’t have handed and the truth I should have had memorized anyway. But I just end up spitting seeds, a million of them flowing out of my hands dragging me out like a million wingless flies rejecting the tears that I cried for all the wrong reasons.
Other times it is crowded with people I didn’t know about, wasn’t aware of like searching through a private drawer and finding *** toys or things you wish you hadn’t discovered and the casket is empty, there is an imprint of a body but no one resides inside until the floor drops and there are stairs I’ve seen before, somewhere at some point. When I get to the bottom there’s a whisper
“where can I find you if not in here, on skin that is my own, on a forehead where no one asks if it remembers Chinese food and the pinch of birth.”

I love my father but I would never tell him no not directly.
I love him to death and am relieved to know
I will never be a dad.
Never be a forced hero.
Never proof of something that wasn’t trying to hide in the first place.

This is a letter to strangers, a dissertation, repertoire
to people I have known but have not fully held
to the ones that I am bound by blood but would not
recognize in a crowded room
out of all these ambiguous characters
I am unlucky number 6. An anomaly of chance girl. Not the settling of dust but of the silent movement before it was ever frazzled by frantic feet. The calm you don’t want to realize exists.

The man who wears a leather belt and uses sensible words
loves her in cobalt violet, in the streaks of a hazy violent sky
after a storm has passed and she lets him
he claims that the egg people are coming, they’ll bring with
them handful of gifts of glory, of the things people hide
in the crevices of sidewalks, in the spaces where identity cards
are devoured by the teeth of the unknown
the television is always on and the static that surrounds them
is the serenading music she listens to before she falls asleep at night
she pretends that love is painting one’s nails while the other
loses their mind
as he laughs at the invisible neighbors outside the window
his bones can smell the coming of the apocalypse
and it’s not in the form of a swarm, or a flood
it comes in the bodies of girls with strawberry blonde
hair and that’s why he’s so drawn to her
and why his mother was swallowed by the earth
she learns that illness comes in permanent mauve
the walls of her room are covered in that hue
the boy she sneaks cigarettes from at the diner
in his car the color is almost a tangible personification
the smoke blows out into the crisp air like a bag of potato chips
the lungs constrict and expand
the thoughts hindered from years of yielding to the yellow sun
with the ****** robe
the child, the woman, the human lives in ****
but the thinker manages to escape years later
and live in the suburbs on an easy paycheck from
foolish strangers that believe that gasoline is a cheap party trick
and a fantastic high
she doesn’t recognize touch anymore besides
the harsh graze of asphalt hitting her knees
people seldom realize that freedom is not in
the way your toes curl but in the way they finally unfurl
how curious you can spot patterns where there are none
to be rescued does not always come in the way of clean arms

She loved him in transparent maroon
the grasp of warm sand kissing you gently

you’re a shy hiss
her voice echoes, whispers through the
stringy hair of green overgrown grass
I’m not the sister you knew all those years ago
the gods have been dangerous to me
in the city of root rot in between the cashmere sweaters
you stole from heaven, from shopping windows
the harvest is unfinished, as the gladiolas bow in prayers
for the follies underneath my petticoat
you wanted the birds to sing but now they scream
for the arrival of summer in the veins I consider
abused blue but have always been crimson sugar
I want to reach out and hold your hand
but it’s foreign now, the youth like creeping vines
that we clung to have vanished
leaving residuals of a wasteland that we once considered
home, manicured to remind you the letters you
threw out of your mouth from the roofs of
sunset apartments
the drugs you hid in the eye sockets of boys
that would eventually be murdered in ally streets
in downtown LA  
adulthood didn’t come in a red box
it came as mother death, knocking her meaty hand
on the door, uninvited and unintentional
as she rubs her temples with the bones of
the misguided
I’m grown don’t you know, you exclaim
I know the difference between the red rose
and the sick serpent underneath it
sure the children would think you crazy before
but when you talk about the rats always clawing
at night at the ceiling of your mouth
you know to laugh, you know that the wallpaper isn’t
shifting for everyone but it’s the gift of
knowing that there’s always two sides of things
that keeps you grounded
in the ever shifting quicksand of this moderate
temperature room for the easy living

It’s no longer burn the witch
it’s drown the ******
purity only attainable when it’s served
as a death dessert, martyr Mary
do you understand TV dinners
made the housewife go extinct
or berserk, I think that’s how it goes
catching their heads in ovens as protest
but listening came in through the door
as a catcall, festering on ottoman chairs
smoking that new cigarette with a cautionary
tale at bedtime
the ends  being ground, like the beef
that we’re all guilty of starting between
sighs, or the coffee beans blistered
trying to come up with an excuse as to why
high heels won’t break that man’s spine,
and it won’t in that new suit he’s so possessive of
because he paid for it with the sweat of his back
as the gaggle of his fellow businessmen
scuffle over who gets to lick the perspiration
that earned him that respect, that bought
the privilege of feeling like a man that stands out
from the wolves in offices, waiting at midnight
for the froth to begin to foam and to
claw at reasons why the bed is always empty
when he’s everything everyone wants to be
and I think you begin to sympathize,
I think you begin to understand why
balancing a ballpoint pen between your
forefinger and thumb is equally as
drinking the cup half full
the modern man with his chiseled teeth
and overt way of speaking throws
up at the American Dream, standing
naked in the glory of publicity fame
there’s too much lights, the makeup
is too intense
the crown of jezebels
Belongs to the hardworking man
with the unkempt lawn, and the
natural features of a god
it’s no longer burn the witch
it’s freeze the *****
while they stand flirting
with the boondocks trapping
fireflies and weak Christians
in their hair
and will you listen to me now?
as the hordes of provoked
believers stand in crowded
bars and in your own home
******* themselves mentally
as they chew and spit
into each other’s mouth
what they’ve always wanted to hear
and the pleasure comes from
not knowing and not wanting to know
and will you touch me now?
that the fantasy is created in your own image
and will you worship me now?
that I agree with these shackles
telling me that they were always meant to be there
that ******* is next to holiness
and will you accept me now?
that the book has been rewritten
and the villain is not you nor me
but the refrigerator with the lizard
that tempted humankind and
banished them from ever entering paradise again
and will you **** me now?
that comedy is only worth in whoever
has the longest tongue

There are two types of secrets
the ones sworn under oath never to tell anyone
whispered in crowded hallways
and while getting cold water from the corner store
and the ones you weren’t supposed to hear
the ones tossed in the dark, the ones forbidden
under the fingernail sensitive
top of the tongue scalding, threatening to
taser your skin with the weight, the electricity
that these words hold suspended in thick air
every Sunday evening I would listen to the
perfect consonants through the wall
the sacred sermon my mother and father would ritualize
the stories from before child, B.C
it would start with a question, so daintily pressed through
gleaming teeth
and he would bellow triumphantly about the hero within him
the time he intervened between two bloodied men with
pulpy faces touching with the grace of dancing gods  
his fists gracefully gliding between a pool of face
and can’t we calm down, and can’t we breathe the hot asphalt
of the day, the gravel of car exhaust ******* out
our sweat, I think you can
and these men with missing teeth and missing souls
would spit but their heads would level and my
heart would soar up through the ceiling, flutter right out
through
but these fairy tales were also horror stories
about the time the man was a boy and his father would
chase after him with a crowbar never to return home,
running barefoot through the hot concrete of the streets
causing blisters to appear like water balloons
popping them like the lungs that burst that day
but nothing but tears exploded out of them
and I thought I understood
the legend of the damsel in distress
my mother waiting by the door, waiting for the burns to fade from
her skin, waiting for the roof to cave in like the feelings
she promised she would swallow with cough medicine
and funerals are only birthday parties when you’re surrounded
by death, oh to be young
but then the secrets started to venture out of the confines of
my home, spilling out of my bed to become
real stories I told myself at school when I didn’t have
a Band-Aid for the scorching burn of sitting all alone
so I started living them, as I sat huddled in the bathroom
envisioning a toy cowboy stranded in the middle of the
bathtub, repeatedly soaked to make his clothes almost sun
bleached and his smile submerged, blotting, erasing
teaching myself that there’s no such thing as free will
when decisions are made for you
and this toy cowboy with his gun perched politely on his hand
Ready to deal some bullets or a handshake,
I never knew which but it didn’t matter
when there wasn’t conversation exchanged and
I wondered if he tried to escape when I wasn’t looking
did he feel like a goldfish in a bowl
his reality distorted, the glass too thick to realize
there was more than loneliness, more than
constant drowning, that being cold wasn’t a
state of being
no I don’t think so
that was the big secret you see
listening when one has nothing to say
you pick things up like lost puppies
or thumb tacks left on the floor
or you lose them like bobby pins and self-made money
my memories, my worst enemy
coming to an empty house at age 13
no home-made meal like pressing my face against
the carpet, being stealthy quiet
until I heard sound downstairs
the neighbors, the clatter of dishes being distributed
around the dining room table
laughter and television news about the ****** of a
teenager being shot outside his front yard
and this was my bread and butter
screaming of kids wrestling about who gets the
bigger piece of cake
the movement of chairs, the kissing of feet
walking from one room to the other
and although these mumbles didn’t tell their story
it told mine
the living room turning from bruised peach
to melancholy blue, solitude buzzing
through the creme brulee walls of my parents
studio apartment,
the tapping of a faucet, the slight erratic breathing
of a pipe leaking gas nearby but I survived
there are two types of secrets told
the ones you’re supposed to listen to
and the ones you forgot you knew