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the lady has me temporarily off the bottle
and now the pecker stands up
better.
however, things change overnight--
instead of listening to Shostakovich and
Mozart through a smeared haze of smoke
the nights change, new
complexities:
we drive to Baskin-Robbins,
31 flavors:
Rocky Road, Bubble Gum, Apricot Ice, Strawberry
Cheesecake, Chocolate Mint...

we park outside and look at icecream
people
a very healthy and satisfied people,
nary a potential suicide in sight
(they probably even vote)
and I tell her
"what if the boys saw me go in there? suppose they
find out I'm going in for a walnut peach sundae?"
"come on, chicken," she laughs and we go in
and stand with the icecream people.
none of them are cursing or threatening
the clerks.
there seem to be no hangovers or
grievances.
I am alarmed at the placid and calm wave
that flows about. I feel like a ***** in a
beauty contest. we finally get our sundaes and
sit in the car and eat them.

I must admit they are quite good. a curious new
world. (all my friends tell me I am looking
better. "you're looking good, man, we thought you
were going to die there for a while...")
--those 4,500 dark nights, the jails, the
hospitals...

and later that night
there is use for the pecker, use for
love, and it is glorious,
long and true,
and afterwards we speak of easy things;
our heads by the open window with the moonlight
looking through, we sleep in each other's
arms.

the icecream people make me feel good,
inside and out.
little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won't flinch and
i won't blame
you,
as I drive along the shore alone
as the palms wave,
the ugly heavy palms,
as the living does not arrive
as the dead do not leave,
i won't blame you,
instead
i will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.
little dark girl with kind eyes
you have no
knife. the knife is
mine and i won't use it
yet.
If you lay still, I'll entomb thee
Stay and capture, but ne'er doom thee
Lie here - So entombed, you'll never die

Let me take thee, let me have you,
I can make us, you won't have to!
In these lines forever we will lie.

Writing this I have already
rose like Romeo, though by lead he
swore his soul would sink the stars. Oh, Fie.

"Liar" - Please, I pray pronounce him,
truth exposed I do denounce him.
Dramatist. You made love with your words.

We make angels from a nothing.
Ones who'll bear the cherubs touching,
probing - dreams, desires, future fears...

Now I ramble - please forgive me,
Fear no lecture though, for give me
Time - I'll write the rhyme to make you see:

If you lay still, I'll entomb me
Rhyme to love - and always move me.
I have leaned that love is in the eye.

If you may still have desire
I'll rhyme and write - then throw to fire
lines in which forever I will lie.
I miss you
and whatever talk we need to have
make it a mad lib
fill in responses you like
so long as we're talking
and laughing
again.
I want the smell of a hotel
I booked to go catch you
to hit me
and swirl through my nose.
are too sweet
when they've cried all the salt out
Green crash,
suddenly center signal
on strange, distant announcement squiggle.
Scenery dashingly
simple, single.

Wave shape,
hungering scented cower.
On top, beady dispassioned shower,
shaving or scraping a
wooden tower.

Stale grid,
static or sounding static.
Appear, pointedly under attic,
wailing forbidden, not
automatic.

Big screen
messaging: starlight scatter.
The end. Something but antimatter.
Trigger between, in the
ribbing: flatter.

Soft board,
terribly outer terror
perceives singular, stringent error.
Coughing accordingly
code propeller.
Stream of consciousness applied over strict meter and rhyme.
I went looking today.

I put on my red boots
and my blue pants
and I opened up the doors.

I went looking today.

I went through the parks,
the streets, the empty hallways.
I got lost looking for a lost you.

The crowd carried your scent,
carried me,
and I was six and a half miles from home.

I put on my smiles
and my cloak of courage.
My watch ticked away the time my heart drove my feet to you.

I went looking today.

I went looking for you.

I searched the corners of boxes,
under the shade of rose petals,
and in burning letters.

Because I had to.
I had to find you
before I lost my mind.

My bones ached for the home in you,
my heart refused to keep a beat continuous,
my skin began to come undone.

I went looking for you today,
only to stop before your door
and walk all the way back home

still in want.
 Mar 2014 Olivia Mercado
M
You know how that quote goes, everyone does.
"If I was a drizzle, she was a hurricane"
I've got news for you: we're all just our own kinds of rainstorms
Coincidentally running into each other at different times
while we're just trying to drench whatever we can.
People used to tell me they looked up to me
and the same people haven't spoken to me in months
because what they saw was a figurehead instead of
a friend who is on their level,
and they like people who have flaws (not that I don't),
but tell us to strive to be perfect.
There's all these impossible expectations
of moral perfection- if you were the one who did it, it's
completely understandable given the circumstances,
but as soon as I'm late for school,
I'm lazy, a dropout, a slacker, partied too hard the night before.
You can lie your ***** off to me but you know
when someone did something wrong it was completely, morally unacceptable, but you, you're justified.
You can't get inside their head and understand them
because who we are, as humans, is not enough to forgive perfectly-
And I've worked so hard to learn how to love
flawlessly, but the more I love, the more I
bleed, with every breath you don't appreciate
and every love poem you don't read
And they keep beating me and beating me down
expecting this priceless gold mountain of positivity
and crushing me. It's like they're looking for flaws
in the statue I'm hiding within, and they seek to
destroy it because even tarnished gold is too bright
in their losing eyes. Maybe I'm the flaw in the statue,
my pink flesh and pale blood can't stand
these attacks and violent words, creating
holes in my heart where before there were none. They seek,
with every moment, for some trait that's imperfect,
and I'm only human, I can't maintain perfect posture all my life,
I'm on my knees,
because that's what they told me to do,
in the midst of standing up for what I believe in I forgot
how to breathe,
I'm begging because I don't think I can do this anymore.
The blood I live is torn out of me because I've given it out of lonely passion, I've had my suffering and death,
where's my resurrection?
I'm driving my head into the ground trying to
whip up the storm that will make me unique, beautiful, and valuable,
tear through the home where the heart is and skid across the highway of souls,
gather little tornadoes around me,
while they're destroying me from the inside out;
What I need isn't perfection, it's someone to love me perfectly
and I'm caught in a tortured cycle because no one can love like that-
so I'm kneeling for these things that are greater than me, and
watching in vain for an equal partner, since
no one can come too close to this lighting
and 200mph wind is fine to observe from a distance,
but nearby it's too much to take-
It's lonely being a hurricane, too, because
none of the lovely drizzles think they're worth your time.
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