old habits die hard,
but the ones that die the hardest have human faces.
these are boys wrapped around fingers,
these are girls painting their lips,
and here I am, writing love songs for all of them.
here stands Saint Peter and a book,
and his long fingers trailing over the words:
the first chapter was drafted
on the back of a movie ticket,
the second on a cocktail napkin, I think--
the third I wrote with pen on somebody’s skin.
the fourth, scratched on wooden planks
with a knife my father gave me.
and yet--
and yet, here they all are,
together like a leather-bound Bible
and the gatekeeper smiles
and says nothing.
angel, what do I atone for?
yes, these are my hands tearing out the pages,
throwing them into the flames, despairing
please, God, why won’t they burn--?
now in the fire I see movie screens and bare skin,
lips on drink glasses in dark rooms.
here are the things which I have lived and spoken;
the ink won’t come off the paper
and I will never ask for forgiveness.
this is the ending I wrote
when God didn't answer.
here I ask again, and only once--
angel, what do I atone for?
and the gatekeeper smiles
and says
nothing.

i can feel my soul rotting out
you’re sitting there, i can taste your
smoke
the bitterness of words on your
breath,
massless
meaningless
i breathe them in anyway.
i know you can’t take anything seriously;
maybe it’s just that you can’t take the
right
things seriously.
you look at me like i’m a
child
(why won’t you meet my eyes)
and you talk like the world is yours
to explain to me,
a little too loud and
a little too long and
a little too much like
you think you’re telling me things i don’t know
(could you even--?)
you think i speak when i’m spoken to,
i think i speak when i’m listened to;
because if you were
right
maybe fewer of these conversations
would be about you
and i wouldn’t be left to wonder if you like me
for the things i do say,
or just for the things i
don’t,
while i’m silently absorbed in
sitting here
listening
nodding
smiling
a word for every thirty of yours,
oh, wow
and
how nice
like clockwork until I’m just
crazy
with
listening,
counting down the seconds until your
impromptu sermon
(beacon of self-righteousness)
ends,
and finally
i can remember the sound of my own
voice,
snatched away in the wind
stirred up by your beating
wings,
but maybe carried off to someplace
where i can actually be
heard.

this is how we survive without living:
on diets of choked-down words
and blood from bitten tongues,
drinking sun that blisters open lips.
we are the ones who taste heaven
by killing pieces of ourselves,
the mortal realizations of all things
romanticized into tragedies.
when we walk through gardens
the roots of trees tug at our feet,
the soles sink into the earth;
still, we cannot walk below the ground.
when we skim flat rocks over black waves
we awaken the fairer sirens
who dwell in fog like the stones we throw
and sing our bodies into mist.
but if we learn to tread water long enough,
our bare toes will kick up the dirt
and unearth the skeletons of shipwrecks;
these, at last, will sail us home.

the girls i see are
angels
sitting around a bar
and laughing
like glass ground under
a steel-toed boot,
with manicured fingers
stirring glasses of
ambrosia
or down their throats
in the bathroom,
because they are not
your Renaissance girls,
harvest goddesses
with lips and cheeks
stained cherry-red.
nobody paints these girls,
their rouge is more
like blood.
they would sooner hang
from a rope, frayed and brown
than a bright museum wall,
for no mahogany frame, or
shining pedestal
knows the grace
of turning aimlessly on
vinyl swivel stools,
making small talk
while their feathers fall
one by one.

oh, God bless the boy
who was born from
blue cigar smoke, and bled
filthy water from arteries
that never made it back to his liquid heart.
please, angels, save the boy
from the stones tied to his frozen feet
when he thought he could walk on water,
and the pearly-eyed sirens singing
with empty promises woven into the harmonies.
pray, heaven, keep the boy
keep him locked up
and rattling the golden gates,
take him by the weary wrist
and shackle him,
keep him loyal
with gifts of ambrosia and wine
and he will build his own altar.
here, people, worship the boy
where he offers a bleeding eucharist,
there is dirt beneath his thumbnail
as he smears the line between
sin and sacrament.
tell them this is your scripture now.
and you-- you, forsake the boy,
climb the ridges of his crooked spine
and do not look down,
where cast from shining heaven
he raises his ****** palms;
this is the rotting skeleton
of the tower he built to the sky.
God, bless the boy, the water is boiling,
and even the sirens fear him now.

I dig my nails into everything I touch
and hope that I draw blood.
museum walls and the pages of books,
my shaking hands are raw and stained
with ink and paint and scars
and all of it, red--
nothing as sanguinous-scarlet or hot
as the red, the red
it sticks between my fingers,
blossoms against the dark
of sleep, of dreams
and the whites of my eyes
are shot with red,
palms pressed hard to ruby lips
and the cherry-stained tongue
tastes red,
the red, the red, the red--
and every light was burning red,
and every other color dead.

summer’s blaze, winter’s haze
the bright white glow of better days
wide dry eyes and fluttering sighs
funeral chimes for which nobody cries
lake water shimmering sapphire blue--
these are the things that remind me of you.
sunsets incarnadine, moonlight alive
a car parked crookedly in its long drive
boys who sing softly and sweetly and slow
girls who wear stockings and dresses and bows
everything’s beautiful, everything’s new--
but when I look at it all, I still think of you.
fireworks lighting a sky full of stars
pretty new clothes that cover old scars
boats rocking slowly on gentle waves
sirens that call faithful men to their graves
driving forever, not knowing where to--
it’s never the same now, it’s never with you.