I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME ROAR
is what your eyes are screaming at me,
pencil scratching across page as
fingers stampede, stationary upon
your desk. don't you
know what you're doing to me,
with your Catholic faith and
artesian frame?? I swear
to your god (for I am
Protestant and yes they are different)
that you will ruin me and I swear
to my god that I would

love nothing better for in
your unmaking of me there is
a subtle art,
not an artifice, and it is
this which I adore, possibly
even more than I adore thee.

I wish I could write a poem about
how clever and interesting and utterly
human you are; alas, I cannot.
all I can think about is your
******* hair, an entropic tangle of
dying cells and pigment catching solar
rays and background radiation in
every ******* selfy you take and
I am sorry that is what I fixate upon
but how could I not?

my apologies, for usually I am
a far better man than this, yet
even then you are
a far better man than I and
I commend you for it.

stay tubular, young lad.

stay ******* tubular.

bandanna knotted in your hair,
you are
eloquently attired, and almost
always a little late; it ok.
you aren't
beholden
to standard notions of
punctuality or
Americanized dreams of
mechanistic triumph over the
virus of Nature.
you are more and less and equal to
the sum of your
constituent parts and
you are exquisite.

I always hated art.

as a kid, the forty-five minutes
every ******* Friday and Wednesday was
excoriating. even though
the other kids adored
fondling their fingers through paint
swatches, it just wasn't for me.
until I met you, my muse and my
canvas, your shuddering skin a
cream tableaux for my
lust to reimagine
pointillism cubism impressionism
le renaissance haut
in scratches and bites and
streaks of saliva criss-crossing
goosebumped skin.

I always hated art.

she smiled at me
through lab goggles and
a light, latex-gloved touch;
I blushed, looking down at my feet;
I caught sight of
the unseemly lump of
flesh on the table between us.
strange, that this dissection was so
[Russian Nesting Dolls]
meta; two brains with bodies
dissecting one without.
technicolor dreams drenched in
formaldehyde leaching out
upon the stainless steel table
parietal lobe corpus callosum Brocke's
area god I think I love
this girl I

Ashes 2 Ashes

such an inane phrase.
combustion is an irreversible process,
and you can't burn ashes for a
second time like you did to me.
you razed me like I was
aught but another Carthage in the
Punic Wars of your myriad
romances and affairs and dalliances and
flings;
why can't I stop wondering
which I was??

dust to dust

light of my life, fire of my *****,
you deceiver of women and
seducer of the same.
you have
never
made a wise choice when you
followed your instincts,
yet, god help me, I find you
adorable lovely handsome.
Queens is your origin and
Manhattan your playground;
isn't it crazy that in a city of
eight million people
I can't seem to escape you?

let me first
apologize; it is neither
fair nor right, that I have placed
you, human that you are,
upon a pedestal, made you
object of my affection,
concurrently greater and baser than
all of your peerage.
second,
let me apologize again.
I've been ****** up for
a while now, mentally and
blood alcohol levelly, and it is
not fair
that you have to deal with me at my worst.
third,
let me
apologize
once more,
because even at my best I was not
worth your time, yet I persisted
insinuating myself into your life when I
had no right to and that,
that was my cardinal sin, was it
not?
that I had the audacity to
love you, and then
to demand you
love me back.

step one: mark out your
territory, bordered by
sea surf on the one side and
beach towels on the other;
dig a moat to the left and right so
no one can intrude upon your
Fortress of Solitude.
step two: build a sandcastle.
ignore the imminent
tides and the omnipresent
ravages of gravity; they are
irrelevant to your
Dream of Isolation.
step three: come to realize
that you are not
happy despite
getting exactly what you wanted:
welcome to the real
world kiddo. I hope you
found what you're
Looking For.

the metro came
clickety-clack, clickety-clack,
velocity spit out by metal wheels
and metal gears.
and I thought about
How It Would Feel
jumping in front of that
mechanized Titan.
(loving you is not easy)
brutalizing pain and then
nothing but ******* blessed silence.

then I realized
I already knew this sensation.
(loving you is not easy)

they lost an airplane.
(imagine that!)
it's 2014 and we just up and lost
an entire airplane.
Barack can tell you
what your best friend said
behind your back
on Facebook,
but we can't find
a ******* plane.
my father, man
that he is,
was all bluster
and thunder, righteous
fury, real Sinners in The Hand of an
Angry God
diatribe;
I stayed quiet through dinner because
I Knew
what it was like to lose something
huge and monumental and beautiful
in flight to behold.
I swear I'll never love again.

I remember,
stretching out,
the whole expanse of
the universe naked and bare
for you and me;
still,

still, still
as the night, though all I remember
is nothing, as if there was no you and no me.
turned inside-out,
my sins laid bare
for public consumption. Love of

my life, Helen of
my Troy, still
I adore thee. the little bear
to my Ursa Major, remember,
remember, do not forget! that without
You I am not me.

For me,
you would do anything, you son of
Adam, you would never turn me out,
despite my myriad disappointments, still
you love me, remember?
(please don't let this come to bear)

Bare,
if you would be so kind, your soul for me;
I want to see you bleed and remember
days long past, bygone eras of
stillness, still, oh so still
before Pandora let all but Hope out.

Out! Out!
you let slip the dogs of war, and they mean to lay us bare.
They destroyed the water still:
we die of dehydration, you and me,
in this desert of
our own avarice ----- remember

me, I implore you, out and out,
days of old when our skin was bare
and our sins still clothed. please. remember.

leaves self-immolate,
red orange yellow --- this is
How I Fell In Love

window frost, hand on
thigh --- our abandoned clothing
littering the floor

a bud, poking from
fresh-thawed earth --- I am trying
to forget your laugh

sun, high; so is she,
blunt 'tween her lips, my tongue 'twixt
her thighs --- I Miss You

my ***** Little Secret, symbolized
by ***** words and little idiosyncrasies and
secret secret liaisons;
je c'adore,
laying Control alongside
cast off clothing and kicked off wet *******,
heartbeat aflutter beneath your
oh so deliberate ministrations and
thighs aquiver beneath your
oh so deliberate teeth.
my wrists chafe; bound by bitter steel to demure wood,
powerless
or rather
entirely in your power.
you've always loved it,
the thrill of exploration, of
Newfoundland, of
conquer and subjugation and ravishment;
your tongue flickering against my
**** like eiderdown,
fingertips tracing spirals and Möbius
Strips upon my *******.

you
subjugated me,
doing me as
Pizarro did the Incans,
plundering my heart and
ravaging the remainder.
that's probably why I love you so,
because
nothing
feels so good as
being subsumed,
breathless held under
kicking but only
languorously,
like swimming on a Sunday afternoon.

god you look so good.
it's taking every shard of
Decency I have
(and they are shards; I dropped
Decency a long time ago)
not to shove you up against a wall
and press my mouth oh-so-insistently
against yours,
hands rough, partitioned from your skin
by that ******* dress
(god, how I hate that dress)
(god, how I love that dress)
your nails clawing at my back
in feline fury, gasping for breath
as my thigh nestles between yours.
(we're just getting started)

I am here,
laying in the grass,
eyes on the clouds and
mind in them.
I watch passing planes and their
twin streams of water
vapor arrow across the azure expanse
and I wish
I had
someone to share it with;
I wish
I had
shared it with you.

instead,
I am here,
laying in the grass,
daydreaming about boarding
a twin stream producing plane
and flying
the **** away from
here.

you love
oh so many people,
but you only love them
by half-measures.
you've never been able
to be so exposed,
to love someone wholly,
to risk that you would
give someone your
all,
your end-all, be-all,
and find it
unreturned, simply
kept upon the fireplace mantle or
perhaps on the bookshelf,
unimportant ornamentation.

he's
tripping, but not
coerced by gravity;
rather a Molotov cocktail of
endorphins lobbed straight at his
prefrontal cortex.
some find this
distasteful,
some find it
deplorable;
god help me,
I find it adorable.
(it's the only time he'll
admit he loves me)

you're
sitting on a ledge,
feet dangling in the fall air
and you won't ******* shut up
because you're with Her
and you feel like a
star:
consuming hydrogen,
creating helium.
no one ever
warned you about how
others would
step into your heart
like they owned the place
(and now she did)
looking around, nodding,
"yes yes, this'll do, but
what's the rent like?"
no one ever warned you
that you'd let them stay for free.

"write poetry for me" she said
but how do you
write poetry for someone
whose splendor eclipses
the magnificence of the sun?
trying to encapsulate
You
in words would be akin to
"caging" a lioness
in a prison of fine china.
so perhaps instead
of trying my hand at writing
about you
I will simply say this:
I Like You A Lot

you've always been
"rough around the edges,"
seeing lines in coloring books as
suggestions and
scribbling wherever you **** pleased
(your handiwork adorns
countless bibles in two churches,
innumerable physics worksheets,
and the walls of
one bathroom stall in your high school,
which has probably been
repainted
by now)
I'm sorry I couldn't smooth your edges,
but I'm glad I did not.

I don't think you know
how madly in love
I am
with you;
I can imagine you clearly
in a ****** white tee
smiling in the sunlight
compelling me to you
like you are the earth
and I am the moon.
(but the moon will never
touch the earth,
as I will never
touch you)

princess,
don't you know your castle is a prison?
you may live comfortably,
but you live chained.
let me take you away.
I cannot promise you luxury;
I can only promise you love.
I know that this
[love]
is a trifle to trade kingdoms for,
but I ask all the same,
palm upturned and hand outstretched.
let me take you away.
I promise to make it
worth your while.
(I promise to make it
up to you)

you were never an artist;
I'm sorry but it is true.
once, you sketched me
(sharpie on loose leaf, 2013)
and while I was touched by the gesture
[labor of love that it was]
it really looked more like your older brother.
now, your art is shared for mere
moments
(stylus on snapchat, 2014)
but you are still no artist.
you are an auteur, a lover, a curator,
finessing your homages to your youth
[pokemon, zelda, batman]
you may not be an artist
but I love you all the same.

I'm entranced,
your hair gleaming like copper
in the summer sun.
(I could swear you never
looked so good)
your laugh is floating on the wind, like
infant arachnids with silk parachutes.
(I could swear nothing ever
sounded so lovely)
your freckled shoulder is exposed to the world,
dappled and *flawless
(Atlas himself had not
shoulders so strong)
(I could swear I was
in love with you)

I am Atlantis, and you, the sea.
I am glorious and ethereal; you are tangible and serene.
you are rhythmic yet unpredictable, flowing into every crevice and crevasse of Me you can.
I am not nearly as impressive without you, the force of You bearing down and on me in every way, thirteen atmospheres of pressure holding me in this ideal shape.
one of these days, you're going to crush me.
one of these days, I'm going to let you.

I hate waiting
but I wait for you.
I'm staring out of the glass pane
into the night
hoping that each set of taillights
maybe belong to you?
(I'm silly)
I know if you were going to be here,
you would have done so ten minutes ago
but it's 10:25
and I don't want to go to bed
quite yet;
I keep hoping you'll show up,
breathless with apologies.
(silly)
It's 10:30; I'm in bed.

"I have a religion
I just don't ******* know"
so spoke
the blonde boy
across the aisle
in the beanie and the falcons shirt.
(he's a high school freshman
and already so
disillusioned?
would that I had been so wise!)
and that's my problem
I just don't ******* know
(no one ******* knows)
where is
your spiritual magnetic north?
where did you find your deities?
in the bracing wind
shearing slantways along your soul?
in the crackle of sparklers
arcing towards the ground from burnt fingertips?
in the murmur of dawn
crossing the horizon-threshold with trepidation?

Let's run away together
and buy a cramped, one bedroom apartment
in New York or Prague or San Fran or Bristol
wherever you like
(I could never begrudge you anything)
I'd sleep so much better
with you in my arms
(I wouldn't be scared
that you would **** yourself
in the night)
I'd learn to cook
vegitarian
just for you
and
I'd make you tea
when you were sick;
You'd tell me
"You're pretty"
every morning
and mean it
and
You'd read me
Nabokov and Ginsburg and Shakespeare
over breakfast on the weekend.
We'd go to the museum
and discuss
artistic movements
and painting techniques;
We'd go to concerts
and dance (though
neither of us
can)
We'd lie in the grass
under the stars
naming off constellation
basking in each others' proximity.
In short, we would
love each other;
*** each other;
make each other happy.
Let's run away.
let's run away together.

do you think
that when the leaves
selfimmolate
in amber and scarlet and sienna
it's their equivalent of blushing?
and when they are
coerced earthward by
the insistence of gravity
it's how they fall
in love?
if these are true
do you think
that the leaves
are as enamored with each other
as I am with you?

your love is so...
clinical.
when your hands are on me
I feel like you're palpating my lymph nodes,
checking my inguinal area for swelling.
as if
I'm diseased
and you know exactly how to heal me;
as if
I'm broken
and you know exactly how to fix me;
but
I'm not broken
and you don't know how to **** me.

you were my Doctor.
your touch my own personal TARDIS.
guiding me through new worlds
of pleasure,
introducing me to new species
of endorphins.
(I've never been
so ******* hot
in my life)
you made me feel
gorgeous.
(if only for a moment)
you made me feel
special.
(even if you've had
other companions
before)
you unwound me
lay me bare;
I was like a padlock beneath the
sonic screwdriver of your
delicate
oh so deliberate
ministrations.
(please come back)

we built our love like Rome built an empire; we built it over years and generations of pregnant moments; we built it to conquer; we built it to last as if unaware of empires' propensity to crumble around those who loved it best. maybe that was the problem, that we loved our empire of adoration and not each other. perhaps we were too enraptured with how good we were together: we always made your friends jealous, we took the best photos together, my parents loved you better than they did me. maybe we were too wrapped up in We and forgot to worry about we. we fought our battles, our Pugachev's Rebellions and our Glorious Revolutions. we were so secure within the city limits we forgot there was a whole world out there, and by the time we tore down the walls to find a world awaiting, we were obsolete; we thought we hadn't needed anyone, and now no one needed us.

I learned fear watching a twenty-something white man with three goody-goody sons and a wife of a teacher or maybe a teacher of a wife sermonize on hell clothed in the black cassock I imagine death decreed all pastors should wear in reverence to the end-all be-all. fear was realizing that all your friends that shared the same skin color were bound to hell by an omnipotent and benevolent and above all merciful god who couldn't tolerate any dissent. we were children, we were taught, didn't Jesus love children best of all?
I grew up, and then it wasn't just my friends who shared my skin color; no none of my friends believed in a higher power at all, and I was unsure I did.
but fear of eternity in hell kept me devout and that was when I learned that there was something worse than hell, there was heaven. how could I be happy without the people I loved? would God make me forget all about them? how could you be perfectly happy in a utopia with no problems to surmount? how could an eternal God judge mortal crimes so harshly? and then I realized that not even people who had dedicated their lives to preaching the word of god knew why God would allow it. I heard ******* arguments that hell was God's last great mercy, allowing those who did not believe in him to not have to be near him for eternity; I didn't believe them for a second. people are full of ****, but only because god created us in his image.

After your lecture on
polyphase something-or-the-others
we meet at my house which is also
your house. We were going to make dinner
but
you're wearing those square black glasses and
a tight lacy blouse and
that **** pencil skirt that hugs your ***
and those black stilettos and
I can't help myself. I lean
across the stove and twirl
it off, condemning the pasta to half-cookedness
and then I
grab you around the waist
pull you flush against me
and kiss you breathless
one hand on the small of your back
the other
on your *** kneading and squeezing
eliciting gasps from your parted lips that
end up between my teeth.
your trembling hands frantically
unbuttoning my shirt as I unzip your
skirt and throw it to the corner your
blazer and castaway your
blouse and then you're in your
bra and dampened *******, fingernails
scratching and raking and clawing at
the small of my back with your
legs spread in an inverted triangle and your
tongue in my mouth. I unsnap your
bra and moments later your
******* are under lipsteethtongue and then
lipsteethtongue
kisssuckbite
lower
and
lower
until
lipsteeth­tongue
kisssuckbite at
your ******* and your
***** until
gasping squealing moaning
you ****** your
juice in my
mouth and on my
lipstongueteeth.
The pasta is wasted.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked through a chuckle, and then it hit me. I knew exactly what was wrong with me. I was passionate about things, and never about people. I had loved people, but always platonically, or platonic and gilded with a crush or wrapped in lust that I always brushed off with innuendos and flippancy. I had never loved another person the way I loved twisting my brain around a calculus problem or constructing a flame chart. I had thought of people in a romantic sense more than I had evaluated people for science bowl, but lust and love had never consumed me as the issue of organizing practice and evaluation and cuts within the handspan of a month. I always fell in love with things, and never with people, and that's why already, not even 16 yet, I've reconciled myself to die alone.