these fluorescent lights and
LCD screens are keeping me awake.
it's not the
thoughts of you; those are
just a byproduct,
because when I'm
awake, you're
asleep, and
on my mind.
my skin is so dry it might
crack in two when my lips meet yours but
I'd hazard the risk just like
I have so many times before.
so many girls and
so many boys,
like you and unlike you and
I like you a
little too much to retain both
my senses and my sanity.
I crave the
tsunami of sensations
only you
can drown me in,
******* my throat with sentiment as I
silently cry.

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.

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.

naked, sprawled across my bed,
flaccid ***** out of view, obscured by
flaccid technology, this impotent
old thing, 4 years old and
working perfectly fine for me;
lighting strikes.

there is magic, isn't there, in
the way she says your name
not unkindly when she is
with her friends and
without pre-alcohol inhibition;
lightning strikes.

I've been here for
hours, I fly out to
FRANKFURT in the morning,
routing through CHARLOTTE, NC,
cool, isn't it? how we conquered the world with
a pair of wings and some landing gear;
lightning strikes.

merlot gnat bite
quivering at my collarbone; can
hear kids screaming across the
intersection, me in my towel and
ankles still dripping with showerwater
upon plush carpet, crickets chirping
just out of view and fan humming
just overhead.

pity you aren't here with me.

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

you've been derisively labelled
"basic" before, but they had it
all wrong your acid tongue could
eat away at the
solid steel of the most
guarded hearts end
my solitude devour me
please oh god devour
me I'm so pathetic and
unworthy why are you still here
you should have left me
months ago and now months
have passed yet you remain,
unmoving, though not unchanging,
and I am unsure what to do.

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.

I woke up this morning,
- well, last night, it's 4:30 AM so
where does that count - phone
on the floor where it rolled from my
sleep-slackened grip right off the bed,
sheets drowning in sweat; they smell like
me, and I am feeling nauseous.
my spine is curved around a
particular puddle of sweat, the
one I awoke in; it's still wet,
but it'll dry out; I have to
put these bedsheets in the wash,
use three times as much detergent,
maybe spray em with Lysol first.

but getting rid of the sweat-soak
won't get rid of the
nightmares of you.

merlot gnat bites
quivering from collar to
coccyx, a carapace of
swollen skin.
I rub myself
raw, aching for release;
is this
how it's meant
to be?
être, pas être,
it's all the same:
I am; you are
under my skin.

"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.

in time, you will come to learn that
you can remake God in your own image,
if only you are bold enough to do so.
this power is frightening. it suggests that
maybe divinity is
overrated,
that there are no answers.
in time, you will come to learn that
there usually are not, and that this is
okay, if discomfiting.
you will write treatises in your head about
everything: the meaning of an emoji,
what your outfit says about you,
what you'll do when you're rich and have
forgotten all about where we come from.
we forget our past because the present
is much sweeter fruit to partake of;
we forget our past is the only reason
there are sweeter fruits to partake of.
you'll learn to stop looking for love
because you don't think you deserve it, or
because you don't think it'll happen
to you; when you stop, you will be
happier, and love will flow freely from you,
and to you. you will drink too much
***** late Tuesday night; your
roommate will hold your hair back while you
*****; you'll awake on the floor with
chunks of food in the sink.
eventually, you will realize: this is love.

I can still taste
oranges on my tongue,
tropicana from tampa,
extra extra pulp in my mouth.
The orange groves are
dying, frost encroaching, and I
can do little; I'm at the
supermarket searching for
coconut oil and lavishing
honey straight from the bottle
onto my tongue; empty
bears litter the linoleum and
the taste of your ***** still
evades my fractitious memory.

"you may keep small electronic de-
vices on, but please make sure all
cellular capabilities are
switched off."
then they switch off the cabin lights,
and I am here in the dark, iPod assaulting
my eardrums as iPhone assaults
my retinas. this is
How It's Meant To Be

me and my ephemeral avarice, my
electronic yearning;
Bethany Cosentino is crooning, a
private concert for one, I wish
Allen Ginsberg was my boyfriend;
the other boy isn't like me, he's
prettier but that's nothing
new is it?

of course, Ginsberg is dead and also
forgotten, by and large; same for
D. H. Lawrence, Caravaggio, Joan d'Arc,
all those I drew upon for my Wilde
persona. there is only
me now, and I am
alone.

put your hands on me:
I'm squirming, *******
enamored with the thought of
your hands on my stomach,
my wrists bound to your bed,
my toes acurl in the sheets.
I love being naked for you but
I get so cold; you laugh at my
complaints, lay yourself
atop me,
whisper, "is this
better kitten?"
in my ear before letting your tongue
lap at my earlobe and your teeth
clamp down in their place.

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.

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.

paint on callused fingertips,
paint dyeing German beer,
paint flickering fluttering trembling
across bare canvas skin as you
finesse, ink and watercolor at your
whim while you work. you are no
Caravaggio, much more a Gentileschi,
but Michelangelo himself would be
awed by your radiance, the subtle
art of your face and
brushstrokes of your curves,
spine sinuous undulating while you
dance for him.

I've been begging for you
to tell me something new for
months upon months, to tell me
that you are not the same,
that you cannot stand me,
that "I love you" was the Great Lie;
but you will not no never
you're too good for something so
base as hate or someone so
base as me but
you're still here and I
love you
and hate myself for it.

I only love you when I'm sober,
so I've been high for, about, I'd say
2.27 weeks?? wild, I know. what
can I say? I just
hate being alone with
the mere thought of you,
cloying and *******, ecstasy
in my endorphins. Newport on my lips
and nicotine in my system; emotions
encased in agar, Petri dish replicants.
sugar skulls crushed beneath timbs and
honey beneath my cuticles and
white wine in the freezer frosting up.
chocolate ganache sealing my tongue
like a sarcophagus and I'm daydreaming
about halcyon days gone by
screaming along to the radio in
your sunsoaked two-seater.

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.

my *****-drenched Valkyrie,
you're a star, pirouetting around
Pluto, gamboling amongst galaxies, you are
terrible to behold, awe-inspiring in your
beauty and petrifying in the same.
a mouthful of liquor, and eyes
near-translucent; I can see your
soul, and I have never loved you
more. you are
silly when sober and
downright derelict when drunk,
a crumbling monument to
late nights and
later trysts; railed out
lines of Xanax
internalized through paper money:
this is the life.
this is what we wanted?
we aspired to more than we were, we
flew too close to the
moon, our wax wings
held up to solar scrutiny, but our
intentions
did not; we were
only kids, but that's
no excuse. just because you've
reached the
Age of Majority
doesn't make you any less of a child
of the universe,
scrabbling in the dust for a
semblance of meaning:
I am Sorry, you were Right, but
it doesn't matter now.
hold my hand.
please. I am
afraid to die
without you by my side.
with your fingers
clenched around mine,
I feel less alone.

there are two types of girls,
or so I was told:
church girls and
bad girls, and my mother
said this with such finality it was
clear they were mutually exclusive.

of course,
you know this is
Not True;
you once characterized yourself as
"the type of 'church girl' to light a
blunt in the bathroom (just sayin)" and
that single quote says more about you than
all this fragile wording, this silica dust
heated and wrought into intricacies and
metaphor and conceit.
You
are far more than
a bad girl,
are far more than
a church girl,
will never be
my girl
and this is how it should be.
you are not
to be domesticated
a la Robin Thicke; you are
uncontrollable, your lust and
disdain for monogamy
twin hurricanes, destroying
New Orleans in a heartbeat and
rendering FEMA
impotent in the next.

there are two types of girls:
other girls, and
You.

phloem in your veins;
your tongue curls around
the syllables of my name
erotically, and I'm
daydreaming about
your tongue curling around
my ******* while you talk circles about
calculus and chemistry.
woodgrain and
blood veins and
gun-splattered gore-brains,
the kitchen counter
saturated in sherbet and
awash in girl-***
while you writhe next to the
fruit bowl, in flagrante delicto.
we conquered the universe with a
steady stream of xenon ions, probing
deep into the velvety wet folds
of the galaxy, *******
to the laws of physics, *******
stretching you out.

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.

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.

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 *******.

rivers of salt; saccharine silicon and
iridescent nightmares;
kids carve their names into trees
because their concept of forever is
three summers forward;
entropy demands a tithe, a
forfeiture of lives; decimate your herds
and still
no, it is not enough.
know it is not enough.

don't keep your sweet little mouth
open too long; sugar attracts flies,
and pretty soon your
teeth will be teeming
with maggots and rot,
streptococcus sanguis
cheerfully wearing down your enamel
like you wore down my inhibitions.
"it'll be fun," you said, dropping
one hundred milligrams
on your tongue, firmly grasping the back
of my neck, and applying your lips to mine.
one hundred milligrams
slide down my throat, and despite myself,
I laugh, because even when I'm scared
I want to be with you.

the Black Angel is God On Earth; she is
lonely beyond belief, and I give her a hug.
people forget that monsters have
feelings too, and
God?
God is the biggest monster of them all.

God is entropy, and she is
unimpressed by the pyramids
on your dollar bills; she will devour
the stars and the planets and newborn
babies swaddled in blankets,
and she yet hungers:
redwoods and sequoias and aloe vera,
microchips and inkjets and MacBooks.

we are crowded around the bonfire,
s'mores and cheap liquor, your hand on
my thigh; the heavens have
opened up, drenching us
in starlight: I have never felt more
beautiful. you raise my wrist to your
mouth, placing a gentle kiss on my
scaphoid and my lunate; you swipe
your tongue across supple flesh
before clamping down with your teeth;
I am seeing stars and feeling lovely
and I am so, so enamored with you and
so, so happy you are 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.

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.

reading ****** erotica at the
dinner table, dim lit,
dusk dreaming of you far too late
in the evening for thoughts
to remain chaste.
Drake's voice laps at my ears,
waves beating upon shore, pulsing:
it's your's.
my chapped lips pressed against
the base of your palm;
the gesture is
comforting, a reminder I
can absolve myself when
I am with you,
that I do not belong to myself:
it's your's.
I awake alone,
snared in sweat-soaked sheets; you are
long gone, not even bothering to
leave a note;
you know I'll be back.
after all,
it's your's.

you are a child
opening presents at 6:34 PST on a
Sunny Christmas morn in PASADENA, CA
while her parents look on in
feigned interest
razor scooter abandoned amid
crushed scrunched wrapping paper as you
tear apart a box of Legos
for the plasticky viscera contained therein.

you are a teen,
finding marijuana at 15:34 CST under a
bed in BOULDER, CO
while your parents shout at your brother
feigning sympathy
simply to ****** it back
and you are wrenching open ziplock
to swallow a chunk of his stash
and you find yourself
enamored with the aroma.

you are a woman,
fighting for equality at 10:26 EST wielding
picket sign (paint and sharpie on cardboard) and megaphone in
MANHATTAN, NY
while your parents
turn over in their graves,
uncertain what you are
fighting for.

we had potential,
-kx, and with respect to
x, *******.
we could've been
a masterwork,
Fields of Rapeseed, 1883, painted
in Prague, oil on
canvas.
but no,
you had to be
Mr. ******* Fantastic,
stretching yourself thin and
stretching my patience
again and again like
so much taffy to be made
palatable.
I have always been
difficult to stomach, even
at the best of times,
and you thought you could be the
Zeus to my Europa, whisk me
away and act like it'd all be okay.
but you didn't understand,
I was Europa, but
not the myth, the moon,
and I desired nothing more than to
drag you into my orbit and
drag you down to your demise.

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.

how eager we are to forget
where we came from,
as though we weren't
dirt beneath God's
meticulous manicure mere
fractional eternities ago.
you stopped talking to me
just days ago, but
it feels like epochs;
time dilates in strange
manners, it truly is alien.
there are civilizations
that simply do not
measure time; things happen when
they happen, and that
is that. foreign concepts and
foreign languages slipping across
the tip of my tongue, while
foreign tongues work their way
into your every orifice.
I'm laying in bed, last night
was a bust, I drank a
little bit of whiskey but
not enough, it rained but
only briefly, and I
did not have fun but
I cannot complain;
at least I don't need
you anymore.

please shut up and let me pretend
that the streetlight shining through the
***** window is moonlight glittering
across my angel face, because
it is 3 in the morning and everything is
poised to break apart like
the ice on the Iowa River.

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?

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 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 remember:

you, in black lace ******* and
little else, crushed close
by gravity,
weak winter afternoon sunlight
streaming in and out of your car,
HD Netflix in your backseat.
my fingers drumming insistently
upon your collar bone,
my mouth pressed against your shoulder
as I sing so softly in your ear,
a concert for one.
((only you're invited))
your hair all over your bare
back and black
lace wedged up tight against your
muscle. your lips are
cold against my skin and our feet
are ******* freezing and the heater is
all the way up but not nearly enough.
I let my fingers parse through your
vertebrae, Dr. Lecter planning
a meal; slice here,
cleave there, remove viscera, season and
cook: magnifique.
time and history are
mercury in my clenched fist;
my nails are biting into my skin, and
liquid silver moments gone by are
flowing freely from my slackened grip.

I started dreaming in black and white.
you never seemed to
belong in this
technicolour drenched era,
an age of blood
carnations and sapphire Bomb Pops.
***** yellow cardboard boxes in
fluorescent refrigerated cases:
there are goosebumps on my arms and you
hated grocery shopping; I made the lists
and I made the buys; you made the
money, you made love.
we bought a Cezanne print for the
great room; it hangs above the frozen
hearth, grey sunlight filtered through
the cellulose blinds. there is a too tall
glass of scotch on the coffee table beside
a too empty scotch bottle and a too full
bottle of benzodiapenes: I haven't been
self-preservative, and you've been
self-prescribing.
we weren't cut out for this era,
an age of ***-coated lips and
onyx Benzes; we would've been better
in black and white, where our
color-saturated demons couldn't come, where our gem-studded cancers couldn't
eat us alive.

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 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?

liquid crystal display
glimmering salacious self-imagery at you,
your lips parted and breath
staccatoing along, flitting just
behind the beat, like your aunt's
first dance at the wedding reception (before
she's had enough to drink) or
her last (when she's had
too much)
she was in the passenger seat
on our drive homeward, leaning in
to the driver's seat conspiratorially,
oblivious to your beauty splayed out
exhausted in the backseat.
"she's my
baby niece, and you better not
**** with her
heart, you hear me missy?"
and I assured her I wouldn't as you
laughed and laughed, bell peals
in the backseat and church bells
echoing in my ear, past and possible
future, sodium vapor lights
slipping away along the highway as
your aunt slid back into the passenger seat.
"so"
"so"
"she's quite a
character," I say, bemused, and your
eyes crinkled at the corners like
newspaper redesigned during crumpling as
kindling for the fire, blue and blue and blue
in the backseat.
"that's true"
"just like you"
"just like me" you agree,
crossing your legs, legs that go on
for dynasties in thigh highs and
your dress riding up too high for my eyes
to focus on the taillights ahead of us when
paradise is in the rearview:
love is
cold lobster bisque
in a big bowl in bed in the morning,
two spoons and a carton of orange juice
arrayed on the covers atop our
entangled legs.

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)

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.