the glow-in-the-dark stars on my wall
are brighter than
my ambitions,
vicodin washes down with
stone cold fear,
and mercury is in retrograde-
not that we felt the need to communicate.
tiny planets on a string,
we danced in the
orbit that we shared.
you had misgivings,
told me pluto
never made it around the sun,
not even once.
but earth created a moon
with her soulmate.
mercury doesn't return direct
until february 11th;
by then
paracetamol and hydrocodone
will have passed.
opiates and human beings
both sources of anxiety
but i don't mind
drowning in them both.

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.

you are a planet
                              
                           ­       but i am a star


*(i am bigger than you, i will burn your eyes out, and i do not orbit around you)

the carpet is orange with little gray and white specks
like television static
the ceiling is off-white with the occasional stain
like snow the neighbors’ dogs have ****** on
I’m filled with the sound a plastic trash bag makes as it’s being *******
suffocating out on the curb in the ***** snow

car exhaust staining the ground
oil dripping in little rainbow pools
they look like tiny universes, cosmic filth
the rings of saturn are only flecks of dust
each of my eyes is a planet for you to explore
each of my hands is a nation for you to invade

the stars are visible in every glistening patch of snow
the sun and moon are the eyes of god
the solar system has lent me its gaze

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.

poetry isn't just for white people, Vivian
isn't a girl's name, and I will
wear these white jeans past Labor Day.
we forget that we could
touch the stars if we *******
tried, but instead we are
here, drowning in atmosphere,
choking on our inhibitions.
there are ten pills tucked
in the very back of your desk;
you love them but
they're about to become a
crutch, and you are frightened.
I don't **** with that
new ****,
but it's not like you care.
I'm still the same *******
idiot, total trash, I
deleted your number
and I won't send you
snapchats,
I wonder if you
deleted my dickpics.
lost intimacy, windowsill
cacti, a Ziplock full of ******* stuffed
inside your pillowcase;
I went for a run, your
name traipsing about my
prefrontal cortex, smashing
memories, beheading roosters,
screaming incoherently about
subprime mortgages and
credit derivatives.
the government is lying about
9/11 but no one really cares;
the government is arming oppressive regimes in
Missouri but white people don't care;
would that I had such
willful ignorance, the right to
ignore the slaughter on our
front lawns.
my parents started from the
bottom, they survived in
America, decapitated birds on the doorstep.
I do not have their strength and I am
washing Xanax down with Gatorade and
refusing to apologize.

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.