listen and look,
honey,
dear,
sweetie,
baby,
won't you shut the hell up,
you're driving me crazy.
I'd survive if you'd save me
but

love hasn't saved anyone I've ever met.
maybe someone who wants to know what to expect
like
home before dark and promises never kept,
and secrets in the park with naked words

frozen
on the lips of an adulterous misstep.

this is useless to those who crave the subtle bliss,
who enumerate ridges of skin dedicated with a kiss
and
catalog nerve endings that shiver and resist . and . just . (quiver to exist)
so promises never need be made,
so we can fall apart and it won't matter, none of this

we never needed a place in a poem or a dictionary,
just a dial tone or a few letters to arrange
to call home and portray the strange
and… try… to find a word…
that rhymes with… dictionary

never trying to deny
our eyes cannot lie,
they will fade from glory.
like the dead,
like you and I

like we needed to fake these scrawling notes
that claw for understanding of mistakes we once wrote,
inky sketches that wax polemical over a misquote
and crying starry eyes over favorite chemicals,
the elements we conjure with, so verbose and so broke,
over coffee and cigarettes and mostly ***** jokes