i don't like nice poetry.
i don't like fancy words,
or tranquil thoughts,
i don't like comfortable or smooth.

i like
R A W

i like poetry that rips you apart from the inside out
shreds your skin,
takes your oxygen and forms it into something else
unbreathable.

i like poetry that leaves you staring,
with watering eyes like whole oceans somehow slipped,
unlocked the bolted door to your retinas late at night
and slept cold, salty and drunk on your bed without an invitation.

somehow the love you made,
sweat staining the soft, greasy thin sheets
meant nothing.
and now the oceans lying beside you,
inside you
salt making you cringe, gag in the safe dark cover of night,
strikes you as positively
irritating;
their breath of tides,
growing small and large with every
step closer they take towards shore.

so you ****** your hands in the swift
raging waters of their
body.
you try to find its warped, used heart,
like a crumpled, empty cigarette package
discarded and wet after a war waging rain;
rippled and streaming in the
transparency of its quaking body.

you seek to rip it out,
and tiptoe to the open window,
vacantly staring at you from across the room,
every inhale it takes
letting more warm, humid air like
dead fishes breath
into the scalding room.

you wish to throw that pulsing,
helpless heart out into the night
listen for a couple of moments
and hear it splatter on the concrete below
the ajar window,
sure that cold,
wet
remains of the ocean floor would be scattered on
the sidewalk in the morning.

but you cant seem to successfully rip it out,
the tendons holding onto the ribs
like wild veins,
stubborn and clingy.
you pull and pull,
aching to tear it from
the body,
but the water around it is too cold so you
jump out of the
waves and weeds of under the sea,
and lie on your back listening to its breath
breathing still in deep sleep,
angry that the tearing on its
heart
didn't make it stir one bit;
just made your hands burning
ice and numb
purple in the dark.

so you satisfy yourself by gently
pressing your lips to its
throat,
sinking your teeth deep below its
vital veins,
stopping the raging rivers in its
soft neck,
pulsating with currents,
glowing with a sliver of silver moonlight passing
through it like a wrenching scar.

you crunch down violently
on its delicate
lifeless passageways
transporting fresh water
to salted sour oceans,
crispy like stringy celery
breaking uneasily in the warm cavern of
your mouth.

then you lie down, fulfilled.
the lack of its vessels
stopping the tide of its breath violently and suddenly,
carotid arteries,
jugular veins
and muscles
spread out,
spurting from its throat,
vast like twisted wings.

you ash your cigarette on the draining
wetness of its tongue,
throw the filter down its decapitated throat
and sit on the white, crusting balcony,
waiting for the rusting sun to rise,
picking sand out from your teeth.