Sometimes you're with someone who you love more

You build up their confidence

Make them sure you love them

That they are in fact lovable

And they begin to see just how great they are

So they no longer see value in what you have

They think they can do better

Be with someone prettier or sexier

You've built them strong enough to leave you.

Are you frightened?
No?
But you're silent
So
I guess it's something else

you feel like a coin on my lips
if I open my mouth to speak
you’ll fall in and I’ll choke

perhaps you love them to be kissed

but they are my lips

maybe I’ll learn to swallow the coin
and stop swallowing my words

i like fire.
i like the way a flame dances on a wick,
how it waves from side to side.
i like the color of fire,
the way it's deep orange in its center and its edges are pale gold.
i like the danger of fire,
how quickly it can spread if you're not careful.
i like the feeling of fire,
the buzzing heat that bounces off of it, the searing burn when your hand gets too close.

fingers down my back
*** too fat
you like my thighs
and my lips
and my little quirks
i can be as silly as i want
and i love it
you're like him
without the abuse
am i allowed to say that?

You've got a flat screen mounted
on your kitchen wall with zip
ties and chewing gum.
There's an ashtray by your left
wrist, and a tattoo on your right
of a midnight street light sunshine
shine
down
on a reupholstered love seat,
only used twice: once for the Eisenhowers,
once for last weekend watching Seinfeld
reruns, putting out Sonomas and *** talk
on the twill-like cushions in that dank
basement apartment w/ poster'd brick
walls.
Slayer, Sinatra, Sabbath, Springsteen,
a Space Cowboy, and something Sanskrit
above your box-springless mattress
about the cosmos spitting hellfire
next month because we didn't sacrifice
crumpled dollars yesterday, or Clinton
in the '90s. There are masses of humans paying
for the market collapse that sent 800,000
oranges rolling into the street, cold.
God-fearing couples are abstaining from ***
to save their souls from the ******
Rapture. Cable cords are being unplugged
in the middle of A Christmas Story so people
can hang themselves from church steeples
to avoid ruining their Chuck Taylor Loafer
Tennis Shoes in the molten **** suffocating
saplings and parking meters. Christ'll save
the righteous ones, the ones strung up closest
to the bell tower.

The parish hall radio says salvation's
only as good as a new haircut.
And that we should all pick up the warped
acoustic guitar in the cellar, and try
to form barre chords with our swollen
knuckles and arthritic wrists now
because punk music will be dead tomorrow.
Hell, the postman will be dead tomorrow,
and every little postcard, paycheck, and print
coupon he's carrying will be dead, too.

There is an ashtray by your left wrist,
and a tattoo on your right.

I write poetry, drink coffee,
talk art, dig cinema,
wear t-shirts without graphics,
t-shirts without tags,
and screen-print my to-do lists
on everything.
I say all this as I blow-dry
the temporary tattoo on my wrist.

I found the class fish wrapped in single-ply
tissue and pencil sharpener refuse,
her poinsettia-sunset scales picked clean,
gathered in a Styrofoam cup. Her coral
fins crumbled, leaving rough edges like split
chalk or hopscotch gravel. Her last ocean
was the cover of a Nat Geo from
1995. Easing my fingers
beneath the matchstick spine, I deftly walked
to my desk, and laid her on construction
paper. I casted her slivered ribcage
in glue before I poured the scales, hoping
she'd triumphantly flick some harmless fire
when she woke, but she just laid there, shining.

—For Tom Surdam

Town's quiet—
aside from the timid
waltz of a porch-swing
wind chime and the backyard cricket
kingdoms. I passed the funeral
apartments, the static cat,
and the bar stool where my uncle
wore his soul sore on steel strings
in a wooden shot glass.
He was a good man, a cigarette
saint with a pacemaker scab. A tavern
sweetheart with a memory made
of drink chips and Marlboro foil.

I saw an asphalt toad on the bridge
bathing in the ghost glint of the only
stop light in town beside another
that was smeared like house paint
just inches from the storm drain,
from home.