charcoal
oxblood
poppy
pomegranate
maroon
cranberry
cherry
creams­icle
orange soda
saffron
lemon
egg yolk
buttermilk
sunflower
olive
forest
lime
mint
ice
blueberry
royal blue
navy
bubblegum
fuschia
salmon
grape
lavender
wine
chocolate
espresso

Leather coat. Oxblood.
Denim jeans. Faded gray.
Rhinestone belt. Black.
Wrinkled button-up. Charcoal.
Old Ray-Bans.
Silver necklace with a brass cross.
Canvas boots. Burgundy.
Three Moleskines. Brown.
Two pens. Red and blue.
Six picks.
Twenty seven dollar and thirty four cents.
One beaten down carrying case. Black.
My guitar.

The whole is greater than the sum
of its parts
but just barely

I might as well be a polystyrene box floating through the city
dodging traffic
bartering breakfast
strumming heartsongs in subway dens

Oh. One glass pipe. Clear.
I forgot that, it belongs on the list.

Okay I didn’t forget it.
I lie, sue me.

Getting high
or low is just a part of me though
and some people think it’s all of me.

Some people look at me like
I don’t have a home, which makes me angry,
not because they’re wrong,
but because they always look disgusted
with I think they should look concerned.

My guitar case likes to change itself from time to time.
Sometimes it’s with the seasons
and sometimes it’s with the sun,
but generally its with the sparks in my head
and how it reflects them.
I’ll wake up round 6
underneath the Williamsburg brudge
with warm bacon in my nostrils,
cold sun on my skin,
and my case will show me the WD
on it’s back
and tell me it means “Wonderful Day.”

On snowy Sundays in Battery Park
it’ll flop down on a quiet curb
and whine, “Warmth ******.”

I’ll amble up Prince Street through the holidays
looking for breathing buildings.
He’ll jump from my right shoulder to my left
and whisper, “Where’s Dad?”
He goes back to my right shoulder.

I like to laugh when I walk past Starbucks,
any old Starbucks,
because everybody in there is from Seattle
and they came all this way for a cup of coffee.

I came all that way too,
but I don’t think it was for a cup of coffee.
I lived with a girl named Cat
or a girl who had a cat
in an old walk up across from a Quizno’s.
Cat gave me coke.
The girl
not the cat.

I remember she
or we
had an ivy green front door
because I’d stay up and stare out the peephole
watching people come home late.

Like her husband, Claire's wineglass
left rings on the table. Her coarse
hair stuck to her thin, oxblood lips.
She found time to breathe in between
sips and dry coughs brought on by her friend,
John, smoking on the couch. He put his Pall Malls
out on the armrest like Dalmatians. Her sister
lay in a red wine carpet stain counting
the pennies behind John's feet.
Claire hid behind a fruit bowl;
oranges with skin far tighter than hers.
*Oranges her husband would've been glad to ****.

the safety vest my rib cage calls home,
tight on my chest as i pave this road

tangerine juice in mismatched mugs
at a midnight breakfast

sunset in the dusk mirror of Pelican Lake,
tendrils of light sailing on a gust of wind

the crisp, dry fire of leaves
crowning autumn trees

my garden marigolds, rimmed in oxblood,
planted despite their toxic pollen

prescription bottles in my cabinet,
filled with pills, model of an addiction

a lace of rust, climbing trusses,
devouring steel with tender teeth


embers at the shore of my bones
in this skin, a permanent glow.

Everyday in English class, she'd walk in, sit down and open a book. The Teacher in silent understanding allowed her to.
He handed her the work wordlessly and within a few minutes she returned the fully completed work back to him. These A*'s meant nothing to her.
I sighed in contempt, this enigma of a girl, what was she? I see her around school a lot more, I noticed that she was the most popular girl but one would not associate her with that, for her persona was not that of one. Everyone fought to talk to her but she just looked at them with empty eyes, seen as full, but I saw through her guise. Her eyes....nothing was in them.
She intrigued me, I couldn't help it, and worst of all, now I can't let her go.
Everyday I am a soldier, constantly fighting for eye contact, yet those bottomless pits of icy brown avoided my searching eyes like the plague.

As usual, she walked into class and opened her book, her precious book was coming apart at the seams, almost a few seconds away from crumbling into pieces for she had used the book as a lifeline.
I cautiously made my way over to her desk that was nestled in the back, she stiffened at my looming presence,sigh.
I stared at her, waiting, with the patience of a saint, a devilish saint.
She failed to look up once, 10 minutes had passed...it was like she was frozen...had winter come early?
was she even breathing?
you see, I had bought a book for her, but this game was tiring and I couldn't abandon my responsibilities for my new-found muse.
I set the book down on her desk and walked away after what felt like eternity crossed with purgatory.
This book was from my personal library at home, I secretly hoped in mock amusement that we shared the same taste in literature although I had an inkling that my assumption would naturally be correct.

From the corner of my eye I gleaned that she was taken aback and that her curiosity was about to override her passive responses. I watched her pick up the book like a predator sets his gaze upon his prey.
My heart felt like it was beating at the speed of light when her elegant fingers caressed the spine and brushed the pages that moaned at her touch.
My breath hitched as her lips parted in thought, ****, she looked up.
God, the realization hit me that she was my own book that I read every English lesson.

The years went by, two years and four days, to be exact, since I first gave her my book. Nothing changed, every week she'd return my book to me after she'd read it, expression, unchanged.
It has been 740 days, 17,760 hours, 1,065,600 minutes since the day she became my muse, and not once did she ever escape my mind.

She started coming into class with punctuality out of sight and much to my  shock, empty handed. Her book was not in sight, my mind was reeling. To compensate she completed her work then stared, enthralled at her desk for the duration of the lesson.
Reminiscent of the first time that I approached her, I took the plunge again, opened my mouth and firmly asked "is everything okay?"
I hoped that the deep baritones of my voice would not get her shook but little did I know how familiar they were to  her, instead she shut her eyes and inhaled deeply. I sighed, walking away, I felt nothing, this was completely expected. crazy.
**** it, I craved to hear her voice, directed at me and me only, something a little less casual then yes or no or even answering for the register.

I knew the that the next time she was to walk in, something will have changed within her.
Correct, I win, hah.
but it wasn't so funny when I noticed the red around her eyes or the lilac blush of feint bruising underneath her eyes or that she kept sniffing or that she couldn't sit still or that she grinded her teeth.
Welcome to coke 101.

That ******* phone of hers that she was glued to all of a sudden just made the anger within me rise further up.
Who was getting her this excited, she was jittery and oddly enough her face looked brighter and less torn...did she almost look happy?

All my questions were answered when class ended and I walked behind her glancing at the screen of her phone to discover that a girl who was my property was engaged in a conversation with a 'J <3'
I saw red, I don't share my property unless I condone it
who was this devil who changed my little mystery?

scanning...scanning...scanning...who was she running to...ah
a group that resembled something fresh off the saint Laurent runway
and within that group, with his tight grip on her shoulder, I assumed was J.
They all wore ripped jeans, shirts that appeared as a second skin and overly large jackets...typical
but they seemed to be teetering on the edge of life, like they lived for adrenaline rushes to make them feel whole. perhaps they'd lost their way and found it again in an instant.
she fit in well and I cherished the smile on her face.

Months went on, the same thing happened every lesson, she'd stumble in after doing a few lines, struggle to breathe or even stay awake. this was all just a waiting game for her.
the day she walked in, stained with blood was the day my being snapped in two. The whole class sat shell shocked as they looked upon a fallen angel adorned with crimson.

2 weeks passed without her, left on edge until my craving to see her was satiated.
Monday came and she walked in, holding a note that she dropped upon my desk.
She stood waiting for me to read it, i did, but in a state of elated confusion.
scrawled in her elegant yet spidery identity "I miss you and I miss your books, I miss the way you gave them to me and I missed the anticipation that came alongside it"

Exterior I was authoritative and powerful, interior i was a ******* mess. I silently handed her a novel with an oxblood colored cover. I looked up and for a split second I could swear that our eyes met.

A week later on Friday, she came to me, with the book in her hands and set it aside.
She looked up at me, directly at me, biting her lip
this devil was not innocent or so God help me.

She guided my hands to rest on her unnaturally thin waist  and just stared at me. Engaged in an internal battle, I could see, she was choosing what to say
but she just whispered my name and left.
I overdosed on the way she said my name, left in euphoria over what could have been.
I grabbed the book in an attempt to make sense of all that has occurred and saw that in the front cover where I had written my name, her name had been placed next to mine.
Just a waiting game...a really ******* long waiting game.

Leaflet or scorpion I care
Not
I am unstoppable
And loved
Looking not to the left or right
Walking straight honest
Fist clenched anarchist
I am true from seed
A Greyhound pure breed
I've caught a scent
Now in chase full speed
Cherishing
Pangs of honesty
Stabbing delicate ego
I stand alone at the
Gallows
Revolting against this
Modern world
Til my dying breath
Fully bloomed
My life will be
A chrysanthemum
Soaked by dew
Dyed oxblood petals
Sword and pen
Will of lead
Some reggae in head
4 dogs & a laugh
By music I fly
Rebeling with grace
Saving no face
So out of step that
Even the boot on my throat
Gives me hope   
Without gimmick
Love simplistic

One night, Death came to visit me and I
Offered him a cup of tea.
He sat gracefully in a fragile chair
That had only ever known my
Grandmother
And said:
      "Young sir,
Have you anything with pomegranate?
      I find that it
traps more of the flavor."

I stood up--my hands trembling enough to cause an earthquake--
And fetched Death a cup
Of the oxblood fruit.
I tried to give Death the cup, my hands as bad as a scared tightope walker;
he
                  Refused.
And instead insisted I drink it.
(I didn't have the guts to tell him I hated pomegranate)
In the same instant my lips touched the hot crimson water,
A zipper opened across the face of death.

"Now, I have you."