The redneck got arrested last night.

The ******* was barking back at dogs
and belting shots of scotch well-before sundown.
You could say he and the sun were collectively sinking.

Nights like these
breed pregnant silences
between the outbursts.
I sit poised for the next eruption
as a child cloistered under covers for fear of thunderclaps--

Another howl,
(presumably bellowing for beer)
then he's batting his live-in lap-straddler
around the apartment beneath me.

With every strike
the drywall learns a lesson
this ignorant *****
can't get a grip on:

some things never change.
The world will change around them
like tissue growing around a bullet fragment.

The cops come,
the cuffs go on,
and the problem is put on pause for an evening--
but he'll ascend the stairs with the sunrise.

They'll reconcile,
            because misery does want for company.

He'll promise he'll be different.
She'll actually believe him.
They'll be back to battering their plaster
with the reverberations of ******* and arguments.

She can't see that a drunkard's apologies
        are counterfeit currency.

I took it for common knowledge.

Perhaps it is...

Perhaps, like living in tornado alley,
they cope with ceaseless ****-storms
because they're just too lazy to move.

I pulled out her chair,

living proof that
while chivalry may be dead,
there are those dedicated
to keeping fresh flowers on the grave.

Like leftovers from an extravagant meal,
I thawed my heart and put it on her plate-

I'd hoped it would sustain her.

It was rejected with vigor.

She infers that she's toxic:
spoilt soil at a nuclear blast site.


I'm starting to suspect the offering itself was necrotic.

If love is a fire,
this is a funeral pyre;
ashes falling
like nuclear winter.

Like a blowtorch,
*** had soldered us together--
I'm too paralyzed by fear
to hope for something more.

Only in the black of night do we see each other.

We barely speak
outside the foul-mouthed foreplay
and passionate epithets exchanged
in our sweat-soaked moments
of collective agony.

Like so much of my life,
this has to hurt to feel good.

A smack on the *** must suffice
when a kiss on the lips can **** you.

I don't dare look at her face.

There's so much I say
in spite of myself—
A litany of confessions
in my expressions.

Not that she would notice--
her eyes are outside,
aimed at a horizon I can't see.

We share this silence
because it's the only thing
either of us still cherishes.

I stanch internal hemorrhaging
by putting the inside outside;


       I'm finding out
               that ***
         without love
     is a pantomime--

               an open-hand slap.

Not an assault,
             but an insult.

         It's too hard to
shed the skin
       you left me in.
                  

                  Even now, I love you
               more than I care to admit
                     so I curl up
                   like burnt paper
          with surrogates
       and memories
   to keep me warm—


             but it still feels like infidelity.

If you wanted privacy,
you might have closed your blinds from time to time.

The devil doesn't knock upon entry.
He knows where he's wanted.

I've heard your conversations--
The bigotry,
the loathing.

I've ****** up filth through your floorboards.

I've tasted your tears,
mingled with sweat
from sins of the flesh,
cascading down your drains.

I've stepped through the hillocks of cigarette butts
you discard as carelessly as your dreams,
a little measure to meld your
environment and outlook:
the world as an ashcan.

I know you better than I'd ever know myself
because my assessment of you is
not gilded with pride or egotism,
not tainted by self-pity.

I know that you wanted this,
in spite of pained cries to the contrary.
I know you really wept for the innocence
you lost long before I let myself in your *****.

You let the world in--
you offered yourself up with impunity for far too long.
You valued your life so little
as to put it on display for anyone's appraisal.

You were waiting on catastrophe
to prove you were worth saving;

I was merely the instrument.

I took nothing that wasn't proffered by your unlocked door.

Your home and your body share sentiments--
I simply took the welcome mat at its word.

I am anti-matter.

Trending on Twitter.

Shooting a guest-spot on Two-and-a-Half Men.


A five-dollar foot-long
meal-deal of a man,

long on propaganda
  while short on substance;


A School-House Rock rendition of
Aspiration Asphyxiation

penning love-letters to Jesus
     beneath my breath
to abate the sensation that I'm just
     redundant protoplasm
with a pecker and a pocketbook



   failing to distract myself from the fact that
every intake of breath is a death sentence.


I have no praise-worthy abilities.
You can't **** your way into heaven.


   Satan himself
caught a better break being
cast out of the kingdom--

there is certainty in condemnation.


Those poor souls who harbor
    the illusion of indemnity
through faith in a
        purportedly magical Jew
truly are the blessed few

not via the Lord's redemption, mind you,
but by the thoughtlessness of their devotion.

Perhaps the two are tantamount to one another.


The ****** are so labeled
     because we question ceaselessly--
curiosity is no comfort.


Should the sun burn black,
     the world will go cold
or
      some star-burst might
   scorch our galaxy clean
of all delusions of eternity.


The meek can inherit the ashes.