Bittersweet, get me going.
                     hold your breath over my neck,
      
                             it really

         lets me go,

                         twists my tongue.
Talk to me
                  like an angel
but,
                                
                         touch me                
like a convict.
 
                        disrespect me,

              neglect me,
abuse me,

but,
              with a voice I can't refuse.

Bittersweet, like a rose infused.


Bittersweet, keep me going.

        my heart
flutters and flails when I hear you in my ear.
      
      Whisper me *******

but,                
                       ***** me

like a ******.

                    ****** me,

             reduce me,
fool me, 
            but  Bittersweet,                      
        ­            make me feel *****.
Like you're in school
         and I am turning thirty.

She's more of a poet
'cause she went to school for it,
and she tastes sweet in the morning,

and in the evening,

sunlight filters through her
and lights up that slice of lemon
that I love so much.
I think I'll have a writer -

on the rocks.

Every time I come home,
my room smells like *** in the summer,
and it sounds like the vinyl is still under the needle.
Best album of two thousand and nine.

Best album of all time.

Sand between our toes,
we wrote prose
on a filthy mattress but
roses never grew here.

And they never will.

There was something about us though,
something that had a feverish pulse
behind it.  I'd say it was something to
do with the way we have of never putting
a cheap laugh below us. I think it has
something to do with resilience but I'm not sure.
Humming trite voicings of things we'd heard
in the backseat of our fathers' cars, radios on,
you use to tell me to flash the turn signal,
in the black of night, just so you could make sure
we were alive. Dry, but at least alive.
A little beacon to justify us,
and just defy them.


Whiskey,
come over
here and
kiss me.

C'mon
Corinthian,
keep me
company!

Set this manuscript
to music and dance for me!

She loves the beat,
bass so heavy
it hurts.

She loves the heat,
ecstasy,
short skirt.

In the middle
of these times,
I'm square.

I'd like to be
with New York City,
if she'd ever take
a bore like me.
But
in the middle
of her times,

I'm square.

I'd like
to hear her
digitally
repeating,

with her
lips pressed
against my ear,
soft whispers,
heavy breathing,

*they can't stop me.
No,
they can't stop me
from dreaming.

As you fanned me
and fed me grapes,
you let the sweat drip
down your lobe.
On a night as wet
as this, slip off
your robe, expose.

my fingertips scaled
your knuckles,
fumbling the thing
you held out to me,
burning so brightly.

All before you stopped
to talk to someone
more important
than me.
You moved so candidly.

You sat down at the bench
In a dress all black and
backless.
I've seen it in a dream.

With the moonlight flowing
down the river, your neck,
and spilling onto the banks,
your shoulder blades,
your hand crept across the keys
like the most beautiful spider
I had ever seen.

You were a different version of the religion,
you were a ****** of the region when we met.
I had the brownest eyes. You had the greenest eyes.
chin sits perfectly in shoulder,
hand fits in hand, molded.
I had hair like a little girl's. You had hair like a little boy's.
Both half ******, my arms were as thin as yours, and toned.
You didn't own a single curve, just edges and bone.
Only your lips were soft. Only my lips were soft.
The fading light bounced off the angles of my abdomen and visible ribcage,
made your mouth water. With a shy,
curling finger,
you called me over to you.
It drove me wilder.

We undressed each other under the covers.
You giggled and I crumbled when you saw
I needed help with the clasp of your bra.
I chuckled, returned the favor when you gave up on my belt buckle.
I had the body of a little girl. You had the body of a little  boy.
The sheets wound around and pressed us together,
You had the hardest hips. I had the hardest hips.
You compromised what was inside your mind;
I felt those first few moans rattle your
visible ribcage and escape through lips pursed
like a porcelain doll.
Took it all in, held on to your fragile frame
and from the moment we were free,
two children in the wilderness.

The leaves fall in September, during the festivals. They dissipate, reintegrate into vivid little vespers that bob and levitate on gusts of wind that leave one bristling. The ferris wheel looks like an electric celestial ferry, set ablaze and bound for distant dimensions, man with mutated mohawk green, eyes wretched, livid and obscene, was the maniacal who manned it. Glow stick ghouls, with faces smeared americana snow cone red and blue haunt the parking lot, purple precipitate that hisses as it hits the pavement the product of their incessant chanting, pulling fuzz-lined warmth from my marrow. Under the stadium lights, women tighten their scarves as tiny, cerulean seahorses shimmer and dance with the ebb and flow of their jewel studded breath, retreating, giggling like immortal birds fallen from the nest.
Love is paper mache; a pop culture artifact. Like a stuffed hare that seems to have lost its ability to come to life after one loses their virginity. It has long legs and keen ears. It's very fast and would be quite handsome as well if it wasn't so **** helpless. It has been bred into the fibers of contact, the filter we set on lust, the way recycled cans make castles on lily pads and dead skin makes dust. We are swirling around in its whirlpool, if it wasn't drowning us we would be dead by now, same goes for the mad, mangy men who will count their teeth with their dimes and pick at their scabs, finger their sores, the retired professor who was too clever to have ever been faithful, the mockingbird that sings on my windowsill every morning in French, the mailmen and the dogs who bark at them in Quebec. An obsessive complex affords one the privilege of straightening the line, counting in time and putting the rabbit en route.
If it is the case that detachment follows from distance then I am one cactus length away (average, or medium sized cactus of course) from destroying the moon's mezzanine, housing all of the dreams behind ethereal, Egyptian, colored crystal that a pagan god stole from a black hole, never intended for you or me.

Songster, not as sinister as they say,
she's no monster, just admittedly
a bit lost in her way.
she caves as I'm walking
down the hall.

I pick her up, off of that flooring,
the rubbery kind, whatever it is,
I guess it's rubber, but the kind that
squeaks when you walk on it after
coming in from the rain; to hell with poetry.

And so anyways I pick her up
and sit her on this bench next to me
and give her about five minutes to come to
terms with breathing and pick shimmering
auburn hair out of the tears smeared across her face,
two, mesmerizing, perfectly blue wells
the source of the streams.
And then I ask her what that
was all about and she blurts out that she

belongs in the Fine Arts Department,
and her car broke down months ago
but her father
doesn't give a **** about it,
because she can't lay up the basketball
or steal the base and so he honorably
lump summed her entire tuition
and sent her to another state
and how ****** she would be
if she had to get a job for the first
time at the age of twenty three
so she wouldn't have to be
dependent on her family and
that she was sick of wondering why
not a single guy had ever given her
a ******* flower
and that if she ever did end up liking one
two weeks later she would find out that he
was exactly the same as the others and

she had a broken look in her eyes

when she said she wondered why we were
all here in the first place, and how we were
made this way, and if people were actually
ever meant to fit together or not;

what if there was nothing as certain
as two halves making a whole?

She wanted to know how everyone's
mind had a different game to play,
she wanted to know why Jupiter
had to be so far away and everything in
between.

We had strolled off of the school grounds by
this time but I still looked twice before pulling out my flask.
I  unscrewed the cap, handed it to her and said

follow me to Deadbeat Hollow,
where we've already thrown
our problems out of the window

and she said

*lets go.

So I went to the campus today, for the first time in a long time. I smoked cigarettes outside of the the lecture hall with some kids from the eastern block whose names I could barely pronounce. They were talking about McCarthyism in a language I couldn't understand - snippets in English - an American history exam. I cut class again, for a reason I can't quite trace, just lost sight of it all I guess. Or maybe I was wishing it could have been a little easier. They never gave us a course in what it means to try, you know? It just seems as if the only thing that stops us from doing the things we love is a fear of failing at them. Thinking about this on the walk home made my head sick and my heart sad, and so sleeping through the rest of the daylight seemed like a good way to get by.

I met up with the friend, later in the evening, he was at the local venue. He had his hands in his hoodie and his Adidas were swinging over the side of the stage, head bobbing, and rhyming in time to the beat of an electric bass drum. I asked him to buy me a beer and he slid his last two dollars over the counter like he always does when he notices my lower lip quivering. I didn't ask him about the doctor's and he didn't ask me about my black eye. I told him to tell me the story again, the one about the cool kids he met in the East Village and he did, he told me about the whole encounter in the snow, with the lights, and how badly he was shivering. I smiled that type of smile, the one that ends up with your lips curved the wrong way and wished I would have went with him.

The waitress that hates me gave me a ride home again so her uncle could close the place down. I offered her one of those Ukrainian kids' cigarettes that I swiped but she said no thanks, and I was glad I had more. She knew this wasn't going to be the last time she did me a favor, the way my track record was but I like to think she doesn't mind too much. I invited her inside but she said she had to run, maybe next time. She told me to try and hurry up and finish school so I could give her the world, and then she giggled and winked at me before she sped off. Back to bed, I had a long day of bullshitting myself ahead of me when I awoke.

Hustlin' out of your garage,
it never takes us far.
My hands are in your hair,
now it's all up in the air...

Hard love in your garage,
hey now, we are what we are.

And it's okay darling,
for the stage you're in,
'cause you're still shedding
so much skin.
Push the blood to the tendon -
lend me a hand, save Sunday
for sleeping in.

When the rhythm hits
and the syllables split,
I'm just trying you.
If I get to heaven,
or, if I could only
just get the hell on
out of here,
it would be
'cause I followed you.

I tested her water.

She was almost frozen over.

Had I tried to dive right in,
she could have stopped my heart cold.

She said

*some are more shallow
than others,
so
don't dive here,
or you'll hurt
yourself.

The summer night
is the summer day,
in a daze, we fall asleep
in the a.m.
We wake up,
we find our friends,
we do it again.

Lamplight
can't save us now,
we're out hounding.

Coffee on my breath,
wearing a frown.
Sunshine, my sweater,
my soul turns brown.

Lips slick with chapstick,
chics' licking sack n' ****,
drag off a ******* *** n' lean,
obscene in the sense,
the ******* ****' a drag queen.

Rival the bible,
hell to sell any,
whats worse, church
bells smell ugly
under my nose.

I chose the shallow dirt
road to death, even the
tallest tales hail the same frail fate.
Fill my urn to earn my fill,
**** it.

There is no still
frame to capture the moment,
fracture the film and leave it alone.
Yellow toned, below me,
sallow, cornered in color coordinates.

Drenched cover but dry at the core of it;
dazzled by ****, dazzled by diction,
you write the dirtiest fiction
and I'm the ******* ***** in it.

Leather bound, cable wound,
leather bound. Black.
Leather.

Something about the vibe.
Something I can see is true,
something electric in the wire,
you're the medium it's running through.

First the surface,
then the inside of your mind.
Our own world, kept intact,
now we're falling back.

Something about the vibe,
something I can't see in light so slight.
Something I can't describe.
you can wake me in the afterlife.

It's where I want to be, this is where I want to be.

There's a city glowing in my ears,
biting blur of the nightlife.
Figure I've been here for a while.
My supplies were piled high,
now they're in short supply
and I'm high.
The walls of my
apartment are red.

I wait until the streetlights
flick on before I flip into a
somersault, I wait until the
streetlights flick on before
I call you out tonight.
The walls of my
apartment are red.

Dead presidents, don't
answer for me,
I paint the walls red.
Dead presidents couldn't have
seen it coming,
I paint the walls red.
Dead precedents, don't correct me.

Could have been a fool,
could have been a rule
you didn't know, so
when your friends are
wrong sing a song that
won't offend anyone.

You kept me waiting for hours,
you were shining. In a dress like
blood and flowers, you were shining.
You better sell it hard tonight.
The walls of my
apartment are red.

Simplify your poetry.

Make it fit for a pop song.

Simplify your poetry,
make it fit for me,
your little *****.

There was a ransom for a queen,
a shining glimpse of hope.
There was a sick and dying scene,
a message for the pope.
The disparity made us desperate
and so we decided to occupy
a building of the public sector
until they met our demands.
What a plan, what a plan!
We were comfortably clinging
to the safety net of fashion,
we were terribly in order.
There were things less trivial
than the status quo, you knew that
I knew that you didn't know.
We were perfectly defined
in the terms of academia,
hey,
        can I follow ya?

Coffee shop talk,
a cigarette gets lit.

Coffee shop talk,
come here, come sit.

Coffee shop talk,
I've got a lot to tell you.

Coffee shop talk,
I've got to stop
stalking you.

In a golden glow,
while you slept,
I strung together
a few haiku
for you
and sang them
to a sad tune,
the only one I knew.

Your words are like clay
before the kiln,
I try to mold them
into thousands of different shapes,
and it's never right.
But I don't
like to complain
and I'd have to say,
I think I handle pain
pretty well,
wouldn't you agree?

Your explanations
need explanations now.
You speak to me
in worlds,
I only know the smallest words.

Your mouth races my heart,
I always give you a head start.

I will chase you all the way home.

Little one,
try not to be

so broken.

Save a shuddering
breath or two,

you've already spoken.

Little one,
emotions,
energy

is spent,

vent,
vent now little one,

cry on my collarbone.

Nerves and naves
may fail you

but I will never leave you alone.


I need red.

Give me purple,

fuchsia, and maroon.

All of the colors that sear your insides;
carnivals come too soon.

Little one,
let it out,

just
save me some.

She rode by motorbike,
one bag and an oily rag swung
over the handle bars.
A little denim jacket and a lavender
scarf wrapped all around.
Her cheeks were charred
from the cold when she got to me
so I packed in kisses
to cool them down.

Get wise to me.
The sun will rise and you'll see
that this windy night
was no match for you and me.
Get wise to me.
When all the leaves are falling down,
when the wind makes a wicked sound,
we'll walk side by side.
Get wise to me.
When you see inside of me
you'll know what it means
to have a home in a heart.
Get wise to me.
Don't be as shy as me,
tell me how it is
and how it's going to be.

Some people write all day.

With a head that stays inflated,
I hope I never become that way.

To believe, it's all important, what I have to say,
would indeed be a sad display!

"Not like that!
Like this."

She turned over her shoulder to face me, snatched her hair, soft and strawberry blonde out of my hands and giggled as she tried to show me the French braid.

She saw my blank expression and buried her face in my neck and giggled some more.
"This isn't going to work."

She gave up on the braid and kissed me anyways,
She tasted like sweet tea,
mixed with somethin' southern and strong.

She said "thanks love".

Her porch was lit up like it was the hearth of her home
and we had stopped slapping at the mosquitoes hours ago.

with my head in her lap, I was getting the grass burs out of her skirt when my fingers crept up her thigh and picked at something polyester, it smelt like lavender.

She put her hand on top of mine and kissed me again. I watched the dimples form on her cheeks as she whispered "daddy'll be up soon."

Laying by the river, when everything is silver, and silent, just for a moment before
the sun rises, we held our breathes

and then the love birds wept
and rattled their cages.

My memory fades as she got up to go but she said something like

you're still dizzy from that southern sting
or
you're still dizzy from that southern swing

and that she was hungry
and that we were hollow.

and I just laughed anyways; I could never get her father's truck to start but my heart was always in the right place, she knew it.

*She had a way with words,
she had a way with wasted...

she had heaven on her ankles with her jeans rolled up, and I just wanted to linger there.
My first prayer, my first gray hair.

The pillows you don't use
don't support. They only serve
to suffocate you.

The shed in the yard was a lot
like high school. It stood all awkward
and it was filled with tools.

Flimsy, the tears you shed
and the hate that you bred
at your brother's funeral.

Tears are flowing like the riverside
we're sitting by. I won't ask why
but I'll dry your eyes tonight.

I'll stay with you 'till
the day breaks.
This is honey for
your heartache.

I won't hate you
for your mistakes.
This is honey for
your heartache.

Face is glowing, all starry eyed,
bluer than sky. I know that I
don't want to see you cry tonight.

I'll run with you
when you can't wait.
This is honey for
your heartache.

I'll stay with you 'till
the sun breaks.
This is honey for
your heartache.

Wallowing
in a stagnant,
skeptical world,
you must live.
Run river, run
you are no forest,

you do not stand still,
and you can never go back.
Logic need not follow,
but it always will,
and that is all it can do,
it is all
I can do.

Pleasure seeker,
still mindful of the gods;
Dionysus, Apollo,
Hanuman, Saraswati
in your heart,
never at odds.

Show no humility,
only invincibility,
make yourself cry
twice weekly.

Leave your mouth watering,
leave your mothers wanting more.

What if the cacophony broke the barricades?
Noise, noise, noise, noise, poison!
Gasp as the venom creeps to your brain,
grasp at the hilt of the dagger, dilettante, for all we can see
is that friends are always followed by pain.

I swear,

   your
imagery

  taps
  the
acid
in my
spine.

Kindred spirit, the privilege is mine, it's just that I,
I never finish because there is nothing going on, nothing to go on.

All right, all right, all right,
you're right,
I don't write as much as I used to,
but in all fairness (to myself)
I feel a bit more loose.

Never mean to,
but I guess I argue
a lot in order to hide
how much I really don't care;
Celina said it's not okay
but
that at least I know
it's insulting.


I only want to be in my body
when your feathery fingers graze my spine.
That tone an angel loaned
to you can ripple through
the void, make a soft,
translucent puddle out of reality,
can you see me
on the other side?

Don't say I'm angry,
it's just that
no one has ever really tried
to impress me, so I'm scared
I guess.

Remember you are here,
don't be weird about the types of things
sentimentality will bring,
will string along to the
forefront of an open sore;
no one pours the sink a whiskey
drink until the girls are crying out above the stars,
better yet, stirring them from afar
for their own faults, for being
fickle with love
and their own hearts.

You know I don't sleep much,
You know I don't dream of such
pretty things but I could imagine
how you, in a different life,
were gifted eternal wings.

Those that brought you to me.

I would weep

if I wasn't made of stone.

She gets impatient
so quickly,
even though
I've told her
things worth
cultivating
take time to grow.
That she's always unsure
is all she really knows.

God had already
given her a sick
set of six strings,
so she sold her
steel body to the devil,
to do what he will with it.

Now they
resonate
together,

one howlin' wolf,


all through the night.



*Haughty,



naughty
necked
girl,

Why would I
write you a jewel,
or a star,
when you already
are one?

Rational
Everyday
*******
Loss
Injustice
Tribulations
Yearning

Underneath a foreign sky,
we soar, we fly.
The first thing I do
is think of you
when I wake up.

Annabelle,
wash this filth away,
bring the rain.
I'm in no rush to get my
hands ***** again.

Underneath a foreign sky,
we score, we get high.
The first thing I do
is steal from you
when I wake up.

Annabelle,
the sound of your voice
has me wound so tight.
Annabelle,
you stress me out.
Annabelle,
you stretch me
all the way out.

Underneath a foreign sky,
I left my dignity in the dirt
to die.
Pride only gets you hurt, and in
the face of light
I learnt
that I had lost my faith that night.

Annabelle,
you have my blood
and skin under your
fingernails
from the night we set
full sail.

Annabelle,
If you can feel
I'll dig deeper.

Annabelle,
If you're not real
I hope I'm not either.

Bitten by a spider
at the oddest hour.

His whole body throbbing
with his own pulse.

All his insides are charred
but sleep is not a willing
companion.
The eternal coronation,
death as his champion.

Sweating through a thin veil
of details, begging the question,
begging for recognition,
even the most elegant logic is an ugly thing.

In delirium, he tears his journal apart-
that's how an artist starts.
He is ugly,
he is crude,
he drank some poison
down in Greenwood.

he becomes quite faint
when struck with the
quaint notion:

that even the heavy
handed blacksmith
has finesse, and feeling too.

Like the artist
with a shattered heart,
I part with my senses.

what's a heart
without art in it?
A tortured soul
with a hole in its defenses.

A strand of dna against a starry sky, there are reasons they look strange to me. You know partly why I will never want you. It's cause I'm used to me being me and you being...

you.

You keep walking out
to see who's going to chase you.

But honey fairness is and fairness was.
That's right,

fairness is
and fairness

was.

I'll be straightforward with you,
I speak in riddles and rhymes,
have you got the time?

I don't have
any flowery words for you,
the **** if I know,
fair chances,
careful glances
in my direction,
could you fall in love or in line?

I won't chase you.

It wouldn't be fun.

I won't chase you,

but it would be fun

to watch you

run run run run run!

She called me




She called me
a little *****

in which five knuckles
and four spaces
were the only faces
that ever turned a light on for me.
Or off, as a matter of fact.

Write it on a flier, or
tie her up in the back of a limousine,
ask her to give you some sugar
and send you to sleep.

Just don't be weird about it.
And seriously,

pay attention,

you just might


burn something.

I think my voice is changing.

I press four fingers into my forehead
and smoke a cigarette like that one writer
I was too cool to ever read. You know,
they treat you like a ******* drug?
A ******* drug!

Past lovers,
and their coat hangars,
I don't wanna talk to 'em,
I don't wanna touch 'em.

But I do;
it's easy to cut into
those veins once you've
found 'em.


*I'm sorry,
so prone
to wasting time,
I love when my head
spins on an axis
all of its own.

It's a long walk,
the way that women are,
and I've already lost miles
to the races.
Try appealing to a youthful
star, have 'em throw money
to the wayside.

I was howlin'
like some horrid wind.
I was prowlin',
bayside,

sick of the **** I was sittin' in.

I was a wizard,

baby,

I was a blizzard
blowin'
through your front door.


I try, I try,
I try, I try,
now put me on trial,

baby,

you can't fake style!

It's not a mask,
and it's not just a past
but something more.
And I'll be able to tell
just what that is
as soon as I
figure all
The above my brow
considerations.
The ones that we
crawl towards,

the delicacies that
you spit at me,

you spit them from your
mouth; young,
European tongue,
look at what you've done!

Why?
Why so profound?
Why,
just act petty,
demographics
don't stop me.
Why?
Why so profound?
Why,
just be pretty instead,
demographics don't stop me.

Already seven cars,
I pull in late.
Put my keys by the candles
and stare at the lake.

Sit down, sip your wine.
What's in? Where have you been?
How long since?
You never drop a line.
You must be busy.
I avoid your gaze
and your hand grazes
my thigh and brings us
eye to eye.

Ready for the bar,
we barely ate.

No shame in
the champagne
I consume,
but I assume
it's the fine wine
I spewed all over the ballroom.

Took it too far,
it's getting late.

You don't want me to stay.
Uninvited,how you always
made me feel anyways.
Turn in slighted, ******* futon.

Last time we met
we slept side by side,
you and me, two reasons to care.
The letter and the locket
you kept and tried to hide,
I think I need some fresh air.

light a cig and figure some things are better left unsaid.
Always tempted to trigger thoughts long dead.

Staring at you, asleep in your bed, linen, lace.
I always was a ***** case.
Your thoughts leak out of your head, thin in space.
I find them on your face.

Better not be here when you wake,
the next time we meet it'll be too late,
so hey, by the way,
you looked beautiful today.

I see you blinking
in the summer sun.
I take you drinking
in the gutter slum.

You sit there
and you read your poems
and you stare where,
you stare where you should just go!

No Morse code! No Morse code!

Gotta find three of these-
three of these that fit...an angel couldn't laugh-
I would laugh! I would laugh!
No Morse code!

I figure the fragments are all black;
I figure the fragments are all

stagnant and all black!

No Morse code! No Morse code!
Ex facto!

I see you blinking
in the summer sun.
I take you drinking
in the gutter slum.

You stare where...
and you stare where...

She used to write poetry,
what would make
Morrissey cry?
The one who left
with all his depth,
the holiest ghost
to ever stick
around his bed.

What would you give to me?
French press,
Japanese guitar,

Dominican cigar spark?

Hearts can grow colder
as they try to feel,
try to push it out.

Black haired
Italian marble,
darling,
we are nothing
to nobody now.

Wooden swing, sandal toes.

Willows.

Swaying.

Sweet
water
running.

A silly, sinking feeling.

Sun saved Boat's neck.

Sun saved Boat from Night,
from shipwreck.

Harbored.

Beached.

Bobbing,
beat of red dawn drum,
tune of tangerine rind tenor.

Wheez.

Sea breeze.

Breathe.

Sugar soap.

Sun drop.

Exfoliate.

We were both still quite sleepy.
She laid her head in my lap in
fetal position for most of the ride
and I nodded off as the thunder
rumbled, and rocked me to sleep,
my head lolling to one side.
It was miserable out.
The sky was a toxic, smoky gray,
swollen and bruised purple
like rotting flesh, and the rain,
so incessant, berated the windshield
of the cab the whole ride to the theater
and all the while after we had handed
a couple crumpled dollars to the driver
and gotten in the cue.

We had our backstage passes
tucked away into our coats,
we didn't want any of the
regulars to see. She huddled
closer to me to guard her
ashen lips from the needle ******
of the wind, that would bring a tear
to her eye when they scraped against
the tip of her nose. She was thinking,
as she fingered the strap of the shiny,
clean, new camera
she bought to photograph us doing
***** things, the lens
reflecting all of her good intentions,
warm feelings onto me.

As a vendor strode by I snagged
up two cups of coffee, and handed one to her
and then we sank back into the shivering,
shuddering mass. She took a few sips, as I drew
the flame to my cigarette, ducking behind her
and cupping the tip in order to get it lit,
I could see the steam dissipating into the cold,
wet air. She smiled with amusement and
after a few moments looked up and whispered to me
"I want him at his best. I hope he's super depressed."
I said
"Yeah",
as I exhaled the smoke and simultaneously, in one heave,
cleared my throat,
"I hope he ******* hates us."

Rigid, with tears trickling down my spinal column
and escaping any other way they could,
crushed up chrysanthemums in my hands,
without moving a muscle, running away
any other way that I could.

One meaningful conversation
with my father in my whole life,
it was after I drank half a bottle of gin
one night in Cincinnati.

He raised me the best he could.

Once, in a dream, I ordered a ****** mary
and now I wonder if that means anything.

If it means anything good.

To construct a consistent
world view, a chore more
than anything else, really.

I don't know if you're right,
I don't care if I'm wrong,
keep singing this song,

ba da dum, ba da dum,
ba da dumb
dumb
dumb!


Young, lover of fiction,
dont force it.

You don't need a dictionary
to write a poem.