my bad habits do not heal.

they disappear for a moment,
stepping out of a room as if
to take a call that they're certain is bad news,
and they reappear,
wearing a different suit.
brighter.
worse.

i bit my nails,
i found peace and stopped.
then, two months later,
i found myself eating paint.
the kind for nails.

clearly they are linked,
one i wear on my fingers
the other i wear in my teeth.

one is in a tan suit.
the other threatens to burn the tan suit,
and dyes it green instead.
ghastly green, the kind he knows i don't like.

my bad habits do not heal, as much as i wish they would.
they take the call in the hallway, and they cry,
but they do not tell me they cried,
because i assume they don't think i know,
and they re-enter
and sit in the corner,
take a drink,
and they start again.

I
I stole my brother’s car and drove to Phoenix in the dark. Bluegreen glow of dashboard gauges, the faint scent of roadkill and desert marigolds. Tap. Tap. Tap. Insects slapping the windshield like rain. How many miles does it take to turn yourself around, to rise up from ashes? Keep driving. Drive until the sun blooms.

II
Some days were more dire than others. CCTV footage confirms I pawned a shotgun, a Gibson guitar, and my wife’s engagement ring at the pawnshop next to Fatty’s Tattoo parlor. The typographically accurate Declaration of Independence inscribed on my back also confirms this.

III
I ran the tilt-a-whirl at the Ashtabula county fair, fattening up on fried Oreos and elephant ears, flirting behind tent ***** with the cute contortionist with strawberry-blonde hair.

IV
I derailed in a dive bar.

V
I disappeared in a city lit by lavender streetlights, where buildings blotted out the stars and the traffic signals kept perfect time.
I picked through trash bins. I paid for love with drugstore wine.

VI
I closed my eyes on a mountain road. The sheriff extracted me from a ****** snowbank.

VII
I holed up for weeks in an oceanfront motel, dazed by the roar of the breakers. Each morning I drew back the curtains and lost myself in the crisscrossing patterns of whitecaps, the synchronous flight of sanderlings above the dunes. I dreamed of dead horseshoe ***** rolling in with the tide.

VIII
The moon over my shoulder tightened into focus like a prison spotlight. One night the barking dogs undid me. Goodnight, children. Goodbye, my love. I capitulated to the candor of a naked mattress. I grew my beard, an insomniac in a jail cell clinging to bars the color of a morning dove.

IV
I coveted the house keys of strangers.

X
I opened and closed many doors. I sang into the mouths of storm drains. I stepped out of many rooms only to find myself in the room I had just left. Despite all my leaving, I remained.

i don't mean to scare you, but i think that somewhere along the way, i fell in love with you. something caught my eye and it was like a fire in my limbs. you bit your lip and ran your palms over your thighs, dripping gasoline over my skin like i was an old mustang with ****** gas mileage.

i'm sorry that i still can't tell you i love you. i want you to warm my ice in the palms of your hands, but i don't think i'm cold enough to ask you yet. i don't mind sitting here in the snow, even though i left my leather jacket in your room.

i like making you smile. and i hate it when people blush. i hate it, i promise. i don't know what to do when scarlet crawls over their cheeks and down their necks and i have to imagine it drifting across their chests. but now you've set heat all over my skin and there's a thrill when you touch my hands and all of this has got me revving but there's nowhere to put my right foot. what am i supposed to do with that?

i'm constantly imagining what it'd feel like to know you. i watch the way the glow of the fireworks makes your skin look red and green and purple, and i wonder what your hands would feel like on my hips with no fabric to separate us, and i imagine telling you i love you over a picnic lunch of whiskey and spilled red hair dye.

because i hate this feeling of two-ness. sleeping next to you and running my fingers through your hair isn't enough when you smell so warm and i am so so cold.

you left my heart out in the rain. it's your responsibility to warm it by your fire.

i hate the clichés just as much as you, but you have to believe me when i say that there's fire in me, and it's burning hotter for you than for anything i've loved before.

when you found me in that used car lot i was already scratched up, and now i'm bursting into flames on the side of the road

and you're walking away like you always knew this would happen.

and the waves pulled back
and so the sand could finally breathe
and it filled itself with sweet drug-like air
and smiled at the sun
before it all returned
and the drowning began again

When I tell you
I miss the past
I don't mean my youth
In which running
Across fields and roads
Was as enlightening
As reading a book on magic

I'm telling you
Crying out to you
Trying to explain to you

That I miss the past
Where I felt like my mind
Was it's own special haven
Of magical escapades
Where I didn't feel so-

what a bore, to be corporeal

i want to be lonely in the way
that stars are lonely -
bright and purposeful in their distance.
i want to have beautiful isolation
the kind that people paint
and take pictures of.

i want to be any poem
that is not my own.

this poem? *****.

in short,
this time is wasted.
it is breathless and dim
and it dies
without audience -

my loneliness cannot have audience
because, then, it would simply not be.

stars are millions of miles off
and yet are still visible,
still spotted with a camera on a hill
while two photographers hold hands.

if you are close enough to take
a picture of me,
it is implied that
perhaps i am not as alone
as i thought i was.

and perhaps you
should get out of my house.

ephemerality is derivative.

i’d rather live forever
with beautiful pain
than for approximately
twenty three more years
with whatever the hell this is.