9th February.
I suppose it should hold special meaning,
Or coloured dinosaur eggs
But it's merely volcano silt.
Washing out a year and bringing in a brand new blandness I don't need.
It'll be the celebration day of my birth in just a week
Everyone has forgotten,
Too wrapped up in their own brain mazes;
Everyone forgets,
Mauve poison daggers seeping through memories
Forgetting;
Mostly warm summer days,
Mostly the southerly change at night
Mostly February ninth.

Everyone's forgotten me.

They kissed you with that mouth
Wrote books about you
Took pictures and hung them up for beer ads
For humans with high testosterone to ogle
While they ******* the top of a beer bottle
Like it will bring their fathers acceptance
Back into their eyes.
Your nine inched heels gave me whip lash
Your ½ inch eyelashes gave me heartburn
Your spit
Indigestion
Because they kissed you with that mouth.
And you still believe,

You asked for it

You still believed you were not worth getting out of the hood for
The hood
what good is the hood and the hood-rats

You ******* ***** in alleyways

All 10 of them lined up
said I might as well have the money upfront
If I'm gonna **** **** I'm getting paid for it

They bashed your head into concrete so hard.
You forgot how your mothers voice sounded like
Almost forgot how your uncles knuckles tasted like,
I don’t know your story
I don’t know your name
I don’t know you
I just know that your friend
And my friends
Last night
Came to the conclusion
That you were a ****
And you were asking for it
You asked for your head to be bashed into concrete
And hey maybe you did
Maybe you wanted something to hit you hard enough to make you forget
The hate inside
The misogyny you swallow
and wash down the drain
maybe you were there in front of 10 guys because you wanted to know what power felt like
what being wanted felt like
because you thought you were worth the money
but they didn't
because maybe that's what you asked for
because maybe your mother taught you to get high and surrender with glazed eyes
rather then take your higheels off and fight

because your laughter sounds more broken than you do
because your eyes hold remnants of your skull
because you remember the taste of your blood too keenly
because my friends, my female friends who are not evil or sexist

my male friends the protector of women
came to an agreement
you asked for it
put yourself in the position to
smell the inside of your brain
because your blood meant power
because finishing them off
meant swallowing or bleeding
and you did some of both because
maybe you chose survival
because maybe you came in kicking naked and maybe thats how you wanna go out with
another mans hands down your throat
some to aid air some
to constrict

weather you bleed or swallow you are only
emptying out

and I tried to explain that to your friend and my friends but
there is so much anger about what happend to you
and none of it is directed at the ten faceless penises.

Because you were once a chandelier of candles
And now you are a faceless light bulb hung on the moldy hotel building
Because your **** gives you free crack and
My friends have disgust on their faces
And I feel
Pity

The tears rolled down your china doll face
as the dust drifted through a sliver of light
that came flickering from that old neon sign across the street.
The pastel wallpaper, peeling away from the walls
showing nothing but the rotting wood of a dilapidated building.
The smell of mildew wafting from the bathroom leaving you nothing to
look forward to except the next drip from the leaky faucet.
How had your life come to this?
All of those teenage dreams.
All those fantasies of love and adventurous living.
Those notions of being an artist and revolutionary.
Nothing but the taste of bitter coffee and broken cigarettes lingers
at every meal.
A love gone sour.
Your beauty far exceeding conventional standards.
That perfect 10.
Wasted here in a dingy motel.
Longing for that one last kiss.
Waiting for him to make you feel young again.
As you yourself become part of this place,
realizing that you are decaying just the same.

March comes like a punching bag

March will bring her smiles like plastic bags
Some tear some don’t
You never know when she will glare her teeth like razorblades and bleed the snow
from underneath these fingertips.
Leave my insulation soaked, me; feverish.
And the joke is, I saw this coming
shivering the melted ice out of me she
bares her grin like a warning sign,
and I was either too brave or dumb enough to step inside
like a welcome mat made out of ice
and a cartoon dog
A scared pitbull, and a woman in charge.
The joke is that haha
There is no joke, you walked in.,
and made one out of yourself.
Out of the frost on your eyelashes and grief on your fingernails.
haha get it,
sweat her out like the coldest fever, without dying of shock.
Get it now?
She brings back the taste of firewood and comfort of flames when you needed it the most
Punches like the best punchline
hard enough to make it hurt
not hard enough to make you forget
hahaha
Knocks the wind out of you.

Scraggly curl hair bounces in the air
wagging with whisky eyes breezy pleasing the eclectic electric hectic now mind
like finding a papaya inside an oyster
battery powered like a pomegranate passionfruit flower growing and glowing
around my trinity heart with the noise of a sphere's galactic ******!

Crystal Citrine Mountains provide water fountains of sunlight
as so tye-dye t-shirt hip-cat hippos smokin' coconut shisha bathe in barrels
of bourbon.
Lion snakes spit words of worlds hurling nebulous timeline's spiraling
and crashing and splashing baptism ripples together painting Pollack Splatters
with the aroma of Byrd Jazz Jam on rye-whisky bread.

Fractal Berries served by the Far Out Faerrie Ferryman Skeletan with bejeweled emerald eyes
winks while I read in the reeds panting in pan-flutes while water rabbits scamper
into clay enclaves to bathe in pinecone designed sand-tubs.

The hieroglyphic phoenix twists and skip-scats neon green vinyl
turning the wind inside out to x-ray flames of fireworks.

Ever since, I've been afraid of the telephone ringing:
That metallic chime intruding at any second
Drawing us from our ornaments to "have you seen her?"

"Have you seen her?"

Maybe if they hadn't told me to get the phone that day
It wouldn't be quite so bad still
But every time I see that tree in our living room
Standing for family, love, hope
Everything that was smashed that day
All around me and entirely within me
Replaces again all that's been slowly healed

That red little ball falling
From shaky hands and weak branches
Shatters on the floor with a sound like a telephone
And those red little pieces linger just to be stepped on
Just to draw blood
And there is
Still
Blood

Two dead and however many phone calls
Shattering ornaments at every little decorating party
Where someone is stupid enough to say "I'll get it"
And everyone else is stupid enough to care,
Like humans do,
About all the things they can't control.
Like the snow falling, I mean,
There's no need to scream at the sky-
Your god can't hear you.
Just go back to the Christmas tree
And pick up where you left off.

There's probably 800 dead in Syria today anyway
And I can't seem to make myself give a **** about that, so
Why should I even really care all that deeply if
There's one less ornament on my tree?

papa remember when you used to spin stories out of gold thread
the thread that came from your teeth
it wove me a blanket so i could fall soundly asleep
papa remember when late on a summer night
we danced to music that was alive and wafted in the warm breeze like night blooming jasmine
sweet, and crawling up your nose and infecting your head
papa remember when you said you’d call
that was last year
and that same song came back on and I was surprised to find tears sneaking up
on me
burning canals into my cheeks
because you told me goodnight
and never said good morning again
because you left in my god ******
sleep

On the day you finally broke
you let every bit of the control you valued so much, slip
slip
away
And I loved it.

On the day you broke I pushed a button I knew I shouldnt have
pushed
and between your anger
I named your fear
"You're sccared." I said
Between your anger and your fear there was no more room left for
control
so you broke and broke down.
As broken down a control freak gets
Shaking, you spat out the saddest sentence I have ever heard
come out of your beautiful mouth
Hair crackled with the ferocity of your hatred you said
"IF. I could change everything about. MYSELF,  I would. My ****** zip code, my zodiac sign, every. *******. thing. The good, the bad, the ******* joyous and the ******* ugly."
You whispered the word "everything" as if I did not yet understand.

My father only taught me how to be a man but my mother taught me how to be a human being
And I too know how heavy armour wears on your skin
Even soldiers sleep
Even vikings take their armour off at some point
Even a captain removes his ******* hat
You
you sleep with clenched fists and gritted teeth
I havent heard you
yawn
burp
****
****
***
or snore
you are
the one eye open on the door and I'm
the kitchen floor cleaner going back for more
ill unload your baggage
just  tell me where you left the ******* keys to the trunk

It's on them nights I drink alone. Find myself thinking of home. These beers bottle bones empty and shatter. Liquor lung sigh. Chest heavy like a white trash wind chime. Like a six pack of bud ice hanging from some fishing line. Hear them low notes bouncing of the lips in the wind. And maybe you worry, but ****, I'm fine to drive. And on those days when my gut isn't a gas tank for beer refilling at a pity party pit stop, I drive on love. Write love poems on phones before the ***** knocks me out. And sure, maybe my love makes as much sense as the words I slurr. And maybe my love is as unique as the crackheads needle in the haystack, but I'll still love you serious as a heart attack. Like a stroke... of genius... an epiphany about the realness of God. That maybe the story is flawed, but you're welcome to believe. And maybe I'm drunk right now, but I never meant to deceive. So kiss me with your break lights, while a pray to the slow light that I can live life like an old man feeding birds on a bench in the park. Got nothing else on his mind... just love... you maybe. And whatever you might think. I promise. I'm fine to drive

Your Los Angeles apartment and I,
We’ve both been abandoned,
Abandoned and forgotten
To your never-ending travels.

I think you heard me say
I hated you,
But I only hate you,
Because I love you so deeply that my love renders me helpless,
And I hate to feel helpless.

Your bed and I,
We both miss your weight,
And wait,
Your sheets and I,
We miss your touch,
That touch you give her so freely
God, I hate Philly.

I think you heard me say
I hated you,
But I only hate you,
Because I love you do deeply that my love is making me feel out of control,
And I hate feeling out of control.

Your front door and I,
We both want to welcome you home,
Because with us, you are really home,
Whether you know it or not.

I think you heard me say
I hated you,
But I only hate you,
Because I love you so deeply that my love is making me blind,
And I hate not seeing the truth, Jason.