painting the pain away
using water based colours
and my face as a canvas

Coffee, what a word
gliding down the throat with heat
burning away sleep.

Writer's block is my *****,
I think as I stick a pencil to paper
producing more nothing on the page
than was there before.
Well this is going no where.*
Perhaps I'll drink some tea
and come back to this later -
or perhaps I'll just give up writing
forever.

For what it is worth,
I have been drunk on self-loathing and
halitosis since our separation
for the sole reason that
brushing my teeth
is only necessary if
kissing is mandatory
which is quite often the case
at least in well built relationships.
Actually, we did not
have one of those, I suppose
because you obviously
never brushed your teeth.

From here on out
I swear to hook up with
only those in the field of dentistry,
and only if they believe
it is ***** to do ***
in lab coats
surrounded by extracted pediatric teeth.

I was altered in the placenta
by the dead brother before me
who built a place in the womb
knowing I was coming:
he wrote words on the walls of flesh
painting a woman inside a woman
whispering a faint lullaby
that sings in my blind heart still

The others were lumberjacks
backwoods wrestlers and farmers
their women were meek and mild
nothing of them survives
but an image inside an image
of a cookstove and the kettle boiling
— how else explain myself to myself
where does the song come from?

Now on my wanderings:
at the Alhambra's lyric dazzle
where the Moors built stone poems
a wan white face peering out
— and the shadow in Plato's cave
remembers the small dead one
— at Samarkand in pale blue light
the words came slowly from him
— I recall the music of blood
on the Street of the Silversmiths

Sleep softly spirit of earth
as the days and nights join hands
when everything becomes one thing
wait softly brother
but do not expect it to happen
that great whoop announcing resurrection
expect only a small whisper
of birds nesting and green things growing
and a brief saying of them
and know where the words came from

I cannot stand foot tattoos;
those things are just plain grody.
How could anybody choose
the most awkward part of the body
to mark with permanent inky
decision making?
But that’s just my opinion.