We met in kindergarten
Miss Wolfe’s class
Into an ear I whisper
A shy boy’s bargain

I knock on your door
Pray the dog
Doesn’t **** me
Seems like a metaphor

Laughter and chasing geese
Stealing glances
And prances in the woods
Sprained ankles in the creek

Your moon-drenched family room
And our primal need
Bodies glide
Into foreign feelings
I concede

We’re both shaving now
Not children
Yet not men
In between and fooling around

In my attic bedroom
Space Jam soundtrack
Hoping my mom doesn’t hear us
My hands on your back

Then moving down
Committing little sins
Shhhhhh
Don’t make a sound

Then the bed of my dad’s truck
Some hand stuff
Never a ****
Never enough

You get up and leave
I want you to stay
I play the radio
97 ZOK

Meredith Brooks
And I hate the world today
Because I’m a *****
But I like me this way

Fifteen and fevered
Down Mix Street
I rollerblade
Turn right on Worth
My love for you
Is such a sad parade

Remember when
We camped on the lawn
Quiet light and secrets
Then that wicked dawn

Dragging us back
Into a world
Where our desires
Don’t belong

We are strangers now
With a little bit of everything
All rolled into memory
Like a sacred vow

I’m your hell
I’m your dream
Do you remember anything?

I recall it all
Your tousled hair
And my forbidden grin
I think you live in Wisconsin

preparing months for an exam
for a number that supposedly determines your worth
******* up to teachers, people you don't even like
just for them to hopefully write a few commendable words about you

all for the hopes of being deemed "acceptable" to some supposed authority
for a place that will decide what you'll be doing for the rest of your life
making these drastic decisions at the age of 18
when not too long ago you were just picking out your prom dress

listing down any type of hobby or recreation you have
to make yourself seem a little more unique
since the competitiveness between you and your peers is sharper than a knife
who will make the final cut in the end and be deemed worthy?

~
Holding court at the Zanzibar,
they looked on good nights
like Egyptian Queens, like Ancient Babylonians.

On not so good nights,
they resembled Brassaï's Moma Bijou -
"fugitives from Baudelaire's bad dreams",
and even then they looked magnificent.

Identity wasn't something you nailed
yourself into in late adolescence.
It was a trick of the light,
and if you were to avoid
burning yourself out,
then you simply let the flames
lick over you
and turned the ashes into kohl.
~

I follow footsteps I've never treaded
And go where I always wish I'd visited
When my time comes to a close
I sit and watch the water

I listen to whispers that were never for my ears
That live not in reality but in my ears
Phantom touches that leave me breathless
They drown in the water

I remember laughter rolling in the night grass
Whose memory retains it no longer
And as I mourn the friend I wonder
I sit by the water

My heart breaks to pieces
As I sit by the water

the sleeper...

riled in slumber
         her face fevered
     cussed about the terrain
                                     of a floral breeding
  bedding patterns and the print
                                        bunched in struggles
in smudges
                     an amateur trial with sisters makeup
     primal cosmetics
            make a mock
                    daubed
                                ceremony for slumber

dusty and museum are her dollworks
        an amphitheatre audience
                                 overlooming her berth
    flaunting the gallery shelves
                sustained expressionist menace
Roman eyes and Victorian ridicule
stuffed suffering with Ugly Duckling down
****** sawdust and your sullied label
they bray and they brawl
         and they sluice their gull gall
    a sick drizzle
       over the sleepers form

   from the exterior
  wild wails the weather
its being
     drubbing
  peers fragile
at the windowpane
a raid on this vulnerable sleeper
impounded in bedroom aloft
raised to meet the jet stream

she is fumbled in dreams...

  abraded adolescent swells
judder out figments
  a bleed of vandals
     siling her muted childhood
       parading the playground
          berating old
         once loved playthings
       adopting no sympathy
    adapting in favour
      of the wild riding will
        of the direful pre familiar

into the woods...

a ***** charmed breath
       dressed smartly as boy
stoppers her pathway
       insisting a gentleman's assistance
frustrates her recitations
      of grandmothers doting
           stern teachings
         like fragile pottery
            come to harm
         broken into teeth
the quick blood beating
       this nocturnal forest
     busy in heat
      bonding death
       to refract the hustling moon

a company of wolves
    fill out the clearing
not a spell too soon
their howls reverberate
             jeering
mocking their new glut
sifting followers
      from the raggle-taggle array of fools
the foolish dreamers
          rounded up
amongst them she stands
red dressed and nervous
one hand clasping
                  and sexing the other

fortified
a great jaw operates here
an excited irresponsible mastication
committed to this fairytale

...agitation in her sleep

Ride a bike without training wheels in an empty parking lot until found.
Eat lunch without deodorant in a sweaty cafeteria until nauseous.
Go to prom without a date in a one stop-sign town until dawn.

Walk to class without pants at a small liberal arts college until famous.
Play guitar without calluses at an ex-partner’s house until fingers throbbing.
Hike a trail without a stick on a one-day trip until sore.

Write a poem no meaning in a 4 x 4 apartment until lost.
Throw someone else’s toothbrush in the trash in a studio until crying.
Delete numbers without reason in a frenzy until numb.
Walk down the aisle without a father in a rustic barn wedding until the groom is smiling.

Hindsight, hallowed be thy name.

All I've got is luggage... luggage!
My God! Turn around; find my comrades slumped under the weights strapped to their spine!
Limping, bearing, burdened by non-negotiables while the High Court of Good Karma takes collective sabbatical —
and this knapsack of shame, I've partial credit in filling.

Grey handkerchief, original sin:
one. single. suckerpunch. and my fists are raised forever,
begging for the chance to swing and prove my own strength
— supposing the opportunity never fell into my lap — I'd said "**** it," packed a

hundred grams of bushy brushed-out curls, stop-sign red
fifty grams of lips to match (uniform too, now I think about it)
fifty grams of raccoon eyelids and coloured-in brows
hundred grams of halls of mirrors, circus-attraction Alice
lose a hundred/gain a hundred/repeat til dizzy
hundred grams of ******-in stomach, eyes averted in changing rooms
wigs by the armful — that's three — nom-de-plumes thrown in gratis
(it's only a journey to the rest of my life anyway, I'll need them,
alternative being cinematic debut as Myself)
hundred performances to imaginary audiences, less-than-stellar reviews
hundred grams of overwhelming then underwhelming "on purpose"
hundred grams of laughing off any belief in potential
hundred grams of scratch-marks and verbal fountains of venom
hundred grams of giving almostneverquite as good as I got
hundred grams of group-work alone thank ****(?)
hundred biro-holes stabbed in martyred pencil cases
feral in broad daylight spoiling for a fight
kilo of aiming for 'scary' and landing on 'strange'
kilo of being third to make good company a crowd
kilo of taking sixteen years to find Her
— Shadowboxer Fiona, rhythms invisible, catharsis in art —
hundred doodled superstitious evil-eyes in the ruled margins
hundred laments over the inability to provide a better future

(removed one by one whenever I think the future's mutable)

that one glimpse of white lightning in a violet storm
one single minute's pause to look over my shoulder
scarce-to-zero progress made
endless miles to go
breathless body soaked to the bone
and this useless! *******! bag! of Everything and nothing of value!!
mansions worth of loathing yet there's nothing to lose
did I decide that because I can't change the world, I can change nothing at all
(instead throwing darts at reflections/emotional *****/kicking stray dogs as a full-time hobby)?

O clarity so saccharine that I cannot be angered by the wasted years
only because THERE ARE MORE TO COME
I take it
   off my shoulder,
the first kind action I have spared myself in time unguessable
empty
     the
        contents...
   really
    air it out...
and trudge on
    unaccompanied.
The world's enough of an uphill climb.