In ten days when I land in London
Don't come looking for me in the park.
Don't go searching the alleys in Camden
I won't wait at my favourite landmark.
I'll be looking through different venues
Watching closely the people I love.
Getting tired of marvelous hypocrites, whose
Affections are shown with the glove .

I clean toilets
with no gloves on
my two tone hands.

I wondered why
I was born.
She told me this:

"So I wouldn't be alone."

I clean floors and
change a commode.
**** fills my nose.

I offer time
in an exchange
for my wage.

"I'm a ***** and
      I was born for this
         companionship."

I wondered why
I was born.
She told me this:

"I really wanted a kid."

Free agent, here.
I'm a bang for your buck.
Want a bargain?
Then you're in luck.

I can change a bed.
(Please take me in.)
I can tend a heart.
(It's what I was taught.)

I swallow.
(Oh, oh.)
I swallow.
(Oh, oh.)

We lay
as gloves
each a leisured hand
ingested by the other

Pleasure teeming
unweaned
and weak for the feed

Keening to pray continue
we lay down
to play some more

They say at the moment before your death,
You will have a piece of life flash before your eyes.
I wonder if it will catch my baby’s breath,
Or my very first butterflies.
I hope I will see all that is good,
Not my first love, but my last.
I hope I do not see the horrors of my childhood,
Or if I do, I hope it goes fast.
When my time comes, I hope it is filled
With all the I love
And all that I have fulfilled,
Warming my heart like a woollen glove.

Self examination
snap the nitrile

blue gloves up in your ventricles
grab a *******

or two
we're gonna stretch and

pull down the protector
3,2,1 avant garde

no sound, but your life was hard
I noticed

you spoke it
credits were rollin'

down your cheek
so you smoked it

and laughed at
nothing certain but death and taxes

laxative breakfast served
a generation

you miss it you miss it
a life that hurt because you

scavenged for Christmas
the little blessings

a life worth living
by killing optimists

penetrating defense
to pillar high with indifference

to intent
now you can't ascend

you stash it
in Easter baskets

in sillicone lashes
push the ashes together

then burn the mattress
dust to sand

through fingers, a fist
3rd grade principal

pulled from detention
a stretcher pulled you

white to trenches you fought in
when all you needed was

a breath of attention
who said you could end it

win it
prescription of tribulations

from whatever God you'd scavenge for Christmas
he put you through it

all the abuses
the habits

the black and white canvas
silent obscuring angles

of mannequins
30 seconds of a dancer

who prayed for this madness
who pays for the therapist

who even lets you have it
who kept you out of church

and into church basements
who writes the book of curses

that force fed you the sedative
given by laxatives

that say they went to college.
their Suit is stained in coffee

Yet you have the vices
The film is over

the light flickers darkness
we sit in the coffin

smokin' and screamin'
blood is flowing, but there's

no fire
we're just speakin'

what happens after 3PM
witching hour that one scene

when the camera angle was
blurry.

it spoke to me
said self examination can't be

latex
you gotta get nitrile

they're cut resistant
cover five fingers

not just a lover
a stranger

they protect you from more than danger
so button your blanket

take down the ink curtains
sun was always shining,

closed it
to blurry focus

could take our macguyver theater
wallpaper canvas stretching

hit us in the temple
like a parsha

finished another session
the blessing of human language

the messenger
malakh, without expectation

we fumble to understand
Scalpel in our hand,

ventricle in tact
we're just holdin' a feather pen

talkin' in white and black
we stick our hands in the past

take a look at examination
then take a look at our self.

I envy her.
I'd write that
she changes lovers
as often as her clothes,
but I've seen her
hold on to clothes
much longer.

I envy her.
She knows love
straight out of
a Vogue editorial.
The kind where models
wear only jeans
and ****** each other
with their polished,
photoshopped beauty
and ****** eyes.

Then you see
the same models
somewhere else,
seducing some other model,
and wonder
how their brains
can keep up
the oxytocin
demand.

I envy her.

My lover and I,
we're full of holes,
like my father's
light blue Levi's
from the eighties.

I don't envy her.
We're full of holes,
my love and I,
but full of patches
because a good pair of jeans
are worth mending
when they fit you
like a glove.

he holds a coffee cup in one hand
and a notebook in the other
it has a langston hughes quote on the cover
written in a midnight scrawl

when he paid, he smiled with all his teeth
and he had taken off his dark gloves for long enough
to reveal his calloused fingers
scarred guitar worn fingers

he drinks his coffee black and sits by the window
and Lord, the thought of him breaks me already