Touch:
and upon touching,
let a wanton look
dress your skin,
pressing its wants-
as in a gentle grip-
shaping my tongue,
to press tales
of soft request,
and taste the very giving
response of that same skin,
adorned and to touch
its naked candour.

I've handed you
every missed opportunity I have ever had with a beautiful,
intelligent man. You are now
the object of my affection, like
everyone who came before you wasn't real,
only practice, but the sting of their rejection
has lasted. It's still burned into my memory.
I am giving it all to you.
Please hold it, for a little while, don't let
my chaos burn your skin, juggle it
between fingers and let it wind around your arm
like a boa constrictor.
You have the weight of the world
on your shoulders, it's up to you to redeem
all mankind, in my mind.
Please, smoke out the bad memories
from the empty, needy cavern of my mind.
Please, replace them with good, with your
jokes, and smile, and kisses on the
small of my back.
******* Bukowski was right, you have
no knife, the knife is mine. But I gave
it to you. Sharp as hell.
Please, don't use it
yet.

Watching my phone,
Side by side with my homework.
Waiting,
for a response...

As I close my laptop
and it snaps shut

my dog sits up
ears perked,
chest puffed, and

at the ready for
me to stand up
and grab a leash
and a plastic bag

for his ****.

And he knows this routine
because it has been seared
into his brain with the white-hot
branding iron
of repetition.

A force of nature.
A category-five hurricane.

We laugh at them
for chasing their tails
when the microwave dings,
for salivating at bells,
but
I am no better than they are.

The same routines
are seared into my brain, too—

stimulus, response
stimulus, response
eat, sleep, ****, walk, ****,

love, reproduce, etc.

and I will continue to do so
aimlessly
just like Ivan Pavlov said I would.

One day I’ll find myself
like he’ll find himself—
lying on a cold slab
in a sterile room
only half alive
aghast at how quickly youth slipped away
but otherwise numb

as loved ones circle around,
hands over their mouths,

horrified
to press the button.

what city this is, it's clear to me,
where silver steel is all i see,
winding, turning, to the left and right,
where no man is content to simply be.

it glitters and gleams even in the darkest night,
flickers with flashes of flint-edged light,
o, the people, with their long-dead eyes,
they know not the secrets this city hides.

o, the people, and their anguished cries,
i hear them all, the lies, the sighs,
alas! these very things i dread,
the city moves on, the clock ticks by.

a penny for drink, sir! a penny for bread,
a pound so i might find a city-bed,
no place to lay my city-head,
no place to lay my city-head.

In response to: Please Don't Put Down Your Pen

You may live by drinking the words,
But I thrive on writing the words.
Perhaps "Please Don't Put Down Your Pen" was written in response to my works, but more than likely, it wasn't.
I live off of the written word.
It is my bread and my wine, my world away from the world.
But I have put down my pen.
Returned it to its rightful place,
The navy blue, leather coated, velvet sleeping place of my works.

I have put down my pen.
My pen has been put down.
Euthanized it.
Comatose in its leather casket.

If you cannot see from my eyes the truth, the love I feel
If you cannot see from them what my heart says
How come you've taught me they are the window to my soul?
How come I've seen from yours the love you have for me?
How come you don't know? Why can't you see?
Are your eyes blind or they're the ones that lie*?

I have this tendency
Of wanting to be loved most
By those who do not see me
For rejection never hurts that much
When we could have seen it coming.



*But I can see you
All of you
From your nervous giggles
To your restless heart
And I won't stop staring
Until you feel my love and
Accept it all at once.
You will never see it coming.