I could fall in love with her.

She promises
everything and anything.

No
She promises nothing
She merely alludes to every
intangible dream,
good or bad,
that I've ever had.

She demands commitment
She rewards dogged repetitive tenacity to
to the point of suffering.
Then again,
sometimes she gifts things for no reason.

It's odd but the harder I look at her,
the more I study her for understanding,
the more vague she becomes.

She threatens me sometimes,
maybe a lot,
and occasionally she springs
nasty surprises.

In spite of her meanness,
I imagine giving her some part of myself
but
she's fickle about gifts
and completely ungracious when she
refuses them.

Still,
you've always got a chance with her.
At least until you don't.

I would.
I would make her mine.

But Yesterday,
that ***** just won't leave me the **** alone.

"You've a large malignant mass," the Dr told her. She appeared gaunt in the feeble glow of x-rays despite being more than a little over-weight.

She was full of words, good words, too but she said nothing at the news biting ******* her lower lip.

She paid for the visit with a nearly maxed-out credit card. She had never been sick like this before but she had to admit, at least to herself, that she always seemed a little broke.

She lived well, she thought, at least relatively.

But she'd been increasingly more self-conflicted lately and the sensation was that of a gaping and festering wound.

A part of her seemed panicked and another part didn't care at all and, more strange, from the recesses of her bowls, inflamed and angry, came an obscene and lustfully sneering cheer.

Her stomach was queasy. She wanted Jesus Chicken anyway. She pulled into the drive-thru, not for convenience but for anonymity. She ordered the #1, add cheese, with waffle-fries. She also requested several packets of mayonnaise.

She ate greedily thru the traffic with her ******* ready.

She thought, thank God for speaker phone, and called a dude that tried to **** her at a party once because she knew he sold coke. She'd had gotten his number from one of the guys he'd been with that night.

She nearly screamed when he suggested that maybe they could work out a deal.

She heard herself say, "I'll be right over."

She pulled out a pack of unfiltered Pall Mall 100's, lit one, inhaling deeply, then choke-laughed unexpectedly when the DJ said, "this just in folks,

Democracy....,
she's dead."

Monsters, they're real but not what was expected.

You thought they'd be green instead of orange. You pictured fangs, not porcelain.

You expected a lot more blood and gore where there's this methodical, languishing torture.

It's eating babies right now and people call it politics.

It just doesn't work like that.  Like a big switch in my head,  (grubby and greasy with finger prints), buzzing and humming when turned on.  

Actually,  maybe it's just like that but...

the thing is,  if I were to ramble 'bout all the ways you are just so god ******....
well, that's the kind of **** that makes people want to throw up.

So if you could somehow just take my word for it that you are...

that poster that hung on my wall when I was twelve,

a wholesome dream as much as a pornographic one,

****** decadence all mixed up with kittens and puppy dogs,

well then

we could keep on loving and living well and forget about things as pretentious, narcissistic and nauseating as a poem.

I didn't have the right shirt on so she sent me home to change into something more appropriate because the people throwing the party were a little bit more than just well-to-do and I did because I generally don't like to argue but my second choice was no better than the first so I left again and then once more until she was exasperated enough to let my apparel go even though I was still less than presentable and I followed her through room after cavernous room adorned with Botticelli and Goncharova, way too expensive furniture, cutting edge electronics wired to speakers that screamed "nah nah na nah nah to ground trembling base until finally we emptied out  into acres and acres of back yard where there were scores of people milling about and a pet killer whale swimming around that would occasionally rise up out of the water to splash guests to their amusement, sometimes grabbing one of them by the leg or arm and gently pulling them down to the bottom before releasing them and back up they would come to break the water gasping and giggling which tickled those wandering about but I didn't get what was so funny at all so my face was that of consternation which in hindsight might have been that last straw because she was looking at me, not with the smile she once had of someone completely enamored and enthralled but instead, her countenance was that of someone entirely perturbed and she certainly was with my ****-poor etiquette, lack of insight and my rather limited wardrobe and it was just then that that whale rose up and crashed down again sending a massive wave that totally enveloped us making me realize in an instant that she might have been right about my shirt, for mine was made of silk and certainly it would have been better to be sporting nylon or rayon or,  at least,  something as wrinkle resistant as polyester for she still looked quite perfect smiling back plastic at the raucousness of those watching and I knew then that I wouldn't be seeing these people at the next big party which weighed on me more heavy than that wet shirt and the loss of her crushed me more than if that mighty mammal had landed on my chest but, oddly enough,  when I awoke from that dream, it was with a lightness of relief finding myself lucid again in a world for which I am far better suited.

They recall far too well

They keep count
of the exact amount of
milk and sugar
in her Earl Grey tea.

They take note of
how she won’t allow
bar fruit
to swim in her drink.

They catalog the precise shades of
white, pink and red.

They never forget a body
or face.

They were unobservable last night
at dinner
with so much light mirroring
the windows

Completely unnoticed
while we staggered
between the bums and youth
of downtown.

When we danced,
when she laughed,
with her cool fingers
slick on my skull,

when the downstairs neighbors
banged on the ceiling

when she said that I was…,

I was alone with her.

But this morning,
too many hours after cocktails,
with her skin fuzzy bright
all the sun leaking in,

I could feel the metallic glint
of their stares.

Close but not too close.
not close enough to hold on to but
close.

When they took the air,
I could feel black feathers
beating my ribs.

The crows,
they know and always remember.

We eat breakfast at the diner
two blocks up the street
I shew shewed them away
while she was distracted reading the menu

but I saved the crust of my toast
to feed them later.

Dolly Madison kisses me back sweet-like
outside of Ruby’s
where we sip elixirs and giggle
at the sidewalk staggers
of late night downtown.

“I don’t want someone directing me,”
She says, unexpectedly
(and it comes out like a question),
“but I don’t want to tell someone else
what to do, either.”

“Oh oh,” I say
“Like two mustangs.”

And she says, “what?”

“Two mustangs,” I reiterate.
Not a rider and a horse
or a horse and a rider,
with the digging of spurs and
the crack of crops,
but two steeds, side by side,
running for all they’re worth.

Dolly’s eyes stare
before they
roll up and to her left.
I make my hands move forward
up and down and
side to side,
together.

She lights with a slow smile and says, “yeah”
and kisses me harder.

In my mind the mustangs
sweat.