Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
I don’t want to be Bukowski
anymore
Filling women with my emptiness
Dowsing ***** with gasoline
Fondling the
icky, sticky
gritty sweet with my
fat-fingered, ***** nailed
slur


I want to be  J. D Salinger
Just one something
so significant,
(even if it outlines the disturbing),
and then
a permanent exit

But here I am
Just like chuck  
looking for a flamethrower
to eradicate that ******* bluebird

The words
spewed with all the sincerity
and eloquence I can muster
always lewd

I may have enticed a bit a love
via thin pen
to come knocking once or twice
but the sentiments
they contain no glue

And so when I tumble
back into
the hopeless spaces between
the dust and ***
there is no you.
or us

There is just
this interminably
ugly
I
believing Bukowski was right

And of course I deserve this ****
but
It would be better
to disappear
to never share
to take my ball and go home
forever
home
Yeah,

I want to be Salinger
I don’t want to be
the fat kid on the seesaw
anymore

The let down
the crash into
the dirt

I want to build castles
in the sandbox

Maybe  
hang precariously
inverted

Or perhaps slide
perpetually

Or swing so high
I might go upside down

then just
let go into a freefall
jump
Hey, kid I really like your work.  You could win a hundred bucks.

Oh, Andrea Button!  How sweet of you to notice.  
What do I do what do I do
what do I have to do.

Create an account, handsome.  Accept the terms, ****.  Post your best work, lover.  

So you’ll give me one hundred dollars for my soul, Miss Button?

"And you license to Tallmadge all patent, trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights and proprietary rights in and to such Content for publication on the Service pursuant to these Terms of Service."

I said a chance to win, sucker.

Oh Andrea!  You devil.
I am a sucker...,
for fine print.
I was in love
with Denise,
(She sat behind me in the third grade and
moved away in the first few weeks of the fourth),
but it was Tasha,
(who sat next to me and was the
best friend of Denise),
that I would fantasize about.
I would wait in some bush
for her to pass by and then
leap out
wearing a black ski mask and
armed with a rag drenched in chloroform.

The part of the fantasy that would
constantly change was
the way I would drag her back to my trailer.
Sometimes
I would have a Tasha-size duffle bag and
other times
I just dragged her by her feet
or grabbed her by her arm pits.
I often thought it would be smart
to bring my little red wagon.
except that I didn’t have one

In my fantasy it was always late morning
because that’s when my mom wasn’t home.

Once I had Tasha naked in my room
I would tie her hands with a rope secured
to the ceiling
I would pinch and poke and rub Tasha’s body
everywhere.
And stare
She would be blindfolded but
I would leave my ski-mask on
just to be safe,
in case Tasha’s blindfold fell off,
you know?

it’s hard to find chloroform when you’re
only eight.  

Anyway,
she would squirm and writhe and
wiggle
but soon she would change a little
and she would start to moan
she would gasp
and eventually
she would beg for more.

And then more Chloroform
I would drag her back
so that when she woke up
she would maybe think it was
just some fantasy SHE had.

But Denise,
when I dreamed of her
we just rode bikes and stuff.

I was in love with her.
Sometimes I think myself clever,
a genius in horticulture,
harvesting perpetual fleeting moments.
A muted gardener.
Watering without promise or
sentiment.

When the air grows stale
I can disappear
(I always have),
like so many ghosts
or smoke
A nomadic farmer.

But today
I want to be
old and knotted roots.
stationary and permanent,
nourishing and timeless,
impervious to elements
so that she
might flourish.
I want to lean hard into the wind,
sway with it and
bend
while holding my
only purchase.

And when she opens up
it will be enough
and maybe for the first time
neither of us
will be
murderers of perennials.
Mary,

don’t leave me.  
The things we’ve seen,
the perfectly serene
tranquil hours,
thick, sweating, hazy bliss.  
No.  
Stay with me.  
One more day of
nakedness in the park.  
One more night of you
late and deep and
infinite in the dark.  
One more breath of you.  

You *****!

I should have tossed you out
with the cigarette butts and
the empty bottles of *****.
I should have buried you
in the back yard where
no one
would ever find you.
I should have
handed you over to
those shady *******
who moved in down the block.
I should have sold you.

Oh, my love!  

These cloudy afternoons are
cloudy for us, tangled
in each other.  
Lost!  
Maybe I could live with
never seeing you again if
I could just always taste you.  
I understand you  
so perfectly.  
The lovely flower,
Delicate,
an intoxicating
fragility,
I will hold you
so delicately.

You *****!
  
I will eat you.  
I will take you down
in restrooms;
on the beach;
on the side of the road;
on the steps of the church
with the clergy staring
upon us,
possessed and hell-promised,
in the middle of
room full of people.  
I would burn the
******* house down,
Mary,
just to elicit
the tiniest bit of
glow from you.

My everything!

I plead.  
I entreat.  
I command, beg and weep and
I find a little more of you
absent each and every day.
Like you have dried up and
withered as
the direct result of
me loving you too much.  
Words and want and sentiment
do nothing
to keep you here and
so what do I do?

I ensconce you
in plastic to
preserve you.  
I roll you up carefully
expelling all the air and
secure you
with a cord.  
I make room for you in
the freezer
so that you will never change,
so that I might take you out for
a few moments
at the end
of seemingly endless days and
finger you
on the kitchen table.  
So that I might breathe you
in moments
when another heartbeat
seems too painful.  
You help me like that.  

You are looking quite
green but
that red hair, oh!  
So carefully I keep you
these days
not sharing you with
anyone, ever…,
well
almost never.  
I mean if the right girl
were to come along and
if she was of the mind
to understand,
open enough to
mentally grasp
the sort of relationship
that we have then
maybe we could
allow her just a bit
of the madness we share.
Or maybe if I had a really,
really good best friend
I might allow him a
taste of you
now and again.
Friends share until it
hurts to give,
don’t they?

All we have been through,
so many close calls like
that time in that
dank little apartment
downtown
when the authorities were
mistakenly busting down
the door next door.  
It was a terrifying experience but
I giggle a little now
at how
when things quieted back down and
darkness fell
I scooped you up and
shoved you
in the trunk of my car and
we drove and drove
and drove.  
It was summer and
hot as hell and
the next day you
started to smell a little,
reek actually and
your odor saturated the
interior of my Chevelle and so
I made sure we
traveled at speed no more than
ten miles per hour
under the posted limit,
totally paranoid with
the situation and
still as happy and rich as
I have ever been with
so much of you
bound and tied and
packaged for
no one
other than myself.  

And still,
look at you.  
Everyday diminishing,
dwindling,
evaporating into
nothing and
enough is never
enough.  
Every time I resolve myself to
quitting you,
to leaving you behind and
moving forth
I pace the floor
sleepless,
my mind traversing a
monotonous loop that
circles every reason that I should
cast you out but
religiously returns
to the need that is you.

Mary, don’t!
Don’t leave me,
Don’t.
The thing 'bout Haikus
when you are on the verge of
something that's deep and
Next page