when the tree bark snags my winter coat
and tall light posts flicker coded pleas “come
home, come home”
a police cruiser surges onto the curb
lumbering tires spit loose gravel and leaves
“JUST DON’T FREEZE”
megaphone boom from a crack
in the door, ka-chunk a boy proves
he belongs to these bricks
with a clever piece of plastic
clutched in fingers of leather gloves
squeaking tight against the
heavy metal door handle, heavy
boots tramping snow from the soles
my head pinned to the earth by a half-globe
of knotted tree branches and scarred trunk
(KJ + DL, fuckGETpussy, rm 122 4 ****)
clawing me back for old obscenities
i wish my crossed legs under this cold-smoothed
picnic table could stop knocking to the beat
of the third floor’s 3am rave, knocking to
come home
ka-chunk, you belong to these bricks.

but with a liquor tongue & sober head
drafting and redrafting the words stuttering
on my teeth to keep you here
falling backwards on my *** will
prove nothing but that i’m not content
to be anything but in the table of contents
not a side character
in your favorite book
but god i can’t stop tripping
over air and chalked-up asphalt
am i first?
am i the only one? i growl
apologies & maybe’s
but honest to hell i am
filled with vice
glittering with ill-intent
dented craniums
punctured fists
bitten up pen caps

oh sure, you’re inked up pal
but those tattoos for the weak
aren’t going to lift any skirts
her lipstick ain’t gonna paint your mouth
for you
“rosebud”
hah

we walked with ghosts that one time
kicking trash, dodging dead squirrels, singing
punk rock---betting quarters & Arizona cans
to run fast against traffic
(this was back when) we wanted
to look for truths in picture books
and lies in the law
chubby fingers & a BIC stick pen
tracing imagined cartoon lives
our speech planned in bubbles

timestop: fastforward
snarling, “oh baby she’s a classic /
          like a little black dress”
with opened siamese mouths /
          rolled out tongue
fingerpainting bruises on skin
with pixie stick smudged thumbs
          “she’s a faded moon /
          but you’ll be faded soon”

between muffled dashboard speakers
streaming swears came the stillness
of carving numbers (each other’s
biography pages)
safety pins hinging on rawed knuckles
forever scarred visual bookmark

waiting for words to cause earthquakes
and fault lines in lungs
what was painted across the wall
in looped ‘*******’ cursive
timestop: graffiti
          i fear the human condition
don’t look at me or i’ll shatter
a powder touch would ****.

We sat blowing shapes in the smoke
and twirling insubstantial rings
around our fingers like wedding vows
I do, I do, until the end of this cigarette
Til ash do us part, my flame-ridden bride,
my raspybreathed king---still

and quiet in the little
cruelties stacked between us
wooden-faced as Russian dolls
growing smaller and meaner
in cold smoke curled round shoulders
space between shivers
contrary wispcat, blueblack cracks
in the universe and veins of a wrist

black to blue
rubber to glue
you’ll always keep chasing me away
and I, like a rubber band,
snap back because I’m

sorry
I spilled cereal on the floor
and crunched it up with bare feet
cracked the martini glass
into so many pieces it didn’t look
like danger
but hard raindrops on scuffed tile

sorry
redwhiteblue America strobes
are scary, you’re not in the club
it was dark and you wanted
to go home---you still want to go
home---but without the blue-uniformed stranger
or the guy who bruised his fingerprints on your waist

sorry
for wearing dreams of romance like perfume
on pressure points, curling my tongue
around pain pills with wishes that
can't put out thunderstorms
and mend the gaps in a sidewalk

sorry
(and this was back when i cried for a
bandaid, any at all, for surface cuts)
we wanted to look
for truths in picture books
and lies in the law
because life is so much better as a cartoon
with our speech planned in bubbles

sorry
that when we were little
I thought rivers were small
because the blue veins mapping your wrist
were water to me
then I let you fall into, y’know,
that real emotional condition
where life was written in rules
chubby fingers & a Bic stick pen

sorry I didn’t leave a post-it
just a crumpled up coat
and the smell of smoke
when my footsteps burned a river
blazing outside and away.

ignite the cold, slick lump in my stomach whose
body is dread, tell me i’m pretty and
then hide my makeup---feed
the red-tubed lipstick to the dog---praise
my muscled calves.
          (my you’ve done a lot of walking in your soul today.)

do not notice the slight limp or pale puckered lips.

do not weep and then claim it was joy, it was fiendishness
all along i know it, and so does your cloven foot.

i crawl naked to my bunker, fortress of fleece blankets, leave one foot exposed.
it cannot split
leave me the hell alone.
so just leave me all ******* alone.

but with a liquor tongue & sober head
drafting and redrafting the words stuttering
on my teeth to keep you here
falling backwards on my *** will
prove nothing but that i’m not content
to be anything but in the table of contents
not a side character
in your favorite book
but god i can’t stop tripping
over air and chalked-up asphalt
am i first?
am i the only one? i growl
apologies & maybe’s
but honest to hell i am
filled with vice
glittering with ill-intent
dented craniums
punctured fists
bitten up pen caps
oh sure, you’re inked up pal
but those tattoos for the weak
aren’t going to lift any skirts
her lipstick ain’t gonna paint your mouth
for you
“rosebud”
hah
we walked with ghosts that one time
kicking trash, dodging dead squirrels, singing
punk rock---betting quarters & Arizona cans
to run fast against traffic
looking for words to cause earthquakes
and fault lines in lungs
timestop: graffiti
          i fear the human condition
don’t look at me or i’ll shatter
a powder touch would ****.

let me be prophetic
let me romanticize bones,
pearls embedded where teeth should be…

i am smoke and blood and poison
diamond chips for eyes, hard,
colourless & cracked facets
she is unstained
my skin every possible colour
every pockmark visible and ugly; every sacrifice
          carved in lines below my chin
ticking down the breaths
counting them, holding them lovingly
in the hollow of the throat
that they may blur together and strike a sickly rainbow
that she may find her salvation at the end of mine.

i sit cross-legged in the grass
highlighting quotes in my book
a girl she sits
down next to me
flips a cigarette from her pack
flicks the lighter once; burns her thumb
hisses softly
her hair is the ***** sun
one, two, three she smokes
determined mechanics of an assembly line
i choke on the smoke,
i choke on her concentration
the pages of my book are yellow with her smoke
yellowed as her hair
i breathe, breathe the cloud
sweetly now
draw fluorescent puffs
highlight the smoke that stains pages
i am focused on my task, she on hers
we sit together and breathe our cloud
small suns wrapped in a halo of smog.