I only knew him by the sounds of scraping slippers on trash days, early to to the curb, always before mine; first at everything.

In late afternoons, when my head hurt from the relentless "boing" of my phone, reminding me of another email I will hate myself for opening at 3:00 am, he would be sweeping his driveway. This old broom, worn down to the stitching, mused by his slippers, synced itself to me. A concert in minutiae before I went inside.


Yesterday his door was open for hours. I only pretended to knock on it. The smell of wet wood and ***** did not sound like anything. It was more of a silent purple or blue faced hanging in a kitchen. I sat in one of his hand made chairs that I felt comfortable in, becoming furious. I stole his slippers and his broom before I called the police. It was trash day tomorrow.

How useful could they be really
extremities that just hang from us

They run into things
They trip over things
They get us into trouble

Some grab things
Some drop things
Some run, toward the wrong things

They put things into other things
and make people say I love you

All of them flesh, soft, rubbery
All of them easily broken, hurt

I was thrown once, at high speed, like a top, into the wind

They pulled away from me as far as they could
like they were trying to save themselves

They covered my eyes
before you asked me to look at you
before you asked me to leave

They held my head
They packed my bags
They walked me out

They would not bring me food
They would not get me out of bed
They would not reach for help

Somehow, they got me up
Somehow, they got me home
Somehow, they led me back to you

They move the hair from your face again
They wrap themselves around you again
They hold yours when we walk again

Today they knelt and clasped themselves together

I make circles with my fingers over your face
and exhale

Round and round
until you find my mouth

I quickly press you forward
thrusting your broken parts like porcelain
through my clenching teeth

Cold visceral parts
cobble their way down
my throat

until you release me

These dingy sheets
discolored at their ends

Press them out, to the brown

Slowly down

Move creamy beige wrinkles
out from the middle

pull the quilt, tuck it tight
flower print, deep purple
radiantly bring the room

back together again

It meanders
in us

like a melody
of wishes,

suspended softly
between our desire -

pulsing  
beneath the skin,

wishing
it was ours to have

like gifts
in someone elses past,

for hope
we never had,

dreams
we never held,

seeming
to believe in love.

It's selfish to taste your morning all at once
knowing you had passed
but that was yesterday when you touched all those babies
when they breathed deep and smelled San Diego

I stared too long at you, into your echoes

...your ******* old age into oxygen bottles
stroking out to door handles you twisted to leave here

When you cinder
I will give you back to Mexico
with all my pulverized bone wrapped in plastic
sealed tight enough for you to gnash your teeth on

It isn't that you come here
moaning and flailing about my room
in a desperate apparitional brilliance

or that you move between my walls
omnipotent, chain rattling

but so much more

You make noise of fears
poets do not care of

of dying
of living
of beseech
of neglect
of need

but in a wailing assertion

If you want dominion here
break something

his future
his past
his heart -
    
           his thoughts

If not

he will most likely
cast you out to dolts
tucked tight in beds
in other cul-de-sacs

You need to understand
this home owns a sedentary poet
seduced by despondence

as aloof as anyone
you have ever strived to poltergeist

he will not know of you
lacking gifted conversation
and a planchette

Come darling
hold my hand
as we did in summer

We would watch wild parrots cross the sky
squawking side by side to bite each other

their effervescent greens and yellows
swallowed by the dusk of us
blurred into one behind an orange sun
setting just beyond our sight

Hold my hand darling
into our darker gray

reminisce of when
we perched in trees
across our seasons

It is hard
to watch you struggle
in those heels

your sullen vacant face
stretched
across catwalks
of nightclubs
breaking ankles over
the next bigger ****

In back alleys
of phat parties
under golden showers
for top pay -

******* pink
and brown
and you

A salacious parade
that lives
to lap you up
despite your pain

I can't watch it anymore

...but I just may pay

I caught a bird
some time ago

and spent all our time
together

I taught it how to sing
I taught it how to fly

and then flew away
forever

He started feeling sorry for himself
long before he had seen his reflection
in shimmery linoleum tiles
that stretched into blind corners

before the snap of magnetic doors
woke melancholy macaroni people
strapped to rolling recliners
staring past Plexiglas TV's

He wore yesterday on his shirt
a step at a time...

one two, one two

felt breaths collectively stop
when he walked the halls...

one two, one two

like watching a one legged cricket
with your hand over your mouth

As cold as this place was
his head had been on fire

slammed into paper cups
filled with pastel colored
blues and pinks and
why pills
rattled at him like a baby

He fell face first into tomorrows

slobbered on wooden spoons
for vanilla ice cream
that he said tasted like Wednesday

He would get animated
when they ran out of Wednesday
and had many rattle cup nights
****** up through a syringe

hands and thumps
pressed him up against
heavy beds of oak bolted to the floor

gloves pulled his hair
when he smelled like yelling
into plastic mattresses
the same color as his *****

and no one wants him *******
while their eyes are closed

they want to see it

they want to say things like
"we'll talk about this later"

wrap his wrists in sheep's wool, in skin
from his *******, clasped by buckles, pulled
tight enough to close his eyes

He should have **** his pants

because chocolate doesn't have a taste
and neither did feeling sorry for himself

I know it when I look at you
I’m stirring in your sky
thunderbolts rise up within
telling us to come inside

I feel the wind whip up again
to drowned out all the chaff
scare the flooded fields of crow
lightning deep in us to crash

I built this bed for us by hand
back when those oaks fell
it washed out all the roads to you
rain soaked sheets of skin avail

I’m not what you want to want
you look amazing in afraid
I will hold you tight this time
enough to feel your windows shake

I wish that we could try again
but I will get you back to town
wait and dry out here for you
pray your storm comes back around

Nothing about today
made me feel differently

I drank coffee
close to my window
to fog it

hoping to see
you cast out
those ***** little pigeons
from behind that woven
cage of hair you make

to take me out
behind anchorages of boat docks
and bleed into weather beaten wood
like thickly mixed blackish-brown acrylic
scraped on shade

Lately,
the sun seems to
burn you off too quickly

scatters you about
absorbing me into
brightly colored hats and sandals

like wispy clouds that never touch the sky
with warm eyes and handshakes
that ring doorbells to get me off the couch
and ask me to come outside with them

I think
I will wait here -

for your drippy face to fall into a dreary mist
and collect on my windows tomorrow

Nothing about today
made me feel differently

I pretended
your mouth
didn't water
for them

You see...

I would
imagine riding
bikes along
shores with
my sunny
closed eyes
and la la la -

but

I could
hear them
***** you
out behind
don't signs
at the end
of the bed

Being quiet
was always
louder than
ice dropped
in warm tequila

POP!

Sheets were
never tucked
quite tight
enough

Pain faced in torrid ignition, burned white
and

Here you are again
peeling back the coy, ablaze

all blackened red, between
dead and gone and me

beneath skin and sheets
and you want me

in your bile and liquid
licked up

leaving what is left
to set on fire

knowing
I can never love you

but only taste you
dripping off your fingers

gaped open
and

blistered over, ablaze
in you

He packed the remaining slightness of her
tightly into an old timey suit case the same
color as his home made heart
to catch a red eye out of Arizona

Brass buckles caught his pant leg
as he ran, throwing him to high traffic carpet
made of things that burned
his face to slow him to a stop

Sitting up, he noticed she was spread
about in pieces again and understood
saying goodbye would be more difficult
than an old timey suitcase could be packed into

The man across the street
watches me leave every morning
I catch him staring at me

I smile and wave
he throws rocks
through his own windows
I would like to avoid him today

I do like it when
he grows flowers in spring
seems to smile more those days
his pill boxes overflow in Zinnia
reminds me of a wedding

In winter we shovel salt
he is subdued by the heavy air
thick mustaches and black beards
make for small talk
chit chat

This summer has been crazy hot
full of people scampering about
like ants under glass
trees full of Cicada - voices
in manic phase

Yesterday I heard him yelling at me
pacing in circles on his porch
screaming and screaming with
his ice black eyes, electrically peering
through me, at me, in me

I slap my face with water
bite my arms and pull glass
from my forehead
because it's summer
in my bathroom mirror

I just don't think
I can take the medication tonight
I'm trying hard not to look at him