I want the respect that I don't give,
and I want you to notice how blue my eyes are,
and how red my lips are.
I can offer you my hands,
they're exactly as soft as you want them to be.
You can look down my throat,
or bite my finger nails,
anything you want.

I want you to stop talking to me forever,
so that I can think about you all the time,
and I want you to watch me
as if you knew what I meant when I said goodbye.

It always gets to the point where my face is hot
and I can feel it seep into my ears,
and my heart is beating so fast that I'm afraid it'll get tired and stop,
then I'll just be dead.

God's not a dancer,
he doesn't have any feet, or a body,
not to mention a spine.
How could you dance without a spine?

I want you to ask me questions that I can't answer,
and prove to me how much better you are,
or maybe if you stood there and smiled at me long enough,
I'd realize how  tired you really are.

If I stop talking, that means I'm better,
and if I keep talking, that means I'm worse.
I hope you don't understand any of this,
because that would make me a liar,
and I'm sick of being a light that you stare at,
and I'm sick of that chair that you sit in.
but mostly,
I hate the smell of the theater,
and I always wonder why the floors are so sticky,
not that I care, I just have an overactive imagination.

And she said to me "I'm taking
That there rusted train
Right on up to Oregon
To see that girl again
The one I love
Shattered and sore
Blue eyes grown wet with pain
The one I left
Clinging and cold
In spitting summer rain."

Benedictine Warlords
Hold ceremonies in ballrooms
Tie knots in dying children’s hair
Demarking havoc to succumb
Red X-es on trees
Placating these
Monsters
These scumbags
These treasons
Against a muck they scoured
A much maligned superfluity
Of words, of thoughts
Of feelings
Of devotion
Sympathy
What of it?
You’ve heard my ideas on living
You’ve killed my attempts
Superavero
Veni
Superavero
Now go, before you learn what life is

Your musical choices
Like your poetry
Are interesting pieces.
I am jealous
Of your eccentricities.

Under my bowels, yellow with smoke,
it waits.
Under my eyes, those milk bunnies,
it waits.
It is waiting.
It is waiting.
Mr. Doppelganger.  My brother.  My spouse.
Mr. Doppelganger.  My enemy.  My lover.
When truth comes spilling out like peas
it hangs up the phone.
When the child is soothed and resting on the breast
it is my other who swallows Lysol.
When someone kisses someone or flushes the toilet
it is my other who sits in a ball and cries.
My other beats a tin drum in my heart.
My other hangs up laundry as I try to sleep.
My other cries and cries and cries
when I put on a cocktail dress.
It cries when I ***** a potato.
It cries when I kiss someone hello.
It cries and cries and cries
until I put on a painted mask
and leer at Jesus in His passion.
Then it giggles.
It is a thumbscrew.
Its hatred makes it clairvoyant.
I can only sign over everything,
the house, the dog, the ladders, the jewels,
the soul, the family tree, the mailbox.

Then I can sleep.

Maybe.

You don't love
me;
you love the
tip of the iceberg
that is your idea of me;
the sugar-coated mute
leading herds
of unfinished sentences
down the copious hills
of his insecurity;
the nice little writer
whose constant attempts
at legendary one-liners
are as hit-or-miss
as a sitcom still airing
far past its prime.

I possess three biomes,
or, rather, three networks
of personalities and identities.
I am much more than
the Jack Macfarland archetype
lip-syncing to Cher in the one
gay bar in town, tyrannically
governing your wardrobe,
possessing a razor-sharp wit
cast toward the backs of his community
in the form of an outdated punchline-
my work on that show
lost its Willful relevance
and Graceful naivete
years ago.

I am of the generation
fed media saturation
three four-hour meals a day,
who ingested cardboard cadavers
as if they were mother's milk
and internally mutated their
thoughts and desires
to fit the compact time frame
of 30 minutes
to settle the series' worth
of traumas and neuroses
while making it home for dinner
to stay tuned for what's
next in the lineup.

Speaking as a casualty of this
inevitable chain of events,
I regretfully declare that even
those who have seen
every episode of myself
for the past six seasons
are still light years away
from the room full of faces
unencumbered by euphemism.

1431

With Pinions of Disdain
The soul can farther fly
Than any feather specified
in Ornithology—
It wafts this sordid Flesh
Beyond its dull—control
And during its electric gale—
The body is a soul—
instructing by the same—
How little work it be—
To put off filaments like this
for immortality

Van Gogh cut off his ear
gave it to a
*******
who flung it away in
extreme
disgust.
Van, ****** don't want
ears
they want
money.
I guess that's why you were
such a great
painter: you
didn't understand
much
else.