we chased after each other
becoming dog-tired and yearning
to rest in each other's arms
i tried to reach out for him
my fingers almost touching his
but no matter how hard we try
we just can't seem to lock hands
i pushed at him and he did the same
i banged the wall, he called out my name
until our frustrations to hold each other
finally die down in our sleep
because he tells me i'm the light
and he's the shadow on the wall
and that is only how we can meet

Shake the demon lover
in the effulgent post-Chelyabinsk world,
where death breathes you back
into yourself and backwards you walk
through those coupled images, so posed,
charged with feigned desire,
the lighting just right,
the angle meticulous,
smushing foreheads with golden rings
on your fingers.
You had a dog.
You had a crockpot.
A kid was on the way.
Shake the demon lover,
rip yourself from her arts district loft,
where the music is in French and always beautiful,
glide down the rusted rails,
cruise past the headshops, the pawnshops,
say the word Tuesday and wonder if it means anything
other than the third day of the week.
You shared a bed.
You shared a bed.
You shared a bed.
Shake the demon lover
and her words track you,
her text reads,
"Come over, friend."
And she calls you friend,
she shouts you friend,
she pants you friend,
as you end the affair for
the sixth, seventh, eighth
time, one last couch
**** and never speak
to me again.

Someone told me talking to women was completely different from talking to men
Familial desire circumventing physical rationality
I don't ******* get it
Flesh is flesh
There is no separation between this body and the next
No delineation save for my own arbitrary ones
This world is chaos bound by imposition
And none of it is real
I'm not even going to say middle class conceptions of family are constructs
Everything is a construct
Knowledge is anthropic chaos
Don't pretend you can tell the difference between essential existence and our subjective reordering of boundless matter
A gap does not form between a molecule of air and a molecule of flesh
I am trapped in my own sensations but I am not defined by them
So back to the story of material existence reduced to reproductive imperative
Treating all of the other *** as a means to displace one's self beyond annihilation into temporal infinity
Who ******* cares?
Legacy does not carry on after death
Legacy does not even carry through life
Language breaks down the moment we open our mouths
No one will ever view your life the way you view it
Splashing through a pool, ripples morph all reflections into monstrous amalgamations
Hey, tell me
Do you even remember yourself that clearly?
Hollow triumph, grandfather's bones in a grandfather clock ticking past twelve
Sorry, I just don't see the allure of treating half the human race as a means to satiate your own lust whether physical or genealogical
Or even categorising humans into binary dualisms that bored philosophers a century ago
Haven't you heard? God is dead
And there is no meaning to your boring male existence

2
I know
once I was just like you
I was young and furious too
the world was too much
everyone made you feel
so hopeless, you think you could ****
I know exactly
how you feel

Like the time
then at work
the colleagues went on
about responsibility
and they conspired:
I was irresponsible;
they were conscientious;
I was a freeloader
Ah, the judges in one's world
the judges of one's soul

and one day
they found a worker in a bad state
dead and lying naked in the clichéd
pool of blood –
in the toilet, of all places -
with the words: “How irresponsible”
on the floor

Everyone was in a state -
I moved inter-state
I was going places

when you say you are whole, you mean this:
whispering good-morning and good-night into both hands cupped
and a tiny bird’s heart in your palms, humming

you are pointing at the ceiling,
smiling, looking forward, teeth that are chipped jealous
of the tile floor that can easily be wiped clean-white again,
shining, and square  

i am mostly cracked-eggshell with the yolk slipping out the side
and rolling down palms, making fingers webbed and stuck together,
what i mean is this: i am Messy
stained bedroom and sock fibers getting caught on the linoleum, stuck

gold-capped tooth like a sewer
gritty, keeps the dirt from going down
brown-stained lips and teeth and tongue to match
kissing the floor
wet, and unapologetic
like the loud truck that woke me up yesterday morning
and today
because i thought the world was ending
but it was just a Man cleaning the streets