I play six clicks to you,
like I used to look for
Jesus on Wikipedia,
when I find my
weary fingers wandering
into my healing wounds again,
digging the cursor across
bruises and sutures to
links so you won't
show up in my search bar.

I can play pretend too,
like all the college students
haunting the streets,
moving straight faced
and dead eyed past
the homeless people
holding their heads and
fighting their hunger.

Your newly pierced nose
sniffs out my high blood pressure,
sweaty nervousness, and
***** haired demeanor;
the shivering mourning dove
perched atop rubble
sings out shaky poems to
your roommate.

You've walked into a new room
and I'm standing in the hallway,
trying to figure out which closed door
I'll find you behind,
pulling each one open in turn
only to hear another swing shut in
some ******-Doo style pursuit.

I keep your memory in my pocket,
a tattered pin-up photograph, to
pull out and glance at occasionally
with glazed over eyes and
a drool dripping mouth.

How does the other side of your bed feel,
so full and pumping blood?

We both jumped in after eating,
but you keep swimming and
I find myself on the
shoreline once more,
grabbing for a towel,
trying to push the water
from my own lungs.

A pair of tan underwear
lives in my dresser,
splattered with stains
from the **** you
keep in your backpack.

I still wear them,
and I can't help
but think of you.

Cell phone shield in hand,
the mirror-me peers
into a shoddy, cracked up
dream reflector-slash-protector
as I make amends with
my agitated mitochondria and
attempt to drill miniscule holes into
paper dolls without ripping them.

So screams the wall hanging!
Banshees dance, falling
into cyclical romances as
cream colored microphones peek
out around one-way windows wondering
whether or not the smiles will hold.
Eyes still,
eyes wrinkles crinkling,
spit spray sprinkling.
Connect to the dreamers.
Push your plug into
my cracking wall sockets,
pull me apart at the seams.

So cries the doorstopper!
Knees bleed from
street corner séances
and eyes green grass
that's afraid to ask
where its clover went
but heavens, it's bent for hell.
Pray tell me, burping chickadee,
when did your teeth glass over
with a film of cerulean and
your bones start sailing
through tepid reminders that
you may end this life a failure,
swallowing Uncle Ben's rice packet trash
at the dark black bottom of the Pacific?

So sighs the statue!
Broken walkie talkies
feed red back to nothing
and knick knack hoarders note
the familiar festering of deadly bacteria
in the lungs and on the
tippy top of the tongue.
Space cadets rocket
through concrete jungles containing
apartment after
apartment after
apartment filled with
mannequins filled with
sand filled with
unevenly severed hands.

So speaks the ornament!
So declares the dashboard decal!
Sensual scholarly seekers
seem so totally hip
and read feminist poetry
to dispel the myths
and spit on the irony.
I won't dare to flatter you
with the focused attention of stone
or allow the personable picture frame
to make the secrets of
the microscopic universe known.

So suggests the ship siren!
So recites the repository!
Empty yourself into me,
adopt a new philosophy,
abandon in within two weeks
so I can see and you can seep,
your fluttering robin heart to keep
and glaciers to arrive upon
a salty brown eternal sleep.
Deliver me to the melting shopping mall!
The centennial fire alarm goes off
at the tip of the cliff,
at the end of the hall.