fROM THE dESK OF THE pOET**

I'm embarrassed to admit this. The night before last I ate an excessive amount of Sour Chewy Sweettarts. If you've ever had them you know that just one or two have enough toxic chemical dust sprinkled on them to make your mouth numb for several minutes. Well I got into a rhythm of eating one, then adding one to it, then another for three, then four, then five, then  six all the way to seven at one time. In that experiment alone I consumed no fewer than 26 Sour Chewy Sweetarts and even that was after having warmed up with several single helpings.

Sour Chewy Sweettarts were at one time marketed under the name  "Shockers". Let me tell you they should have respected the truth in advertising inherent with that label. The intensity of tartness conferred from all these ***** Wonka treats was remarkable and very well could have been the most face-squinching sourness I've experienced in my fifty-plus years.

The unfortunate downswing of these hijinks is that I developed a chemical burn that spread across the entirety of my tongue all the back to and including the area where my uvula hangs.

It's my own stupid fault. I could feel the chemicals eating through too many layers of cells long before the administration of candy pellets had reached four, even five-count multiples. By the time I had the seven pack ****** down to gel the burning was so bad I had to squint my eyes. The question that found priority amongst all that came to me at that moment was "how long is my mouth going to be so alternately sensitive and numb that I won't be able to eat my beloved jalapenos and spicy vittles?" A couple of days later and that answer still has not been found, although progress has been made to the point where I have faith it WILL indeed heal...you know how paranoid I can think sometimes, surely my mouth will never heal from THIS god forsaken self-inflicted injury, after all, I deserve it, hence the term "SELF inflicted". It's nothing but payback being it's usual self. If I never get to taste the wondrous seasonings of a well-mixed chili recipe cooked to perfection by someone who really knows how to make chili...if I never sigh with uninhibited satisfaction after downing a swig of Dr. Pepper or Miller's High Life or Guinness Stout...if I never again will be able to tell the difference between prime Angus beef and succulent Maine Lobster it is for good reason that I've been deprived of these tender mercies. It's because I knew when to stop and I kept on eating, though tears had begun to form.

No, it's more than that. It's because Universal Forces were all the while begging me, whispering in  my ears, "Stop! Stop! Enough! No more!" What would have happened if Joseph had ignored the Lord on that cool December night? Gabriel let Mary in on what was going down, what do you think would have happened if she'd gotten jealous of Joseph and disregarded the angel because he didn't have quite as much clout as her husband's Messenger? What would have happened? Nobody knows. But I know what would have happened if I'd heeded the advice of the benevolent spiritual  beings who were trying to warn me to lay off of the Sour Chewy Sweettarts. I wouldn't be sitting here typing on the hp laptop about how I got the chemical burn from hell.

But it seems like valuable lessons may be learned at every turn. So it is that with almost every experience I am resigned to also look at this one as the hard earned silver lining. Just what exactly have I learned? Well, first of all I've learned that it would probably be a good idea in the future to regulate severely the amount of Sour Chewy Sweettarts (aka Shockers) I eat in one sitting. If I ever eat them again, If the emotional scars of the chemical burn will free me in my sweet tooth's cravings for Wonka Sugar to ever again opt for the sour stuff. I learned that eating Vlasic Kosher Dill Pickles with such a freshly de-sensitized/throbbing chemically-scorched tongue is a prospect that shares much in common with a full day of taste-testing ghost peppers. Only on a slightly smaller scale does the briny pickle juice pack it's own searing acidic punch.

Other lessons? Oh I'm sure I could fill a book with lessons this has taught me. Writing that book might be the most useful, benevolent gesture I ever offered my fellow man but I don't know if I can do it. But if I did, this would have to be the first couple of lines on the very fist page:

Make sure you're going to have a LOT of alone time the morning after.

But that's just plain good advice.

Candlestick lit,
predatory form divorced
Daybreak take your feet
Assault me with rough dissonant hands
Take from me your bright request
Down in the valley curtains part
The thin plane light overflows
Without light-seeking caresses in the clear sky
Bold accommodations of the sunbursts
To Save

Appalachia
The displeased living hear of me
With Vivomantic symbols
After blackened nights begin
Fornicating on your birthday
Off his downswing that has passed...

"How the call it is unfulfilled
your mind, thoroughly healed
Terrestrial white feathers
And tame plains lament
Yet less tame after
His darkness heals you".

That summer day when the rain shaded shallow
And as dull walls divorce the Bejeweled earth.
You don the nakedness of supernatural awakendness
Painted by these symbols Aiseralam spoke...

Appalachia
The displeased living hear of me
With Vivomantic symbols
After blackened nights begin
Fornicating on your birthday
Off his downswing that has passed...

Candlestick lit,
predatory form divorced
Daybreak take your feet
Assault me with rough dissonant hands
Take from me your bright request
Down in the valley curtains part
The thin plane light overflows
Without light-seeking caresses in the clear sky
Bold accommodations of the sunbursts
To Save

"Love is patient,
love is kind
and is not jealous"
>>>why is jealousy now an easy frame of
mind
my own ******* business<<<
past is past
don't let these fleeting feelings be the only thing that
lasts

firsts

this is no introduction to a new kind of
hurt.

"love is not provoked,
does not take into account a wrong suffered"
the fight to be rational
keeps

getting


tougher.

enamored, disgusted, confused, what's true?
now i'm drinking as much as you
growing fat and always tired
i can't believe it when I'm told I "inspire"
crawl into my ******* bed
stare you down while you're giving me head

overthinking
overdrinking
over all this mindless sinking

"[love] rejoices with the truth;
bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things"

back in a hole

I.
I saw it all through the eyes of a child, knees scraped ****** at the altar of remorse
Who couldn't sing a single hymn without his voice breaking off
And who lost himself in the laughter from the congregation
I took it all in by pieces
The way the dreamers lusted for Icarus, but ultimately settled for getting high on the ground
The way the dreamers became junkies and the way the junkies died like clockwork every hour on the hour,
To be reborn as prophets on a newsreel clicking their tongues about the fall of America
Please
Get down off your high horse, brother
America has fallen and now you're just embarrassing yourself

II.
Mercy for the lovers, they know not what they do
Mercy for the restless, the senseless, the savage
Plucking at chords till they find the voice they need to reach heaven,
Sipping gasoline from the cupped hands of the sons of the revolution,
Mercy for the revolution, they really did mean well once
But their anthems caught on dead air and they drowned in the high tide of their own self importance
And we didn't mourn but we'll sure build them a monument,
A manifesto pieced together from scraps of torn up prescriptions, misspelled names on coffee cups, tobacco spilling out the seams of broken cigarettes
And it will proclaim to the world,
These are the fruits of your labor
These are the lifeless things you bled your youth dry for
Sanctify them, sing their praise from the highest peaks
And receive payment in your next life,
A hundred hymns per heart broken, and a thousand pardons per spirit swallowed whole
Mercy for me, you know I couldn't help myself

III.
We are looking at the underbelly of an evil machine
So when I speak the apocalypse please know I'm being serious,
Lazarus has just finished his third cup of coffee today and he isn't even pretending to be amazed anymore
How could I get that lucky?
Could I unlearn the branding of my soul or am I next up to the chopping block?
If I ever hear the wind cry Mary on the downswing of the blade falling to take my life it won't be soon enough
And I will look back on all the bruises in creation I've left,
In milky white flesh turned deep purple,
In starry American sky lit up by dissent,
In innocence exposed to the fluorescent light of sin,
and yearn to leave each one again,
Just to experience what it feels like to stain something beautiful one last time

IV.
A beautiful boy drags his grandmother's ashes down his throat into his lungs to spit back up epiphany after epiphany, balanced on the manic edge of destruction
An angel faced girl dreams of mountains, the whole world a church to be celebrated
A harlot sings desperate in the street to attract just enough attention to make it through the night
The devil lights another cigarette and waxes romantic about the one that got away
These are the heroes to whom I give silent thanks,
These are the criminals to whom I give violent condemnation
These are the faces I pick out of the static behind my eyes,
These are the hearts I wear stitched into my sleeves
I'd be nothing without you

V.
**** me once more in the neon lit halo of your love and this time give me a shot between the eyes, just to be sure
For I have seen the end and I'd rather just get it over with
String me up between the billboards for life and loneliness and hold me still in the holy visions I have of a last judgement
Shoot me up once more with my drug of choice, the sadness I spent decades mixing in my basement till I got it just right
And let me explode one last time,
Let me be vivid and shameless, let me scorch their retinas and blacken their brains till they start to see things my way
Build me a monument worthy of the king they thought me to be, not the king that I was
Write my eulogy on the back of the receipt for my soul, and never let the ******* tell me I didn't get my money's worth
Martyr me again, and this time I won't back down
I promise
It's the least I can do

You hold my hips as we listen to Kaskade
I'm never going to know the exact name of the song, darling
I rest my head on your shoulder
Exactly 72 hours or more after we met
Smiling serenely at each other, trance-like
Our bodies swaying to some invisible beat residing in our heads

We never do watch that Minions movie in Dunellen
We do eat cold leftovers of Chinese takeout
Retrieve them from the mini fridge in the hotel room
Congealed chicken and broccoli and your beef dish
We eat cold slices of Margarita pizza from the first night
Shared an Italian dessert with two spoons and one glass and thought nothing of it
Talked of your ex as if you'd driven out to see me for months instead of just that one time
Smell **** in the hotel hallway when we come back from our escapades
Joke that maybe we could ask the other patrons two rooms down for “a sample.”

The room becomes a home
We domesticate ourselves
Trap our secrets and nightly admissions in the thin walls
Share a toothbrush
I model for you in your old boxers
You grip my hips and kiss tortured minds out of our systems
On the first night, you fumble for me in the darkness
We had *** hours before
I'd only had one pair of clothing
I was high on hypomania
You were lonely and desperate and enamored with the idea of me
I heard your voice in the pitch black of the room
Disembodied, floating, pining

“Taylor...? Are you awake?”
“Yes,” I answer back, stifling a yawn
Demons crawled along the surface of your bronze skin
I could feel them too
They were always there, slinking into the corners of every room
Perching on the windowsill, furtively glancing at us
Unseen, invisible, unknown, silent stalkers

You ask me about loneliness
You speak about your worries for an “us” not even a week
After your Facebook friend request
“I don't know if we'll work out in a relationship,” you say
I watch you with my large brown eyes, inquisitive
Bite my lip, taste the salt of you on my bottom one
Taste your skin and spit on me

Hours before you'd clasped my leg, it, laying on your shoulder
You pounding, feral, all wild animal, sweat on your brow
Grunting quietly, watching me, looking at nothing and everything at once
You **** me until I'm completely dry and sore
Lament that you want to be inside me still, that it *****
I think, oh how it does
We took off our glasses to blindly ***** at each other in the darkness
You'd said you liked how it sharpened the senses
I was a repeating rainstorm, endless, Summer showers in the bedroom
Hot, sticky, palpable
You taste saltwater, briny, sea, inside of me

“I don't know if we'll work out together
When we do go back and if we do end up together
It'll be disastrous,” you fortune-tell
I bite my tongue, taste salt and pennies in my mouth
I swallow it down wordlessly
Hours later, you're back in PA
I message you on Facebook, my heart in my mouth
I want to ***** with the amount of anxiety,
Tremulous in my fingers, humming in my blood
Throbbing, alive, achingly


“I don't intend to fall for people usually...
But I've fallen for you
I don't think I can keep talking to you like this
I'm usually scared of falling for people,” I write
You reply without any trepidation
Some strange confidence and Siren call beckoning you
Some spellbound hook curling around your fingers
“I'm emotionally invested in you too
Look, I understand
But I enjoyed my time with you
Let's at least be friends
It's not easy for me to shake someone off.”

Two months later you tell me, after messaging me at 10am
To see how I was doing
That when your room mate was wildly ******* his girlfriend you thought of me
“Most days I think of you.
You're in my daydreams
I come home and I wish you were here
That I could come home from work and you'd be there waiting for me.”

I try to scratch you out of my head, now
It hurts too much
I told you I was in love, I tried to deny it but now it's more apparent
I message you and get silence in response
Talk to someone else
Have ******* with another man
Purge it out of my system
Stick my fingers in the back of my throat
Try to puke. Nothing. Dry heave.
Encourage him to see me and then I encourage him not to
I lose about five pounds

I think about you and your stupid dog and cat
I think about you and the daydreams
I think about you and other women
How you'd **** them
How you'd take them out to dinner and hold their hands
Rub their fingers with your thumb
How you might be

Your hands
Your soft breath
The bright gleaming eyes
That strong German jawline
That fleeting mood,
Upswing and downswing
Your insistent arrogance
The hot tongue on my hardened ******
You suckling
Dark heat emanating from your wet and warm mouth
******* me on the couch
Clasping to each other
Burying our heads in each others' necks
Slow rocking back and forth
Rhythmic
Our shirts still on, your jeans half-way pulled down
You entering in such haste and hunger
The board game forgotten on the table
Laughter muffled by your feverishly kissing me
Did you love...? Did you?

I think about the physicality
But then I think of the late night conversations I'll never get back
Your sleepy “hello” at 1 in the morning
Philosophical musings I never tell my friends that we had
Us, talking about literally nothing in the beginning
The lingerie site we subscribed to
Looking through catalogs of what you'd see me in
You saying you could buy me something to model for you
The *** chairs we looked at, furniture to purchase
Odd daydreams of a coupling that almost-was but never-was

I think about you holding me even though you're so unused to it
The smell of baking banana bread
That inner battle in your head when you saw me the second time
That sadness
That loneliness
Your... “don't forget to come back.”
Cologne on your medical scrubs
How I didn't want to let go
How I wanted to stay
God, how I wanted to stay and just do better
The kiss and then...I wonder if there was a lie in your mouth
No, I don't think so
Was it my fault to fall?
No, I don't think so
Was it yours?
No...I don't think--

my body contorts
along white bedsheets boasting basic blue flower print.
i stretch, without direction - fingertips reach cosmic deeps, i think.

curtains mostly drawn; one sliver of sun let in.

globular of lonely, swung
out into this far-off nook of hook and warm-no-more:

i am, now,
chemical alter
on the downswing. where
is my attraction?

stuck in space
deep,
pitted in sleep that wakes the Fates (that do not exist),
only bored ice dust and
lifeless true blue neutrinos swarm about my body.

i used to have pull;
gravitational cool.
now i am tons of tundra,
acres of bleck lol melodrama,
a mess, always
in bed:

it makes me.
it always has.

The bipolar swing goes down
Regret, regret, regret

Maybe foolishness
When I placed my bet

My life is agony
Tormented still and yet

I have to see it though
Time an Ocean and I'm wet!

little animal walking in the dark
chased by the heartbeat, heartbeat,
the hammer that says
die alone in the dark
the downswing of it cruel on the skull
of the suffering little animal
in its misery in the road
You still take an analgesic
and feel nothing
a cure is a poison is a cure is a poison
you’re grateful to the berry
that killed you
and scared of the river water
that brought you back
scared of the stutter of that
heartbeat, heartbeat
the ache in the chest
the shortness of breath
the voice saying that was enough to die
now pay enough to live
heart-throat animal stumbling on a dark road
it can pay you as well as a rock can fly