So I’m sitting in this dark room, smoking cigarette after cigarette after cigarette. Staring at the pile of mail on the table. Left behind junkmail, junk that I have to answer, his junk. But then again I am wearing his clothes, his shoes, Christ, This might even be his bathrobe. Moved in on another mans turf, or am I just keeping the seat warm? So he can go sow his oats, sleep with some secretary or ******, do fat lines of whatever, never having to check in while checking out . I remember I think , what that used to be like, to be free of things, things like commitment, things like meeting your obnoxious co workers at the bar, And not the cool downtown bar with its dim light, backbooths and jukebox full of blues, The uptown one with the yuppies and their bluetooths and never ending vain chatter. Things like love, things like forgetting that your favorite color is yellow, not mustard yellow but bright ******* canary yellow. The yellow that reminds me of bathroom stalls and jailhouse walls, and all those, late late night trips to the E.R.. Things like time , Remember that time when You said “lets take it slow “ Then the next morning you wrote I love you on the mirror in Red lipstick. Should have been a stop sign, a flag ,******* warning, right there. Things like Freedom, The freedom to fly away, To escape, to set sail. To be free like that B.M.W. on the autobahn, in the commercial, aimed at the friends, with the Bluetooth surrounded by yellow walls that sing those blues, To be free But then who would be wearing our clothes ,our shoes ,Christ, even our bathrobe, Hell who would even answer the mail.

let me take it in the morning
as sleep is wrenched free from magic and dreams spill away

when my fingers go seeking, dark around the moon hells
and the sift calamity around the air in your kiss

watch with smug freshly shampoo’d dig
can you tell the distance between the under door and beyond?



A giraffe at the window, staring through the blinds
Bees in the mailbox, trying to escape the flapping junkmail
Beneath the basement, a loud squealing, won’t go away
A creature that fell through the cracks of a scalding nightmare


Into the floor, seeping through every layer
Feed it hemlock, but it won’t go quiet
He who drops a cell onto a moving floor
Will find a young boy’s poor mother, dead at his feet
With a neat handful of blood, seeping onto a well-manicured lawn
take me in your palm, hide me there, in your wrist


keep me safe in your pulse and maybe one day
my wings may mend when you feel a life pulse change
and less of a seeping away

1
I don’t like people
who come borrowing books
They sniff the paper and ink on my shelf
and they ask to borrow
as if they’d ever read
anything beyond junkmail
and cut-out coupons;
and as if they’d ever return my books
if I don’t bark, hound and remind them
and re-remind them…

2
There is my friend Sam
who recently took a fancy
to one of my books
on my shelf:
“Make a Billion, Loser”

“Can I borrow that?”
Sam asked
And he looked like a loser
so I said, “Yeah, you can borrow it”
And he took the book off the shelf
and he said, indignant:
“Hey! The first 100 pages are here
But pages 101 to 200 are missing!”

And I said, ******* by this imbecile:
*“Hey, the first 100 is where you read;
the second half is missing
cos that’s where
you go make your money, you loser!
Now go read the book
and then make your Billion!”

this poem is for you
remember all those nights
no
remember all those days
that you spent with your head towards the sky?
when you met the mailman at the door
knowing it would just be junkmail
with an eager grin on your face anyways?
every day
is a reason to make the best of the small things because
remember when the small things kept you alive and
out of the hospital?
you can’t say no
to a lover who keeps persisting
so i’m calling you out of your darkness
the light is always on
this one is for you

The morning begins with another bottle. Her
broken mirror has already spoken its lies,
crucified her  with a stranger's face invading
her bathroom.
Later
the stairwell does not echo her footseps
as she descends, carefully, one foot, then the other,
the exact placement of each step thoughtfully
considered, planned out and
executed with a grace that is almost
Procrustean.
She leaves no shadow behind herself, throws
away words into the deep green silence.
They fall.
I could get a job, she tells herself,
listening to the silence of her footsteps.
I could blunt the stings of honeybees,
gather the nectar of drones.
Her feet sink into the softness of the stairsteps.
At the bottom, she opens the locked door of the mailbox
hugs junkmail to her breast.
Her fingers leak tiny drops of blood
over the sealed envelopes. Her mouth
is full of dust. She eats her memories.