Heart skips
like a warped record,
trembles over scarred vinyl
until "I love you"
tastes incomplete:

(I)                love                 you

I                  (love)               you

I                   love                (you).

My Swan Song mewls off key,
cascades across the
marred terrain of my soul
in a thick lacquer of tears.
Notes flatline
in unison with my
waning pulse
(waning, like the face
of the moon on the night
of my eighteenth birthday).

My breath
resigns to static,
dances in slow decrescendos--
sputters its way
towards nothingness,
slipping rapidly from
my consciousness until
I no longer hold
any recollection of the music
(or the poetry).

When Mr. Brown forgets
leaves his puppy unfed and tied
before rushing off to work
the animal mewls confused
abandoned and lonely all day
watching Dog TV.

The parched houseplant
screams from its porcelain prison
for silent water
wishing only to be made wet
fecund on attention once again.

Everything sits silent
in the close confines
our life's domestic drama
just waiting for us to realize
we are born to notice
the cries of who lies closest.

Yet no one is to blame
for ignorance;
it is the Dog's karma to be abused,
the foliage to dry and go discarded
for no apparent fault of their own.

It is Mr. Brown's karma
for his dog to die
with a broken unfed heart
to toss his plants in the trash
to find his home unadorned and silent once again
and wonder over and over
why is life so barren?

In my cabinet
no one comes
tapping. The
slap of my
thoughts
like the strike
of steel drums
on the walls.
No one calls.
My breath
booming; a
bass string
plucked in
panic. The
air around
opaque as
top-shelf
ignorance.
With me weep
my shoulders,
stooped, my
hands, curled
and catching
the precipitation
of grief.  No
mewls, no
moans – my
voice, too, has
left me heaving
and weeping to
the sounds of
my seclusion.

He stands behind the bar.
His demeanor is calm,
not caring
about anything but
the meticulous arrangement of liquor bottles.
With a white ragged cloth in his right hand
he grips the glass necks
between
his three first fingers and thumb.
He people watches.
slowly he paces back and forth
behind his protective

separation

seeing the world behind his sleep laden eye lashes.
He sways to the music of
golf commentators and steam cleaning dishwashers.
Tired, broken, slightly drunk from sips of ***
he sneaks
when no one is looking,
he lets each palm lay flat
against the cold plastic granite counter top.
To his right two women
in their fifties
are lulling about grandchildren,
while the
click
clicking
of a laptop causes a stressful twitch in his left eye.
New customer.
"Hi, how you doing?"
She walks away, slightly bothered
he pays more loving attention to
hot glass out of the steam washer
than her need for a twelve dollar glass of
bitter clear looking liquor.
More people.
four this time.
"Hi there, how are ya?"
The woman asks in a loud voice.
Shes happy, excited waiting for
a husband back from a business trip.
She orders a glass of champagne
while the man shes with wants Budweiser.
"We only have light. Is that okay?"
The man looks ******,
as if he himself should take on
responsibility of a society growing more fond

of an inebriated state of mind.

As the woman continuous to talk
unending
he places the wine glass before her,
all the while thinking
with a bitter delight
that her husband,
who has frequent trips
sees a different girl every night.
He knows this,
all the staff at the airport
that have an occasional drink know this.
But his wife,
his obnoxiously cheerful wife,
sits in blissful ignorance.

They're still talking,
still trying to make conversation
while a baby mewls in the background,
and the golf spectators cheer at a whole in one.
He's tired.
let off momentarily by the bar manager
he sneaks another small glass of
***
mixes it with Dr. Pepper before walking into the back.
His breathing is methodical,
he waits for a sound,
anything
at all to signify his existence,
his meaning of living
before he takes another sip of his drink.
The *** goes down hard,
***** threatens
to
displace
his pride
but he manages to keep it down.
"YO!"
He winches
at the rust filled tone in his managers voice.
More people have pulled into the bar.
Its busy he needs help.
He lets out a curse
it bursts forth then
settles
hovering before is red eyes
before pushing away from the desk.
The metal legs scrap against the stone floor.
Another sound that makes his mind
believe that ***** is the only
escape
to some type of comfort.
His rubber soled shoes squish as he walks.
He sighs.
Sounds of golf cheering and baseball playing
distracts him
momentarily from his misery.

A jolt of pain doubles him over.

"Has my temple split?" he thinks.
He gingerly flutters his first three fingers
against the vein pounding incessantly.

A young woman walks up the the bar.

She belongs on a beach, he thinks.
Her hair hangs between her shoulder blades.
Her eyes are are light,
her skin glows
between her light turquoise mesh shirt
and bleach white shorts.
She orders a cold coffee,
he pushes the can over slowly
watching
her shell earrings clink against her jaw bone.
She gets up,
he watches,
and walks from the bar.
An arm wraps around her waist
outside the threshold of the bar
and kisses her softly on her forehead.
Her father perhaps.
She doesn't look back.

He did not stick at all in her mind.

He instantly erases her face
and resumes to dancing his fingertips
against his excited vein.
The clocks reads 8:25.
Two more hours.

is lovely.
She mewls
and purrs
and sleeps
and eats
and *****
like there is nothing wrong with it.

what i never had the chance to (let you learn)
was that I dance with the shades up wearing
nothing but the sun, telephone wires casting
cuts across my lips, small ******* that don't
swing heavy but fit in palms,

how much
have you changed since you were casually knocking,
since before you might have thought I was
untamed but a conquest you had already mapped--
realized I was a bit more to hold, (you did)

But that I so often go back to those two nights
telling myself I should have whispered your
name, to gauge a reaction, to hear your last
name tagged onto breathy mewls--I shouldn't
be this way, knowing i forge relations through
fingertips, I dunno why kissing is such a problem.

Probably because they write you into a chapter
that goes on for hundreds of pages afterwards, after the
supposed ending, even after I tell you that I'm done,
what is it like to be you? To be them?
to be able to move on so quickly,
and replace others with others with others

a man,  some  would
debate;  who prefers
the   co.                  of pussycats
& dolls is   someone
obsessed w/ *******;
[ all kinds  but snooch
is a  body part of another person;  
who,        although not as cute - ]
as bright little      yellow eyes;
mewls at  midnight too
[I do  like  pussycats]
               [sleeping  calico  kittens:]
looking like rolled up
Argyle socks; [mother],
is  that singular      role adopted by
whomever  it  happens
to fall upon - mothering:
licking & petting her little
blind brothers & sisters:

he's sitting in his desk chair
the comforting, quiet drone
filling the quiet of the early morning
the air was cool, albeit, carrying the faint scent
of stale coffee and sterile cleanliness

he didn't dislike his job.
this morning, however
was disrupted by a slow, almost languid pace
his stack of files remained stubbornly untouched,
his mind is captive to forbidden territories.

he pictured his little girl
in the soft light of her bedroom
the curve of her bare back as she stretched
a kittenish grace that belied
the sinful paths his thoughts were ravenously pursuing.

a jolt of
pure
illicit desire
shot through him
leaving a tight feeling in his groin, which was unwelcome and undeniable.

he imagines kneeling between her thighs
the warmth radiating from her flushed skin as she slowly awoke.
his fantasy plunged with a dizzying intensity
to the slick, swollen flesh
still damp with the essence of her own wet dreams.

the idea became vivid, tactile
an experience engaging all of his senses.
he imagined the delicate sounds she would make--
the soft mewls escalating into desperate whimpers
as his tongue relentlessly explored her most sensitive places.