my childhood was removed from me
inside of a blue mustang
and what remained after that
I tried to barter off the highest bidder
but I grew,
not up,
but forward
further away
slowly releasing
hands of defiance
fists chock full of hopeless words
like anger, the flavor that aches the bone,
the cold kind,
more barren than the green of Christmas lights
glimmering off the icy veneer of a white picket fence
overeager, in the apathy of theatrics,
to strip off the remainder
because the empty feeling that followed
might one day
make a decent poem

Acrid stenches of contrived action
stain his sloppy, uneven speeches

gallantry is unnerving, obnoxious
to me, even in the grandest favors.

I sniff with all my offended senses.
To a bloodhound nose, it's cloying.

He smells like he's trying too hard,
trying too hard smells sour, biting.

I prefer challenges from a cunning,
a silver-tongued fox. Let me chase.

Subtle while retaining the ability to
remain brazen, aye, there's the rub.

Chomping at the bit, the overeager
and easily pleased are not my kind,

the authentic and untamed always
give me more rise than an easy bait.

Shadows slowly cast themselves
Upon a stranger’s face today
As we sat in silence in the waiting rooms of Hell
I stared with transfixed fascination
As those shadows kept at bay
What little life there was to have inside this putrid cell
I felt a hunger as I trembled
Morbid thoughts and plots were formed
And I began to taste the darkness forming at the edge
Promises of bloodlines broken
Hopes and dreams obliterated
I stalked my prey in silence as I stepped onto the ledge
The kiss of death sublime
Euphoric in sweet savagery
I cleared the mental cliffs as I embraced the crimson tide
Sanity and boundaries broken
Flesh consumed and penetrated
Welcoming the howling of the hell that lives inside

Skin and bone I have become
Flesh and blood have drained away
This heartless shell has grown forever cold
To the pain I now succumb
An overeager addict slave
Watching fractured sanity unfold
Memories, they scar my soul
Just like a dull and rusty blade
More deeply scar the memories that fade
I can't take back what I've become
But I will surely give away
The violence created by mistakes I have made

Twilight shines on blinded eyes
As blood congeals and silence falls
Though the taste of ****** sweetly lingers yet a while
Every scream and every cry
Nourishing the membrane walls
******* satisfaction brings a cold, sadistic smile
Drops of crimson such a pleasure
On both skin and ragged clothes
The smell of exposed entrails bringing mad, euphoric bliss
Lust for killing beyond measure
Entering the final throes
Still no less ****** than a long-dead lover’s kiss
And oh, the lies I tell myself
Of how this last will be the end
That no more will I give in to the sweet, addictive urge
Until the shadows cast themselves
Within the mirror once again
The promise will be broken as the want and need emerge

Skin and bone I have become
Flesh and blood have drained away
This heartless shell has grown forever cold
To the pain I now succumb
An overeager addict slave
Watching fractured sanity unfold
Memories, they scar my soul
Just like a dull and rusty blade
More deeply scar the memories that fade
I can't take back what I've become
But I will surely give away
The violence created by mistakes I have made

An animal I have become
Humanity is stripped away
Lust for blood will never be controlled
Falling farther beyond numb
Finding darker games to play
My dark mind consumes my very soul
Death resides within the hole
My failures and mistakes have made
As I deny salvation’s masquerade
I won’t take back what I’ve become
But I will surely strip away
The shadow-mask contagion of your bleeding-heart charade

fingers tapping against your thigh, music note mumblings. subtract everyone else and watch the feeling
m
  u
     l
       t
         i
           p
              l
                y
disassemble and reassemble the ensemble and allocate your earnings as earnestly as you can without appearing overeager. overhearing a conspiracy between my lips and your neck. a secret isn't a secret unless you whisper it, so do it, make sure the russians don't hear us as they rush off to give reports on that look I just gave you, the one that is oh so telling. reveling in it. living in the revelation of your skin, pouring down your presence like honey, like sweet molasses dripping thick and sweet, simmering under the sun, glimmering in the water like a jewel, jealous and ****, painful and dark and dazzling. beating only in anatomical hearts, out of tune, cacophony and cruel crimson, missing someone not something, left wanting and waning in the light of a lopsided moon, farsighted and fingers that prune in purple light rippling across the walls, willing to travel the planes of your body, embodied travesty traversing the sahara, dunes doomed to be swept away by the wind, breaking and kept away, each grain unable to touch one another more than once, gorgeous enough to be pain, staking your claim on misery before the misers bury it in their own backyards, backwards discovery, a convenient amnesia, believing ruses and runes to decipher in delicate dictum like tricking a language into translating itself.

almost too much of not enough.

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, again,
and I'm wearing green shoes, green shirt--
overeager as usual. I've never really enjoyed St. Patrick's Day, or any other holiday, for that matter, and I find
it ironic that the more significance we give to a person or
event the more their meaning is deluded. But it's good to have something to look forward to.

Today, in America,
St. Patrick may as well be a naked, red-headed lepperchaun.
People don't care about him as much as me; they don't get out of bed
each day that week wearing green and scoffing at
the timid early-spring sun gazing at the short-sleeved men and
brown-thighed women.
Maybe it matters to them that suntans at the beginning
are only de-tubed relics of an ancient, burning photosynthesis
relinquished to the ground. It matters to me more that
these women think-- even more, know!--
that it is too late in the early spring to cover their legs and
allow the pale, unready skin lie in hibernation.
They want to show the men their defined calves and
undefined dreams. They fain naivety with bright hues, such as Kelly.
And I frown, because I know they have to do this, or
I wouldn't notice them. Waking up and putting green shirts on
the whole week leading up to St. Patrick's day.
Anticipating the Spring, which is already here, they raise their glistening
arms in the air and lean back, smiling, to sing a toast to the short, Irish martyr.
Who wouldn't rub their flesh with dripping tongues for fingers?

Searching

I always thought the iPhone
the most human of devices.
I named mine George.
Like an overeager child
George buzzes when engaged.
Spent, he recharges
to the sixty second cycle
of a resting heart.
Last night in a hotel bar,
an accidental altercation
with a roughhousing stein of Great Lakes Lager,
ruined the inner George.
Now, when shaken, George rattles.
No longer able to connect,
the heart-rending message “searching,”
parades across his shattered screen.
How human that yearning
for connectedness?

The air is clear tonight
I am relaxed
overeager hooligans
are shooting fireworks
into the face of the muggy
night sky
The light summer breeze
smells like her
my head
is swimming with words
the right one always on the tip
of my tongue
the right one always out of reach
a family on the sidewalk
out front of their house
the women fat and weathered
the men unkempt and wiry
small children running around
laughing
and a disabled man sitting in the open door
of a car which blares bluegrass
and I am yet to walk the hills
where does this trail lead?
or better yet,
what does any of this mean?
blah blah blah
yaddah yaddah yaddah
tonight,
none of that matters

If she could have got
inside her head, Nadya
thinks, she is sure, her

mind can expand like an
inner universe. The thoughts
moving around like lost

planets, clusters of stars,
images, words, faces, actions
remembered. If she could

just put her hand into a
hidden orifice and reach
into her brain and sort

amongst the galaxies of
ideas she could be brighter,
braver, wiser, and there

clinging to certain ideas
associations like Proust’s
madeleines would be old

loves, broken heart moments,
melodies from favourite songs.
Josef has told her to leave

off the *****, to put away
the bottles, drink water, tea
or whatever. But he does

not satisfy. His love making
is a joke, all push and poke.
Sometimes she thinks her

thoughts come out of her
head and dance. Time for
another drink. She thinks

of Paris. Summers past,
spring walks. Josef’s endless
chatter breaks in; those all

too intellectual boring talks.
She imagines him as another,
pretends some young Russian

overeager tends to her, embraces
her body, kisses each inch of her
flesh, pleasure giving. No more of

this boring life, more of that wild,
touching the new, exploring ***, living.

Where'd you wander off to? I was one lonesome night-shift from writing another piece entirely – Allen y Federico, chasing Whitman as he climbs the paywall guarding Bohemia, ashen fog of beard left trailing in his wake. Ah, but here you are, my High Court of Muses! Lavender castoffs of two mechanical empires, camped outside on the supermarket pavement: awaiting a dawn delayed by the skyscrapers it hides behind. The Best Minds Left Standing... Lorca’s feet beating faraway Gitano rhythms; Ginsberg spouting love-letters re: the weeds’ anarchic growth from the concrete cracks... and one smaller sycophant.

I’ve offerings of oranges – Spanish nostalgia reduced to contraband – ‘stolen’, bruised, saved from dumpster fates. Wouldn't you have done the same? Isn’t food waste just state-sanctioned sacrilege? Naranjas, clementinas, full miniature moons split into crescents: I figured (halved) you'd (quartered) be starved (eighths). You savour each sacred drop of juice in ways I've yet to master. I’d always been preoccupied with expiry dates... Moloch who sets up shop inside my brain... yet time melts between my lips and I am with You under UV floodlights. I am with You where the overhead glow may not be starlight but it’s not the worst alternative. I am with You – until the checkout boy steps out for a cigarette and when Allen’s eyes follow in pursuit, I’ve lost him again. Holy, he mutters into his final segment of fruit; holy, I repeat, imagining Eve’s overeager sprint into the wide-open prisons of thought.
    I am a woman cloved in two, better half wrapped in citrus peel and tied with string – para tí, maestro Lorca. Does it bother you that these buildings stand closer to the Sun than you could have ever reached? Yet you were nothing short of an Icarus, and how close you came! Abstract wings borne from words and notoriety! Your mythology was written to fit a flamenco guitar – if they don’t know that, they don’t know you – through musical folklore, Franco tried to **** that which was immortal. His legacy is a nation of graves and a granddaughter in the gutter press.
    I begin to feel that history is a ripple-effect of looking over one’s shoulder and deciding “you’d hate it here.” There’s always the dawn. You wait for it with practised patience – pervasive optimism – the ability not to end an “always was” with “and always will be”. Is it all you’d waited for? Has time diminished its novelty? Will you write it down and tell me what I’d slept through?
    Out cold, you turn me onto my side so I don’t choke when Moloch finds his way out.

She trips and falls into my path, overeager
with bright smiles and a kindness she tries
to conceal.

The first time we met she fell into
my bed on the pretence of stealing
music and laughter.

Persistent she hovers on the edge of my
life, ready to invade, for a time, whenever
invited.

She has soft skin and hands that are
engulfed by mine; a quiet voice that
falters when shouting.

I wonder if she has other men, who
too extend the right to stay only
for a while.

I wonder if she likes it. And I wonder
of the hesitation that drops
from my skin to hers.

there is a girl in your bed,
her jewelry tossed to the nightstand
because you were careless in the dark
ankles peeking out from the sheets,
hair splayed out like a painting, wild and frozen in the moment
of some unknown dream,

and you want it not to matter,
you said that it was simple, that it was just
*******

when you pressed your hand flat against her back and
rammed your teeth together in overeager kisses
and grinned in lazy triumph
when she sighed in your mouth,
you said,
“don’t worry, this doesn’t mean a thing”

you collected phrases to armor
the cavity in your chest
“it’s just ***”
“nothing to talk about”
“i don’t feel anything”

but she stayed the night,
pale light from the window is tracing where you’ve kissed;
her bony shoulders, the freckles that collar her throat,
the purple-red bruise you left just below her right ear
now blossoming so much more beautiful
than the alcohol and the night would ever
let you dream up

there is a girl in your bed
and you ache with how it matters.

do you know this dream? tied
to a fence, barking. the mailman comes, afraid -
he confuses your overeager friendliness with ill feeling. do you
know this dream? the sun never goes away - your cratered imperfection never shows his face. do
you know this dream? on her sleeve worn, you wear away.
the wind never blows you straight - do you know
this dream?

Stream of consciousness ... Go—
The best days are ahead,
I know.
I think?
I hope.
But I want to be happy now.
And these highs and lows
are neither high nor low.
Everything is sustained by
nothing more than a monotone
heart rate while inside a voice cries
"static is suicide."

And I don't know if I am relieved
or offended that you didn't
think I was a cheerleader.
And I don't know why it even matters.
And my best friend let me down,
but I don't want to talk about it.
And how can someone get to know
me when I don't yet know myself?
And mom and dad,
there has been no drought. Consistently watered, my deeply rooted insecurities have only grown.
And most days I just want to go home, yet that very thought
is what drives me mad.

Give me something that
gets me out of bed.
I don't care if it cools my lungs
or burns my throat, just give it to me.
My hands are greedy,
my heart overeager.
Because even though Jack Kerouac
said that it is dreams that unite
all humans beings
and although I melt at that
beauty of that thought,
I want to be kissed in this life.
I want to be kissed today.
I wanted to be kissed yesterday.
How do you be an active participant
in your fate yet still let Destiny
do it's thing?

I don't want to live in cottony
allusions that are spun from
slumber and made into the
burdening burgundy sweater
I must put on to go outside.
My dreams don't release me—
they make me sad and sentimental.

Give me a life worth dreaming about.
A life to inspire dreams—
not a life lived with eyelids shut.

I was always
a bit overeager
at answering questions
I just
wanted to make sure
everyone knew
I wasn't totally clueless.

The pen
is not your friend
But you don't know that yet

You sit
clenched fist
looking nowhere
mind
going everywhere
or drawing
a blank

You've clenched
your fist
too tight

Blood is never blue
but if it were
it might look like this

Rivers cascading
down to your wrist
the ink
finding a home
in the crevices
of your hand

Your pen is not flying
the page is not splattered
with overeager writing

Instead
you're left with
a sticky hand
and a mess
to clean up

can i chalk up my prudish ways to a stifling, arab upbringing?
one where my mother would often comment on the bra strap showing beneath my shirt,
or my dealings with a boy in public;
where *** is never isolated from marriage

i don't care about *** and marriage,
*** before marriage,
but perhaps it is difficult to scrub my mind clear of that kind of thinking

conservative, we called it;
more than anything, it suffocated me

but perhaps i could chalk it up to the first boy
whom i gave the privilege of proving my mother wrong;
proving that *** and love were not mutually exclusive;
perhaps i could blame the boy who abused this privilege,
kissed and touched me of his own accord,
and scarred my appetite for anything that intimate

perhaps he is just an overeager boy, me a shy girl

but here i am,
incapable of kissing another without shaky hands,
the feeling that it is distinctly not right to be here
kissing someone,
despite how much i want to

so who’s to take the blame?

There used to be a time
When all I wanted was you
When the idea of a future
Was only possible with you
When you were all that I ever dreamed of
When I could see all I'd need in you

Now that I look back
I was overeager and inexperienced
All I saw in you was an illusion
I only saw what I wanted you to be
Sadly, that's no longer wanted here

Now that I've seen what you became
I'm glad I never got the chance to decide
I'm happy you chose another
I'm happy that I never had a chance
Because I'd have made the wrong choice

pituitary phenom, muppet with unshelled

eggs for eyes.

whose dilation's the yoke of a molding cellar

wall, that has never been looked on.

a dry grey mane that wigs his skull like a

cobwebbed broom in overcast.

his slanting squat protracts & threatens to

dislodge his elongated bones.

each howling the winds of his caution--

caved in his overeager mouth.

a knuckled-up grip obscures the torso

of his son.

which by proportion notes the size of his

hands, akin to manhandling a loaf of bread.

though bread plays its part in parable, as so

its body bleeds.

Saturn devouring his Son, his head & right

arm depict the clean cut of a single bite, or

a meticulous succession.

the upper body is a thick outline of blood that

refuses to run--as the left arm of Saturn's Son seems

to gag him in protest.

his buttocks stream down his dangling legs--a

cosmic voodoo doll with its pins popped out.

Your face, it takes me back
to places I don't want to go,
to past mistakes, a time
in which I didn't know
I had to brake.

Flooded by bad memories,
the thoughts are ganging up on me.
The girls keep hanging up on me,
left on read again. Yet I thought it was funny to say
"That is what she said.".

My hands and pants were over active
and my face messed up with battlefield.
My performances were overeager, antsy
and unkind words my rattling shield.

So thank god I'm no longer there
even if my life is like an unhit spare.