Today I straightened all of the hairs on my head
whether they needed it or not.  I like being organized.
Ironing out the kinks in my leather jacket with a baseball bat.
I try to cut the blues from the spinning record,
flicked numbered matchsticks across vinyl to
set the fleshed room on fire,
don’t touch me, I’m a real live wire.

Being on top of my **** is like handmaking
beeswax candles, I twist & turn, carving wax
in the air—There is always more to do, I
always tried to cross t’s and
sort the junk mail from the paychecks,
accidentally dropping cigarettes into the piles of post.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched you
lick postage stamps for the outgoing flood.  
The laundry gets done even though I’m
too tired to pull my key out of the door.

I am in control of my own destiny.

I smoke Coca Cola & drink cigarettes for breakfast
because I don’t roll out of bed on the right side
of any given day, and
yesterday I put my foot
through the television
because tap-dancing on the shards
of the wood-paneled tube from dad’s first marriage
sings gnashed-teeth harmonies
with the microwave’s low groan at 3AM—

I used to eat cold spaghetti in torn jeans and nothing else
while you flipped through channels on basic cable
to hear the collage painting the end of the world.  You were
always an empty can that year, you saved
orange peels to fill with oil to burn—
your name whispers itself into the grease hissings and
I hear it over the skyline and I cannot seem to find a match
to strike to light the last crumpled smoke in my pack—

All I want to do is send you photographs with singed corners,
photographs of your letters, attempts to burn away
any sight of you, ways to cut&bin;; the flint that ignites
the only bonfire in my eye.

And sometimes I wish I could just scream at you until
the flowers crawl up the brick walls of your apartment;
my kitchen smells concrete like celluloid ashes and
if I snap my fingers to break broken promises and
floss my teeth with violin strings I might not miss you
anymore.