you were my Yoko,
but i traded starfire for
a couple more thighs to keep the colder
nights away but I wouldn't
dare presume to be
Lennon, writing verses across the universe
instead I scrawl on the walls and hope to
god you never see your name
scribbled so facetiously
indelible, never forgotten but so undeserved

suffer in silence; i say
too much here and too
little elsewhere
every piece written, shuffled off
like clockwork
to the nearest bleeding heart
open 24/7, not out of
choice, but necessity like your
local convenience store
seeing its most loyal customers
only in the early AM

suppose we splinter at times.
i remember splitting knuckles on gravel and
tar. staring at the insides of my traitor hands, thinking it was remarkable how pain looked so
different, so comforting as opposed
to how it felt

you tell me about
love, and say I know nothing. But I know enough.

you tell me love is your parents grown
old, together, both
each other's pillar.

you tell me love is your man
walking you home and
leaving you giddy on the doorstep

but i know love.

love is my father yelling YOU ******* ***** when my mother tries to sneak in
in the dead of night

love is me, sitting outside the cold apartment, waiting for her to come visit her four children

love is my mother's boyfriend, and his clothes hangers on my
back, from being too noisy playing
Wheel of Fortune on the old white computer

love is me, smoking my weight in
chemicals

love is me, hiding my noose in the corner
of my cupboard, worried what my siblings would think

That is love.

it's always a little wet this time of
year. I don't mind the cold
so much as the dampness, but it fans
the anger a bit, when it should be tempered.

I am mad, yes, but not the
manic kind, I'm mad the way old men
rap on your windows with their
bony knuckles and yell at you through the thin glass for playing the guitar too loud. I'm mad the way the same ***** old men try to
drink and smoke and ****
themselves to death,
trying to drown old hurt or
some ******* like that but it all comes
out in the wee hours, covered in bile.

I've told no one this but I always did
love your madness. it was honest and intense. but i didn't come any closer because
it was like wildfire, and I'm more used
to the cold.
you were still in my head
then, and I kept myself out of your grip.
just out of your warmth. it was bad
enough to see other men burn but I never
did even once think I was above it all.
hell, i tried to smother your inferno. now I'm the one on fire.

"I'm not afraid to die," I said
If I was sure money wouldn't be wasted on a funeral
I'd **** myself anyway

Inconsequential, any of us
Why does it even matter, when all we are is dust?
"You inject meaning, and that's how you live how you do"
I reject that completely, what I've done is just not done.