I forget what I wanted to write about.

I forget because I'm cold,
and I'm on the front porch
of my parents' house while they're both asleep.
Because they know I smoke, but
I don't like to rub it in. Like,
"This is what you've taught me to avoid!
And this
is all I rely on!"
And that's all I hear.
And I don't want them
to hear that.

And I forget
what I wanted rely on,
but when I think about it,
it sounds like music notes in my head,
and there's no way you can hear the song,
because it fades in the distance
(on a minor chord)
when I toss the cigarette ****
into the ivy, where my parents won't see it
as a constant reminder of how
I fell so hard.

So you can't hear what I hear.
And I can't really hear it either,
but when I wake up
in the afternoon
on my parents' couch,
all I know is
there's something I should be listening to,
and maybe it's the wisps of my dream,
or maybe it's something bigger
I can't quite grasp, but,
I should hear it.
And I can't.

So, at two PM, I fall back asleep,
trying to hear it again.
Or maybe, I wake up,
and wander around wearing oversized clothes
and wait to put on deodorant unless
I go outside,
and until then, I eat everything in the house
until I feel satisfied
and I never will.

Everything smells like cigarette smoke,
and nothing smells
like the butterflies in my gut.

But strangers like the camels I smoke.
So I purge my nervous stomach
onto the blank canvas in front of me;

and I bathe myself in nervous applause,
while my insides
wrestle with the snake left in my belly,
never to be seen
by the audience, because
lovers don't like that.

Fangs aren't required
to tear into meat.
Blunt teeth and hidden molars
do just fine.
It may take more
chewing,
more mulling over
the dead thing
in your mouth,
but eventually
you will savor and devour it,
and swallow it down,
forgetting after the last gulp
about the life you just
consumed.

your eyes
when you look at me,
they are hard
to describe.

they do not
squint, they do not
harden, they do not
narrow, they

somehow tighten but
in mirth, yet
still with sadness, and
it's sadness at me

as if i give you
Joy and Pain
as burdens to bear
as a gift unexpected
but necessary, once
you understood the undertaking,
accepted its presence.

not quite a
white elephant
but almost.

and your eyes, they almost
overbrim with kindness, and so
i must worry
that maybe you are sad
because you see
that soon
you can no longer be kind to me.

maybe the Joy brought
the mirth but
the Pain brought
the sadness and
maybe you are saying
the bargain-basement version
of The Words to me
because you know that to say
anything more
will make the future parting
that you have planned
more
depressing
than having not heard the words
at all.

and maybe you could carry
both the Joy
and the Pain
for a while, but soon
they will become
too heavy.

and you will lighten your load
by gifting me back
to the world that gave me to you.

Murmurs of French
must have blanketed the great–
cocooning 'round Salinger,
lilting for Whitman–

flitting by Carroll and
flirting with Eliot,
sighing on Plato,
marching in Chaucer,
nuzzling up Dickinson,
lying with Hemingway,
giggling to Alcott and
gasping at Plath.

Murmurs of French
must have borne their babe souls,
gifting them music
instead of dry words.

Murmurs of French,
the language of beauty,
just buzz past my ears
'fore I swat them away.
It is fitting, I think,
that my tongue should collapse
upon trying merci
or a bon appétit,

and the lone French I can muster
is notably stolen
from the notoriety of
a Madame Marmalade.

He'll ask me why I'm here.
I'll tell him I don't know.
And that's true in so many realms, but
I'll keep the clichés to myself.
And there might be some
silence.
And then maybe he'll ask
if I've ever hurt myself,
or thought about hurting myself,
which I guess is
the pleasantest way
of asking if I use my cutlery for eating
or for breathing.
And I'll shake my head no
as I subtly turn my arm
face down.
Because that was a younger–
older–
shameful–
proud–
self-sacrificing–
but mostly
self-centered–
me.
And who likes to bring up
Her
in polite company?
So then we'll sit.
Maybe more silence.
He'll start asking questions
I don't really want to answer, but only
because they bore me.
And maybe he'll bring up ***.
Or not, but
we'll end up talking about it,
and he'll read something
into that, like it's
always on my mind, but
it's not.
It's just
the only thing I know how to do.
He won't chastise me,
but he should.
And then someone might mention
school, and ah,
here's the real problem, he'll think.
I'll launch into my grades
and the fact that they barely exist.
And he'll ask me why,
but the most I'll be able
to tell him
is that school just doesn't really
do it for me.
We might talk about that
for a while,
but it'll get old quickly
when all I can repeat
is how apathetic I am,
one way
or another.
So
he'll ask me why I'm here.
And
I'll tell him I don't know.

Curing my depression
cured my alcoholism
which cured my creativity
which cured my happiness
which cured my sobriety
and then nothing

I have a squid in my belly
and she likes to be fed
filtered cigarettes
and whatever *****'s on sale.
When she's good
I'll treat her with
a couple lines off the table,
but I never use mirrors
because she's never good
until two in the morning
when she's all liquored up
and I'm not looking my best.
These days I'm pretty fed up
with her *******, because
sometimes she'll stretch a tentacle
through my esophagus
and pry open my painted lips
and reach out to whoever's closest
and go for their neck.
I try to swallow her back down
to protect everyone
but she's a tough broad
and it's hard to tame a creature
when you're not sure
where she ends
and you begin.