Dark

There are times when the smoke's too much for you to handle
and we both have to curl up on our sides for a while but usually I'm the only one.

3 a.m I am
sleeping
you, drawn
restless as
the birds
we  spied beside
the slough, frothing
at the mouth, or
tearing from
a dream, my words
only make it worse,
as hopeful as they seem.
3 a.m. is a fractured time
bones still poking out
if I angle the mirror just so
I read the lines beside your mouth
in certain light
the sight's enough
for me to need to
wash my hands
At 3 a.m.
you wake and
shift under the sheets
while the lines too faint
to understand
kick me in my sleep.

rinse repeat

Acid eats away at skin slower

Than you at me

The burn is consistent, low

Frequency

Missiles are firing off in Israel

Faster than your

Faults can be absolved, 

jealousy circumvents relief

everything sour seems to do with belief.

Trace amounts of uranium were found

Not enough to amount to much

But I'm sure the president's hands are still

Sore to touch

I wring mine raw in the evening

For you to say its fair

Five minutes later the news has come

And then it isn't there

For a moment god was everyone's

But no one seemed to care

Religion war jealousy and love are words

For a minute everyone forgot which ghost they serve.

I cannot define my doubt in you and

We cannot defend our methods of compromise or defeat

so the scent of blood rises as it dries in rancid heat

Two lovers jab at their eyes

One hundred thousand faithful men take each other’s lives

And if that's good enough for God, the Government and them

meet at the break of dawn

sometimes love seems like a curtain

Half drawn

Or war that most of the world doesn't understand

because they change the channel

while we wring our hands.

ghosts disguised as wisps of smoke rise
float into your waiting mouth
somewhere there must be a lake without anything in it,
but there's nothing like this stillness;
swallowing up every last trail of white
that plumes from the shine into pervading darkness

A spider crawled from the pile of last week's dirty laundry this morning and I didn't even have the energy to kill it.
Meeting someone is like taking drugs
it sucks up all my strength at once, and then I'm lost laying in bed for hours by the phone.

I leave early, slam your car door,
scram off to places that don't
Make me choke on my words.
I'm sorry I have so many questions
It's just that  people like you split me open
and
I won't do that for anything.

On nights I don't know where you are
I play music to bare bulbs and blanketed walls
friends howling beside me like the street dogs we are.

You're no glass of cold water, darling.

But it's our third date and I still swallow hard when I meet your eye.
The faucet drips in Nick's bathroom. I listen from the toilet
close my eyes, bare ass cooling on the seat

spring's heat plays the bastard
I sweat caffeine, work with half my head singing a song of yours.
Bile builds fortresses inside my esophagus while I wait.

Someone knocks on the door,
"C'mon Ana let's go,"

We walk to the beach, visit the tide-pools,
You still haven't called so I turn my phone off.
The pools have been ransacked by children
A dead starfish curls, drying around a stone that has been forced through its middle,
the same way we all hold on to the things that kill us.

I turn my phone back on and I don't have any messages.

Daniel

I wanted to tell you—

My mother nags me to take initiative all the time.

Your Volvo slid off the same cliff I speed down

Whenever I endeavor to die

But don’t want get caught dead taking mom’s advice

The paper identified you by your wounds,

As we all learn to identify ourselves;

Broken collarbone, fractured neck, multiple cuts and abrasions

Non-life threatening, it said

The moment you slid your hand between my legs an EKG flat-lined in my head

Phone ringing vaguely, aloof to your struggle

Someone cared about you then,

I’ll bet you sat on that stoop for five hours trying to remember

Who it was

By the time you did, her name was sliding off your tongue and you

Were flailing to catch it,

Bound up in search-and-rescue red

You called your mom and she called the police.

L3: The third vertebra does more than you’d think

Christopher Reeve was superman and even he fucked that one up falling off a horse,

I don’t have to remove a tube to kiss you or

Push you down the street in wheelchair

The doctors kept saying LUCKY

Like you’re so LUCKY, someone’s looking out for you

When you smile the gap between your teeth

Takes off my shirt

You’re so LUCKY and I’m so LUCKY

I’ll tumble down the brush in place of you one day and

Your mother will cry when you marry

A girl who doesn’t know

How you waited on that stoop for five hours

Trying to place a call.

THINKING I WOULD NEVER NOTICE

Some one sucks the marrow from my bones,

Is it you?

Cruel impaler, leaning over me in sleep

The fingers I loved so on black and white keys 

Stretch, grotesque, peeling back my skin 

Crack my ribs, tie your bib, suck me dry

Every day I feel more empty

you have the nerve to ask me why.

Untitled 9

"Do they have you taking lithium now?" my mother asks.

Good morning to you too. My eyes would roll but she has a point —I couldn't even complete the task of pouring her newest eastern remedy into a tablespoon without dribbling bits of purple nectar all over the marble counter. She sighs, tears a paper towel off its roll.

I woke up healthy enough after a week of bedridden illness to a batch of lesions bubbling up on my face. Impetigo is a skin infection most common in infants and toddlers. I'm sick twice a month at least. My immune system has its defects. Mom frets; scours the internet for magic potions to make them go away. My hands just fucking shake.

"I don't think so."
"What do you mean you don't think so?"
"I just take what they give me."
Well are you bi-polar or depressed?"
"Uh...
depressed I guess. I don't know."
"Is that what you tell Dr. Ferguson?
"Sure."
"Ok good, no lithium then. So what's wrong with your hands?"

I down the syrup that made it into the spoon. It's over-sweet, mouth now slicked with sugary slime. I think about smiling at my mom, letting the dark red syrup squeeze through my teeth, down my chin.

I meet her eyes once more, nothing like mine. I tell her I feel better already, kiss her cheek, turn towards the door. My vision is blurry, my face is blistering, my hands quake uncontrollably as I reach for the knob.

Dream 3

I dreamt you were in the passenger seat, knees
jammed against my coffee-spill-stained mahogany dashboard.

animals passionate as we are should not be confined to such small spaces
I could tell exactly where we were driving: southbound on the 101,
by the bridge where they found scattered remains of a woman 
the same year I graduated high school and you blew out 28 candles.

Crow black clothes don’t necessarily suit your hair, you know. I’m just being sour.

You're a coward: can’t even look me in the eye 

We were going again together last night; my dreams abased us both

but only I woke abject, victim to my own absurdist regime

memory apical, mind distressed. 

Its not fair how you look so young, 
my hands lift up, possessed 
to hold you, and I

fold them in my lap.

Your eyes talk so much more than you do, 
joke less and less and less. 

I held your hand while we got dressed and shook the sex smell off with smoke

at work you said you had to go,

staring at my mouth to drive it home. 

Exegsis

You are not my lover, Name omitted.  Even with hands hot and heavy on my hips. I don’t let anyone touch me. You don’t know how I pinch at that skin in anguish because you don't know who I am. You are not my friend, Name omitted, but I felt you in my loins last night. I read your words like rolling up my sleeve for the first time. Everything after was just tapping the syringe. In the morning I learned how to be broken by you, but I still don’t know your middle name.

Stray dogs collide for a moment to smell each other’s groins. I have buried my muzzle in the nape of your corduroy coat. I know your scent: orphan; boy; mutt. I carry it in my gut as dogs do. You sleep in the garbage pile by the railroad. You are not my lover, Name omitted, but your scent sticks to my face. The pound howls out into darkness and we shrug it off. Trouble brews in silver spoons; your absence in my blood.
Still, I let sleeping dogs lie.

Dust // Kismet

Archetype :

When I woke up drooping off your arm, after almost an hour of sleeping, my crotch ached dully and you moaned deeper into a dream. I know what it means when someone says we need to talk, but I let you say it anyway, focused on your hair and how everyone I’ve tried to love has had hair like yours. You stuck a cigarette between your lips and extended your hand above me. I let you pull me outside. We lit up. On exhale I met your eye. “I know what you’re going to say,” I said. Someone joined us. I handed him my cigarette and walked inside. Threw up bile while Katie did her make-up in the mirror beside me.

Defenestration :

You told me in the car. Dealt the blow with padded gloves. I stumbled back a little; I lose my breath sometimes, start taking it in ragged heaves. You touched my breasts, you bastard. I turned the music up so you couldn’t hear my pulse gain pace.

Dream 2

Shifty as you are, your caul

Drying round a neck thicker than my leg.

You’ve become quite the animal,

talons quailing from the softness of my skin

Waking to the sound of your borrowed name,

my vomit is winking beside me, gleaming.

I sit up and you do not admire my shoulder blades,

You sleep. A corpse if not for the golden hair

that shines from your head involuntarily.

Your body is dead weight.

You can’t hear me mumble how badly I want you

so I wink back at my bile and stand up.