happy birthday

t w e n t y - o n e:
still bursts into tears
at a poorly cracked egg; watching enzymes cook
quick as the wrinkles on my face, twenty - one already knows
the looks are gonna fade
happy birthday sweetheart
didn't drink didn't drive
still the thoughts of past wrong doings
fill my cup every night.

dream 11

Our Brooklyn is not yours. We are always running through it. The streets are narrow and cobbled like Venice's, and we trip through them laughing.  I know it's really the borough because everything is brick and Brooklyn is where you live. I can't take you from there even in dreams. Our Brooklyn is all fucked up; a mix of the paces I know better than it. The city belongs to you but I find my past in every corner.

At one point people flood us, something I hated most when I tried to move there. We're mashed between a horde of sardines as we hustle up the steps of some Venetian bridge clinging to my memories. We're surrounded by skyscrapers and I ask you why we can't see the top of them even though the sky is clear and you smile so I drop it. I haven't seen you in years, your smile's been gone much longer.

For a moment I think you'll let me drown in the crowd but instead you dissappear, and the streets empty, and I'm holding a severed hand.

dream 10

Black curtains droop
as only black curtains do
we drink to forget about the air. its stagnancy
our own—ought to continue confusing affection with affliction if we want this to work out.
if i were a man i would probably take up a whore, but instead
my closest friends know the things I mutter in my sleep
Not a shame, not a dip too painful or deep
You were promises and hope and I am drunk,
awake, you shot my leg
the house we robbed glistened in pills
no, the house we were protecting was dressed in dollar bills
black clothes and rubber gloves
you were supposed to shoot the door handle
my therapist says I wreak of betrayal and that everyone in my dreams is me
five times out of nine I'm polite enough to agree

the prescriptions help, but

Life is funny if you squint hard enough. Amidst reality and our war to ignore it, there are moments of blinding brightness. On this particular morning and every other after it, salt-crusted crabs crawl from the void to fight for a reason they know but cannot recite upon questioning. My friends and family continue to spin around me like horses on a carousel. Things change and then change back again. Stores shift spaces because no one can afford rent in Santa Barbara. We've just moved in to our studio. It's a garage worth your whole paycheck. The crabs fight on, scampering past children, tourists, and homeless men who sleep beneath the pier until they are swallowed by the brine. You repeatedly tell the frizzy haired female manager of Sears that you have a bachelor's in English. In front of the art museum a band plays and I listen with my eyes closed, moving my hips. Two women, early eighties, sit and watch me. I catch them staring but neither of us acknowledge it. They don't look away.

On the pier there's a shack of sorts that sells fresh fish tacos and authentic crab cakes. The branded crayfish with fists forced shut by multicolored rubber bands look out from their foggy tanks. Crabs claw at each other on the sun-bleached wood slabs below, exoskeletons whacking dully in moisture laden air.

I have to laugh. The tanked crabs, lobsters —some long dead, hone their black beady eyes to the fight below. The art museum band breaks into an afro-cuban jazz bit. The women watch me dance. Their hips have been replaced, claws bound, they sit now in their tanks as I move through the world pretending there isn't one waiting for me.