construction

The ikea plants are staring again

I don't think you're supposed to water them

When's the last time I actually watered 

Anything

I'm thirsty

Everything inside me is brittle or broken

In two months I got more cavities than I've had in my life

(I've never had any)

forgot to water my teeth

They've already found me 

The pounding starts around the Time I fall asleep

Construction workers keep better schedules 

than I do

The drill pulls my soul through seismic shifts

My busted mouth rattles within itself

My organs threaten to evacuate

What the fuck could they be hammering at, at 9 in the morning

Hammering my dull sockets into submissive attention

I hope this isn't what the ECT will feel like

My dad said the only side affect is sometimes participants have trouble making out words when when when the mamamachicne is turned on

Can't be worse than no sleep and teeth turning to rust 

Not more difficult than a poor Hispanic man rattling your metal cage right as you drift off,

Blaring the mariachi station from his battery radio and signaling 

"It's time to wake the fuck up"

With his jackhammer in braille

Red Herring

Red herring
Quiet dead
Mouth open
Teeth (if red herring have teeth)
my cold fish
You
Hang limp around some foil
Well, we both do
Cold cold fish
Knees aching by three and
Shedding dry scales on some
Old man's furniture
Let's fill his lungs with us
Let's hang him on the wall
Our red herring
Bones and flesh and foil

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.

In Seattle,
Clouds storm the port
racing horses cross the sound and down again
Oregon takes them in
rust eats
I get a full night of sleep on a drunk stomach
The city swings from grey to greyer
Moody as a ghost
People have eyes as tired as anywhere
but I like them more
Cold bites the word home off my tongue and then my tongue itself is
gone
Steadily we take the state line
the Northwest licks itself all day like a cat in heat
Young men in sweatpants huddle, laugh
Seattle cleans up good
the men exchange money, tiny plastic balloons
Cargo ships sit thick, fallic in the bay
Clouds shower down on everything
and then they run away.

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. 

The Fifth

Day one said we didn't have to wear shoes

Bone white toes curled in shallow cold

water sloshing from a pail.  Now

We don't go when the tide is out

So we don't go at all

bound up in books, careers

Water still there though no

one is looking.

On the second day we donned black ties

Polished like our hair. Jostled 

a resume with clammy palms for hours on end and then

your mother heard you cry for the first time in a while. While 

I sobbed for four years straight.

On the third day we crawl.

Age has not treated us kindly. The

Return is slow, we envy even 

Barnacles, creeping 'cross the dull shine. 

The common blight of dawn breaking

Oceans on our skin and bleeding

Out or bleeding in.

The pill is sour, it tastes of death. Metallic

on the fourth day. You 

are gone, wriggling in the the morning sun. We 

say we are young and hold each-others tongues 

with our teeth. 

On the rocks or underneath the tide

somewhere in the pools brimming with life. 

Your shirt was red, I remember

But day five brings nothing.