I think I'm suffering from something. This morning I woke up feeling a weight on my chest. I felt like a compass at the core of the earth, it was like all that iron was just throwing me for 360 degrees. And I realized what it was, like, I'm just trying to be successful, you know? And that hunger couples with fear so much for me. I'll wipe my eyes, and lay in bed in a scared stasis. A feeling drops through me *******. First it's a desperate feeling for action, to do something, to be productive. Then this desperate complacency washes against it. A rock, a body, a me.

Foolish roiling Krakken,
go back to your basin. old-timer,
No wit, no heart,
just energy enough for that last breach.

Old timer, schemin'
in the swirl,
wrapping those loose arms around me so tight.

It's hungry again, thirsty.

Krakken crackling through
all the fluid in my body
And making my lungs
howl in hatred.

I've seen your eyes in the mirror
again
not to deep below.

Hungry for oxygen.

The piano sings
as
you tap the keys
in
a lonely lighthouse
of hurting repetition,
because even as you sit there,
you are letting go,
and the piano
is rolling away from you,
its voice stopping
and plunging darkly
only to stop
and look back at its
footprints in the sand,
the ones
against the edge of salt water
and the breakers
coming in
to break things.

The sun
is a pink moan,
the dusk
is
a blue happiness,
the stars
are white
memories
of the earlier loving hug of fog
and you have painted the day
at your piano.

My drunk dreams
are astounding.

I wake up
at four
in the am.

have a smoke.

Then go back to sleep,
still tipsy.

Judy Greer
makes it to the farthest
reaches of my imagination,
and I must save her
from
a
man
with a hundred
groping hands.

A girl with a spirit
full of the ripest sunrises
in their peaches,
pinks
and plums
must be told
that it is ok
to be this sad
in the morning.

When there is no reason,
and night is crying
over
its demise.

I must take her from the sky,
to take her to my bed,
where we lay naked
having never ******,
but because it's much easier
to tell the truth
when skin is touching.

It is much easier
to feel human,
when you are touching
them
unadulterated.

I must rescue
the world in my dreams,
I must eradicate
disrespect
and
cat-calls.

I am the defender
in my dreams.

Why is it that I dream of saving women,
because I have been told
to do so?

Or because
I am doing what comes natural?

Or maybe
I am just hurt,
and when I am hurt,
I want to save people.

You could take
thunder apart
with your teeth.

Lightning
doesn't know
the light
of
your
mouth.

When we finally talked again,
me and Gnat
were cordial.

I was finally happy
that she
was
happy.

She said,
"I really am in love this time."

And it felt good
because
I'd known she'd finally
found it.

And that the verses
of my poetry
couldn't reach her,
like the symphony
of the exquisite
symphony
of his
could.

I love Gnat,
because
she is in love
and
happy.

I find happiness
in the fact
that a girl
I constantly ****** over
is now in for the ride of her life;
a ride full of ups and downs
highs and lows,
but a love
that can resist
a rollercoaster.

I am finally happy for the love
of my life,
and they don't tell you in the movies
that you can be happy for the love of your life
when they're in love
and staring down the
barrel of eternity
not thinking of it as a gun
but
thinking of it as true
real
love.

And that's what Gnat has.

And I'm so happy.

When I'm drunk
I think about you.

Ironic.

I just want to purge you,
but I'm not that masochistic,
because missing you
will never be harder
than not missing you.

I swear girl
you've made me want to
take all your ****
and throw it
out on the steps
these past days;
thou shalt not steal.

Lately
I've been wanting
to chop your head off,
but I'm a moralist
so I do it in my head
but sometimes...
thou shalt not ****.

But I love you....
thou shalt love they neighbor
as thine own self....
and I love you in the agonizing way a man's heart can be caught and snared.

I've had to sleep in my car
for six days now,
because of you yelling and screaming
and just hating everything about me
until you wake me up in the morning
tapping on the foggy glass
in a bathrobe, them pink, ***** slippers,
and some scalding black coffee in a mug,
and I look at you and I just want to....
thou shalt not ****,
again,
thou shalt not ****.

And it all started with you
waking me up with a bible to the head,
thumping me awake
at 3:15 in the morning,
standing over me reading
"thou shalt not covet another man's wife."

And everybody's a sinner.

Is this where it happens?
Is this the where
and when?

On a bus going through
nowheres stocked with burned-out houses
and Chevys idling on empty axles?

I have passed so many of them,
that I don't know
when it'll stop;
all this quiet and oblivion.

"She talkin
about quittin me,
she said
'I'm tired of you coming
over here
sweet-talking
just to get in the door,
then
you go upside
my head
once you inside,
no,
not anymore,'
I said,
'baby,
I apologized for all that
before,
why you keep bringing
up
old ****?
You need
to learn how to forgive
and forget.
You know
I don't mean nothin by it,
fuhreal.
But all you ever do
is talk about
what I am
doing wrong
what I have done
to you,
can't we just be cordial
and sip on this thing
I brought over?'"


"So she let me
in
and
we sipped that night."

I picture them glued hotly to each other
on a couch;
a bed;
scrambling
together
drunk out of their minds
on
the ***** tile
in the kitchen;
two plaster figures
stuck together
by
bad chance
and
some fault of fire.

Hectic breakneck of the chopped up music.
beautiful wilt and hungry wither of the hips.
Drunken fingers grasping a drink and shaking so feverishly,
its like the adrenaline of war.
Knowing there is something past the moon,
past darkness. The freshness of sweat.
A black skirted woman dances.
The fabric squirming up her hips
as she drives her thighs,
whipping them back and forth.
Dreams bellow out of hollow bellies,
the bottom of the roar,
a squeak.
The bouncers in bowties and charcoal suits
look nice.
The opaque lights and streamers of brilliantly lit people and huge parade of bodies
washing and bouncing inside are like fruits in the dryer,
Tumbling and tumbling until they are fully juiced and induced.
But you can never find a willing partner
For good rough ***. Or even
love: the canary in the mine.
A pink, throaty croak
Emanating from its black lungs.

There are places
where people can come and go
as they please,
where derivatives
are anomalous
and the main source
can never move
or be cleaved off from itself,
there are places
where people are lighters
flicking themselves
on
and
off,
there are black moons,
and black tears to send
a universe asunder;
There are ravens
made of feromones
with receptors
always beeping
like satellites
in the middle of nowhere
with twitchy antennae,
and sometimes even the sun
is black;
there are places
where coffee
is uneccessary
where there is no sleep
no threat of it;
there are places like
my heart.

I am afraid
I could exhaust myself.

But then
little tiny dots
of rain dribble
basketballs
on my cheek.

And the sport
begins
with a buzzer
and a knock
on my door.

This is the time of year
for lovers to break,
for rounds of applause
to burn
the
lives of millions
into a caucophony
of happiness
and unity,
for the sun to turn
over
in the sky
and get closer
with the Earth
becuase heat
is drunk love,
for clouds
to fall
and get skinny
as they writhe on the earth
and the earthworms
wiggle to the surface
for a drink,
this is the time of year
for maggots,
for destruction,
for putrefaction,
for decay,
just becuase it's getting hotter,
doesn't mean its getting cleaner,
the vultures circle
when the smell of meat
travels on thermals.

This is the time
to make plans
in order to break them,
when we make love on the beach
and get sand in our genitals,
it is because we cling to each other
far too easily,
and this time of year
will remedy
our attachment.

Spit it out, why don't you,
say that this time of year
is better
for self-loathing
and hatred
than sunny skies
and ice cream that drips
for days.

Nat called me,
said,
"I missed it."

Skyscraper to the sky,
hit me
hard,
rushed through my body
in a light year.

So bugged out,
I puked,
right there,
on the receiver.

"Are you ok?"

"Imma be fine."

But I wasn't,
I'll tell you how scared I was,
I was scared
of breaking her face
open
on the side of a sofa,
afraid of my father,
afraid
of just up and leaving,
being the father's
some of my friend's
fathers had become
awaiting the same fate
for them,
afraid of being my father,
afraid of over-eating
and taking up all the food
in the world,
afraid of being my father,
afraid
of
this being something
that would define
me
at age 18.

Afraid of being my father
but way younger
with the insanity of fear.

Nat got it
a week later,
but it still ***** me up,
because now
I think about the baby
that almost was,
because I think about the
father
I could've become,
the kind
that loves
his
child.

The kind
that doesnt' hurt the baby
and the woman
that birthed a new God;
the kind that is a channel
away from the tributary
and all the things
the tributary
could never be..

the heart is not an easy
thing
to
devour.

The black of darkness
is a black
that's not easy to conquer.

And you have
brought troops
with superior artillery,.

Hello there
gruesome stone,
blood flowing over you,
making you lifelike
once more,
I can see your limbs
escaping your nothingness
like the useless appendix.

Your beautiful thighs,
and loveless algae-green eyes,
your senseless fingertips
and heartless glow,
your tiny brain
with it's one-track philosophy.

Gruesome stone,
you grow from wantoness
and neediness,
fed by the blood of those less fortunate
in love,
you harbor an innate greed
to be found again,
to caress the excellent jest
of unrequited love.

You are an out-of-this-world high
when you speak,
and you are not meant
for the
human heart,
and yet,
you follow the rivers
till they empty into the ocean,
and finally become stone again.

Until the last drop of stolen blood
has been washed away,
you and your beauty and horribleness
taint the very spirit
of love.

Taint the very problems
you intend to solve.

So, gruesome stone
like Dracula,
when there is nothing left,
you remain,
lifeless and pointless
a stone's throw away
from the human heart.

A pebble waiting for the wash of the slightness of a droplet,
to mar the warmth of the heart.

I have headaches.

Maybe I drink too much,
and my family thinks
I'm an alcoholic;

put too much sauce in the venom
and it becomes
a pasta of destruction.

How little
we value
each other's hearts,
when they lie
in oak fingers,
so old
and
so known
that it's hard for us
to know
their beginning.

When compassion
lies dormant
like the dogwood
with no lavender,
it is easy to forget
that we are human.

Because I love you,
and I should have more pride,
I should never say that,
it is unbecoming.

But it is easier to say,
than I have forgotten you,
that you are broken
and twisted inside of me.

Do you like flying?

I like flying.

I like the angle
of wings,
how they shiver
on the runway
as an artery of redemption.

The murmur of the engines
and the wheels
hopping like babies,
that is freedom.

The sifting through clouds
by the wings,
like dragging a stick
through a puddle of oil,
that is like love.

The belly of the plane
skimming over the clouds,
basking naked in the sun,
that is like life.

Descending through the fog
bumping in your seat,
watching the porthole
for the brown grasses of geese
and jewelry of the sun on other jets
that is like the birth
of the world.

Taxiing to a stop
and unconsciously
taking the sweet, lovely woman's hand,
in whichever way she is beautiful,
the one who snored through the descent
and it sounded like the piano play
of rain and concrete,
that is like grace
in innumerable measures.

Jacky had a tiny voice,
a voice
like a whistle.

But she carried
Julian
like she was holding
goodness
and those tiny arms
had veins
in anacondas.

"There's my little man,
my little soldier,
my little hope."

Julian
giggled in twinkling spoons
and vivid joy,
the joy of a mattress
of Jackie's love.

Jackie wore like
a thousand wraps,
applebottoms
and chucks
clinging
to the
soles.

But she loved
Julian
and took him in her arms
when he screamed.

With that tiny voice
she sang
and made ice sculptures
out of the cold blocks
of his hunger.

Are we in trouble
again?

Tonight while I lay in bed,
hold me
close to your stomach.

Matter of fact,
hold me
in your stomach.

Take a few bites,
will you?

Let me know I'm substantial enough
to be your human feed.

Tomorrow
we'll turn the tables.

I'll be pregnant
in my infintesimal
intestines
with you.

Nibble off that vein,
thank you babe.

It feels good
when your teeth sink,
and my life
is held in your teeth
like Allstate hands,
because there's no such thing
as love insurance.

Maria
kisses
like she wants
to take your head off.

The top lip
is an umbrella
all the way to the bridge of the nose.

The bottom
slobbers
the
cleft-chin.

When I kiss her,
I want to push her away
and
tell her
"quit that ****."

but she's green.

she's never been with a dude
the way that I want
to be with her.

And so,
the kissing
I tolerate.

The way she takes her tongue
to every black surface
that the shadow of her mouth
creates.

I shake it off.

Or
how sugary my mouth gets
with all the extra saliva
she wets my teeth
with.

I'm cool with it.

But one night,
she gets down
on all fours on her
sofa-bed.

Her skin:

patchy black
and white
from the moon coming in
and scattering
against the leaves
of an oak
outside the window.

Her jaw
working
in square motions
as she swallows
down
all that extra
saliva,
from all that
extra kissing.

And she said to me,
her eyes
placid,
glassy
and black
as leather,
"**** me like those **** girls."

Ever have one of those moments,
where nothing is beautiful
about anything you're looking at?

A taste in your mouth,
gets sour
like you've been chewing copper
and
nothing is beautiful.

The boats in the harbor
flirt with the pilings,
their sails have trapped
nothing
and are flaccid,
the gulls scream at the masts,
scream while they lift
their spindly legs
and tiny feet
escaping
the noiselessness.

I sit with the sun
as it bursts
and the cirrus clouds,
like cotton,
are filled with blood
or tears,
or some brutal combination
of both,
as the needles
poke through the house
and the sun
is pushed out.

Leaden stars crossed her eyes,
and she has told me
she will only love him.

I have had a few hidden tears
in that stolen bed of dreams;
and she sleeps with my kisses:
a reminder of betrayal.

It is six in the morning,
here,
and I am lazy drunk.

I get out the bed '
and leave her
krunk
on maddened sadness.

I see Demons
in my sleep.

Their fingernails
scratch my eyelids until
little loose licks of skin
bleed
and the tears
come down
in torrents
the color of fingernails
and hell.

One descended
on me
one night,
landed on my chest
as a black raven
with green, wilting eyes.

I'm going numb, I can't feel
pain, or hatred,
or even love.

And if I do,
I let the demons devour it
until
hell is senseless
and the black-footed,
white-winged
demons
return
to flip me over
and eat what's
left of the meat
inside my rib cage.

I wanted to toss
something,
I wanted to feel
your body
like
palm prints
on my windowshield.

Write
"I HATE YOU"
all over me.

I can take it.

I've got thick skin,
but my heart
is shallow;
you could touch
it
before your fingers
grace
the pleather
of my backseat.

I fake it alot.

Some girls think I'm macho as ****,
but really,
at my creamy center
I **** them
like they are splinters.

Just trying to get it out.

So let's back out.

What's a splinter
to a whole human?

Nothing.

Nothing but an irritant
that itches,
when the computer
is on a high-wire
glitch
and these girls climb telephone poles
thinking
they're fixing
me.

When really you've boled
a hole
in everything
and climbing poles
gets them farther
from my core.

I would like to go to a place,
where people want to be,
the roads running
and bleeding notes
in the gutters,
a place
where people
want to remember they've been,
and fold their music
to be pushed across a rivulet
to someone across the street,
a place that could be called
a lime of abundance
or a lemon
of love,
someplace bitter
but sweetened
with just a dab
of sugar, a place
where I could become
a crystal
and dissolve
without pain,
I would like to move
out of the US
to a place
where people
learn how to talk
again
because they don't know how to talk
when they are at home,
I would like to live
in a place
where I could talk candidly
in a bar,
where I could yell
about the things
I want to yell about,
I could go somewhere
and stand in the street
and read poetry
and you would walk by,
I would be invisible,
I would be
unknowable.
I want the wheels  to come off,

I want to expect
to be blindsided by a bus
and wrap my arms
around broken headlights,
as I feel
love in her arms
in a place I have never been
and a creaming love that does not fit
into Jersey dresses
or bleached Jordans.

Lisa Nelle
had this cat
Suki.

A calico.

Suki would wiggle his
******* in your face,
a black hole of fur,
then plop down on your belly.

We smoked that cat up so many times
while the TV was on
and the volume was way up.

Then we'd turn on her amp
until her house buzzed
and we couldn't hear the neighbors.

They'd knock their brooms
against the ceiling,
on a ******* Friday.

We watched
that cat twitch
across the floor
and twirl in the sun
by the balcony door.

He'd pass out
when we
passed out.

I come back
for promise.

The tea leaves
told me it would be
all it should be.

My bags were packed
the same way a child packs a bag,
everything vital
was left
on
the
bed.

I took satisfying trinkets
because pollution
dulls.

Oh,
I
am
at
your doorstep
once
more.

The lady in the techni-colored
shawl
with eyes like a rainbow,
brought the water to a boil,
dropped in the leaves,
told me
my future
would be ready
in a second,

I'd know everything in due time,

and it was.

The tea leaves told me
in a raspy, Pall Mall
voice
that everything was going
to be
all it should be.

So,
here I am,
at your doorstep,
and everything vital
hums through woven lips
on your bed.

I have come for a teddy bear
that I have hugged
too long.

Heather,
I could fall
into
your
brown eyes.

I really could.

Time's not waiting
on
any
man.

So,
with that little ***
and littler
voice,
trust me
when i'm saying
I could talk to you for days
as your body became
nothing.

I fall in love easily,
let's hope this one
has a stamp
of truth.

heather,
with the long
brown
hair.

heather
with the long,
brown
voice.

heather
with the long,
brown
legs.

let me be redundant,
let me
be
unequivocal
in the recitations
of my heart,
when I say,
I'm feeling you
and my knuckles
could burn
as I grip
the soft limestone
holding me
from
your
eyes.

I want to have a few drinks,
so I slide up to the bar
and put something
on the paper in my pocket.

When I run out,

you throw a paper towel
my way,
placing my straight shot
and a pen beside it.

I could see myself
rubbing your hips
as you rub
my traps.

We could press our sticky bodies
together
for a moment of holding,
later on
too much liquor
could put us in a closer position.

"What are you writing?"
You ask.

"Anything."

So I take that pen
and paper,
and talk about Iowa
with you: A girl with callouses
even on her pinkies
hailing from a little farm town,
with a voice
full of the South somehow
and ideas on how to get by
the pitfalls of religion.

I talk about
wanting to find places
to go
where I could write
and drink
until forever in the morning
in the city.

"I'm not supposed to tell
anybody this,
but there's a bar
over on 110th,
that stays open
all night,"
you say so close to me
that I could pick out your lipstick
at Sear's.

"What are you doing
after this?"

"I don't know,"
saying as you wipe the bar
down.

So I don't know's
become eventual
movements
between our bodies
to the door,
bumping your hips
against me
and me sliding
my hands
around your waist,
trying to get the bumps
closer.

And so maybe
with love from New York
I'll write somewhere
else
about girls
that understand
my obsession,
who throw paper
and pen
my way
instead
of fear
and unknowing.

Things had already started trending downward for me and Natalie. We'd talk about new people. Old people. People like old boyfriends. Or a girl I'd met that was different in a way that no girl had been different to me in awhile. And we hurt each other like that. Or by pretending not to hear each other. Or by just ******* when one of us didn't want to, but we felt we had too. Because it was normal. And per usual, we started arguing and throwing things at each other and smoking on the balcony by ourselves late at night listening to the dogs bark and sirens.  And we grew. Grew in cancerous separation. Once it started we couldn't stop it. One day she told me something final, she'd hooked up with an ex, and he had said something about "having changed" and she seemed optimistic. I didn't give a ****. My pride was nicked, but she wasn't **** to me then. I helped her move out of the apartment, boxed everything into that tinyass mini cooper she had, put some of her stuff in my car, and drove her to her new apartment. It was that easy. We hugged at her door. She said I'll call you later. I said okay. She never called me later and I moved back in with my parents. I think that what did it is that being in love is like being a parent, the love becomes the baby, and when two people stay together for the kid and not because they love themselves as much as the baby, then it goes from bad to worse. Then they really start to hate each other. Then they don't talk for years. Don't even talk about that grown-up elephant in the corner ******* on its own nose.

I'm sorry, I'm such a sorry man,
regrettably, I thought of our old love,
remembering nights of amorous hugging,
bending you over, spreading your legs,
entering your body, finding a place
to reside, though not deep inside,
not where the creature of love casts
his gaze at me, from his light
with a shadowed eye, seeing through you and I,
to the future cast in the die, I fall
hard you said, quietly, so quiet and
hushed, without weight.

When you talked about your dreams, they always escaped
your mouth in a mote of smoke,
into the spackled ceiling it snaked,
wisping, serpentine, through all the fiberglass,
into the atmosphere, into the solar system,
not yet burned away, into the stars,
where all of you resides, all your dreams.

Back on earth, my eyes fixed on your escaping self,
I imagined no happy endings, no good way
to say a sad goodbye, a burning lullaby.

No way,  even naked,
in the bed we shared, did we share a single shred of truth.

Curled up in my arms, naked bodies sweating from the *******,
not just not knowing each other anymore, not just not listening, but so close to the singularity when we were *******,
so close to zero gain,
that when you said we may be having a baby,
I didn't know enough about you to say yes,
only knew enough about *******,
to say no to yes.

I'm sorry I turned out to be such a sorry *** man.

The first time
**** all the money
I don't have.

****
all the clout
i never earned.

I'd take her in my room,
feel her *****,
give her a tingling
of my tongue.

I'll put my whole mouth
in it.

I love eating
*****.

I love eating
her fears
for the first
time.

Like I'm the first
that ever did it.

I take  it in
mouthfuls.

Drunk love is the best love.

No inhibitions.
No dispositions.

I don't know
how to miss somebody
in the right way,
I can wake up
in a bad state
still bitter
over things I said
or didn't say,
hungry for brine
and salt licking
my open chest
and curved spine.

The ribbons curling in the sky
move out across
the bluest bay,
I have fished so many times on the rocks
overlooking the military base,
the carriers roll by;
the submarines hum in the deep
there antenna in an operatic frenzy
and the captain is to busy to sleep.

I wonder what is moving
inside of you
just beneath the breakers.

Each time
'I throw a fish back into the fray,
I hope the bombs of their bodies
make noises that you can hear
even where the ribbons
can't tie up your soul.

I always leave around noon
my gills burning
and the air crashing
with all those sonic booms.

I gulp,
and gulp,
and put myself to sleep,
with some bottled ocean,
and a few good memories
of your heart,
that trembling, silently scared
deep.

So let me know how to be right again,
take your line and weight and
squirming bait,
and teach me how to miss you
in the right way.

Strobe lights
make your shoulder blades
look like wings
when you
dance.

Spread all over my chest,
I can feel you flexing,
little dragon
burn me up
with your wings,
leave some of those flaking
scales
behind.

Let the music
drip
like hot metal
in a **** rain.

It is a black spot
as cancerous and consuming
as those wandering black holes
that squander life
like poachers.

When I return
to heaven
and all those angels stand at the gate,
I hope they've got their magazines
loaded,
because God told me
that depression is when
even pleasure
will seem like my pain,
and I might have to die
with the feeling that bullets create:
fire.
And that fire in my belly will drop
as hope riddles it with all them magazines.

I could have  a few more pints,
pass out,
and still be in the same place tomorrow.

That's the thing about it all,
man,
I'm stuck here on a planet for neanderthals and minute-men.

And it's gracious like that.

Giving in plenty of normality,
conciousness
and stupendous
felicity.

Like we could all have three bedrooms,
xanax(enough to **** ourselves),
and a few appreciative kids.

I
think
"I'm sorry,"
is what she said
to him.

She'd broken down
all lines of communication
and he was hungry
as hell
for her taste.



And what he said to her
was the most
bitter of all the greatest cover-ups.

"It's okay."

Bitter like scuppernogs
in North Carolina
when the sun reaches down
and burns sweetness away.

It was an assassination
of faith
that day
they lit two cigarettes
with one lighter.

That day
they sat outside on park benches
unearthing each other
while trying to hide.

"So," she said
to him.
"Did you know
that I can roll the tightest blunts
in the universe."

And he said something,
something
falsified,
something
calcified,
something
ha­rdened.

"That's dope."

Because the love drug
had taken all control over him,
and rage
couldn't come out of him,
he didn't have the spirit
or the *****
to say
that he'd drank himself to death
all day long
because he thought
she'd strapped on an oxygen tank
and flown to the stars:

Distant
as
a
supernova
burning holes in that
murky
purple
night.

there are two dimensions
to this living.
One is the surface,
the ethereal,
the light to the dark.
The shadow to the skin:
The depth of pigment.
But then, there is the deeper sin
the battering within.
The judgment of blackness
based on skin.
It has hounded us,
through our history,
from House to field.
from basketball court
to court house.
From boardroom
to dorm room
to class room
to living room.
Granny used to say,
ooh girl you've got good hair.
Nice and wavy,
like your grandpappy's.
Used to say,
see you're the pretty one.
Running her fingertips
along our cheeks,
mired in awe
of our caramel complexion.
while like tar,
it stuck to the minds
of our classmates,
cohorts,
coworkers.
With jealousy
they said light-skinned,
not black enough,
not us enough.
not us enough.
when one day in class,
the teacher had asked,
"what do mommy and daddy do?"
Janitor.
Works for the state.
Garbageman.
we piped up proudly,
"my mommy and daddy have college degrees,
one creates houses
the other works in network security"
all the while,
our classmates had laughed,
made fun of us,
"so, that's why you don't talk black"
Two smart ******,
bred a smart *****.
And so the story of us,
had morphed
from the days of Angela Davis,
to this new form of self-hatred.
the valley between us
suffered a cataclysm
and became a canyon.
Continued to grow,
our skin a stain,
and as actors we had to train,
mellowing our dialect
just to make it seem as if we had intellect,
cause we all know a succesful black man,
has two distinct voices,
and not through his own choices,
it is bred from necessity.
can't sit in front of white man
and talk like pickaninny.
got so comfortable out of our own skin,
that we felt we were the ones
digging out the edges of the canyon.
So far thrown from blackness
that maybe this is how they separate us,
make us hate ourselves
and love they wealth.
make us hate our hair
and love they locks.
Cause like superheroes
we switch from day out
to day in.
Being dark, light or caramel complexioned
we stay hounded by
how close we get to whitening.

"Oh my god,
mane,
this girl
she just broke apart,
so soft too."

Heck takes his hands
and makes this snaking motion
in the air.

He starts at the top,
his hands shaking
where her **** would be
then he curves inward
moving down her body,
his tiny, reddened, scabbed knuckles
shake at the invisible waist of her
then his hands flash out
wide,

"Oh mane,
this girl had a big one,
thing was big and gorgeous."

Heck stares
off,
lost in the reverie
of the soft girl
that just broke apart for him.

He stares off
as his drink gets warmer
and the tiny yellow bubbles
at the bottom of his mug
wobble to the top
and pop.

I take a few more drags of my Marlboro
and snort some more of my drink
and as we sit at that bar
where there were girls everywhere
Heck sits in his stool turned toward me,
his hands massaging his thighs
and staring up,
thinking about the girl
that broke herself for him.

Just to be with him.

After falling
Off the wagon,
I ****** blood.

And woke up worse
Than hemorrhage
Suffering from a pain
I couldn't
Explain.

Pain troubling
Me thru the day
Knowing there were
Things I couldn't fix
Or understand.

Waiting for nightfall,
The shroud of darkness
And
Foggy light,
Knowing understanding
Would never come,
But searching for its source
In the sky.

While soldiers died,
Under a Syrian night.

In a long time,
like a good dream
that just faded away,
and now I relish in its memory
like a ******,
I can't stop holding on to what
so badly needs to let me go,
can't stop tugging you closer,
as he calls your name from that crack
in the front door,
can't stop saying how much I love you,
in how many different ways and shades,
that you can never remember
or never cared enough to in the first place.

Can't say that I've grown,
and become greater than what I was,
a new shoulder for you to rest your head,
new muscle to make you feel comfortable.

Sometimes I wish that I could scream,
at the top of my lungs, just the way a rabbit does in the maw of a lion,
or cry the way the sky is blue,
infinitely, with new meaning everyday.

Sometime I wish that my anger,
could become as ****** to you as anything,
and that it would be as masculine
As everyone of your most embarrassing desires.

Sometimes I try to find things to cry about,
and when I don't, I drink,
feeling emptier than ever, because I can't seem to feel
what everyone else feels everyday,
like I'm missing the big story,
the biggest, brightest explosion ever known to humanity,
the show of God in the light of your eyes.

I wish I could say that the long swish of your brilliant hair,
is it.

Or the tiny crinkle in your mouth, the trickle of a smile,
is it.

Or that hopeless cuteness in your ***** brown eyes,
is it.

I have been overlong,
wanting to understand everything about what I could never be to you,
thinking more about what you were to me.

Each memory a needle against my heart and brain,
trailing across nerves, tickling and destroying,
and all the times I couldn't satisfy your hunger.

But, on the edge of my desperation,
reaching out and holding air,
grasping molecules,
swiping at nothingness,
slapping away feverishly at my own dark emotions,
I keep looking for you,
like the memory of me that you are,
while I'm sifting through the dream of me that you became.

The idea that I couldn't make whole,
the ache I couldn't bend in my favor,
the lie I desperately plied as truth.

I have loved you,
I have loved you.

****
a love jones,
or some
Tyler Perry *******.

I want a chick that pulls knives out on me and jokes while she's doing it, because that's how we joke around.

A knife
like:
"You're not the kind of man I thought you were
when we first met.

Pulling out knives
and
putting little dimples
of love
into
each other.

Heart's burst into a thousand
brutal glowsticks.

The vase of the body
pulsates
with shoots of light
and in the night
You can be seen
from space
a head a thousand filaments wide.

when i put my hands
on my chest,
thinking of you
and lick my lips,
thinking of you,
I can taste
black,
I can feel
black,
I am blackened
and dark
in my bedroom.

Touch that orb inside me, or mercury,
that loneliest lover slipping
off the cuticle of the horizon.

Reach out with your hands
to that compilation of so many lights
that seems one.

Become the glove that traps
infinity and bridges gaps
that break bodies into particles.

Make love to an earth of oblivion
an earth of nonsense,
an earth of pointlessness,
make love to the years of youth,
the years we waste
not making love.

I swear,
Gnat
had two moods,
crazy
and angry,
one time
she punched me in the face,
and I smacked her,
and smacked her again
until we were spooning
on the couch
and she cried
as a lavaflow of tears
fell on my wrists.

But then
she had this mood
where she'd
clutch me,
through my ribs
to my heart,
and we'd love each other
so hurtfully
that I'd die
every time she touched me.

She grabbed my heart
so viciously,
and consequentially,
that I just wanted to die
in her fingertips.

If, one day, I see you crossing
The street, I won’t wave,
I’ll let you be.

More beautiful now
Than you’ve ever been,
A couple butterflies
May come fluttering up
Out of my mouth,
And my heart may skip a beat,
But if I see you,
I’ll look down at once
And stare at my feet.

When he catches you in his warm embrace
And plants a sweet kiss on your face,
I’ll clutch my newspaper close
To my chest, and hold back a tear,
But I swear, you’ll still be as beautiful
As you’ve ever been,
And I won’t love anyone
The same way again.

When he takes your hand
And you turn to walk away,
I’ll feel that same deep burn in my chest,
That I’ve always felt,
That will never change,
Even when you turn around
And look at me so strange,
Like the visage of a dream
From some long-forgotten place.

But honey, when you furrow that soft brow,
And turn away quickly,
I’ll remember those days
When I caused you so much pain
That you counted the seconds on the clock
Hoping all that time would just tick away.

And the shameful memory
Will haunt me,
even as I turn to walk away from you
And you turn back to him, to walk away from me,
Going down two different streets.

The best buzz
is that one singular moment
right after the first forty,
when you've got a Marlboro
hanging with its fingernails
to your bottom lip.

And you're so lazy
and warm
that you push the smoke out
without lifting a finger.

I hate abstract art,
right along with you.

I like the impressionists,
and pointillists.

You will be
my Camille
and I will be
your Oscar-Claude.

Wear that green dress
to bed tonight
and I will make you
bashful,
but confident too.

You will make me
humane and
delightfully weak
inside of 500 square feet.

There is good,
there is hope,
there is a future
even when understanding
is far off,
and malice
is the epicenter
of the human earthquake,
there is good,
there is hope,
even when
you feel like no one loves you,
and you just want to lay down
in midnights forever,
to be a nightflower
in black and blue gardens
under the tiger-stripes of the moon,
there is good,
there is hope,
there are paintings
painted with the colors
of dreams sweeter
than dappled sunshine
and mercurial march mornings,
there is good,
there are times
when you see me
when you can
and that is enough
for me,
there is good,
there is time
left for hope,
there is a clock on the wall,
there is a salve
to put on ticking hands
to make them stop
and make sweet movements in the air
again,
to make spring as cerulean
as glaciers,
with all the ice water
in the world
left to drink, there is good,
there is hope.

Walking to the bodega,
I think about those sparrows
that run in the wind,
even when there's a cold blow
going,
and they work
like freaks
with sin on their mind.

Once I clear myself
of you,
I will write
like I used to,
I will be free
of the breakwaters
to read,
write,
and create
again, but love
or whatever-the-****-it-was,
has put a stop to
everything,
and I walk
to the bodega
with a head full of nothing;
no thermals,
no heat for me to ride, but I'm sure
I'll be okay,
I'm sure
you don't care.

I'd rather
be safe on some branch
lapping acid rain out
of a lead saucer,
than trying to ford
this river in the air
with nothing, not even a pair
of wet wings.

When I get
to the store,
I buy a pack of Marlboros
and ask
for all the lead
in the world.

He looks at me
with a screwface,
so I ask him again,
and he
says
"No loitering."

I was gonna fly home,
gonna try and test my
shoulder blades and see if maybe
I could make something happen.

But, I go to the garbage barge in the back
and sit, beside it, gravel scratching my *** with stingers,
as light scissors out of the sky;

little needles of sun in
the little oceans
in the little asphalt craters
making little,
if not any,
noise,
and I lean
drinking something slightly mean,
a forty and another in the bag,
because it usually helps in these situations.

I left my wings somewhere
and I cry there,
cry because I'm
stranded
in a place that I have never been,
with all the light in the world
and no place to put it.

I murked out,
at some point.