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.

They said:
"You on a path to get shot."

In the form of a bullet,
straight through my head,
pink mist and all.

How much is a life worth?
or how much does lead weigh?

In forms underlayed with venom,
I have perpetrated goodness.

In ways misunderstood
I have appeared evil,
and maybe this is so.

Without you,
I am alone again,
and each moment
feels like a dry fever.

I go to sleep
in fits of time,
a few hours
here
and
there,
scattered like bouys.

When I feel happy
its because I'm in the desert
and
that's the kind of happy
you feel.

Angela,
would you ever
come back?

I've been asking
this question
as the licquor
subsides.

I've been
sleeping
on it,
just to take
its weight down.

I ate
three tasteless burgers,
and rummaged
through their tomatoes
looking for your lips
red as cherries.

Hopefulness
is a disease,
a cancer
because it spreads
in violent fingers.

The **** of my heart
has begun
before the burgers
settled.

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.

I saw her
walking from the bodega
and it was hotter
than a tick
cradled under my *****,
and from there the fire
spread.

I was listening
to life
after
death,
had that **** on BLAST,
and she was carrying groceries
in the crook of her arms,
plastic bags
swinging
in response to the weight of each other.

Back and forth,
until I thought they might
just get ideas
and run away together.

And right there,
with my windows down;
my eyes on her,
hers on the concrete,
I wanted a forty,
cause forties clear my head
and my conscience
was banging me in the side of my head
like two bags
full of loaded groceries
on
frail arms.

I used to love
the ripple
of her.

I Cherished
placque suns.

I walked amongst
the withered oaky clouds
reaching to the earth
in capillaries
of lightning.

I made
****** on journeys
in the night
to the
licquor store.

I could take refuse
and morph it
in my hands,
because they were
her
hands.

She was the gravity of neutrinos,
I spun
and
spun,
and threw off layers,
as her bra
lay on the floor
and the laces
of her ******
lay
whitely
in the corner of the room.

I could've been anywhere
in those final seconds,
the club with it's thousand
orbitals of dancing brilliance,
the park
with it's millionaires
of hate,
the senseless
desert
of my
heart.

I was in the rainforest
feeling the universe
in droplets,
and my pores screamed.

Destruction
is something to reminisce over,
and I moan
like a cat in the night
with it's broken leg.

I moan
like a dwarf star,
getting smaller
and
smaller.

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,.

pain
be the body of grace.

horrible grace uttered over
and over a
                  gain
                           ful waste.
you and i told lies for fear.
we were never really there
in love.

but now we're here.

prayer can't stop a thing,
I try bending a knee
or a wish.

but na,
I ain't to religious; so talking to god
becomes addictive too quick.

you have found something new,
I've found the old foundry.

all night pouring cauldrons of liquid hot into a bad cast.

sparks so **** and comforting,
i see them jumping from the window of my belly button.

god,
there's hell in me.

i'm being disposed of as i watch
a new lava
being poured in an old way.

****,
im asleep,
drunk,
tilted,
restful.

i'd suggest you go now.

In the alcoves I hunt for mystery
and pleasure. Seeking your joy. I hope
to break you to the core,
and make you crumble to all my love.
Id hope your days are perforated silences,
my voice a trickle of whiskey.
I treasure your absence,
thinking to myself, with a cigarette.
I sip down evan williams
Pretending not to hurt,
but with a hurricane
your surge through me.

The words of a heavy
heart,
are replaced
by the resplendence
of life.

I think about her
constantly,
but truthfully
you have been my only friend.

I call
and
call.

I place hope on Hermes,
I place hope on my messages
and their ability
to convey
how much I care
over telephone lines
and the truth
of my heart's reminiscent eye.

Little lady,
your comforts are poison,
you never return my love
and I am constantly hurt,
wishing you were here
in the birth of my confusion.

In the midst of a moonlight ****,
I lied to myself,
and said we were making love.

The universe unfurled,
and your body liquified
in the heat of the moment.

If i keep with my stroll,
I might just
catch a crazy case.

I might just catch
crazy
in the worst place.

In love,
the worst humans
debase
themselves
even lower.

So when her love
reaches me,
it make me less human
to the point that I don't even
know her.

I begin
to only know myself
in my episodic returns.

The episode
of kissiing.

The episode
of loving.

The episode
of breaking
over *******.

I wish I could pull ****
my way;
have gravity
in my palms
and the sun
in my arms.

I want to  feel heat in my biceps again,
I want the mountains
to rise up
again,
I want volcanoes
instead of pimples.

Randy was drunk and high
and skipping school.

She'd sipped on a few too many sips
of crown royal,
and that wasn't the reason
but she says,
"that didn't help."

Javaughn picked her up
beside the chinese place.

"You want to go back to your place?"
he asked.

"whatever,"
she said as they passed
a fat blunt,
fat with the demise
of depression.

They wound up in her room,
him taking her clothes off,
her saying no
in her mind.

So drunk and high
she couldn't say anything
but saying no
in the asylum of her mind,
the peaceful place.

But she said no.

"I gotta finish," he said.

NO she yelled.

But it was colorless.

And she receded into a space
of novas,
a space where bodies exploded
into a web of elements;
a web of objectivity,
of lost usage.

He pushed and pushed
and it hurt her more and more
as she saw his nostrils bending
more and more.

He continued his huffing,
no she said,
placing his hands on his chest,
no,
she said,
placing her hands
on the echo of his heart.

But he continued,
he had to finish,
and he did.

laying there huffing and puffing
human
he did,
as she lay
with a t-shirt still on
and ******* wet with pain,
crying in her mind
of the cosmos,
the paint of objectivity
and lost humanity.

He left,
and she stayed,
locking the elements
in her heart,
like the trapped carbon
of earth.

And so she cried
and I held her
as she told me,
because I did not know
what else to do.

What are we doing?
Why must she cry?
Why can't everything
be all right?

Because it is not.

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.

I'm trying to move on;
I wish you'd get the ****
out
of
my head.

I want to force love on another,
when the words
are lost because
they
are words
meant for you.

I want to take
your misery
and make a cake.

I want to be the candles
dripping wax
over you heart.

I want to be the heat
of knowledge.

*******,
I'm ******
up.

I caught Gnat
cheating.

caught her in it.

Not in the bed,
but enough
in the heart.

She said,
"Yea,
I ******
Jose,
so what?"

And I said,
"so what?
I love you,
and you **** me
like this?"

I wanted to hit her,
wanted to say with an open palm
that my heart
was a closed ******.

That it hurt
when she forced her love in.

So Gnat left,
and I got bitter,
I drank
and drank
in that lonely apartment.

She had a good time
with
Jose,
but came back
when he was done
with
her.

So what is trouble,
but attachment?

Attachment that you can't
pry loose,
even when the loosest nails
are easy in a crowd of girls,
when the heart
is a rigid baseboard.


So, I felt happy
for a second,
then depression hit again
when we ******,
and I knew
she
was
gone.

I'm saying this a thousand times,
but bitterness grows,
and when I find a good one,
I let her go,
because she might cheat,
so I cheat on her
and in conversations over verse
I let it be known.

But I miss
companionship,
true love.

Now it's ruined.

It is not enough
to stomp on our hearts;
It is worse to stomp
on the ground we find beautiful.

You fall in love with a man
who's in love with his disguise.

He wears a black suit, black tie,
covers himself in glory, his eyes the starry sky.

In his bed, the book is written.
faithful lover, he authors your prison.

You cling to the book of his love,
singing its melancholic words.

In his black suit, black tie,
his scorn covers you in bruises, blackens your eye.

But the book, you still read
even after he leaves, and the love is dead.

You're disgusted by those lines,
losing faith in all of mankind.

You'll find yourself in time,
but one day again, you'll become the man in the suit and tie.

This is poison,
"Statistics show
that one out of every
three black men
will spend time in prison
in his lifetime."

This is the remedy,
"I sit alone in my room drinking."

I feel like
society has tried to castrate black men,
because our *****
are so harmful,
especially to white women.

We break them,
make them unfit for society
right?

Statistics make us inhuman.

My skin color
has to be more than a distinction,

**** this *******,
Imma move to Alaska
and forget the girls I loved
and the ones that loved me
even though it was detrimental to them.

"Where do you find
these
broads?"

I don't know.

But i find them
so that I can love them.

So that I can love them
until it hurts
and I am left with a stinging
pain.

So many wasps have stung me
before.

I have placed the royalty of their stingers
in the waste
of heart break.

The knives are finally out,
I swipe at a million hives,
until I have finally cut the wings
of one.

I just want to meet poets.

The ones
in
the clubs
not
made for poetry.

The one's who
reside
in places
where
their thighs are places
for grinding.

The one's that push dudes off
without malice.

I want to meet the poets
at the bar,
taking in all their ears can handle,
because someday
they will
write it all down.

I want to meet the poets
in the middle of divorce,
becuase the pain of separation;
is a fissure of
love.

Poets in their cars
at five in the afternoon
with the windows open,
because carbon dioxide
builds in the system
and a greenhouse
of hope
may
be
feeding
unborn seeds.

I just want to meet poets.

I freaked out for
bout
five minutes.

My bottle was gone,
and I couldn't find
it,
and
*******
I'd climb Robert Plant's tongue
to get to heaven
to **** god
if  my bottle was gone.

But it wasn't.

It was at my feet,
and I'd freaked out.

I gotta get warm
in any form,
or else
my stomach
sinks
to my intestines
and my heart
gets a lil weak.

I need WIld Turkey
to keep me going,
I need you to know
that I'm insane
in some ways
and it feels like
nobody
knows what I'm saying.

My brain is stagnant horns,
just fat as Louie Armstrong's cheeks,
and
I'm a sardine
on your tongue
waiting to be spit out
to plastic oceans
instead of
acid chambers.

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.

a man like me
needs you
because his heart
is broken.

Sometimes
I like to think,
that what we had
was part of
a dream.

I just want to hold you
even though
you've travelled across
broken bridges
before.

I like to come back to you
in the swirling clay
of night.

When purple clouds
make my pain
seem all right.

So, I drink
to you
constantly,
because if I don't
I'll forget me
in place of the breeze
that rustles
over my rattling lungs.

I could never sing
you a song,
and I could never
drink
for
so
long.

Oh,
touch me once more,
let me feel your tiny hands,
those black fingernails
and their jaundiced
finales.

So much smoke
was wasted
over
our love.

And it makes one
go crazy.

I just wish no one
would know
that I'm crying.

That i'm inside
this lonely house
and I'm putting on different suits
just to get through.

I just wish you'd take me back,
just wish you'd give me one more chance
because you've got a hold on my heart
and it just won't let go.

Touch me with a kiss
or hand print on my soul,
I don't know know what it means to love,
but for me,
it's defined by the threat
of this super-massive black hole.

You **** me in,
and I want to let go of my light,
for the last second
of my life.

Love fills me up
and I water the garden
desperately.

With dead petunias on the floor
I crawl on my knees
just wishing for them to grow.

Know that my
heart
is
quick.

Understand
that it has movements
like a fish,
spurring
to the next
bubble
of oxygen
in an ocean
deep
without it.

I move as soon
as I know the love
of that bubble
has been ****** dry
by ***** gills.

I want to know how you're doing
because I care about you
deeper than love,
because friendship
is greater than love
in my book.

You can choose your friends.

Not your lovers.

So,
I hope
someday you call
to talk
about writing,
because when I said
I loved you,
it meant,
I love our friendship,
and I ****** it up
that night
we made lips
into gestures
of companionship.

Take a second
and remember
what I said,
that friendship
is greater than love.

That the bubble
is never
greater
than
the
ocean.

I want you to be all right,
because a second
in the library
is greater
than
love
daily,
to me.

I want to hold you tight
in the palms
of understanding,
and not
let you go
in the discipline
of youthful breaking.

Today drunks got up,
on an upended axis.

And wobbled
on driven souls,
driven to ****
and let the hate loose.

A drunk walked in mud
to work,
and his boss sported a smile
of sad pride.

He had done a great job,
and no one knew.

When they were sitting down
on the couch,
cracking the air with laughter,
the country man
looked up
and saw
a daughter of light on the floor,
slitted through the blinds.

He wanted so badly
to cry.
But didn't.

An imp limped
upstairs
and down, back again
to the basement,
and his old ma
heard him sparingly.

So much happened to day,
so beautifully
sad,
clear, and azure,
that the masks
of nails
spiking our faces,
slowly wore down
against steel skin.

When the sun went down,
aching for pain again,
they took the first swig,
then a second.

Like pent-up rage,
a demon
in its cage
hungry for
a mouthful
it has not
had in days.

a mouth not
its own filled
to the brim.

worked on

Temper tantrums everyday,
the baby
I have become
is the same one that
pukes up mommy's love.

See,
lil ma
got me
on the switch,
she questioned my intentions
thought I was up to no good,
but all I wanted was a single parent love,
something
that could withstand pain
and nourish
a broken heart
like mine
all by its lonesome.

I just wanted you to see the other
side,
because I spend to much time
on mine.

I dictate how mean I can be,
but as always
we got into arguments
and consequently
you took the baby
between us
and held it away from me.

Not a baby
of flesh,
but a baby of love,
morphed into an adult
of
scorn.

So now what do we do
with this wild child
in our midst?
do we throw our hands up?
or do we put our middle fingers down
and hold each other's shoulders
like lovers should?

I've got a date
with the devil,
she never wears stilletos,
just a pair of chucks
and them lee dungarees,
if I order a drink for myself
I have to order one for her.

"Are you going to drink that?"
I ask.

It's just been sitting there for awhile,
so warm and hungry.

"No,"
she says,
and her eyes are already pocked
with burst blood vessels,
already glassy with my soul,
she's got it now.

So I take it,
and take everything she's got to give.

Which is a lot,
considering.

*******,
The spider said.
Evil, evil thing to say,
To the fly stuck in your web.
I'd be gone in an instant,
If I hadn't been bitten,
Paralyzed,
Paroxyzed,
Entanglyzed.

Those shimmering beautiful eyes
And delightfully sweet and spicy aroma of your juicy *****.

My lips
Knew a thousand ways to make your legs curl and your body shrivel. To make the web bounce and thrum.

But it was you,
Charlotte,
You who knew the fool in me
That loved to love.
You, Charlotte,
Whose beautiful shimmering eyes and plump body
Fattened me up for slaughter.
And I loved you for every minute of it.

Even as you devour me now,
I close my eyes to the sound of your poison coursing through my veins,
Thrumming along,
Music to die by.

I had so many purses
of night
that i couldn't sweat her.

I couldn't feel warmth
even in the embrace
satan
made
when he held me
in his sweater.

Hell could catch me for a thousand reasons,
I might be a sinner,
I might **** a man if need be.

But my heart
is made from a century
of hate.

A century of racism,
telling me that the white girl I loved,
was probably getting *****
when we ******
and made love
on the side.

So what can I say,
when I go on journeys
against Hades,
trying to pull life
from the depths
like Orpheus' stupid ***
couldn't do
for
Eurydice.

I'll never do it again,
this is where
the heart the begins.

In hell,
trying to make
sense
of the devil
and calling her
to make amends
for my sins
with girls
with a ***** smell like vanilla.

Blandness is a disease,
I can **** a thousand of them
with ease.

Ease is the son
of lazyness
and I've gotten careless.

You know What?

You're going to go

outside

and have a smoke

and think

you'll feel better about yourself
and the direction
your life's headed in
for once.

For once in your life
you'll be proud
of yourself.

And then that nicotine
hits you quick.

Get jumpy.

Get agitated.

And you realize this
whole love *******,
you realize this
whole career *******,
you realize this
whole happiness *******
is just

TOURETTE'S.

I love my mother
like the prodigal son,
she introduced me
to activism,
and where I'm at now
I can't release it,
even as we went
to the Lincoln Homes and Estates
to set up computers,
to give people that look like me
a chance.

I remember the older
dudes would tell me
to keep my head up
even when I was down.

There is a heart
in
"da hood"
as the white people
around me put it.

There are fathers
pushing strollers.

There are mothers
making it
against all odds.

There are families
decreasing,
but
increasing.

There are computers
full with words
and poetry
and novellas.

There are black children
picking up books
more than guns.

Picking up basketballs
more than guns,
and why should they be
labeled
as less intelligent?

****,
they just want to get
out
and achieve
and it's wrong
that you say that's the wrong way.

I hate going to funerals
for faces
with cheekbones still heavy
with baby fat.

And don't love me
for telling you this,
don't love me
for being that "black guy
that talks about problems
in the ghetto,
da hood!"

Change it,
go there,
help people,
hand out books
to children.

There is nothing scarier
than ignorance.

As we ****
our souls
touch the bottoms
of the river
where pirannahs lie
in wait.

New things,
New emotions,
New places,
New,
New, new.

So old to you.

All I'd wanted to do,
You'd already done.

No magic in flipping through
the pages of last year's edition.

I just hadn't read it yet,
No spoilers babe,
Please,
don't ruin it.

But you did ruin it,
somehow,
The way that lovers always do.

Without words,
But even more brutal.

You laid beside me,
As our bodies burned in the tumult.

You stared at me glumly,
As I hooted and hollered,
Energized and convulsant at the pleasures
Of the newness of each moment.

Not knowing that I was being seen through.

A placeholder.

A parenthesis.

An interesting afterthought.

That I was the means to an end.

The work-around.

That you were thinking of him.

And the countless pages ya'll had written.

But, I eventually got wise.

I saw the blank awe
For augurs:

The listless staring,
Limp kisses,
Lonesome nights
Too easily won fights.

It was written.
Written like this poem
And
Meant to be erased.

I want you to always think of me
When you think about what you've done.

And I hope it makes you smile.

I've still got the dog, *****.

Droplets
of rain
on the leaves
make synthesizers
of the earth.

Echoes
begin in the brilliance
of
destruction.

Walking through the morning
in the decreptitude
of missed dreams.

I have been drunker
than any of you;
but you have all hated
yourself
enough
to
think
of
ending it all.

The drunkenesss
of suicide
is enough to understand
my pain.

In the night
you have contemplated
a thousand ways.

Even when I think
of you,
I think of you.

Can i tell u
Can i tell u
That the loneliest
I feel
Is whn im deepest
In my own mind
Tht the loneliest
I feel
Is so deep
That id rather reach in
Thn reach out
Rather feel u
Than me
Rather be ecstatic looking
:) :) :) :)
:)
:)
Than say whats going on
Deep inside of me
Wish i had u hear with me
Wish u could be the eventually
To eventually see
Whats ******* with me
Wht makes me wnt to push away freends
Of yrs
In sake of solitude?
Rather than love
I seek inner sanctum.
****** up
Push away friwnds of yrs.
Im so gone now
Wondering
How
Long
Now

We dine off of  hearts
goaded from the sea.

Hearts drawn to dead promise
and
cold hooks.

The gills
taste metallic
and the flesh is sweet
with mercury.

The haul is yanked overboard,
and the tuna fly
like angels of vengeance
to our dinner tables
where wine
condenses the poisoned bodies
into forkfulls
of pleasure.

The meat is sweeter
than anything we have ever tasted,
we hope that it puts us to sleep.

Not wanting to ****
or cherish
the bones of each other's bodies
has led us to gorge
on these fish,
these harbingers
of comas
that we are too awake
to realize
are the dreams of the stars
filtered through the
diamond-studded
rollers of the Pacific.

The blue and cold Pacific
it pumps out
the fuel for restaurants.

Restaurants
where we gnash our teeth silently
against oily meat.

Restaurants
where I have a drink
and you have a drink
and we have our fill
on vicarious oceans
that decay in the parties
of our bellies.

Tonight we will sleep
because we are drunk
with poisoned meat.

Robbed meat.

Catastrophic
is the grinder of your mouth.

A goaded heart
is an atomic bomb
and we have our fills on them.

Until we no longer want to ****.

The mercury
courses.

The waiter
dashes back and forth.

The cook
slices and dices.

The fishers haul in a line
ten-ton lines of bycatch.

All for a single forkful
of the most sugary
thing
two people can share
when their bodies
are useless
and wheezing for the oxygen
of a purified love.

The impure line
of your 1950s body
is all curves and no nonsense.

No holding back those valleys of flesh
the pools of sweat lambent in your thighs
with the reflections of a thousand firefly's eyes.
No pain in that extra
on your pelvis.

A few pounds more,
is a few roses less, less bulllshit.

Sometimes your lips become chapped,
caked by the dryness of conversation
and the impropriety of self-consciousness
and I like to kiss them,
because mine are chapped,
and i'm so self-conscious,
so worried about that other couple
in the corner.

When we are in the dark room
of each other's arms,
and I could kiss you but don't,
or when I could grab your ***
but won't,
I keep my arms around your waist
and pull you tight, warm, and close,
just to taste the sourness of
stale deodorant,
washed away perfume,
and your old milk breath,
because you're gaining some weight
and I want to savor this heat
for licking away those lambent pools of sweat
on your tiny back,
grand piano waist,
and the crack of your ***.

Ecstasy. Ecstasy. I'm losing it
just thinking about Cosmo burning.

So much sadness
resides
in my palms.

I rest my head there
in a pose of thought.

I position the gun of my mind
against the bomb
of my heart.

don't drink
like you don't mean it,
drink like you want it,
like you want no more
sorrow
and a ****** is in dire need,
put your lips
all the way to the cusp
of bitterness
to the very vector
of unhappiness,
let your tongue
loll in
the shadows
of your mouth,
let it droop and kick back
against the acid wash,
but don't hold it too long,
sorrow is a monster that likes
to creep in
at high tide,
when everything is under covers
and restless.

Kick that **** to the back of your throat,
kick it to the bottom of your heart,
the top of your soul,
the end of your salvation,
the tipping point of your love
and the blasphemy
of your hate.

Don't call out to her now,
she isn't listening
and you're not even close
to being finished.

Maybe
it's *******.

maybe
I'm
confused.

Maybe moving onward
and upward to the next one,
is just a way
for me
to hurt
gracefully.

To feel nothing
as I have felt
so many times before.

Because I've had girls before
that went back to old boyfriends,
and it's easier for me to say
WELL, **** IT THEN,
and **** HER TOO,
SHE NEVER CARED.

Instead of uttering,
I care too much
over too much coffee
and too much Evan Williams.

Stay away girl of the Eagles,
find a new one,
a one
that will
love you
as beautifully
as I did,
but didn't say.

I was afraid
you'd run
away
if I told you
I think
about you
constantly,
because I'd wake up
at
four
in the morning
and still tipsy
mourning
over
if
I can
be of service
to your heart.

I thought you'd leave
and I'd be stuck here
with a licquor heart.

I'd be stuck here
as I am.

The horn moans
inconsequently
like a train
baring
down
on a car with no wheels.

A bass
can rumble
across my heart
like thunder
rolling across the sky
in circling f-16s.

The trademark of war
is loss.

The trademark
of peace
is complacency.

I would rather
drop bombs
on your heart,
than rest in the obesity
of redemption
and graves.

So when the jazz
begins
in the jazz club,
I feel nothing
but war,
no peace,
no knowledge,
just a war of teeth-*******,
mind-*******
drenching
limb-*******
hope
that
I
will
see
you
again,
when I know that no peace treaty
has ever been signed
without a loss
on
all
sides.

What peace is there
for a love-sickened heart?

What dreams reside
in the memories
of kisses?

Once he's out on the open road again,
the glittering lights
devastate him.

Reminds him, too much,
of the woman who's left behind
nursing a half-glass of wine
on the porch,
eyes glossy and red,
mascara the gauntlet runner.

She's finally saying goodbye
to his sorry behind.

She hates him. Cut and clean.
"Get your ****, you need to leave."

"If you stay here, I'm calling the cops."

She whips out the phone, taps in the number
shoves it in his face.

She plays no games,
no ***** given today.

A baby bump, bumped its ugly head
into him.

Sleeping some nights, on the soft shell,
he could hear it too.

A murmur here, a murmur there,
a murmur everywhere.

She dreams of the days on the beaches,
the crystals on the clear blue,
the screeching silks careening through the sky,
the canary diamond cradled by the waves.

The good ole days
before disgust
ruined her heart against him.

The gorged days of Fall,
burning, passionate nights of Winter,
glorious victories of Spring.

One night, he flipped out,
left the house heaving
and didn't come back
for awhile.

But the nail driven
couldn't be un-driven.

Before he turned the ignition--
for thirty minutes--
he picked a blister on his thumb
until it bled.

I miss you
girl
with the hair that smells
like sweet beer
and
breath
like iron.

I am anemic
and brutal
without you.

We have seen
and called for misunderstanding,
But I have seen our future children,
mulatto genearation,
Ticked off,
I am at our confusion,
Foggy like the farts of war,
The bullets continue to fly
even in silence,
From my brother's gun,
*** can you call youreself,
When you hold tight to the chains,
We must let loose,
We must see the sun and its morning fog
As the dew of renewal,
Because I have seen you witb oure
Mulatto children, and you looked at me,
I was a father.