circus peanuts; barely a candy
soft and full of sweet
orange and fake
like a boy who i once knew

chinese peanuts; so much flavor
soy and longan berry
brown and natural
like a life i used to own

peanut - former endearment
now a rat like dog
boy and life i don't want anymore

a phone call from a parked
toyota in hyde park
rings my desk in guadalajara
i have just settled an argument
about mopeds and fat girls
you're drunk, crying, hyperventilating and
i am booking a flight to chicago as soon as
i hear  your tenor

you begged me to come
charged me with childlike charm
that i was guilty of loving our sister
more than you, an outsider

never one to be alone, you
brought me home,
showed me Chicago

that hole in you filled now
you wish i was far away
so you could call in
every unsunny now and then

there are no words, we've said them all...so the silence comes to force us to feel the blows of sound...this empty what could have been...we would have been okay before you became a first...but you and i were never meant to go anywhere...it was just to see, just so you could say you knew

as if you ever needed to...you and i have always known that this wave would find a shore...the undertow of our wordshed, the roughage of all your rejections tumbled me across the floor of that ocean of false pretenses...

and only because i still haven't figured out just how full of **** you are, you deserve whatever happiness it is you've found...and i am becoming that prowling shark you still aren't scared enough of to stop taunting...forcing me into this canal, too narrow to turn and too little salt for the tears i warrant...until i toss you back into the foam to ****** the deep...

you are a terrible glutton...burning through all your friends and leaving a wake of discontent and writhing desperation like you're some kind of ******* rock star...

but i know what a frightened lost narcissist you are...and i always will...

you wrote all those songs
each lyric a shorthand
heartful message
that never left our lips
neither heard nor said

i wrote half those songs
it was so convoluted
each poem a missive
never imagined
i would be asked to explain

your heart breaks every time
it weakens my resolve
i am the last person you
thought they would ask to help you

was i in love or just alone? i'd been waiting all my life just to worry about now - could it just wait, can it all go away?  i'd been stopping to pick up every bird that broke it's wings and quickly find i couldn't mend them and they would be so angry with me that i couldn't just leave them there to die and when i would finally discover the road again i would cover my tracks with snow as i went so that it might be as if i had never existed at all, that i had lived like a shadow passing through and no one would ever remember my name.  

one day a black bird paused on my window sill, begging me to redefine love, i built my castle and put daisies on the breakfast table and that black bird sang to me and i knew the delight of sleep in a bed i was in so often that it was almost mine.  as soon as we claimed it for our own, he broke his own wings beating them against me and the walls.

I came in looking for an angel who could heal my broken wings so that i could get so far away it wouldn't be possible for me to ever be the same
i knew it was a sin to cage that black bird.

there are few angels that sing

the last time i saw you
you rested my head on your shoulder
stomach churning like sea foam
our kissing touch in this
homesickness for wrestling in your eyes
missing a heaven i'm not sure we had
trying to get somewhere in the density
in the dark of that embrace
but you are never going there
you wouldn't touch me
and i knew to leave as quickly as i could
i'll become a gone face
fallen, like embers,
voyaging away
like the waning pitch
of a siren
in the nighttime

somewhat soft like silky clouds
that crowd the moon august evenings
musical like the tinsel laughter
of summertime trees
some scared and simply lost
in these days where touch
is so furtive like fingertips
tapping at the soft of my waist
and i am wondering,
who's eyes will hold me up tonight