The dead often come to visit me.
My favorite corpse a delightful copy of
Something it used to be.
He comes to my door and I embrace him
He smells like aged formaldehyde under a coat
Of strawberries and mints
His front teeth are still spaced evenly
Sed for one
Hanging like a faulty Christmas tree light
Right over his holiday red bottom lip
If I could still kiss them I would tell him
As sweetly as I ever did, “your lips are as soft as whale blubber.”
The way they used to move around and in between mine
Makes me think your mouth could have danced on Broadway
And the crowd could have thrown up at its beloved star roses
Only the petals would rub your lips too rough
I would tell him, “baby I miss you.” And
“I’m sorry I never returned your favorite book.”
But in all fairness I think you have never returned anything of mine
Not my favorite blouse, my grandmother’s portrait
Not my heart. Not yet
For it is little and porous and too dead to give to
Someone one who is still alive
I bet you keep it there in your back pocket
Riddled with granola crumbs and sticky excrements of gum
And maybe every other haunting you take it out
Before sitting on it and you dust it off
And kiss it.
There is something sad about that.
Having your lips touch things I can’t feel
You might as well have ****** on my liver
I wouldn’t feel that either.
Come to me when you cannot rest in peace
With pen and paper and too much coffee
And in between cigarette puffs kiss the outside
Parts of me I can feel.

Dearest our love poem goes like this
Come to me again late at night
In between purple hues skies and patchwork blankets
Come to me when my parents are fast asleep
And they won’t be able to hear the one-two of your feet
Walk up the carpet marked stairs
And higher up still my bunk-bed ladder
And even if you miss the second step
Don’t worry if the thud of your body hitting the floor
Wakes them up.
**** it.
After you scrabble up into my bed and
Later when they come in we’ll tell them the truth
You were only trying to whisper me
Your secrets
And I was born with ears in my mouth
And let them find out
That some people were born like that
With body parts hidden in odd places
And senses that overlap organs
Making it hard to understand why I have
To taste your words
And see your heart
Because I was also born with eyes far apart
From my face and somewhere close to my chest
And it just so happens to be I found someone like you
Who was like me too
That was born with their ribcage unattached
So when we hug I see your blood
Flowing in and out of your beating heart
I could touch it with my eyes they are so close
But I won’t.
See I was born with my feeling on the arms of my blouses
And when you take off my shirt
I brush against the bend of your knees and fall to
Tickle the tops of your toes
Where your mouth supposedly isn’t supposed to be.

all the envelopes in all the worlds
will never be enough to carry my love letters
letters with headers that would be better read
dear  lover number 1,2, or 3
but the dears are really never suffixed by numbers
because the names that correspond to them
mean more than all of their sum
and fill up too many pages than I can count to
and some pages the number I can’t read at all
because I bare down too hard with my pen
and the ink seeps down onto the next letter I have to write
making page 76 look like page 48
and the periods at the end of sentences
look like misplaced and blurry hearts
it doesn’t help that I write in red
and that I only love a certain shade
it doesn’t help that I am broke
and I can’t afford ink
but rubber band are always on sale
and I can wrap them tight around my throbbing veins
to pump out the most velvet red hue
at the lowest price
but when my blood starts to bottom out I stop writing
and I start kissing the next boy who makes
my heart beat out more and more words
to write with.
Another number to start off a letter with.
Dear number 5, I’m sorry about your head but you shouldn’t
Have under judged my right hook
Dear number 7, don’t worry my body’s finally absorbed those bruises
Dear number 1, I wish you could have seen me naked I wish
It was still possible for you to see me naked.
To cut off all my rubber bands
And to burn all my stationary
Because you need to be greedy
And you need to use all the envelopes in all of the worlds
To write letters for me.

My muse for writing is hatred
I hate this and I hate that
I hate you.
My right hand seems perpetually pressed
Against paper
And the pressure from my left
Comes from a clenched fist
My fingers wrapped around
Some crumpled scribble of a thought
Most times my body feels like the vertical pole
Balancing opposing weight systems
Constantly pushing for power only to lose it
Again every single time.
And I hate that I rhyme
Because I am too off set to stand straight
On my own two feet
I am meek and I must teeter between
Who I am and what I write
When what I am in a ball of hate
Writing about how I wish it was love
And how nice cool metal would feel on my left hand
Compared to the hot blood
That seeps under my finger nails
From constantly clenching back cascades
Of callous conscious thoughts of hate.
That I hate I wished was love.

The other night I was walking down the street
In a sweatshirt and blue jeans
And to the left of the street I heard
“Hey baby, get in the car with me”
And I knew this couldn’t be a nice gesture
And I should be afraid
I should rely on the pepper spray in my purse
Over the compassion in a man’s heart
Because after all I’m just an itty pretty bitty
In this big ol’ city
And I need help
I need a white knight to protect me from dragons
That used to be men but forgot the meaning of the word no
And twisted it so
It meant try harder
Look at how short her skirt is
And I thought since when did the length
Of my skirt become the measure
Of a man’s self-control
When did the visibility of my thighs
Warrant unwanted invites
I don’t remember sending out mini-skirts
To request people come to my birthday party
The length of my dress does not mean yes
And the cut of my shirt is not a man’s control test
And when I say no that isn’t just a request
Why do I have to be afraid to be a woman?
Why can’t men be taught not to ****
So I won’t have to be taught ways to avoid it
Don’t walk alone
Don’t talk to strangers
Don’t walk at night
Don’t leave home without pepper spray
Don’t walk in that neighborhood
Why can’t being a woman mean don’t
Be afraid you never have to wish
You were born with padlocks instead of knees.

Loving me is hell and hell is dense
And hell is heavy
And hell is hot
Dense with the influx of passing souls
That nudge elbows of their brother sinners
In tight elevators that hum not
Piano music but drums so loud
They convert heart beats to 808 rhythms
They shake the victims of vices so
Hard the change falls from their pockets
And bounces back up into their eyes
Hell is heavy
It is heavy with the weight of lies
And of the truths of passions sought and met
With only finger tips and white lips
The vicious bosses of mobs
And the cemented feet of snitches caught
Hell is dense
It is packed tighter than fingers in fists
Clenched fixed on righting wrongs
The air there is hot with breathes
Held in and finally released with
The unbuttoning of sliming corporate tuxes
Fastened inside out so the brass buttons brand and burn
The business boys’ bantam bodies
While they look up at the men the tired to measure up to
But where always a stich or two short
Hell is hot
Hot and steaming with the blood of the corrupt
That was spilt and then encountered a tilt
Down a funnel mixed with rotten oil
Left stagnant by sinners that sought not
To move a finger to clean up that gunk
The steam from sinners water not sweat
Boil sweet and steamy up into the
Mouths of men with jaws wired open
And rested on their bellies that are propped up
By guns taking all that is sweet for themselves
This is hell
This, like me,
Feels tastes sounds and smells
Of dense hot and heavy
Sins deadly appealing
And dammingly just.

Loving me is hell
The brim ****** coal melting the
The rubber base of my shoes
Leaving my soles bare
And red and raw
Pulsating with heat pumping
Blood into my skin in attempts to
Make it live again
But my body is faulty
And it does not know the flakes around my toes
Are already gone
And any aid to save them is as useless
As rubber trying to fight fire
Loving me is hell
Because when I burn my feet I cannot stand any longer
And I will need you to carry my rotisserie rotten
Soles to where ever it is you wish me to go
And at first your arms are strong to hold my weight
But like everything else
Like the iron on statues like
The wood that built a house
They will weaken
And I will only be a burden of a beast
Whose soles not unlike my own heart
Makes you wonder if they are still completely in tacked
And you will consider throwing my body back
Into that fiery hell
Because loving me is just that.