finally you came back to me;
for good we thought.

we'd walk out in the dark, and sprawling streets in
the empty mornings
and smoke packs of our favorite kinds, we had thought.

and there was one glorious weekend when we wore
long skirts and smoked
rollies on
the white painted balcony.
we stole six bottles of wine from
an unlocked cellar,
fully clothed in our
indian dresses,
underneath were our lacy bras
and silky underwear.

we walked the path barefoot
to the Nest, and we tattooed the dead and dying branches
with the sharp art of our burn marks,
and under the bridge where we
jumped into the frigid creek,
and let the sun shine through our hair while
a blond boy played his guitar.

we stayed up late,
jumping on the soft pink carpet of my room,
making small earthquakes in the quiet town,
screaming the songs
that beat to our own heart.

we crawled onto the red shingled roof
and inhaled the
thorn filled
atmosphere of
November,
smoking newports and marlboros faster than
Olympic champions.

we were naked but for our limp hair, hanging at our sides and
shivering skin,
“smoke me like a cigarette”
we softly sang, with the light of my room
slowly slinking into the night.

we took a drunken shower afterwards,
a bottle of chardonnay
reflecting the red light overhead,
the water rolling off our bodies,
ash falling from our hair.

we woke up in the light of one another's
morning eyes,
with splitting heads and cracked grins,
we had more plans.

we laughed on the secret
flower hotel porch,
bringing out more of our wine bottles,
playing our music loudly,
unfiltered spirits
was slowly writing their tragedy on our
wilting lungs.

that night we stuffed our beds
and created sleeping bodies out of ***** clothing and
small pillows.
we ran into the fresh night,
trouble as a steel edge on our
summer filled laughter.

we danced to the music that filled our
murky brain,
stumbled into a smoke filled room and burned
our throats
*****.

we walked in the deserted hours
of four in the morning,
and stamped on the counters,
of some boys house,
voice hoarse from
singing Neutral Milk Hotel at the top of our
brimming lungs
and banging on guitars.

we broke ashtrays,
and hearts,
and we snuck back in
with orange-chai hookah fresh on our
dry lips,
when the sun was threatening to
rise.

we wandered around the sunken down
town
the next day,
unfilters again.

we smoked three packs in two days.
sixty cigarettes,
for the sixty days we've been apart.

my mother told me later that she could smell it on me
riding on my breath,
she could tell by our dry eyes
and bed made hair,
we were hungover.
we smelled like ashtrays,

Hydrocodone is no excuse for you to be
torn so violently apart from me,
everything is falling out of
place.

ma vie a vivre.*
scream it into the empty night
with your roaring voice
clawing at your throat
ma vie a vivre.
yell it loud into the
black abyss
with the silent sounds of white
noise as a backdrop;
crickets,
4 a.m. freeway trucks,
your feet pattering, slashing the pavement.
ma vie a vivre.
yell it when you're drunk
with lips that taste like
spirits
summer
and orange cream popsicles,
whisper it in the roiling
and plotting storms,
bags under eyes hanging heavy with rain.
ma vie a vivre.
say it softly with
moist lips,
into the ears of a
boy with
hands like the husks of coconuts.
ma vie a vivre.
say it in a hushed
strangled
voice
at a mothers twisted face,
in the air that echoes with a
rageful slap.
ma vie a vivre.

this is my life to live.

i'd search for a boy with
honey colored hair like tousled, dry
summer grass
and a face of
sculpted
clay,
where creases are made at the edges of his eyes,
the echo of his grin.

he whispers his poetry harshly
with lips like racing animals,
his strong voice sinks into the ocean of
night
like an empty bottle
in a leaky boat.

i'll find where his lips
softly kiss the body of a
cigarette before bed.

then i'll eat some tobacco
and light myself on fire in his
sheets.

please do not say "i love you"
to me, if you desire to be my lover

i wont be impressed,
and my heart wont flutter.
it's cliche, and overused, and the phrase honestly bores me.

you could lay your kisses on top of me
like dominoes,
and call me the rising sun that tinges the clouds
with peach and crimson.
you could say that i am the fear in your stomach
when you're about to jump off something high,
you could say i was dead roses in the cold of
Marches early snow.
but jesus christ.

please do not say "i love you"
to me, if you desire to be my lover*

cant you be more ******* creative than that?
can anyone be more ******* creative than that?

all i ever do
is crave cigarettes and crave you

love is eminent.

and if you look at this miniscule existence of yours, you will see that it is stuffed in the cracks of old and memory-ridden sidewalks,
which have had to bare the deepest of weights,
of peoples feet which have been into their lovers homes smiling,
and out of them shredding their skin with their nails.
it is carved into the ancient trees, barren of leaves,
and grown from your old sweethearts seeds,
the one with torn jeans, and an addiction to tea,
and who was too much of a spirit to chain down. you had to let him free.
and of the woman, who owned a small, unheard of bookstore,
with books that smelled like cinnamon, about byzantine subjects,
and she let people take one and leave one and tip as they please.

love is there in the unsure drip of the faucet,
disturbing the silence,
in the morning eyed sun,
when the day has just begun,
and you can feel a sticky tightness on your cheek, where the tears used to run,
and the burn in your mouth, is it from your lover
or your two bottles of ***?

it’s in the old pictures from years ago,
where you cant quite recapture the moment, but the vague feeling is still there.
the film is dark and smoky. just exactly like it is supposed to be,
and all of our faces hold this resonant feeling of whole.

and there’s love in the way you jump off something high, ready to fall, and fall, and fall,
and how you focus on the moment of the fall, and not the crash landing.
the moment of all surrender, underwater, floating, meaningless bliss.

there’s love in your daily cup of coffee, or two, or three,
and there’s a special art in the way you mix your sugar, and pour your crème.
theres love in how you smoke your cigarettes,
and how the smoke creates complex, fleeting shapes,
a new one every drag you take,
twirling, and running, and breathing into space, condensing itself,
in a matter of moments it sinks back again,
and makes your couch smell of ash and sin.

theres love in lots of things.
even still
in the way the hopeless strike the clock,
back to work, over the dock,
into their houses,
cut out of dough,
to presume their tasks, and label themselves,
thoughtless in a row.  
and mindless words,
the dinner table sets,
dry dinner time small talk.
they breed for the numbers,
not the pleasure of ***.

love is there in the cold ridden hearts,
of people who don’t believe in passion or art,
its in the escapees of our generation,
in old trucks, singing oldies, crying of separation,
in the numb of the brain-washed,
without their minds, wandering endlessly to and fro,
but they just have to struggle and dig deeper,
and into their own world of drunken, honest, chain-smoking, dancing love
                                                  They will go.

Dimples on her face,
Walking long miles without her,
Pebble in my shoe.