Contaminated.
Surely more Macbeth than Banquo.
Level two: Lust.

****, ****, ****, knock and bang
at the door, for more.
Of what?
What of skin?
What about blood-shot eyes, coated tongue, sore back, bad-breath,
harsh light, pants too tight,
legs itch.
Fidget, twitch;
unnatural movements.

Unlike waking up,
joking, smoking on the porch.
Fancy coffee, cinnamon cakes.
Nothing black or heavy on my face.
Purity, hung-over purity.  
----------------------------------------------------
Roamin­g the streets, alone.
Constantly, consistently, alone.
Dancing to my own accordion tune.

"Oh, I thought you had some kind of throat disease"
Remarks directed toward the inch wide puddle,
of brown, runny spits next to my boot.
No, no, not exactly.  

Sand-pit puts them out quite nicely.
Don't have to rub the leaves out of the ****,
because that's an "ordeal."
Auburn hair, almost quite naturally, has influenced me a great deal.
The meals eaten, and passed through, disgust me.
She reminds me that I am human.

"Acid reflex?" Another gal, knowledgeably inquires.  
"My sister has it."
Your sister, well her and I could be great friends, then.
Deficiencies ****** me.  

Coffee spits, at 11:30 a.m., by the white-washed concrete fortress;
my new back porch.

Is it rude to lean my boots, that which touches the ground, without any kind of discretion or watchfulness, up against the toilet seat and tie them up neat, into little bows?
I'll never know, I suppose, whose bottom will sit, and ****, where I thought it appropriate to mend my un-laced foot.

Is it non-sensical and insensible to stare off into space, breath heavily, and pause in mid edit, while a handsome chap, inside and out, walks past with a stranger? "Call out his name," No, heavens no, do not call out his name.

Are our engagements forever fleeting? Am I to arrange the next meeting? "It's the 21st century," he retorts one day, "I gave you the wrong idea," the next.  Wrong idea? Just because we woke up and smoked a **** together and discussed the pros and cons of city life versus country life doesn't mean you gave me any ideas, I just thought you liked me.  

Wrong idea? Idea, the conception, misconception, that your touching my naked body, meant that from there on out, we were going steady, and I was to call.  

The 21st century, is all that it is cracked up to be.
And I am cracking up, outwardly, while I muse.
Inwardly, I am cracking.  
Needless to say, Athens county should most surely stop fracking.

Turning all of the lights off and pretending like there's nothing due.
Conditionals, conjuncts, and disjuncts to name a few.

The condition is that my naked body has been revealed to you,
uncomfortably in the light
and confidently in the dark.  

The conjunct is musky, old-timey undertones
of Sam Beam's voice.
Dr. Pepper, eventually, convinced me to be reckless
and rot my teeth, and give myself a stomach ache
for the sake of making out upstairs,
in a chair,
next to home-ade sound absorbers, made of fiber glass.  

The disjunct:
deciding between two and a half hours of utter hell,
driving a broken down dust buster van in the middle of
hell's ******* half acre, chugging up frosty hills and into a town,
a foreign town,
to be greeted with, "Hel-low,"
Versus, not having to do that.

The biconditional is that I will be with you if and only if I can be with myself first.

Counting young women in black leggings
and baseball caps, with ancient letters inscribed on the tops of them.
One-thousand, three-hundred, thirty-five dollars
and fifty-four cents,
for half a year
of friendship.

The damp sidewalk is the stage,
the crushed orange leaves a platform.
Rubber rain boots have only existed for three or four decades.
Holes in an umbrella, holes in mother's boots;
Whatever that man said last night,
whatever that was,
it wasn't an oxymoron.

Leafing leaves, neon green with orangish tips
shake subtly with a light breeze,
and madly with a heavy breeze.
Or is that a squirrel?
Foreground, background, juxsta-
positions;
And I,
just in the right position.

Honey sweet passions mixed with a dab
of citrus and spice and yellow, fragrant sweat.
Crinkled up foreheads, ugly and unforgiving
presented with a chortle of self-regret.
Possibly, possibly--
We can be friends.
Reticent, regal, wondering young women
bat eyelashes at a tree.
Forward, flexible, fickle females
can't stand to bat anything away.
The line, the analogous line is so faded--
it is unrecognizable.

Who lives in that house?
That house which so determines
Our do's and our don'ts--
Our will's and our won'ts.
Why, it is divine Majority.
We thank you, Emily.

Four stories higher than at least thirty-seven people below.
Walking, one foot in front of the other,
Eyes, aimed straight ahead for duty's sake;
For the sake
Of avoiding
eye contact.

Infant crow's feet well up upon hearing biblical friendships:
Best friendships.
Hood covers eyes; hood covers everything
except heavy breathing and fast-pace swaggering.
The thought
Of you
suffering,
is dagger-ing.

To be brown, and free, and un-connected!
To be without bias, to be without mate.
To comfort and to sidle up next to
in the most innocent kind of way.
To approach, and to be responded to.
To be noticed, all of the time.
To be hidden, most of the time.

I am deeply, deeply sorry.
The mountains humble,
the news crushes me.
Watching discordant relationships on the street,
the extent of self-help.