his mother sleeps with her mouth open.  I have seen him tip an empty beer can above it.  when he has a crush on a girl, he takes me by the shirt and gets in my face as if he could spit me into being.  summer, we get our bird legs (he says, he says) to tiptoe on the tongue of god.  

he writes stories under any tree on its way to lightning.  the stories come from a lake surrounded by gravestones.  if bored with the reader, their text disappears.

You can tell if someone is rotting by looking in their eyes. I
get the look of smoke on cotton,
my mother's childhood house burning when
the doors became more difficult to shut than my legs:
her father died
her mother drowned
so she could pass the bottle to mine. The only ring I have
been given are the purple
bags and bruises and tapeworms
everyone says were alright in childhood,
the rings around my eyes tapering like the sound of
morse code. Read me
listen to me please because my body fluids are like ashes
that will go up in flames again if
ignored: I will burn you. Your black eyes will
get blacker, darkness is the only thing that can commit to me.

The best thing you can do to get me to forgive you
is take off your belt
and make me bleed, better than I can.

I have slit my wrists into mouths for air and
pockets to hide unhappiness in

because of words
like sorry
like I wish I did not have to do this
but everyone always has to, I know, and I need

for someone to carve the
flesh from my asscheeks the way my
parents wanted to
that time when I was six years old and dashed into
the road really hoping to get hit

for the first time. You
could hold the blood and guts for the first time and I
promise
when I am empty, an apology will feel full.

It's on them nights I drink alone. Find myself thinking of home. These beers bottle bones empty and shatter. Liquor lung sigh. Chest heavy like a white trash wind chime. Like a six pack of bud ice hanging from some fishing line. Hear them low notes bouncing of the lips in the wind. And maybe you worry, but ****, I'm fine to drive. And on those days when my gut isn't a gas tank for beer refilling at a pity party pit stop, I drive on love. Write love poems on phones before the ***** knocks me out. And sure, maybe my love makes as much sense as the words I slurr. And maybe my love is as unique as the crackheads needle in the haystack, but I'll still love you serious as a heart attack. Like a stroke... of genius... an epiphany about the realness of God. That maybe the story is flawed, but you're welcome to believe. And maybe I'm drunk right now, but I never meant to deceive. So kiss me with your break lights, while a pray to the slow light that I can live life like an old man feeding birds on a bench in the park. Got nothing else on his mind... just love... you maybe. And whatever you might think. I promise. I'm fine to drive

he likes forgetting
good things
bad things
because to him
it’s all bad
because it’s all
not good enough

he keeps himself away
like some secret
that could destroy
the world
and
you have to wonder
if he knows how silly
he sounds

he’s voiceless but
he loves to scream
enjoying the cacophony
because he doesn’t
believe he can make
music

he’ll show up dead probably
not in the ground, but somewhere
like a run-down apartment
or a happy family of four
and you’ll know because
he only frowns
between when the drink
hits his lips
and
when the drink
hits his mind
like sleeping gas

he’s not worried about it though
he says there’s nothing to be worried about
that you shouldn’t worry, that this is the way
that things are going to play out
no matter if he’s loved
if he’s hated
if he succeeds
or fails
if all his dreams come true
or all his nightmares

it’s time, he says,
to make peace with it
and if you would please
just leave him alone
to feel alive
without
guilt.

your *** is like ****
(i think) and the backs of your knees
are like
i think. very nice to be inside of

i would you,

do you think too?

your lips and perhaps?

i would like oh dear to fit
like rain fits in April;
very wet and strictly.

oh dear and to eat you tinly i would hurt myself
with the hardness of earth. i would climb
into your fist very stiffly a flower. andear,
i would lay a hand against your unmeeting(
i would enter the primness of your heap
A mountain of unsleep. ) andear

i think you,

(do you think tooo)?

The smell of iron at 9:19 am, disgusting
Unresolved, I
Would have given you the palm of my hands, there
Was a parade of objects in hibernation, and
The wire was made of plastic
I couldn’t
Walk, Tiburtina
Railway station blew up around me, the
Upside-down lilies hanging and dangling, you
Were sewn inside
My chest and pushed
Broken
You were breaking my ribs, shrieked, I
Was thinking about your hair
The embrace
The window
The cat
On the other windowsill
(As if he knew)
And you
Moving forward in the smell
Of the smoke, expanding
And she
Keeping on, she was filling up
All the cans
Was labelling and talking and talking
Pretending she had never
Existed, she
Had been
Transfigured
Hidden inside the white, she
I miss you, you kept saying, it
Couldn’t be done.
Don’t you understand?
It couldn’t be done.