I Always Forget Something

I tried to hurry along as always.

Purchasing things to clog my arteries and booze to simply maintain.

As I tried to ignore the nervous energy that made me want to scream out to some random stranger: 

“If you get in my way again, I will literally pound your head into the slab floor and keep on moving as if nothing happened!”

As some poor underpaid kid just thought to himself that he should get a raise for having to mop up this not-so-gray matter and remnants of my victim’s skull.

As I try my best to maintain the facade, I am a quasi-normal fully functional member of this mad society.

While I endure the ride home, listening to my friend babble about all the shit I could truly give a fuck about.

As my arm goes numb as my body yearns for its poison and I simply nod my head and try not to stroke out from having to endure the heat and pretend every breath is not a struggle.

As I arrive home to cram everything into a mini-fridge and pour a drink as I cuss myself for forgetting the razor blades for which I had planned on slitting my wrists that very evening.

I was angered, deeply out of air and beyond words in my lack of focus and frustration.

As that night a friend asked:

“Dude, what’s been going on with you lately?

You know you can talk to me, right?”

As I laughed within while saying nothing in return.

The truth does anything but set you free.

For I understood in this life you tell everyone whatever it takes to shut them the fuck up and in turn make them pay you no mind.

We as humans should have the freedoms to do as we please as long as our choices are not a danger to anyone around us.

But in truth, freedom comes with guidelines and way too many fine print agreements.

So I poured another drink to vanish externally to everyone around me.

And called my newly acquired friend to reschedule a return trip to town and remembered I should probably pick up a pen and some paper as well.

I wouldn’t want to depart from life’s station without leaving a note of explanation behind.

I may be selfish but I was far from rude.

Don’t worry, this isn’t a warning.

It’s a promise in the making.

I owe you nothing, let alone an explanation.

So fuck off!

The light’s out for a reason.

You ask if I remember

Those nights
almost a drunken blur
of bodies touching
bodies and of feeling
as if you being an inch away
was my heart
reached in and pulled 
from my chest

My bed
your car
any stolen moment
secret kiss

I remember narrow stairs 
and lavender
your beard against my curves
your lips against my neck

I remember it scared me
to love 
to care 
that much
for something
I could lose

So at the moment
I should have 
pulled 
instead
I pushed

A Misconstrued Kindness

the big red muscle is on sabbatical
it took another dig at an empty human
a tainted canvas with damaging emerald eyes 
pulling the trigger has always been easy 
aiming is the problem and there’s only 
so many times that i can blow my brains out 
before i actually blow my brains out
but i’m not there yet so instead 
i’ll splatter my brain on to the page
and write about how cruel you were 
and title it after something stupid you said like 
a misconstrued kindness 
i guess i don’t know anything anymore 
maybe i really have lost my mind 
i’ve grown too old and 
the heart isn’t what it used to be 
the orchestra has been replaced by a dj
and now there is nothing left but rot and bones
a bad copy of the original barely crippling by
just trying to forget
and trying to remember how to do it all over again 
because the truth is little is known 
why a small thought of you
amounts to a drastic night filled 
with bad poetry 

pissing blood

heard a bryan adams song 
on the radio the other day
and i know none of 
my fucking summers 
growing up were ever 
like that

yet another night of pissing 
blood and seeing if it is 
possible to replace it all 
with jack daniels

you notice a neon soul 
from across the room

she wants to shotgun a beer
and show you all the latest 
trends in pubic hair

you can spot a broken soul 
a mile away

and the first thing that comes 
to your mind is drop to a knee 
and produce a ring

and here come the nights 
of loneliness

troubled dreams

funneled by the ecstasy of
whatever that woman in the 
coffee shop was talking about

rinse and repeat

don’t worry, none of this 
is real

just a broken dream
caught in the seams

of a tortured soul

It’s Too Cold

I wake up in the middle of the night because I have to piss
but the room, it’s too cold,
so I just lie here in the dark
and I think about it.

I really have to piss
but I’m stuck under the blankets,
my nose sticking out like a thermostat.
I should get up, just do it fast,
without thinking about it

and 
I should learn how to change a flat tire.
I should clean the house, fix the toilet
and apologize to people.
I should undo my ponytail and fuck something up.
I should break some windows,
scream bloody murder,
take a writing class,
compose cranky letters to editors
and learn how to play the guitar

but it’s too cold.

I think that to myself – 
It’s Too Cold.

It’s always too hot or too cold
or I’m too tired
and who am I kidding? –

I can’t even get up to piss without pondering it:
waffling, as dolorous as Hamlet,
still undecided after an eternity;
my hands two pretend cubes of ice,
the floor between the bed and the toilet a vast tundra,
cartoon wind blowing loud and frosty
from the open bathroom door
and into that dimly lit cavern between my ears.

Too Long

It has been too long since you were inside me.

Images flicker in my brain: sweat on skin
Licking, pinching, biting
legs askew,
moans pressing against the ceiling,
my liquid backbone pooling on clean sheets.

I breathe,
pulling air deep inside
pushing against the constraints of my clothing

wishing it was you that was here to push against.
Tendrils of you curl away like the smoke of a dying blaze
I grasp at nothing.

Busy fingers in the dark.
Wanting thrums a steady beat in my head

as I try to touch the places that are yours

With a sigh
I cover myself with black lace and suck on sticky fingers,

On my belly now.
Sleep awaits.

Attrition

‘Coming off the fryer…careful! 
I’m a customized nightmare, 
loaded with all kinds of weird virtues 
that’ll make this prick recipient ‘s shrink wince, 
for fucking sure.  
Man, so this is what happens to damned souls- 
you’re not consigned to a circle or pit of Perdition, 
or nothing like that.  
That shit’s just to earn writers cash, or give pulpit gospel 
boobs their big break in the almighty salvation scam. 
No, you ain’t consignment; it’s assignment.  
You’re the cerebral bacon, my friend, lifted fully cooked,
like Minerva outta Jupe’s brainpan. 
You’re Ephialtes exalted.  
But it’s a one-time gig before oblivion; 
no appreciation from managers; 
no “Nightmare of the Month” recognition, 
or anything of the sort. 
One.  Time.  Gig.  
Repeating is defeating is the attitude.  
When I was alive, I believed with the best of them. 
Boy, I was a dumb fuck, too! 
You have to be stupid with credentials to chase those
mirages.  
Thankfully -yeah, I say thankfully- my wife’s fuckin’ 
My “best friend” woke me up.  
‘Course, I killed ’em:
shot ’em right there in that bed that I’d bought before our
wedding, along with the perfect house, the sedans… everything. 
AMERICA, baby! 
Then, I lit a cigarette, 
and held it so close to my eyes I thought I saw pitchforks. 
I couldn’t let the police take me in.  
Honestly, the thought of a trial that was just so much bullshit 
and Alka-Seltzer.  
The image of my defense sitting there going through files;
going through the motions, cause he knew I was fucked anyway.
So I finished my cig and plunged headlong down the muzzle of that 
Smith and Wesson.  
And ya know, I seem to recall that as that bullet was 
knocking down the walls in my head, I saw it all for what it was- 
it was never there, that “life” of mine.  
You see, you’re born, and then they blind you.
Everyone, from ya mother onwards.  
They explained it to me when I got here that it’s like the 
Somme offensive in that world:
between reflections and regrets.  
Dreams, and the stale wafer aftertaste when you die;
or, you fucking go crazy.  
The perfect liars laid to rest occupy the penthouses, while 
Honest losers like you and me hug fitfully in the trenches.  
Those who are living?
Well, living ‘s an act of attrition.  
Ha! 
They’re gonna send me up soon. 
For now I don’t want to do anything except
sit here and finish being sick. 
Hurry up and finish that cigarette, will ya? 
Here in Hell it’s so damn dark a cigarette ‘s 
might as well be an oil lamp.  
It’s my reflection in your eyes which sickens me. 
In the image of the Almighty, why are we so fucking greasy? 

Black Heart

Could remove the onyx tinted contacts 
and boys would be surprised to see the blue
irises hidden, like blonde roots you must dye 
every week to keep from public view.  
Carry a charcoal parasol when there 
is the slightest forecast of sunbeams 
on skin that goes golden everywhere 
within a half an hour, it always seems.
If it all happened at once, you’d look like 
some ordinary girl who bakes oatmeal 
raisin cookies with fair hair pin curled tight,
a cinnamon sweet heart that will make them feel
love in lieu of fright at the black heart you hide.
You need to look as dead as you are inside.

The Poet

there is no room for the poet to sit
he is in the standing room only section
even though there’s 3 people there for the reading

the poet looks at nothing in particular
and sees everything
he is the disease
and he orgasms the cure

the poet is at his strongest
right after reading the masters
he bows knighted into dust
and from the dust he shall rise

this poet thought it would take a lot more cigarettes
to finish this piece
he will smoke the rest later
when the decent line eludes him
and he daydreams of sex instead

the poet dies in the end
he can tell by his book sales
there is no place for him
other than to chase elusive beauty
like a stripper that talks to him
even though she knows he has no money

the poet will follow her to a beanbag chair
back at her place where there is no lighting
and cry on her nipples
and she will rub them in her pink
till they are castles dripping with holy oil
she wore her cross
and she liked it when he nailed her

the poet will go off topic
to devote a few lines to a stripper
and find his way back to the subject
when the loneliness of the blank page passes
and his wife stops snoring

see the poet is drowning
and all he wants to do is
pull you under with him
with a few metaphor meteors
simile smiles
and altercations of alliteration

has he placed a pleasing offering on the altar of beauty?
he can only wonder
and the poet is not talking about a facebook thumb up the ass
he is speaking of that dark cavern
where beauty fornicates with beauty
and a connection of light illuminates
the poet’s beard catches fire
when phantasms such as this occur

the poet has lost his athleticism
his tan
even his torso
all to make a stand
when everyone else was sitting
he is a gunslinger
a cat whisperer
a lover in black and white movies
you’ve seen him a million times
but it feels like you are just now getting acquainted

the poet has killed his muses
he’s captured them like lightning bugs
has kissed them goodbye
has written them long unanswered letters

the poet has no generation
he is of the family of God
he is not of this world

shhh it’s time to go
Jesus said “a prophet is never welcome in his hometown”
will you run with the poet to his car
with the old upholstery
dusty dashboard
and change in the ashtray brightly smiling
where he will lull you to sleep with the turns of the wheel?

the poet knows lullabies
and prayers before bed
will you follow him to the cloud of the next town
to give a reading to gnats and pestilence?

has he taken you this far
only to leave you on the side of the road
or the end of the poem?

no

the poet’s eyes
are your own lonesome eyes
reflected in a pool of words