for the poets who wrote in latin

i smell like hot
twat&i like it
a lot, yes
it's delicious
breathing in
the scent of my sex
diffusing through the place
&when i clench into you,
and you
fill my senses
cupcake sweet and tangy,
woman
we reach through the room
with grasping fingers and a sense
of entitlement, yes

this is my body and blood
which has been honed on you
which has been lapped by[&from]
your lips&labia
[lesbia]

i think catullus&i think sappho
would have been proud

after all they burned her poems&we're
burning now
so
she knows what it's like to taste fire

to lick it from the curved lower lip
ah,
goosebumps twist my frame
&we roll face-to-face
how is it
i've come to be here,&you
how are you faring
in my precarious bed,
young one?
does the yaw&pitch astonish,
or terrify?

white trash news

it's only monday night,
eleven
&a game shop owner's duct-taped
two teenage
would-be thieves into the closet for the cops.
meanwhile, a house has exploded&
no one knows why.
just boom - ashes.
meth-watch watches the
non-profit anti-meth guys go broke,
or maybe
it was a bust, or maybe they busted
the organization, it wasn't clear which -
i really don't care cuz next
it's on to cockfighting!
then later, UFO's in texas,
as small kids
run deranged in tin-foil beanies, like
demented hershey's kisses
i want to hide in my room already,
but wait!
we've still got
octuplets and shortages
on oxycontin, DEA's fuckin
with the street dealer so now
everyone else is paying instead
food poisoning the people, yes
so now just lay off a few thousand more
and goodnight, amerika
watch it spiral
down the drain
and go
we're all going somewhere,
especially
down

obsession

it really was an accident, this time,
though
that hardly keeps me from fixating on
the oh-so-minuscule cuts
on my wrist

i dropped my knife while slicing through
plastic packaging and the serrated teeth
tore tiny holes
which transport me back years,
years ago maybe
six-or-seventeen, with my watch
belted tightly to that wrist, hiding
the flow

i've got tattoos now, over most of those scars
but you can still feel them, and now
a hard knot
of scar tissue's raised, again
visibly
slight infection resurrecting
the feel of tender tissue
over bone
with those small scratches
i can't stop staring at
flaming triumphantly
next to my tattoo

carpe noctem

and i do

foggy and 32 degrees

waiting for an apple breakfast
outside the corner store
fifteen minutes before its opening,
hopping foot to foot
hoping
kinetics will involve
heat of some sort
while steam seeps from my mouth
and my wet hair slowly gets
cold enough to freeze
and even when on the bus,
my hands are too cold to touch

just like my feet in their protective layer
of boots as the rest of me
will slowly freeze, the more silent you become
at the other end of the line.
being busy only goes so far as a valid excuse.
meanwhile i am planning
to become as busy as you are, so when
i don't believe you, it's because
i have done what you are doing,
only while working, also

standing outside a co-op waiting
for the doors to open so i can manage a breakfast
from the bruised fruit bin,
yeah
there is more to life than poetry,
or homework, or
using the above as any
sort of excuse.

so when i'm worrying
because i'm not bleeding when i should,
and i don't know what to say
about that,
or if it should be
any business of yours,
other than your involvement
in the potential making

so i'm running a test
and
with the results
i will decide if i should let you see,
and decide
what the fuck we are supposed to do
with this mess,
whatever we are
calling ourselves
lately

overcompensation

it's a strong point of mine
i'm waiting for my phone to ring
but it's you,
so
that means the phone will be in my bed
with the ringer off, and my door
shut.
and where i'll be
is the living room, blasting
music loudly -
which means i will finally
call you back around an hour
after you finally managed to dial -

otherwise it would be my hand
fidgeting the phone open&shut,
staring
as if my action could somehow alter
the timeline of your making.
i've learned what enough is, now.

enough is pretending
that you won't call, which
is a pretty safe bet

so if you ever do
come through
i can imagine it
as a pleasant surprise.

at this point

i don't even know if i want you
anymore,
rationally
when drugged the right amount,
and cynical enough i'll admit it
i don't know how i'll fare
with someone so blindsided
by life.

rationally, i mean, there's nothing
i'm really leaving
so it's a pity i've told rationality
to fuck itself, there
is nothing rational
in what lives between us

what with all the ways we've tried
to make it die and
failed, it's fine

although we look haggard
with our shell-shocked mouths,
which still dribble rubble
that means less and less
the more we say it
no matter how many times
it's repeated,
the constancy of assertion
will not bring
any more truth
to your tongue

so let's move on.
we've bombed the place and yet
we linger still.
among the hills are pristine places
and plenty of new spaces

in which, if you really prefer
the chaos,
we could recommence
the countdown

hump-day

the bad sign comes
when you stand to leave
and your center of gravity shifts
the bus ride to work's spent
head lolling from your neck against
the back of the seat
because you're too dizzy
to open your eyes
and you realize
how drunk you were the night before,
because it's approximately
how drunk you are still,
so walking straight
is a dicey proposition.
you'll spend the day looking ill
behind your desk, when
you aren't beating a path to the bathroom
to be briefly, professionally ill
hoping no one will walk in halfway
through, and find you crumpled
on the tiles, cheek pressed
to the wall, hoping to absorb
the stillness

maybe saturday

yeah, of course it's full of maybes, like
maybe you will kiss me
when i walk in the door, this time
or maybe i just won't show up
at all
or maybe i will drag
out of bed early on an unlikely weekend morning
after failing to sleep
and wear a path into my floorboards
until the coffeeshop is finally open,

maybe i will leave before you ask me
to stay, or
maybe you won't ask at all, out of fear
that i might

maybe if you lay out all
of your options you'll be
able to figure out how to focus
instead of wondering blindly because
you don't know
what else to do,

maybe
if you weren't so fucking caught up
with what-ifs and you could enjoy our time,
maybe yeah maybe
i'll just
get caught up in this questioning, too
and maybe when you are finally finished
with your dissection of all we do,
maybe there will be
enough of us left
to create something
from our ashes

a little constructive hero worship

we [whee!] sing
i fancy/frisk/frolic/fuck
with words too so you’ll have to
look [LOOK] look!
closer i’m
trying to tell you something

[tell you when my mind is wholly occupied with
beating a path into the pavement
and not breaking my stride, breaking
beating my brain over things
i cannot change i am
slithering down the streets]
tell you
about running rapidly shifting me
non-sequitously when i’m straddling
two worlds where i
don’t want to be

[i mean fence-tops are for alleycats and
the weak ones,
my dear and we
are not part of their number] i

don’t want to be here,
i want there
i want delicious holding arms, yes
[sliding over my face and breasts you, darling
must know all of what lives inside of me
to know how to touch me so
oh]

whoa

droll

i'm the youngest person
in the place
& the only one
not clacking at keys.
i wield
my pen with long-practiced ease
long companions,
i and she
not much satisfaction's discovered
with plastic tapping keratin.

i've callouses on my fingers
from my tool,
which will not eat
my words but saves automatically
whatever i am scrawling onto scraps
that will be stuffed in pockets
and hauled out, eventually,
like the days' catch.

i mean peripherally i'll be
mining myself deeply
all day,
to find something worth preserving,
a taste of a frame of mind,
a mindset so thick it molds
between your fingers,
so fresh
it still bleeds when you apply
a bit of pressure on the wound
i'll open to public display,
after all this is what writers are made of,
exhibitionism with eccentricism,
mixed with solipsism,
a pen
full of ink and twitching,
or, i suppose,
if you prefer, the clickity
clack click clackity
click

click

shakespeare we aren't, thankfully

so many writers in a room
yet only one open notebook

even my lined friend is drowsing on my bedroom floor,
too large and awkward to fit
into my bag
& it's far too cold
to carry things with my frigid hands.

but that doesn't matter, i've got
scrap paper so
mostly i'm wondering
what the hell's beside the room's solitary notebook
as the owner types blissfully,
ignoring its lines
it's glass of some sort,
the type
that breaks easily
and i would swear
it was a bong, in miniature
if this wasn't the library,
although that's maybe not such a horrible idea,
excepting the inevitable toss-out
that sort of behavior would accrue.

still, the library, any library
is far overdue
for a little mischief.
i'm going to go investigate
the locks
on the bathroom doors.

when i ask far too many questions

how much of what we see
is lacking the bigger picture?
how many times will we
bypass
what will define our future?
i've watched so many times as
friends left what they truly desired
behind them, fled in search of
something with less power to thrill,
or terrify.
it is hard to reconcile the mind.

meanwhile i wonder what
it is i'm running from, this time
my love of women
or whether
i'm just sick of inhabiting
my own mind
and wanting someone else's
to crawl into,
like yours
when you are so far from me
and maybe
that's why i like it

you stand out

the silence
is more comforting, now
than i'd imagined,
the excuse to disappear into my solitude,
which
presently scarcely occurs as
i'm too busy distracting
myself from what i want my brain to drop
like a chastised dog -
the subject no longer has any meat
left to devour.

best to leave it aside
in the pile of useless things
than continue to worry it so, although
i sometimes wonder what i will discover
if i bite through to the marrow

imeanwhatelseareyougoingtodoreally

is it fighting, the way we hurt
ourselves,
and if so, what or whom
are we battling?
surely there is nothing left worth,
at this point, preserving
but scars that pale in comparison
to the struggle,
paltry marks to prove having
suffered
and then finally when
you've almost given up,
thought you've won
the skirmish -

it's taken ten years to realize
the extent of the sickness, how
it burrows, hibernates
until you relax the sentry and
then it bubbles
to the surface, hissing
mine, all mine,
and you let it back in,

i mean,
what else are you going to do really

pretty girls

slip glances sideways into
the conversation, exist in
the spaces between the words
and wait patiently,
yes
for your gaze to be drawn
magnetically

this one-horse tavern town

i can feel the twang in my voice
slipping back in
it's been marinating
in old bluegrass, and it's rubbin'
up against the kind of folks
found in trailer parks in small
hick towns
howdy, i'm saying, and the
y'alls are breaking free,
take
a girl out of the country and she's still
just as country in the city,
no matter
how hard she tries
to homogenize.

fuck it.
i'm repairing the soles on
my well-worn boots, gettin' out
my stetson and the next
dumbass what pokes fun at it
will get whacked
upside the head as hard as
only a southern girl,
who needs the knowledge,
can manage

black&white

this time, i got
photographic proof
perhaps a bit gory, but certainly no more
than the blurred snapshot
i took long ago
of my
bloody wrist accompanied
by a razor
i thought, shame to waste it
took another self-portrait staring
into the mirror unsmiling
blood streaming from my nose
as if it had no time to waste,
running away
from what lives in my head

just waiting

the ferocity with which i desire
to be yours terrifies me
how badly i want you to need me
as a constant, not
a flux
i am not, after all, a temporary
element.
you are fluid-like, mercury,
in that you drop and jump
freeze to boil and not much
contains you
but i don't care how hard
you liquefy
sooner or later
you're going to discover
solidification

refusing to censor

i don't even care
what words come out, anymore
paper or pen
tears on the phone

what i say to you
i no longer guard.
if i'm drunk and
inclined i'll speak
my mind, snipe
as far as i like

i think i deserve these
small and simple pleasures, the
righteous anger
i wield like a shield
against you, for after all
it will not do to
lower my defenses.

you rip to shreds
every tentative bit of trust
i put
in you

general application

to display my worthiness,
they asked for my work
implying my seriousness
would be judged by
my content

so naturally, i sent
the poems i deemed most inflammatory
each word carefully honed,
seriously
enough to prove my merit
but snide enough to let on
i was wise
to the game

they didn't take long,
letting me in
handed over the keys,
told me there would be no
time limit - after all,
i was working on it -
evolving into the person i would be soon,
and the new book
that would be placed on the shelf
showcasing
what we bleed
when left alone
to our own devices.

the ability to create

i always wondered
how we lost it, and
to whom
whether we used ourselves up in
the strengthening
of others
as i watched you submerge yourself
in him, in the stability
he implies

and i wonder
how long it will be
before he sees the selves
you've tried to drown in
your pools of memory, wonder
if you will ever come out
from under cover long enough
to tell me something about you
that doesn't sound like you
rehearsed it
in your room, very late
at night, like you do
when he's sleeping

trying to leave behind

i wonder how many poems it
will take to make
this volume sink under
its own weight

how many times i'll thumb
through, waiting
for a blank spot to appear
out of the chaos,
how many hours of
obsession
i'll eat like oxygen
wanting only
to leave behind the self
i'll entomb into the pages
in ink enough
to contain her

the [learning] curve

i finally learned
to drink myself to sleep after
your leaving
discovered
how many beers,
how many glasses
of scotch it took
to lull myself into laughing
a calculated process, involving
no accidents, this is no blind
mourning
i wanted to know
what it took to be happy
without you.
the answers to these questions on bottom of page:









five;
three;
nothing.

view

there's a window here through which
you can see no sky,
only
the skeletal winter branches of an oak
rubbing against the faded paint
of a brick building,
built sometime
before the new deal, but after
the automobile
greening copper on the roof,
starting to moss over
with age
over which a skyscraper looms,
shadowing everything in its path, even
me

prophesying

thursday night, 10:43 or
somewhere near, around eleven
is when i'll hear
your voice
calling to me, after silence
from sunday night through the week
until
you're again lonely and
needing me, asking if i'd
like to throw away my weekend
observing you toil
through what will give you
professional papers,
asking me
if i'm willing to come to you
so i can watch you run,
again,
when you've had your fill
of me

when my roommate asks me why i never follow through

and woman, when
i don't invite you back, and inside,
don't take it personally,
i'm hiding
scared to let you in for fear
i will run just as swiftly
and leave you, devastated,
behind

for i'm no more ready for you
than he for i
nor she for me, back when
i was learning
to touch another woman's body
like a cathedral, as if
something sacred is housed
within the center

when

when you are finished
running away
from your own head,
let me know

i won't hold too much
of a grudge,
until

you get to the point
where you know what you want,
it's not me, and
still
you remain