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

sure you did

you used missing the bus
as an excuse not to come over last night,
again,
and as i looked down at the phone,
seeing red
i realized
it wasn't just a cliche, i
really was,
as my nose ignored
the rules of engagement and broke
the dam, scattering
drops of blood across my book's
pages
wasn't even my book, but
the library's
so i smeared my blood
into the paper
with the side of my hand,
trying to wipe away
the stain your lack
of consideration leaves
on my mind.

it didn't work
i awoke at three, trying
to remember if you called
when you said you would, which
you didn't
and i lay staring
at the ceiling in
the bed you were
supposed to be
warming with me,
wondering why it is
you find it
so fucking hard
to hold me

"i need to be more careful with you."

yes, you do, but
not in the way you're thinking,
not
in the sense of us both making
decisions we're too smart to,
on taking needless chances
with our bodies

all these things pale in comparison
to the things that live in my head,
what lives between my hesitancy
and your tendency
to run

we should handle like fragile eggs
what we have in the small moments,
what we create at our table,
and savor all our smells combining to say
home, you are home, home
in my arms.
so yes, let's be careful
to preserve
what home we have,
let's not get so caught up
we make mistakes
with the spaces between us,
but don't be careful
with me,
let's just burn

the exclusive, by permission only, writers' room.

just walking in gives me
the shudders
naturally, it's got to be
stifling in here,
work-strangulating rather
than inspiring, sitting so silently
as if noise can forever interrupt
the sentence you're composing in your head
as if any single thing
could disturb you, the writer,
the special breed.

i write in crowded spaces, compose
in my head beside the copy machine,
crouch in the bathroom stalls to
scribble, it's not
so earthshaking as others
try to make it seem
the best writers go at it
wherever they can, in between
the chaos of their lives
we've all got our own process but
don't think it's brilliance, no
it's obsessively applying ink
to paper, hoping somehow
to capture something in a way
that seems you could almost
reach out and touch it

distraction sex

two days ago i lay
naked with a college friend, discussing
the lovers we were attempting
to leave behind,
discussing the futility
of our efforts

i said,
my life now could branch
into a thousand directions, none
of which will involve children, nor
marriage
and all of the stability
those things imply

and regardless
i’ll be just fine. but
if these things are
to be, they will be
only
with you,
my love



my friend said, "i
always wanted to fuck you
to understand
what it’s like to know
what you want so well,
and be unafraid
to reach for it."

it is hardly the absence of fear,
merely the knowledge
that nothing is possible if
i do not open the door, invite
something in, and leave it ajar

hoping, this time
what comes in
will not involve robbery.

there are worse places to be

in your bed isn’t one of them, although
when not fucking
we spend the time agonizing over where we are
or aren’t going

you spin in circles

i let life take me
where the current flows.

but it’s all too obvious
we’re down the same river – whether
we want or not to tether
together is still unclear, like every decision
we’ll make
in the next year. nothing is static.

this, i know – we are unwillingly magnetized,
polarized, pulling together as we attempt
to separate.

i try, in my way
to leave – i’ve got
my retainer of meaningless people i call
to entertain and distract me,
the ones i trample trying
to forget you,
these small and useless things

much like the open three-pack
of condoms you couldn’t manage
to finish, not even
with that girl you used, again,
as an excuse
to run
from me

she exists
as two
used condoms, two
shitty snapshots
in your photo archive,
a meaningless moment you ran from too,
for running is always simpler than remaining.

your flight pattern straight back
into my bed, asking me,
"tell me what to do,"
as if i could plan your life
for you, as if
i’ve somehow got more of a clue

the five years you’re got on me are as useless
as all your justification
for why i'm not quite 'right'
although when i tried to make you say it,
all you could muster was, "well
i wouldn’t say never."

this does not come
with a consolation prize.
there are no substitutes
this time.

so i’m nursing more beers
than i have the right to drink,
and when i call the next girl
i’ll use as a temporary you
i will be drunk.
otherwise i
will lose my nerve
halfway through her door as she tugs
me by my beltloops

and when she strokes me, when
she makes me come,
the name
i will be repeating over and over
in my head
will be yours.

destroy

sometimes i want to obliterate these
pages, the helplessly
hopeful verse,
i want
thick marks obscuring
what i cannot bear to see
without my throat swelling to
the point where
i cannot
even speak

what sticks in the mind

the nape of your neck is what
i'm remembering, i certainly
stared at it long enough
as you buried your face into my
collarbone, burrowing into my throat
as if searching for something
that cannot be found without
digging underground, without
turning away
from the sun.

i always wondered
what you found that far inside of me
sticking to my flesh as you slept
not beside, but on
me
sweat gluing us
to the bed.
stretched out side
by side, that was all it took
for you to curl into me,
shove yourself into the hollow
of my neck
and i stared at you, your nape
naked through your thick hair
and i ran my fingers through you
wound my fingers in your hair and
brought your head
to face me

beginning with someone else

"who breaks the thread, the one who pulls,
the one who holds on?"
- James Richardson


we both break it - pull
so hard it snaps and recoils,
hits
us with the suddenly slack ends
left grasping only a piece,
end
of many things and beginning
of none
so i drop that cord, leave it
like the gutter refuse it is
and walk on, kicking
at cracks in the sidewalk
thinking,
i can't ever believe i
thought of telling you even half
of what you know of me,
which is still
hardly the tip
of the iceburg

the stand

and i think
what she wanted
was someone to save her
from her rut,
she
could take or leave
me.
which is fine, i
took her
and left.

or rather
she did, tiptoeing out
of my bedroom
the morning after

blankets&sheets

when we wrap ourselves
into the cloth of our beds, i wonder
how many hours
you spend
just like me, how many times
you've wanted to call, but didn't

i wonder how many years it will take
for the memory of the way
my body feels
to ease into the back
of your mind

great

i want to know
your expectations.
why
you are here, eyes heavy and purple
head sagging towards the table,
staring at me, always
at&
into me.
i want to know what
you are doing here, why
you still insist
on paying for the dinner
i do not want
that you desire
i order
you gaze
intently as if expecting
some performance
i
don't know what you find, don't
see in my mirror where
your fascination lies.

my face pale
and drawn, stoic and lined,
my mind
too tired to try
for polite conversation.
there
is nothing left to say
between us.
we let silence ring heavy
in the air and
you stare.
what the fuck
are you expecting?

eventually

i will run
far enough to get
shot of you

but until i
become that cold, i'm
apologizing to my roommate
sorry,
sorry
i'm crying passing out
from my dinner of beer
into your bed

what do you have to be sorry for,
he says, and
i think,

there is not a moment
of the past year
i do not wish away

chaos coinciding

winter cold
the stench of the city streaming
through my bones,
diesel trucks
clouds of smoke spewing
from the smokers loitering
on every corner,
men with
nauseating cologne
applied so thickly i can taste it
when i walk past
the smell of ozone
in the rain, wet concrete
the constant clatter of well-heeled shoes
burnt espresso wafting combining
with greasy restaurant exhaust vents
i am
surrounded by stupidity so thick
i feel like gasping for air
stuttering, strolling
shitfaced drunks,
bums
demanding dollars as if
i had anything
to give

imaginary

say i'm sitting
at a cafe and you trip over me
or
maybe you work up to it after
watching me on the bus
for days
maybe i step on your foot
in some inane line or i
talk to you
when you're trying to read
on the train
and you humor me

and then again maybe
you don't exist
yeah maybe the next time
i'm staring at you, i'll
find myself
looking through you like
a foggy windowpane -
image shaken, but
still recognizable

who would you like me to be?

with you, i say my lines perfectly
as if i were winning awards
on a stage

i give you a nice, ironic one-liner
the last word
is always mine.

you, staring after me
with that look on your face i
can't quite place
into the way you say
you feel for me
like you're expecting something
around the bend that doesn't come
so intently


you read like an open,
well-worn book with the spine
cracked
at a favorite place

an unnamed, unspoken thing

strangers on the train, trying
to avert their gaze
the tension that ripples between them
the fascinated examination of the floor
which is streaked with rainwater,
and dingy grey bootprints
the pure blackness of night outside
the windows
reflecting only the distorted image
of myself.
i keep hoping if i stare
long enough, everything
will dissolve into patterns
without coherence or order -
the image i imagined looked blank
when
i stared out the window, but
it's more like feral,
so no one meets my eyes.
i do not mind.

they called me 'scary'

if i saw myself
on the street, i
wouldn't talk to me

all flapping long leather
trenchcoat and boots
to the knee, black
head to toe,
frozenfaced in permascowl

i understand now
why people are afraid of me

when i walk i move
like i have somewhere to go,
which i do
i go deliberately, placing precisely
thumping pavement with my long stride
peering out of my uniform noir
at the suspicious world, as if
i don't like
what i see.

i would be wary of me.
those who ask me why
i'm not afraid of walking alone
in the dark night
have not seen the apparition i become
when stalking the streets.

"a woman like that is not a woman, quite."
- Anne Sexton

this bitter winter

you hug me so tightly like
it's hard to let go
and
i lean stiffly into you, reminding myself
to put my arms around you
(what
i'm supposed to do),
i'm too tired
to get closer, i won't invest.

you look older, sadder. i look like
a tragedy mask
from a play,
frozen
into my role.

you move closer to my side, bumping me
as we walk,
though
i'm trying hard not to touch you
too raw, too much
after the sensory deprivation.

months ago we lay face
to collarbone, hips, knees and
legs intertwined.
these months i've spent in my bed, holding
my pillow.
no one touches
my skin and if they
move toward me, i flinch away
it's too much to want something
so fiercely that you cannot,
will not have.

you soak my touch like a sponge
and i cringe away,
so you don't notice
when i put a few more feet
of distance
between us

take nothing personally

you sometimes don't, and
sometimes do
leave a mark.

so i'll be in the bathroom now,
washing the scent
of your fuck-and-run
off my body.

red velvet

for a week, i drove
past the armadillo's armored body,
back & forth,
to and from
the obedient girl i was imitating,
contemplating
the diamonds on my left hand.
every time i passed his still form,
i thought
about the red velvet cakes they'd make
for the grooms' cakes at weddings,
grey frosting caked
into the armor of an armadillo.
the idea
was for the cake to resemble
the roadkill.

this road armadillo resembled
the cake at first, lying
on the center yellow lines
as if sleeping off
a night of rooting. i skirted him carefully.
when he split open
in two days, his red velvet insides
peeking at my headlights,
i rubbernecked past
the hit & run, staring into his center.

three more days transformed him
into a lump, small pieces flung
across the highway
and as he worked into a smear, i swerved
to avoid him
and thought about my own wedding:
when i saw my fiance's roadkill cake
would i disappear as swiftly
as my dead friend on the road?
my young stomach churned on it.

on the seventh day, as i drove
after canceling my marriage, i
let my gaze slip to my bare left hand,
my own empty body, and i hit
the armadillo, tires thumping over
the greasy lump that had once been
a grey thing, and then pink, and later brown
and as i struck him
i imagined the heap of flesh against the wheels,
my mind saying,
"ugh. guts
on my tires."
but when i looked
the thing had left no mark
of its body.

on being spokesman

we don't have to dig down
far, to find the selves
we used to embody
we still store them beneath the skin, or
in my case on,
visible within the dermis and
waiting
for acknowledgment.
marks holding their silence
in patient anticipation
and yes
one day i'll be dealing with this
more publicly than really anyone
deserves to display
telling them not to tread down my path,
and knowing
i'm far too late
for the ones who really
need to hear it

darning

i sew myself into my new life,
checking carefully to make sure
the binding tightens.
i'm carefully darning
what remains
of my holes, which are few.
the last person to enter
has exited
and i'm getting more and more
comfortable with reprising my old role -
seamed shut, a beautiful tapestry
with nothing inside,
not even a space
for what could one day be.
i do not leave anything empty,
just sew until there is no space
left for anything,
not even me.
but i don't take up much
time, or room
and i am comfortable without
a home -
i spent ten years searching
for one,
and then three more
learning that
there is no such thing.

waiting for it to show up

pissing on a stick
did not alleviate
my concern, merely
provoke a period of pausing -
waiting to bleed, or
failing that,
any appointment
to scream out,
what the hell
is wrong with me

inside i feel
something insidious,
really wrong,
much like the first time
before i bled out
what would have been
our child -
the bleeding that
will not come,
the imbalance
of body

and i, yes
am terrified

waltzing

my silence has not been
intentional.
i am not
stemming words of woe and
holding them inside. it is simply
that they do not exist,
my mind
is too tired to create that kind
of vitriol.

i won't cry through my words,
because i do not cry. i will not say
i do not feel this at all,
surrounding you: i do.

i let it wash
over me like a vague sort
of stain, a dye
that,
given enough washings,
begins to fade.
the parts of me i piece together
are undiluted, raw, freshly mined
and freedom is an empty shell

yes, empty. not damaged, nor destroyed,
or any of the adjectives used
to convey this

think pristine:
an empty ballroom, a
thing unused
echoes through an empty room.

rainy season, the

perpetual sounds of moisture
my shoes squelching through the dark, spongy leaves
the overflow of the eaves
falling against
the walls of my room while cars
plow through puddles and deluge
the sidewalks with gutter water
the patter of raindrops against
the ground,
as silent as the rain is here
i still think of rain as noise, a
soundtrack for a life.
a way to gauge the passing
of time.

wet tracks into the house, a trail
lurking on the floorboards
the impermanent marks
of occupation
you'd never know i lived here.
this
is not a home, and i act
accordingly:
withdraw
everything into my four corners,
wait the weather out.
rain gurgling into the gutters,
weeping down the shingles,
leaving rusty tracks behind
caressing the walls
i
do not touch, that do not
touch me.

solitude

i am inundated
with silence. blank pages
scream their accusations, beg
for a passion it seems i've
somehow buried, stifling myself
in order to tamp down the riot
in my mind.
i've
bombed to resume peace
and order, and so i kick,
scuffing through the ash.
the rain has come, & i crunch
through yellow leaves each morning shrugging
my hood closer
to my face.
drops scatter against my glasses.
nothing moves early in
the morning but
cars slushing through the street,
the winds blow and
trees shake water into the air.
the early hours grow bitterly colder.

alone,
i pull on chilly layers
and stand pebbled
and plucked in front of my mirror,
relearning my face.
it is hollow-eyed
and rarely moves.
i leave in, and return to,
darkness
to a place where silence remains.

for andre

what i want to do is call:
say
you have no idea how badly
i still want you, even
though it's been years.
i still
want to lie in bed with you
while you blow smoke out of
the cracked window, deliciously
naked, pressed thigh to thigh.

you say i would not recognize
your current condition, too skinny
and strung out on love
but
if that's true, i'm unrecognizeable too

you wouldn't know me either.
perhaps
we both are different people now
than who we were,
who
had delirious sex after nights and nights
of touching.
now i don't bite off
my desire for you. it bubbles inside
i know
how badly i want it. it's
crossed my mind more than once
that you and i might have made it,
if we'd manage to live
in the same state
might have turned out differently,
in some alternate place
and all these foreshortened maybes
don't get me anything but
a bit regretful

sometimes
i wish i'd stuck out that town
and seen where it would go,
you and i,
the misfit couple sent
straight from hell
and it's been
two, three years but now
i want you more than ever
i still
want to be pressed to your side,
thinking about old possibilities
and the ridiculousness
of figuring everything out
a bit too late.

lock

i've slowly locked
myself away, through the years
behind layers of armor until
no one is left knocking
on the doors to get through.
tonight
i'm realizing
that no one's through - i
don't know a single person who
is past my bullshit,
my straight-on i-don't-care, not
family or blood
or girls whom with i shared my head
and i'm sick of it

sick of wanting to peel out
waiting for someone
to tap
on the knocker, look, ask
if you can use it
chip a little
at my layers of paint

i
am not invincible, just
put on a good show.
i wish you would know.
look at me,
ask me
what i'm made of, and maybe
this time i won't
throw up my persona,
maybe
i'd put it down,
build
a bridge of it, let you come
picnic at the edge
of it,
really
want to know.
ask me who i am
and maybe,
maybe
i'd tell you
the truth.

and yes

yes
i am disappointed/indifferent/crushed/stoic /lonely
i am not who you'd think i'd be, although your
face feels smug in its worry and i hug myself

remodeling

blank, i feel:
canvas prepared
but abandoned, still white

i am letting the lack of color
remain.
it doesn't seem to matter
what the other hues could be.
me, renovated:
freshly prepared
for the next person i
won't let in,
stilled and repainted

enough paint will disguise
almost any flaw
the cracks become invisible
lines of glue begin
to smooth.
holes
are harder to fix,
maybe
a little plaster
but give it
a thin layer.
soon the dent
will go unnoticed.

get your hands off of me

you still touch.
drumming beats onto my knee,
pressing your thigh to mine
the oh-so-casual lean
against my shoulder as you listen
to me.
you bump my side as we walk.
i shy away
touch
has become too much. when
you press against me
i move away
i want to
but will not
touch you.

but your easy reach for my body
has not disappeared
you hug tightly and
won't let go.
i cringe.
squeeze back, and run.
closeness is only pain.

you left, staring
through the windows on the train,
hands pressed against the glass
as you gazed at me.

i return your stare
but do not wave
i run
as soon as the train has passed.
i try
to forget the look
on your face.

whatever your dark desires

know this.

light piercing down
will flay them,
penetrate
until the darkness
has washed away
and you will only be left with
the cold, naked,
quivering
truth

wish list

what i want
is something thick enough to do the job
not too long, but
not so short it can't
hit the back of me
don't care about the denomination,
paper, plastic, animated biped,
give me a hand[or two]
just
make me drift out, and then into
my body -
make me remember
what it's like to scream and sweat

one or the other, or both, of the sexes
as if there's enough change to
make a difference, as if
any person or thing could possibly
alter the thrumming solitude of
this bed
say rubber, or latex,
let's
go for hard and indifferent,
so it
won't care when i don't
want to cuddle
don't want to let it settle in my bed
long enough to get comfortable
and stay

foxwoman

look -
white snow speckled by flung
droplets of blood
the red fur of the fox
clamped into the trap, steel
teeth in its foot
to the bone.

and i, i am that pitiful animal,
duly gnawing
through my leg,

look -
i'd rather limp away
under my own power, bleeding
missing a limb
than be caught in your trap.

frost

this winter seems suitable for saying
all those words that never
came out before:
i'm sorry,
i love you, i'm sorry for loving you
really fucking sorry.
yes
winter devolving into a soggy mess,
as we all hide in our layers

who can even see us
underneath it all.
who
can really tell what we hide
underneath.

gaps

in the spaces we conscientiously place between us
unspoken longing lingers still.

i
do not believe in hope, so
say nothing.
you've heard it before.

what i do is disengage
a little more every time i see you
i wrench my body away
in degrees.

soon i'll be separately self-contained,
restrained
from acting as if
my desires
in any way
coincide with reality.

to ash, to bone

i walked you home, you
asked me in. i
said, "i'd rather be set on fire,"
your face fell

but this is why: it's memories
that rage in my head
and
stepping foot into your warehouse
of them
would be akin
to setting plates of food
in front of my starving girl, saying,
touch, savor, smell
envelop, hold it
in your arms, snuggle close
but do not give in.
DO NOT want.
do not taste,
open your lips, do not
inhale and let your mouth water
do not want do not do not
do not cry
do not desire what
you cannot have

do not
pretend as if
none of this matters
to you.

i would rather be burned alive.

election

the fireworks, explosions
in the rain,
flashes of light
as the neighbors run by screaming
honking their car horns,
it's late
election night
i listen
and look forward
to picking up the paper
tomorrow morning,
finally see it
in ink,
irrevocable.
change,
blowing in
on the wind.

if there were a saint for shitty timing, i'd pray to her

when you said it at first
i thought you were lying,
i mean
what a way to admit,
years after the fact
you'd wanted most
what you would not do -
ask me to be more yours,
than simple fucking

and i, unknowing
the frail hold you had on fraying nerves,
a snake lying in wait
for the next sudden movement,
which i got all wrong,
so i got bit

which is fair,
i suppose -
after all
i knew i was handling something
skittish,
and wild

spilling

i dyed today -
myself, i mean
spilling ink all over my knuckles,
which now as if i've engaged
in gloveless boxing
and it won't wash off,
but settles into the lines
of my wrist so i can
see the tiny creases
we normally don't notice
all over our skin

i look like a law
office suicide
pants&sweater set
off-set by my
blood-like spatter pattern
that clashes with the decor,
and my shirt
should've used black,
i suppose
better to look
a fool with an inkpot
than someone who might
bleed on your files

liquid parts of life

the shock and suddenness of
unexpected bleeding
as your lower lip blossoms and
all you can taste is iron, dull
and lifeless
or the smell of it, as you crouch
behind your desk and hope
a handkerchief is enough
blood caking inside your nose
or the vividly visceral watching
a razor part the skin and peel,
in layers, the truth from
whyever you are doing it, even
while knowing how
maladaptive and unnecessary
and useless the action is
and knowing you do it because,
not in spite of these things -
always a conscious choice,
for you - the need
to show something,
and knowing
exactly how
to do so

if we still love

eventually,
i answered
my own questions,
as i often,
accidentally do:

yes, no; maybe
[indifferent, i believe you are
but i am livid with it]

yes, the relationship remained
and no, it devolved
into tears, fears, and
other excrement
and maybe in a few years
this won't seem so urgent, or desolate
indifference may one day remain
for more than mere moments

in the meantime i bide time
dulling myself whichever way works well enough
and i hope
that in enough time
the answer will be yes
and i won't be using
your name
in the same sentence as
the phrase,
"stupid fucking man"

fall

instead of hiding inside
the sickness that lives in my head,
i bide my time
biting my lips.
they eventually crack
and bleed
and it's painful when i smile, so
i rarely do
especially when thinking of you -
i just chew harder
when wanting your face,
so
now you evoke for me
the iron taste of blood,
a clenched jaw,
a nosebleed
i can't stop

police get called

sirens swirling through the still dark street,
who knows
where or what or whether
the cop just felt like running
a red light
or whether the red is blood
reflected in the blue and white
night light
on the pavement

the time has come to say these things

ad infinitum
until the brain stops responding
when you drift back to the subject
and i hear
what you're saying, but
i just can't care
anymore
about what you have to say.
talking like, what if
i have kids &how will my
fucked-up mental case
of a mind handle
that scenario?

all the while saying, i
don't quite fit into your picture

but you're the one who started bringing
up potential offspring

and maybe it's lodged
in your mind, because
however briefly,
i did carry for you
unintentionally,
unknowingly, until
it was at an end

and i suppose i'm not
the only one still wondering
what would
that have been like,
you and me

i mean, really

dryness in winter

i wonder
how long it will take
to stop bleeding,
how many
handkerchiefs i'll dirty
and leave stained for you,
whether any
of the marks we make
will fade.
how many days
holding my hand over my face
so when blood runs down my nose
no one will ask
if they see,
i wonder
what are the lengths to which
you will go
to run from me

tracks

the wrong end of town,
i don't mean bad
just opposite
side of the city,
where it is all too apparent
i do not belong
from the strange glances i accrue
walking in my winter coat of wool
my office shoes stark
against the shifting gravel
of a supermarket lot
with a worn sign,
three letters on the face
and the stamp
of poverty
on all the faces

cavity

i imagine it is something like
what a heart patient must feel -
ribs cracked apart, sewn shut
around a chamber
necessarily larger
to fit the hands that molded it.

a chest must gape far
to remove
all of what you left in me.

so i walk through the room with
the peculiar feeling of a weight
removed,
the space beneath the
breastbone hollowed. scooped out,
sanitized and clean
for its occupant.

there is little that remains.

now i hold my chest high to hide
the fragile nature of its incurved bones
the ribs that fractured beneath
your hands, on the coldest night
of winter. the ache
of a cavity in a tooth.

i bite down harder in hopes
the pain might dissolve
into the sudden rush of fire.

something out of nothing

i wonder
how anything
can be made from loneliness,
from nothing at all,
how something can spring
from a lack
of something precious.
and when i drive
all thoughts from my mind
in some pathetic attempt to pretend
i don't ache
for another so hard my teeth clench
involuntarily in the night when
what little sleep i get
fails to throw
my body into any port of solace,
no
nothing springs from the tension sprung
tight-wound in my aching spine
there's no such thing as something
made from an entity
that only subtracts.
in the morning when
i wake, head pounding, memories
mere blurs
and i stare into that mirror,
loneliness is not a component part,
there are no parts
with holes that need the filling
but some things can contain
emptiness, yes
and when i stare into my eyes,
that is the only thing
i see looking back.

automated autopilot

if i never stop
i will not have to process anything
but what must proceed through
in orderly fashion -
the march of days melding
into a steady delirious deluge
of information
i let pour through,
although it will not
touch me.
i live life
in a haze of things i take
to forget you
and i wonder
how much of this year
will be left to slumber
in the dungeons of my mind,
while i try to get a few
pieces back
from the ravages of time.
but don't try too hard,
lest every piece
i tried to bury
might resurrect somehow,
and claw its way
to the surface
like a wild thing i'd
go out of my way to smother,
if only
i could get close enough
to put
the pillow to your face

stairwell

voices muffled behind closed doors
i can hear the cadence but not
the conversation
from my perch on the unused steps
between
the ninth and tenth floor
the elevators
give me my solitude.
i need it
i do

trying to erase everything in my head
and wondering how far running
is far enough
this city's not large enough for me
to get lost in.

i can feel insanity creeping in, silent
as a cat
don’t know whether to fight it or
welcome madness back in
like a long-lost lover and enfold it
in my arms.
there is comfort, after all,
in the familiar.

returning

all the way home i took the curves blind,
hand sure on the wheel,
body clenched
around the hard knot of my stomach.

staring at the waning moon as if somehow
it might shift things.
all the way home
i imagined the touch of your hands on
my body,
arching against the seatbelt,
along in a sightless night.

you asked me to
tell you what i was thinking,
i had
no idea where to start so i just shut up,
which means,
i want you to
hold me so hard you bruise my skin,
make me feel my own body,
touch me
let me know you are here.

antiphon

i repeated the words,
a sickening mantra to myself:
not need, not need
do not feel
hoping to bear down
and force my longing for you
into the same box
as all the other former lovers
i never really left behind, just
scrubbed their stains from me

i'd mouth it silently to myself,
not need, not need
banging my head against the wall
behind my bed,
hoping to somehow sleep
wishing you would hear and come up the stairs
to me

i couldn't even feel the pain.
not need, not need
i'd plead not to
but i do.

and i'm not finding it a weakness, but
a strength, standing
and facing you
when i could have ensured
i'd never hear your name again,
run
until i'd convinced myself
you never meant a thing

but i find strength is not,
ultimately,
self-reliance. it's
the willingness to face yourself,
and everything you attempt not to see
when you confront your mirror.

negotiation

i'm watching the sun shriek up
over the horizon,
mulling over
your inability to claim me the way
so many others tried

i refused all but you
so now you
refuse me.

you talk, about restlessness and
the feeling you're still looking for something -

something you won't find
until you understand
what you search for
can only be found within you,
and the rest of us
have nothing to do with it.

you call us contentment, when i ask
if you are happy
where you used to call it love

and i'm screaming this,
sickened
as i watch this devolution

your problem is in front of your face:
it's not that you're not done
looking around for
a better bargain
but that you do not give
even value
for what you possess:
you don't
count your losses when figuring
on next, or "better"

and you know i love you, but
i'll say it straight:
by the time you figure out
you might just want me,
after all your posturing,
i may have become disgusted by the fact
that you call this merely contentment
and do not take what i freely give

you shelve the offer, tell me
you don't know how
to let someone closer in
as long as you're still shopping, you never will.

i'm starting to feel
like the bruised banana you leave
on the counter and won't eat,
but watch it slowly darken
through the week.

you dissect the idea of happiness, and whether
i belong inside
and i'm tired of this weight[wait]
sick of persuading my shell-shocked self
to try

this morning's cold
i'm shivering two hours
of sleep from my eyes,
waiting my shift through to
come home to you, and not know
what to say

so instead i'll go drink beer and shoot
bleary photographs
and on that film
i want to show
the bruised look
of my eyes,
an honest portrait of what toll
i take from you

i won't come home to the cold sympathy
in your eyes.

if you will not claim me,
i will reclaim myself
and fucking piece myself
back into my patchwork life
scraps into a quilt
until the holes are again
made whole

cicatrix

this is what they
do not tell you:

it doesn’t end when the scab closes,
and the skin heals.
scars
penetrate deep beneath the surface,
ache
when you press their newness,
itch
until you rake your fingernails
over the sensitive new tissue:

they do not tell you it can take years
for the tenderness to leave.

doctors will say: stop
cutting yourself, you
keloid
[scar visibly, raised, violently]

patiently waiting for your skin
to finally start to assimilate,
when the redness
starts to fade
– these
are the lessons you learn on your own
lessons you relearn,
every time,
as,
each time, you manage to forget
and the agony of healing
surprises you

on razors

stop trying to tell me what this means,
let me
tell you: it's
release
(release?) yes, of blood, but more

pent-up energy that, left untouched,
will explode
the tears that will not come
what you attempt to drink away

this impetus begins in the mind
the cyclone of thoughts
that won't let go and so
you get frantic trying to kill it, i mean

wouldn't you do anything to make that hold
release?
to force the storm to be through?

anything will do
whatever makes you slip into a state of staring

the terrible desire to crawl out
from your skin, or,
failing that, let something escape
and not knowing how

blood, (tears, if you can make them)
the need to run like hell
need
like a drug, like any other escape
escape
yes, it is

i said it

so imagine, if you will
not how hard it might be
to work yourself up to do it -
put a knife to your skin and pull
and part

but instead
what might horrify you to the point
where bleeding is a desperate haven.

volatile

the trees are vomiting
pink
petals into the streets
nature's finest display
of flowery fertility
& i'm slouching along in my newly
baggy jeans, perversely pondering death
the dying confidence i have in myself,
the new kill of the trust
between us,
yes,
i tried hard for that
but won't work anymore.
this time i want
something to come from you.

scuffing through fallen blossoms
thinking wanting
to run
until i forget
you
but that won't do
i can blister my feet all i care to
but there is no forgetting this

i tried
sitting on the couch staring
through you like a window
as you asked
me why friendship wasn't enough
you said, stop it. don't
don't turn off.
stay
with me.

so i did
because you asked
and shrank within myself
to fit the way i feel
growing smaller
and foundering in my self-loathing,
i've
expended too much of myself
on you.
now i'm failing myself,
unable to run when i need to most
too ashamed to admit
my failures, &
angry enough to stick out your bullshit
but vulnerable enough
to tell a stranger, when she asks
me to call her,
that i will.
and i do.

it's NOT that i don't
want you.
but it's nice to feel,
even for a night,
that there are no ghosts.
and it'll be just me that she desires.

stripping

i get asked often,
by men
who've never tasted desperation on their lips
how
i do what i've done.
"i couldn't do it," they say, shaking
their heads,
and i'm thinking,
you have no idea what degradation is.
something more like humiliation: like
standing barefoot on the filthy floor of
the local convenience store,
barefoot because
beer from deposit cans
has soaked through
your shoes & socks, thirty minutes
into your shift,
while
dirty construction workers throw dusty money
onto your counter
as if you, not they,
are the one covered in grime.

degradation: reliving over and over
the moment
your lover says he's looking for something
better than you

standing swallowing bile,
palming
cash while thinking about $20,000
of student loans and that bachelor's degree
that really helped your career!!

i tell these men, they know nothing
of how humiliation is made.
they've never seen it.
here i own this stage.

i roar.

intensity

words scatter through my periphery
and i only grasp
one
at a time.

solitude.
longing.

when your lover wakes each morning,
contemplating whether or not
to keep you,
what can you say to that,
what do you do??

i spend my mornings lying awake, while
trying not to be -
curled into myself,
counting down days to destroy what is left
of this month, the last of this house.

waiting for the space that is ours
to disappear.

he does not touch me

naked in the bed, you
wrapped around me
you are further away than when i go back
to the city
and leave you behind

and i know what's running through your mind
like an endless marathon
whether to stay or go
what the hell you're to do
about me, and
where i fit in your picture

sometimes i wish you would let me go
but you say you're not ready yet.
yet.
as if
sooner or later you'll work up to it.

i want to build a life with you, but
hold my hammer loosely.
no sense
constructing something you may tear down
without warning.

darkness

even the sunshine
through the window is dingy
today, as though my brain sees
everything
through a thick cloud of pessimism.
i'm not trying to cultivate this lens
to focus the world within,
it comes unbidden
much like your dreams at night
when they snatch at your ankles
and you run
faster than you really can
but they never let go
and they always catch up.

life's too short

we spend too much time
on the unimportant things,
what will leave us,
in the end -
laughing times with friends
you'll never hear from
again
when they leave the city,
girls who want nothing
but your naked body
beneath your sheets.
we misplace the time
we should use with the friends
who will not leave our lives,
the time we should spend with family
and the types of lovers
who won't go
when the reality of life begins.

your priorities are an exercise in
error of judgment.
and i am sick of waiting for you
to decide
sickened by the fact that you
don't know what you want,
or who, or why
so if you don't feel
like coming over,
fine

but don't make me waste my time
waiting to see, if
this time
you'll be thinking of me
for once,
instead of being
so caught up in your own head
you lose sight
of everything

only years, love

i wonder -
how little
truly separates me
from the people
i have been?

the things we know only when sleeping

i ran through the sheets
of a portland thunderstorm
splashing through freezing puddles,
laughing at the crash of lightning
coinciding
with the city.

i was still warm from sleeping
in my lover's empty bed,
curled up and contemplating

"stay," he said
despite his weeklong absence,
with the half-hearted excuse of
watering his plants

i know well enough
it's not about tomatoes, or
a house that needs no sitting
this is about having someone

creating a home
to return to,
about sleeping solitary,
but not alone.

"you really love that, don't you." "yes, i do."

i'm breathing you in and you
are already inside

i don't know what this means, or
why

my mind slightly dizzy
tasting the scent of you

our heat melts the worries
our troubled heads tumble inside
like stones waiting
for polish

coping

now even the alcohol
will not dull me enough,
not even mixed with
the pills i use
to keep my mind to a dull roar.
the mixture just drugs me
to sleep, which is
torturous enough,
with dreams i do myself in
without having to drag up
your memory.
perhaps my sudden freeze
will splinter you
into fragments, too,
after i am done
cracking in two

you float to the surface
unbidden
and you are a ghost
that will not be set into its grave

compunction

profanity & inanity
all that seems to flow from me
when we speak
on the phone.
i'm by turns enraged
or just stunned,
sometimes trying to remember
what it was like
when we talked
without the compunction that
now separates us

sometimes when we
are both falling asleep
on opposite ends of the line
it's like being in
your arms
would be, if i
were a million miles
away from home

sagittarius

you were shocked, i could tell
as i snorted
some stranger's coke

off a long, dusty mirror.
i was staring into you
daring you to say
anything.

i watched that stupid girl
you wanted to fuck so badly
gaze at you like jesus or,
failing that,
a minor saint at least
watched as she inhaled the
drug she didn't really do,
except when trying to please you

she was already drunk.
i knew
it would make her sick, but
said nothing.
my mind was clear.

you were quickened,
quivering
with the insipid anticipation
that comes when you think you might
get your way,
but haven't yet

i wanted to hit you, but made do
with fucking your crush in the backseat while
you drove my car home,
thinking

fuck you.
just
fuck
you.


at that moment
i would have been happy
if i'd never seen you again
at all,

much less when you
crawled into our shared bed
ravenous with desire

i wished for the last year of my life
to disappear

it wasn't about the drugs, good
as it was to
deaden myself

i wanted to hurt you
as hard as i could.
i didn't care how.

loneliness equals desperation

i would have given anything,
last night
for your recognition.

i needed you to touch me roughly,
erase her presence from my skin.
a fluke, her presence in my room, and i
with no reason not to let
her in.

but i was dreaming you, eyes
closed over her gentle fingers,
waiting
until i could hold you again
and lose
myself in the frenzy of our joining

but instead, i held you
as you slept, fury barely held back
over the time we don't have,
the reasons that keep me
driving back to my shell of a house
at two in the morning,
waiting out your obligations.

stifling the urge to cry
as i wrestle with my mind.
but it is not enough, no.
i need more.

i want you to bruise my body.
let me know i'm still here.

prolifery

the sidewalk sports proverbs in its cobblestones
tells me to go slow.

i do.
i keep wondering as i walk this path
each day,
how one could be slow
enough to turn to stone.
curl into
the cobble until my backbone
solidifies, hardens.
make my skin
go granite.
every day i pass in too
much of a hurry to read the stones
although they shout as i pass:
time is nothing to a stone. their
thoughts will remain, their silence
retained.

after i cried

i carefully licked
blood from the scratches you left
me off of my face

readings

i sat in the bookstore, listening
to Ursula Le Guin reminisce
lamenting
the lack of lost lovers' names

and i thought,
that's
why i write them,
each
a pebble in my stream

words unimportant in the memories of pressing skin,
but still
i want to name them
preserve the small part of myself
that chose: you.
you, and you, and you.

i told you

if sex was all
that was driving me,
i certainly had easier, and likely
better places to get it,
and people who would treat me
like a goddess
as well you know,
as well i know you
could easily find someone
unattached.
our remaining revolves
around more than mere chemistry,
pheromones, hormonal polarization.
my hormones have
other places to be,
and other beds i'm
invited into - pity
i can't get you
out of my head -
your claws sunk
too far in to pry loose

wanderlust

baby i want you
to hold my hands
they are cold.
they are waiting for you.
i want
you to tuck them into your pockets
and wait until i
melt into your heat.
please
come over here
i want to tell you
that you are beautiful.

losing

the utter rage
that once had me fisting walls
so hard my
metacarpals cracked
is so frozen now
i can't
even find it

carousel

i think in order
to settle your spinning mind
i should close my lips over your mouth
so we cannot speak

drawn to complication

i don't know if you realize
how much i appreciate
your hanging around until two
although you tried to leave
by midnight -
i relish the seconds
i am not alone
in this house's walls,
sitting bolt-upright in my bed
with every creak, which is strange
as i raised myself in
the noisiest old house i know,
so i ought to be immune
to the sounds of timber resettling
on its foundations.
i want you to know
i'm not quite so immune
to you as i let on,
but don't quite know how
to bring it up
so i just smile into your eyes
when you are here
and hope you can hear
what my brain is screaming -
how long before you will recognize
the desire in your eyes, or mine?
i am so drawn
to complication - to the thrum
and beat of a racing heart,
the patter of skittish hands
that i wish you would use
to cover my trembling ones,
and hold them
until i can stand
to let go

in praise of mouthy women

i did try, briefly
to quieten myself
for you,
give you a touch of stability
on my constantly shifting ground.
"your" chapter
is the end of the piece,
no matter how i look at it -
that kind of fierce desire died
in the small piece of sunlight
i gave it
hoping it might grow,
in your looming shade.
so now i brush
the dried twigs with my fingertips
and palm the leaves and crumple
them into powder.
the wanting
retracted
until all i need
is my breath steaming in the air
on the streets,
good shoes for rambling
because my mind will not sleep,
enough alcohol
to make me smile - my needs
have simplified,
back to the days before you
when all i wanted was a pack
of cloves and enough coffee
to drown my slumber in,
since i don't like
the way it snatches,
a razor hidden in my wallet
for comfort rather than need,
for bleeding is a conscious act
of mutilation now,
not an excuse for escape,
but a little self-hatred
peering through the walls of the room
i lock it into,
music on my headphones
so i can rock myself
to apathetic staring
when i am the only one
in the room

inefficacy

i wish i knew how to say what
it is i'm feeling,
but
words only make it so far
before tumbling like dominoes,
leaving fallen soldiers in their wake.

i'm beginning to mistrust words
as they twist and reveal themselves:
not what i meant to say.
not what
you think it means.

i don't
even know what i feel anymore,
except an obsessive need to release everything,
and no way i know how.

i want it physical. i want more
than shifty words on a page,
i
want to be able to touch my rage
and mold it
into a display
i want tangible things
i want
to explode silently i want you
to see.
i want you to fucking
see that i cannot write this for you.

it's not hard at work

the copier's pulse is steady
whirrr, ka-chunk. whirrr, ka-chunk.
the sound of plastic colliding,
rhythmic.
numbing. i could be
thinking about anything now
but i am
as brainless as my copying assignment
my stare is intent:
watch pages
flutter through their assembly line.
no, i won't think.
i will not
remind myself of you.
i take
my job's monotony and apply it:
in the morning i count the stones
as i walk, studying texture.
i focus
on minutinae, sink into the
relief of routine until i forget
to remember
why my brain
is shutting off.

depression distills you

all i want
is to be done with today,
to crawl home and
hide underneath the covers,
for there is nothing else worth doing
except masturbating my own
neuroses
and seeing if they'll
decide to stick around, this time
after the doing is over
and when drinking's the only thing
that lulls me to sleep anymore,
i know i might as well stop
sleeping, because at least
that's not toxic to my liver
only my mind
which i'm trying
to leave behind,
like an unwanted animal,
so it acts accordingly -
keeps staring with its
adorable eyes,
showing me the potential
good times
but it never follows through,
and only the truth will remain,
in the end -
the type
that pisses on the rug & then
cringes in
the corner, expecting a blow

observance

i wanted you to watch
my every move,
take it in hungrily,
as you do
and try to play it
off, as if your
concern somehow lies
within the saccharine
sentiments you spew;
am i okay, what in
my world is new

why do you care, and
what business is it
of yours,
the shape of my heart
and its unsteady beating,
the details of which
you relinquished
the rights to

i watch it snow
in my inner sanctuary
blanketing what is raw
with a sense of solitude,
and solace
in the masking
of what lies beneath
with something that obscures
my details
from your view.

verses

sometimes i think maybe poets
are the least useful of all
wordsmiths, although
a friend likens us
to gods
maybe, if gods have
the ability to scrutinize
the things they create, and see
the changes -
we do have a way of eviscerating
the matter.
but all my skill's as
useless as anything else
i've ever found,
for, lacking an
audience, we mean nothing

so i stabilize myself
against the wall
and try to remember
why i matter, why
what i say
makes any difference at all
and i wish
i could know it did.
what we all
wouldn't give,
to have that kind of certainty
that what we do
has impact

leaving

i just want to be done,
and i don't even
care how,
or what that means
running is the wrong word, or idea
but i feel a sense of urgency,
a need for motion in
whichever direction will get me
the furthest distance away, the fastest.
of course, there is nothing left
to hold, which is easier,
when cutting ties
to reappear somewhere
completely untouched,
and alone.
the type of pose that
is maintainable
when no one knows your name.
and i am
willing to go
waiting on one hinging factor
as to whether
leaving is worth
the hassle, or
if it is the only thing left
of worth.
my hands twitch
with ideas i do not finish,
half-broken thoughts
of a life elsewhere
and nobody i know
to watch my devolution.

sinking, but not in

i will never forget
the look on your face
as you told me this -
such severe pain -

"i want to love someone else
the way you love me..."

and i?
i couldn't feel
a fucking thing

wondering what becomes

i push
pulling process from
the parts of myself
i'm loathe to hold a
mirror to,
for everyone's interested
in something that bleeds
out fresh
there's no end to the curiosity
about the sorrow we accrue like bric-a-brac
glass ornaments on a shelf,
where they slowly splinter and crack
with the temperature fluctuation.
the ink i'm leaking i'll
slowly etch into my skin
over the years,
documenting frantically
before it all fades
with time
& i'm push pulling from
others, now
pleading poems from people
just as damaged as i am,
wondering what becomes
of our creations when unleashed,
what we discover
and exploit in others
and our own fragile heads
how are we somehow more qualified
& inclined to mine our minds
for chunks that sparkle?
i can't define
but i know what lens we view
through - the 50 - 200 zoom,
getting close in view
while holding ourselves removed,
lest we get
too mired in life
to continue on alone

thickness

spiraling slowly down
blood
is thicker than water, and helixes
more quickly than
you'd imagine
dissemination is rarely what
you think it to be.
and after years
i finally have enough hair again
to cover my face
when i lean forward
long hair is good for hiding,
which is why i never quite
felt myself without it
the choppy locks i used to sculpt
in the mirror,
bemused at my
smaller, shrinking body,
the lack of hair to twist
between my fingers

it was a mohawk, once
and once was enough
as i stared at someone who
wasn't me in the mirror

now i just avoid
my gaze
and the face that's
so much thinner
as if the lack of smiling stained
permanently
into a loosely-clothed frame
that constantly surprises

flee

if i run fast enough,
you won't be able to catch up
and i'm ready, now
to go
i'm expecting you will stay
behind.

what hold must release, for you
to forget me,
and i,
you?

distance will do,
a lack of proximity
can temper most things
to a dull roar.

running to the next hole
i'll find to
crouch in,
waiting for the bombing
to lessen overhead
waiting
to gather enough distance,
and speed

so when i see you
in my trail of dust,
i'll have enough warning
to step off the path
i've beaten
into the pavement.

length

i'll never
be that tall, but
i'm working on it
squaring my shoulders against the wind
wishing for the strength to
straighten further,
steel my spine
against the strangers who stare,
the rest
who walk by as if i'm
invisible.
i stiffen silently
trying to steal some serenity
from those who slouch into their seats
as if there was nothing
to this world.
i am sick
of circling up, scrunching knees
to my chest and bending
towards my book as if i could make
the leap elsewhere
by mere proximity

so i practice my pose,
shoulders pressed back
against the cold, the backs
of bus seats,
straining
against my stressed muscles
to stand straighter
act a little taller

this isn't all about you

i hope you realize that,
when you're waking
there's more than the surface
buried within.
there are sure signs of surfacing.
asking me, terrified about
life and where it leads,
wanting an answer
i won't [be able to] give you.
you let fear
run rampant in you -
yet all your reasons fade
when we are two together,
the tether releases you,
that binds.
you are of my kind - too
wary of the good things
lest they fade, which
they will
if you persist in
turning away
trying to replace
something that still
snatches as you, something
that has a hold
which will not release.

just remember this

i'm sorry i awoke you at three
to hear me sobbing, i
don't do it generally -
i needed someone to hold on to.
it's been years since a person
like you has been near.
or was,
as you're having a blast
running away

picture a forest of trees,
i
in a clearing watching
as branches tear at your clothing
and impede your leaving
i, standing motionless
as if stillness
could camoflague me

picture blackberry brambles
on the paths you're
wading through, because
clear and easy trails
are the most terrifying -
no telling where
they lead.

the mask

though it's not
my general style
i'm applying it all this time -
not because of you,
but to protect myself
from you.
it's like finding a mask
the eyeliner used like
the Egyptians did - black ovals
to protect against
enchantment
mascara, color to cover
my pallor

it's the small bits of armor
we wear which
affect us the most.
and this does feel like a battle
for the upper hand,
no matter how unintentional
the warfare is.

i wish we could both stand
on the same side of the line,
each holding the other up
until we stand straight, alone.
but you will not accept the support
you push me aside
and blow in the breeze,
wobble, fall, stand,
wash, rinse, repeat.

i even lie to myself

once i promised myself
i'd never feel this way again
i shut off all the proper circuits.
i shored my back
against the cul-de-sac
but stepped away
in an act of blind faith,
towards you.
with newly open eyes
i survey
this scorched earth
i stand upon.

what we reap

there is a part of me, and it is
not so small
that think you richly deserve
what you have reaped.
it is no consolation, this
pathetic end,
two hurting lovers incapable
of soothing the pain.

this morning i dreamed
of your family, and
i do not wonder why
you turn away;
i am more curious
as to why
you'd ever think she
wouldn't run away
from you.
why didn't you see this end waiting
for you to fall
just hard enough?
my fate, i knew
ahead of time.
these things, this
is what breaks a life.
leaving over and over, running
until you find someone
who will flee
from you.
turn your habits into hot,
blistering ironies
that burn your heart.

THIS is what you've done
to all those you have left behind.

freezing

the cold is not
from the milk i drink but
this sudden chasm
which has its hold
on my body - i feel
dizzy & i tremble
& feel sick why
do you avert your gaze
so avidly? why will
you touch every person in the room
but me?
no i'm shaking with cold but
that doesn't have to do with temperature
it is cold
because you've taken back
your sweet and easy intimacy
you will not touch me.
not until we are alone -
and you turn to me
as if i can answer your questions

and the only answer i have
is to this question:

are you in love?

mourning

i cannot decide
whether to let
this feeling cascade
into me
or not
let it touch me
at all

resist

[it isn't worth it
either way]

to let go
be let go

[or
to never
have grasped
at all]

just fine

it is what i do not lift
to my lips
that will tell you the extent
of my despair
and loathing.
what i will not consume
the strange passion
for counting, and lying -
no, not hungry,
just ate a bit ago, really -
i'm fine

rubbing it in

a layer of salt on the wound
is all i'm going to get
from you
so i don't mind that you're
not calling to tell me
why i won't do.
it is a relief; my inferiority
i know all too well, can plot
the timeline
of my mind's rise and fall -
the freefloating panic
and empty inertia of apathy

i know more about my
being unfit
than you give me credit.
so pardon your fucking trouble,
dealing with me -
some lost, fucked-up self
pardon my thinking
this time would be worthwhile,
that i
might have deserved this;
i erred.

i do not need you
to tell me
because i sing it to myself
with every solitary step
on the concrete,
each song i sing
to myself,
a lullaby
voice cracking
on the walk home.