Hmph

I am sleeping in your chest,
not your heart or your head,
but your chest, chest of drawers
that you sometimes dump out
onto the floor.

Ice chunks, over here
we are, we are listlessly
listening or maybe just hearing
something that we couldn't be
kind to me.

untitled

and my stomach bubbles
I'm not quite in trouble
but it is coming

I see his physical collapse
a half-hearted aftermath
of years of neglect and rasp

my lips are tense tonight
while you're on a one way flight
sailing somewhere far from me

and you're pissin' out your mouth
while I'm here, sweatin' out the south
another night in the pine trees

a long A

you're kind of strange
but I guess you could say the same
about me

it's mother's day
and I wish I was you, babe
but I'm nobody's

your middle name
is a word that I can't say
I'm sorry, honey

I feel ashamed
from your gaze, should I refrain,
sway or stay

hi, hi, hi, hey
I'm glad you're not me
hi, hi, hi, hey
I'm glad it's not Sunday

make up your mind
or I will just take mine away
all right, baby

a small price
for such a large and lovely stain
is it that insane?

wash it away
the bleach won't sting past yesterday
inching down the drain

your voice strains
but it's still living inside my brain
for at least one more day

moving fast

and my head is a beatbox
too irregular to be a tick tock clock

baby, this boat don't rock
if you want out I won't stop
you'll have to jump, belly flop
I've got no time to gather moss

or seaweed or anything
no time to walk around in your whisky dreams
no time to push you in your mind's tire swings
I, I, I, I'm leaving

recovery

you said I was your favorite, you're lost and last only one
kissed me hard like I was some fire you were trying to put out
but I just burned on

all night I lit the walls of your bedroom, kept us from dark
glowed at you
baby, I wanted to

and that's the truth
I'm telling the truth

but now you're just living on the the back of my eyelids
and I can't stand to sleep
uncomfortable, now.

and I know it's better that it is over, I know it is better
that you are far away, no longer bogging me down,
but I just hate the feeling

that love can turn so bitter, that all those tender touches
were really just strikes.

How could you blow this match out?

beats me up

ring it back to me,
sing it back to me,
babygirl is lonely.

and your blue eyes
had some sort of mythical
flecks of brown and complexities
weighed down so heavy on me.

why'd you make me cry all these days
I know I'm not perfect
and you know you won't change

left me pity and pithy, with words to listen to
and the music turns me on, and the music turns
my head off

I just listen to the beat,
the heart beat,
but can't move my feet.

word tangles

these words were bread and butter on days when I could not eat
these words were hard thrust on days when I was wounds up
these words were long, long, arms on days when I was lonely

but today, it's not enough
but today, it's not enough

angered caress, restless, drawing in deeper breaths
and your heart lived beneath my breasts,
sinking deeper in my lover's chest

your eyes say it all, but you refuse
to let those words
come out your mouth.

Why I do it.

I know poetry is what I love because it's spiritual to me. When I sing I am worshiping. When I write I am praying. When I close my eyes and everything melts away but the tap in my fingers and the syntax beat in my mind, I am meditating. It's the closest to god I can ever get.

Free Write

I'm choking on the pine trees. The needles are green on the branch but they will eventually turn brown and cover me. Cover me like the forest floor that sleeps behind my sliding-glass door. I see through it but can't walk through it. The lake paints the ground blue, blue black at night like your eye after your brother punched you in the face and you woke up with a bloody mattress and you said you can't remember anything but I'm not sure if I believe that anymore. You wake up sometimes and just go back to sleep. And I asked your silver mirror what your face looks like and if you are the same now that you had your lights all punched out. But the mirror man didn't have an answer because he said you avoid him like he's cancer or the plague or something bigger than what he really is. He says you think that your mirror reflection will cause you to see something more and that you aren't ready to deal with that yet. But what are you ready to deal with? Do you ever really deal with anything?

I still miss drinking 40s with you, though, and the way you roll around on my couch after you sip warm absinthe and your hand runs down my spine but we don't kiss, we just sit and are silent and still and then someone walks in the room and breaks the air with some impeding talk and dismissive thoughts and I just want to go to bed but you can't go to bed when there are people in the living room talking and babbling and drowning the moment that we spent all night drinking to get to.

So I just go outside and smoke even though I really hate these cigarettes because they tether me to some redneck, white trash past. And I have spent a million years trying to convince myself that I am not that, that I am special and different and I don't like riding around in the woods and drinking bud light and I don't watch nascar and I don't even know what cotton plants look like even though all those things are false, to a varying degree, but still they are false.

But you know that and I know that so we don't have to talk about it. And I met someone new now and he makes me nervous but then I remember that I don't like being nervous and I just miss being comfortable with you in silent dark or weeping morning or whatever and you put your arm around me and you don't have to say it because we both already know it even though we pretend we don't and I'm happy I never kissed you because your face is all bruised now and I don't want that bruise to be me, too. And I bet I hurt you a lot already and I know you hurt me a lot already but I really can't remember who struck first, or why. Or maybe I can and that's what I'm blocking out tonight.

Tipsy Cheat Sheet

whisky's for when I'm with southern boys
with honey tongues
and sea lungs,
tan but charming.

tequila's for my Mexican friends
who squirt my eye like limes
and leave me,
on to come back again.

vodka's for my Midwestern men
pale and flavorless
they blend in
to anything.

absinthe's for the alcoholic who calls me
his green wing fairy, but takes it back
as soon as morning starts
and the night ends.

Alcoholic Men #42

You drink the whisky like it's water. We go swimming every night. You drink me as fast as you can. You let me go straight to your head. You get so dizzy and you fall so hard. You're spinning around in my bedroom, steadily still sipping, until it gets to be too much, you can't keep me down like this anymore. You can't stand how full you feel, how your stomach churns and flutters, how your head pounds, and you've just gotta get me out. And that's how I end up on the toilet seat, on the bathroom floor, splattered on the walls, but mostly just down the drain. 

No more grey.

goosebumps and the hair
pokes back through my skin.

you say you might leave, might
not need me.

but I'm not responding to your
half-hearted threatening
of half-hearted anything.

Do you, really?

you say, "maybe,"
but I know better.

three simple words,
but it's careless,
even if coupled with a caress
it's just parts on a mattress

it took a year, and it hurt
but if nothing else,
the one thing if I've learned
it means nothing if it's not earned

that word.

ant

and sometimes I just wish I was an ant
all tiny and black, slipping through the cracks
and no one could tell me anything, because
I wouldn't have ears, just antennae
and we'd walk in a line and not really
think, or at least not cerebrally
we'd march to the beat of some
silent drum

and I would lift so much, so so much
and I'd carry, it, too
and I wouldn't complain or anything
because that is just what ants
are supposed to do.

I'm the animal.

I will stalk you
not like a hunter
lusting after a deer

more like a bee
hoovering over
a strawberry flower

I'm gonna drink your nectar
like it was sweet, blushing wine
and baby, I just hope some of your pollen
sticks to me.

a little something

Chisel my face
whittle it back down
to you.

Heavy heaving walks
with me but I don't
hear anything.

You're the slipperiest fish
that I've ever known
you're the heaviest dress
that I've ever sewn

and I still remember when
you used to have a soul,
oh, I don't know, you say
oh, I don't know, your hips sway

living your life like a muscadine
crush, crush, crush,
as soon as you were plucked off the vine.

8/11

Brothers, I never had, instead
sisters in the park with pinkish
barrettes in blond hair, feather
curls whipping in southern wind.

Still, part of me liked toy trucks
and metal slides and basketball
hoops; the sort of adventures that
not just anyone can have.

But little boys can be so cruel,
spraying at me with stink bombs
and tripping me with wire in the
woods behind my momma's house.

Yet, something was always a bit
different when you were here, even
if your firecrackers were snapping in
my window on a heated Friday night.

And sometimes my best friend's
mother just didn't care, left for
weeks and we all kept the secret
-- kept each other close at night.

Afternoons boombox blasting on the
roof and I think that, for the first
time I felt a little bit comfortable
being a little more than different.

Aaron T and Aaron A, my brothers,
inside you were twins, and our
mommas were working together
in a chainsaw factory, playing
spades on the weekends.

We lit each other's first cigarettes
and went to bed with our heads
wet, but didn't give up on each
other just yet, not just yet.

You ran and got me a rag when I
sliced at my finger in woodshop,
sopped up what was red, raw, and
wrought, or so we all thought.

One week I left home but I had to
come back early, the highway had
captured one of your bodies and we
all wept but I can't even remember

I can't even remember what his
casket looked like, or what my
momma's looked like, or what
Aaron T's momma's looked like

I just remember that her ceremony
was closed casket and by then I
was glad for that, I had decided
that I liked it better that way.

So we spent a lot of time as smoke
clouds after that, lighting each other's
last cigarettes of the night, what once
had been play had became necessity.

Because you and momma met quick
ends on opposite ends of the highway,
because the road to our homes got
stained with something more than black

Because Debbie was growing sicker
by the day, because she threw away
all the pictures and lied to us and said
the end wasn't near, not yet, children.

Brother it has been six years, today,
six years full of mustn't and won'ts,
six years full of doubts resting on
some dusty, black, country road.

And I can't say I'm better this way,
I can't lie and say it is all for the best,
but I can say we lived through and that
at night, I can still feel your breath.

So today I will go to the woods
behind your momma's house and we
will chase the dogs and not gaze
at the highway at all.

one more from high school

You're such a perfect boy now
Such a perfect man, now, I might say
But I must confess
You're so much better when you're unsatisfied

Because I never loved you more
Than when you were flawed and fruitless
Young but useless
And when angered, ruthless

I never knew you were beautiful
Until I saw the tears in your eyes
Trapped inside a hard, hard shell

No, I couldn't love you more
Than when you are cold and desperate
Waiting for the comedown in the back of your car

No, I couldn't love you more
Than when you're body is soaked
Standing in the shower with all your clothes on
Just letting to water run down

No, I couldn't love you more
Than when you're fast and breathless
Yanking off your necklace
Hurling it into the nearest garbage can

So curse the girls that make you hurt
And bring back your warm, if reluctant embrace
Lay your body down in my bed
And I'll just sleep on the floor
I will just sleep on the floor

I listen to you breathe
Counting the seconds between the ins and outs
Making sure we didn't get ourselves too strung out
Making sure we didn't take too much this time
Making sure we didn't kill ourselves this time

my lovely lost ones

Your face - it slowly fades
It looses its clarity a little more each day
I thought I'd burned your image in my head
What I thought was a memory
Is now a scar, instead

Your voice - it slowly fades
It loses its meaning a little more each day
I thought I'd carved it into my ears
But the oceans of my thoughts have eroded
over these past few years

At one time I could see your face
At one time I could hear your voice
At one time I could feel your breathe
Hot and gentle on my neck

At one time you were always there
In the wind, in my hair
I thought I could hold on to you forever
But my memories have been severed

I want to be the music coming from your headphones.

I wrote this (and the thing beneath this and the thing above this) in high school, found and redrafted them all today. You can tell this one is from high school because no one listens to CD Players anymore.


You are quiet and alone
The way you like it, blocking out the world
Concentrating on your work
and the music coming from your head phones
I watch you quietly, pretending not to look

I Peek out at you
hiding behind my book
I see the outline of your chest against your shirt
your rounded fingertips gently graze the pages of your text

Your touch seems delicate but powerful
I can feel your pulse rising through the air --
thick and electric;
You don't even know that I am here

Or maybe you do
It's so hard to tell with you
perfectly alone and comfortable with yourself
resisting the distractions of everyone else

Text books and CD player
the only things you need
You don't see me
You won't see me

I want to be the music coming from your headphones
filling your head with thoughts unknown
I want to be the words in your text book
your gaze fixed upon me so intently

Your fingers grazing me with their powerful grace
I want to be the slight smile on your face
the words that spark an interest in your brain
the words that take away all that pain

I'd get my own headphones
But I know that all I'd be able to hear is you
So why bother
All I want is you

All I want is to be the music coming from your headphones
Please, tap your pencil to the rhythm of me.

Meet me at The Majestic.

Meet me at the majestic
Meet me at the old place
Where we sat beneath the stars for a few moments
As the younger ones walked by laughing

And if I was ever broken
You were the only person who could ever fix me
You arms were screwdrivers
Your voice was needle and thread

You warmed me up
Without a single touch

If you keep holding my head
When it threatens to roll over and fall off
I'll keep on keeping you
In my head twenty million times a day

But who I am kidding
I'd do that either way.

Hmph

I wrote, what I think is, a really good prose poem but some things are just too personal. Boo.

Just another draft

Ethereal, you don't say
you can make the words float
but at night, you won't.

And I felt you all warm and dark
on my skin in the park

And I felt you all hot and bothered --
bedroom fodder

You know so much more than me
but you'd like to think
you don't know anything
no, no.

He calls me artist, what a farce
I'm just a hot, hot mess
with an unpainted face
in a cotton summer dress.

and it's layers, like a painting
covering up the last to get to the next
sacrifice the beginning
for a new ending

but I don't feel the same
but I don't feel the same

I'll let it flow back into me
I'll let you sing, sing, sing
but I'm barely listening

This time not focusing on the words
but just the melody.

I'm washing you out of my hair
untucking your name from my underwear
oh, no. oh no?
Just go.

the jump [automatic writing]

the moment you step off the cliff and feel yourself drift into a pile of empty beneath you you lose the fright and the anticipation of what was to come, what is coming now, and you don't fear it, you don't feel it, you just are it. You don't want it and you don't wish for it to stop it just is, it is just there and you are just here and you don't know how it happened and you don't care. It's like the moment after orgasm and your head is empty and you are floating but not really floating just existing but not even that and not even breathing because you took in a sharp breath just before and you can't let it out now, now can you? No you can't think to do anything and your head is just black -- not soot black or ash black or bad black, just empty black, transparent black. And if every moment could just be this moment then you could be so different, you could be so free, you could be so anything. But you hit the water or the ground or whatever's beneath you and it's over. You're gonna have to climb back up if you want that moment again.

argument #147

Yes, of course, tonight
is a big, big fight.

I was purring but you were growling
crumpling me up like a browned old
paper sack.

The light creeps in; it's the morning hour
and you are flinging me around, breaking
my back.

You won't mean the words tomorrow but
I'll still remember every thing you've said --
you can't take it back.

If you touch me tonight, a bit too harsh
I might do something surprising, this time
I might fight back.

something short I will revise later

your voice rings empty
like an old telephone
clank, clank, click
nobody's home

I'll be, keeping your head above water
I'll be, keeping you close to heaven
I'll be the newspaper on your floor
The lock on your door
A book you read but don't understand
A scar dug deep in the palm of your hand

Redraft of some old shit

We ran out of matches before it was time to strike
We're rubbing sticks together hoping this might turn out right
But all the smoke signals spell the wrong words
And the flame just won't burn bright
Like it did last night

I tied you into the laces of my shoes
And just ran, ran, ran, not knowing what else to do
Pinned you on my shirt in an effort to keep you close
But you squirmed out, right under my nose

untitled at the moment

and he was steam,
hot and clean.

oh babe, you're a charmer
a disarmer of all the armor
I've been wearing around the house
like a cross on a necklace

all my troubled years,
he couldn't give a fuck
my fondness of beer,
he thinks he's in luck

and I'm starting to believe he is.