goddamn but i want your poetry in my veins again like thunder under stormy skies and eyes upon us as in olden days when we thought we were so much younger than we really were.

my anger bubbles up and over sometimes and I long for your presence to diffuse my tempered steel, water to quench my just desert. just desert. your trees sway for me with you in them, branches dreaming of roots and vices versus us forever and another ever and a day like today, hollow but for emptiness.

salesmen of our selves we run rampant through whatever ramparts rise before us, braving battlements and raingutters alike for the sake of salvation and her gemstones. forget about whatever it is you think you lack, for you lack only me.

She fucked me until all the beer was gone from my refrigerator
and then the lonliness got the best of me.
So I learned how to subtly destroy myself
without anyone noticing,
with everyone thinking quite the opposite,
in fact or fantasy.

See, everyone always thinks the writer is so romantic
so capable, jovial, affable,
bullshit.
Anyone who actually falls in love with them,
finds out their little ineptitudes and daily failures,
begins a quietly adamant loathing,
a hate untouchable by change.

She turned my kite into a puppet -
strings severed, crossed, tied to my arteries,
bleeding out my ink to fill
a blank black canvas
with more black.
Usurping my page from my self,
my hand from my pen,
and my time from all my clocks.

But blue windows opened on my yellow eyes
drunk in the morning sun like syrup
through blindnesses drawn loose
so many pretty tales came walking
waking up my soul with coffee colored kisses
and I healed a bit
toughened a bit
forgot about a piece of my heart and kept
staying in one place while moving.

Last night the stars swallowed my upwards gaping mouth
as the steam from my urine coalesced with the smoke from my dangling cigarette
and my beer bottle beat out a pulsing rhythm on my thigh
to match the muffled whump of bombs.

I think
I am.
I think
I be.
I am, I be
I define.

my self subverts
evolves, disentigrates
it hurts
so I make a salve
from your arsenal of
batted lashes
wrap them around
my burning pain
whose ashes ascend to
some rendering of heaven
etched into your back

my sky bursts with crimson
orange and turquoise
you with jewels spread
over my thin thread
of a precipice
me poised to leap
into your shadowed
fading rainbow
translucently seducing
the light of my night

for some reason
my words wouldn’t
work for her

I gave her my
tongue and it came
back chewed

in someone else’s
mouth it could
not weave it’s magic

so I spit blood
down into the dust
to see the color of my soul

it came back to me in sepia robes
pressing a wet Arabic
in its cheek

I said to my tongue:
“I do not know your echo.”
and my tongue replied:

“hold me…
buy me a beer
and forget you ever met me

like all the other
walking haikus
you’ve put your penis in.”

I replied:
“you don’t talk cock
unless I tell you,

don’t you know God
made it officially illegal
in this state?

Besides, johnny cash’s
ghost is making
levi’s commericals

what the fuck do
you care who my
word/cock’s for

when the federal note
is fucking johnny’s ghost
into the ground?

this rainbow’s brighter
than any black
you’ve ever worn.”

my tongue and
my word together
in the same mouth

as homeless teens
hawk theirs
in alleyways

for less than
the pocket of
my levis

fucks for bucks
to anyone
who buys

the american way
american tongue
american cock

american haiku
american pocket
word mouth

my tongue as star
on reality t.v.
thinking it owns this desert


of televised fantasies
and bazooka joe
dreams

my tongue awakens
in Yankee stadium
two on two out

my mouth full
of counting
deceits

with race and base
place, space, the heat
heart and hate of the game

my disgusted
tongue spits
itself out

wondering on
the metal
in your mouth

wishing wet was happy
dark was rich
and words

were wings
in some mouth
of God.