I write the words radiator cap so many times on a torn sheet of lavender paper that it stops making sense. While I wait. The not-silence of the open line makes me want to kill myself. During all the conversations I've had with people about nothing. I keep dreaming about dogs. And the wide expanse the noise of metal on metal makes. When it hits. Deep under the bed of lower right teeth. And sometimes at night when he's asleep. Nothing but the lackluster bedroom air between bodies. I stare at the shape that should be his face. Until he turns to me. Unreal. And all those horror-shows and roses turning brown in vases settle down like a dead lover's weight in the chest. Sucked to sink and lie waiting. With the scent of rotted wood in the nose. When all I want are sour lemon kisses and strong palms on backs and the occasional middle-of-the-night-fuck. As if rocking like boats might make a morning come to find me sleeping safe. In a dream where you not torn into blood and guts pieces when I am chains and teeth rattling. Circle me. Please. Tear me unafraid.

the night before the year begins
and time loses us like old phone numbers
we watch the empire strikes back
and when the disc skips and we have to switch it off and i am anxious for the day and stupid-love-headed
i only yell
leave me alone . . . i'm going to hoss
running around the living room like an 8 year old
even though i mean the ice planet, hoth,
and not the guy from bonanza
until you drag me across the carpet by my ankles
and we laugh so hard
that i forget myself
and that the edges of you will start deteriorating soon
flashes of our images
like this one
to hold on the tongue
in between

an adrenaline junkie
there's absolutely no way around it
i don't dive out of sky borne crafts
or shoot myself up with needles
but when i watch a series of shows
about violence
my vocation
and then the paranormal
and the sleeping body in the other room
taps and taps on the divide between
knuckle to soul shiver
it's a match to set the fire
to a night filled with anxious legs
and a body that doesn't ever know what to make of itself
medicated
or not
there will always be the rush of
me
inside
compulsive itinerant nightmarish glimpses
of how i can't settle
when the poison posits itself
like an intention filled goblet in a god damned Shakespeare tragedy

right now, no matter what i do, i just wish that i didn't feel so scared
of my own chemistry

this really is what it feels like to be crazy
and to crushingly comprehend why it is that you are so

to me at night she comes. wet parchment paper filled moments. only the errancy of her laughter --. a peel. a stuck key in a memory. struck. and when i wake to coffee morning. cold sheets and the reluctance of moving a body dead. suck ghost for air. and cling. like someone set the thing on fire. i say it again. in spanish. to the not-grey walls of the room. where the bed is too big. all day long. cama del amor. roll the locked tendon left bicep. finger tip to thumb. inside. incisor. strung. like ropes around us. to vide.

there's no language to say i miss you. as much. only the vacancy of the life like the space in a bed left by an old lover you now hate but still think about all the time which in some small way like a rock in the toe of your shoe when you can't stop to clear it out only makes you want to hate yourself a little more with every waking breath if you did that kind of thing. which of course. you don't.

we've suddenly switched to cinnamon toothpaste
he says it's just for a change
but who can really know
for sure

it's 100 odd degrees where i am
right now
not in this room
but just on the other side of it

this is the first time i've been alone
with myself
for more than a few minutes
in months
i thought i'd need the television to stop the ache of silence
and i did consider climbing on top of the bed
to moan the way the wind goes

instead
i didn't