without you licking my brain. scratching my surfaces with your eye lashes and not-yet-made memories. of fire cracker skin and imaginary snow globes. i find myself guzzling coffee. trying to find that feeling of the way your voice makes me race. like hummingbirds for heartbeats.

he screams and beats on doors from a couple of houses down. after i threw up the last vestiges of the dinner my best friend brought. tonight. from the short ride home. onto the expensive and now ruined bamboo mat i keep in the kitchen to hide the gross dirty linoleum floor of the kitchen my previous renters left. fucked. wrecked. she wants one thing simple. i know.

to leave her alone.

these late night hours. render me wordless. screw me. out of time and place. of night and sleep and never-wake. with my two hands. free. i wrench the lips of his mouth. fingers ply to lips and tongue. to not fight the shake of the skin and the shudder of the spot of the thing when its done. those silent stains that make bodies and eyes. teeth and laughter redundant.

on the way to work i follow a blind man wearing a hot-air-balloon-show jacket. contemplate irony with each boot step to ground. he turns to me, as i pass, smelling of morning whiskey and cigarettes and shouts: red. his eyes wild turned white like boiled eggs.

world time server

but i can't seem to figure out how to get to

now

i wonder if you can deal with this disease. this full stop mutant. me.

worded and wordless i curl up on the front porch with poetry and cold shameless late afternoon coffee. to be awake and aching with the awakening. i read one a half-dozen times, maybe more, to pause and say something else. shameless like coffee. greedy with heart pulsations.

you have always just arrived
you have always been here since the beginning

I'm staring at the screen trying to write about sheets and curved calves and the arches of backs. But nothing's coming out. Instead I'm thinking about trains and waiting for a phone call. Instead, I'm staring at Christmas lights. And thinking about decorating your leg. When these sheets lick the curve of the calf. The arched back. I. No. It's not there. Still nothing's coming out. I want to feed you with my hands. Stare at you for a thousand hours until I forget there are things called hours and time bends and folds and delivers us []. I am this hand on the back of your hand. Your skin to skin mutation. I am the mouth of your mouth when it laughs. I want to fold you like paper birds. Wings. Wing me. Fall me out windows and doors to fly and go. To let me out. To let you in. Go. go. Help me outscream lightning.

it's funny to hear you say my name. my real name. even if i cannot hear you saying it at all.

pocket me.
please.
enclose
envelope
me.

voiceless.

and unafraid.

Fighting off fear and feeling incredibly sad. I am listening to you. And your fast words. Your holding arms. I am fighting for safety. Sanity. Calm. The wonderful way life can bring change, when we let it.

for words and friends and never feeling alone

i've pushed the television stand up against the porch french doors. left the front room lights on. as if the glowering pulsation of late night television might drive anyone. off. i'm perched in the bed with my baseball bat and two hard cold shots of vodka. no where close to sleep. to dream. shoulders hunched. jaw pressed hard. i think. this isn't something i can't take. alone. i realize from memory. this is something that i hope i wake up from. alone.

tonight. i really hope i don't fall to sleep.

balled up on the floor. i lean temple to cold floor. squint life out of one barely open right eye. the black and white tiles. spinning in endless lines. diagonal. the smell of my own blood. the life pouring out of me like someone's stuck a knife down my throat. this is not a memory i scream to the radiator coils. hissing like angry cats.
this. is not.

a memory.

ate potato chips for breakfast
in bed
still wearing pink pajamas

what I would look like in the photographs you could take of me in that grey world I miss living in.

If I would be beautiful even if I were wordless.

there's no houses or accidental babies. no one pulling me through. here. only this feeling. this one way conversation madness. of wanting too much of something the opposing side of love has said it isn't interested in making any more excuses. for. my petty apologizes. and waiting. small crimes. for uninterrupted conversations about soul songs for headphones. and is that alright? yeah?

is that alright.
as the man says,
to give my gun away when it's loaded.
is that alright

with you?

Tripped to the store then steeped tea to sit on the sunny front porch and sip

doesn't think she's ever going to trust anyone
again

steadily becoming one of those days where, without immediate reason, i feel like crumpled paper. where it'd be easier to sit on the couch with the television talking and cry. instead, i'm going to wash my face and put on street clothes. and try like hell to get moving forward.

At the check-out counter, the cashier asks for my identification. She passes it back with the usual comment you don't look like you could be that old. I blush. Laugh. Express some words that meant to say thank you.

Clean livin', she exclaims, as she packs the very large bottle of moderately priced vodka and a pack of cigarettes into the sack, along with a few other insignificant items. The moment carried me and my groceries all the way home.

you always do that,this,etc
i think i'll be a happier woman
it's not that i'm the most positive person in the world
but i certainly don't intend
(even if i've slipped on the occasion
in reality
in the rational world
people hold me accountable to)
to define the people i most love
and who i assume are just as fallible as me
in
absolutes

not grappling for words so much these days
there seems to be
nothing
no insane image to bear
to wring out the distance
until we are left
with nothing
not the dull sound of the empty aluminum can
or the ache of a dull heart
i am not the thing that causes the twinge
between
your
anything
only the thing you only want to not do
the thing she always does
any longer
even this
doesn't wake
the words
that might

no

upon consequence
and excellence

you

don't make me feel like writing

anything