When you leave me
it will be my fault
entirely.
When you leave me
you will take with you
everything
in the kitchen cabinets
and everything
from under
the bathroom sink.
You’ll leave with
half of the bed,
(the warm half)
and several strands
of my dead hair
stuck to the soles
of your feet.
When you leave me
it will be because of my drinking
and my extreme understanding
of our misunderstandings,
my lack of compassion
my overcompensation
my dirty mouth and dirty mind
my open legs, open ears.
I hear every conversation
you don’t have with her.
When you leave me
you’ll take the steam
from the shower
and carry my morning sickness
under your arm.
This is my fault.
Please, take me with you.
I don’t want to be here
with me anymore either.

I wrote myself
into a poem
just to save you
the clean up
of what’s about
to happen.
I hear ink
leaves less behind
than blood.

My pain
is personal
and wet.
It leaves stains
on all the walls
and before they’ve dried
you draw faces
into them
with the tips
of your fingers.
Your fingers too,
are stained now.
My pain
is an electrical outlet
and the wiring
behind the plate
is faulty
and dangerous.
You put your fingers
in the socket
and wiggled
until the shock
set in.
My pain
is a paper cup
and it’s empty
on a windy day
and I’m tumbling
across the park green
collecting pollen
and bug teeth,
wings.
There was once in me,
wine
and the lovers
finished drinking
and were left with red
on their lips
and their tongues
which made it easier
for them
to set me free.

flowers on ice.

I’ll be home
after mid-night
so keep the flowers
on ice,
keep your heart
warm
inside the oven,
keep your hands
off the other girls.

I don’t need
to be fucked
I need you
to fuck me,
there’s a difference
in that.
I don’t need
my heart
to work properly,
I need my heart
to explode
inside my chest
and fill my body
with blood
and ooze,
there’s no difference
in that,
it’s all the same
if you think about it.

Acoustic Fuck Fest

start with
slow
snapping
strings,
add
simple-sugar,
shaking
smiles,
cigarette scars
and stir in
solid
stars,
stretched
stories,
slather
over skin
ignoring
the sulfur
scent,
soak
in the sea
and repeat.

Here’s how I’ll do it,
here’s how I’ll attach myself
to you.
My hair
through the eye of a needle,
the needle
through your skin,
a firm twist
of my head
will tighten our bond
and I’ll rest it finally
against your arm,
watching blood-drop
constellations form
like a light show
just for us.

A Love Poem You Can Complain About

There are caves
undiscovered
all over the world
with loves poems
on the walls
that were never
finished
because their
authors
were suddenly struck
with
the hearts
of their lovers.

I have seen
so many wonderful things.
I’ve been very lucky
in that way.
New York City
at midnight
is brighter sometimes
than the moon,
and flowers
when they are blooming
right in front of you
are so magnificent
that I’ve been made to feel
tiny and
grey
in their opening shadows.
And so there happens to be
a shadow cast over me
by your form
and in it I am humbled
and small,
but unlike the flowers
or the City
you take my hand
and force me to rise
with you,
stand next to you
and blossom along side of you.
I feel I belong
inside of your skin,
I’ve been very lucky
in that way.

A quick poem
before I run off
to masturbate 
to the thought 
of the needlepoint
hanging on your mother’s
kitchen wall,
the one just above
the stove that says
There Is Love
In This Home.
It’s covered in dust
which means either
the love has left
or the love
was never there
and I so badly
want it to be hung
in our kitchen
with the window
overlooking the garden
someday.  
The thought
of something so ordinary
and so false,
telling our visitors,
this is real, watch us kiss
out back
by the tool shed,
see?
There Is Love
In This Home
and outside of it too.
We can play along
just like anyone else.
Our friends fall for it,
but the garden is laughing
from afar.

Sitcoms

This whole place
smells like strawberries
and lemon
and chemical cleaners.
It sounds like sirens
and laugh tracks.
It looks like Bukowski
stuck drunk inside a fairy tale.
This place needs a shave
and a haircut
and a deep conditioning
of its soul
(which is crusted into the spaces
between the hardwood floor boards).
The flies ate the plants,
the spiders ate the flies,
and I’m sorry my love,
but I ate our dinner
all by myself.  The yams
and the cloves of garlic (whole).
There’s a sitcom
on the television and
she doesn’t love him anymore
which is as good a reason as any
to cry for a while.
Put the kettle on
while I take this shot of tequila.
Maybe the hot water
and tea
will burn away the mistakes
(and the dinner)
still sitting in my throat
to make room for something
sweeter.
If you were sugar
I can’t promise
that I wouldn’t swallow you
whole.

Dirty.

I’ve seen a lot of boys with dirt under their fingernails.  Dirt made of grease and shit and flaky skin.  Dirt made of blood and gravel and the wetness of some girl. 
I never much liked those boys.  I didn’t want those fingernails anywhere near me.  I feared I’d catch something, or worse, that the dirt would end up smeared across my skirt.  I didn’t dare think about the state of their beards, their hair.  What was crawling there (surely), was bound to have several legs and bodies you could see straight through.  Just thinking about it, I can see their insides, the milky white of their bellies and the coffee with cream shade of their brains.  Intelligent little things that could very easily see the benefit of jumping ship from this dirty boy onto me where my perfume smells slightly of lilacs and my teeth are filled with fruit.
So I would keep my distance from these boys.  Keep my glance down and my hands in my pockets.  Be sure to cover any small razor nicks on my knees. 
Until I saw you sitting on a sidewalk, that is.  In the city all alone, you sat back against a pile of books outside of a bookstore.  There were tattoos on your arms and there, of course, was the dirt under your fingernails.
I began to turn my head but something pulled me back to you.  I paused and began scanning (not truly looking, not registering) the titles lined up on the concrete.  I pick a large hardcover.  It’s Whitman and I flip to page 104.  I read a line on the page and then the ones on your face.  They’re similarly interesting and poetic so I say hello, ask if you like Whitman, because he’s pressed against my chest now.
Days later, you are running your hands along the curves of my spine and I grab your wrists, kiss them, and then plant my lips against the pad of each of your fingertips.  You run them through my hair and I feel the rough brush of your beard on my neck so I know your ear must be close to my mouth now.  My eyes are closed when I whisper that I love a man who knows how to use his hands.
And you do.  With them, you plant us a garden and chop garlic.  You wipe my hair from my face in bed and you pull my hips closer to you.  You squeeze lemons and limes into my liquor, you pull weeds. 
Suddenly there are callouses on on your palms that look like diamonds to me, mined from hard work, and they shine brighter from knowing where they’ve come from, and from thinking of all the places they’ve yet to leave their mark.

Dear Future Me, (as requested by: blankspage)

I hope it’s Autumn where you are.  Always.
And I hope that your hair
is a shade of silver that sparkles.  I hope it’s still long.
Do chandelier earrings peek out and shimmer
against that backdrop of grey
when you shake your head vigorously “no”?
You’re saying “no” more, now.  Your neck is sore
from saying it so much.  So much twisting
and it’s beginning to wear on your old spine
(it was never much good anyway)
but after so many years of playing the pleaser,
I’m happy to hear the crack of your bones
and to see the spiders legs at the corners of your mouth.
You’ve been smiling more.  You’re still wearing braids
now and then.  There’s a ring on your finger.
I have to say, I didn’t see that coming.  It’s silver,
at least.
The stone, imperfect.  It hardly shines.
It’s polished oyster shell, at best.  Pink in places.
You’ve married a man who actually cares for you.
He likes your poetry.  He likes your short stories
but he has a hard time seeing himself in them, though
he’s always there. 
The children in the leaves, the dark eyed ones,
they’re yours.  They have your play-ethic.  They’re jumping
and crunching earth.
Take your glasses down from your nose and look at them,
really take them in, covered in bits of ground.  When the rain comes,
don’t drag them indoors.  Let them become soaked through
with the sky.
Write your poems, your books, condition your hair,
kiss your husband good morning and kiss him, always,
good night.

I need
your voice,
mixed with
a metric ton
of gasoline,
half smiles,
half  moons,
and the whispering
of dying stars.
Ignite the tank.
I need your
flying skin
and bone
and teeth
and particles.
I need your air,
there’s none left here.
You can’t explode now,
I need to you
to clean the ash
from my hair.

Truthfully, I don’t leave my bed for long enough to write prose anymore.  I wake for short bursts and struggle through the haze of alcohol to remember the one or two pretty words that had flown through my head before sleep.  They must become a poem.  They cannot be expanded upon.  They were white birds and they are quickly taking flight, just trying to get their bearings on their clipped wings.  I think I may have gnawed them off while grinding my teeth during a bad dream.  

If I capture the tiny birds, the tiny words, the little white word-birds before they can fly up through the gaping whole in the ceiling (it had been burned there by a meteor that crashed into our bedroom two nights ago.  The sheets had been set on fire and I had never felt so warm.  It was the first good sleep I’d gotten in a while.) I will press them to an ink pad and press them to the wall.  I call them a poem, but don’t title it, and then as suddenly as I woke, I am sleeping again.  

The birds are always gone the next time I open my eyes, and their markings on the walls never make sense to me.  The walls are a mess that the landlord will need to paint over.  Several coats.