your gaping jaw

what the hell would you have said had you seen me in the evening
where i was and what i was doing and how it happened to happen.
what the hell. is that what you would have said? fucking rebounder.
is that what you would have said? or would you have felt nothing?

you couldn’t have felt nothing. i was your favorite love for so long
and the afterbirth still hasn’t slid out. there’s still love’s long labour
to finish before we can wipe the floor of our separate indiscretions.
but tonight i was a free man fucking like a free man. wild. i bit her
and she bit me back and her fingers are still under my shirt clawing.

what the hell would you have said had you watched me last night.
no no no that’s not him that’s not. is that what you’d have said?
it was me. all to human me to vow myself interminably to a spirit.

i don’t regret it. i shot you out of my body in spasms in heaves
and today you’re a thousand miles farther. a million. more.

your radio silence

keep under the radar like you’re used to. it’s your own damn life.
slide along radio silent while boats pass overhead. unoverheard.
lights off. you function better in the dark. that much i remember.
short words. caught breath. muted paranoia. fleece for everyone.

my bloody memory

this is the soundtrack to our movie. the songs we’ve collected.
that we are too human not to fall in love. all too damned human.
that we will lay ourselves down on strangers’ beds and play
imaginary love songs as they stroke fondle our faraway bodies.

this is the soundtrack to our movie. the mistakes we repeated.
over and over again and again to prove we were all too human.
when we laid ourselved down in familiar beds and made believe
we were lovers. i’m not so sure that we weren’t. not really.

this is the soundtrack to our movie. the sadness we’ve created.
that you aren’t god enough to return nor i god enough to admit
i would crumble like olympus if you said the words this evening:
i am all too human. i am flesh and blood. i am heart and memory.

your open secret

oh for the love of god would stop with the fucking cheerfulness already.
no one believes you. you don’t believe yourself. that makes everyone
and everyone says you’re pedalling faster than you should into a wall.
quit racing. even if you win you lose and if you lose i daren’t comment.

and for the love of god would just admit how fucked up you are. afraid.
tell me it’s my fault. i can digest it. admit you just don’t want to be alone
on your way to houston when the road stretches out past a dusty sky.
admit what you’re doing is a mechanism like all the others i have seen.

or are we talking about me. perhaps. but oh for the love of all that is holy
would you unhinge your jaw. start screaming how you can’t make it.
we all know it already.

our reasons

evening affords a birdseye view of awry and how we got there
and of course you remember. we fought over the price of shoes
new mexico air conditioning and moving to houston in the fall.
you’re not in texas nor am i vacantly expending electricity anymore.
think what we were fighting over/for. was it worth ascending cost?

maybe. i am ascending a cool evening searching for starlight
to pin down and call my own: there’s my perihelion or yours.
it reflects off the shoes i bought for fiftyseven dollars at that store
you recommended when the heel fell off my loveworn loafers.
think. what were we fighting over? i have the footwear asking.

it was the french girl wasn’t it. the one i loved before you came.
i don’t have the french girl but i have the shoes much the same as
you have your beer swilling accademic but don’t have houston.
may i call you darling? darling i am finding fuckall in the world now
except questions like what we were fighting over and fighting for.

your ambitions

agony ecstasy and your dreams. these are lows i never sink to.
no iceburgs ahead. crowline as she goes. steady hand in the till.
call me a cynic if you like but you’ll never do that thing you say
and that’s the difference between the two of us. you infected me
with the desire to do something anything at all and i’m shaking
the chills off still. but it’s almost gone. i’m almost free from ambition.

postscript. when you fly make sure it’s at night. you can fly.
you will fly. but don’t go as high as you can. it will bring you down.
and leave the moon alone. icarus never learned that lesson
but you might.

my theme (2)

these days i write only when i’m disappointed with the paths you choose
as right now you are fucked and fucker. to think you were all along.
why should that matter. you don’t read these words and we don’t speak.
we speak through others to others but not to each other like grownups.
i hear news rumbling like retreating thunder. storms passing as i sleep.

these days i write because i am all too human and you are all to human.
in our postapocalyptic paradise the towers are falling apart
with no one to spackle no one to mortar no one to do the hard work.
it was my choice i know. i still don’t regret. not here now ever.
but i am all too all too all too human. sometimes i look backwards
and forget who first shot on purpose.

my needle

again. again finger to nostril and the glass tube. razor blade chop chop
chopping in the background like the clack of teeth steel on enamel.
walking walking through a desert invisible walls. ah the good trip.
again. again finger to dial and the fibreglass tube. quartertone rhythm
to the edginess of finger. can’t quit now oh no almost halfway almost.
god what is he doing wrapping her round and round the post?
god will you keep her spirit able and willing when it happens.

again. again tighten the strap and slip like bugs under the skin. oh.
oh oh. do not love the violence of delivery. love the package.
do not love what you are so much as love what you do for me.
thats a lie. i love the needle.

your white flag

are you losing the breath to say heavy words and is it like fainting?
see you’ve done the right thing before to fuck me up real good
and leave my sadsack happy days ambitions in some gutter
while like a candle our love flickered ran low and puffed out.
you know the tango and how its steps stop your heart.
how the foxtrot goes and where your errant emotions will end up.

are you losing the ammunition to lay low heavy enemies
and is it much like a riverboat running out of steam? drifting.
see you’ve done good by me to kick me square in the balls
and leave my lackluster backbone crumpled inside some foxhole.
you know the march and how you’ll walk in circles in circles.
how the bagpipes deflate with anger at your white flag.

your insanity

look at me so wise. i can see the seed of something good sprouting in him.
i will be there when it germinates when it springs into the air swiftly
with fruit fruit more fruit. i needn’t love him for he is merely a project
(but i do don’t tell anyone oh the insanity what has come over me oh)
to work on and i am in need of a good project lately. it dulls the edges.
there is a seed of something good dying to live deep in his chest
and though he is not material i am building something out of him
(not a lover don’t tell anyone it’s a lover it’s anything but a lover oh).
who knows what will happen as the future turns brighter and brighter
and i water and water the ground i can hear a rumbling freight train.
oh my nearlover almostlover quasilover you are about to open.
(oh my legs the tendrils are you gripping me no the insanity no no
no no no the vision black thunderous no should leave can’t leave no
no no no my god you have forsaken no the insanity oh)