my frailty

i should be asleep: these three pills should’ve knocked me over.
but you know why i’m still here stringing words one after another.
it’s because i have nowhere else to write them. except here
anonymous to my former lovers and friends who have left me.

when i let myself i miss you so much. i should not have left you.
should have bit the fucking bullet. should have shut the fuck up.
shouldn’t have told you about the french girl and how we lit
new york up like a million watt lightbulb. you have both left me.

i am all too human. not that i want to be but that i am. human.
frail and prone to fall off the wagon. faithless failing falling.
shouldn’t have ever met and loved you on sight five years ago.
should have turned the fuck away. should have left you then.

your victory

august 24 is my birthday. finally things roll around: another year
of searching for something anything at all. somewhere to stand.
you are putting people in awkward positions. don’t you see that?
you are posing them between the two of us: this is no battle.

august 28 is our anniversary. remember how we were one last year.
but my back is broken from lying on the floor. i feel like two.
i feel like you. playing people like chess pieces. fuck you.
life isn’t a game to be played like you can’t wreck people.

august 32 is when we get back together. fuck you. fuck you.
my stomach lining eaten by your reflux your reflexes.
you are acting the goat. stupid idiot lover with your ideas
that only if you have the most friends you’ve won something.

my dream of flame

there’s an empty place set when playing at tables and candlelight.
there’s a hollow in the old mattress ready to be junked but not yet.
there’s a box full of monody and masks playing manequin by the fire.
there’s an ageold singsong canticle written on the backs of envelopes
all saying: i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you
i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i do.

there’s a linebreak to catch a lung to catch a backbone to catch an
anything at all and call it plaster over the bareboard peeling walls.
this house is all to human with reminders of you. should be staked.
four wall blackmail and a match. swish sizzle sulfur smoke and burn.

my scar

i’ve washed you off me your musk off my lips sweat off my chest
picture off my nightstand. but behind my eyelids pictures rotate:
how we grew familiar and knew each others’ bodies like a swiss
clockmaker knows gears. you remember that look i gave don’t you
when you knew i’d reach and set you ticking if not for our friends
crowded round us. you remember your faltering moves undercover
when i taught you to tango with me in our three four rhythm.
you remember a bloody sheet an agonized flush across your chest
the way you tugged at my lip and gasped and tried to make words
and dug your nails into me wherever you could and begged begged
begged me to stop whatever it was i was doing and i wouldn’t.

you are the only woman to give me a scar: look at my arm here
just above the sleeve where your teeth broke through like claws.
you are the only woman i can barely shake off. i wake some days
and imagine you on top of me grinning crookedly at the thought
of torture to follow. i wake some mornings and imagine you there
like a three four rhythm and remember how we talked politics and
religion and all sort of things lovers are supposed to pause for.

you are the only woman i can barely wash off. jenny love of my life.
now in someone else’s bed. i miss that territorial way you had
as if i were yours alone to look at and the way we found buttons
and pressed them at will. i miss your hipbones and your nipples
and your neck and your toes and how you sometimes screamed
then made me scream with you.

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.