Teaching a Toddler(A woman-child?) the Manners(Manipulations?) of Love(Jealousy?)

please dont drink with her please dont think with her
something can happen some things i can do better i think
that i think better i think those things can happen
between you and between us things happen different than
the differences between you and that child, that girl
if you please please me first please

excuse me do not forget me excuse me no neglecting me
recuse yourself from all social niceties if you will
that require your nice manners, that refuse your nice & neat neglect of an ex
lover love her? lover it's unexcuseable
excuses are to me the lover's niceties of neglect

i beg your pardon darling please pardon my vanity
the tenacity of my unpardonable envy is begging
for the salve of you pardoning yourself from seeing an old darling
who is going to beg for the pardon, my king, of that wound
(on your chest) i pardoned myself from life to be a salve for
part based on you darling, part based on your pardon of my audacity

oh i thank you oh how i will for all things thank you
the blank hues of days you thank her for filling i will shade in
in shady willow tree caves i will thank you for the hue
of pointsettias poisioning your cheeks oh thank god for you

Apotheosis

Through plump porcelain
fingers ringed with gaelic grandmother's silver
and hardy long nails whose DNA are shot through with
cocaine and the dust of cowboys riding off to chase
injuns on TV screens and girls with bigger dreams
like triple D breasts this girl thing looks at me
and says its the touch, its any touch, its like
she's found the Cerberus to cork her nitrogen bottle of lonely
and it's touch and it will keep those shades in sohelphergod

I think desire or quelling it
works as well as dousing blue vibrating electricity
with water then wading in water so blue
as the lakes in north country and screaming
at the flagellation of poison coursing through
the maze of veins when those snakes that can
swim so sperm like up and through waves for days
and bite her right on her heel its like if we love her
we must fling bouquets to the wind and save our baby girl sohelpusgod

Through pulsating cayenne
hair ringed with grandmother's gaelic curls
and fetus sized wrists whose boniness grinds like
powder under an apothecary's beat and the dust that coats
your patriline because great great granddaddy drank mint juleps
with his feet propped on sooty scorched skin and courage
propped on his mother's womb this girl thing looks at me
and says its the touch, its any touch, its like
she's found the mouth that will blow the rank stench of a tomb away sohelphergod

I think this cartilage idiocy
catches as well as a poacher's trap catches
like the hammer of domesticity catches a most lovely
loving woman in the act of lipstick on the collar on the boxers catches
in the pores of grayish bloated mushrooms dank musty rainwater catches
on the snags in girls' cotton rigidity something like
when daddy brushed our hair he never knew how
but we laugh while our scalp sears and its like because he loves us
we must kiss rapiering stubble which grates us raw as pork sohelpusgod

Although viscous turquoise
eyes like yours stroked with the wrinkles of aged papyrus
and a form erect as Priapus whose vellum danced with
coarse musky hair waving like reeds headiness that
punches pow right in the think of all i have left
and demolishes me boy man god thing looks at me
and i don't need the touch, its not the touch, it's like
a harvest abundance when he pushes thermal oxygen out of his mouth pufff
when we are loving and from that I know weather ohthankyoulover.

the cop car roars by and ordains himself a liar
strands of my black hair fall fast and i call myself
the ugliest
i would claw at my face's windowframe like so many
wheels clutch at potholes but
my fidgeting hands are full with two bruised
persimmons, forlorn from their fall off
the tree
i bought them when i couldnt buy my reasons
for roaring up the interstate, pushing on
the clutch as desperate as my thighs push on your
ruddy ruby red ears
i stopped when i sold out my standing at the university
and bought these persimmons, sandpaper felt wet dreams on
the tongue
and crouched in the shadow of a meadow behind
the fruit stand
in fresno. imagine my surprise when orange silky skin
scuttles away from prying fingernails, opening like
rotting wet floorboards. i like it, this pulpy glove
sliding down my arm
the weathered brown face languishing beneath his straw hat and
the fruit flies didn't seem to mind when i
whisked my hand over the stand for a couple more
he didn't wake up, anyway i would have gotten them any way
i could to fill that wicker basket you picked out because
thank you for
the hows of
no the ways which

no you just remove the pit lodged between the buds of my breast
when you kiss there like so, like feathers, like a quill
puncturing the roaring rot of a seed
you pull me out so delicate

"the trees have their loves through they're different from mine"

a pretending like that would work
like taking the gremlin doubts that lurk
in my mind and snorting them down into my mouth
chewing them up and squishing them out
through the gaps in my teeth like tender
titian yams, all dull pumpkin spice.

a pretending like that would serve
like the way i dished up the curve
of my shrunken breasts in a boned corset
deluded, that, these were the roundest your tongue had met
truly though its a presentation hiding my womanhood
a sagging secret like a bar of soap in a stocking

a pretending like that would pervert
like sloshing around in mud and dirt
uncapping a jar, trying to capture the breath
of crimson tuberroses, light powdery and bereft
of weight. i hate that the thorny can smell this
waltz on the wind too, so i pull out the roots.

a pretending like that would incinerate
the feathered masquerade mask i would bait
a fire with, that big venetian spectacle you wanted
to wear on the town, so daunted
by showing us perfumed ladies your cherub face.
i would take it away to take away what would hide you.

a pretending like that would water down
a piece of your peace of mind, contrast like the sound
of uncapping your maker's mark, wanting to make a mark
on the tension of boyhood and tasting that dark
amber, which is just diluted now, because i like
your hands how they are. sober, crystal, unshaking.

or it could be (please please be) that pretending
she never sewed the frayed woolen lining
of your cold country solitude, that she
never came before me, it could be
as harmless as furtively clipping your nails.
maybe you couldn't play that guitar anymore but

you look so secured for me when you play bach.

Cherubim I'm Sorry but Thank You

If my nose were my child, the most valuable advice I could bequeath upon my aquiline little darling would look something like this:

“Poems and sneezes and bees and murmuring mornings will mislead you to think that roses will always offer you a powder perfume light as gossamer wings. I know, beloved- it seems as if one day, all the cherubs took a break from rolling around field of strawberries and stopped splashing in fountains of wine and visited Earth. Eagerly, wonderingly, these little babies –much like you!- popped into the most glamorous and bustling of metropolises, curious and energized at the spectacle man makes of himself. Yet, upon witnessing only terse acts of loving and the most disheartening acts of brutality, the tourist cherubs could not help but blush! Their round nectarine cheeks turned fiery red, a soft pink, even yellow with comical nausea. In the really extreme cases, blood fled their cheeks altogether and fled back to their enchanted nursery in the sky, leaving their faces a pearly white. There was no need for their cheek-blood to flee so hastily however; the disheartened and awoken little angels fled quickly after, scared of what they could possibly see next. The only evidence they left of their excursion? Their cheeks! Marked so, soiled really, with the shock of the ugliness of the human world, the cherubs never really wanted to wait for the sweet nectarine color to return- and definitely did not want to take this in-your-face reminder back with them, to a dreamy world of innocent hedonism and clouds of pillows and nectar. They left their cheeks behind and we called them roses. Imprinted on them always will be the light dust of the clouds that you will always desire, my dear nose.

But remember! The most injurious expectation you can have is that a rose will always be wearing this fine fragrance coat. You see, you should know better than anyone the importance of having nice breath! With this desire in mind, the blowing wind dusts off and picks up the rose’s perfume, stealing it and swirling it around its mouth and blowing it all over the Earth, in hopes that people will forgive his icy wind chill and irritating impudence (his favorite activity being to lift up women’s skirts and playfully peeking underneath, you know).

So treasure your moments with cloud dust when you can and remember something more selfish stole it first if you find a naked rose.

Your turn, Kandinsky

you wear cruelty like a color
a thick butter of it just hovers
on the twists and the lines
of your rigid form. It dines
on girls using forks twisted at right angles.

but don't misunderstand me, love
i sorted the science of it above
the restaurant, in the attic, remember?
through pasta with bloody red marinara embers
i told you i was leaving to Argentina.

two things happened right there, right then:
a swig of that shit wine thatd put some men
to shame and indifference coloring your face
at a soldier's march, a condemned rebel's pace
and you requested a leather wallet, "they cure well there."

and that was that until it wasnt
when later you whispered we mustnt
make too much noise as you laid me across
your cool sheets the color of straws
and your baby blues were murky and oily.

oily with greasy apathy that shimmered on top
of you and your skin until it seemed to drop
off your lashes onto your square solid wrists
and THEN then then then i tasted the twist
of how you, you swirl, you feel in colors.

how crimson is every single shade of red but
and titian a mangy magnificent mutt
of it all! all! all! except that sunniness
which it can't take under its wide hoop dress
like the rest of its grandchildren colors.

Marx were you ever in love?

i become the worst pig of a capitalist
when it comes to owning you
i want you i want you through and through
you have lived gold's worth and i have missed
it all until only pearly days ago

but i would pay more for this moment than any other:
the moment red slapped your cheeks in anger
and found your thoughts so warm she chose to linger
on the chamois of your cheeks as a rosy cover
dancing in a blushing waltz so slow

Short-Order Cook to a King

you lowered your mouth to mine, first,
head lowered like a bow, lips straight mine pursed
like a little girl playing bergman
(no, kelly) and i thought that might happen that night and
so i tucked bits of ginger into my teeth
i bought from the stand on Tudor street
because you luxuriate in having that bite in your soup.

i thought that might happen every night until that night
so i tasted like ginger for a while, watching your height
get smaller and farther as you rode away, in late cold dark
and resolved to get some other flavor and make my mark
on the loops and furrows of your boy brain.

but ginger worked until it didnt anymore
and you came around until you didnt for
a while and then it was time for fiery peppermint
fresh sticks of it i stuck in my pockets until it stuck in the lint
of my pink coat. you tried tongue for dinner once, mine,
and winced at its fire, liked it just fine
said it reminded you of cigars and royal crown whispers.

until one raucous evening when i swapped spit
with a towhead yelling skinny thing who couldnt sit
still. That was when we hadnt spoken for a few weeks
and you mentioned books and business and my cheeks
were salty all the time. but i took a brave break from
my sea and went out on the town to the artist's slum
warehouse. he, that blonde, tasted like nicaragua and oranges.

citrus tasted like relief to me and, figuring
you had been missing because you were configuring
messes of minds like ours, i thought you could use some orange, too
a woman's attempt at getting your mood to sienna from gray blue
and then you'd know know know i can bring quiet.

so i bit a golden sun in two and found you two at the bar
a deflated you and your southern whiskey, neat, at the far
end of the room. your murmurs were of disconnect distance
but so intimate i forgot how your absence meant resistance
and showered your sandpaper neck with sugary titian hellos
where were you downcast prince, your humor so marked by the gallows?
you said you liked citrus, then ordered yourself some fried plantains.

fruits go moldy until you rang my bell and pounded on my door. I am unprepared
and you are regal with quiet demands and can hardly muster some care.
now you have shown up here on my door early morning, fog gray
cinereal dove early, and ask so sharply why i taste, taste, taste! that way
your velvet baritone boxes my ears with its lush disgust.

Without pause to pepper my bitterness- in truth?
This taste is the taste of wanting you.
my tongue sweats sadness feral with reeking lust
my gums don a coat of grime tailored from your dust
and my breath? a stale hops catacomb of decay
its longing that keeps me from brushing gossamer cobwebs away.
but you are here now, my love! there's some rosemary i've been saving to chew just for these very moments i get to spend with you.

If I was old you'd make me young

I never felt as
romantic as that fall day
when i rolled around

in damp musky hay
muffled by the sloshing sounds
of moonshine and rain

those black boots i found
victorian leather and
steel eyelets so black

kicked off to the side
sagging to the side Van Gogh
hidden by more hay

the bottom started
talking one day, flapping its
big flat gabbing mouth

and it wasnt til
you came along that i thought
to fix them and wear

them out on the town
as we waltz through puddles and
hide behind wet oaks!

Winter yours

Winter you’re the lover who taught me how good it feels to be cradled in a chokehold while being fucked. Sometimes there’s so much of you going on all at once. Sometimes your foggy breath and dripping sweat are salty like the sea near my town and its lovely, it blows all around me as you blow into my neck so rough. But sometimes you thrash too wildly about and it’s strange because I know you’ve done this so many times before. When this happens and you start gauging me with your wet tongue I wonder when it will be over and remember why I don’t shave my legs for you in particular like I will for the sensuality of your brothers. But then you always remember to choke me Winter and its insidious too. Your cloudy fingers tinged with gray work their way across the skyline of my collarbone and shoulders and wrap themselves around my vocal cords. Sometimes you’re softer than others but I like it most when I can’t shake it off even the next day. When you choke me like that Winter it’s like blacking out and all your thrashing isn’t even noticeable anymore. When you grab my throat like that Winter all I can feel is you moving in and out and around my flesh and bones. Sometimes in all that movement there’s a black space of swallowing movement really and you Winter feel warmer than all the rest when you do that.

tonto

the man i know who loves me second most is teaching me that i am the kindest woman around town until i know you know it and then i become as hard and callous as a callous on that romanian woman's feet, the one who lives up a few feet in the upstairs apartment and has trouble walking a few feet because the skin on her feet is so tough and rough. hi yes my brutishness is just disgusting and i have about as much wherewithal as she does to hide it- the kind of wherewithal that diminishes with time. i care care so much about the way beings care but that being said its only the care thats being brought into being by how much their care can please me. which, admittedly, knowing my appetite, is pretty damn limited.
simply enough though despite this tough im simple as they come, i would say. see foods i find delicious must be high in fat, see, peanut butter, see, avocadoes. i order the same thing at restaurants and i go to the same restaurants and it never feels the same and i revel in that same. erica jong is my lady and we have afternoon tea at three quite frequently by my window on that dark red sofa. i like watching pretty boys undress and sometimes when they undress their thoughts like so many of their shirts and trousers i will listen sometimes. it's like winning a battle and losing a war.

Plath Syndrome

i am the woman that will not wash her hair for days and
i am the woman that will come out looking like marie antoinette as a result and
i was the child that read a book or two a day and mimicked the greats in her mama's mirror and
i was the child that wanted to leave babydom and cross the moat as soon as their heads were turned and
i will be the mother that loathes sucking her husband's cock but stays for the steady
scratch that repeat rewind alright optimism let's try again i will be say it
i will be the mother that languishes in the countryside with her little loves by her side and
i will be the mother that cooks cakes and bakes pot roast and adores it and him with his manhattans and
i am the woman who will make these manhattans although
i was the child that drank too many of them but
i will still be the mother who can make them

even if i dont want to

ren

I know a man that
makes it alright to put hype
and breathtaking, in

the beautiful sense
of the word and feeling and
feeling good for it

for putting the two
together as if theres no
other way but his

christmastime i love
you and you and that which was
you, delicate hype

an old testament sort of evening

i just had a stroll with jacob of old
i threw my words and burns at him
and he listened, jacob of old
and he was tired because he plants trees all day
and he was dusty but he dusted the dirt away
and hes got a direct line with god
and he figured that i needed ice cream birthday cake style
i just had a stroll with jacob of old
i threw my eyes up in relief because he says god says

i'm gonna get better soon
i'm just gonna have to leave that shit alone

the word replacement doesnt exist

i know im in a bad way when i want to be in a bad way and living off air and smoke and black liquid seems like a good idea and the sneaking suspicion starts that maybe ive been missing out on whats in all those pretty crystal bottles that everyone else gets to drink but not me never me but maybe me again just maybe.
its just that either way and no matter which way i twist it im broken any way i shape it anyway so whats the point of trying another way than the way i knew for so long, i mean, thats my way any way and no one would blame me for going that way its the alcoholics way its the junkies way and its a certain way i know well
its just that i already feel so grimy on the inside and i like continuity i want my insides to match your outsides his outsides her outsides but i just stay grimy and i know how to make my outsides grimy right quick and right to the quick of it
at least then i knew where the sad came from it came from wanting to be gone and the gone not coming fast enough but coming coming coming nonetheless this way im just waiting to be hit by a car or beaten at a bar or go down in an airplane real far trying to get out of this fuckin lonely loveless town full of books and academia and essays and mean boys who will fuck you just to reach in and grab your heart and swallow it whole and walk out the door satisfied with the blood drippin down the side of their mouth.

or ill just read faulkner and pretend im in the south with a love and the wind will bellow and billow real warm around us and ill get that same feeling i used to get in my gut from that flask of cognac me and my little imp used to carry around. cause there was nothing like it, nothing like those cold still days or nothing like the drugs or nothing like her my dearest friend my other half that stuck that rusty needle in my back. still, theres been nothing like it. maybe the south will heat things up again.

he has no problem
picking books over naked
small hands, my tongue, soft

i have no problem
picking him over me my
peace ebbing away

please god please let me
leave it alone this time i
have learning to do

too

to her:

i carry on this affair because i know that in the depths and the roots of your hair
you'd kill for this kind of affection and a section of my nights are freed up for dalliances
(and i can hardly stand to not be filled up now and again any way anyway
(like a car in need of juice to go go go it's kind of the same with me) )

and when we're sitting on the moldy plywood dock and wearing 1940s charcoal blue smocks
i always get the feeling that we will start reeling with anxiety if i don't keep up the chatter
and so i do what you do so that i know what the blue of your dress feels like
and then my girl and i have something to unfurl and dissect and chatchit about for some time

because when it comes down to the brass tacks and brown of it all
i'm just trying to scrub and bleach away afternoons with each rub and toss of our body
the our that's happening right now, there's no consistent right now our you know

do i really really do i i do really really i do i do i have to do this again? again? again? again?
not again.

he swivels his hips and
brings me doughy bagel bits
the way saint paul could have
if i could have
gotten him to love me

The Automaton Breaks Her Hibernation

YOUR MOLASSES ONE
DOLLAR STORE cookie dough love
is dull, dull, dull, dull

give me my baby
blanket immaturity
any joy filled day!

my lady told me
about some boy who would bike
for that damn pussy

outside i might like
things to seem tea and crumpets
but girls want to FUCK

Thanks Gertrude

They say, so they say, the proverbial they, that
i am bored and weary because im boring and wearying
and girls like me, with a figure like me, have a tendency to figure what they tell me makes sense
because they seems so much more than me, its even a longer word
[theres power, a power it seems, in syllables and consecutive stringing of symbols]

but this time, of all times, after so much time, i really think it's you, firefly
it's your shimmer that's duller than
first grade costume glitter
because playgrounds and lollipops and freckles gleam
until you drop that sticky sweetness in the boogery sand.

and i got, what i got feels like im being besot, what i have got
is an appetite like my boss' down on that waterfront
he eats real mean and hardly breathes a breath of clean and fights mean,
too
and that cook im in love with, whos in love with his kid, that kid of a cook i want to make love with
makes my boss a steak as big as my face and he'll wash it down with cazadores and we've got a fight, a real mean fight

so i spend my day waiting on him, waiting on my feet, waiting is quite a feat
and i guess after all that pacing around for you seems like too much too too much much
i need you to bring me to my knees, instead, in works stead, in schools stead, in times stead, in my appetites stead, in my sad's stead, instead of instead.

Let's Go Travelling

what you have on your shoulders
what they call chicken skin
what makes you hide within
those clothes
that could hide rocks, sticks, boulders

that sandpaper on your chin
that hides cherub rosy blossom cheeks
that betrays your gentle roughness for weeks
those whispering whiskers
that could scrub away all the dirty places ive been

all these bumps
are the most delicious pinpoints on this most detailed roadmap
for my adventures around your body!

i love you loud like
the roar of early morning
a hush of prayer

(like worship knew once
long before pews clattered with
knees and treatises)

so busy being
seamlessly endlessly still
kissing all dew drops

Amongst Your Things

It's an Oedipal
kind of justice when i kiss
him on your pillow

and your swift-footed
temper is such that seeing
us now, you'd blind him

or you, or me. see
that's the thing about your sword:
it could land in my

eye or your sad arm.
the rusty miniature
of which i found in

your bags during one
of the days you said you would
go away and get get cured.

no one asks the gods
to drive oedipus to blind
wrath and blank eyes but

the finality,
sweet finality of it,
we will not deny

Gecko Toe You're All I Need to Know

The scientific marvel which is the gecko toe should start a new kind of foot fetish. Each gecko footpad has five toes, all of which are covered with thousands of inconceivably tiny hair-like structures called setae. Each setae has the diameter of about 5 micrometers. To put this into perspective, the diameter of human hair can be anywhere from 17 to 181 micrometers. The fineness of the seta is nothing, however. On the tip of each seta are anywhere from 100 to 1,000 spatulae, which jut out at an angle. These spatulae are smaller than a wavelength of visible light. Because of these microhairs, each footpad of the gecko bonds to surfaces at a molecular level. The effect is one of the most whimsical nature has to offer; a mature gecko could, utilizing every setae in its possessions, hold aloft a weight of almost 300 pounds.
This disproportional strength could make any weightlifting champion weep. It would seem that breaking a bond of this level would be a Herculean feat, an evolutionary oddity that would actually be the undoing of the gecko in the face of a wily predator. No- the detachment is pure in its simplicity. An anticlimax of the gods, really. The gecko can be freed from his molecular bond by moving his microhairs in the opposite direction.

My Proteus

I floated on saccharine honey comb
Mistress of stinging bees
Being slowly inwardly torn
By airwaves penetrating old sycamore trees

My mother with saffron olive tree skin
Said my protean king would move like the waves
Emerging from morose modern din
A good man does all bees save

I spun men’s limbs around like a fortune wheel
Somewhere on the zodiac he must be
Some water-weaver knows what my bees feel
he will stop morphing his ways for me

One will let me hold his heel you shall sea.

I left Calypso-the Echoes were too deafening.
Maybe this one will
salvage my hive
bring my honey alive

The Desert Woman only knows the passion of the Sandstorm:

Her brown arms engulf you
Smothering warm symphonic covering
Spicy fire lymphonic night breeze
Roaring still everlastquick soaring
Breath
Lashes layering longing looks toward dunes

On which she lays her arching petrol back
Hiding the grains of sand holding her up no
beating sun above her can see

See, the Desert Woman’s love is Like This:

She shall dance on the sand and
Let her feet sink deep so deep down in and
Tiny grains of rock may hold keep drag slender fire down but

Only about as long as a sandstorm.

And when her brown toes kick away from you you’re

Sliding tumble wonderingly losing
Stepping never dually missing
Beating sol-ace foolishly believing
Grains
(so sorry, seemingly splendorous statue covering her)

The Desert Woman never steps on the same sand twice-
She has a drought and you bring a sandstorm?

It is like this.

lean in and i shall
tell you a grand secret of
the velvet heavens:

Lovers hang from stars
on silken spider threads. their
sensual trembles

upon the thought of
their beloved causes night’s
twinkles- not Science.

for twinkles shant halt
for lovers shall always hang
from a noose of silk

Iran

I used to lie on sunbaked roofs
And cry with yearning
And play music that
begged for rain.
Once I(return from my flirtation with purity and insanity)feel the rain again, I frantically inhale cigarettes
And weep openly for the desert.

Rain:

Tonight, I could go
Outside with my plastic cup
And fill it with rain

My heart cracks open
Like an egg when rain falls
Only, I hate eggs.

Tiny drizzles greet my upturned face
And I send a nod for this gesture
Until I realize God is crying.

A Limerick (In Spirit)

Natural Selection

On a blistering frying summer day
Mrs. Adam rode her own crimson wave

But thought she’d sneak in for a quick dip
Not even the pool would notice the trip

Down to the marble bottom she dove
As chlorine flecks like fish would float

Only when she came up and rubbed her eyes
Did she look around and realize…

The sun wasn’t only turning her skin red-
She saw her own blood tsunami up ahead

And from embarrassment did she drop dead!

Published En Memoriam; Written on The Front Lines.

Christian’s Snores:

Sometimes, as you sleep
Your breath punishes the air
Whipping what feeds you

Other nights, sweet boy
Breaths languish up from your chest
Air falls like feathers.

Sleep (or lack thereof):
Can’t you see you’re killing him?
Please, stay close awhile

Sometimes I think that
He’s been drunk for so long
Happy makes no sense

If only he knew
He’s an opportunity
to write about grief

He should be more than
A muse to a woman-child
Writing about men.

P.D.E., My Favorite Junky.

Maybe your hide your heart (you hide the best you can).

But I know
How your rough hands belong to squarely
Solidly delicate wrists
How you tremble in your sleep
How your eyes (those broken beer bottle green eyes)
Widen
How you smile with tiny tic-tac teeth
How you fear ghosts and your old life
(skid row demons still haunt you)
How thick ropes of veins twist along your arms
(an intricate maze you followed with a needle)
that you miss your baby brother and miss
being a child
that you grew up too fast
yet you tote the heart of a small scared boy
how you rarely eat
yet when you do, it is consumed slowly bit by bit
yet when you pass flowers, you stuff pedals in your mouth
How you entertain an endless procession of regrets and remorse
On the cracked cinema screen in your mind
How your face stays blank in meetings
Yet internally you are in crashing ripping uproar
How you judge your insides by the world’s outsides
And find yourself lacking- and all of us, too
How your writing is angular and jagged
(a most awkward print)
And how you observe the world, green eyes
Taking constant notes and calculations
How your world is scary wonderful fantasy all your own
How you love new socks and too-big shoes and showers and cleanliness
You like things clean. All things but you.
How you lived on the streets among the
Broken and painful and desperate
And dying
And dead.
And you never felt more at home.
What your voice sounds like, how you don’t mind
What Dylan sounds like upon your lips
How you speak Spanish and look like without clothes and with your eyes closed and mouth open
How you work hours on your feet, go home to blank walls and late nights,
Then go home to that insane asylum,
And never think of me.