Allie's Journal of Art: March 2005

Poem: a fresh scar

note: i dont do that bullshit anymore, just remenising about how it used to feel
--------------------------

i often sit and wonder what makes me carry on,
through the hate,
through my cracked smiles,
fake emphasis on useless things,
i watch everyone glare at my scarred arms,
i know what people think,
sometimes i just sit and watch myself bleed,
a tear here and there helps me remember that i'm still alive,
i don't know what makes me carry on,
maybe it's the sunsets i love to watch,
it might be the hunger for a future,
everytime i sit on my own and wonder why i'm still here,
i tell myself, ' because you want to breathe',
but i'm not sure my midnight screams know what it is to feel,
or see, i've been blind, so very blind to the world around me,
crumbled on the inside, and still i drag myself on, through the thorns,
like a rag doll on a string, i feel as if i haven't started to breathe,
waiting for something great to hit me,
i often sit and wonder when that day will come,
and i wonder if i will amount to something usefull,
or am i just collecting dust.

Poem: what she said - what she did

She said,

‘Let’s drink like its suicide,
Let us get intense.
Blow away this afternoon
With mad dances, screams and strip
Down to our true selves.
I will make you come
With a shot of rhythm and reds
Watch the blood rush, feel the blood lust
Pounding waves of desire
We will sing of art and shout about pop
Slam dance, stage dive, twist and crawl
My kisses will be lethal
My tears will be laughed at
Come on
Come on
My pretty baby.’

She said,

All this
And before I could answer

She took the gun
Smiled
And pulled the trigger.

Poem: question marks

short crap of a piece
---------------------
Why did it always seem that the thing I shouldn't have been thinking about was the first on my mind?

I sighed, staring at the pavement as I balanced on the curb. Brushing a strand of hair behind my ear, I glanced over at him and the rest of the goons. They hung around the same place everyday, in the middle of the park, loitering on the merry-go-round. Adjusting my bookbag, I averted my eyes, but eventually, they drifted back to him.

He was good-looking enough, with unruly dark hair and big brown eyes, but it was him as a person that really got to me. He was kind, and lacked whatever gene it was that made the rest of those goons so cruel. And he was the only one who noticed me.

I was often the subject of ridicule, the one with the dyed black hair, the band t-shirts, the colds smile for whoever it was that had succumbed to the empty promises of being accepted. No, I was a solitary being for the most part, giving into ice, embracing fire, not really anyone, yet everyone. Supposedly, there was a theory beyond all of thise. Mom called it "reverse psychology". I begged to differ. I wasn't how I was because she told me not to me. This was ME. She'd just have to deal with that.

My journal was my best friend. Amongst the few friends I had (most of which were inanimate objects), it was definitely my favorite. My sister found it once. I had left it sitting with my Algebra homework on the kitchen table, hoping it would be discreet enough to pass as my notebook. I was wrong. She started reading it and when I finally caught her, she was more than halfway through, her blue eyes the size of dinner plates, as if it were a real surprise that behind such a passive face, there was such a corrupt mind, filled with stagnant envy, cold hatred, and passionate love. In that one moment when our eyes met, we finally understood each other. She never told a soul.

I dropped my bag, sitting down on the grass in the parkway. It was quieter here, none of the guys could see me watching them. But I was hoping he would see me. He was one of the only people I felt comfortable talking to.

We'd met two years ago, though it seemed like twelve, in the fifth grade. We were almost exactly the opposite of who we were now. I had been the right hand of the most popular girl in school. He had been a geek who was more intelligent than his goon friends' high egos could ever make him out to be. We werre both on the soccer field. I was alone, as my "best friend" was out sick with the flu, and I didn't feel comfortable around the other girls without her. He was standing, leaning against a goal post, sketching in a small notebook. He seemed nice enough, so I walked over, and in that single moment, lost my position as the second most popular girl in school, though I didn't know it then.

He and I talked for a while and we had more in common than one might have though and we became fast friends. He taught me a lot about who I was. And I realized that I didn't care to be popular, I just wanted to be me. Who was I? He helped me to find that too.

But I was now in a position where the popular kids wanted to drain any happiness that I could have in my life, and the did - because they took him. They stole him, they took him without permission. And they drowned him. They drowned him in all the superficiality of being cool. They destroyed him in what was in style. They killed him with popularity, and held me back so I couldn't save him.

And I fell rapidly into a darkness that I had yet to escape. We did still talk sometimes, whenever we could, and I'd listen closely to anything he said, locking it away in my heart, telling myself that the real him would realize what an idiot he was being and come back to me, and we'd be losers together. But after two years, I'd given up hope. He was gone. He'd never come back. After all this time longing for him to be my journal, be my best friend, I'd lost myself. I was a shadow, but less than that. I was mist, so invisible, so cold, so sad. No one could make me disappear, but they all wanted me to. No one could make me stay, because I went with the wind, I flew away. And there was no way to get me back. I was lost.

Quite honestly, I'd wandered mindlessly before he came and stumbled blindly after he was gone. I was nothing without him. I suppose it was love. I suppose it was there all along, I suppose we both felt it. But just turning eleven, in the fifth grade, how were we to know? We knew nothing. Mostly I was cloaked in insipidt whenever he was away. He made my life interesting, he made it worth living. And I never did tell him that, I figured I'd have forever, and to my surprise, the "preppies" took him over.

I suppose when you realize that superficiality sucks, you can leave and not return to it. I guess somewhere in my mind, I knew it was stupid, there was no point, it wasn't right. I let the thought slip. I liked everyone liking me. But they never really liked me. They liked how I looked, what I stood for. I stood for likeness. And now I stood to differ.

But he was gone, in a blink and a sigh. So, in my most loving thoughts, goodbye.

Poem: hospital...

In these hallways of echoes
Ping-pong shiny
I am tempted to dance
A cute waltz in my pink pajamas.

In this room of gloomy monster machines
I lie quiet
Watched.
Ignored.
At the same time I
Try
not to move
Aware of how thin my covers are
How naked.
How little.
How all is whispers
Far away conversation.

Sometimes
When it almost gets too much
I think of you
And that funny face
You pulled one winter night
To make me smile
So fucking hard,
Called yourself a dork
And oh how
I fell in love.

In this world of no time
The electric clock defeated
The TV sighs a game show
Bright lights chatter aimlessly
With a sleepy air conditioner.
I tap a conversation
Of my loneliness
Wishing it was over
Wishing I was done.

Wanting to be brave.

In this building made to rescue me
Uneasy mix of fear and dedication
Not every answer will bring smiles.
I know this.
But

The way this one girl smiles as she brings a glass of water,
The feel of his strength as he holds my wrist and hums
A silly
Catchy
Pop song.

These gentle warriors.
Here to fight.
The crazy things our bodies do.

I love them.

And so far away, like that one cloud in the dark
Dark sky moving grey and fast
Your love
Helps me, help them
Defeat for now,
The cynical army of unholy invaders
Those tiny ancient fools
Cannot have me.

Till the next time.
I am saved.

Poem: eternal flames

i cant beleive
that you cant see
just what your love
has done to me

and if i cry
to sleep tonight
pray in my dreams
you'll hold me tight

but now i know
what could have been
and no ill never
be the same

and in your eyes
all i can see
the beauty of
eternal flames

Poem: your mouth, an ugly scar

"love is itself unmoving,
only the cause and end of movement,
timeless, and undesiring
except in the aspect of time
caught in the form of limitation
between un-being and being...

there rises the hidden laughter..

quick now, here, now, always-
ridiculous the waste sad time stretching before and after."

-t.s. eliot / four quartets

a.
here is the place, i know this place
we have been setting up for years
ms. petroleum, mr. karl marx, karl with a k,
appetizers for auburn mouths, silverware for
sex changes, flagellum like daisy petals,
pressed between our mouths, what're you
(cumming) for? your daughter is dead.
not making sense.
fingering graves,
the absence of;
girl, we know where you live
the cumulus clouds bangblowback
backwards,
i have lived this five hundred times,
forty-one minutes ago,
five nonstopliving seconds of;
HELLO HELLLO HELLLLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i never called for help.

b.
cure, cure is a home road
inside a murderous fog, inside the
loophole, a woman,
we're through, we're through
creeping like saints, holding microphones,
our father, our fathers, our father in heaven
gambling, gargling,
counting how many un-redeemable,
un-returnable,
i never said i didn't lie,
to come inside me, come inside me,
CUM INSIDE ME,
wash over me,
the limiting reagent,
the theoretical yield,
gotta be a good girl
gotta be a good (HURL)
because i needed to be.

c.
hey frank, your inspiration
for my latest piece
is leaking from your cock
it's beautiful, this music, a splattering
of the brain, eating cellophane,
seeking headache, to bottle you whole
cut you in two, i got to have it all
the dark dark dark, suffocating, wailing,
waiting,
what we said when we were friends,
sucking cigarettes,
doesn't matter,
things just are
living,
fine.

d.
brace yourself for the stars tonight,
stabbing the sky with ugly
fingers,
following the brightest,
we'll always find our way home,
devouring egyptian seas,
assassinating kennedy,
your mouth,
your mouth,

i understood, an
ugly scar.

Prose: kansas vs. california

tonite the beach lurks like a dead body-
and i am walking in its dead look, a dead fruit
sweet as cum and soft so soft like breasts...

tell her i'm sorry that when i open my mouth,
my body leaks out of it, and that is why i can't touch her right
tell her i'm sorry that when i close myself over her,
the moon shuts her cataract eye, that is why i do not see her face cry
tell her i'm sorry that when i leave her,
my head caves in at the thought, and that is why i can't stay by her skin

when i stand here, the sand yields like a thousand other human beings, in a pile,
all dead, their bodies still hypnotized by living
i am that world she knows she knows she knows
the housework of seeds and jealousy,
without clothes, a thousand arms of water, plucking at me-
that is how she loves me forever.

Prose: her prayer was dead on arrival

when you see her on the streets again and her hair is glazed with afternoon song,
do you ask yourself what is it like, what is it like
in a book that you wrote, still reads like it did since morning
words you saved for painting in a bird, or perhaps
you traveled to each apartment window, the grass wet with mourning
a shutter made half closed eyes, its creases disturbed you
how could any creature sleep through what you could not
and see the same face mourning,
these words, she would understand the stagnancy of your hands
and why they bend, and sag
the nails bitter with failing

it read like a mass and how the children looked through the tabernacle, in afternoon smog
for a hole in the wall savior, ashes fell and placed themselves on their tongues
running through pews and kissing widows, you were young, still
how did she lack such innocence then, standing with that look, sick with prayer behind you
could you tell her how, you read a million pages of skin unfolding skin,
when you touched her, everything scattered when she asked you
what would happen in a few years and all that is left, will there be a child, will you
love me when your cheek is close to my cheek, there will be no money? will we
be together when my eyes close against yours finally, the ocean sweeps us away and
eats us into sand?

buried under the holy dark, used condoms wet and warm, your words built around
"vacancy" and "humiliation", the dark rising in her face
blooms with weeds and dried roses, what you tried telling her, wasn't worth
keeping, a psalm being blowing out like how the sun unlights the night,
when you wrote the end.

Poem: and we are bound by symmetry

these pretty things are not mine. these pretty things are ours.
and i wanted to tell you, about how we cannot say why we need a better reason to
explain the tension in our bones. and how sunrises are little ecosystems of their own,
the light filling inside our throats, while these pretty things are not mine. these pretty things are
not mine, they are ours. and if i could tell you, why we know what is good, what is not
coming, why we fear things like the dark... and the skin of your arms are perfect sheets,
white, shallow, the depth of veins, stark.. if i could tell you, and these pretty things are not
mine. these pretty things are ours. these pretty things are meant to be owned, these pretty
things are ours. these pretty things are ours...

Poem: in the dissolution of your early grave

this is absolution- a shock kiss strangle of the day, with you,
my
sick, sad lunar friend, there between solar system
and the thought of my vulgar
body,
the loose construction of epithelial laces
THE FRUIT OF MAN,
and the pregnancy of chaos, existence, yours quaint and diseased
a dissent of light and cigarette addiction;

i love you.

AND OUR arteries are now
bubbling from within, and your fingers are babbling inside
their own bones, inside me, a hundred pieces of
stagnancy, arthritis make them stone,
worthless and i will love every
sinking of my skin (or how i would have imagined it), deep in restraint,
the talk of the town, an odd puckered shape,
look how we have wasted all these years!
all this sexual tension, in the sucking of oxygen
your voice an infection, a grave,
hungry and astute and always sleepless
if i could have you anyway, you say,
and god will merely shrivel up into
a rippling of teeth and clatter,
and i wouldn't refrain I WOULD'T REFRAIN
i will pull out petal by petal, eye and eye
and kiss each wounded speak and talk and break...

if i could have you anyway,
i would love you like the sea like the sea like the sea
i love you
like
how you empty yourself into me.

Prose: from the dead letter department

eventful and decline.

they say i have my fathers passion, whom, in his uncertainties and timeless infrequencies, beats his only daughter (and that dark withered bloom inside that wooden casing shook and screamed and melted like ice coming in contact with the alive) and left her outside of the house in the dark when she was afraid of ghosts, or stories of cowboys shot dumb in the head, you know those sounds they make, like pocket change and aroma of valleys and ranchos and mexican faldas (y no quiero tu hablar por mi), or devil women with river weed in her hair, the ones that arise from stones and portions of dandilions, so youve got to speak to god like you mean it or theyll eat your future babies, something like that, something you have to do, so that my mother called the cops on me as she held me down in the neighbor's yard, and i screamed, i screamed, i screamed (por favor la llorona, no comes mi cara hermosa)!

you say i have the same type of hair as she did, the one with the big breasts, except mine sway inadequantly, but impressionable still, and you hung your arm around me and you smashed my ribs with your fat arms, with your fat tattoos and held me whike you were making a phone call, while making love, did you see my hair is not black, just the absence of light, and my eyes are the same way, uncalled for, and you were double jointed and pretty lashed, i remember they told me youhad sex with more girls than i have fingers and toes and limbs, and i didnt even notice that the top of your head is this terrible autumn while the rest lay in painted black, you remind me of earth, the smell of it when you creeped your hands to my heart and played with what you thought would be best.

you say i sing too much about the injustice of the world, and i never mention about what you did for yourself, you pulled yourself out of this gapping wound and tore yourself a new world, and threaded your eyes with your words, and stapled the rest, after the crash you pulled me out and we made love on the pavement right there, i thought like we did when we were fourteen, miserably with the stink of possibility and institution, we made love like you didnt need to live anymore or have a phone number or even a brain to function your touch through me, "we are dead", you whispered in white tongue, i tell you i am falling madly, but there is no contraction of the tongue, no voluntary movement, no sign of life, and you were right.

i say that there is nothing living under my bed, or in the pillows, the sheets, there is no murderer in my car except me, innumerable fears like holy shit, i'm going to die today when i fall sleep, or how tall i am getting, how much do my organs cost, can i live without you, my liver, my heart? can i see without glasses, what will my stories sound like if i tell the truth? that i've slept with myself, and liked it more than stars and united states', explosives, guns, and keats' poetry.

Poem: and we will think of you no further

why would i drag myself into something foolish such as the folds of your words, but not the trust of your body?
not the image of your body stabbing into my body,
or the funerals, i balanced books on my head for,
the look in your eye is no look,
there is nothing to fear but me.

and so i am telling a story again, in the breaking of the oceans, a rolling of a million tongues,
uttering the numerous murders of sailors, grecian cargo, they roam with lack of a skeleton,
lack of a pair of eyes, yet eventually, finding the sand, these waters reaching like a useless hand
a temporary stitch into the grains, slipping a kiss more like a bite,
this is how they will find you, that is how they will insert their might,
into
every opening, every good intention, every little excuse and creeping lie;

i remember drowning once, i am telling a story again,
i was not four years old, maybe five, with mile wide scar on hip, with purple coloured
and suckered lips,
and the light was pretty smiling,
and the fishes were swimming, swimming with me,
all the aquamarine
figurines were breathing, but i, with no escape of the punishment of lungs, and
myths of man, in the deepest of stomachs, swallowing the blood of christ
with no chance of a whimper, feet standing like pillars, feet among
the stillness of an unaltered season, forever, heavy with sea sick buds,
blasting, blooming, bleeding, on the bottom, we scraped together;

i am telling a story, of how i took his virginity in the bathtub, porcelian
has no face, no veins, but one smooth eyeball, no lid to shut it, a cyclops
with handles and uncomplicated machinery, no language but the scenery
of a leak, running and running through obstacle of foreign shapes
hair and grease and cells, eaten by the iris, its poor lousy gape
down fumbling, down strength,
down bible, down arms and mouths and legs:

the worst part of water is not how it evaporates, but how it always returns to itself.

Poem: cowardice

...you are sitting alone in the dark,
like always and
outside, the crusaders are knocking down the door; got to have that kind reassurance,
right? what you became (to me), the coming, the savoring of a good stab in the heart-
you have no friends, no suit, no confidence,
what does the sun look like inside that head of yours?
lobotomy cut outs/ true love in staring hard at other girls, but nothing comes
she is dead and we are up in space, looking down into heaven
what do you see in me? and this cowardice smears down like rain tonight,
she is whispering: fuck me, fuck me but don't leave
she is whispering, and you are kissing her
like you are kissing your mother,
she is whispering, and you don't remember how
she looks like in a certain light...

november is the sickest month, in
a year of fireflies, and our
worst fears have sabotaged this latex and metal framework--
in a few more years, we'll be able to speak with each other,
when the whole world is dead and asleep and useless

and i loved my ugly body with each
and every word you mouthed.

Poem: waking among the dead smell of blooms

"i shall sit here serving tea to friends.."

waking among the dead smell of blooms
rotting in my dress, forcibly june
opens here, a funny mouth: stammers, "not yet!"
layed out in mimicks, mirrored regrets
opens another, a sore eye of moon
shines in crumbled places, i set them up for you
and remember fragments, my life inside
tschaikowsky in postcard meters, albert starving his starry night

what have i, my friend, what life gives me, sick in bed
a decadent view, naked, erect
what caved-in dreams, and would you not write me
all that i have killed in you, runs red
and when shall we ever meet again...?

PLEASE MISS PLEASE COME AND REST

here here useless body, tacked on breasts
i crossed out the hunger on my chest
art is a surgery, the skin flabby, not petite
the mouth warped, hydrocloric, no teeth
my lack of lovers, my nerves come erased
they have cut out the touch you placed
sitting, stroking, pen in throat,
the found expression between bed sheets

here here our friendship,
all our friends
all our neighbors, soiled ladies
all our friends
and sky no resolve, smouldering over your head
smoking chaucer, unfeeling with the dead
london bridge is falling down, falling down
the women you will love, falling down

please miss please go and rest

shall i close my eyes to you, your red face
the voice with dejection, that unyielding tune
waiting here, to spoil the bloom
slowly, slowly, come i undressed
to reach over, feed your distress
shakes the stink of june
come i, a terror
breaking limbs

Poem: jack and the giant beanstalk

when you scourge a man
what do you get, steve?
all the smallprint
before they get me underground
we are all good men, all of us still-
it is a dry month and i am still a man
with fingers prying tissue
i doubt what will come from dead cells
no longer pink but cloudy grey
and overconfident

virginia,
we are all good men, all of us still,
send us out to die once again

not waking to this cold bile morning
alone,
i love my children, i do
based on the gallon,
with beautiful empty mouths
and beautiful empty heads,
antebellum-
mr. kidney and liver
and mr. and so what will it be today, boys?
i thought of and believed in our lord,
and grandfathers of a glasseyed persuasion
served with...

what have i, my friends
what have i
for every year i saved for you
my life inside,
albert humming his moon river at the four corners
and katie with no dress on,
remember her, lipsticked; too short hair?
and when will we meet again?

light, light in aged stains,
signaling faith and victory
on a lampshade.

Poem: someone told me i was the most beautiful girl in the world today; and then i shot him in head

i want to waste my life with you.

break apart your skull and hold the nerves,
nerves like hand grenades, i could kill for
you; in a world of capsize, who are ya, i
could kill for a dissection too, cuz all we're
trying to do is figure out what kind of people
we are; mother, mother, this is not; mother,
mother, this is not how i wanted my blood
to be formed; from shell and auburn and
folklores; in this world, this lovely fucking
world:

and every time i love someone; and every
time i love you; the clock beats backwards
this body's a jail cell; i will love you like the
dawn; i will love you, i will love you like the
faltering dawn.

Poem: king lear is unattractive

is there anything you would like us to know? academically? personal experience?

:

my mother was raped and you are my lover.
i know nothing at all except when you whispered my name
it was violence; that i was not touching skin, or
how i'd imagine it any other way academically,
unpeeling back the ugliest fucking thing i'd ever seen;
this is how we said we'd do it to our lives, samantha,
we could sit here all day carving
SWEETHEART, HOLD ON I LOVE YOU
onto our thighs;
ironic as a lipsticked kiss,
looking like you bled your heart out through his
mouth;

my hipbones are cracked
and
i do not consider myself a woman as much as i consider
myself a writer and i am not a writer because i do not write
about
the human condition so i pledge allegiance to the flag i do not
trust: like a cigarette. it dirties my throat.
like the peach tree of when i was younger. i threw that
rock into the neighborhood boy's face.
that is what i would do to that
earth shattering compartment,
what i call your
cavity,
i know nothing because i love myself.
i know nothing for the drumming of this machine,
what i call your
voice.
it is too hard to turn me on.
i fuck myself with machines.

i am being fucked by machines.

speaking foreign languages; their
tongues scraping our cavity walls:

this is the body, walt whitman, this is the body
this is the body, body, bodies untrue

like newspaper fillets, our bodies are warm and warred,
scattered and obtuse; this is the body, the body, this is the body
where i held onto you.
this is the body, this is the body in packaging and disarm,
this is where the surgeon pokes, where he inserts his ride
this is where my prettiest land lives, and my birds roam and ovulate
this is my cavity, my chopin and ladies with cards and unborn
features. this is the body, this is the body, body, body,
the politics of burying a corpse: you can't die until we pay for your name,
you can't die until we pay for your name, you will never die.
this is the body

this is the body.

this is the body in which i used you.

Poem: blow brains out with your love

"Oh, darling, let your body in, let it tie you in, in comfort."
-Anne Sexton

"The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

i like greek tragedies because of them
visionaries
wearing their hairs up in car crashes
resounding,
clogging throats and wavering purpose
by elimination, acts of god
kiss me, the first chance you get
because the heroes are
blooming lovely tonite in
their mass suicide parades;
their women with scars on their lucious tongues;

i want to
make them smile,
a green dollar smile

i like shakespeare and the way he makes me
sweat and lick the afternoon
like someone's gonna be coming any moment
any moment any moment any moment
any time,
like the time we
killed each other
you know,
sitting in the car with the ghosts of
carbon monoxide/
sunrise
mouth to mouth sonnets full
of:
would you miss me if i was
the only one
inside?

i was a terrible fuck.

i like cesarean, glue, wrenches, the people
of los angeles, mr. PISS ON THE
FITTING ROOM FLOOR
THANK YOU JESUS CHRIST,
and lady with no skin on, you're a real voter,
you've got real class, sneaky and shitting there
with your mouth wide open,

you've got real words
that i want to hear inside me
all night long
will you be my girl when you
blow my brains out?
then,
we talk about ruining each other's lives.

Poem: things i don't remember

november is the sickest month

the way my mouth had reached over the distance of interstates, organs, indian reserves, bishops, soldiers, your most loveliest bodies, singing to
you
touching yourself to
that perfect crackling of 3:15 a.m.
and parents asleep and gathering
ring fingers and torsos and because all that i love was sound,
(tightly, your chest lifting against the door in rhythm)
you've put the phone down,
you've stopped speaking words

christmases with a tree

el niño, wearing a catholic school jumper

"the first time i fell in love" being
the first time i saw america again after
so many silent nights
humming to the virgin mary,
lighting candles for the tabernacle
watching
missionaries fingering dead men and their hungry dogs,
rancid meat on display in the streets,
a conquistador jesus among the crowds in cheap colouring, hammering
rice patties and miss princess asia of manila, i love you i love you, iniibig kita, ang ganda mo!
in a motorcycle parade, her face is so maganda
mabuhay, you can't say it right
my dear, what is wrong with the colour of your hair?

my mother's car accident

my mother's wedding pictures

what i consider precious

after school, walking home once to you,
i smiled at spanish ladies taking their daughters to the park,
stroking their cheeks, ah hijas, daughters, wanting love so bad,
pretty enough to be so easy,
moist and bleeding out on the night grass,
you told me this was a sitting sky,
this is a graveyard for you and you and you

my body being precious

like a prayer

my father calling the police on me

almost drowning

the house i was born in
the house where i lived in and learned how to talk,

the house, where it had stood

wanting everyone to fall in love with me, over and over again

Prose: winter took us both

for every past life, i have escaped you & all your desperate forms - you have plotted against me, moved your trojan horse, broke apart your army like little seeds, scattering them into the air around me, the sound hitting the ground like glassbreaking- a tune so despairing!
for every past life, until this one - you missed me: winter, summer, spring, fall-ING into the next one, your army reduced, a napoleon despite the season/ the disregard for anyone but your own purpose- souls as new sprouts, souls as dead gardenias, souls as bayonettes erected in the snow... such useless, useless movements. for every past life, your features cold and intangible, your legs too weak to walk! your cities crumbled and dry, the ocean forever, taunting you!
only the memory of her, the death clutching rhine; europe could not contain your gravities/ the cards tell all!
only the memory of her, winding, shocking, too heavy for your dreams to ever ignore
for every past life, o you hypocrite! you suave chevalier! living life like a second hand. winter took us both & shaped us, gave us our dainty mouths and palms and heels; winter took us both, & chained us, gave us our nightmares and desires and needs for every past life, strung out as delicate jewelry beads, the worst kind! unwanted in a corner, afraid it might break- feeding on the shadows instead of:
sunlight, you feared, and twilight you moved; silver in your hair, i didn't know you then!
sunlight, you feared, and it consumed- old gramophones/ sad films- the bomb dropped and we were never the same, friend
for every past life, watching on your street light, a cigarette in your mouth, symphony no. 6, in b minor, Op. 74 pathétique for every past life, i let you find me- balcony room at the hotel; i felt sorry for you, for us, so i gave up on all my defenses! signed my name for you in the snow.
for every past life, myself too unruly, too exposed; the skin is unfit for this soul you told me about, my clay hands too invaluable, shining in the symphonic:
moonlight, you trailed through the snow home, dragged onward alone- i watched you pass under my window, petit garçon dans l'amour; o, won't get what he's waiting for, won't get what he cries for!
moonlight, to the dawning sun- you never sleep, staying up late to stage your battles on the chess set, putting apart the king and queen on separate sides of the board, the loser to be on guillotine, never to be the same to you again (i hope to never lose)
for every past life, your photographs sprawled out on the kitchen counter now- your cool pose, your grey eyes, still looking at me & knowing, knowing, no matter how far & where & when & how, i still love you, i still love you,

i still love you.

Poem: a conversation with the rim of his glass

we could of snapped her neck, they said
too tight to hold and too soon to touch,
devoted, not so,
no one cares for it, the volatile of our
intestines, smoky and sagging
yards of tubbing, this truth they want to
pin their hands to, blood cell after blood cell
where words and where sense?
completion wearing a blindfold on one eye,
we've no eyes, no brains, two faced, and lies
our own minds sinking, relaxing,
begin, benign the kiss of brown
splintery ocean, seeping through the hills,
eating people whole, this fog,
eating brains whole, we are lost, we are lost
i am in your room where my head is falling off
little boys i loved, folding their lips and quivering
leathered and dead
"oh it should have been me instead"
the tiles are seeping with worms and air
pulsating, no, nothing, i must stare at
christ with a pipe in his purple mouth,
"oh it should have been me instead"
living virgins and fingering self:
hello and goodnight, doll,
i'm living fine
hello and hello, so long
i'm living, alive.