The odds that you even exist
are one in 400 quadrillion
& yet you want to die
Did you know
Dolores was a weird dancer
Hemingway wore lace before he wrote prose about polydactyl cats
Thom’s eye would droop, as he talked about dreams
Kurt hated to brush his teeth
I find this spectacular
We loved them
Don’t you want someone to love you
without fucking you?
It’s what Marilyn wanted
Maybe.
The plague turned out to be
a tease
The rat had its guts eaten out
You said it reminded you
of me
You were shooting me between the thighs
with blank
eyes
God’s peeper was in the sky
dressed up like a nebula
or maybe, that’s just a celestial fart
We’re tripping & picking Daisy’s
marveling that the odds of existing
are almost zero
But kids are dying, God
Did you see that?
How all our lunatics wear crowns
How we are all in love with shiny things
instead of each other
God, this life can be so hard
& I don’t even have the worst of it, not by far
We stand on our tiptoes on the water tower
& scream “WHY?” at the sky
I wonder if our voices
ever make it up to Heaven
Unbuttoning
my ribcage
Longing carves a massacre into
everything real
(calls ruin a deliverance)
But blood doesn’t prove your existence
dreams bleed too
& some may say it’s imaginary things that bleed the most
I pocket your darkness so
I can throw it at new lovers
Sometimes it bounces off their foreheads
Sometimes it burrows deep in their brains
That’s how I know I’ve found the one
for a day
*
Darling, tell me, did the bartender ever make your martini dirty enough for you?
Do you think you’re living better on the flip side?
The massacre is you
the smoke lining the Devil’s eyes
burning blue
You brought your break-up teeth
to the wedding feast
& gave your Shakesphere speech about the romanticism of worms
chewing & shitting out our corpse
((Frankenstein is learning how to be human
& realizes that too, is a wretched fiend))
We are all unsaved & loosening our screws
Have you noticed the cranberries are ribbed?
Is this
Pleasure?
I tell you, you woke the wrong God
& you tell me you like me better
a little drunk
You were a lover of words
& perhaps for a moment
A lover of me
For i have words!
Can you hear them whispering
conspiring against me
intoxicated with foolery & nonsense
weird & awkward
stumbling over the fungiform papillae at the tip of my tongue
& trying too hard
My father’s reflection in the rearview mirror
told me to cherish this moment
for it will all disappear in a blink
like snowflakes melting on eyelashes
someone forgot to tell me Grandma’s finger sandwiches were sacred
we ate them as we sipped phantom cocktails out of Moroccan chalices
Before our tears turned into blood stains on winter white
How they looked like watercolor hearts
& you insisted on taking the blame for my intoxication
But none of this was your fault
Soon, the boy with the eye forever pressed up against the lens
will drop his camera and go to God
(or so we liked to tell ourselves)
& the monster will peel itself away from the shadows
& spoon your brains
into its mouth
like mad house pudding
We used to amuse ourselves by dolling up the taxidermy
in push-up bras
& sailing grandpa’s Lazy Boy across the endless sea
That was just yesterday, wasn’t it?
& you were a young woman
running on the beach in your bikini
That photograph burned into my child brain like a brand
Like the way you draped yourself across the pine box
We didn’t have to see inside to know all there was
was ruin
His, and yours, & mine
And the hands of time
like a bruise around our necks
Will you meet me down at the dock?
& you can tell me how you can’t find meaning
in anything anymore
I will scoop up this rot into a pile of leaves
& burn it into poetry
so we can feed the worms
for they feel hunger too
You liked your gloom
spoon fed
Lies dolled up like a flamenco dancer
Somewhere there is scripture
warning about all of this
the all-consuming lunatic hunger
somewhere we are all rockstars screaming from rooftops
“more, more more!”
Dreams of the honeyed lips
of the washerwoman in the window
scrubbing the filth
out of all the things
we dare not mention
*
Her hair is piled high
she smells like butterscotch
& apple pie
She’s spinning cotton candy between her thighs
& you’re sure you’re fucking her
on the flip side
so you send a soldier to the front lines
All of God’s rage fits inside
the prick of a needle
worlds inside worlds & the banana peel precipice of death
You are always falling in love with a stranger
spooning gloom into your lunatic mouth
save me with some of that
flamenco dancing
& the scripture that warns about all of this
Pain is a poet’s opium den
I stare up at the stars
constellations winking like conspirators
he put up wanted posters of himself
“shoot on sight”
No one is looking for you
Did you hear the silent click of the door closing
as happiness snuck out the back
A memory burning with peroxide, crooking her finger
& Hell’s mouth painted
like a bitten lip
Eve’s candy apple red
the way her legs split & blood flowed
felt like man’s demise in retrograde
Can I bum a piece of your soul to fill up this hole?
Your ‘NO‘ sinking like a stone
into Goliath’s brain
You see, I think that is all I have ever wanted
to be known,
to be seen
my splendor
& my rot
equally embraced
I think these things as I melt into the walls
the tap of Death’s nails
the pitter-patter of earth & rain
on the pine box
It’s cold outside
Can I cut you open like a Tauntaun
& crawl inside
While I eat this banana?
You are not the first one
to have walked into my room
with sticky fingers
Pouring wine from a box, you tell me
how the Blood of Christ was on clearance
& how you stood at the Hellmouth
feeding it the myth of romance
while demanding some beautiful fucking poetry
But all I want is the Lord’s mercy
My closed sign glowing like the neon lights
of a happy ending
& yet we have never felt
more sad
Poetry for the void 