simple syrup

There was nothing simple about the syrup

as he mixed my drink

The complicated hazel encircled the blacks of my eyes

Is there anything you need?

Do you think you could lift the needle from the record player?

Do you think you could stop the hand of time?

The severed boar’s head mounted on the wall had seen too many things

forget me pills dissolving into alcohol, people disappearing into the fireplace

I hang my jacket on its tusk

this was our last midnight

*

We all just want to be special

Don’t we, Thom?

Loins

She asks me

if I were being eaten by cancer

Would I even want to know?

*

I stop chewing the loin in my mouth

& look up

with bloodshot eyes

eyes that have seen the Apocalypse slip

out of God’s pocket

& roll across the floor

like a lightning-strike marble

*

I do not fear these things

I am devouring myself

costume for cool

her bare-breasted poetry for you

broke my heart

When I was already suffering from insomnia

But I promise you, boy, it’s not jealousy

It’s just me being wistful

But I don’t believe for a moment her bones are hollow

*

I bought a men’s tweed jacket

with elbow patches

& sweat stains

I dyed my hair white

I wore Chuck’s

& hid my crooked fingers behind stacks of rings

Sister, tell me, I did all the things

How come I’m still not cool?

*

She tells me there is no costume for cool

I am too weird

& needy

*

Here is where I contemplate the question

Maybe my mother was right

maybe my sadness

wasn’t chemicals

& disassociation

& self-loathing

Maybe it was

a real-life demon

& I needed an exorcism this whole time

Well, now what?

Lipstick Ministry

I remember

the sound of leather hitting the floor

& poking holes in the lid of the jam jar

I tried to trap you inside

My love for you was as honestly earned as dirty money

fluttering on the dashboard

of an OxyContin rep

*

All I wanted was the lipstick ministry

of the blondest bomb

Her moon-white face spilling shine

all over the backseat of my addictions

I don’t want to see the death of poetry in the kitchen

I don’t want to think about her cold breath

on the back of my neck

whispering….girly, listen….

*

We are all just falling off our rockers & blacked out

licking our wounds like lollipops

dragging our shame behind us like starved dogs on leashes

burning slow like clove cigarettes

& last night, I forgot to poke his holes

But I can’t save myself either

from these memories or these regrets

*

& I don’t want to think about how sometimes the gutter

feels like home

or how her cold breath on the back of my neck

reminds me how I may never

feel this sort of ache again

Misbehaving metaphors

The monster inside of me

the rabid thing, that foams at the mouth and bites

clawed its way out of my guts

starved for understanding

& misbehaving metaphors

begging to be fed something

other than….

mediocracy

condemnation

& religion

*

Is that you, darling?

Carelessly tossed into the sea

Well I shall carry you back to shore

with my teeth

Untitled Poem for Picasso

Picasso didn’t title his poetry

some things do not wish to be named

they only want to exist

jumbled

We undress to lay ourselves down in the thistles

there is a deadman hanging in the schoolyard

& we wear halos of lilacs to play in the rain

tell me about the beauty of her breasts, her thighs, her hair, her eyes….

her tears, again

*

Have I ever told you, how much I like you?

weirdo

starry eyes

You trace the mystery of existence onto her velvet thighs

and look at her through starry eyes

*

Beer goggles are a powerful thing.

poem for jack

Yes, it is cold in Wisconsin most of the time, Jack

but when the sun comes, & the pansies poke their tiny painted faces through the ice

it is marvelous

*

Oh, Jack, darling, sometimes I yawn and say commonplace things,

but sometimes I burn with madness

Don’t you see Jack,

how poets have the power to turn fleeting things into forever?

*

I always thought you were the most handsome while smoking a cigarette

Tell me Jack,

do you like girls with magenta hair

who sometimes yawn

& sometimes burn?

where does all the madness go?

My neighbors are fighting again

He stumbled through the door, late & drunk

Now he is screaming from the street, “Woman, what do you want from me?”

as she hurls his belongings into the yard

In the morning, they will pick everything up, & quietly bring it back into the house

There was a time when he’d stroke her hair until she fell asleep

She would make him coffee in the morning without being asked

I am reminded how hard it is to make someone happy

How easy it is to fall out of love

When the insanity fades

where does all the

madness go?

There is no such thing as ‘the one’

the crow tells me

There are only those who stir your chemicals,

briefly

& then you learn to tolerate them

for convenience & duty

I tell the crow, to fuck off.

The wild thing inside of us

I admire the way my cat climbs walls

murders

so casually

He is a beast in miniature

I am just a regular human

There is a wild thing inside of us

that howls for other wild things

but we have bills & laundry

*

My mother said, when the Devil comes

I ought to be brave

but I am terrified of little things

like cockroaches running over my feet

*

Look at us, hovering over doom

while the robots in zoot suits stroll on by

They too, will kill casually

If they could hate, it would be

the piece of God

inside you