Spiders on the porch. Darkness wakes the web. Laughing through her fear. Her embarrassment at having been born. In stages full and bright with she tries on the threat. Patient to let it consume her.

Her eyes exploding with people. Parachutes of skin that navigate her fall. The bile of hope fouls her dress as her cloud wretches. She continues to climb. Noticing too late that the steps to the bottom are so far apart.

She sells herself in little bags. Small handfuls of change. She removes her face. A vending machine of woman. Doling out fractions of touch. In minor orgasms.

The lie of the self is that it wants happiness. Or is even capable of producing it. The majestic feats of drug we imagine are within our means.. The abyss of consciouness only chemicals can quell. Delicate kisses of ocean on dry beaches. Deposting the dead in the same places from which they took us.

Stealing the living.

These empty hands helpless to stop them.

Coming and going as they please.

Eternal. Uninterested in the mating rituals of broken men

Spiders on the porch. Neglectful of their webs. Paralyzed prey waiting to be eaten. Light bulbs inside the wounds. Switched on again. Illuminating the disease.

The constant.

The gods of lesser men.

Flies. On the shit. Time travel isn't excuse enough. Lies. Bit of sober in during those long songs. Plastic heels on the doll's missing feet. Children of men in rented tuxedos. There's nothing to gain from this experiment. Nothing other than knowing alone is better. For the both of us.

I could poll the tortoise. Ask him how long the race lasted. But he could only answer as long as it took to win. Bodies. Like flies on shit. Tongues. Like maggots growing in the dead.

I could count the second between now and then. As if this time machine were viable evidence.

Watching the wolf. Huff and puff. The pigs with their straw houses.

Lacking such fairy tales I just wait. For a better villain.

Enough to spill. Spill a little bit. And no more. That'll do. A tantrum of skin embezzles my attention. Every encounter is a sudden accident. Each kiss is whiplash. I search for my head amongst the debris. But when I finally find it I decide I was better off before I did. Happiness is the seat belt. Sex is the windshield. And we were hoping to crash.

I like my wounds to be vocal. I like my bandages caked with blood. Brittle and sewn to the scab. Muddy watercolors of the last time I felt anyone. I like infection. The itch too deep to scratch.

I was driving. Steering with my eyes. Seeing with my hands. As lovers demand of their victims. As touch requires of its students. I wanted to learn. I wanted to know. What the world had been keeping from me. What drugs there were to make life bearable. How many flavors of people they came in. I wanted to know.

I could tell the story whenever I wanted, but I had only that one chance to live it.

Such is the quality of love. It grows too slowly and lust is so impatient. No time to wait for the paint to dry on the colors we thought we wanted when there are so many blank walls I've yet to test.

I'm better off with bare wood anyway.

The splinters are perfect lovers. Gentle enough. In comparisons like dog tracks. Corsets of men. Shaping my bones to fit other women's bodies. The world is always unprepared for the beautiful. Shocked at the slightest hint of compassion. The world doesn't want to make friends. It just wants people. Lots of people. To displace its emptiness. And people are the same.

No paper. Just words without anywhere to go.

Coaxing the princes. With promises of sex. As all princes must be convinced. The ave the beauty. Or what passes for it.

Numbering her strangers by the shapes of their penises. Little girls tracing their men with worn out crayons. Little girls pretending they know what they're doing. Little women denying they're old enough to answer for what they've done.

Life is a true or false question. And I'm always wrong.

You pour the water. Thirst your only motivation. Lost in the tension on the molecules. That something so small could decide for us.

I don't know what I have left to want. I just know that it's still waiting for me to decide.

I don't know what life is or why is tries so hard to convince us. I just know that it's less likely to spill over the closer that it get to the top.

She's not a princess. Will never be one. But she hasn't forgotten her princes.

In a world she doesn't live in anymore. There's still weather without her. Comedy and drama. People living as though she was never there.

She writes to the person she isn't anymore. Long letters on the other side of the paper she'd saved from the life she had before. Red ink slips its veins deep into the white. She remembers. In buckets of skin. Soured away from the bone. In fits of love more experiment than promise. She tells the glass to wait. She's not ready to be seen again.

She's still too ugly. To look out.

Louder than her solitude. Quieter than her fear. Small blankets on big beds plow through the moments. In words her fingers tell her to say. In eulogies she's always imagined would be hers, not theirs.

She was never alone until someone else was there. Then gone. Her thought process a three-legged dog on stilts dancing the mambo with its clothes on the floor. She was no one. She was nothing. But it never bothered her at all. Until the window went both ways.

You're wrong. I am different

It's you who is flawed if you can't see.

The threads over the holes in my socks.

Can't hear the hiccup of running feet.

Maybe you're deaf. Maybe you're blind.

It doesn't matter.

I know. You'll never hear. Never see.

Don't want to.

It's not our hunger that's to blame as we starve. but we still hate it.

in the way we see everything
steeped in our losses
sour with days we'd
thought forgotten
and so unusually romantic
as is every broken heart

the night makes promises
the morning never keeps
under rumpled sheets
between tried bodies
quiet sobs search the
silence for moments
that were missed

in fits of futility
as soiled as pleasure
sorrow becomes vision
and we can see in the darkness
obsessed with a future
we can only see through
hope's too perfect
binoculars

scribbling on the shadows
in palettes of sweat
colors she imagines
when none are present

eyes wide open
to see the nothingness
between her legs

not a word to say
or fool to write of
now that she can see
what never was

stubborn stairs
envelop the corridor

tadpole footed frogs catching
flies with their mouths sealed

the princess in her parlor
executing the pea
the actress in the park
giving shakespeare's ghost
a blow job

as if he'll remember her
after its over.

i. you don't.

love anything.

callous pigeons
carry the touch

from my skin
to yours.

and back
again.

connecting dots
in invisible ink.

determined sheets
collect the tears
of our flesh

in damp portraits
that draw our hearts
in red ink.

remnants of lust.
too content with
our loneliness.

our truth being
just how softly the
pillow meets our
heavy heads

as we sink into
the tomb we say
will be tomorrow.

strength in every failure.
freedom in sorrow.
knowing the moment
is lost.

sunken ships she called
her moments of clarity
stalked the pale gauze
of her happiness.

convalescing
in the tears
of youth's
soiled linens,

a child unmolested
by the intricate
griefs her mind had
so carefully cultivated.

one cigarette at a time.

when i am me
i have a storm
to prove it to myself.
it rages like i do

too distant for
anyone to notice.
peeling the layers
from the darkness
in a search for itself.

stepping on the
broken glass and
wondering which of
my faces is gone.

close to the margin.
nearer to the tear.
i'm your paper.
write on me.

i'm your ink.
wear my pain.

faces at the fold
perpetuating my desire
to be someone i could want.
like i have wanted him.

my one truth.
my only constant.
the only whole i've
ever known is gone.

Down.

Frozen steps in front
of dark houses.

across.

pebbled streets
beside heavy mailboxes.

at the bus stop
on the curb.

doused in stones
from lonely walks.

the passenger counts
the chagne in her hand.

He had
chronic ethusiasm

He was
so sure

About everything
except us

We were
so high

That it
hurt to look down

See ourselves there

Ready to resume
the lives we

had abandoned

I listened only
long enough

to hear him say
we were over.

I'm not going to be one of those...

But you are one of those.

So just take off that corset and breathe.

Sob.

Lament.

Everything you've done.

And worse.

Everything you haven't.

Breathe.

Sob.

Allow it to hurt.

Just this once.

It was nothing anyway.

Two strangers fall in love. And then forget.

Eachother.

Rouge sheets thick with sex. Burst like a blister. And we wipe away the pus.

Two strangers catch each other's names. And we keep those beds. Tuck them in like children desperate for a story.

That ends well.

It was nothing. Just strangers. In lover's clothes.

Blaming that wolf again.

This stiff oasis.
Turning us sober.

While we try
to reach,

Something not
ours. Soft victims
In red cocoons.

That refuse to
change us.

No deserts strong
enough, to prove this
thirst.

Turn these stems
to leaves.

Put to bed
those rabid dreams.

I was counting.
The minutes.

I was waiting.

For permission
to live again.

Flirting with the
corner of the paper.

Cold attacks in
warm fingerprints.

More than proof enough.

Of anything I thought
I wanted.

The angle of the kiss. So acute. The turmoul in the touch. So frantic.

Thrust. Tooo true. Broken specimen.

This was love. As much as I could. This was happiness.

As much as I'd ever know.

Of it.

So many. So few.

Were there a way to measure.

How close.

the cow.
the queen.
all victims
of skin.

i laid
the rug down.
in echoes
of our feet.

we swam.
through the moment.
without stopping
to breathe.

episode after
episode, of
killing the fawn
to revive the forest.

we had so much
invested in those lies.

In sturdy vices
I swam.

Long sleeves
not enough.

The demon
with his lunchbox
working like
the rest of us.

On asides.

Unwilling to
trust the stage.

In scenes that
pool as calm and
strategic.

As any liar.

She fluted the
word through a
purse in her lips.

That alone wasn't
a prison, so much
as a an escape.

not that i didn't know.

I'd just never heard
someone say it.

As real as she did.

And then
everything was quiet.

The ceiling crashed
into the floor.
With a bulimic cough.
Angular and anemic.

The caviar of so many hearts.

Dead things
served on crackers.
Their only flavor
in how much they cost.

He was a priest.
And a comedian.
And everything else
all people are.

I was a child.
And a poet.
And everything

I've always been
since the day
that I was born.

We were laying there
in a sea of skin.
Like the strangers we were.

When the door opened
and the walls
all decided to fall.

And everything

was quiet again.

On both sides of the pen.
It's right there in front of me.
Two noons later and any
name I try to give it.

Fails.

Waiting for the
slope to gently cup its hands.
Falling because it's
The fastest way to

Get there.

On either end of the room
It pitched in quiet furies.
In cotton coffins grinned
By the moon, while every window

Looked in.

And saw nothing.