Welcome

Trust in me

Broken comb part my hair

And

Breathe deep the memories

That have hardwired themselves to my cheeks

Now ebing and flowing with the sounds

Of those gaudy mechanical things

Called lungs

That live to let your heart do its job

Twine your spine around itself

And get a better view of this moment

Where all the poems about

Trust and the love we want ourselves to feel

Is being played out

As we skip the sixty broken hearted promises

That eleven minutes after eleven

Offers people who cling to hope

Like transients

We do not need these wishes anymore

We found that trust in this night

This is not sex

Binocular piping baristas

Fresh off the shift

Turned voyeur might call this sex

But this is not sex

This is not making love

As much as it is

Creating it

Hard-boiling lust and straining it clean

This is the night

Where we turned off all the clumsy switches

Of the world

The labels and the terms

Opened every door

And shouted that tonight had happened

In a language that only people who had learned

What we have now learned

Now know

Both translators of this language

Now find themselves smiling

One mouth too dry

And full of pillow to speak

The other too wet and understanding

Trust in me

Like I was someone you had stood

Shoulder-to-shoulder with

And had entire conversations

Finding eye-contact in the horizon

Like someone who had skipped a date

And the chance for sex

To sit shoulder to shoulder with you

Watching a movie with too much blood

And too little plotline

Like someone who listened

Face to face when you said the things

Girls were too much themselves to understand

And boys were too much themselves to care for

And mined a new type of love in that

Trust in me

Like I know you

Like I was your brother

Like I am

Like I could watch you sigh

And not wonder about the breath parting your lips

As everyone else in your position would

Trust in me

Even from the beach of your tomorrow

Trust me

So I don’t trust alone

Once More

He tried to tell me

That leaving the light on

Would mark a mistake.

I asked myself

If the mistake I made

Would haunt me.

Yes.

Sometimes

Sometimes

Sometimes the love

We stupidly choose to feel

Is grotesque.

This way,

We do not feel the brokenness

Of avoidance:

A self-sheltering.

This is how we remember

Not to forget.

This is how we remember

We can feel.

Harder in the presence

It feels more broken

For having felt your fixing.

In a mixed up way

The bruise is a reminder.

You were always so good at that;

Breaking things

In the process of mending them.

In losing and not minding.

Help me remember

How to remind you.

Nighttime is both

Beautiful

And treacherously hind-legged.

A dystopia we wish for

On the backs of tossed coins.

The coming year will be.

A waiting mortuary.

And then it will multiply.

Welcome home

Under the neon ruby glow

Your skin

Almost evaporated.

Damn you for reminding me

Of your mortality.

My lungs yearn for something

So much more wholesome

Than this pang,

They burn with

The salty memory of you

Inhaled.

I do not make my excuses

Anymore.

I do not need to.

I do not forgive them,

Either;

I must mistake myself

For someone with virtue.

This is how we survive.

We avoid survival.

We turn fully toward memory,

Hop three steps backward,

Finding solace in a moment

We forgot we were standing in.

A breathing room

In the likeness of a you

I used to know.

End of months

Paint that smile on,

Or steal it from the Past;

They need you stronger.

Brutish

I am so sorry.

This is unforgivable,

To leave you

Trapped inside the airtight

Box of my smile

Or kindness.

I never asked enough

To know which

It was.

When we parted ways

In the airtight room,

I thought the door was unlocked.

That you needed some

Time to think.

A floor,

Four walls,

The lamp,

And the two parakeets

I reluctantly forked over

For your trouble.

As with a poisoned mine,

The birds were the first to go.

I would have never

Closed the door behind me

If I knew you would

Be trapped.

I do not think.

You can't help

But to imagine

The shape of my stomach

Upon opening that door,

New prospective occupant

Nearly underfoot.

I heard him run

From the sight of it.

The smell.

But never turned my head

To watch the retreat.

Here,

The lamplight still burns.

The floor is caked with tears.

Gritty, gritty tears.

Yours always had a way

Of sticking around.

The walls have started to crumble;

They too have been kept

From breath.

There are footprints on the ceiling.

These sign reluctance.

You fought yourself for survival

In the last moments.

You convinced yourself

That indigence laced with delusion

Would uproot an answer.

You inverted the solution.

The corners were what got me.

Three of them

To be exact.

The other five sheltered cliches:

Your hopes,

A crucified hand,

Another crucified hand,

A yard of moleskin,

And your signature in firefly blood.

The other three really

Caught me by surprise:

Your Past gazed at me from the bottom left.

A child's beg.

It took no shape

But that of two precipice-eyes.

They well

And remind me my shame

In carelessness.

Your Future glared at me from the upper left,

As if to remind me,

"You never carved a spare key."

I take it like a man,

Knowing I had bones to carve:

Bones I chose to keep.

And the bottom right corner

Of this room,

This room which gasps for breath,

Somberly snatched the wind

From my body...

Your Beating Heart

Languid, but stoic,

Had jumped from your chest

And run to you.

Like a half-life miracle disaster,

It had summoned breath

To coat your throat

And beckoned you to safety,

Or something akin.

I had never seen anything like it.

The body broken,

The heart a saviour.

This,

This is truly survival.

With an opened door,

Discovery of this magnitude

Can even become life once more.

I carved this doorstop

From a bone in my wrist.

I wasn't using it.

It is no key,

But it is yours.

Discovery Of The Self's Broken Past

Take two for the pain,

Three more to forget.

Wake yourself

One backside of the knee

To the corner of the mattress

At a time.

Thrust your heels

Into the broken evening

Scattered across the floor.

Walk.

Toe to heel,

Miss that off-kilter floorboard

Lean to the left

To keep this man

Asleep.

Break the banister,

Or trip down the stairs.

Alongside either

Make sure

To grind your headache

And snort it.

Remember your mistakes

As an impartial observer

Of half-truths

And dizzy daydreams

Come to pass:

He tries on a pair of sunglasses

Like the skin of a man;

Simply for the sake of it

With too quick a realization

Of the self.

Specs stolen to a night.

The town.

In the evening,

The clock towers

Lie for miles.

They are moons to be sheltered from,

Omnipotent bastard children

Yearning for hope.

Some for another drink.

None to remember.

If he glances upward,

The two-handed screams

Will blind him.

So he digs his fingers

Into his thighs

And wishes they were holding

February 2009.

He wonders

If that date was right.

He knows it was not.

But I'll be damned

If I don't make

The same mistake

Tomorrow.