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I like the way you touch me there
Don’t stop please, god continue!
The feeling that you create stirs me
Always bringing me to a new height

peel the skin. it hurts to touch.
don’t touch me there. i hate that feel.
you insist on torturing me. i don’t know why.
leave me untouched and untouchable.

I remember the days we were happy
Clichéd, yet typically radiant and alive
Smiles, laughter, and no truer love
Could we, perhaps replay those scenes?

these memories are painful.
nostalgia’s just not my thing.
please stop talking about the past.
if i could change – if only. stop.

The song of your voice, fluttering
The whisper of my name off your lips
Moans, sighs, pleasantries, and the enjoyment
Thunderous notes in my symphony

that shrill vindictive yell.
the harsh disappointment in a voice.
i dream of these and wake alarmed. angered.
wishing i could forget the noise. screams.

The look you had when you smiled,
Took my breath away, fiercely contagious
I was always striving to recreate it in you
A wondrous urge to repeat the bliss

dark hateful eye cast onto me.
burning, burning through every pore. charred.
dejected and rejected. abject disgrace.
please don’t look. turn away.

dreams & endings

She reads on red wings
Dreams, in streams, some vulgar things
You saw me yesterday
That dress I wore
Beautiful, I don’t recall
Walls gilded in glistening dew
Remember the day, plucked

Sing me away in a coffin, a face
A ladder leaning, splinters a maze
Contractual moorings, arson in haste
Water mistakes, a fumbling, disgrace

Save your voice for better verse
thrash away swiftly the proverbial horse
Better meaning and truth of will
Add and subtract the emotional till

I stare too long at the light in the ceiling
Recessed and warm, it’s halo, my dreaming
Conversing with it, eyes open and squinting
We manage agreement, with light relenting

What act is action? When words become sound
When girls control boys standing, sifting in sand
What mindfulness sprays from levers not pulled
Where are the ones we wait for? Why are there none?

He raised his tongue to click, to spit
A reprimand of passion, the bridle and bit
Representing her yearning in bland, muted tones
His failure in those lives, his yoke, their stone

Sins of the mother covered over with rocks
Floating with the organization of gnats in flight
Seeping oil from creases in a cardboard box
Fleeing under shadows behind bloodshot sight

We led each other, palms joined, once
Toward fences built and trenches dug
Simpleness of thought, content inside pairs
Which way are you looking? What stairs dare.

We fell behind the deadline walls
where dust and rats and dead cats crawl
When smart ideas were thrown away
for love with hope and fresh decay

Asserting faith in larger things,
I stayed a course in smallest rings
Danced with demons I knew before,
then left them hiding under wood-planked floors

Pulses thread while tears vibrate, and
Bleaker thoughts contrive their escape.
Covered scars behind thickened lids
Over eyes that dreamt in melted film

Lend me your words, lay them here
Hear the blood course, watch me steer around
this fear of wanting, it compresses our sight
against half-truths and promises,
ideas and lies

Endings sewn on patchy jeans,
our bandages stuck on happy scenes
Internal sound from airless depths
in culverts and compost of other selves
Those nights alone, long and cold,
foreboding tones and brittle bones
Memorials to pain and fear left stains,
like carious forms of childhood play

she

She felt the city in her cheekbones
The sunset on her perky eyes
His reticence inside her chest
the clouds trembling against her thighs
Stop sign fingers wiping lines of sweat
Tips moistened in traffic, freeways bent
Those structures in lust, built to withstand
Branding orgasms with slights of a hand

addiction

I need your drug to alter me

fix my thoughts and drown my breath

cover my spirit in forgetfulness

conquer my senses and my libido

like a razor on my throat

a noose or revolver

yelling at me now

louder harder

fill my vein with poison and passion

use your mouth to allay withdrawals

seminal peaks bring waves of nausea

place yourself upon my face

distort my vision and flood my brain

every drop will find its place

your substance finds my abuse in spades

song

Are you listening? Really listening?

I don’t believe you hear me singing.

The song and words are from my youth,

my Rosetta stone, unlocking me.

Desperate screams from disparate voices.

Melodies, trances; sight lost to hypnosis.

Answers to harmonies yet asked, while

choruses echo, three sentences passed.

Sing aloud in bathrooms and sewers.

Conjoin reality to fantastical rumors.

This is my opus, loud and long, listening

to the composer, my master, a song

carnival

Take one chance, throw the ring

You never know what tomorrow brings

Clichés and counterweights abound

In this forsaken one-horse, one-trick town.

Making love under the moon and starlight

Like we read in your magazine one night

Makes hell less hot, water less deep,

Back tatts brave, and footsteps fleet

begin

Jumping from the bank into the river

near where we all lived

Summer days, humid, stifling,

finding the only respite around

Taking turns diving in

while the rest watched excitedly

Sparing a few seconds to appreciate birds

crossing high from one treetop to the other

The soft whisper of wind seemed to speak to us

and approve of our folly

Those days were the launch of our lives,

reserved to daring, juvenile to adult

Auspicious and untethering

survive

Pulsing through each corner and curve

flowing into everythere simultaneously.

Pushing outward

unending for a time,

to the tips of my fingers, tingling and humming.

Speaking in my brain and humming at my ears,

determined essence, hemoglobin carriage,

rising to fill in an autonomic tumescence,

subterranean,

reptilian,

with a fallacious but firm resolution,

seeking only propagation and continuation

of these, and solely these, corpuscles