shy as virgins

The last time I touched you, I mean really touched you, you were taken from me in a mess of heartstrings and betrayal. You became the miscarriage of my birth in Paris. You became elusive, you turned at my touch. I turned my eyes from your pleading, too, I am guilty. I am so guilty.

We spoke in Berlin, a little bit. An awkward conversation I broke away from when I realised that I could do nothing without tears. I handed you to the best doctors I knew; they all said there was nothing wrong. You weren't broken. You were brilliant. It was time I saw it.

It was the last time I touched you at all. Now, here, you and me, a different city, a different country. I knew I couldn't avoid you forever; you've stayed in my heart like nobody's business, tearing around, screaming, throwing tantrums, pleading with me to just see you one last time.

You were my jewel, my morning flower, my dew on the grass -- he tore you from me, he crushed you, bled you, and did the same to me.

We were taken from each other in Paris, darling. There's no doctors here, love, and these wounds are older and scarring. To fix them, they must be reopened, and I am no surgeon. It's not going to be pretty. . It's not going to be pretty, but I love you, and if you'll just... give me time, and be patient, I think I can sew us back together.

body music

shoot me up
my delirious cowboy
dredging the depths
of the dark mystery
returning home,
hat on heart and
boots in hand
shoot me up
in the depths of your delirium
mainline me in the heat
of this stillness
in this blue cooled
sweet staccato of
hips on thighs
pelvis on pelvis
shoot me up
in the depths of
early morning
with my lidded eyes heavy, my dreamer
shoot me up
with sweat and soul
caked on bedsheets
and slammed on walls
repeating and repeating
shoot me up
main line me like breakfast cereal --
cocoa puffs and mimosas
you taste like train whistles and champagne
shoot me up
with you hat on my sunrise
your tall jungle tales on my feet
your boots in my back
and your hands in my hair
main line me electronic
ten paces
high midnight
shoot me up,
let me draw you in

"Le Mixtape"

Tonight, I am
wrapped up in your smile,
far away
over freeways and post-
apocalyptic dreams
Tonight I am strumming to drums
I forgot
and missing you.
Tomorrow morning will be a
tribute to our punk-rock June.
And I will boom swagger
all down the streets of Seattle,
boom swagger all over
the sidewalks of my life.
(boomboomboom)

Post-Post-Postmodern

She knows suddenly,
how the story ends:
on the pier after dark,
the benches and filtered
hand-rolled cigarettes
under the no-smoking sign.

She knows the words
before they roll off your tongue,
before your eyes
can even betray brain's glimmer
of betrayal:
"You said you loved me."
"You said, you loved me."
"I did."

No, she knows
how the story ends,
days, weeks, even, before it
comes:
"No, you needed somebody
to help you escape
a toxicity
a wasteland
and I was your lifeline
and you're welcome."

Yes, she knows the retort
towards her back
as she walks distance increasing:
"So did you."

And she'll give pause,
for the final note of
the swan song,
the great crescendo.
She'll consider:
"I never should've let you touch me."
and
"You meant nothing."
or
"She was right, this was a game, I win, you lose, goodbye."

She'll give pause for
the fleeting rests
quarter hald eighth note lies
and settle on four full beats of her heart:
"I don't know
what
I needed.
But
I am glad
you were there."

The cigarette stamped out
the toe of her boot
and the winter rain
dewing on the navy blue coat
you've never seen before;
smells like a life she knew,
a life you feel cheated
having never known.
Wrapped in the strength
of a sea-city's winter,
with the iron will of the lonely,
she's known how
this story ended
before you ever laid your eyes
on her blessed form.

sounds you'd die to

The syllabic sound
of your name
has been echoing in me.

It starts with my footsteps,
and grows up the creaking of my knees
to the swish-swish of my thighs
warm from walking friction.
Around my back,
calling up my spine to the
thud-thud-thumping of my poorly broken heart.

Your name has been
the echo of my heartbeat
since the day I was born;
I just couldn't hear it
'til some minutes ago.

Changes

I am going to wrap your heart in butcher's paper,
under every fold I will kiss you in ink.
The pen nib will scratch at your fibres, baby,
but it's all right,
Love is Pain.

I am going to paint your lungs in oils:
red ochre, sweet vermillion and cobalt,
paint you a whore,
and let the air be your pimp.

I am going to coat your ribs in chocolate:
deep, dark, and bittersweet as your lips
in a last good-bye.

Your stomach I will let alone, it's perfect,
acidic, clenching, except for the butterflies --
I will tear their violet wings one by one
to cease the endless concerto flutter of love.

I am going to pluck your eyes,
replace them with the pink roses you see through,

The rest, your skin, your face, your bones
I will leave bare and unblanched
a seeding perfection for all the world to view.

I will depart from you broken,
and fulfilled,
Unspoiled and unsullied
save for the cracks on the discerning come to notice.

Blake's Song

William.
You and I stood and spoke candidly
before your death.
We stood on cliff's edge
overseeing the masterful slavery of oysters
in the ocean.
We spoke in monochromatic color wheels
and turned every green blade to blue steel.
Equinamity rose and you took your hand
to mine,
painted a book running up my arm.
The last sentence made a declaration of Me
as Soul's inheritor
Soul's hierarchy
and at last spelled out the meaning of ------
just as you went to again dip your brush in ink,
God's breath blew you over the precipice.
You called to me the last words,
of smoke, and vapors;
the illusions of contemporary,
but again God's breath kicked up,
swallowed your words
as a starving infant meets a wet nurse's breast,
and you were gone.
I stood for eternity,
examing a grain of sand,
God's breath returned and tried to take me with you,
but I fought it, William,
with words of spite
and words of anger.
I fought it with the newly forged grass,
among a thousand allies,
an army of Me.
I screamed. I wept against the tyranny of God,
and his tears thundered,
but my tears roared.
My tears roared waves onto shores --
the sea swelled up to meet my backside,
and struck the wind to surrender.
We stood on cliff's edge,
God and I, speaking candidly of your death.
And the hand you held,
on the arm that you scribed,
reached
up.
I quelled, I shook, but
I nary spoke a word as I stepped aside
to let it do a soldier's duty
and pushed.

Song for Wendy

Paint me in monochrome
unbeknownst to quiet smoke
and vapor lights
inside my blood
inside my bones
my marrow beyond
all reason
I am boneless
among sunflowers
I am wretched pale in moonlight
and poetry is my foreplay beyond
my gilded tongue

Mia Blanca

you are not my hips cracking
bone-crushing soul-wrenching ache
in the pit of my being
and you are not sweet harmony's forehead
pressed to mine lost
in the universal theories of music
between two girls,
you are not under my skin,
in my blood, my cravings at midnights
or my cries in dreams
you are not my pride,
my joy, or my whiskey morning's kiss.
You are not hands to the floor,
back-bruising instantaneous
wall-clutching,
you are not the force of an orgasm
when the boy next to me has
finally dropped to dream's bullets,
and you are not in my heart of hearts.
But I'm going to keep you all the same,
in the smile behind my eyes
and the rhythms in my toes,
the larynx-tearing pitch.
You will be my song,
when my voice has finally run out.