Jell-O

The blood was like Jello-O

                                             All over the backseat of her Ford Victoria

            Still painted like the orca whale

                                                                      That represented so much of everything

That the                       monopoly money-filled                   government wanted everyone to think

Because they couldn’t remember what they were running from

Being a fugitive for so long

Breaking all the laws that had the decency to be straight

And the suggestions that had the rage                        to be a little bit more crooked than her front teeth

All stained like the butts of the cigarettes that she kept in her                        Altoids tin

Together,                       cruising with the sin of forgetting

And bending the rules like a candy cane

                                               On the fourth of July

With another siren following her

To add to the symphony she found too amusing to drive any faster than a hundred and twenty

                                                                                                                       Miles per leap year

They still hadn’t caught on that she couldn’t be caught

17.999

All wrapped up in the didactic stagnancy of wishing for you on my birthday candles, it seems like the elegance that the empty sky once held, that faded for a couple days a couple hundred years ago, has returned to caress the moon like a lover in a different color and kiss the stars like they’re a map to a better place. With your lips like sugar and your teeth like question marks, you’re a splatter painted masterpiece of everything I could have ever wanted, created all right and tied up all wrong. I cry out little slices of my own mortality when I weep for you in the darkness of the memorable nights, designed to give cause to the unacceptable. It’s inside of those tears, I lie to the detector, and watch the way my heart rate spikes only when someone says your name. It’s cold against the back of my thighs because I’m slapping myself to get your attention and burning my skin so you’ll find me more beautiful than pitiful again. I’d grow my hair back in an instant if I could. I’d grow my hair back and mark your territory on my skin in ink and silver and send electrical shocks through my nightmarish blood stream until the broken back the rest of them left you with is gone. You’ll be able to stand up straight one day, without having to show off that you can stand up straight, and then it’ll be the moment past nothing and you’ll walk away. I’ll watch you with more regret than pride and more love for you than hatred for me. I’ve asked the magic 8 ball once again; all he says is that it must be hard for you to be the reason I want to stay when I’m the reason you need to go. Until the music stops and the bruises fade and the naivete of everything you whisper to me at midnight has quieted to wisdom, I’ll pour every part of my existence into your pressings and your heated elocution like it’s understandable to me anymore than to anyone else. I can feel the pulse you’re sending over, all damned, underneath your genomes of unique ambiguity and the whimsical way your white on black on white on black turns to color in my bedroom kaleidoscope. You’re all wrapped up in the didactic stagnancy of me wishing for you on my birthday candles. I don’t want to know if you wish for her.

bOoM

They're keeping both their hands on the bomb
with one little finger blocking the access and passage to remorse
until it becomes a more compact representation
of everything that everyone would have wanted for them anyway.

They have a sense of starry-eyed naivete in their innocent
name games
despite the fact that they've stopped caring what goes on anywhere at all.
They're bleeding all over their name tags
and the boxes that they've put themselves in when they decided to say
"I'm too gay to be straight"
or
"I'm too smart to fall in love"

It's been mapped out on the schedule
because all of it is incessantly planned
and the entire world has lost its appreciation for

spontaneity.

That's why, in case the judges ask.

Tile Marks

Let us go then, you and I.
Name me after her
until I'm just as enigmatic as the lovely memories of her feel.
I'll stop asking when you stop asking
why.
I'm ripping off record players as I'm smiling just to smile
standing barefoot on the tile
for a while
until my mouth goes out of style.
Let us go then, just us two.
The Mardi Gras medallion is swinging in time like a rhythmic repugnancy of what I should be.
Futuristic reprimands make your voice taste like arsenic.
Pour me a shot.
Let me go then, on my own.

Lovely

Drafting in pencil, she called herself February and pretended like the
                       million edged sword
                                                    didn't hurt the way that her poems made it sound.
Altogether, wrapped up without anyone else, she drew pictures of the way that the other half lived on the side of the planet where they walked upside down.

It struck her occasionally that she should probably run. 

People had the tendency to call her the wrong name with indiscretion

and forget when she started speaking

or what her point was at all.

She was number 2

She was option B

She was 18 pounds too far away from a friend who might think of her naked without trying to color her in a language she didn't know. 

She thought of buying a 

                                  name tag

                        and wearing one on every layer so that even when she was undressed

they'd have the decency

                       not                        to                 ask.

She was starting a phase of undeniable regression on the subject of tomorrow's plans. 

Wherever she stood these days, she wished she was standing somewhere else.

They told her carpe diem

but she wasn't really pretty enough to seize anything anymore. 

She'd wait until the rain forest fell silent. 

Maybe she'd be lovely then. 

Suitability

I've got ink stains all over because I'm trying to wire myself into the ribbons of my typewriter. I'm mimicking the way the stamp hits the paper so that my voice can sound that addictive and that perfect. Writing all the ways I could never touch you in the sunlight, and all the things I wish I was whispering into your delicate aura right now. You're wrapped up in California snow and I'm drowning in my a leftover set of tears.
If you came home, I'd never leave your side.
If you held me once more, I'd love you until I die.
If you say you want me back, I'll find you exactly what you need.
Being suitable is going out of style.

fuck and other extremities

You built me out of stones

When you tried to build a home

Where you could be alone

And let the way that the second hand

Took a stand

Against your superiority complex

Fall off your skin without leaving a little scar

Because it would’ve pushed you too far

To admit to me

In the back seat of your car

That I was worth something more than

The candy wrappers

And the cigarette butts

You kept in the ash tray on the table of your

Imaginary patio

Next to your make-believe

Romanticism

And eclecticism

That you pride yourself on

It seemed to me that your favorite time of day was 13 o’clock

And all of the remnants of tomorrow could have been mistaken for now.

Fucking and having sex in order to pretend we don’t make love

Our freedom quaked until morning was etched all over your face

And the zodiac could be tattooed on your palm.

There’s a light-up line on the floor

To keep score

Of the path I take

And all the times I break

The windows I’m supposed to clean

Or make a scene

About something too esoteric for remedy

And not quite esoteric enough for philosophy

Without discrepancies, I wondered when you’d run to the top

Of the local mountainous oceanic meadow

And do one of two things:

You could have poured the clouds in my eyes

And watched the way I looked before you

Or

With the same wistful serendipity you could build a hundred little shops

With big striped tops

And melted me into your mouth

And kept me there for the rest of the year.

I wouldn’t hear

Of any other maniacal flirtations

On behalf of the sound of my heels on cobblestone in the rain

It hasn’t stopped you from reading

Or feeding

My addiction

To perfection

And disappointment

It’s a roman candle

Before I fly off the handle

And requite the unrequited

Until you smite me into oblivion.

I love to kiss your mouth when you swear

Or say you care

With lips like water

Is it getting hotter

In here or is that just me?

You see, I see the millions of starstruck fireworks to the west

All the rest

To the test

Until my tongue is hung like the jim crow lynching

Until musical squares become circles

And we both fall off the edge of the world.

I can taste her name on all the musical notes

That you wrote

And transposed into a different key

So it could be

Okay for me

Without me knowing it was all wrong

It’s not my song

It wasn’t all along

You wouldn’t have said anything

If I hadn’t said it first

I’m not as naïve as you think.

I left the dishes in the sink

Because I break all the bowls I hold

And I can’t do what I’m told

And I haven’t forgotten that I’m getting old

And cold

Freezing

Truthfully, I love it when you prove yourself

Or mark the calendar

Of my health

And don’t remember

You kissed my swaying and rocking reservoir of pebbles that drop in the lake

Until you take

Me back.

I sleep naked in your sweatshirts and pretend that they’re your arms.

No harm

Or meretricious mendacity

Because it’s redolent around the garden

Where I locked a key

Under a tree

Inside

You have to get in to get in

I’ll call you, laying next to you, to ask you on a date.

You feel like a thousand miles above the ocean where the air is soft and I’m held aloft by the scintillating sound of your voice.

They say

Or breathing

Like I’m running out of days

Because I’ve got one of those feelings

That set me to reeling

About the state of the world that I’m in

It shouldn’t be a sin

To forget your kin

And leave them behind for some sunny days

Far away

With an empty tank of gas

And a forgotten element of class

When we sleep under the bridge

But still make it for breakfast at Tiffany’s

And scrub the dirt from our nails

Just to put on our diamond rings

It doesn’t matter that we stole them

From the mother hen

Whose children will attend the ivy schools

And make fools

Of the price of private education

When they’re working at the train station

In a couple thousand years

Reminiscing on the days when we used to walk

And talk.

Who gives a fuck about the little fucks you’ve lost and all the left over fucks you’ve still got?

I fucking don’t.

I actually do, but not in front of anyone else. 

Fawns and Lady Bugs

All the year-long disaster drills started yesterday afternoon, and she was balancing lady bugs on the tips of her fingers, waiting for them to realize that, disaster or not, we would all die someday anyway. She surrounded herself with the snow in the morning, the sand in the afternoon, and the starry sky by night, so that she could see the best and worst of everything in every city in every light at every time of day. The natives of the planet asked her for tutorials about the culture of her extinct race. She forgot where she was born and let herself slide off into the shadows before they realized she was gone. 

Different from the rest, better than the best, she withstood every test with the delicacy of a bulldozer and moved across the freeway traffic like a laughing little fawn. All the obstacles were challengers, bowing to her like the start of a fencing match, holding up their lethal swords and dangling poison next to her ear. She could hear the shot guns a thousand miles behind her, but she never turned around to see if she had any competition at all. She danced with the Gods of another time, letting Aphrodite fawn upon her and Mars bow gracefully before her feet; she didn't know who they were, but she carelessly caressed each of their faces and kissed them like all of the frantic fables they faithfully spun were true. She loved letting them think the best of themselves. 

She thought the best of herself all the time. 

She was lovelier than the sunflower fields of Tuscany, and she told herself that before she fell asleep under the falling rain every night. 

Be Mine

Melancholic understatements drown out aphrodisiacs until oysters have lost their potency.
Try green skittles next time, or
ask yourself first.

LOST

Take off that mask of burning remedies and let me see the inside for one slice of a second, only until my eyes have been blinded to the light of what is elderly and left. Municipalities are setting trees alight to fight the power of the night, and tomorrow I'll borrow a hand bound book. Silent eccentricities and electrical shocks are their treatment remedies so that nobody can feel any of the pain that has painted itself upon the walls. Everyone is too distracted by the glowing screens telling them left or right; we are a generation afraid of not knowing the way. Funny enough, it's the light-up squares with more touch-sensitivity than today's common man that seem to be getting us lost.

scientific malfunctions

She’s pressing her fingers against her temples hard enough to give her occipital lobes a bruise the color of the nail polish she picked off last night. She threw away the script she was supposed to keep for the rest of her life, so she’s running off book whilst the rest of humanity knows exactly what to say. She’d really rather have it that way; intelligent understanding seems to her, when all is said and done, a little too mainstream for her eloquent silence. She’s writing in gloves, scratching in gloves, touching herself in gloves so that her DNA is kept to herself; she’s keeping everything to herself. She had 27 seconds left and she couldn’t think of a New Year’s resolution. It’s a good thing she didn’t think she needed improvement.

She doesn’t know what day it is and she doesn’t know what direction would take her to a room inside someone’s mind to call her own. She’s got her stuff packed in a little napkin tied to a stick, and she’s got her toothbrush in her back pocket, so that she can wipe all the cities off her teeth and keep a running tally of the number of renditions of beauty she would find on the map.

She looks like a foreigner wherever she goes. That’s probably why she ran so far from her daddy’s bible and her mommy’s cookies, straight in a straight line to a land where her inability to speak the language resulted from locational proximity rather than an emotional detachment.  She lived on the beach and never touched the sea; she worked at an amusement park and never rode a ride; she moved to a big city so that she could complain about the smog.

She probably still smoked through her teeth and maintained her intense superiority.

Little Bites

Horrible notions began to strike me
on the nature of communal living
and
communal dying.
Because the more the air smelled like chamomile
and the farther I got away from you
it felt
like the sun had lost its flare.
Sounding far closer to giving up
than you ever did to holding on
I began
to hold my breath.
I'll keep holding it until I see you
with the moon behind your eyes
and
the starlight in your skin.
It's tornado season in my wonderlust
and you're on a one way track to bursting.
I'm forgetting the way
it felt to be alone.

History in the Blood

"Because," she would whisper for his ears only in a tiny closet of a restaurant where, until the mindless stars disappeared to give way to the careless sun, they had the audacity to fall in love, "I can smell the history in the blood of the river here." He didn't understand, but she couldn't see how she could be more crystalline.
They held hands with silence until the coffee in front of them had gone cold and then, even then, they still watched each other. It became clear that the reality of his fantastic illuminated night terrors was that, without a doubt, he never really met her. She had the tendency to drive faster on the streets and slower on the freeway, he noted, but he never could deduce why. She, as she would have explained it, had no desire to see the millions of unhappy faces that she could be confused with. Anyone could see the resemblance between two people who have eyes, and beating eyelashes. On the freeway, she was just by herself.
It felt to him like the musicality had left her voice and been replaced with a sense of concrete phenomena, gold embossed to remind him more of the cloudy city streets of London than the laugh that used to remind him of nighttime on the ocean.
"Is that it?"
With an ironic smirk, she responded. "Of course that's it! What else is there?"

In that moment he thought, for the first time, that maybe love isn't as great as everyone had cracked it up to be.
She stood without another word and left.
But as soon as she was gone, he realized that yes, yes love was exactly as great as they had cracked it up to be.
He could still smell the remnants of her perfume on the air that she had been breathing. Lucky air, he thought.

Outside, she let herself shed a single tear before she started to walk. She had planned, esoterically, to forget about the nuisance of gravity in order to step back on the time space continuum. She left because she knew she would never love again. There was a funny sense of freedom in knowing that all your worst feelings are packaged behind you.
She stepped on the grassy knoll where he first asked her if she had directions to the supermarket. She directed him to a dodgy bar in the East End where she sat waiting for him, holding his heart and his reverence in her left hand while her right held a dirty martini.
They laughed that night, all night, and for the next 364 days.
Today was 365.
She never spent more than a year in one place.

She pulled out her ticket to everywhere and disappeared.