like a good lil pup

Sometimes, 8 minutes before 

your client call starts

you see your picture. 

The one where your hat is backward

and you're licking your best friend’s forehead

like a good lil pup.

And you cry

because your best friend 

is dead,

and your 

whole world is different,

from that pale yellow joy of that day-

where your hat was backward

and you licked your best friend’s forehead

like a good lil pup.

Hard as bone

Hard as bone

Sometimes. I can feel like the bones of my skeleton 
Are this close
to pushing right through my skin
Erupting outward, a firework of red spray and 
pink spaghetti noodle sinew hiding 
just a glimpse of white I guess, 
i’m not really sure what living bone looks like

But it doesn’t matter
its not my bones 
its not my skin 
And the fireworks arent blood 
or tendons snapping to burst
Just thoughts
yellowed, worn, weatherd, 
nasty thoughts as hard as bone.

12/4/15

6:45 PM, she was already breathing it in
Not yet late, not yet early.
The families laughed when they saw us.
my grin so dumb it never passed the third grade.

We rode the paint chipped boar and sheepish tiger
around and around in faded brass, player piano, antiquity-
reminiscent of the nature in which we had come.

There, a million tiny lights played auras in her eyes
and shone opaque on her curls:
      softly glowing greens and reds,
      dancing on the sun beams peaking through
      the window's shade

The white copy paper shield I brought
had profanity protecting, scrawled in permanent ink;
finitely guarding my sternum from
     cracking too soon.
But she folded it and slipped it laughing into
her brown leather purse.
     crack

2:00AM, she exhaled
not quite late, soon too early
A lit cigarette dangled from those sheepish
smiling split lips so dumb they never passed
third grade.
    each step a funeral procession
    each step a parade
"Goodnight, thank you for all of it."

Listening to Graceland

Each change leaves the vinyl siding
of heart pockmarked.
Varnish gone, tiny holes show
the woodwork and pink insulation beneath.

The hail reigns from the dark clouded hippocampus
- a nickelodeon film (complete with cigarette burns) of
sepia toned images swell and join the high and low
pressure systems. They're careless in their storm's birth.
Freezing but not quite frozen. Solid little white balls descend
into the house I built. The house she helped design with
her little hands.

Those little hands they haven't stopped holding
onto my big beige, knuckle cracked paws.
Not yet.
But death or shattered shadowed window panes loom.
Autumnal hymns sway singing dirges through the
brown leafed breeze. Her words are left without shelter-
Her worth forever beheld behind the pockmarked vinyl.

Twelve.

There is much to be said

for the dead red hearts

starting back up pups

lick my back face spray painted

panting in blackface

Oops I meant blackspace pace,

myself before I fall fawn-like

dawn might make a Bambi out of me

dear here cotton tailed brown fur

crowned her infinite but found her finite,

friday night lights, come faster

glimpses short and they past ya

by, short sighted knee-time getting knighted

by the queen I- cant't think but to think I-

maybe might've with my baby might caused this disaster-

even after the rapture captured none of the rafters

and there's no damage done. plunge.

Plungin toilets boy let's get out of

the coke-stained tile floor porcelain skin

fitted bathroom body, find some new hobbies,

go to L.A. and hang out in lobbies

hangin heads like Holly, would, like Hollywood would,

should I ever open my eyes

and see past this disguise this guy hides behind

and I found out why.

Cause in the last twelve seconds left

I learned that this death, is twisted started feeling

lifted from that blunts and those kisses but you said

that you hid, poison on your lips

ellipses

eclipse it vision blurry I hurry to stop the flurry

of feelin my body sifted twitched in dreams shifted to

stitch it squeam to the blood cut runs from lip's tips

red foamy vomit slips it and slips out

in fountain spouts to the sink mouth then

my head hits white and then

lights out.

Attention.

Apparently, if you've been hollerin'

in my ear for 5 minutes it's

insufficient for my snap n pop

attention. Crack. There, I'm

looking at your gray eyes,

hearing your sinewy yellowed

whines and nodding my

coconut furred face in recognition.

Crack, I'm gone to the dew silhouettes,

black dropped on the brown brick semicircle

structure along the lichen hued statues. Crack

my ears pull back to my harried back head

sideburns standing at attention to

crisp salutes of winter's wind:

prickled with your words' firework

bursts in the black exhaust pop

of the streets salutations; vibrant

all the while.

Crack I'm back to standing straight

from sofa slouched embroided back

pain to your eyes, to be tingled from

your cigarettes wafting with lavender

and lilac pedals out of your black hair

and silk shoulder blades

up the dark olifactor tunnels to taste. Crack.

I sheepishly grin as your softly stained

coffee teeth guffaw at my slack hung

beige jaw closing. Your words have flittered

into my oak room mind and are sitting cross-legged

waiting for tea, your eyes shine content,

and we walk back inside.

The wares.

The wares wear no grins

but smooth leather gloves

on their hands, their skins

worked and tanned to the

finest grade of italian wallets,

their pride is etched into

the black lines that sweep

across their palms.

The industry of the north

took careful aim at the heart

of these wares, it's arrows pierced

their judgement and made them

hollow to nothing but dignity,

never will they sultry a tear

down their dust stained

cheeks.

Where has there been

replaced a place in chest

for dilligence in thought?

A place where mind waltz's with

other consituents of emotion

and yeilds the real feelings?

In the middle of nowhere.