if you gave me
half a moon of a chance
i would
kiss the incisors
out of your mouth, clean
and hold them in my
own, like chippings
from an old mug
then
pray my tongue into
a bowl of holy water
and ask god to never
leave you thirsty
why do you live in your body like you will be given another? as if it were temporary. you starve it, you let anyone touch it, you berate it. tell it that should be completely different. you tug at your soft flesh, wish it thinner, wish it gone. you fall in love with those who praise the way it sighs under their hands, but who praises the way it holds up your weight, even when you are falling apart?
“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
“I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.”
“Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire…. Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. It’s real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like you’ve suddenly become an idiot. There’s no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help.”
“We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting”
Lightning hits the roof,
shoves the knife, darkness,
deep in the walls.
They bleed light all over us
and your face, the fan, folds up,
so I won’t see how afraid
to be with me you are.
We don’t mix, even in bed,
where we keep ending up.
There’s no need to hide it:
you’re snow, I’m coal,
I’ve got the scars to prove it.
But open your mouth,
I’ll give you a taste of black
you won’t forget.
For a while, I’ll let it make you strong,
make your heart lion,
then I’ll take it back.
loneliness is holding a piece of cardboard
under your new kitchen cabinets
as the handyman drills holes for the hinges
that will hold the door in place
and you are catching the sawdust
so he won’t make a mess
as he looks down your blouse and asks you to lunch
I know you like lunch and you say you can’t
and he presses why not and aw, come on
until he says don’t tell me you have a new man already
and you say Victor, a name you make up on the spot
your handyman says take it from me I’m divorced twice
it’s too early to date exclusively and you say
I hear you, but Victor is really something
this is the last trip your handyman needs to make
to finish the job he started four months ago
when your ex was trying to get alimony
from you and the handyman said no man should take money
from a girl and that’s really low and you loved him
for being on your side and paid him cash
under the table and he was always on time
and swept up because he’d been a single dad
Sitting alone at the bar,
