Balderdash! he yelled,
enraged by young lust.
Wriggling his white,
once tender and smooth,
arthritis plagued hands
’round in tight circles.
Eager for his wife.

But she was sleeping,
ensepulcher; dead.
Waiting for him.
One day he will
arrive by her side to
rest in an eternal
embraced unity.

Between then and now
every piece of him
will die like a bee who
only used his stinger by
accident. His abdomen
ripping apart from
essential flesh. 

Bone will mold to ash,
evolving into small particles
without definition. Dust.
Only, today as he sits 
attentively on a park bench
rebutting the birds and the 
execrable breeze

does he realize the
opportunities he wasted to
give his life meaning by
sitting alone, thinking of her.

Blasted to the past from the broken wine glass on the floor,
stepping on eggshells and lies and spilled White Zinfandel.
Losing my faith in God, closing off behind cellar doors,
turn up the stereo and drown in sound. From citadel
to slum in the eyes of the beholder. Silent whore
seeping through the cracks in what I bestowed her.

Blasted to the past from the burning joint on the table,
forgetting what was to forget what’s now.
Losing my mind through the blaze, growing unstable,
throw more wood on the fire. Melting down
from a someone to a snake skin. I’m not able
to express myself through pencil and pen.

Blasted to the past that I’m trying to forget,
but the only thing I’ve lost is my self respect.

Blossoming faults are packed
loosely into my back pocket.
Another distraction, another
silence, another lie, another
thoughtless expectation without
explanation as to why I
deem it necessary to feel.

“It feels like sticking a fork into an electrical outlet. My heart convulsed and tied itself in a knot. My muscles spasmed like they were reaching for nerves that were just out of their grasp, but weren’t actually there. Sounds were hollow, like listening through a sea shell, and colors were distorted through amber waves of grain. Panic. Then the thoughts of, Am I sane anymore? What is sanity? Not this. All it took was a flinch of my eye in another direction to suck the air out of the plastic sack wrapped around my face. That’s what it feels like,” he said, describing what it’s like to kill another person. Somehow I found it comforting.

I remember the first time I saw a dead body. Not a dead body dressed up at a funeral in a fancy box with flowers placed neatly on top, the type of dead body we have grown desensitized to, but a bloody, dislocated, contorted dead body with no definite shape, smashed on the ground.

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that I count in the pages of my string-bound black book and it didn’t mean a thing then, nor will it ever. You’re only a number. You’re not a face, you’re not a soul, you’re not a body, you’re not anything. Only a number. Or maybe that’s just the load of bullshit that I spew, because I’m afraid of the reality.

You’re just another time in my life that I want to forget, but can’t, because of the hate I hold for myself and what I have done. I’m like a connoisseur of the flesh, but taken out of context. My intentions are seen from a mirror-like vantage point, backwards and mishappen. They are contorted into words that are shoved into my mouth, but were never spoken. Only myself and God hear my true voice. 

You’re just another wrinkle in the bedsheet. I count several between the crisp creases. A memory of your body sprawled out in ecstasy is burned into my retinas, but the pain it brings breaks my heart every day.

Others think that I forgot about the time we curled in my bed and your eyes gleamed in mine. They think that I forgot how you smiled as your hair fell in your face after you took off your shirt. They think that I forgot your love of Batman or your hate of marijuana or how you don’t get along well with your mother or that your parents getting a divorce destroyed you inside. No, they just say that it was only a one night fuck with a confused young girl who had gotten taken advantage of. 

They think you’re just another number with a blank face and a forgotten name. But I remember everything we shared. And the things that followed were like dust in the wind.

I am desperate for desire from devoted lovers

despite the damnation of the sins
etched on my skin with Sharpies

and half-smoked Marlboro Reds that glide
from my finger tips and flutter towards the gravel road
near the splintered and disintegrated church steps
where I praise God with one syllable and curses conjure 
behind my tongue with the next

and my goddamned anxiety leaves me numb
and useless like a cliché about a cliché

and my mind contradicts my heart 
the way an eight ball of coke manipulates
the nervous system into believing it’s immortal

and my soul is itching for impulse
or intuition or something or anything

and the inexplicable implication of depression 
coursing through my veins

and the partially cracked reflection in my cornea 
that points out my flaws like a drunk mom
who will never be proud

and my antimatter trust sprouted
from deception and misleading memories

and the lust that seeps into purity
like a crack in Hoover Dam

and the way I will never feel
as loved as much as I love you.

Is it okay to fall in love
with a woman I’ve never met?
Whose words glide across a page
and casually take my heart with them?

Is it okay to fall in love
with a face I’ve never seen?
Whose smile, I imagine, is bright
and her voice so soft and sultry.

Is it okay to fall in love
with the idea of someone?
Whose soul is perfect in every way
and never breaks your heart.

Is it okay to fall in love
with you?
or her?
or her?

Is it ever okay to fall in love?
I should think not.