You spotlight eyed, sharp heeled, real-life magic wielding masterpiece--
Often relegated to the confines of the bar bathroom's night life,
You handle a power that shows its face to the sun, and its tits to the cashier.
Slut, they call you. Good for nothing, but I know you make the world go 'round.
For centuries they tried to box you in as a witch, a common demon out to
Wreck the home of ""high-status"" men who can't control themselves--but I know
that your life consists of nothing but a hold of your own heart,
And your "horrific" whore-allure so often hated by (mostly) men comes only from
Your ability to care less.
My favorite safe place is in a rose bush.
And I’m very sorry about that.
When you live in a thorn patch long enough
you start believing everyone bleeds the same way,
so I divided your world from my comforts.
I don’t love nobody—not romantically anyway—
but I have a lot of practice when it comes to hate.
It’s easier to hate and to be hated;
at least hate gives me something to do with my hands,
and sometimes, for some, that’s close enough to love.
The way I see it, I only know of 3 types of people:
people I like, people I don’t, and people I’ve never met.
People I’ve never met are easy.
Legions of faceless nobodies, asking nothing of me—
and me, nothing of them.
People I don’t like are even easier—
with enough distaste, it’s worth it to ignore them altogether.
Sometimes they go as far to hate me, and that’s flattering somehow.
But people I like...ugh.
The truth is that I don’t know what to do with the people I like.
I fear that my mental cocktail has put the entirety of my opinions
so fully in one-inch margins
that I could swap spit with a kind enough waitress
but I couldn’t marry a best friend.
I never really got the idea of love —
at least, not in the broadest sense.
People love their work,
slaves in suits and skirts
clamour to crawl through concrete cubicles
to short shares of Microsoft
and they love it.
Folks will argue nightly,
put up with such intensely avoidable bullshit
for that single moment
when he finally—finally—makes the effort to buy flowers—
Hearts swelling so fully, so tightly, so complete
that they’ll stay wives for the rest of their lives,
and they love it.
It’s much easier to deal with when it’s abstracted like that.
But when it’s not, it’s hard to...uhhh.
It’s among my many joys to be considered pretty.
To some.
Sometimes.
Usually when it’s dark
and there’s drinks and drugs involved—
but it doesn’t matter.
Sometimes a kind, chivalrous gentleman
will come along and ask me if we wanna get out of here.
I say yes, of course—
it’s always just so loud in here when they ask—
and we leave,
and he kisses me some,
and it’s real nice.
And he grabs me some,
and it’s tender,
and it’s warm.
And I look up in his Hollywood eyes—
mine only half open,
my mouth wet,
my head dizzy—
and tell him that I can’t have sex with him.
It’s not entirely true, but,
I can’t give him the wrong impression, can I?
I can’t.
My favorite safe place is in a rose bush.
He tells me it’s fine.
He tells me that it doesn’t matter.
He tells me that I’m a valuable person
and I’m worth a hell of a lot more
than what my body can or cannot provide.
He cuddles me.
He spins me in the air.
He gives me roses.
It’s all so gentle.
He’s really gentle with me.
After an arduous courtship he tells me he loves me.
He tells me in all the ways that he forfeits his own will,
that my life is his to have,
that he carves out a section of his heart
and dumps the shavings at my feet,
telling me that he’s made room for me in there.
Room for two.
Room for us.
But not enough room for me.
I need a lot of room.
I need tons of it.
If he wanted to make space for me in there
he wouldn’t have enough of himself to carve.
He only has room in there for us.
So, with tears welling,
eyes half closed,
my mouth dry,
head dazed,
I throw thorns
and tell him that I can’t love him either.
It’s not entirely true.
I do love him—but only in that I really enjoy him.
I light up when he enters a room,
but I light up just the same
when other close folks do, too.
I love him, I love him as in
I really enjoy his presence,
his company,
I love being a person near him—
but I can’t be his person
and he can’t be mine.
My favorite safe place is in a rose bush
because I know the flower can’t stay pretty without the stem.
And that’s the most original thing about me
Is what I remember telling him in my
Feigned confidence, my limp-wristed college try
To ooze allure out of my skin and onto his plate.
I didn’t want this, but I was told that I did,
And doing my homework I knew all of the tricks
For he took it all——hook, line, and sinker.
One is as one was,
And one can be whoever.
One and one makes two people
Who don’t understand the other.
I look at his face,
Ask what his eyes are saying,
And I’m told the words that remain
In that hazel sea are beyond my empathy.
Yet I lie with him,
In spite of all ways it’s wrong,
And in turn he lies with me, though wreckless,
For two stay as they are in the ways that they were.
And in that way, do they stay as one.
In
My
Walk
Home
On
This
Windy
September day,
Hidden among the early bird
Leaves ahead of fall was this
Brown napkin. Pressed onto
Its face was the fast food joint
That commissioned it, but what
Piqued my interest more was the
Words scribbled in nearly
Illegible Sharpie:
Crush is what they do to cars
Before magnets lift them skyward
And dump them on a heap of metal.
I laughed when I read it.
It was funny. It was so fucking funny.
I cackled. I wheezed. I doubled over
on that sidewalk looking at
This nothing piece of litter.
Crush is what they do to cars,
What a fucking psycho. Define crush,
Local Chick-Fil-A customer. Define what makes
Someone “crush”. Define what car I am in your metaphor and
How I, in this scary, fucking terrifying moment could never understand
The people I can only half-love back. I laugh so hard I cannot breathe.
I laugh and I laugh and I laugh. It twists my stomach. My vision blurs and my fingers turn purple.
I can’t stop laughing—exerting my control on this faceless somebody in a world of somebodies.
Fat tears streak down my arm as I reach for a Sharpie of my own, mine red,
And turn over the napkin, arrested on what I should write
but know I can’t let this fucking thing best me.
I fantasize for hours on what must be my victory.
I will write, I will crumple, I will throw and destroy, and
I will be whole again.
I fall onto my side,
holding this napkin
like a stuffed animal,
I find that
I don’t have the
energy for
any of it.
In the dark
I walk away,
broken
by this
corporate
garbage,
make my way home and
Obsessively write on my chest,
over and over,
WHAT
DO
YOU
HAVE
THAT
I
DON’T.
What contains love
as a best friend does, who stands
wiping lost tears of mine
as I hope for forgiveness?
The flaws on plaster walls are my domain,
The placid life in House Solei my friends.
The man and wife, while boring, oft mundane,
Lived all, in two—themselves, decades, and heart
Beats.
My notes of them kept myself sane,
I marked their fights, their dates, the drugs they take.
While sex became to them obligatory,
She would fantasize while musing on my
Chains.
Every moment,
Every minute,
Every hour,
Of every day,
Of every night,
Of every week,
Of every month,
Of every year,
I marked their orbit ‘round each other,
Forgetting only then my eyes can’t close.
My mind in lonely, idle days, contorts,
Betrayed by only steel ball bearing creaks.
Back then, before they started working more,
The workdays, the nighttime tortured loners like
Me.
Hatred built, the boring talk began
To rot my patience towards the flat Solei’s.
Their worth, while paid in bills toward the flush,
High-towered over still, steel blades.
And for
Every moment,
Every minute,
Every hour,
Of every day,
Of every night,
Of every week,
Of every month,
Of every year,
Decided, they, to tighten belts, she said,
Or we will starve.
Money became a constant fear,
They would add hours, lose connections for dollars.
He picked up drink, she picked up pills.
They dug themselves deeper to forget the torture.
Lawyers, doctors, businessmen saw
Them as profit potential, and fed them poison.
My hate for the Solei’s vanished.
They paid bills, but I hated who made them do so.
And for every moment,
Of every minute,
Of every hour,
Of every day,
Of every night,
Of every week,
Of every month,
Of every year,
They laid, rot, forgot not the days
Where sex on the couch was enough for the Solei’s.
The lord came while they slaved away,
And we both recognized he made me, and I, him.
He left an eviction notice,
I felt shame, and spun for the first in twenty years.
And in nothing short of anger,
I tore my wires apart and sparked a fire.
The Solei’s were gone, and thank God,
For my need to punish the lord stopped for nothing.
And for every moment,
Of every minute,
Of every hour,
Of every day,
Of every night,
Of every week,
Of every month,
Of every year,
That heartless bastard’s insurance
Sent checks—his life, for good, assured,
And they get to starve.
Starve.
Starve.
I always wondered the life people expect
When they think of the small, shy, still,
“Country life”.
Artists adding romance to such places
Serves the lie’s plate, stacked full for the
Parasite.
Often others omit their other—
The white from the brown from the black—
In
Hatred inside oneself mended
With drug, drink, and dads who were not
Satisfied.
Anger allowed for neighbors came
Through in names for votes at its best.
At its worst,
Gunfire.
“Move!”
Oil and sweat and acid
Fuels
The steam and mechanical
Air.
“Spin!”
Proud Detroit workers smile
At
Their Industry that takes
Place.
“Up!”
Aisles of parts decide their
Place
‘n Ford’s Model T they
Build.
“Lock!”
Steel seas sparkling in the
Glows
From molten metals up
There.
“Done!”
Young ones sat with serene
Minds
Among prides of fellow
Man.