like watching a kitten

dismantle a tapestry

as if it was just a ball of yarn

if you want to see me unstrung

then keep on doing

what you are doing

you’ve got me in your paws

and it is soft

and I like it here

dim tungsten lights and the smell of hospitalized death
the last time we fucked
so clinical - it was my chemo
I miss you the way a survivor misses cancer
like fighting you was my reason to wake up in the morning
when it takes this long to carve out the tumor of malignant love
how the fuck do we learn to trust again, fall in love again

are you a song
will you play them, will you sing them
can you find the words to the life I have been living
so caught in a rhythm, my world is all rhythm
I am so Ringo, can you Lennon
can you find the words to the life I have been living
will you play them, will you sing them
are you a song

are you a song
these days it is cold outside always
my bones have been chattering
like they were trying to say something
like they were trying to sing something
my life is so monotone
are you a song

and even though love,
    has always been a 4 letter word
it wasn’t till you said it,
    that it felt blasphemous to believe
hold me like a confession booth,
    for I have sinned, oh how I have

“because you are not pretty enough”

“because there is somebody else”

“because I just want to fuck you”

none of the reasons you think I haven’t called are true

maggots open themselves like oranges inside my gut

at the thought of giving my heart to somebody new

I try to tell you but your smile burns with longing

for the person who I want so much to become

sinew stitched into a diamond

a swing-dancing, coffee drinking diamond

or maybe you have a motorcycle heart

that eats mountain trails I want to climb

or maybe, you are a devil

I wouldn’t know

inside my room it is quite

it is safe

they were wrong - every man is an island

so ask yourself, is there enough wind in your sails

to bring you cross an ocean

to bring you back to me

for, I am stitching anchors into my arms

      I am gasping in throat-fulls of “giving up”

      I am pearl dying for Atlantis

      I am going nowhere as fast as this world will let me

so ask yourself, can my willpower push you away

faster then your little legs can run

That night you carefully left me on the ground
like a pile of fallen leaves over a small ditch
a Ranger’s Cache to keep your secrets safe
that’s how I know you were coming back
how your fingers look so much like hers when they grip a shovel

When you go,

a U-haul full of my baggage tagged with her name

will come crashing through

to bury me beneath the rubble of my loneliness.

let me drink in your youth one more time

and in the morning

we cling to each other

like flies to a warm corpse

last night, we cracked open our wounds so that the prayers could blossom

today, we are left crushed like the rose petals

          the forget-me-nots

          the “she loves me, she loves me, she loves me not”

          but you, you love the things that I do to you

your velvet lips

look so much like hers

except for when they say

“I forgive you

“for not being a better man

“and simply being yourself.”