Extended Stay

We lay on the hotel bed
hungover and low as
snail droppings
after all that coke and
wine.

We spent the afternoon
watching fat free television,
hiding from our
plans and
enemies.

The only time anything moved
was when I stood to make her
a grilled cheese
on the hotplate in the corner
of the
room.

The tile floor told
the story of
our love:

shards of broken glass
and a thick pool of red nail polish
from where I had thrown her things
against the wall
the night
previous.

I had told her to leave
again
after telling her to leave
so many times
before.

She called out from the bed,

"Daddy, I've never heard you sing,
I want you to sing for me in the
shower."

I smiled.

"Of course,
kitten."

I gave her the sandwich and
she perched on top of the pillows while she ate,
an alabaster dove on
linen
branches.

I was happy watching her
though I knew that she would fly away again,
it was just a matter
of
time.

She would lock herself in some bathroom
with a late night pill pusher
or
promiscuous couple
and disappear for
however
long.

I thought to myself,
"At least tonight,
my dove,
I've caught you
and fed you and
kept you
warm.

Just like I have
so many times
before.

You're safe for now."

When she finished eating I
locked the door,
turned out the light,
and got back
into
bed.

A Dream

T and her dog
Finn
were at my house
but
Finn wasn't Finn,
he was a big, brown
dummy of a dog and
he had gotten into a cache of
take-away sweet and sour sauce
and he was golden orange from
top to
tail.

T was busy so
I got Finn in the shower and
hosed him off until
he was as good as
new.

He smiled at me for a moment
then ran off to pursue glory
in the heat of
his own dog day
in
summer.

I tried to tell T that
the dog was clean but
she wouldn't respond to any of
my calls or
messages.

I eventually found out,
through the vine,
that it was because there was
someone
new.

I wrote her that I'd found out about it
but when she came over,
tail tucked in,
I wasn't upset.

I told her
that I know life is short
and that she should be with someone
who makes her
happy
even if
it wasn't
me.

I said not to worry,
I would take care of Finn until
things
settled
down.

She smiled at me for a moment
then walked out the door
to finish a life story of which I
would never
know the
ending.

I stood for awhile in the ensuing silence.

The sun came through the blinds as
the dusty afternoon cast fences
over the carpeted
floor.

I grabbed Finn's leash and
set off to find
him.



When I woke it was 7:30,

I got cleaned up
and left
for
work.

Rufus After Dark

I lay down tonight to listen
to Rufus Wainwright in the dark.

Sideways,
knees to elbows,
I wanted to
vomit.

I've been dragging the shallows
and swimming in my own
wake.

These tales are tired of me.

I throw them down the hole,
they fall and echo this and
that.

I tie them to canaries.
I tie them to my ankles
and I wade out in the water
to see if I fly
or
drown.

Alone in the dark listening to Rufus.

We don't even know what to feel anymore.
We're tired of peeling the nails from our fingers
of scooping our eyes into our cereal,
of spitting out what we're forced to swallow -
chin up
it
get's
better.

I run my tongue along your misery,
you wrap your lips around mine.
Let's do it until they kill us,
or until we kill ourselves
and fall away
to Rufus Wainwright
in the
dark.

How different it all is now.

No more fires.
No more smoke.

A fistful of dollars
that has lingered in
my
pocket.

The neon dark,
the girls all quit,
the barman resigned and
the phones gone
silent.

Just me in the middle:
bittersweet.

When Alexander watched
as his conquests burned,
I imagine that he felt somewhat
the
same.

They were the best of times.
They were the worst of times.

They were the worst of times at best.

I've kept with those I truly love
and who truly love
me
back.

Here we go.

Go, go, go.

Next time I see the sunrise
it will be while kissing you
awake.

SevenOhFour Nine Five Seven Oh To Three One

I haven't spoken to you in a decade,
well,
not by mouth,
but
I've written to you most nights for
fourteen
years.

See,
I admired you once
and
its just love ya know,
once when I
was traveling
alone.

I wrote to your mind to
pirate your heart
and...

I'm so eloquent when it doesn't matter
but I'm going deep down here man
and the words they
struggle.

I know nothing about you.
You probably told me once but
I was drunk then,
your knight in
vomiting
armor.

I may not be your favorite.

You may not concern yourself with
me at
all.

I've checked you out since
once or twice a
thousand
times.

Stealing sideways
glances of you:
green eyes
tousled blonde
two children
palms up
heart wide
open.

I don't have any thoughts on any of it,
its all yours and
my place is right here
tap tap tap
tap tap tap
bathed in blue.

But you are not alone.

So what if we as humans have
burned cities to the ground and
stolen food from the mouth
of
babes?

So what that we destroy ourselves
and each other and
everything in
between?

We survive.

We claw toward heaven until
we see them pearlies and
if they don't let us in we
all go down
together.

You are not alone.

I don't know if this helps
or if its just the piss of drunks
judy,
you be the judge on
that.

But you are not alone.

tap tap tap
tap
tap
tap.

Morning View

Water Under The Bridgers

"We talk for hours until finally
sleep takes over
the amphetamine"

Phoebe nailed it.

I remember getting on the train one time
in Flatbush,
I have no idea why I was there.

There were three of us,
empty husks of
rotten corn,
strung out shoelaces
parched and pale among
the REAL
people riding
to wherever the devil sent
them.

I painted a poor excuse for a picture,
sitting in stark contrast among the human ambition
pleading with the fates that
my girlfriend was in one of these tubes
riding toward her own
personal
hell.

I have too many stories like these.

I have too often seen
the sun rise over skylines,
that destroyer of revelry,
rudely proclaiming my
shame:

You whore for a snort!
You slut for a sniff!

Such language.

I like to think I may make it.
Two months on Tuesday.
Two months dry.
Two months
clean.

But there's a lot of broken glass to sweep
I've made a bit of a mess.

Some casualties were sustained
during the campaign
and
there are some people who don't think too highly of

Yours
Truly,

Artemis.

P.S. poor me,
poor,
poor,
me.

Maybe now your ghost will leave me.

You drove me around town
in that old white Cadillac
and you were always listening to that
terrible
rap music while
complaining about panic attacks
and life is just so
hard.

We'd drive around and
at the slightest hint of traffic
you
were rice on a wedding day
falling to the ground in
a thousand wild
grains.

Meanwhile,
I was neck deep
in court ordered service
and had to listen to it all as
your dog stuck his big,
dumb,
fat head up into
the front seat,
trying to offer his own
two
cents.

Meanwhile,
I'd just gotten out of jail
and the least you could do
was the most you ever would
and you proclaimed yourself
the
hero.

Its really not that you were so bad,
it all just always came with a
price.

You thought that a ride somewhere
somehow deserved great accolade or
constituted endlessly
devoted
love.

Honestly, you could have driven that
big white boat
off a cliff and
I wouldn't have thought
twice.

All I ever asked was that
you showed up
at least when you claimed you would
or,
eventually,
even at all.

So when you packed it in
(surprise surprise)
amidst the gentle crumbling of my sanity,
I thought that,
surely,
after the ensuing agony,
self reflection and
woe is me,
you'd have the common decency
to flush yourself down the drain
of my profound regret and
wasted
time.

Yet there you are,
lingering in the most
inopportune
places.

Somehow,
in your brief time of
residency you
grabbed my sex firmly by its manhood
and have ripped it grimly through
my aching
balls.

Each pound of flesh that
I press beneath my own you
appear dutifully
every
time,

Punctual for once you're
a looming audience and
a most
unwanted
bedfellow.

Each penetration is a menage:
us and
you and
us
together.

There we all are and
I,
the hopelessly addicted animal,
ferociously crave
your
skin.

A man unhinged,
I want to fill the room
with our unholy scent and
sin.

I yearn to spit into your
gaping mouth
as a fistful of you
is pulled toward
hell.

As I begin to push myself inside
the wet envelopment
that defies proper description of:
name -
taste -
smell -
or sensation,
you arrive to mock me and
pulling my eyes toward you
I go numb at the waist.

Until before me you are


DEVOURED


by a submissive and depraved
young creature


BEGGING FOR ME


while I look into your
blissfully pained eyes
gleefully lost in the pure pleasure of
this perversion and


I KNOW


that this is what you wanted from
the beginning and
I give you every inch by
throbbing
inch.


AND FINALLY,
THE CACOPHONY OF
ORGASM AND
FLUIDS!

THE KITTEN GLISTENING BRILLIANTLY,
PAINTED BY NUMBERS
A MILLION SPERM RACING
TOWARD NIRVANA!

TWO TITS!

TANNED STOMACH!

LOVER!

SLAVE!

OUR SADISTIC FLESH
SATISFIED!






(beat)







Awake now.
Eyes open.
Her face.

I Inhale.
Exhale.

Take in stale and
cursed night air,
four sickening walls
ten dead fingers and
ten dead toes,
I hate you in this moment
more than there
are worthy
words to
describe.

In a breathless embrace she
runs her hands over my
sweat slick shoulders and
desperately
presses her breath
into my mouth and
in the distance I hear
the fade of your
lifeless,
taunting
laughter.

Another emission
yours.

Great thief you've won
again.

In the dark I
shut my eyes
and
pray:

Flee from me
unending night
and give me
rest.

A relief from the constant
and cumbersome burden of
you.

Found: From Some Time In 2013

I have lived on both sides of the coin -
I have been good,
even
respectable.
I have also been a thing that you would kick from
your doorstep,
a stray and rabid
dog.

We are always all
just this side
of
madness.

There is nothing poetic about 7 am
pacing the floorboards,
peering from windows,
feeling the terror of a brand new day.
Knowing that in an hour's time they
will be expecting you
to FUNCTION and WORK
without a wink of sleep and full
of poison.

Meth mouthed hookers
with tongues the taste of latex
and sore nostrils are the norm.

No one knows to look at you but
you've seen the depths of depravity and
most would never find their way
back.

I am not sure I will ever be the same
but somehow,
like a roach:
I still
survive.

Where Are You?

It's 11 PM and
I don't know where
you
are.

I don't know
which way you're
facing.

If you're sitting up or
lying
down.

I don't know your address
or your phone
or the color of
your
door.

I don't know if you're
humming over dishes
or whistling a tune while
on a
stroll.

I don't know where you are.

I don't know where
you put it when
it's just
too much to
bear.

I don't know if you laugh
in lush gardens or
if you cry
into knapsacks heavily
weighted
down.

I don't know where you are.

I have forgotten your voice.
I have forgotten your face.

Though I can sometimes

remember

your silhouette on top of mine
riding a riot rhythm straight
to
orgasm.

Now its 11:02 PM

and I still don't know where
you
are.

Tonight I'm thinking

of ADF in the early twos,
forgive that I've forgotten exactly when,
and we drank Red Stripe on the porch and
it was awkward but
wonderful
to be
alive.

And the night was hot and silent and
you were far
too good
for
me.

And I
devoured you.

First lips,
heart
last.

And I never loved you.
And I never loved myself.

And once you came down off the roof
of your Brooklyn apartment
and they sent you away
to a place
you would break to
describe,

you told me that I was bad for you
and I'll forever live with questions

why?

But I've known myself forever and
I don't blame you
at
all.

I look at your pictures;
you're fragile but
happy.

I guess you got what you deserved and
so did
I.

Letter To A Friend Who Won't Stop Whining.

For goodness sake, put down the bottle.

Either that or learn
to keep it mostly to
yourself.

You splatter your pitiful prattling
all over the wall
for everyone to see and in unison
they say,
"poor fella."

Realize this:

The world is mad.

Cat's, like most women, only love you when you feed them.

If you measure yourself by outside adoration
you'll always feel lower than
filth.

There is much magic in a tree branch as its blown gently by
the
wind.

Its more than possible to be alone
in a room that's full of other
lonely people.

For goodness sake, put down the bottle.

Realize,

You probably won't find comfort between a woman's thighs.
It is just as cold there as a year spent alone.

Lies are the current currency of the day but
there is still good out there
in the
world.

Love doesn't have to be a finger on your trigger,
it can be as simple as
a letter just to say
hello.

Understand,
that you're ugly and
nobody else likes you
but that's
ok.

You don't mind you and that's good enough.

And for goodness sake,

put down the bottle.

I don't know why.

I don't know why

the foreman has gone mad,
or the knives are all dull
and the grill only has three
wheels.

I don't know why

Durham was never good enough,
or her taste was always dull
and I slept beside her but
never fell in
love.

I don't know why

ten years went by
like sawdust in sunlight,
and I drank it all
away.

Why I loved her body
but found her conversation
numb,
and I asked her to see me through
the haunting of another lover
that slept
one wall
away.

I don't know why

The self righteous weigh against me
perversions uttered at all hours
while under an influence I struggled
to
control.

I don't know why I'm so self righteous
and don't think perversions uttered
at all hours don't affect
anyone other than
me.


Twelve hours of minutiae
stealing me from me,
leaving nothing but food for
worms
my apologies to
the bard.

Questions with no answer
and barely worth the time,
bullets gloved in velvet
fired deftly by
a silver
tongue.

I'm going to miss you and miss her too,
but unlike her -
I'm leaving
you.