it smells so good

like summer

you’re crying about something

dumping breath and static into the receiver

howling

grating a blackberry all over your face, lips

little chicklet keypad depressing at random

cacophony, when you send your regards

but we’ll meet again in hell, vulgar homonym, etc

walking through the caves below, imagining how. imagining why any of this is significant.

the park. an affirmation, a tribute to nonsense.

it’s not even a good hiding spot. you couldn’t even.. sneak up on someone in here.

so, we didn’t talk for 8 years.

a horse will run itself to death if you keep whipping it.

just like our affair.

driving through the rain, through the smoke of santa fe springs

lost words halt any explanation

three hours late..

two plates of paella cool on your kitchen counter

a forehead scrunched up in earnest

and entering the tunnel, underground

a distant voice in your ear until the call drops

and I continue west, toward the coast

its the sharpest knife in the block thats never pulled

the shucking blade, it stays sharp

never having split the briny lips of an oyster

How I smell like burnt wood chips. How your boyfriend’s a gob shy dip shit. How we’re so drunk.

It’s an hour later and we’re playing under shirt/over bra in the elevator. Like we’re in middle school.

Making out in my neighbor’s hallway. The door just happening to be unlocked as we flung through it.

You didn’t want to be here. You wanted a hotel room in some expensive part of town.

Just to order room service. Just to have a food fight.

I didn’t want to. I still don’t. But we fucked each other in the shower anyway.

And never talked about it again.

Over champagne mimosas in the morning, we didn’t talk about it.

In fact, neither of us ever mentioned anything about it, ever again.

Snowing at Nintendo. Snowing at Microsoft.

Your Hyundai’s nose first in a ditch.

Honey, your cats can eat whatever you’ve left out on the counter.

I’m not coming to get you.

your voice starts sounding stupid. more stupid than usual.

breathing turns into a chore. all that extra saliva from all the mouth breathing. all that extra bad breath. you’ve got to constantly lick your teeth so they don’t go dry and stick to your lips.

food just tastes like mush. mushier than usual.

two wads of toilet paper shoved up my nostrils to keep the blood from pouring out of my head.

it’s funny when your burps taste like blood.

like that time you fell down the staircase.

or that time the cat scratched your arm when you were drunk and acting like a cunt.

or like that time you dumped me via facebook.

happy valentines day baby.

essex county is shit

I’m right at home

I could fall asleep right now, right in this chair.

checkered flannel shirt, wet and crumpled on the linoleum

waking up again with boots on

the apartment door left swung open, creaking on its hinges

radio blaring

saturday morning static, reggae

last night we planned a trip to the ozarks

me and you and a tent

polish vodka, cigarettes, and beef jerky

nobody except you and I
but we lost our sense of humor a long time ago

we’re burning

and that’s why I don’t want to fuck you tonight, cath.

Remnants of rotten wood planks erected half a century ago above a vacant building on Ballard Ave.

Under that decrepit awning, about to drop. I leaned in, and you pushed me away.

In little whispers.

Whispers that would come sparkling down her cheek in the light of a birthday candle.

Words like streams of thick honey from a squeezed polyethylene bear.

Oozing nonsense straight into you.

Into those warm, fuzzy little ears of yours.

Honey so sugary gold it could attract fire ants.

Pandora. And that’s what we would call you. Panda bear.

Honey, pandas eat bamboo leaves and just shit them back out again.

They fuck and they fight.

And I may be no better. But panda, that name that we gave you.

That’s all that it meant.

Would you come if you knew that everyone ends up fucking at these things because it’s so goddamned tragic nobody knows what else to do?

Everyone just wanting to feel something else. Even for just a few minutes. In the bathroom, in the laundry room, the garage. In the master bedroom at the wake.

I ask you to come to my funeral.

To fuck my friends.

I tell you, feel free.

Just throw on one of my playlists.

I tell you go ahead. Set the mood.

What do I care, I’m dead.

It’s late. We’re so drunk that everything is just paint swirls. I’m not even sure you’re paying half the attention I don’t deserve anymore at this point.

Screwfaced and glaring, eyes sticky red as she gets in to stories of how.

How the estranged daughter living in Omaha won’t speak.. How the child support. How the alimony. How the mortgage.

How the stories are all the same.

The fake tits. The sagging stomachs. The dirty foreskin.

It’s enough to keep me drinking. Enough to keep me from detaching completely.

The bar fly. With her big toothless grin.

Her meaty hands rubbing my slouched shoulders.

Telling me, I’m such a good listener.

What she doesn’t hear, what she doesn’t know, is not engaging in conversation isn’t the same thing as caring.

The faces of these women. All I can imagine anymore is what they would look like glistening sweaty, convulsing on top of me. Remarking something filthy, something forgotten under pained and labored breath.

I find it disgusting most of the time, but that’s me.

We share each other’s thoughts:

The mirrors. The neon. The men down the bar. The stale air. The broken in comfort of it all.

The men who eventually take them home, jackknifed on their bar stools. Crushing can after can of Schmidt.

Heaving swallows slowly as the bar lights dim and the room thins out. And it’s just all of us, coming to terms with tomorrow.

Watching my glass as the ice cubes go ahead and melt anyway.

Whiskey changing shades.

Lightening up.

Till it’s gone.

Hard work not falling in love with a bartender come 2 am.

But we do our best.

Stepping outside into the darkness.

Into the rain, toward the cab lights.

And the strained morning.

at the corner table

you dont drink red

i order a pinot noir

we clink our glasses anyway

and finish the bottle

at the deathbeds of former lovers

diamonds aren’t forever

flickering images vanish

knots untie

till I’m walking backwards down flights of stairs

out of here

to breathe smoke in the dark

free from hospital waiting rooms

and the deathbeds of lovers

because diamonds aren’t forever

and being an artist, you tell me, I’m free to hate anything

even you

head’s a-pounding

road ahead’s dusty, winding

and in cascading waves

flowing out in loose corkscrews across the pillow.

our room service cart, table cloth draped over, blocking the hallway.

your hands on me

arms, legs,

your emerald eyes blinking,

the clouds outside pressed up against the window.

wrapped in sheets, tangled up in you, it’s too early to wake up

another morning on the 25^th floor

last night, we ordered champagne and didn’t drink it.

we ordered scotch and the ice just melted.

we ordered grilled cheese sandwiches, crusts cut off. they’re still lying on their plates.

last night we started all sorts of things, and didn’t finish any of them.

Hallway, kitchen, living room.

My nights slowly getting darker.

Scribbling into a notepad in the fade.

A bottle of wine and sleep swollen eyes.

This evening I drink alone, ignoring the debt that chimes around me. That flashes in tiny lights from the edges of the room. That piles up, on and above the counter.

A sip to forget. A sip. In the twilight. Between the pulsing. Between the beating of my heart.

An introduction.

Passing through the red curtain, led by your hand.

Colored lights, smoke, and noise.

Everything in here smells like pussy, like tequila.

My face, a worn sock after a long flight.

Laurel Canyon whizzing by.

And the shrouded stars, invisible.

Our eyes, busy, and pointed down.

Flicking my cigarette, gulping coffee on 1^st avenue south.

Mexicans waving down trucks in front of home depot, further down the street.

It’s Friday.

My flight’s at 5:30.

Leaving for Los Angeles with a heavy heart. And a head full of doubt.

Wearing my sleepless nights in my eyes.

The streetlights flicker.

I’m not here, but I haven’t left yet.

Flap around a newspaper like you’ve got a stork by the neck.

Turbid words inking your fingertips.

Scotch on the rocks.

Yacht in the harbor.

Barnacles popping in the afternoon sun on a water logged pylon.

The pads of your feet slipping on the wet grass.

It’s nothing.

Your hair was in your eyes.

So you probably didn’t notice.

I poured you a drink and held your cone, your hands were full.

and your leather shoes, slipping

a beautiful woman on ice

you put your hair up

walk

the pain of being

for the moment

kept at bay

everything loses vibrancy

the flashing colon on the alarm clock

like two distant satellites

orbiting the earth

dust floating in a sliver of light

electromagnetism, gravity, my breath

held in suspense

we’re restrained and

nothing comes in contact with anything else in this space

everything in animation

withdrawn from you

after all,

you’re never on time

mortar to skin

bare feet stand numb on dirty tile grout

a slick bathroom floor

a crumpled towel

steam-heat

blood dripping from your forehead

good.

morning

your breath falls from your lips as the words come out,

and pile up all over the floor.

the night before, the smell of it, gone. replaced by something else.

the taste on your lips. no longer sweet. just the stale flavor of the morning after a long night in abandon.

all around you. the edge of your bed. birds flying.

what happened last night

may or may not be forgotten

some day

noticed my own reflection in those vacuous orbs,

and then lowered my face,

kissing her gently on the mouth.

the wet asphalt gems of the street.

the sparkle of the sidewalk.

your wrinkled silk dress.

yeah, san francisco is a friendly town.

composing ourselves beneath an awning.

with your slender arms above your head.

the taxi’s don’t notice, and neither do you.

I’m lost in this town.

panning my face around an unkempt room with my dry mouth, careening.

licking lips.

concern slowly stems from somewhere.

builds, falls with my arms onto pillows.

the dust and down filling my lungs in long, labored breaths.

remembering you, leaning against the bathroom door.

in your underwear.

smiling at me.

your hair. a tousled mess.

my long fingers, pressed to my temples.

you were gentle to me.

but you’re not there.

and neither am I.

nor our records.

nor our photographs.

nor your piled up clothes.

this is far from ordinary.

but we’re ghosts now,

I can’t explain why.

bodies in orbit

doctors and patients

children and their mothers

destruction isn’t ever what we want

dividing amongst each other

subdividing

spiraling out, turning in on ourselves

fractal beings

experimenting in the dark

vacationing indoors

a lampshade

the horizon

the television’s glow

your beach sand is the settling dust

in the wrong direction

turning our heads to look behind us

is a man–and tells me he isn’t homeless. my eyes drift. float to the scratch over his right eye. reaching out his hand he tells me he needs work. for bus fare. to tacoma.
his arm, a protrusion. stubby, cracked fingers subtly separated. beckoning.

i stare in detached blankness. become absorbed in the calm familiarity of the gesture. reaching out and with a clenched hold, i shake it, gripping the flesh, the bones of his hand i say no, thank you. i can’t.

he looks on the verge. quasi-tears socked in his eyes, this man—15 years or so my senior–he calls me sir, and thanks me, as he turns to walk away. this muffled tantrum. this decorum. measured footsteps down civilities’ wayward, creaking floorboard.

crossing the street he casts back, and hurtles towards the direction from which he emerged. further still, from tacoma.

I’m going to finish my drink. I’m going to dance with this sycophant to my left. If only to press up against her cleavage for a minute, for the memory. If just to trade the scent of each other. Then I’m going to go home.