Tivoli (i lov iT)

In my dreams you work
at a movie theater, an old one,
and I go to see movies by myself,
hoping that you'll be the one
standing in the back of the
theater, while I sit in the last
row and pretend not to notice
that we are alone.

frictrice

My Babydoll used to be a rogue

called herself a gunslinger

called herself Queen Androgyne

she's died dyed dark dead

all lipstuck up and rouge 

pronounced the French way

learned to mock talk walk like a lady

learned to laugh like something's funny

My Babydoll used to be a rake

called herself a skirt-chaser

called herself gentler than a man

her toes bruised black and

she likes it, loves it, will do it again

for the way that it grows her 

gazellian limbs and kneads her 

ass into something fine

My Babydoll the neuromancer

now calls herself the romantic

now calls herself whole, soulmated, full

she's singing slizzer slurring calling
it devotion, fool for fatuous love
mixing up mania and admiration
she taught herself to stand upright
and look her infanta in the eye

My Babydoll wrapped in slacks, slick top hat 

taped her tits to her chest and passed

today she wears a different mask

she smiles with tiny pearls

gloss glided, plucked, primped

bones wrapped in a new soft, plump

knowing her infanta wouldn't sleep 

with my hand-me-down playthings

velvet, powder, silk, cream, lace,

she made herself a brand new face
mortar, plaster, tar, rust, lime

pretty things decay with time

The Wife (Kate Chopin Pastiche)

Alberta having looked not very long into life, had not looked very far. She put out her hands to touch things that pleased her and her lips to kiss them. Her eyes were deep brown wells that were drinking, drinking impressions and treasuring them in her soul. They were mysterious eyes and love looked out of them.

The first person to take Alberta by the hand was her mama, who was not really her mama. Alberta’s mama often collected stray creatures and brought them home to keep her company while her husband was away. When he was gone, the thought of him alone dwelt in her mind, and his name and none other was on her lips.

A picture for your lover

"I'm drawing you a picture," he told me.
I thought it might be a peace offering.
He was no artist. He refused to try to be.
"When can I see it, baby?"
"I don't know. I don't know if I want you to."
But of course he wanted me to.
He wanted me to want to.
And I did.
But it wasn't exactly a picture.
It was really more of a chart, he said. A chart of his mind.
He drew it out with bubbles, arrows, lines.
And I was at the center.
And at the edges were terrible things.
It was labelled "A small portion of negative thoughts related to you;
Or, why I don't have a chemical imbalance."
But it wasn't exactly a chart.
It was really more of an excuse. An excuse for his mood swings.
A justification for grabbing me.
(You needed to get a grip on yourself.)
A justification for not caring when it hurts.
(You've hurt yourself before, so why can't I?)
A justification for putting his hands over my mouth.
(You've used that mouth for things I don't want to think about.)
A justification for pushing me onto his bed.
(You've been in enough beds, it shouldn't be new to you.)
A justification for the line, "I'll let you up when you shut up."
(Your crying too loud. Do you want everyone to hear you?)

A justification for treating me like a whore. 

(You've allowed strangers to see your tits.)

A justification for his sporadic snapping. 

(Your tattoos are a visible reminder that I'm not the only one who's seen them.)

A justification for his lack of affection.

(You make it so hard to love you.)

A justification for his absence of remorse.

(Your past is not my fault.)

Using myself against me, using me as an excuse.
All I can do is try to commit it to memory
Before he tears it up so no one else can see it,
So no one else will believe that it ever existed.
So that he can convince me that it never existed.

singles/ad

Unwilling/inevitable participant in Hegel's master/slave dialectic seeks same.
Join me for candlelit dinner, and after we can head to my place for a bit of emotional blackmail.
We could take long, moonlit strolls together in the park as I regale you with my sexual history, and you pretend not to be revolted.
We could vacation together in Montauk, where you could verbally abuse me, and I could pretend not to notice and then quietly mutilate myself while locked in the hotel bathroom.
We could grow old together, grow bitter toward each other together.
Strong, capable, outspoken (read: bitchy) emotionally unstable female seeks soulmate to spend cold nights with, engaged in fiery hurling of insults (and occasional inanimate objects).
Seeking male or female, preferably with some sort of mental imbalance.
Seeking male or female with self-esteem just low enough not to leave me.
Seeking male or female capable of unfavorably distorting my self-image and persuading me to contemplate homocide and/or suicide.
(Roles flexible.)

thirst

(the way the alcoholic's lover pours his gin on the floor,
only to watch horrified as he laps it up from the puddle at her feet)

all my profound is poured out, licked up, drying,
gone gone, squandered on loving lesser beings, boys
with scratchy skin, hungry eyes, ungrateful grins, boys
burned black by sick sick, sorry attempts to keep warm.
I have no more to give, nothing nothing nothing left.

noir

feelings fermented,
he left me to be
a thin glass bottle
of chilled apathy

control this world

out of the corner of my eye,
there are serial killers/rapists
(possibly a combination)
lurking, tapping on my window
ready to grab snatch or stab
but looking straight ahead
there's nothing but trees
with dead leaves What is it
about the night that makes
a sane person so stupid? Maybe
it's a hologram trick with the
streetlights and the stars to
make us feel just a little bit
luckier to be alive

Upon seeing the 17 hits on my page from your hometown on Thanksgiving

What are you doing here, you sadist?

What's wrong with you?

Get back to your donut hole goddess and stop checking in for any hint of you in my thoughts.

Get back to your any-soft-body-will-do redemption,
get back to your pathological lies,
get back to telling yourself that you're shy and introverted,
get back to never ever shutting the fuck up,
get back to never being able to be alone,

get back to shameless flirting with a sex you're not interested in,
get back to art for the sake of getting unsuspecting girls naked,
get back to the pornography that you try to pass off as poetic,
get back to transparent attempts to get girls' attention,
get back to objectifying and degrading attractive women,

get back to pretending to have read or watched or played or heard anything that you think will make you in some way desirable,
get back to your pseudo-intellectualism,
get back to trying to impress her with your borrowed opinions,
get back to revising your personality according to your new love interests' preferences,

get back to custom-tailoring your likes and dislikes to what you think she wants in a soul mate,
get back to passing off old songs and drawings as special,
get back to telling her she's the only one and she's amazing,
get back to your lazy, fragile devotion,
get back to forgetting who your friends were,

get back to guilting your roommate into buying you food,
get back to spending all your money on shoes,
get back to tricking old lovers into doing your laundry,
get back to relying on your parents and telling yourself you're grown up,
get back to your hypocrisy,

get back to self-consciousness about your homemade scars,
get back to blaming them on anything that sounds plausible yet pitiable,
get back to threatening to kill yourself when things don't work out the way you planned,
get back to thinking you're justified in all of your actions,
get back to selfish obsession,

get back to slandering old flames because they've realized that you're psychotic,
get back to pretending to be drunk so that you can have an excuse to act like a psychopath,
get back to pretending like you'd thought of proposing to me,
get back to pretending like you had a ring for me,
get back to trying to make our story all the more pathetic,

get back to telling yourself that I'm awful because I couldn't love you the way you wanted,
get back to villainizing me because I will smash any pedestal I'm placed on,
get back to pretending to be happy for me,

get out, get out, get out.

Escape rope:

I wish that I had one,
and that reality was Pokémon,
and that you were Mt. Moon

the ring that went missing from your finger

every time I make an effort and you sigh at it,
every time I lean in and you don't look up,
every time you leave without saying a word,
I lay in your bed, trying to think of something
that might sting you as you so effortlessly sting me,
but I can never manage to think of anything close
to the same calibre of cruelty as your thoughtlessness

Ace of hearts,

Ace of hearts, you used to be the suicide king, you used to be such a fool for love.
You were of the same suit, but you had a sword through your head and a crown on top of it.
You were part of a full house but moved out upon realizing that the deck was fixed and not in your favor. I think I told you that I didn't want to play anymore, either.
Ace of hearts, tell me, is it good not to be king? A king means little without some sort of pair, but aces must get lonely, too.
Life as an ace is unpredictable. In some games you're most valuable, a hot commodity, everybody's after you. But in others you're next to meaningless.
In any case, this is to say that I like having you in my hand.

The kind that consumes,

He was at least seven different
people at once. Most of them did
not like me, but one loved me so
much that he set fire to my mattress
and made sure that I suffocated in
the smoke. I loved at least one of
him back, though I had reason to
believe that the other six plotted
against me quite regularly.

Dear Anyone Listening,

I never want children.
I could never tuck my babies in at night, knowing that someday they would have to grow up and stop being afraid of the monsters under their beds, and that, of course, someday they would begin inviting the monsters into their beds.

12 Steps for Fitting Your Lover Into a Shoebox

1. Find a shoebox.
2. Decapitate, dismember, and disembowel stuffed animals. When the stuffing blows away in the wind, pretend it's dandylion fluff, and you just made a wish on a rather large dandylion. Wish to show no mercy. It'll come true.
3. Shred all love letters with your teeth. Bitterly spit on each scrap until all paper is sufficiently damp. Mold scraps into a papier-mâché bust of your lover's head. Let dry over night. Set on fire in the morning.
4. Drag mixed CDs against concrete until the pavement plays your song. Crack CDs in crescent moon halves. Stomp on them until the sidewalk sparkles with shards of love songs.
5. Take scissors to all clothing items. Cut into strips roughly the width of your lover's conscience. Tie all strips together, making sure to double-knot. Saturate in grape juice. Hang in a place that you don't mind attracting insects. Let the moths take it from there.
6. Paste pictures of more attractive and emotionally equipped people over all photos of your lover.
7. Sob hysterically with regret.
8. Repeat step 7.
9. Repeat step 8.
10. Remember that this started with a shoebox. Fill shoebox with stuffed animal skins, papier-mâché ashes, CD dust, remnants of sticky moth-eaten rag, and improved photos.
11. Dig a hole so deep you can barely see out of it. Climb out of hole. Leave shoebox. Replace dirt. Stomp on the grave, if you didn't get enough stomping in step 3. Spit, if you didn't get enough spitting in step 2.
12. Walk away. Don't look back.

Higher Education

I wasted four
years scratching
his back with one
hand, writing her
poetry with the other

bhakti

I saw the black ink shrine in her mind

singing the polecat with technicolor hair

as she reclined with heavily painted eyelids

I saw the sensuous scene etched on the screen

preparing to be flecked with bright wet brushes

as she touched her tongue to the tip to begin

I saw the bible with soot-smudged pages

banging against the blinds in her bedroom

as she rubbed the canvas with a black rag

I saw the spill of shimmering viscous liquid

dripping down the tips of her stained fingers

as she shuddered at the sound of the shatter

I saw the string of shining prayer beads

resting softly on her cigarette paper neck

as she kissed the canvas

  "i won't let her good body go to waste"

Unwrapped,

I am nothing more than a gray
tangle of half-formed dreams
a headache induced by breathing
in the smoke of my own cigarette
a junkbox of thoughts belonging no
where that may be needed someday
thus spared from a garbage can funeral
though I once told her I was god
and she felt no need to refute it

A blond nun with black lips

My wings were made of unsturdy words,
and I sold you cheap smiles
in exchange for your services
as a backbrace.
To me, you were the most gorgeous
medical device. The prettiest piece
of lifesaving equipment I'd ever laid eyes on.
You held me in place for how long was it?
You made me feel strong enough
to stand up straight for once.
And then you rusted,
leaving my spine zigzagged
in the most unfortunate contortion,
which forced me to sit, stuck, gnarled
and staring at the floor.
It's been how long now?
And I still can't help but default to looking downward.

wherever she wandered

(she feathers when it freezes)

Evie never thought she needed an identity
she looked in mirrors and fantasized about smashing the glass
Evie always loved a good smashing
when she couldn't get the words to come out right
Evie broke bottles and fed them to her skin
it made her feel warmer sometimes
Evie was cold cold cold lonesome shivery
she had never shivered by herself before

(with wings like a bat in summer)

To my ink-stained darling,

You were made of bones

only thinner, like thread

only tougher, like leather

only brighter, like branches

only loud, like love,

but you were not 

any of these things, 

not really. 

I was made of plaster, 

only thicker, like blood

only fragile, like feathers

only whiter, like paper

only soft, like love,

but I was not 

any of these things, 

not quite. 

We were made of hope,

only thinner, like tethers

only fragile, like lead

only lighter, like blindness

only ugly, like love, 

but we were not

anything, 

not anything at all. 

Dear Lia,

Lia, I am writing because our stories are gone. They were erased in a shameful fit of sanity, but now that I'm mad again, I need them.
I know that our stories can't come back because you've erased every trace of me, painted over me with thick, white acrylic to make room for something with fewer flaws.
This leaves me to tape up my mouth and bind my hands. This leaves me to chew my tongue and scar my palms with half-moon grooves. This leaves me to bite my nails 'til they bleed, just to keep my hands and mouth too busy to signal something significant.
When it gets dark, I light a candle to you; I wrap my arms around my body straightjacket-style and try to remember what came after once upon a time. The things I remember are better than the things we erased—no grabbing for gold, no accommodating the enemy, no star-crossing, just lovers. And this is the way that it should be. A soft madness cradles me to sleep.

Always,
Desirée

Dear Kit,

I know you're gone gone gone, dead and reborn as someone else's Robin Hood someone else's Cyrano someone else's Paolo someone else's Lancelot. The two of you rode off into the sunset, and you're still honeymooning. I know you told me once that your kind doesn't get happily ever afters. "Watch the movies," you said. "We always die in the end." 

And everyone is dead. They've been reborn in the same bodies, but the people I loved aren't in there anymore. They're all hermit crabs, and I'm in love with the shells. 

I know this, that you're gone. I tell myself that my Kit is dead dead dead and not coming back. I tell myself Kit's a new person happily ever after in the same old body, and I say to myself, my Kit is a shell made of watercolor and cotton and fragmented thoughts that lives in a box dead dead dead and buried in my mind. 

I know you can't come back. I could play Frankenstein or wish upon a monkey's paw, but you'd still be all wrong. I know this. I know this. I know this, but knowing doesn't stop the wanting. 

Always, 

Carmilla 

Dear Kitten,

I think that we are mad, and we will never stop being mad. 

We will never stop because once you've tasted madness, nothing else tastes as good. 

When we reach for our keys, when we go walking, when we wake up in the morning, we think, "Maybe today," when we should not be thinking at all. 

Nothing feels as soft. Nothing smells the same. Nothing makes me cringe like when I'm mad with you. 

We are meeting, laughing, talking, writing, dressing, talking, talking, too much crying, sleeping, holding, laughing, writing, reading, breaking, leaving, crying, crying, crying, together, alone, writing. 

We do this in real time, setting fire to each other's insanity again and again, timed like a circus act. 

We are most alive in the back of our minds. It feels like home to us. 

We make our beds of memories and we lie in them and lie and lie and lie, too afraid of the dark to wake up. 

Dear Jinx,

If I had the audacity, I would cover your life in yellow roses. Every day I would litter your walkways with fresh flowers to trample. I would dissect a perfectly good posy just to pile the petals onto your bed, make you a nest of something soft and alive. I would keep myself a secret. I would learn to make masks out of marigolds and morning glories. I would learn to be two-hundred different people, and all two-hundred of us would spend all 4,800 of each day's hours knitting you a brighter life out of daisy stems.  We would learn to hide under rocks. We would learn to thrive in shadows. We would learn that transformations are easy, if the weather allows. We would live and die weaving you a sunflower dream from behind a fat oak tree, watching you read on the bench nearby. We would use up our 6 trillion breaths on sighs so that you never had to waste yours because I know that you've spent a lot of time sighing already. We would do all of that for you, the one, the only one. I would do it for you. But I won't risk it on the all-too-likely off-chance that you'll pick up all my yellow rose petals and piece them back together in the shape of a mask that perfectly fits my face.

Synthesthetic Adolescent,

Is your insanity bright orange and does it smell like fresh paint?
Is your neurosis a red six in Times New Roman quarreling with her neighbor, the chartreuse 13 in Helvetica?
Is your raging self-deception flavored like Flinstones Vitamins (the purple ones, NOT the pink ones, which taste like keys clacking on a typewriter)?
Is your estrangement from reality a capital letter Q, an ampersand, and then the letter Z, merrily sharing a plate of lasagna, which sounds like a car starting when it hits your tongue?
Is your psychosis Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 2 in buttered praline minor?
Is your plight simply that the magenta will not stop singing?
Or is it that the radio will not stop turning your walls magenta?

Dearest Dearest,

Your name is the lowest of low blow insults in this home. Your words are something we crowd around to laugh at. Your desperate lunacy makes up the for the fact that we do not have cable.  Your lies are the punchlines of our favorite jokes.  Your theft nourished our nerve endings, made them grow like vines, now completely wild, our bodies overrun, unable to escape.  We thank you for the entertainment. We sincerely believe that it's brought us together, and for that, we cannot express our gratitude.