still not bukowski.

i always fumble with my lighter;
holding it in the wrong hand, i
have trouble making sparks lunge to gas dance to flame.
and i hate heat on my fingerpads,
offending my lukewarm sensibilities.
i still cough at least
once every other cigarette, and
it sounds just like when i choke on your name.
i want to forget the people i've loved
so violently that my blood is no longer mine,
transfused from one-in-the-morning typewriter poets
and fainting red flowers in kitchen-table vases.
while boys kiss her thighs
and run the clumsy infatuated fingers of
three-in-the-afternoon text message poets
down the arching white flesh along her spine,
i smoke to forget the people i've loved like war crimes.
i only forget outside,
so the scent won't cling to me like
bad thoughts do.
i only grow gardens in ill-suited places,
where i know nothing but weeds will thrive--
so walk with me beneath the arbors of gulping english ivy,
lay with me in beds of canada thistle.
light me up
with a match or your tongue
or whatever else you've got to make me feel human.

did i forget my medicine, or is it just my terrible personality?

you're a sweater with sleeves that only reach to my wrists,

i can't pull my fingers inside for protection, 

i've outgrown you.

and i know you haven't quit smoking,

i smell cigarettes on your cardigans,

carcinogenic, 

i can taste our suicide pact in exchanges--

but weren't you crossing your fingers too...?

sometimes i still want to steal away to california,

let the city air and city cynicism 

pollute me,

the way my vices 

and nights spent with you have been doing these two years.

but there's no place for sadness like home,

and there's no place for me much of anywhere.

*yeah i am pretty sure i messed up my medicine.

smitten, seering, buzzing, sweet.

[among the networks of overpasses
like swooping concrete ribbons,
transients perched in their
tarpaulin carpeted condos
watch the traffic and breathe the
thick-hot exhaust breeze
that's coming off of passing cars.]

i like a girl who
writes like my bruises,
who makes me think my thighs
flowerbeds
and my head a hot air balloon
tugging at my shoulders.

i like a girl who writes.

no.

you thought i was sleeping,
kissed my chapped, sealed lips
like they meant something, though unmoving.

so i've got on makeup like joan jett
and a shirt that smells like my best friend,
i will wash you from my skin
i will wash my skin from my skin,
nothing left of you or what you touched
will cling to me--
and i will be okay
in spite of.

i can't really talk about this any more.

thankyou for giving me a breakup poem to write, isn't that something every artist needs in order to be real?

the first day we talked like lovers,
with hitches in our voices that meant we were being honest,
i saw you sideways lying on the bed and thought
you were one of the most beautiful humans i'd yet met.
and you talked about your scars,
and how you weren't always strong,
and my god, i knew i was caught,
i knew i was in trouble,
i knew it would hurt.
but i couldn't leave your room
until well into the night, and i drove home
so full of butterflies i'm surprised i didn't crash into a telephone pole.

the afternoon we got lost in the suburbs,
i traded my hesitation for a two-story house
with french doors, bays of flowers and succulents,
windows so tall that the light they stream in
is probably pulled from the surface of the sun itself
in folding flumes of golden plasma.
but when i reached for your hand to give you the keys,
to lace our fingers tight to show i finally
knew i meant what i said,
you would not take them,
me or the key to the front door that
i finally believed in for the first time in a long time.

the week before you decided i was not yours,
you held me like you loved me,
you laid beside me like you wanted to touch me.
and i knew you didn't, but i didn't question it,
none of me flinched or buckled-- though
i could sense it would be the last time we'd touch like that,
i was so sick and sad inside that i was just glad
somebody cared enough about me to pretend
that feeling all of me was all they wanted and
knowing the pace of my breathing was
something they'd been
waiting for.

the night i shoved you into finally breaking up with me,
into saying what i knew you'd been holding onto unsure
for two months,
i was too tired to feel all that bad.
even now there's not much aching other than:
"i was unlovable to the first person i'd ever kissed,"
and "it's a shame, she's seen me cry,"
and "every time i held her hand,
her fingers went clammy."
i think maybe you believe in god now,
but i'm left with just myself and
i don't much feel like worshiping me this week.

the monday after we became just friends,
i was afraid of falling again
for the pretty girl with the heartache made of daisies.
but i didn't and i breathed a sigh of relief until
i realized what that probably meant-
it's going to take me a week or two to
never want to touch you again.

it was mutual but also i hate it.

the hardest part of breaking up with you is
nothing broke--
and i'm not sure how to handle it
or feel about it right now.

like firecrackers, inside skulls, but all wet.

i still don't like fireworks, i don't think i ever will.

they were curling my toes and shaking my heart the night i lost half my hope,

when i acknowledged that no matter who i became, 

i would probably never feel good enough for anyone i loved. 

i think i'd just like to feel good enough for myself again.

and i know i'm not that awful, but i know i'm not that great, because

i'm alone a lot, yknow?

i can't smoke, i'm just going to go buy as many sparklers as i can find, 

and burn them up by the lake.

(if i just went out and made friends, maybe i'd feel better!
but who am i kidding, i'm not going to do that.)