THE CAKE IS A LIE

I want you crawling in pestilence.
Disease festering infection.
One hundred pounds of shriveled shit and regret
for sticking your dick
in every girl with an exotic name
or pseudo-punk princess with a pierced lip
and no boundaries.  Your favorite countries
to explore.
Your tongue used for spitting nonsense
all dry from the  thrush
instead of dripping in lust.
You can’t taste anything but your
unwavering remorse.
Chewed up antibodies
 like a squeaky toy.
Clusters of tumors stuck on your brain
like barnacles on the lower deck
of an untended ship.
You loved taking off in the Pacific
on your friends’ parents yachts.
Your only protection now is God
but since your God is lying limp dick
covered in lesions
on a hospital bed in San Fran,
I guess you’re really better off dead.


I’ll buy two tickets. I’ll bring my daughter.
Show her the skeleton of the guy I once loved.
The guy I once ran to
that my daughter will run from.
Don’t scream babydoll.
Pus and blood
seeping from open sores in your skin.
The parts that should be left in
dripping out
like my feelings
years before
when you told me
you could never be a father.
When you told me my insecurities
were too much of a problem
and you couldn’t help flirting.
Do you flirt with your nurses?
When they wipe the crust from your eyes
do you tell them you love them
and you promise to stay
even when the rough has gotten going?
They better get going.
They got other patients,
and quite frankly,
they find you repulsive.

I always come back.

People make their beds.
Enjoy  the bad reception on your cable TV,
the infection has spread
an d you can’t close your eyelids.
Advertisements for Tide
and the state of the economy on CNN;
that’s all you can see.
You can’t move your wrist to shut off the thing.
And barnacles wrap your synapses;
it’s too painful too think.
Your mouth is so dry
like a New Mexico summer
where you spent a whole season high
trying every dime that walked by.
It’s too tiring to drink.

Take a look at your world.
Take a look at my girl.
I used to be your girl.
You had to see the world.
You once told me
“I’m young, I have my whole life ahead of me.”
That was ten years ago
and there’s no one home
to pick out your gravestone.

You had to see the world.
The world ate your body
and the women you loved.