THE CAKE IS A LIE

gonna lose it over something less ridiculous
even tinier than a man
tinier than your ideas about  my
“identity”
who I am
& who I oughta
scalp

an ant in my shoe
too much oxygen in the room
no bus fare
injustices that you don’t get
infants with knives for knees
somewhere near Beirut
time just ticking by
or
an elderly woman with flawless skin
& no children
& then

the kaboom.

I finally learned
how to kill
my God
with one small
taste
& you still think

it’s about you.

it’s easy to fuck people over when you push God aside.

Alcoholics

CANNOT

moderate

their 

drinking

lighting is dim to hide the imperfections of the company we keep
low-lifes like me, but dressed ok, disguised as people who care how we think
how we feel, how we act
loyal like shelter cats
just happy to have a place to lick the dirt from themselves
to rest their claws for a second before they are abandoned for a new leather couch

I’m in the center.

quietly trying not to slit my neck with this broken pipe I fashioned into a prison knife
surrounded by sycophants sucking on hookah
laughing, having a good time
at some other kid’s expense  that can’t keep up with the jokes
the nonsense & quotes from authors he’s never read
that explain this existential trauma  better than our dense pens
everyone’s a critic
we’d get along but he’s too young
don’t fret, we’re all born in ape coats
no one is that well-bred
I want to rest the pink coals in his blank eyes, give him a conversation-starter
some morose infirmity the other bleating butchers can admire
a community of cutting you down to size
my brain is screaming for a sip of something more intense than the tea they serve to teetotalers
who wasted half their time wasting most their nights with low-lifes dressed like people we might like
I’d sip second-hand on any skid row drunk
if these canines knew how to draw blood

& I wish I was back in Brooklyn hooking boys with the promise of a good time
a half full bottle of rum on the wooden floor of someone else’s den
take my number down before I jump off the Brooklyn Bridge
they never called

I would always write.

I don’t need to do this right now
I hang out most nights
with everyone in my head & when I do
I make them pretty
I make sure they rhyme
like the battered poets
who have found themselves in the center
wringing their thoughts
dreaming of Mexican restaurants that overserve
& little artist boys to suck the salt from arthritic knuckles
these constructed mobiles come to life

if I spin them just right.

I did tonglen

    & then I stopped

&  then I got mad at you.

I sit in my own suffering
I don’t get samsara or maitri
any Chinese writing
set on the backdrop of ivory skin
glistens in sin like droplets of white wine
perched on the lips of an adulteress
wears chants to protect her
from herself & prowling misters
(there’s a light that never goes out)
yellow flickers of frightening gestures across the tops of your sentiment
taking the form of  dead roses from another sender’s good timing
( I have lots of time to whine & crocodile cry)
orange contained flame dances like two addicts
 antsy, anxious to fall off the wagon
bow to your manmade altar of chances
watch the incense burn to the ends
where’s the explosion I’m waiting for?
watch you
breathe it in & breathe it back out again
I tried Eastern philosophy
to curb my unceasing appetite
but
sobriety blows
exhale on cobra pose
someone else barks for once
I feel like a worm on an operating table
exposed for the spineless bottom feeder I am
breathe it in
& breathe it back out again

& then I got mad at you.

waited for the room to catch on fire
extinguish. respire.
you asked for compassion
wisdom & guidance
(there’s a man that never gives up)
& I lay holding my breath
the admired martyr
on her comfortable pyre of cool pillows
& really good timing
wear me like the shame I’m showering you with
eat me like the poison someone wiser has you swallow
to keep the feelings from igniting
a force you cannot control

& then I swallowed you whole.

breathe it in
(don’t look back in anger)
now

respire.

I broke the glass you made for me
that read
the alcohol made me confused
it was a lighthearted joke
about something I once said
when I had finished dribbling out
some nonsensical political sentiment
I could no longer contain
in my shrinking
shriveled with contrition & aspirin
tiresome tiny  head

it’s just an object
it’s just an object
to be used

to hold water
I should be drinking more of
I drink too much coffee
& then I drank only borrowed time
big huge 1.5 liters of really cheap wine
(I’m cheap like tonight’s stolen kiss)
now with my vitamins
replacing half burnt cigarettes
I’ll see it in the sink
remember I’m thirsty
thirsty for so much of

& I’m glad it’s gone
really it reminds me
of all the times I blacked out
& said

I’m just an object
I’m just an object
to be used
to be borrowed in a closet while rehearsing song lines
to lure you closer to the climax
I didn’t have my words then
not to be confused
with a  person
recoiling in horror
at the sight of a freshly wiped window pane
&shaking out a
can you help me?

you handed me a glass to remind me what I meant.

my God sits at the end of the bar with a splash of bourbon in his beard
smug smile smeared across his face as he mocks our idol worship
idle hands that worship professions
 the bar is where he finds (me)
chomps down pee sprinkled peanuts to help digest these
most earnest confessions
looking for bros to bang knuckles with
 dames to knock boots with
underage kids to shoot pool & the shit with
my God eats shit for a living & I can’t shake em
 he makes me want to drown myself in the creek
if only it was about 17 feet more deep & my snow boots
were caked in concrete
  for now
 I’ll drown myself in Colorado cold
 let the wind shake my bones on the long walk home
to nowhere that resembles heaven
 my God’s too busy fucking with more wasted souls
to notice my scrubbed palms raised in fraught prayer
 he mostly leaves me alone
these days, he mostly leaves me hanging by a string of 24 hour chips
between men with yellow nicotine lips
just dying to taste something as aged  as me
& women knitting the ends of their heartstrings into safer hats
these days I sit in awkward silence with foot over knee
& wait
& he
he mostly leaves me

when you have a moment
could you save me?
(wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler)
I would like you to replace him
I would like

 I would like something new to chase.

I broke the glass you made
that read
the alcohol made me confused
it was a lighthearted joke
about something I once said
when I had finished dribbling out
some nonsensical political sentiment
I could no longer contain
in my shrinking head

it’s just an object
it’s just an object
to be used

to hold water
I should be drinking more of
I drink too much coffee
& then I drank only borrowed time
& big huge 1.5 liters of really, cheap wine
now with my vitamins
I’ll see it in the sink
remember I’m thirsty
thirsty for so much of
& I’m glad it’s gone
really it reminds me
of all the times I blacked out
& said

I’m just an object
I’m just an object
to be used
not to be confused
with a person who said
can you help me?

you handed me a glass to remind me what I meant.

when I long for that purple pout
red smeared lips that smell like my father’s van
looks like I gutted a dog with my dull fangs
& he bled out everywhere but my pert mouth
 that no boys wanted sucking their tongues
 moist like a kitchen sponge
soaking up the empties, the glass table wreckage, the stories you hid
in the bottom of the boysroom toilet
all the creepy crawly toys in the attic winding on their own
Wild Irish Rose breath subverting your smile
cover my moans with your softening boner
grinning like the Joker gone absolutely batshit
I use to smell like oranges when I ate better
 you said I smell like a Friday night spent in a cinderblock cell
you say, “you look like hell, kid”
& I sure taste it
right before you shut the door
 leave me lying there, panties round ankles, skirt up to nipples
I can’t find my cigarettes
dreaming of  unconsciousness in the wet burial of an innumerable amount
of squirmy, slimy prospective whores
that will never come to fruition to see their mother frozen like a statue
but less graceful than stone smirks
less gracious than those perched warbling birds

sometimes I want to look like damaged goods
relive the glory days of being coveted
baked so hard I was fried like an Easy Bake Oven muffin
(they used to call me Easy Made Cummin)
smudge my eyeliner around the lower lashes
rouge on the cheeks to look beaten
like a retired boxer’s wife
like I’m drifting from outer space to populate your planet
meet me out in the middle of another territory’s orbit
I’ll be the one with the overfilled challis
&  jack-o-lantern face skulking in the wreckage
of ships I warbled at
two ships that should have just passed right by each other
 in the guiding lighthouse of the cruel, cold night

when I dream that way
when I notice I’m paused for more than thirty seconds time
daydreams of pipes & laughter &glasses full of amber colored ice
 (I’m a broken record in any given setting & all I hear is “Oh my my”)
Oh, and my God says
I just cover the broken chapped places with lipstick
moisten the tip with lemon water
grip the bottom of my dead brother’s sweatshirt
with white knuckling fingers that use to grip life with the same stiff posture
it’s sweet like rotting fruit in summer dumpsters
Oh, and my God says

i’ll never have to smell like roses again 

those red wine stain lips that no boys wanted to touch
but kept me smiling like the Joker gone absolutely batshit
I just put on lipstick

but i’ll never touch that shit again 

I love the fact that I am starting 2013 with a clear conscience, heart, and mind and not in the grips of a paralyzing fog. Happy hangover to everyone! May your day be filled with soothing sounds and doting lovers.

Been sending you messages via missed connections.
 Little fleeting meetings written in discreet expressions for you to stumble upon
on one of your benders when you check for kicks to forget the shame of the track marks running up the curve of  your arms you’re now disguising with concealer & flannel sleeves in meetings.

Typing descriptions of the bags under your eyes: I’d like to dive in, nestle, drift down your bloodstream
to feel the twitch of your vein as you insert your fix. Electric pulse of contented melancholy.
 Long exhale. Breathe me in for a change of molecule. Change of sin. Haiku for you to find.
 Contemplate the people that write these, the people that check these. Here we are. Staring contest.
 I look eager, hungry for defeated meat. You look deceased, tired of watering your skeleton
to keep it alive. Meet me inside the cables of our fucked up minds.
I’ll whisper sentences of optimism, Bible verses, uplifting prose, lyrics of love & hope.
Nuzzle my neck in the bulk of your sweatshirt. Fall asleep in your lap. Your new heroine.

As you begin to crawl out of the confines of your distorted thought patterns& surrendered life to find God & follow the light of forgiveness, begin to renounce the nights of fiends & bleeding sneezes.
I promise to let you down little by little in noticeable indifference & middling rhyme.
I promise to cease my affections. I promise to leave you now that you need me.
Pray to your altar of syringes. People can’t be used like needles.
Love & addiction are both terminal diseases.

Some addicts are better left alone to ride out the high. To find their own low.
To die their own God in a less traveled alley buried in the comfort of their vice,
betrayed by the night & the angels who promised to save their wretched life.