Spine Worm

It’s 8 am.
I’m on a bus to New York.
One hug away from breaking down in public.
don’t touch ANYONE.
Avoid eye contact.
Don’t Panic
My plastic smile is fabulous
whether I am
or not.
I’ve desperately needed an ending for months
but I knew months ago
this is never ending.

Time’s shrinking, you’re the last gasp
before plastic’s pulled
over my face,
slick fill mouth and nostrils,
wrinkling against open eyes.
Thin death tugs my eyelashes
but you’re in my lungs,
mingling with recently illegal blue cinnamon
saving my life.
Without you I’m slug bait.
Can’t wait.
My father calls to tell me when and how I’ll die
sounds so poetic
but it isn’t when you live it.
Preoccupation with mortality is an occupational hazard for ministers.
Mama never left the stage,
she just acts out different dramas.
When antique ashtrays flew through the kitchen like zeppelins,
the blonde schoolgirl I used to be hoped for a new Daddy
but we never had room for a pony.
I’ve always been a preacher’s daughter,
and now I’m an artist’s lover.
I scratch at the back door
let me come in
curl up in your lap.
sleep on your pillow
touch your hair.

You're the sunshine I need.
Pour over my fragile skin and
burn it off.
I will rise from my ashes,
looking for you in the sky.
If I can't find you,
my remains will sketch a picture of you
on every reachable flat surface.
maybe someone will direct you to me
if my smoke signal is black enough.
The seat next to me is always open,
if you’re you.
Thank God you are.

Copper Flavour

Yeah, Phil and I are a thing.
So goddamn modern,
ditching getting hitched for shacking up.
Noncommital fidelity.

I like his tattoos, the Pixies poster in his ammonia scented bathroom.
Phil convinces almost everyone to dye their hair black,
like the cigarettes I smoke on the back porch
sitting up too late
waiting for Dawn to come
baby pink eyeshadow says the world is ending.
I ignore her,
Don’t Panic
Whisper half forgotten poems across the pillow
at that sweaty, sleeping city.

Phil would make an honest woman of me
if I weren’t such a liar.
I keep leaving him
on these blue black stiletto capped sticks
and coming back.
Let’s say I walk into doors,
crooked smile and bleeding gums
She’s so clumsy
Hospitals are for those with insurance
Not me
My parents worry
but they never liked any of my lovers.
And Phil loves me, really really loves me
When he’s not eating me alive.

Stick A Patterned Pink Band Aid In My Chest

Tell me Santa’s coming
I can have a pony
And you will love me forever.

I’ll believe you.

You Are The Woman Stuck In My Throat

Those smiles don't move me.
The attention I want
is yours.

I want to be your
beautiful dream.

And please don't
wake up-
I'm so tired
of your going away.

Silence

Sun blind stumble round Filthadelphia,
skinned knees
(how old am I, again?)
leave red roses on wet pavement.
Light another black cigarette with the end of some stranger's kindness.

Acid rain turned tsunami,
drowning is perfect and so were we,
once upon the small hours of a dead time

The heart is just a muscle.
The heart is just a muscle.
The heart is just a muscle.
But hers is torn and it's breaking mine.

stressed, scared, running
rare sightings create broken communication
I want to say anything
Just to say
Thinking of you
But I talk too much.

Perpetual Motion and Static Cling

We’re so grown, we don’t break.
Maintain gorgeous not exactly lies, I’ve got
new men in my thighs, you’ve got
new work in your life.
Not exactly unhappy,
there’s so much good in life,
but cigarette pause and
I miss you, miss you.
I miss you often, not always.
Do you notice
when I don’t speak
to you?
I didn’t think so, but I often think wrong.

Sibilant city skies scream suicide
and I’m laughing,
romantic atrocities spill from her pretty mouth
I want to kiss her till we’ve both died.
Crashing burnt babies,
spray love, lust and perfect cheekbones
all over the damn highway.
I love her,
I love her,
I love her,
I am utterly abandoned, completely unreliable
to anyone else.
Following her to the ends of the earth,
I forget myself,
I am my Self.

If you came back, what would I do
with you, with your sad sense of replacement?
There is more to
even my
life than sex, mister.
If you knew me enough to know that,
would you have known that love trumps typecasting?
Seen differently?

Dancing ladies want someone to love them,
even when the shadow’s wiped from cracking eyelids,
the music’s stopped,
colored hot lights yield to cold dawn slapping tired fishnets.
The more people see of you,
the less human you’re seen.
She loves me under fluorescent grocery bars,
she loves me in broad daylight,
she loves me by starlight and sunset and
when we creep out of town at dawn
her eyes shine brighter than headlights.
She is gorgeous without glitter,
passed out and pale in muted afternoon tones,
I love her.

We are consumables consuming,
why were you so afraid of being eaten alive?
There is no thrill like the thrill of slipping
down her throat.
You gave her your cock,
threw your head back on the trial run.
My heart’s in her teeth.
There is more to (even my) life than sex.