Well tough. The vitamins and interviews going
down rough and shingles on the roof
burn bad luck into the soles of my
battered toes.

An application says no mistakes,
A degree begs over-qualification,
a sandal doesn't care for the casual,
and I am tired of fitting into small spaces.

Red lipstick confidence is confidentially
universal. Red pumps sex for the
amateur child.
I have more than bruises and scabs

on my legs and feet than sight and stars
after working a city night. Alcohol is
jealousy and I do neither for free
cause allergy season.. know what I'm saying?

Drugs come to talk to me
from you from me to you
but drugs will always be there
when poems are varnished to

vanish.
My friends call me the wind and
the wind calls me kamikaze.
LIKE WHAT??

a house of cats

She looked, "Queens has a
feminist review?
Ew, but," she saw,
"why?"
We're on a diet together over jealous bodies of chocolate fondue and raisin cookies.
I check kitchen cabinets when getting water,
to feel guilty,
to hit myself when a man can't tell,
to joke about the whore that I am when we both know,
you're the whore for selling
my body
out.
You're the slut for my sexual bragging rights,
you're the mouth to talk about my blows,
you're the reason
I am a feminist.

what?

you know I couldn't resist
raining. it's going to leave us hung
dry when it barely takes twenty
minutes

in the borrowed mornings
to wise up in rooms not my own.
Coffee and cancer go
through the motions together.

a stocked fridge means that I am
not the frigid one, means I have
a right to stay, though I never stay,
I have a say to leave

when I am always leaving.
I need a sundae with a nonday
to follow, so I can stay in bed
all day and wallow.

the computer froze playing chess;
black to move and the white queen
suicides like conversations
with dead people.

everything you ever wanted to know
i write down in a napkin note.
you, i whisper with my vixen,
and that?

It's a list of people standing too close.

summers

the pebbles skip like frisbees and
anti-depressants on a summer lakeshore
boulevard of hiking a day away --
strapped with a backpack of the city still.

though I try to breathe in the sea
and your dirty blonde hair is so easy
to liken to my mouth where the foam
forms i love you, in waves

that crush the crescent moon's reflection
and fishbones drift in
and out of season,
collecting sandy urns with gone eyes;

shells of a past sight, perhaps.
And now it is with a clutter of stones thrown,
each one taking a weight
away from my own

immeasurable, irrevocable, invaluable
importance, when
what is important is the shape of your
hair when the wind stops naked

and bare. We are looking for
the same stars as always
have before; in this dot, this thought
occurred infinitely

twice, thrice. Did the plane really crash
this day when my heart has been
rejected by my veins?
Do birds often collide when flying

with closed eyes? Does it take
poison and confusion and stale
beer glass to wake and take
us alone, home, again?

The i in team

You,
who would choose war in the guise of warning
You,
who would make mass the creed of masochists
You,
who would indulge in the meaning of her misdemeanor
You,
who would crown a trophy on eliot's apostrophe's
You,
who would talk verses in silenced conversations
You,
who would feign the lion of social rebellions
You,
who would simply be the is of the artist
You,
who would rope and use Caliope, your muse
You,
who would call the press on your depression
You,
who would rate in me a plead to ameliorate
You,
who would cook whirled peas and call it world peace
You,
who would feed your pet of repetition
You,
who would drink gin to touch the imagination
You,
who would deny its over from an ex-lover
You,
who would tap the last ass in the crack stains of class

You and me and me and you and you and me.