the coffin...or an old girlfriend

i got some calls from an old girl and a friend. at that point, i just wanted to burn up and swallow my pride, but i told her that i still loved her when i turned out the lights. she told me her pillow was wet whenever she woke and dreamt of me. i told her that my hands were still sweaty every time i thought of her. i also told her that i wished that a plane would come down into my apartment every time i thought of her. she told me that i was being melodramatic again and that she wished she never called. i told her that's okay. i wished she never called either. but then she began to cry. i'm a sucker for sad girls and for this girl, who never cried, i was even more of a puddle of mess. she told me that she was drunk and remembered main and how i drove up after working a fourteen hour day just to be lectured by her mom about how i shouldn't be disturbing her family's trip because i don't believe in god. but her father told her mother that i was harmless and i never got her in the pants. he said that bluntly. i got in her pants for sure, but while i talked to her i didn't think of that. i thought of what i have and cried to. i'm such a dick sometimes. i forget sometimes that i'm years and drinks away from that shit. she wore boxing gloves in a photo i saw years later and i told her i saw them. she said that she was scared. i asked her why she was smiling. she said that she did it for looks. i told her that 'you dress up nicely for looks.' she said that she did dress up for looks. i'm years and drinks away from that shit.

everytime i get her, it ends

she ate glass.
i saw a shard
make passage
through her cheek.
and when
she opened her mouth
to reveal her bloody teeth
i saw an ocean,
a sea,
a reminder of you and me.
with all the misspellings
and the rust we acquired
in our knees.
from always
falling over each other
and assuming
the role of the trouble.

that'll unstitch your palms.
and under your tree
we discovered
what teeth do to jeans.
what?

the months inbetween

you're in the kitchen
wondering where the money
will come from,
while i'm in the basement
wondering why my skin is scraped down to the bone.
and come the time of morning
when making love becomes boring,
i'll pull down the sheets
and wonder how long i actually slept since we've met.

fisher boy

the boy with a cyan cane, known to the greater world as a fishing pole went by the ocean to find his favorite killing ground.

he has a bucket full of water and a bucket full of fresh, soon to be dead clams and a football. the hilt of his cane is buried in the ground after it was cast with one of the soon to be dead clam, floating between the top and bottom of waves. he throws the ball to an imaginary receiver and imagines the throws that are never caught. he's that kind of boy. he doesn't think he'll catch anything today, it's too sunny and his imaginary receivers, well, he doesn't think that they're that good. his daddy was a college receiver. his daddy taught him how to fish. his dad had grey hair and his mom left him for bobby last week. at least that's what his daddy kept yelling into the phone last friday. he'd also knows that bobby is the family's boat mechanic. his dad's been gone for a week.

'anyway', he thinks, 'how strange it is that i have a blue cane. they're usually black.' his reel is regular enough. he picked it himself. he wanted it to be regular, but considering the pole being a shade of blue and being odd and all... he also wonders what it would be like to eat snow. would it hurt his teeth? his mother always told him he had very sensitive teeth. she would always get him coca cola with no ice when ordering in the drive thru. he would like to eat snow, at least one time, he thinks. he thinks that he wouldn't want to ever throw a snow ball at someone, just lick it, but not lick a flagpole, cause he's seen a christmas story. as he throws his football to his imaginary receiver he notices out of the corner of his eye that his cane is bent and begging for the sand to release it's hold. 'this 'un's the big 'un, bigger than at camp last summer,' he thinks. he ran headlong to his cyan pole and plays like his favorite hero, arthur the king and pulls the cane out of the sand and immediately finds out that the pull wasn't as hard as the bend suggested. yet, he does not release his pull. if anything, he doubles his efforts for his quarry. he knows that this bugger would only run out further if he showed a weakness. 'lucky,' he thinks. he put on the hundred pound test in his garage before he left his house. childish luck, surf fishing.
'sea bass? sturgeon? flounder. I'm at an inlet to the sea, so maybe...'
his heart is racing. today iss his day. the boy with the cyan cane rolled out of bed this morning, still alone and scared in his parent's house, devoid of food in the pantry, and knew that he had to catch something to eat today. with every pull of the mystery fish he thinks of how his father taught him how to scale and debone a fish before he went to summer camp last year. the lesson stuck with him, just like daddy's lessons on daddy's guitar that he could never touch unless daddy was there. he played it every time his daddy left for work in the morning and put it back before his daddy got home. he'd been playing it every day for the last week and for the first few days replaced it under his daddy's bed but recently grew brave and slept with it in bed as he would a puppy. and that made him wonder, 'why does daddy leave his guitar under his bed?' cause his daddy never played it unless he wanted to show the boy with the cyan cane a new chord or an old Beatles song.

he kept at the mystery fish for the better part of an hour and believed that this had to be the best, most adventurous battle to have ever have unfolded on this beach or any between boy and sea. he always wanted to be part of an adventure story. and he never knew of an adventure where a boy was victorious in the night. the red sun had already begun it's descent into the west, over what his daddy called the million dollar asshole's club houses and still was sinking when he, the boy with the cyan cane finally felt that the resistance died.

once he felt the draw towards him, he double timed his reeling. watching his cyan can rapidly bob, back and forth, left to right, and towards his back, he felt the reel eating it's way back home.

it was dark when finally he heard a slap on the beach.

dearborn, mi

i can barely breathe in this Midwest city. it's taken forever to get here and everyone is jobless; at least that's what the Detroit newspapers say. everyone drives fords or Dodge's or Chevy's around here and I've never felt so foreign. my Honda made it up the driveway to your ex-girlfriend's parent's house and yeah, did i tell you that i think that she looks like a linebacker? yeah, well, she does. she came out of the house and got in my backseat and told us that we should meet some of her Michigan friends at a basement party called club abyss where we could score some coke. i wanted to strangle her, kick her, bust her teeth out till she bled to death, but then again, she would've probably worked me. remember, i did tell you that she looked like a linebacker...and she probably could hit like one too. anyways, i wanted to maim her because we'd been driving for hours and i wanted to sleep and not go party with a whole bunch of coke heads and i was sure that there was some couch inside her parent's house that was warmer than January and had pillows and blankets. but we went to club abyss and there was coke and i woke up. but then again, i slept. but then again i woke up. it was morning and i met the kid who threw the party. his name was mark and he was nice, but he was only seventeen. and actually, club abyss was his mother's basement, where he set up speakers and a turn table and his mother stored old Christmas decorations and sewing odds and ends. i asked mark if his mother knew what happened in her basement last night and if she cared. he told me she knew and that the coke we bought was actually coke from her friend who was a dealer. and no, surprisingly enough, mark's mother didn't do coke. she was just helping out her friend by using her child's friends as the primary business. well, after we ate breakfast, mark took us in his Chevy across the river into Windsor, Canada. i have to admit, i did enjoy that. we went to some casino and i blew a hundred bucks on some slots but got comp drinks and stared at 'foreign' women. it was so different. it wasn't so different. the bathrooms were cleaner that in Detroit, but the language was the same and the girls gave me dirty looks just the same. your girlfriend looked at every guy that went by and gave them the same dirty looks. that made me feel a little bit better. after the casino mark parked his car on the street and we walked till i found a place that sold cigarettes and bought a pack of player's unfiltered and a Cuban cigar. that was always a little dream of mine, to buy a Cuban cigar but in the end it tasted like shit. now i don't even like cigars. I've lost faith in them like i lost faith in god when i tasted his words. what a sad thought; i don't have faith. we found a bar where a guy was in the corner playing a guitar through a cheap amplifier. he was playing bad fleetwood mac songs bad. his singing got dramatically better with each drink. older Canadians drank. i ordered a pitcher of miller light and played pool in the corner. they were shit at the game. they looked more like chess players. we drank and we talked about new jersey and Philadelphia and how you weren't old enough to drink in the states. the old Canadians laughed at that. i laughed at that. the trip went pretty shitty after that. we scored some more coke from mark's mom, back in dearborn and a little weed in ann arbor, but then you fought with linebacker and we drove back east. i shit for the first time in days at a truck stop in Ohio. we drove through a Pennsylvania night, cutting like a scythe through Russian wheat in the mountains, finding our feet back in Philly. i dropped you off and forgot that i was your friend and didn't call you for weeks.

the bones of bats

when your bones go bad and the color yellow find your teeth and your legs stop working, even basically, you won't be able to escape, like running under water soon you'll find yourself working harder. and in the dark you hear your heart beating in your blood and your veins struggle with the mud, rust colored when you cut your skin. it's silly that long ago you were given the gift of bones and courage to go where you shouldn't have and now you can barely leave your bed.

younger times when spring came so did the cops burning by the ocean with beer and your love fucking on off season porches only to notice the neighbor has come early standing by his venetian blinds. she threw her egg in the water, wrapped in blood and cotton and yo imagined with the aid of the heater and violent violins on your way home that something caught it's death that night. and now you're ready to catch yours.

the city's year now becomes clear. the tangles untangle, the car horns and sirens have caught up with what the bottom of beers left behind, the ghost rings and their old ghostly conversations and no more sneaking out into the desert. the work and play piled up and built a home and hair and nails will still grow when you find yourself under.
so clap your hands when your fingers stop and push harder when you say you can't because you were bleeding bones and will now eat your crow under some astro turf and it can't get too much worse, right?

the bell blew the building and she opened her doors. the sidewall coughed and spit out the street. your legs hiccuped and our came your feet. this coming clean in this world of dirt, only you'll get dirty again so love your lover.

there's now nothing to hold, so this must be paradise. deep in the night, bless me father. i lost a fight so call off the pity. he stole my wallet and a picture of my first love so i will pray for lost things and sleep on your house steps. and i am still blind and bats still have holes for eyes and eyes for holes, blacked out and so cold. so come to me this night and we'll make it an occasion and make our own death dance and play flutes and whistle like champs and sing the same songs alongside the same radio and make it all go away. the girls and the sewer grates, they're all the same, they rot like holy shit and clean just the same.

give me a dime for every dollar every time i called her, told her i love you, only to find out later he fucked her, here in my bed. dreary sheets and bet on me, i told her. she was blessed with two hearts.

heroin recollections

and she made her way to heroin harbor with her belt on and her spoon burnt black, the handle hot to the touch. her head found the sand and her mind swam through dreams and stories, some real and some just make believe. she remembered her first love with a finger in-between her legs for the first time and how she bled while she was staring at white walls that were sparsely decorated with pictures of dolphins, ripped out of magazines and one that was taken by her at the maryland aquarium in the inner harbor. she remembered descending the spiral walkway and feeling the stares of the bull sharks, unrelenting. and grabbing her father's hand and she remembered how her hand only could wrap itself around his pointer finger. she remembered the rain and remembered how her father ushered her under his umbrella and how he called her darling.

she backstroked to a party after prom into cassie's room with poker cards and chips glowing and lighting up the floor and a pack of matches. she lit one and dropped it on the carpet. it went out almost immediately. she got impatient and lit one and then leaned the flame into the entire match packet and the dropped the packet and match onto the carpet. a flame grew on the carpet forming the shape of a rose and grew ever hotter and then into a shade of pink, the same color as her corsage. she watched and watched until her forehead beaded with sweat and the paint on the walls started bubbling off and the drywall evolved from grey to black. she opened the front door and met a fire fighter for a brief second as he ran by into cassie's burning house and continued down the steps onto the sidewalk and then stumbled into the grass.

she awoke in a yellow submarine without fanfare and without anyone onboard. the controls were drawn with crooked lines. there were two that seemed to her of major importance. on was DESCENT. the other she couldn't read. she thought that the artist didn't go into enough detail with that one. just scribbled something illegible. but she believed it to be ASCENT. she grabbed the lever and cranked it up. the submarine rose and started turning a shade of pink. she thought the sounds of the ascent were beautiful and started humming the melody of HELP. then the submarine rattled violently and began a rapid descent. at that point she just said fuck it and laid back into a conveniently drawn up bed and stared at the rivets and the bolts that held the yellow pressure bomb together. as she stared up to what she believed the ceiling of the submarine to be, speakers appeared or more better put, they were drawn just that second when she looked. the sound of the song came over the speakers in the submarine, faintly, "HELP, I NEED SOMEBODY. HELP, NOT JUST ANYBODY. HELP, YOU KNOW I NEED SOMEONE. HEEEEEEEELLLLLPPPP!"

the song ended and the singing stopped. she watched the in flight movie. sleepless in seattle, yet there were sub-titles in a foreign language, and even then she could barely read them. they were french subtitles. the movie encapsulated many desires that every woman dreamed of. she watched that movie millions of times. she was on the empire state building with the boy and then she was in his bookbag. she heard the reunion, muffled through nylon, zippered up and tucked away. she felt the descent of the elevator and heard, "CUT," but the sounds of kissing didn't stop.

she was on top of her second love and he was tearing into her and it hurt her in-between the legs and she was getting tired and felt like it was going nowhere and that she wanted more than anything to go to sleep, but the red light on the camera on the desk next to the bed, next to the computer was pulsating and she remembered that they were recording. so she cracked a hollywood smile and whimpered like a schoolgirl and it hurt. it really hurt and she grinded her teeth and her tongue became raw and she felt like she couldn't breathe and she saw black, but right before black she saw a hand around her neck but couldn't see whose hand but she swore that it was her dad's. but then there was complete darkness.

RING. RING. RING. the telephone rand and she folded down the covers and she was fifteen again. shed didn't answer her phone. she immediately got out of her bed and went to her window and drew her blinds. she knew that it was her last chance to see fireworks. they bloomed like a cheap sparkler. they were so far away from her bedroom window, but the last burst was amazing. even from miles away it glowed like a beacon begging her to remember when it was simpler. her mom called for her and told her that it was the fourth of july and that her dad was doing her favorite on the grill, ancho chile rubbed steak and her mom was doing homemade mashed potato with butter and chive. she walked into the backyard and knew that the fireworks were over but still hoping that the finale would continue into an encore and lo and behold, the finale encored. this time in the backyard that was coffee colored, she was not alone and not under the covers, but exposed to anyone and anything that wanted to swallow her.

she felt lips on her neck, then teeth and she looked up at the eyes, the brightest green. she was staring at the pine barrens from the fire tower, the evergreens growing like daggers from the sugar sand stabbing the sky. she was stoned but felt the clearest that she'd been forever. it was morning and her shoes still were marked with dew and her toes were wonderfully cold and she could feel th wind passing through her. and this time when she looked from two hundred feet to the ground she didn't feel like she would wet her pants like the first time and she didn't feel panicked but felt like she could float the whole way down, riding the thermals of this and immediately probe the fine granules of sand with her toes, sifting the individual pellets over her nails and embracing the shudder of a chalk squeak on chalkboard it would produce. and while she would rub the sand against her evergrow; she would be thankful for the serenity. but she was atop of the tower, sitting on the top step believing in nothing. under her breath, she thanked her mother for loving her, hugging her, bandaging her when thing cut, mending her clothes and her heart when anything tore through them, for kissing her dad even when both knew it was an act, the most sexless and fake act possible, and for always telling her father that she loved him and she never would stop and how on anniversaries she would buy herself a present to show her friends how wonderful her husband was and how she told her that somebody would break her heart and maybe even more than once and that she should never get married, but that she still loved her husband and that she was the exception, that she was the exception to the broken heart rule and she told her that her father was her one and only even when after a fight, she would come as a silhouette against her door frame and cry. and then, with a roll of her shoulder, as if she was shrugging off a compliment, she left the firmness of the steps and stepped off the side of the fire tower.

she awoke on the beach and it was moving and it was morning. there was sand under her bra, rubbing her skin raw and there was even some in her crotch, probably from rolling around. the belt was still attached to her bicep, just above her elbow. her shoes and jeans were gone, but she wasn't embarrassed to walk back to her car, just thankful that she remembered where it was. she left the needle behind, back on the beach and hoped that in the immediate future that no one would step on it or even worse, reuse it. she turned the car heater on and remembered the feeling of warmth and put the car into drive and left.