and so we like
shopped until we dropped, literally
over the food court rail, falling right into santa’s little
sit-on-his-lap-and-beg-for-that-sega-genesis-saturn-64-bit-system-and-be-terrorized
-as-an-elf-insists-that-you-turn-away-from-the-fat-drunkard-and-smile-for-the-fucking-camera hut.
terry fell onto santa’s lap just as saint nick was getting up,
one big, “ompff!” and a whole mess
of calamity
with the six year olds still waiting on line.
some idiot started cheering and then the rest of the little mob took it for a show,
like we meant to fall through the reindeer and bust our asses in santa’s little workshop,
and before we knew it,
we had little snot-filled tykes tugging on our legs, all cheerful excitement, begging for us to,
“do it again!! pleeese!!! mister, mister, do that again!!!”

i always said that i would
and i did, i did
i thought, always thinking
that you’d notice
i always told you i would
i would notice if you died
and i thought, i thought
that i would always think of you
but i had been dying
for a very long time now
a very long time thinking of dying time
of you, on my bed
while i was dying
and you didn’t notice
that i wasn’t there anymore
before you had thought to think of me
lighting a cigarette, you had to leave
you said, ‘look at the time’,
walking away from the bed post looking
like i was dead and i was
one last time thinking:
i’d notice if you were, i’d notice
i always said i would
i always said.

you are suddenly here.
you were not here before.
and even that is in itself a contradiction:
was there ever, a before?
has there ever been one? and if so,
there will be, a later. with such things ahead,
and behind you,
things that have never been, here, by their very nature,
what would, here, be?
what is, now, if you didn’t know what it was,
or what it will become?
you are suddenly here,
and it doesn’t come as a surprise.
it would be better if it did.
you are suddenly here because you were somewhere else,
not necessarily, there, in relation to, here
but a place other than what is before you now.
you are here suddenly and you are moving
to not be other than, here, knowing
you can never go back:
you are suddenly here and it doesn’t come as a surprise.
immediately after you are here, you no longer are;
you have moved to somewhere else.
things have grown, twisted themselves slightly,
new things have emerged and others have disappeared.
you do not keep track of the flux and fluxuations,
you have moved again, but you are continually moving,
even when you are standing still, so you are moving, always.
you were here, even though, you are always on the move
and never quite, here, for too long, even though,
you suddenly had been.
at some point, at some unknown but accumulated time,
you will no longer be here and it will be just as it was
before: a surprise.
it will not be as arbitrary as your arrival;
there exists the chance you will have regrets
but also the chance that you will not want to leave.
most probably, however, it will be of the such
that you will not even know its characteristics
and you will no longer be, here, or elsewhere.
you will suddenly be gone
and perhaps all the more better for not knowing:
you are no longer, here, any longer, suddenly,
just as you came.

past the talking
the smiles the flirting
the trivialties
just get to the point
her undressed
not even in the sack
her going on me
her chest on me
my hands in her hair
on her lips her neck
the lines of her stomach
on my knees
hands tight on that
curve
between
her hips
&
back
facing her
pulling me in
pull me up
rubbing against her ribs
standing pushing
put me inside her
with her hand
grind into her
holding
look everywhere
her jaw her cheek
her collarbone
her neck her shoulder
her breath her breast
pressed against me
the globe of it
being there in there
in the room in her
in the moment
and that’s it
just to be inside
someone someplace
some warm mystery
that wants me
as much as I
want it to.

you had asked
so all this
is gonna pour
right on you
& everyone’s tellin’ me
that I’m goin’ too fast
I’m goin’ too fast
but maybe
they’re not goin’ fast enough
for me to slow down.
and I wish
I had nothing to say to you
so I’ve held back
you had enough to slow you down
& I’m goin’ too fast
I’m goin’ too fast
but maybe
my mouth wouldn’t be fast enough
to get it all down.
but you had asked
so all of it
is now on you
think of me
as everyone tells me
that I’m goin’ too fast
I’m goin’ too fast
but maybe
Life isn’t goin’ fast enough
for me to stick around.

my knee had been shaking, jerking up and down like a piston so often lately
“Stop doing that, it’s making me dizzy”,
and i turned to her and said,
“Well then, I guess you’ll just have to cut my head off..”
and she dropped her fork because i wasn’t exactly smiling
but i wasn’t being dramatic and i had kept eating, my leg suddenly conscious
of itself, or me of it, and it froze with her jaw as she stared at me and i glanced at her.
i shrugged and when she hadn’t stopped looking at my mouth or the words, i pushed myself away from the table and stood. “Goodnight”, and i left, walking down the hallway
and in the morning i could not pull myself away from the desk, i wasn’t exactly writing
and my leg would not stop unless i thought about it, but then i’d be off on some tangent
and it’d start again, the left so vigorous i briefly saw myself trembling as an old man,
eating alone in a diner where i couldn’t even hold a fork. i could no longer stop
shaking even when i caught myself.
i don’t think i even noticed it,
the food kept falling out of my mouth.

four walls
have more than the you I see
everywhere out of the moment
you slept in this room
the event of you not ever again
has me removing the ridiculous dream
I dreamt of having you once
(this once was of you)
and abruptly otherwise locked in
four walls not moving to forget the dream
that I was dreaming
(to close my eye and not see your skin
cutting it open)

I know you don’t care much
for my kind, but please
spare me. I have little time left
for the type of nonsense we had originally
invested so much of ourselves in,
it just isn’t worth divulging anymore,
or indugling, dependent of how we were
lying down, and when,
the street corners had some sort of significance.
But isn’t that it had always been between us?
Me the wanting fool and you the harlot?
Oh now, don’t blush, dont be angry,
it was what it was, and you standing before me
glaring doesn’t change anything at all,
written in stone. As you well know,
I was always a bit block headed,
one of my most admireable traits. It kept us going
for longer than it should have, quite drained me
of my senses, little left now, just floating about,
I have a better understanding of crackling leaves,
let me tell you, a kinship. In the wind
dry and hollow. I could write
a thesis on it, quite a dissertation, it would take me
years to get it right, but i’d be mostly writing all that
time: that’s how much I could say about it, and without need
of defense, what you had done to me
is solely in my head, not yours, neither anyone else’s
for that matter, and so, no board to present it to,
just maybe a set of chafed knukles and fingerbits. Strained
through the floorboards, with my ear to floor, i’d find myself
like that, no clue as to why, you didn’t even live
underneath me anymore, the pun is
“that I had hoped you were dead and you were sent straight to hell”,
despite my anxiety, and you smiling just seconds before.
You shouldn’t have called out my name,
just let me keep walking into familiar ground, let me stumble
as I have been. It isn’t too much to ask for, is it?
Just one of those pipedreams I suppose.