your fingers across her back and you thought of this one time being a wall you held your hand to in this way across her back was it this or even had there ever been a place stapled
in your memory of her back your hand resting ever so
for once
the fingers uncurled curling at not moving you a rhythm of her didn’t you feel so your hand
there was no other than this one you can not remember as ever repeating even though
you can see each on your fingertips her back facing the fingers of your hand resting your body
at her back turned on you her turning across the distance of you leaving the fingers etched in
themselves the grain of her turning away
and you had been remembering where you had made it to your hand as a glance of her turning away to face your own but it had then to be leaving the traces of your fingers to her way
back to you
so that you could touch not her offering her back as if it had been to drench you across
curling uncurling bodies a rhythm of her away from your fingers to be farthest away from
where she was blocking you stopping your fingers from ever reaching the wall past
through her spine where you knew her fingers safely
nestled into the walls of your own

like gears wearing down
the pumps heat up
steam starts to blow
you tell me to shut up.
teeth start to grind
tension: a coiled spring
wheels come to a halt
hate to me you bring.
a scowl a giggle a shrug?
all I need is a hug
to say I’m forgiven
to get what I’ve given.
so little a thing
a loose screw a lip
pulled back sneering
curses on the tongue tip.
lashes of nails
rip ripping the machine
broken junkyard parts
promises thrown into the bin.
a scowl a giggle a shrug?
all I want is a hug
to say I’m forgiven
to get what I’ve given.

When she had left him, he decided to remove every inch of his skin that she had ever kissed, touched, or licked. The pain was bearable, especially after he had removed his left eyelid (gently, gently, she had pressed the edges of her lips against it one night when he had awakened from a nightmare), the membrane was too thin to merely slice the uppermost layer. Having one eye remaining open for always was a sensation that overcame any other possible mutilation. In fact, he was surprised that carving off his nipples, excruciating as he thought it might have been (each with a swift twisting stroke, one following the other, almost with the same deftness of the flick of her tongue as she had moved from one to the next), was nothing compared to the raw quality that the left eye had continued to see for a number of days, until it dried up, becoming useless.
The majority of the work he had done himself after having his scrotum removed and the testicles placed back into the abdomen. He had to go practically to the other side of the world to have the procedure done (a friend, who had gone to the airport to pick him up on his return, had noticed something in his step that made the friend uncomfortable and ill, but this friend would be unable as to explain why). From then on, he, himself, held a scalpel in either hand, without any sort of anesthesia, but with the help of his memories, meticulously went about what he had set out to do. He started with his face, the eye first, then the lips, which came off quite easily (when he had pulled the bottom one in particular, for the blade to slide across more fluidly, he recalled, and could actually still feel, her teeth playfully biting it). In front of his bathroom mirror, propped on a stool to give him as full of a body view as possible, he had worked his way down (his legs bearing the longest scars eventually, her having entwined her own about them), five or six towels underneath the steel supports. It was not a quick process, the face itself (where her fingers so often lingered on his cheeks and neck as she slept) took a full day and several hours after dinner. Never did he perceive the peeling tissue as his skin, equating it instead with uncooked pork, whose texture was similar. He was merely removing dead meat from his face, meat that had no purpose, not even fit for consumption, diseased.
In the middle of the night, he would awake, startled and sweating, the more recent of the wounds stinging (her voice in his ear, fresh, warm, close), having suddenly remembered, through his dreaming of her, a specific spot he had missed. He had tried to remain on, and skim from, one area of his body at a time, in an organized and orderly manner. The most difficult in getting to, nothing to do with a degree of sensitivity but with the mechanics of his shoulders, was the plane of his back, its indentation at the center. To solve this problem he had gotten fresh towels, arranging them by the door of the bathroom, opening it inward, placing the handle of the scalpel into the space between the frame and the door so that it would jut out. With his right-hand pulling the door firmly closed, his body practically sideways, he moved onto the blade until he felt the desired spot (her fingers would sprawl themselves wide, nails etching, digging at times, just below the shoulder blades, where her forearms were tight against the back of his ribs), piercing around it, and shift himself accordingly, in a semicircle, switching angles to close the loop. When he had done so, he used a sterilized fork to peel off the skin, a piece sometimes falling off the prongs of the utensil onto the red blotched towels.
It would only be after each successful operation, never during, he would keep his mind sharp and concentrated then, that waves of nausea and dizziness washed over him, and he would bite down on his tongue to bring himself back into focus (despite the fact that it was the tongue that she had most contact with, he could not bring himself to the point of severing it, he was sure he could not live without speaking). Afterwards, having given himself enough time for the brunt of the pain to be smothered by drugs prescribed from the operation abroad, he would carefully climb into bed, fresh gauze wrapped about himself, onto seven or eight layers of bed sheets. Each morning, numb but clear headed, he would change the bandages, checking each laceration for infection, applying creams, iodine, washing off the previous night’s applications. He had saved the hair for last, the body done (she used to scratch his head as they watched T.V., or tug gently tufts of it before she would climax, his head between her thighs). With a pair of shearing scissors, he cut as close as possible to the scalp. Because the sink was more or less always moist from the week’s constant rinsing off of blood, clumps of hair had clung together, resembling fur. He finally recognized himself again. Until then, he had seen himself as something other than a person, more as material, a meat sculpture for an artist motivated by both an objective application of technique and a deep-rooted blind creative passion (mimicking the same recklessness with which she had taken off his clothes). Now, however, his name returned to him, a sense of ownership for the body before him: a sculptor recognizing himself in his work, the marking of his hand on the work itself, and the effect on him of the work being finished.
It was on that night, as he lay in bed, he felt that she was very near, almost atop him, not merely in his thoughts. He could not explain this knowing in his mind of her presence but he got out of bed, walked down the dark hallway, approached the front door, and slowly put his hand on the knob. Inexplicably, he then thought of the number of phone calls that were on his answering machine from his friends and his employer. They were, at first, concerned, then distressed, wondering, if he was still alive, why had he disappeared off the face of the planet? None were from her. While working, he had not answered the phone or the door when someone rang, keeping most of the lights off (as how often it had been with her here, dark and silent).
Turning the knob and pulling, he realized that what he had done to himself was not solely because of her. Opening the door, he stood there, the night clear, the air hugging him, cold and fresh, the street empty, seeing no one.

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)