what used to be three or four day episodes has now all of a sudden returned to the persistent gloom. the bright spots are fewer and even in them, the clouds block the brightness. even though i came in kindall and cuddled for days she still got up without a word twice at night and left the snuggles, and i don't care who she fucks, but i care who i care about, and i hate knowing that there are seeds of love that will go unwatered because distance and damage are again next to me. two years ago i saw brooke and her original woman hips and how she filled a dress the way honey fills a jar and i didn't care for her dog but i knew i could fall for her, so i did something i never do and i said well god if you're here, how about this, let this union come to fruition and i'll repair what broke with my mother and go further. but of course logic says you should not need an incentive to fix something if you want it fixed, and of course the faithful say god won't give you what you want unless you deserve it, and of course selfishness is at the root of my soul so naturally i got nothing in return. velez was married and ignored, and i wanted to send her back to her dead bedroom dripping and bruised, but she ghosted me. the other married woman, same thing, same scenario, same outcome. krystal gave me two nosferatus in an act of decency i didn't expect, but that doesn't erase infidelity. why didn't izzy let me ravage her like we planned? why did michelle cower at the foot of her domineering mom and why does she now have to kneel at her dad's grave? why'd bunnie leave after stringing me along for months, why was ash a man who clearly can't handle his own sexuality, why would vinita want her ex, why'd ava hold my hand, why'd rose choose pussy, why'd caitlin not want to try again, why'd shauna flee, why'd liz go elsewhere, why'd rey call me every night past midnight for hours and then suddenly go radio silent, why'd chloe hang up on me after a heartfelt talk even though i tried to find her a job so she could sleep easier, why'd two or three hundred other women treat me as disposable or try to get me to pay? what happened to kelly and pickle, her cat, and why did alice have to be real but a flake? why did i have to lose that game of darts when i know i'm better? why have i been missing layups? i have no one to cook for but myself, no reason to clean my room and no reason to shower and no reason to go anywhere. lives are now lived in tandem or away from me. rosie, aahoo, angele, olivia, yas, shivangi, julie. faces in the crowd now. i am an intruder too often in marriages, and now i am hyper aware of being unwanted or taken in small doses like i'm the oldschool green death nyquil. of being disregarded. how many people did i send this script to and how many got back to me? how many people were supposed to give feedback on these stories and i got none? i'm hungry so often and i don't want to eat because i do not like feeling fat and ugly. i'm disappointed so often that nothing is accepted. i spend too much money on restaurants. i have all these little nagging injuries. i don't know the last time someone came up behind me and hugged me. i am not in any weddings. the family i had here that i saw all the time has now dwindled and severed and left in so many directions that i am saddened to have to feel that same thing all over again as if the removal of one family wasn't bad enough. the one person i wanted more than anyone to share everything with and bask in the fact that we beat all of the awfulness that turned us into the shattered people we were is dead and i haven't felt close to whole since. the good things and the good days are here in miguel visiting and in my continual dart and ball improvement and in my consistency in writing this fiction and in my skill in the kitchen and in my cats and in health and wealth. selfishness and isolation say that i will succeed and i will succeed alone. but my god i do not want to write these books with no dedication pages, i do not want to go on a tour with no one making the hotel less lonely, i do not want to peresevere and pat my own back, fall asleep holding my own hand, and keep making meals for one.

before you sleep each night

here is the vision you should conjure each time you contour your body to his, inured you are to indifference, and think of me as a california condor (rare as LA snow freezing a car door, something so distant it's hard to miss):

mid-june rain at midnight. storm window opened slightly so we can hear the patter, even though the sill will be soaked, likely. in the den below, a comedy show's on, audience laughing at the slowly told jokes. my hands still reek of the evening's barbecue coals i'd stoked. the woodsmoke and butane clung to my clothes, so they adorn the chairback, and we aren't worried because your door is tightly closed. it doesn't matter that your dad's home. a fluorescent nightlight glows from the corner, coating the room in a hazy purple glow, not enough to see by but enough to know. i've walked around your toed-off docs often enough that my feet move exactly where they ought to go, like they stroll with a mind of their own. the hissing rain is the background track to our kissing, which is rendered intermittent and staccato by my sarcastic remarks and falsetto bravado, the way a song is interrupted by a dj's shouts on the radio. your ear canal is tickled by my bothersome chest hairs, and you tell me you can't breathe in the thicket so you're retreating for some fresh air. you sit up and scoot to the window with your breasts bare. you tell me how the closest branches of the willow come so close to the house you could almost poke the bird's nest there. i tell you not to become the nudist neighbor, the woman few avert their eyes from while the rest stare. you laugh me off, knowing i mean right now and earlier, when people were treated to more than cleavage because a snag on the sharp corner of the deck made your summer sundress tear. i brush aside your hair and kiss the bulge of your shoulder, and you rub my wrist where i finally inked the celtic clover, and we let the dark breeze dance around us the way kids wiggle like clowns at parties and drunks jiggle in bars like jokers, and even though time is a bulldozer, we ignore it like all lovers should, content that if tonight the world decided it was over, we'd accept the rushing end, not scream to make it creep slower.

here is the mission you'll likely ignore each time you lock the door behind you when you run to the grocery store, shopping for another boring meal to cook at four before he comes home and tosses his coat on the floor the exact way you hate because it's more than an eyesore (it's a blatant act that says this house is not a home, this relationship is just two people living together alone):

come back to me so we can sleep, so god can finally sigh in peace that we somehow made it work in the snarling gnashing face of defeat.

the seasons of sabrina

maybe winter with sabrina is warm. maybe there are drinks at cabo cantina, a walk along the marina, sly jokes about how her tv show barely outperformed xena. maybe overlarge sweaters trap the heat. the sight of only fingertips poking from the clumsy sleeves makes my hands feel lonely, so i'll jokingly grab them until their slightest touch leaves me at ease.

maybe spring's around the corner, bringing with it yawning trees whose leaves will decorate her hair, whose neighboring flowers will make her sneeze.

and maybe summer will trail it with open arms and pastels, with sundresses and trips to carvel for ice cream to cool off hell.

if i'm lucky, i'll fall and trip into autumn with her windswept hair at my neck, wipe flecks of saltwater from her cheeks, and pray the seasons of sabrina stay on repeat.

clear up my karma

am i paying some karmic debt for stabbing that frog? my memory's clogged, fogged over, as i trudge through childhood recollections, old hurts floating as miasma on the bog.

the caterpillar didn't deserve to die, flung against the stop sign with no remorse.

the pigeon's ribs should've stayed unbroken, not cracked from a paintball as we laughed til our throats grew hoarse.

do i owe blood, pounds of flesh, the lives of those i love, because i drowned anthills in windex, covered beetles with mud, stomped on cicadas simply to hear the crunch?

has every invective against a faceless stranger come back to me threefold? have my threats and aggressions manifested as this uncharacteristic LA cold? family discarded, friends disregarded, peers and fellow men ignored cold-hearted - is this payback for shrugging off every soul and dearly departed?

does st. peter check his ledger every time a fortunate dove cuts my airy way, only to fire an arrow through its breast to punish me for every past journey i went astray? have the sins of my fathers racked up and crashed down, polluted me so i had no choice in this place? is there nothing i can do but storm the pearly gates to shake my fists, to change this course, to fight fate?

false promises

hopeful hands and lava lamp smiles glow like fireflies in the dark basement, the echoing grey stairwell, the empty hospital, the quiet class. we ran in the rain for dimp miles until the liar's lies slipped off the pavement the way a dead plecko squelches farewell and slides down the murky aquarium glass. they told us: there will come a day the torrents stop and the sun will blaze. there will come a day the pain ebbs without the crutch of a morphine daze. there will come a day god returns, engulfed in rapturous praise. there will come a day we find homes and cease our roles as cold, derelict strays. they did not tell us: that day was yesterday. and we are still here, broken stacked on broken prayers fallen on deaf ears, caressing the same old daggers, crying the same old tears.

she’s fat, but she wants me

[Wednesday, January 19th, 2022. 9:50 p.m.]

how many more overweight, dough-faced, unhealthy, too-far-past-30, boring ladies are going to flirt with me? sidle up and slip a hand in my pocket, overbite a lip and finger a locket?

i pine over stallions with curves, leggy devils with evil eyes, foxes whose baritone purrs and sudden squealing cries prove for a moment i'm not cursed, the dysmorphia's a bug inside.

i've let out low moans and whimpers when i've seen sisters of god make models seem simple. i've received a few simpers, melted like july ice cream, when a smile cracked two dimples and breathed life into something i'd only seen as a dream within a dream.

18-year-old nymphos tonguing dildos shimmying out of cheap rippable clothes, women my age with arms inked with rose, unicorns sporting hair the color of crows.

too hard to think, and the only ones who stick around at the bar once last call hurries the stragglers forward for a final drink are the ones who'll fill me with regrets, the ones i won't want to bend over the sink and force to look in the mirror at the rawness of us two hungry beasts.

one flashes some thigh, leans in and asks if it's true what she's heard - that i can write any woman into a dove, give flight to wingless birds, fuck like someone possessed?

she's fat, but she wants me. is that enough to quell the lonely? for flesh to no longer taunt me?

perhaps the lies in moments of need are sufficient to tide me over, to quell the lust and greed, to kill the Y desire to spread far and wide the seed.

conversion

[Saturday, January 15th, 2022. 12:49 p.m.]

"our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name -- " you paused, i looked up from the mickey dee's fries cooked in beef tallow. "that's the wrong prayer," you said, face sunken and sallow, same complexion as the potatoes. you picked at mine, knowing how much i hated it when you ate those and left none for me. where did this newfound religion stem from? you used to pull tarot cards to predict the days, used to say i was the embodiment of the arrow, this aggressive bull of suppressed anger, something that scared you right down to your bone marrow. now you pray and read the bible, tell me that you can't stand how my idle hands never seem to do the lord's work. "i have to make a confession," you tell me as we clear our trays and place them next to the concessions. "so what are you telling me for? fetch a priest," i shrug and point in some random direction. you look at me with something akin to pity, like i'm a leper in desperate need of a blessing.

this hole a home

[Thursday, December 24th, 2021. 11:50 a.m.]

home could be cookies baked overnight or slight frights from the glowing eyes of possums atop fences below the streetlights. could be the would-be quiet dates riddled with uncertainties and should-shes, her fingers pressed to my lips to shush me as i stammered through kisses as a rookie.

where home begins to take form, like water to its prison, is in the thunderstorms, downpours, lightning flashes, while huddled under a blanket, warm, listening to rain tapdance on the gutters as black nights break way to grey morns.

had i known that this house would not be home until your socks were mixed with mine, until you hung your necklace on the bed post, until our separate ghosts met and mingled and clinked glasses in toast to having a new haunt on the opposite coast, until i watched you doze in my arms illuminated by the muted cartoon glow - had i known that you were what made this hole a home, i would've told you i loved you decades ago.

two types of lust

[Monday, December 6th, 2021. 10:55 p.m.]

there are two kinds of lust:

the first is primal, animalistic, where fast fingers rip at bras half-covering your bust. it's the stirring in the pit of my gut, the rush of blood, caressing myself and pretending each callous swipe is your touch.

it's seeing red lace and thin straps ride legs so skinny they'd be in a kid's meal, hips so spotless they could belong to mannequins. you topless with a small hand shyly covering up, only to move slowly into crossing your ankles causes that lust to bubble, to rise to the surface; like lava, to erupt.

yet the second lust is more contained, less reliant on bites and restraints, less about the aftercare from the spanking pain, less concerned about your curled toes and o face.

no topic on our tongues is jejune, and every object we purchase has a sweet place in the room. i don't feel marooned on your kitchen island, panic-stricken and searching for my little spoon. i'll festoon your figure with turquoise and kisses, tinsel and licks, ash and cigs, as you moon me and giggle about how that sight will make me owe you a grand soon. together we can watch classic cartoons, listen to everything from metal to folky tunes.

neither form of lust is deadly, not even a shade of a sin. besides, i'm kissing an angel - god's got no choice but to grin.

idolatry: or, the want of angele, the lack of god

[Thursday, November 18th, 2021. 8:30 p.m.]

somewhere in a dingy corner of a used furniture store is a couch with a soul, not yet fully torn but ready to be ripped by a newborn kitten's claws, and its springs dream of sighing as they bear our weight. its arms will open like eagle wings as we clasp cocoa mugs and rub our bare feet together the way crickets do in morning dew each morning in foggy spring. there is a lamp nearby too whose eye will gaze on our wool blankets as i read aloud to you my favorite stories - tester, where the dark ended; hempel, in the cemetery where al jolson is buried; schickler, the smoker; erian, troika; lipsyte, old soul; ames, i was in flowers - and hope you swell like i did when the words danced inside my head and became the thread to stitch me whole. there is a sweatshirt three sizes too large buried under plaid and denim vests, a sweatshirt that turns you into a stick instead of accentuating your perfectly propped heavenly breasts. perhaps a vintage lighter in the discount pile, an ashtray next to a vhs of the green mile, some taxidermy, some shark teeth, some toiletries and a nail file. all the while, as we browse, i'll think of your rabbit-lean legs and how they never seem to chill; your bangs, your lips that need nary a fill; how you treat my hangnails with delicate fingers and never pills; how i adore you in both your manic movement and your sudden bouts of still; the hoarseness of your voice when morning's sudden light attacks the windowsill; how i'd water you every day as part of the promise i'd never watch you wilt.

the devil’s workshop

[Thursday, November 18th, 2021. 10:00 p.m.]

if lucifer licks his lips at lackadaisical stature, i hope he'll understand that my darling's hasteless hands have a purpose, and make him loath to attack her. her hands waltz from my bland fingertips to my earlobes while the marching bands of our lungs bellow on. they lightly tread my skin's surface; her laugh is never mirthless, but grand. they gently pat pillows with no demands, and wait patiently until i can find them with my own uncalm palms, until i pluck away at tendrils and strands. the devil surely will curse it, but i'll embrace the slowness, the traced love notes on my scapula in cursive, the snail paced buildup of her courage, the gazes stolen and the glances furtive. i welcome the halting of time and body, the beseeching from curved lips; thank the devil for idle hands, otherwise i'd never know comfort like this.

maybe i won’t eat next month

[Tuesday, November 23rd, 2021. 10:16 p.m.]

maybe i won't eat next month.

maybe i'll retreat into my usual cave, the one i know is safe when an episode looms, so i can avoid the shower and seldom shave. no friendly hands or happy hugs, nothing but beer in the mug to remind me of all i've never conquered, of how, to so much, i'm still enslaved. i don't have a sponsor, i don't have a father, i don't ask anyone to shoulder blame.

perhaps the grave is a fine and private place but it's a lie that none do there embrace - the shared casket tells the truth, as does the tombstone's face. where is my forever home? who is my forever one? what's the point of unshared space?

maybe i won't eat next month. too much chocolate, too many stouts, too few assurances, an excess of doubts. let the pants fit looser, let the body be sunken in like a storm-broken ship.

kindness has taken a whipping from everyone it chased. maybe i won't eat next month. no one would notice anyway.

was my soul not enough?

[Monday, July 19th, 2021. 5:20 p.m.]

why do the clouds settle over me so heavily? why is my disposition to fall into depression, to bottle up the tension so readily? i expressed myself with you, sought out a remedy for our communicative flu, but fixed nothing in our seas. still we drown in whirlpools and eddies.

why when i cut peppers and rub my gums does the heat still linger? my fingers are stained with capsaicin, and i foolishly grew complacent with how steadily i burned, all too aware of how my hotel heart was still vacant. why do jalapeno remnants remain on my fingertips when your neck and earlobes are long erased from the memory of taste on my lips?

what did you want from me? was the rest of my soul not enough?

was this snuff film romance part of your plan? was i supposed to forget about the softness of your hands? was i supposed to ignore every adoring word you said, every squish and nip on my cheeks, every nap that flowed to sleep, every gaze you gave me that told me i was finally on the brink of peace?

i never struggled to pronounce your name, i never indulged in an ounce of your shame. you lay there naked and nude as i was and assured me you felt the same. coughing into your fist that you understood may have been a nervous tick; i'd reexamine it all if i could, see what signs i missed: if kisses were bidden with just the mouth, if hands were held with just the wrist, if pinky promises were never honest and just a childish dirty trick to rope me in and believe you when you said our quiet love was some fortunate form of bliss.

i won't ask about the others - scratch that, i can't. you cook for her, you suck his thumb. did you lie and tell them you can't cum when you remember our too-short nights were filled with shakes, too quickly done?

your mom knew my name, must've seen it when you drank juice and munched pastries i sent after scouring the web to find a norwegian food delivery service that would convey exactly what I meant. i hope she told you that i must love you more than fishermen love a full net, more than bowerbirds love a gaudy nest. more than god loves his angels and humans, even the devils and demons and all the rest.

truth is i love you more than i know how to say, more than i admit, more than i know how to pen.

the big apple of your eye

[Friday, February 26th, 2021. 8:00 p.m.]

if you're nudged awake by traffic horns ignore the judging birds of dawn. don't rush to the subway to stand and yawn with strangers who won't budge when you bump shoulders, who maybe quick to anger at cumbersome mothers in curls and rollers pushing baby strollers. don't let the train's hot breath dampen your hair to your neck, cling and cloy the stink to your head. stumble into a sweet soft morning instead: piping coffee, skyline views, typing details, local news, smiling neighbors, hotdog vendors, lost tourist, library rentals.

take a walk for polish food, for hare and hunter's stew. sit alone at a table for two, devise an outline, think it through. against the odds it happened, turning from the crowd to the few: there are millions in manhattan, but in truth, only one you.

am i still the right person

[Friday, May 7th, 2021. 2:23 a.m.]

am i still the right person? maybe not, since now i trot around the block trying to fight any version of you and your weeks and months and silence. i hang a left on curson, pray for violence, get no bites. sometimes i think, fuck this, and drink myself into a stupor, eat too many fries, idly browse for flights to fly in women for a night. i don't stab myself anymore - i'm a trooper. sometimes i cry because you weren't a straight shooter, and even though it was the wrong time you couldn't tell me otherwise, couldn't treat me much crueler. eventually, soon i hope, you'll fade like dusk as evening creeps, you'll stop inhabiting my arms as i sleep, you'll flee from my words like i'm a wolf hunting sheep, you'll abandon your family and pack up and leave, you'll be a distant dove i was half fortunate to meet. i take nothing back - i'll remain spicy, i'll still cook tuscan chicken, i'll remember your icy eyes, i'll always stop and listen, i'll pretend i was the right one like you said. i'll pretend i'm the one in your photos clutching your waist instead. i'll pretend every empty morning is that way because you stealthily left bed to make a cup of coffee and lightly toast your bread. i'll pretend to love you until the facade is shed.

angele’s ashes

[Tuesday, May 4th, 2021. 8:00 p.m.]

(no time for neurotic fits amid semi-erotic polaroid shoots - if 5 feet of 'tude fit snug into leather boots, i shudder to think what scorn and fury could do.)

these cigarettes are flicked until the filters are well-lipped, until fingertips are kitty-licked, until it's summer again and ripe for a backyard picnic.

i suppose all the seldom snowlit skin has to see the sun sometimes to stay sleek as unchiseled marble. but no renaissance man or painter, no architect nor engraver, could craft her with fewer flaws.

i am not religious, but i'll be damned if nature and god didn't kiss when they decided that this, this seraph gifted blood and pulse, must be human, and not the embodiment of bliss.

the world is small; if i recall, i saw her eyes before, as freshly rained-on moss on the slick bark of some toppled oak i stumbled across in a downpour on rural poconos forest floor.

as a poor man scribbling poor words on discarded notebook strips, i'm fortunate to be enriched by such an iridescent muse as this.

my heart hurts

[Sunday, January 31st, 2021. 10:32 p.m.]

my heart hurts.

i can say it baldly - no women have called me, whether in ecstasy or in need. i sow my seeds, water the earth, pray the roots claw and grasp their legs like umbilical cords in some lusty, dirty birth. sarah and that adorable face flaked, while angie vaped and talked crazed. the nameless, the featureless, the blurry others have disappeared in a sea of names, have retreated back under the covers of whatever comforters they keep on their beds, glued to their phones instead. who hasn't replied? i've lost count. who's wifed, who's committed, who's taken? i've lost count there, too. do i have a thing for these married women? is it my fault she's not happy with him? do i believe these words are lifesavers, that she'll lilt and bounce to my sappy rhythm and swim to me soaked and soppy, away from the neglect, the traps, the damning presence of a warm body? they say i'm sweet - sweet for homecooked meals, for sincerity and truth, for throwing their orange peels in the garbage disposal to mask the smell. am i sweet? am i? tell me you want me, tell me you want me, tell me you agree to my proposal - whether a room for a night or your couch for a day, whether i'm a groom avoiding flight or a grouchy fast lay, whether you're mine or some foreign man's. lately this mind of mine has been nothing but a foreign land.

my heart hurts.

in the waking hours i'm not dreaming about ant, crying my heart out because he doesn't know the future. in the waking hours i'm not dragging this dagger out of my breast. in the waking hours i'm an animal, preying on the weak, straying from society until i'm too tired to go to sleep. in the waking hours i can push the reminders back and down, attract a crowd of distractions to attack the sounds, lie to myself over and over again, lie and say it's getting better now.