105

I sneaked out in the night to drink from the mechanical fountain, lined with grinning bronze youth, signed in red plastic: "LIQUOR PLAZA"

and "たばこ," like a streetlamp. This blurred reflection of the Beer Park glows, day and night, and despite every warning, we are drawn time and again -- our thirst to blend outdone by itself, dissolved more easily with social lubricant.

They wait for me like brethren, but my existance is more exciting than familiar, and there are still walls between us, 19 years tall, milleniums wide.

My eyes, they've said, are blue, but the fact is they are simply not brown, and beyond that, the exact hue is a matter of opinion. I do not mind having my eyes stared into, or my brain picked apart by hackers, seeking to unlock a code.

Insert two coins, and the spigot brims with reasons to raise our voices, mingle tongues, and become teachers to one another, and students and pets alike.

104

I ate that bullet years ago. There never was an exit wound. And now in my brain, like a bee in a bonnet, the heavy sting of an impulse rings. I have regrets like I have neurons, and I've never mourned the passing of a cell. The dying mind myelinates, smoothing itself soft and clear. You are lodged in there somewhere amongst the matter, but I am young and plastic. I grew into and around the lead which settled, sleeping, in my head. My dreams taste like metal today.

102

Like a gurneyed patient, rushed down screaming halls, I was ushered, numb, through a pivotal Spring.

101

the leather stripe above your wings ties us tight.

100 (cento)

Now, it hurts to be alone, evading all your moves, living in a world of lies together, you and I. I am a shadow, And I'm tired of walking alone, forgetting my limbs, without knowing the way.

Another day ends. I can't get close to you with you not being able to understand even yourself. We don't even know each other's faces. Will you just leave me here? Go on, close your eyes.

Even if you hurt me more, The sickness is yours, too. Even if that cold, strong wind creeps into your heart, it's better to wait for it alone... Even if it breaks me to pieces You'll never take me down.

[a cento, aka "patchwork poem" written using the lyrics of Luna Sea (Ryuichi Kawamura, translated by Jessica Polichetti) and Dethklok (Brendon Small)]

99

When the beast rears back like this for so long, she loses balance. She slams  her strained claws to the ground,  and sinks her sunken fangs into sweet creams and velvet necters.

98

I am a set amount of liquid poured into an unwieldy flask, such that I splash at the sides when I walk. When I sleep, I pool gladly into a single limb, small, only as that space, still with the gentle tides of dreams. But when a noise penetrates my mild waves, the vessel jumps erect, and I am swept through a system of caverns I never deigned to travel.

97

No matter when, or what, I will want any tears you spill to soak my shoulder. Run only to me. Let my arms stabilize your sobs, and my hands be your handkerchiefs. You may break only when I am there to secure your jagged parts together. Your hiccuping frame is the beam I lean on.

96 (written last summer)

I do not want to talk about what happened. I replay it in my head so often, it's become a film. If I rendered it in text, I'd have to explain every posed light, every blocked step, and all the subtle choreography of the train wreck. On the frontal lobe's big screen, it's all drama. Insight is sifted to purring voiceover, and you can see my friends' disapproving glares through the camera-shake filter.

It fades to black, and then I scream, so I couldn't tell you what happened to make me cry like that and curse his name.

I keep guessing, but no one can tell me. I apologized, but no one wants to talk.

I wonder how they recreate it, or if they do at all.

95 (written in september)

I found the night's first stars, and caught the clock at witching hours. Silently, I inhaled the rhymes and found my next breath hinged around you.

94

Tonight, I switched my clock back to Eastern Standard Time and unrolled the socks from around the red plastic cock.

Later, you sent me a picture of your cat, with the bones of trees over her hind legs.

I could feel the breeze coming in from your window, over the painted wings on your bare back. I could feel your arms finding my stomach and your warm body fast to mine,

although I'd snatched away your sheets. When I speak to you, half of me jumps over the jet stream and falls into place, waiting for the 300 bus or behind the kitchen wall, anxious and wanting for you.

93

You scribbled your love on a scrap of paper and tossed it over your shoulder. The wind snatched it and attached it to the sidewalk, where a million

metal poles grew towards the sun. Scaffolding bloomed on the spot, sealing in your secret. The workers gawked upwards, in awe, and made calls.

They sent cranes, trucks, ladders, and ropes to dismantle the shell that your softness grew. I woke up before the crew could finish,

but before you wrote it, I knew.

92

Your love is a lizard that snuck into my disheveled house. Unseen until a flick of the tail caught my eye as it scurried under the couch.

As a child, I would have shrieked and left the room.

I've since learned that lizards and love are not worth panic, so my heart didn't even trip. Still, I read the word again and again, committing the sight to memory for easy indexing.

Lizards seldom duck behind furniture to stay there. I do better not to look for them at all. It would fall to an obsession, a race to tack down something fluid and fast.

Your love slipped candidly into this house. I know it darts within the walls, because it's warm enough here for your blood.

91

I wonder if, like a parasite grub, my cheeks roll outward, bounding sweet stains to my mouth in parentheses.

Probably not. But guilt is the same texture as cocoa butter, and its melting point is much lower, so:

Because I stepped out of the shade - although every trace of sugar has been tongued aside – the grainy afterchill clings, its moisture rising off my lips and origin already forgotten by my throat.

Guilt is my acquired taste. More than to smooth over its craters, I want to spackle each full to molten top, flush with thick numb flesh.

I want to keep on pretending that it includes vital nutrients, provides me sustenance,

and will push right on through my system like a grain does, not a poison.

90

To you, I am a pipe junction bandaged heroically in silver tape. Only when the spigot is turned do I spill over –

not in haphazard spurts but a single low pressure flow, a gradually clear pool of water untainted by bitter rust.

To myself, I am the geyser from some pipe’s ancient copper side, when its pressure mounts, its walls quake and burst time and again.

The plumbing is purged so often, no liquid holds long enough to rust – but still grows bitter.

89

I already know what I lack, so this one-sided quarrel, is salt to wounds.  It's as senseless to spread fault over the rolling coast as to measure the depth of the lagoon.

88

Moonless void. Even wet dirt grows darker.