Tiramisú

The tiny duffle ruffled slightly.  
It sat between her legs,
across the hall

as I rolled my eyes up each one,
stopping at those shorts,
folded once or twice

and above all that delicious middle,
tight and hot and there, yes
above all that,

was a face that searched me out
from the corners of its eyes;
let me speak but said nothing.

I thought I’d give her everything:
a bottle of ale,
lily bouquet,

three or four poems
I wrote for someone else.
But I could have loved her, too.

She must have known it in those seconds;
the body talks and if I had the tongue
I’d show her an inspired expression.

The bag did another shuffle
and pug popped its head out.
I thought to pet it but she saw me
coming & picked it up, blinked confusedly

her burnt apple hair
jangled in front of me
I froze & turned

and ran out to the nearest bush,
vomited into the base of it
to the taste of whisky.

It was high noon
and the tower bells rang
for every day I couldn’t cut it.

Wednesday, Gloom of Fridays

The rain was glass
broken so that the air still warmed me
when I stepped into it.

I wondered; knew
you would get wet
even with an umbrella

and that finally,
no distance could keep
my stoned advances from your window.

I knew things but wonder
always on the meaning.
Distracted from the path

and without a proper sunset anywhere—
my guts hung, dripped
and washed into Back Bay.

Soaked but not cold
unless I thought of how
you were kept dry.

And by my twists of fantasy
and no tools to castrate with
I would have unraveled

that I opened the floodgates
but I’d never apologize
my knife, you are too high,

like bone neck lace
your affects hang
to hide his blue and black marks.

bloody untitled

What is said creates what you are
in the elusive parts
of my most practiced rituals.
Exchanging promise for time
from machinations
to a cracking mouth.
The glow of a color I forget
in the rush of blood to my empty parts,
lost with every bite
but remember the center of that field
where we stood,
when I shuffled around [in / the] pieces;
chewing my lips until they flowed
so that I couldn’t lay them,
finally, on you.

Composed Piece Through the Magnifying Glass [or Why I Ran]

It’s startling
to face you;
the well inside fills dangerously,
erases from my mind
knowledge of your path
and any of your loves.