Alien Me

telephoto me from outer space

regions of stars exploding

dead but still shining as if they weren’t

collapsing under black hole pressure

moving your hand lower

i whisper, lover

you could have been my archeologist

uncovering the well buried broken past

but now you’re an astronaut

and im your final frontier

these movements,

your phasers humming to life

i truly am your alien life form

so rare and different

unknown

you aren’t ready for this, baby

i breathe CO2 and your lungs are about to crystallize

with this kiss

i bleed liquid nitrogen

are you prepared for my frostbite?

you should’ve stuck with your terra earth

the musky rich soil of love and promise

undiscovered reality looms

because all of their expeditions

blew apart at my door step

Japanese Love Motel

crushed red velvet coursing through these stems

looking you over like a hot drink on a cold tongue

you know the drill

we’ll be over each other before day breaks

but for right now you can just be

my Japanese love motel head board

rock me back and forth

school girls and nipple clamps

mirrors on the ceiling

catching snap shots of the first and last

riding out your tomorrow with today

if it ends we’ll go down in style

silk sheets made of pick up lines

sweat perfuming the air

but im a good girl bucking you back

living in scenery from Macbeth and that one with suicide

you really do know drama

you know me well

Hometown Heroine

You’ve got that hometown stare, and you throw it my way every time I bend over a little too far. I feel like I’m at the high school football game and you’re making a touchdown. They’re cheering and I’m trying to remember how you scored on me. We do this dance each time I come back from my latest failed escape, crawling into the local bar, where the patrons raise expectant eyebrows. They knew I wouldn’t make it far, not past the county line. There you are at the spinning jukebox, with a cold one ready. I’m a wet t shirt contest away from being the harvest queen of po-dunk hell, you’ve been wearing your crown for years now. We’ll take slow steps to your pick up, then out to the point where we misplaced our body parts once upon a time. You’ve been waiting for my return, tail between my legs, beaten down to the trailer park one more time. Johnny Cash, you haven’t even changed your soundtrack to undressing me on a country night. Mama, you told me I wouldn’t go far, not with legs like that, wrapping around the quarter back. I’m small time, small town. But tonight, as you slide my now faded panties off, I know I’m going  down. This is my death rattle and I’m taking you with me. At first you don’t notice, but you hear the shot, a firecracker on the fourth of July. The wound starts to flower out from that barrel chest, your eyes searching for a reason. I kick that hunk of body off of me. I roll you out the back of your truck bed and start the engine. I’m falling into a burning ring of fire and you’re all gonna burn like my dreams. First stop the local watering hole, Blackie’s Badlands Saloon. Hear the shotgun, bang, reload, hit ‘em all again. Take out the local liquor mart, with a bottle of Jack in one sweaty fist and my old Colt in the other. The faces that knew I’d never leave, never registered my return, never knew I even left, are looking a little more stunned when I plug the cashier at Red’s Food Store. Down fall the town folk, wriggling like the night crawlers we hooked for fishing on moonlit summer’s eves. I load my arsenal in the back of Lucas’s truck, thank god for America and propane. Two miles to Happy Hills trailer park, two miles and fifteen cylinders of fury. When I roll the tanks under sleeping silver Air Streams, I know I’m playing my leading lady role, I know I’m the star of a tragedy not soon to be forgotten. Light a Marlboro Red, listen to the gas hiss from a fold out lawn chair, take dead aim at the white target under my Mama’s pride and joy. I won’t make nothing out of nothing, can’t be something if I’m part of this septic shit. Time for my inferno, time for hell on earth. Pulling back the trigger, I think I was laughing when I let her go.

I Hate Goodbyes

please fill me in on when i get too boring, let me know when you’ll be leaving, tell me the truth and ill let you go in peace in stead of pieces. if my voice starts to grate your nerves and you cant stand my dark green eyes, say you hate me. give me that. because ive spent so long loving images of imaginary men and today i want to hear the truth. today ill believe everything you have. but when you walk away remember that i want the works. i want you to make me feel your detestment of my being. i want you to take it out on me with a crowbar, i want you to rip my hair out, my dry dyed hair. I want to see clumps of myself at your feet, i want to go blind with a red hot poker, i want my tongue cut out of this wretched mouth. snip my lips dear, stain me, stain me red and black. i want you to have the guts to show me how to hurt, because youre going and im staying and i want you to know what i look like after a bad dream. i need you to see me undone by your hands. look at the mess your leaving, you dont have to clean it up, just knowing it exists is good enough for me.

Go Angst Yourself

and i knew it when i took the handful of white lies
i knew this was a dull blade and tomorrow wouldnt come
i choose my own adventure
books about my mother, my autobiography
so many blank chapters
so many metered lines
and they fit me in a straight jacket once
and it felt like i was home
wrapped to death in my misery
warm under the starch cloth
hugging me to sleep
you begged me to put the bottle down
i showed you who meant more
i win every time by losing everything
in the end its a game of who loves who less
narcissistic me can find a way to numb you
no one knows how the nails and broken glass
carve my insides
you didnt know i was stuffed with sharp objects
until i started bleeding through
they never know
im a project worth abandoning
even i cant justify my existence
maybe thats why i mutilate the ligaments
i tear down my limbs
i am a loaded gun in my own mouth
and i wont make it out alive
believe you me.

Conditional

You’ve got me tracing the bodies on our checker tiled floor, layed in the 1950s. I lay down next to them and you outline me. Caught off guard, I didn’t know the roof would leak, I didn’t know it would flood. Feathers are settling like white snow on ageless skin, the pillow you eviscerated now just a part of the crime scene. I want you next to me, hold my hand while I start going cold. The polaroid snaps an image of blue and gray, a butterfly and a mammoth, my virginity and dignity. This is growing old, this is why I take trips to the beach in black jeans and turtle necks. Can I hang around your life afterwards? Can I still be in your pictures? Do you feel it now? The ebbing of our life together, sharpies running out of ink, abalone cracked by the otter. The water is almost over my shallow head, I always feared I would drown in these tears. All while the camera shutter is going off like a beetle. The walls are collapsing and I’m still now. You walked out through the front door, the way you came in. What were you after? You never said a word. We are bleached bone, we are driftwood, we are all the shades of a troubled sea and you were God. I would have left us too.

Infestation

I am the eerie disquiet of a thousand cicadas, rushing the wheat field, a plague on your mind. I think they’d rid themselves if they could, shed the exoskeletons of my crisis. I’ve been hollowing out for a long time, nurturing these interior maggots with my intestinal caverns. they feed on feelings of inadequacy, you helped keep them fat. I never should have listened, but I took a pick ax to my ear drums too late and now your voice is the only sound left in my head. it reverberates through these fused skull pieces. you are never enough. you are never going to amount to anything. I see the lips of others moving, I can’t read them. they could be trying to save me for all I know, or they could be reiterating the echoes. hit me in the chest, collapsed like a rotted tree trunk, sick with termites. I look down at the gaping hole of my heart home. she’s a shell, they chant, she’s a shell! then something evil and slug like crawls inside and makes me it’s hardened refuge. now I am as vile as you always wanted me.

Bargains

He motioned her over to his corner of the bar, his eyes virulent and breath septic. She lingered at her stool before proceeding in his sinister direction, knowing full well the implication of each tottering step. She placed her hand palm up and he pricked her with a long, steel, aged needle. The blood took a moment to well up in a perfect bead in the center of her outstretched hand. He smiled at her willingness and licked the soiled point with a forked tongue. She had been here night after night, speaking with him and deciding whether she would go along with this plan. Finally, the decision was made. He winked a charcoal lid and in a dim sulphurous cloud he vanished.

 She was not at the bar anymore, her clothes were elegant and silken, each stitch was a work of art. The manor house echoed wealth and she exuded class. A man walked down the marble staircase in a smoking jacket holding a brandy snifter, he paused to look her over before embracing her in a passionate kiss. Her skin was cleared of oil and dirt and the heavy make up was replaced by natural beauty. Her palm itched and she opened the petals of her hand to see the dark black stain in the middle where the man had pricked her. This was worth it, she supposed. She didn’t believe in God anyway, but she believed in his counterpart.