i keep pulling at this string
that is a stitch holding together
two otherwise gaping sides of
my flesh in my mouth,
the raw wound between.
with my tongue, i pull at it
and touch it
tapper sur les nerfs,
en francais.
everyday, in my heart
tapper sur les nerfs.

dream

in dreams i can break free
and you can hurt me
by writing a sign that
says:
Go away.

my identity is so much a me
that I am floored
you have the same name.

a sad eyed lobster in the tank
is waving its banded claws at me,
flagging my attention.
Save me, he says, save me.
I turn away. I am so sick.
All these packages of flesh and bone,
as I am a package of flesh and bone.
I walked along the streets in the snow
which is now up to my ankles,
and black fish are swimming in my blood.
How will I make it through the last half
of my life, I am afraid.
I am afraid to be alone now.
I am afraid of my future.
I am going to live to the end of my days
and will have done nothing to last
beyond myself.
They say that a teacher can never know
just how long
he matters.
But I do not worry about my posterity
as a teacher.
I worry about my life as a strand of DNA.
Am I to be the last of the great line that made me?

what is it with boys?
boys who like girls.
this is the boys i know.
rachel, rachel, rachel.
and i am ho hum staring
into the galactic space,
who are you?
they go
rachel rachel rachel.
and i am ho hum
what was your name?
did we talk about that...
oh now i remember.
yes i remember now.
and then they swim in
my blood like a virus
and i wake up one
day sweating and shaking
with some kind of
desire for the
boy who poked and prodded
me to some kind of
attention.
Yes, what is it with boys?
the day i notice them
is the day they yank my
hair and push me away,
push me down,
push me to the dirt.
and then i follow them
arms outstretched
begging and crying
for their attention
now that i don't have it.

Come on baby
Finish what you started
says the song
and me too.
Come on baby.
Come on and finish me.

sludge

feelings are like nuclear waste.
there was a reaction that created them
and they glowed
colors unseen, unknown, eye candy.
But then the decay begins.
Bit by bit, the glow fades as the
feelings turn into a
grey, lifeless, dangerous
mass.
Causing irreperable damage
at some cellular level in my brain
circuitry.
When I think of you, I think joy, then pain.
When I think of you, I think joy, then pain.
When I think of you.
Nuclear waste does not go away by will.
It goes away through time,
as it decays into something else,
or dissipates into nothingness.
And so with you, and so with my feelings.

I thought I liked gertrude stein
her poem was so creative
so clever
and then it went on
too long.

i tried so hard
so hard i tried
what was it with you?
did i do something?
did i steal your thunder
break your heart
kick your knees out from under you
douse your fire
ash in your drink
kiss your best friend
lie to your face
piss on your lawn?
Whatever did I do to you
short of be nice
and nicer
nicer
and
nicer
and
nicer
and
nicer
until I had softened completely
and I understood that
this punch to the face
was you punching you
and I could be even nicer
by standing in your shoes
and taking the blow.

cheap like sebastian

song is in my head again and again
don't know what you mean in these words
but i'm pretty sure that you're singing
a song i understood really well
a few months ago.
is it the melody or the beat or the bass?
i don't know, but it pins me, pins my mood.
so here's what i think you mean.
i'm going to tell you what you mean.
nothing you can do about that.

I'm starting to see

I am starting to see the truth
like a tiny flame in a dim room,
and its making everything slightly yellow and brown.
Better than black and grey.
I'm seeing what I didn't see, sharp corners and
all the tacks on the floor I've been stepping on
and screaming.
You aren't the person I want you to be.
I painted you so beautifully in my mind,
and gave you a medal of honor,
a badge on your chest that
could reflect my own eyes back in copper.
I've got copper eyes
If I think back hard, I sat alone a lot
and waited.
Maybe it was only good the first time
and the second.
Only logarithmycally did three become
nine.

everyone is wrong

i can not believe that you bucked the trend
and did not call me as everyone said you would.
everyone said you would be back.
i think i put my faith in that,
because it let me go forward into my future,
and was some kind of secret security,
that no matter what future i had,
i would get a chance to revisit what was left undone.
or, if not undone, what was left me bleeding.
haunted by what we never finished,
i guess i did those things alone
and you were a dull blip on the radar,
not so important anymore.
until
you
decided
to slam shut
one more door.

infected

i've got something worse than swine flu,
seems I can't get rid of you.
I'm infected with something in my heart,
haven't forgotten your hands
in my hair, on my back.
I'd rather be sick and done with it a week
later,
puke my guts out in a bucket on the floor,
and smell and sweat and stew in my own
miseries for a week of hot and cold sweats,
feeling lonely.
It'd be over after a week, maybe two,
and I'd rise from bed a little bit frail, pale, frazzled.
It's so much better to be really sick
than to have this disease.
I need some kind of cure to get you off
my mind.
Do they have a shot for that kind of thing?

teacher teach me

teach me teacher teach me anything.
i can't teach you
what you will need to know
i don't know what you will need
or what you will know.
the world will not be the same
now, ever again
the world is so tilted,
so introverted
that i can't listen to the sounds
of birds
can't listen to the sounds
of the creatures beneath the ground.
those were the old ways of seeing
and no one cares for that
these days.