charm

charm is
a dangerous thing,
my friend

because although
it has its benefits
although it grants you the ability
to make as
meaningful of friends
as you'll ever have
effortlessly

you must be cautious
for there are all sorts of
poor fellows out there
just waiting for someone to
give a second look
with a concerned word
to spill all over themselves
and gouge out their own soul as
an offering, as if to say
please, you caring
son of a bitch
see what you can do with it
i can't seem to fix it

and you'll catch yourself
sputtering and choking
and regretting every
sympathetic gesture
because you know
that you would fall over
the same way
for someone
a little more charming
than yourself
and you know
that you're far too broken
to do a damn thing
to help

We don't know the difference between right and wrong

if we did
we wouldn't use eachother
or kill our chances of productivity
with sex
and selflessness.

Alcohol isn't an anti-depressant
it's an over the counter
sleep-aid.

Percocet, Vicodin, alcohol, and weed. Let's be honest, who still needs "cutting" to feel complete?

There was a cutter on the TV. Some lonely kid looking for attention. His feelings bled thin in small red lines. Or sometimes curves, or zigzags, or in the form of perfectly shaped crosses that would make a vampire rile in his wooden staked coffin.

"He should just man up and stop cutting himself."

Her and I, we've got stories for every scar spanning the full length of our bodies. The television makes us begin to exchange their origins and like people, scars love to talk about where they came from...

"I almost cut off my thumb."
"I think you told me that, check out these bruises. They’re from last night in the street, when I tripped and fell…. By the way, my right foot is starting to swell."
"Bummer, check out those red veins."
"That's just a scratch."
"Oh, sorry. I initially mistook it for eczema anyways."
"I've got cuts up and down my right arm. They’re kind of hard to see.”
"That’s weird, your skin feels flawless.'"
"Yeah, but don’t touch, just look real close…"
"I still don't se... er, um?"

Scars. And lots of them.

I stay positive and try not to ask about the crusted ridges strewn like dirty socks across her skin. Instead, I light a cigarette and sit back to watch Chris Angel’s, Mindfreak. After five minutes of professional brain numbing slight-of-hand, she silently stands up, almost on cue with a commercial, and cries a solemn, “be right back!”

Twenty minutes and two cellular phone calls later, she returns to the couch and hides under a comforter. Her right hand is glowing. It’s been totally polished clean; pale-pink on top of cadaver white. Throughout the duration of a half-hour show, her hand’s become marble that looks like it’s been scrubbed too hard with gritty public restroom soap.

Beneath the gleam were red trails and brown rusted segments. They flowed between lifelines turned peach, resembling streams seen from an airplane flying over Rocky Mountain ravines. Even from just a few feet, her hand looked like a lava flow of sunset dusk; red scavenging the depths of dry skin cracks.

With a deep breath I realized that while I had been watching a man break free from a straight jacket in a shark infested tank, she'd been downstairs in the dark, humming quietly and cutting herself over a sink.

In a poor attempt to ignore what I had seen, I tried to stay positive, and asked...

"So, how come you always wear sleeves?"

& thanks don’t speak

I rise—mist off the pavement
no, a cigarette reversing from a puddle
back into her lips—carrying on—
why do you cry? I don’t—no,
I haven’t—forgotten conversing—if
you call it that—I was speaking once
skipping honesty—running on—an
incomplete sentence—& thanks—how am I
supposed to write—what was barely dear,
wrenched underground—sense—dull
other’s stench—you brought them here?
better start thinking—of your own
excuses—I’m sick of finding them
for you—“sleep is the best medicine”
but I don’t dream—but I don’t pray
be thankful—I don’t remember dressed up
pretty words—can always finish later
cutting out, careful editing—why stop
a line?—say it spit spill over my face—
physical shape—syllables drowned—in
liquor giving different names—can’t get
the story straight—you told me to get an iron—
what does that mean? I produce, I distribute
—I shit & can hold up better than the rest
—I shave & kiss softer than the sleaze
—I shank in the dark & don’t speak

Television and Art

Maybe I don't write
with the largest
vocabulary
or with a sense
of art
but this poetry I read
the abstract and a-linear
plays out like free jazz:
it might sound great
but what do you think when the record ends?

Does it make you think of politics?
Men in blue suits and red ties shaking hands and starting wars.

Does it make you think of sex?
Two bodies rhythmically connected.

Does it make you think of art?
A bohemian in a black beret and an apartment in lower manhattan.

I get sick of pretense
fast.
Does that make me a savage?