Archive: 2004

Untitled #139 • Heat • A Bullet In The Form Of A Kiss • Thoughts During A Morning Ritual

Untitled #139

You don't notice a degree until
your face freezes just like your
mother said it would.

You don't appreciate a centimeter
until one saves your life; you
don't think about a minute until

you're begging for another. You
never notice her heart until it's
beating in your hands, never feel

the ridges of a fingerprint until
until it's burned away. When do you
think about a fist until it finds

a jaw, about a breath until it
hurts too much to breathe? When,
I'm asking, do you think more than

is needed, thinking just for the
simple sake of the thought?

01/20/04

Heat

She boils my blood
like water or lava
      tar or mud,
like a chemical in
      a jar.
She melts me like
      ice or butter,
      a marshmallow
      or metal folded
over again & again.
She is condensation
on my window, sweat
      on my brow,
      an open flame,
humidity personified.
She, in so many other
      words, makes
      me hot.

5/12/99

A Bullet In The Form Of A Kiss

Each night
I lay behind
her, place
the gun barrel
of my mouth
to her neck
and fire a
bullet in the
form of a kiss
like an execution
for lovers as
the smoke curls
around her with
the scent of
my want.

4/10/99

Thoughts During A Morning Ritual

The blood and shaving cream look like a strawberry sundae in the sink as the Sonic Youth drift from the stereo into the room with a lit candle and a shirtless me thinking about how the marriage takes a little beating whenever the blonde one is around but what can I do? She's where I have to be, where I earn my keep but don't get to keep what I earn.

So the shaving cream is spread a second time across my nearly smooth cheeks and Sonic Youth has become Coltrane whose tracks run along the tiles with a little echo to match my son's little feet as they run in search of a truck to dig and dig with, to get dirt under his fingernails, not unlike the ones I cut on my self the other day, cut too short and rubbed a nerve, just like every day is a rubbed nerve, some times against a cheese grater or a rusty fence, and some times against a wet mouth or a bare back, a back covered with beauty marks over a spine I love to kiss up to the neck and down to the ass and over the hips and on and on and on.

The shaving cream is gone now, down the drain with the hair, leaving me with a finally smooth face except for the drying blood and the little cuts that sting like a bitch but that's what the days are, aren't they? Cuts and bumps and bruises and scrapes and scars that you get from the broken glass of damaged lives and the sudden fists of misspoken words swinging from your blindside to let you know that nothing is ever forgotten and, to you horror and sadness, against your every futile wish, that nothing can be taken back.

8/6/98