South of Mexico

maybe if i had stayed in europe
you could have forgiven me and
we'd have gone to talk to strangers at the Espacico Niram
off of Calle Independencia Nº 2, several thousand
meters from your flat on a weekday maybe
if I was there
under some Sangria carnation cloud you
wouldn't have been capable of finding
that white gold girl, that brunette with thin lips
if I was there
with my fists white and stuffed
into your hair.

All of my friends hated you
you were too loud and obtrusive, your hands too free
with sloppy words strewn together in loose loops
of grammar, sad English with weird vowels,
heavy English that nobody laughed at you
should stop writing me letters because
it is too hard.
It is too hard to think about and it drives me
to drink harder than when you were here
and my life was ending.

Tell me things, but tell me them later.
You are like me, in another place with other people
and I can't suck at fumes anymore
for that feeling.
It was that feeling, and you know it
but we have had so many other lovers since
those looks, the dense ones in the dark
so the pity is over, now, darling the pity is over.

When you go to Boston with that smart woman
the one with the headband and short nails
I'll probably be pressing my face against some
new stranger from the north, or the south
someone with new and underwhelming tactics
for climbing inside my mouth and I'll press
with the same velocity I used
on everyone else but you
in Cuatro Caminos, some old year
some old, old year
back before we were old enough to die.

Crows Feet

I remember falling in love with you
it was car-sick heavy and heaving my organs in public
licking stamps for the quick pinch of salt and glue
pressing them down cockeyed
pressing them down cockeyed for you

I remember hating the years of your voice
the weight of your consonants pulling me south
towards myself, towards the sky, towards
the ugly incline of your empty mouth
that pressed me down from behind
pressed me down from behind your voice

I remember eating a stack of bread
alone in a motel room outside of St. Paul
dancing on the mattress that talked back to my heels
that kind of talk that lets the letters maul
your abdomen, with your back pressing
your back pressing against the wall
until it takes out your love
it takes out your love and uses it
to re-paint the upstairs hall.

I remember falling in love with you
back when bit my nails on the weekends
and drove a yellow car
that you made fun of I was just this child
with a bad haircut perched at the bar
it was a long time ago,
that someone cared enough to leave a scar
it's been too long since I was pressed,
pressed into the jar

waxing your left forearm

this is the first time i
ever have looked like a woman,
something that deviates beyond lines
and scarves around my neck
always looped too tight, chaffing the skin.
this is the first time i
will forgive my equillibrium
for sloshing around in rebellion
against what I have done to my status quo
you and me, we both came unwanted
and i feel the weight of those years
on the top step, wobbling forward
my face is planted, my face is
overtaking this odd woman,
the only kind of woman
I have ever seen.

Yeah I suck dick she said
with a fag in her mouth, a liar
skinny and tall poking her finger
into some round man's eye
i'm going to shake you off though
get up on that horse
ride into my lame horizon
look back with all these remorses.

mom

you were just one of god's stolen children
blessed with less time
but you were all that i wanted
most of the time.
i can't forgive what happened to you
because it made me so mean
most of the time.
I could never stand to think
giving someone else our family
all those dense stares
thick with a secret about
what it means to live a life
all of that ugliness
all of the time.

Bad kids

We're all bad kids, man. All my friends are bad kids. Nice to be around other bad kids, sipping olive liqour and dancing with strangers, getting so drunk we think this one look is so devastating we'll never walk again, you can't say no. I can't say no. Go through it, add some paint strokes to this experience muddle it more with some mustard yellow, baby even if you wanted to, even if you could, you can't say no. Been waiting my whole life to run into someone like you, head first, honest sentences I will forget about the next morning and another one goes by like usual. I've been waiting my whole life for color, you pastel swoop, add yourself to the skyline right above the horizon I scribbled too hard with black ink and I'll think about you sometime when that song comes on all lazy and thick.

I thought now that I am old as fuck this bottoming out bullshit would have lost its appeal, the inactivity, all the sea sick dizzy fuckery--it should have stopped. I should have matured, learned to shut up and keep things closer to the vest, stop feigning confusion when I know exactly what it is I am doing, in those small spots of living and never in the larger sense, true-- but things are more simple than you'd like to believe. It is all very simple. That is the most complicating factor of the whole equation, just looking at a figure made of a few slashes and thinking, "no way that can be it." Someday I will tell you about it if we ever run into one another somewhere else in some other epoch of our lives we think we know is coming, but in fact will not.

I remember playing laser tag with my father one time in the spring of some year in the late 90's. That was a good day. I wonder how often my father thought about what it means to have a kid that has to eventually go from good to bad, start drinking coffee and fucking creeps. I am the worst. Life is for assholes.

fuck the universe