Lose Your Millions and Call Me

if only you
had been a poor man,
i could have stood to have you
see my books
as pieces of material,
i wouldn't have minded when your dirty
hands touched the page
and made it unreadable for the ticking
it now made when i try to concentrate on the words,
but you traded my brain
for bank bills.

i want to bring
you back to the store and return you
for a new edition
with new pages
so there can be room for new stains.

if only you had been a poor man
we could have clung to each other
for what we didn't have -
me to you for your thick skin
and way of seeing the world for roads
and maps and laws.
if only you had been a poor man,
i could have tolerated your love of old cars
and your need to spend
(maybe you would have travelled
further then,
maybe i would have called then).

instead we suffered through improper pronounciation,
use of semi-colans,
commas, parleying about greek gods,
your roomate interjecting where you
couldn't finish your sentences.
if only you had been poor man,
we could have clung to each other,
become ripe,
not known the page was stained
because the juices from our mouths
would have made it look new again.

Savage Bed

I don't want to know
about your mind kid,
your skin is fine with me.

you bought long tailed crustaceans
and let your skin bake -
you called yourself tanned
but you look slightly red to me.
skin red like lips
even close to burgundy.

your skin is heating up
are you sick or are you fine?
it isn't too late
your brain is still ripe
if you use water
and vitamine and put the paper
away, put your hot skin away -
rest away.

you got sick in the sun,
I could have rubbed your skin
hard to make it disappear
between my hands and the sand,
could have made it soft
but I didn't want to know
about your mind - just your skin
would have been fine.

Sugar Eyes

stupid strands of sugar
all over the sill,
sad silences do still the air
where once you fell in
sheets -

sugar is melting all over,
sad, sad, sad silence.
there is sugar all over the air
and somehow it eliminates the
spaces -

between where you are
and where you are not,
but it is melting,

slowly disolving into clumps
and then into nothing,
all over the air where i stick
my tongue to see if you
are still here

but you are not.

Drunk Love, Sing

you always knew how to party,
you know that, they know that.
drunk and pretty love you have come so far
in so long, in so much time since we have been
writing next to one another.
stop picking at your hands and play a song,
you always knew, you always knew
(for the record i didn't always know -
drunk love you always did know how).

baby, pretty baby i am drawing you but
you are coming out darker than before,
in all the dark, can you be seen in lights?
can you be seen in the light in a chair
with my love on your lap, hands soft in your hair.
no more drunk love, no more drunk love,
i will have no more of that drunk love for
my body cannot handle all of that
drunk, drunk love.

you always knew how to party,
they will give you that at least,
let you in and give you tools for things that
you don't know how to do (that alley was dark,
that alley was dark, these alleys are filled with
beer and drunk and love - you're going somewhere
and i'm going nowhere, nowhere).
sing a song, sing a song.