write write write write write

through
gritted teeth
happy for you.
Perhaps because she’s
beautiful and cool
and thin and
blasé, drives a tiny
car and grows tall—
erect and perfect,
thriving on just blow and
organic soda.

She has a long name and
requests I use it
without resorting to
some pedantic nickname.
I’m overtly
guarded, jealous.
Part of me wants
to be her and another
part of me
wants to be you.

When we met
I shook hands
with you both
in the bar adjacent
the hotel lobby,
and said
with
eyebrows up
“How do you do?”

I noticed your hairs of grey
while we were driving.
now so very distinguished,
my old friend.
i’m jealous;
if i only i could pluck them out
and sew them into my scalp…

my locks for
summer
baa baa
baa

ING
(not sure the german language even has such a thing as a gerund…?)

just wanted to
pick and poke
and not hold
after I said
wildly inappropriate
things to get
you wildly tumescent.

Raising the
eyebrows at me
as you
worked diligently
made me wild.
I didn’t mean to surprise you
with the news;
it just happened.
Furthering any
morning after
intensity has stalled—
and good thing because
I might have
undone me
and
resultantly undone you.
Discretion is the
key to
prevention.

I’ve cleaned up
that mess before
so I know to not
make one again.
If you can keep
emotions insofar
enough to like
touching my jutting
collarbone and
not whine when I
have to
up and leave you
then I’ll know
we can be alone together,
touching or not,
but at least
together.

I could write
a book
of simply
punctuation marks
all about
your pink ears,
(slightly fuzzed
when the light’s put
behind them)
the soft-skin
kind of ears
you can
see straight
through
when the light’s put
behind them.

And it hurts
one small me inside
to think
of your
yearning
alongside
for the other,
always the other.
As you’ve
supposed
perhaps we
are always alongside, chasing
in order to
make light
of how
terrible is
the
keeping.

And though
you hide your face
I can
see straight through
your cloven paw
to see the
slight slits
where eyeballs
are, should be, were
shining.
How breathtaking
and how so
poignant your
sibilant whispers are
across my thin—almost
white—translucent
ears (just
round and regular
not pointed ears
like yours).

At the end,
we’re pulling up chairs,
the sounds scraping, echoing
across the wooden room and
we’re all full up of
drinks we’re
downing even after drowning
in too much to night before.
Here there is
no need to
scrape or
speak softly
because
nobody knows
you or me.
(Not by sight.)
When at
the end of the end
you depart
from me
with your days full ahead
of important
Things To Do,
meaningful, contextual paintings
to paint
(that will pull
the words
right from
our center
and chase them into
being)
I am
at last
not sad.

I wonder what you look like
in the winter
because I only know
the summer you.
And there you are
with
a worn belt
those dark sunglasses,
layer upon layer
keeping you warm.

that it wasn’t any good.

3 paragraphs. I have christened H with another palindrome. I have written first person, eegad. I made a pun. I wrote. Again, turning one’s worst moments into money.

came in from a gift book i got someone. oh lord. i’m just destroyed over it. and reminded of when drew, my love at the time, hated hated hated keep the aspidistra flying because of gordon comstock. gordon comstock! so it’s official. i love books centering on genuinely unlikable characters. and i write genuinely unlikable, fairly despicable characters who can only interact passive-aggresively. woot. stay tuned for more discouragement. one week until screenplay treatment is due.
^cringe.