this should’ve stayed in my diary

 

smearing sauce on your chest, pulling cheese

from my cheek, blinking black pepper

in the bathtub, ashing cigarettes

directly into the lukewarm water.

last night was a food fight, last night

was a jazz band, and drinks on the house,

bc the owner of Fiona’s thought it was nice

to see a group of ‘young cats’ jamming

out to the standards.

i surprised you

with a coconut bun from Fay Da bakery

that sat in my bag for 6 hours + a bouquet

of flowers i bought at Trader Joes, and it goes

without saying that i’d walk into incoming traffic

for you, if self-immolation meant anything at all

               (note to self: it doesn’t).

                   _________________

          

and now i’m loading up your dishwasher with dishes

(i swear) are from 2 days ago, and i don’t mind

at all, i’d make you an omelet a day, if it meant

you’d stay - if you’d feel me - my middling love -

my true true love—but idk if you even want that shit.

 

i love too hard i love too hard i’m a real lover

and maybe you can’t match my freak.

              _____________________

 

{anecdote}: a little bird told me he lost feelings

for another little bird (this bird is a girl bird)

when she was away in Spain. when she returned,

she loved him so much it made him feel guilty

for not feeling the same. like the vibes were off,

he said, the vibes just weren’t vibing. and i suppose

sometimes love makes you shrink, sometimes i think

love makes you shrivel into a raisin. the chase is a grape.

that’s great—bc in 20 days i’m flying to La Rioja (SPAIN!). 

love grows in Logroño, bursting—como uvas nuevas

en viñas viejas, or like reserve wine blooming in oak barrels…

but here, in the jerk smoke, flower studded gridlock,

gritty sidewalk schlep, 5th to last stop on the 2—

          love goes

                     love goes

                                  love goes

                                         love goes…(??????)

 

 

 

 

sparagmos

  sparagmos: (Ancient Greek: σπαραγμός, from σπαράσσω sparasso,

 "tear, rend, pull to pieces") is an act of rending, tearing apart,

  or mangling, usually in a Dionysian context.

 

the party is…over? the honeymoon

phase of our Brooklyn polycule—

a feeding frenzy of twitching tongues,

puckered fish lips, fins, scales, gills,

ecstasies and elations—has ended.

the green JBL croons Aznavour, as

a battalion of ants fortify their post

from beneath the overflowing trash can.

Septimus is shitting in his litter box.

the splotches of mold in our tub grow

more intricate by the hour. i sit on Madi’s

new comforter w/o panties, now the pale

pink is soiled crimson in menstrual fluids.

a baby screams outside. a cabinet swings shut.

 

this is what happens when you put theory into practice.

this is the consequence of consequentialism.

this is what dreams are made of. This is EKSTASIS.

everything is fun, and anything is game, until

 

[you realize] our feet might be forever stained

gray with ash, matted hair epoxied to our necks,

throats eternally dry, craving a certain warmth,

and wetness that only acidulous liquids can

(temporarily) quell. an idyllic hell. nobody

sets out to be iniquitous, but suddenly

you’re Macbeth, following daggers

into rank rooms, slipping into

a sinister lull, a mad malaise—

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

and now now now now everybody knows

the big FAT stupid FESTERING fetid truth:

 

            We Are HUMAN BEINGS, not tiny gods,

            with sticky blood, and suppurating hearts,

            feelings, and fingers, and flesh.

 

of course, it’s all fun and games in New Arcadia,

until it’s not—now, depraved, stripped of our lace

Brandy tanks—a ritual of omophagia commences.

tonight, we feast—on our roommates, our lovers,

and their lovers, tearing shreds of flesh

from their sinewy, tattooed limbs,

chewing clumps of viscera, intestines.

we (collectively) eviscerate our friendships,

the thin veins of companionship twitch, and

like strings of red twine, unravel and fray.

 

and we awake to stains. who do these fluids

belong to? whose leakings. whose immortality?

for you cannot rescind these rites. these rituals

are irrevocable. she kissed he. he tongued she.

whatever the fuck—but you bore witness.

watched the crude spectacle unfold,

and you can’t be mad. because

these things were unspoken.

‘Situationship’ implies misfortune,

but we’re supposed to be bohemians:

deshabille masters of modernity, blasé

lackadaisical, degenerate scumbags!

this isn’t supposed to hurt, and

tomorrow wasn’t supposed

to cut so fucking deep.

 

We are all fucking crazy

i was talking about the time i tried to stab Devlin,

because Devlin had tried to strangle me, and

Dexter asked: do you and all your roommates have BPD?

literally, we do. do you? we don’t do

the dishes. i’m looking for the Scrub

Mommy. mommy? mommy? who left

their oatmeal bowl next to the sink? oats stick

if you don’t scrub them immediately.

there’s crud beneath my nails.

remnants of a breakfast burrito.

Cholula Chipotle.

 

man i already miss you dude i already miss you god i already

 

dread going back home, and now i’m coming back “home”

to grilled chicken hearts, cat dander, and cop cars. my brother

bragged about the 22 LR to his “girlfriends,” and now

he’s about to unearth the truth about women: we are all

                                                                          fucking crazy.

 

every friendship/relationship/situationship is Freudian—

i guess arrested development prevails in Lasch’s America,

and if you rip up the floorboards you’ll find

a tunnel, two hundred dollars, or plain, grey tile (banal).

 

Holland Tunnel. you were pointing out

the guts of the city. wires and pipes. quoting

Virginia Woolf: the viscera. innards? i needed to shit.

you were biting curls of skin, cuticles. you bit my hand.

i felt it in my tendons, my ligaments. my tendons,

my filaments. my style! my stigma! i’m always blooming

lilac and lavender since you’ve discovered how chewy i am.

how tender. mommy? mommy? soft viscera. lipids. tendons.

 

dude why are you worried?

you’re arriving at the airport literally 4 hours before your flight.

 

she Aer on my Lingus til i Dublin. she Eli on my Dexter til i Luke.

 

you saw Leya at the airport terminal. she’s going to California

with Rocco and Aniela. she left her oatmeal bowl in the sink.

they don’t have oats in California. they have Amoeba Records,

braggadocios palms, Disneyland, in&out, and gooooooood tacos.

 

our naked mattresses collect pollen and matcha dust. the pizza

on the table has been there for five days. my sheets have been limp

for three. Madi’s been M.I.A. for several. you’re off to Dublin.

Devlin is back from the looney bin. Eli has your keys. i’m still afraid

of bees, the ladder to the roof of your apartment, and time

present and time past. do you think T.S. Eliot would fuck with me?

 

well now i’m in long island. well now i’m going “home.”

Dublin is full of poets and drunkards (being redundant),

and you’re 1/4 Irish so i guess 1/4 of you is going home too.

time past and present future. past and present future past.

 

hello grilled chicken hearts, cat dander, and cop cars.

hello Georgian cigarettes, oatmeal, plantains, elf bars.

hello grilled chicken hearts, HEARSAY! and cop cars.

hello Camel cigarettes, popcorn, and thorns, wires, barbs.

 

 

illness of the bedroom

 

“is that the truth he says, the pain is easy…”

         listening to Low in the walnut shell

of my teenage bedroom, groveling

         in its cavities, like a husk fly,

and I’m thinking,

                 poetry is dead isn’t it?

or more frightening,

               could I be dead too?

signs point to yes but

as long as I can feel

the soft comfort of fleece blankets,

harshness of cigarette embers,

frigid drafts, hear the pinging

of sleet against frosted panes,

smell the singing, singing

smoke of incense burning,

I can verify my status

as alive.

                  but living?

                              

I pace the floorboards as they pop

        and jeer, aged pine, 

worn smooth by the soles of people

        who can no longer press

down their feet to pace, 

        who can no longer lie flat

on the planks

       to catch a dream.

       (speaking of, what kind of dreams

       drift in the drafts

       of a colonial Long Island

       hamlet)?  perhaps something sinister

 

               they’re gone,

               passed on,

               remaining only

               in the words they scribbled

on the floral wallpaper,

            the glass medicine bottles

in the backyard, the crumbling

foundation, circa 1890:

             the mother passed

from stomach cancer,

            daughter, sudden death,

son, freak accident—run over

            by his father's carriage,

which follows

that the father died

from what must’ve been

a broken heart, which is real

by the way, not just

a poet's plight, they call it:

         takotsubo cardiomyopathy.