Self-disclosure
Only perverts want to describe their own sexuality
only freaks with their emotion
& so I abuse myself
with language too
I have the opposite of hubris:
afraid a prayer is
too self-serving
My own lawyer but
a filthy poet too
& I am earthed from the best
so boundaries
don’t
apply to me
It's the sin of doing it scholastically
magic or unsanctioned liturgy
does an audience make me stronger
will I collapse from the attention
do I exploit my soul
for posterity
is finding the music
an eternal responsibility
I bruise my knee
on the brink
running and/or stalling
terrified by my own success
crying for having said something true
saying it because I think I have to
resisting ensnarement
in your vision
I’m trying to rescue you,
too
clean you off &
wrap you in a bow
Love – I care so much
I know you
I want you to know me too
Twenty-six and still
I wish other girls would like me
or fit into neat categorization.
That blonde cheerleader, that Peter Pan –
I'm always changing my story,
shuffle clicker of fun facts
in lieu of personality
I love cops in good neighborhoods,
talking about the weather,
cold brew from Capital One cafe,
the armed guards at dispensaries,
vaping on the platform,
free-bleeding in the Walgreen's
candy aisle
I wore the wrong dress today the wrong shoes
everyday I should only have jeans and a sweater
and a gray cloud of obfuscation
not sure if my plan was to raise or raze
no matter –
I can just light a joint
for both
Afraid of anything real
Depressed enough to eat in a Subway,
looking out the window I'm in love
with a man who yells –
sometimes I am a woman who sleeps a lot
who wreaks havoc
trying to pick at the spot
but not focusing
creation is messy and
I'm not really a person who turns on the lights
I have to see myself in montage, mirrored,
prettier with everything just flipped
on its side
I'm not usually present in my body,
usually acting like a teenager
lying through my hair I have successfully
smiled my way through
I come from a line of desperate sluts and
scratch that, I come from a long line of women
I do and don't understand
who I want to put into boxes for easy story-telling
who I want to put me in a box for some weird sex problem
that’s really some weird childhood problem
something to prove Freud right
I wish I could be diagnosed with hysteria
masturbated on the check up table
held down with an industrial vibrator
thus cured
I want to float away but I can't stop thinking of what I look like
in the policeman's dash cam footage
or my upstairs neighbors’ imagination
I must be a weak baby girl with no top on
water everywhere, too weak to towel off
and quit the skinny dipping
It doesn’t mean anything to you, to be loved by me?
Now we’re yelling to hear something.
I picture hanging a sign
Zero days since last incident
but which incident to choose
Was it you, my committed partner,
in the locked office online
with the exposed explicit women
performing vulnerable
If I were to strip like them
who could I be to you–
big tits and crazy eyes?
In need of a man
to suck the blood out
romantically possessed,
I meant to say obsessed
with who is pretending
and who’s not, because
I’m right here –
and you are?
The romanticization of romance
“Goddamn man-child,
you fucked me so good
that I almost said ‘I love you’”
- LDR/EG
————
Marilyn makes two to tell me I’m already in love,
to point out the real in my smile. Three
if you count the idiot voice in my head.
I’m afraid to go either way,
to let myself believe if he won’t/
to not believe if he does.
I can’t stop thinking of Chandler Bing.
Why can’t I just be. One week at a time.
One fuck at a time. One video at a time,
of him stroking his cock, its blotchy tone
so much darker than the rest of him,
its gorgeous smooth skin length.
When I think of it I freeze.
Isn’t that what this is about?
The sex, the fabulous, hungry
sex; a hook
made from a finger
not the overwhelming context
like glamor
swirling every memory, every hint
writing questions, like
why does he come over in the bad storms
and make excuses not to leave
