I once thought of winter, inclement
But seeing now its naked beauty,
Was I blind before? Too pure to nakedness?
Or was I too busy, too asexual?
It whispers, too prone to do my duty.
I'll be naked, intimate, and irresponsible.
I used to walk through bare, nonexistent trees,
But now I see their faces. As I pass,
They shiver less like trees in the wind,
And more like me in the wind.
Do I really stand in the center of
Crowded Acorn Street?
Eyes avert and liberal skin shudders.
Oh dear, I must be seen again.
In this recurring nightmare of happiness
And being loved for who I am,
I've tasted blood between my lips.

Trashy people, trashy images
All around, a new world reality.
Twelve o'clock on a railroad track.
I've dreamt of this for weeks, in fact,
Fiction is as fiction has survived
Against the super-speeding breeding
Of ignorance,
Kept so skillfully in tact.

My room was in the back of the home,
Warm and fresher,
With a window.
One day the sick-sweet scent of candles and
Stiff rain,
A sensation of tropic pain, and
Cinematic waste drove me insane,
More than the mental scrape of a
Repeating Crosby record.

No memories to wrestle with today.
They've fled my dreaming bowers like the Turks.
"I've never really taken stock of you. I was
Indifferent or whether I was too polite,
I don't know which."
But I like to think of those close to me
Conventionally,
And forget to question why
I am who I am.

An image, a dream, a sneeze that made me,
In a microsecond,
So disturbed, like an attempt to toss my soul
From my body.
I thought a dying moment must feel...
Be the same.
For Christ's sake, let's get out of here!
It smells of censorship, and that referee...
He looks like an ape.
I've got a sick grinding in my heart about
Those people who disregard self-improvement.
I will write the longest lack-substance ever told.

**********

What self-possession. What is the
Neck-tie for? To pull him forward with colorful ease.
There were words... contenin peninsula...
Cherbourg... but I only noticed the lips they
were pushed from.
I landed on them like a quivering snowflake
And I felt bitterly cold compared with him.

I may be mad,
I may be blind,
I may be viciously unkind, but
I can still read what you're thinking.

Love and like are not relative,
I don't care what anyone says.
If you were drowning, I would save you.
Hate does not save.
So then, do I like you? Because
I hate you a little less than hate, but
Love you a little less than love?
But it's a fact that I don't like you, so I
...... you.

Look to the coin around my neck.
It rests upon my collarbone.
It speaks of the goddess Roma, the she-wolf,
And Emperor Trajan.
It is 2000 years old.
This doesn't fascinate you, and
That is not where your green eyes rest.
Take those pretty things away.
I'm hard and sharp,
My will is concrete, but
You're drawn to softer lines,
Curved ones.
I'm glass, venetian, and
See my lips are blue, frosted silver.
I've always longed for eyes like yours,
But, perhaps... mine would not express
What yours do. Perhaps...
There would be a deeper trench. Perhaps...
You could take my number and
Teach me a lesson in the phrase, "open book."
Perhaps I should know what it means.
The smoke from that lumber plant, it
Makes me smile.
You offer me a cigarette.
Committing slow suicide seems an amusing practice, but
Only to me, and
Only when you do it, so please...
Continue.
I'll smile.
"Continue."

How did I fool you? When my lips smile,
But not my eyes?
You should have noticed.
It's refreshing, twenty sets of headlights,
On a rainy school morning.
We've had parallel parking spots all year,
So why have we never spoken?
We talked for hours in the almost rain,
My window rolled down, you,
Leaning against your door.

"In regards to high school,
I was bored before I even began.
What was my worst relationship?
I suppose, the one of me with myself.
And of course, I've never been
Attracted to anyone. You?
Ten people? Well.
Oh no, none.
My best one, then? No test. The one with Him.
My Lord. Such sweet whispers.
But I, I'm such a horrible partner. Capricious, I
Never keep my world, and I stray, dreadfully.
No, not physically, but worse...
In my soul.
Not the strongest love can cleanse a sinful soul
In a carnal life. So how could I love, say...
You, for instance?
No.
One love story in the making is all for me."
Love is a censorship which I could attempt,
But for lack of an object.
What a one-horse town. For shame.