There's a girl on the playground.
If you're her classmate
and a girl, corner her,
and join her club.
If she protests, the password
is broccoli. The password is always
broccoli. If you are her classmate
and a boy, threaten to pull her earrings out
and slap her. If she protests,
the password is sorry. The password
is always sorry.
Take her home. Go to your room
and jump on the bed with her,
tell her she's the queen,
although she'd rather be a peasant.
Kiss her under a blanket,
in the backyard,
in front of the turtles.
Then tell her someone paid you.
Stand with her on the hot cement and
burn your feet.
Buy her ice cream.
Climb through the neighbor's gardens,
ride your bikes to the cemetery,
and then learn how to drive.
Go through fields, scale the water tower,
drive all the way through high school.
Avoid the police,
don't notice her body changing,
learn to speak French to her,
softly, buy her beer,
sow your seeds in the earth.
Get your nails dirty.
Don't stop at red lights,
take her to a diner up
in the Jersey hills,
comb your hair a thousand times.
Chain smoke.
Take her dancing,
fuck her while your cat is watching,
write her a love song
and lose her in the woods,
look up at the stars,
and ask her to trust you.
Draw up the blinds,
take her to college,
make your bed, make out,
make her dinner, a feast,
macaroni and cheese,
red wine, and broccoli.
Break her heart.
The password is sorry.

Cutter

I would cut my wrists for you

if it meant

you would stop slicing through

your own flesh with a disposable pink razor.

If it meant you would hurt yourself

in anything less than the manner

in which you do,

so nonchalant

as you throw your head back

to let auburn curls

distract

from blood seeping through

your favorite

grey sweater.

Fits of giggles

escape your chapped lips

and I almost forget

you believe:

No one can love you.

I do.

I love you like no man can.

Because no man knows

the slow wretchedness

that consumes you

when you let him in.

Between rapid breaths

and graceful thrusts

and dirty words whispered

like they mean

romance

and passion

and truth,

into your very being he comes

and robs you without giving

and you tell him it means nothing.

Then he

takes his shot at heartbreak,

and you?

Turn away,

ingest poison

to combat the hollow

you’ve convinced yourself

holds no emptiness.

I do.

I would cut my wrists for you

if it meant

you might start bleeding.

Tattooed Tattered Wings

I saw an angel get a dove

tattooed behind her feeble ear.

She hummed a tune,

so as not to hear the needle tear.

Mascara smeared,

she cried black like the tat gun,

but sat still.

No fight or flight reaction--

just a distraction--

filling the void with her own voice.

Piercing predicted pitch;

she had no choice.

Strange... Needed pain

to have peace on her brain!

Olive trees stem

from the seeds in the rain.

Bleeding a vein,

praying for a seasonal change,

but she'll be left with nothing

once her demons are slain...

Jack Daniels All Day

Slinky intestines-
Whiskey puke on a war path-
Poor me!? Pour more shots.

A mostly true account of looking for Anne Frank's hiding place (And never finding it)

I'm so high,
the Dutch man thinks I'm dying.
I say: I am going to die.
My arms are like steel beams,
bent at the center,
my bag is a bookcase,
a dead man, a hundred pounds a least.
I fall into a corner,
and he vanishes.

The next day, we eat strawberries
in bed, we eat brownies,
I wash another man's sweat
from my breasts, we dance
on the streetcorner.

The whores look on.
They think we're lost.
They think we're looking for a poplar.
We've been searching all day
for the streetcorner, a sign.
I'm so high,
I'm scared of a mural.

In the park we stand, backs against the wall,
childish grins, waiting to be shot.
A dog flees past, and then another.
You tug on the red scarf
around my neck, and we're running,
running madly for the train--
we've left behind cans of olives
and bread and cookies,
great aromatic hunks of cheese,
cards from your mother
aflame in the jacuzzi,
all the towel warmers gone cold.

We run to those tracks
to wait for the train,
so high on each other's own hairs and freckles,
the shots in the club,
the bars of white flowers,
we almost run to Vienna then, to Paris,
we forget our birth months,
the return trip, gestapo,
we're so high you wear your sunglasses
while sleeping, I kick the Russian woman
on the train, accidentally, I'm an animal,
her son reading stupidly, so high,
the wheat outside, and steel,
and orchards, the birds gliding,
the whole death whistle,
wild hills and pastures,
the crumbled brick and clotheslines running,
we're all laughing now, hysterically,
the ancient ways,
we're holding hands and screaming,
we're flying, flying, the blue air
so high above us
I could die an extra death.