shut

there's illness rioting within me.
disease spreads its fingers, a violent choke
are my vital signs so vital?

i could've been fooled
and
i was.

the waves of nausea clash with the narcissism
and the drugs don't make it better
the drugs are the sickness, the sickness is the drug

'baby, you're being morbid'
naw, i'm being human
i'm shivering with self-restraint, shivering with the subtle way
you hold your hands
over me
me, an untouchable

WHY THE FUCK WON'T YOU JUST TOUCH ME (?!?!?!)

the deathbed floating hands
they're just favors
they're tie-overs
its a waiting game in the waiting room
and i'm sorry
i'm sorry i'm wasting your time.

i look out the window. i don't see any leaves, come to think of it, i don't remember ever having actually looked for leaves before, but now i am, and there aren't any, and is it winter, is that why? i don't think so. prayer beads block my view. i don't remember leaves, but i especially don't remember praying, what if i had, would there still be a mess on the floor and in my veins and outside my ice-cubed window? shut the book, i'm cold. i'll be even colder to you.

you're just waiting.
tapping.
smoking.
actually, i wish you'd smoke. you just sit there, jittering.
tapping.
waiting.

never crying.
never once crying.

i'm not one of those people your mother would ever want you to cry over
even with my eyes glued shut and no one to love.

shut the book.

dry

mosquito bites line my legs, forming irritating constellations of a summer i do not want. i could wash them off with molasses, catch more flys, my body is a bug zapper? i miss a lot of things. i miss cold war american values, i miss my patriotism, i miss the moments when words made a difference, when sentences pushed through bongos, punct;uation be? fu:c!k(ed). this mango weather reminds me of the last time i treated a boy like a diary, the guts i spilled across his skin and the pens i scratched him with and how the sprinklers and the new semester rinsed it all off him and out of me and i was in a new coma for months that were shaped like millenia, but i crunched through them like carrot sticks and now i barely remember all that malnourishment.

i read once in the newspaper making love is like riding a bike: you never forget
except i never learned?

i used to be a lot of everything. now i sit crossing my bones and shut my nose and pretend i am drowning in an eastern sea, surrounded by flowers, a sacrifice. i pretend i'm religious. i pretend that 2 in the afternoon signifies a march of heroism and not a seat on a pile of underappreciated leather and wire, fingers for clickers and re-runs until the microwave dings.

i pretend i face the same issues as ginsberg and that i'm better at writing about them.

there's a hushing outside and an animal dying and i? i'm concerned with the lack primetime sexual indiscretions. i call the cable company, crawl outside, taste the grass, dizzy, memorializing the time when you were my country and my amendment rights and my buddha and my promise ring and my planet and my god, and the pebbles you kicked in my face and the buzzzzz you didn't answer. cable box puts me on hold. you never answered your god-forsaken phone.

its funny, how i used to like the wasteland. i'm going to plant it full of pansies.