poetry room is upstairs.

for naomi's boy, who loved peter.

bathtubs filled with

bubbles & beat

&indian snippets

are important

as anything else:

the faucet drips jazz

and i am sudsy prose,

letting my mutilated

childtoes play with

white soap beards

forming foaming at the tiled ridges,

liquid santa's

lapping, hidden chins.

candles are lit, yes

romantic shadows smoking on

the water

confettied with

candied ashes of the poems i HATE

or the letters i LOVE

too much to

be

REAL, like this moment is

REAL,

and the smell of wax

on

flesh--filters into my

neurons, digging

dig it?

because let's face it:

the burning

wakes me.

and all the fairy boy-a-sleeping diary entries

make my skin

itch

for

passion that

is that perfectly

animal-crazy.

thank you, allen,

namaste.

black as birds.

so.

blackbirds

sit up on blacker wires binding up communication,

scumbrilliantly twittering english mangled by rapidity

we cannot comprehend,

swooping

dropping roofies in our trailer-trash red cups

i wake up

under hands so flutter-white and lonely

it takes a soft light

a subtle morningcreepiness to cast a shadow and to know

they aren't mine,

books crashed on the floor around me

disrespect lining their spines

and memories in their skins

we're rain damaged

and the birds are nestled dry in their skies and they

gossip and laugh like they're at the market and we're

the village whores

the wall-crashing and mother-catching made me who i was

but its no longer who i am

so shut up, so shut up!

alexander's body is dead across the sea-rocks, salted

and i will attend his funeral, but i will not send flowers

we woke up

elevator-bruised

and brushed with sap

and i tasted more like you and i smelled more like you

than i've ever tasted or smelled like me

and god, i loved you so much

i wished that i could be you.

and the birds sat outside cackling trash-hungry

disagreeing and picking through plastic

and trying to outsound us

but you were dead-set on discovering the new world of my shoulder-blades

so i lay like the indian ocean

and stopped caring about blackbirds///////////////