why? | into the shadows of my embrace

i conquered my own childhood silence and now the world is my lit confessional marquee,
but it’d take a busload of high school soccer girls to wash those hospitals off me

oh, am i clean?
nineteen.

they said sex will keep you young and make you older at the same time,
they said sex will have left you aged normally,
and so i guess it’s sorta like smoking and walking at the same time
in that it will have left you aged normally

oh, am i clean?
lord, please, why me?

i wish i could feel close to somebody but i don’t feel nothing.
now they say i need to quit doing all this random ffff-
now i think my upstairs neighbor hears me masturbating,
and there’s other one’s peeping through the slits in my curtains
and i never got a name for my shady compulsion
‘cause i messed up and kissed my shrink in a jersey city hotel room..
and i know saying all this in public should make me feel funny,
but ya gotta yell something out you’d never tell nobody.

we found the dead fox, and a dozen matchbox cars, when we cut back the hedges on cortelyou place,
how many got lost left so long they grew moss ‘cause they recoiled into the shadows of my embrace?
we found the dead fox, and a dozen matchbox cars, when we cut back the hedges on cortelyou place,
how many got lost left so long they grew moss ‘cause they recoiled into the shadows of my embrace?

oh, am i clean?
lord, please, why me?

“one man’s filth is another man’s truth. big mouth filled with one long tooth.”

why? | a sky for shoeing horses under

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

WHY? | Gemini (Birthday Song) 

It starts with you
on a mattress in your parents’ old room,
clipping your toenails into the room
like the room will fade
and you will move
onto other rooms
and you will go
to other places.
Then the wedding,
Then the woman passed out
in the driver’s seat
at the order board at White Castle.
We woke her up and she went
‘round to the pick up window
like she knew exactly where she was.
Then I wept
with my face in your night shirt,
trying hard as hell to say
“until death separates us,”
loosening the skin on your breastbone,
I painted your nails
and you sleep
while I write all this down.

There was a moth caught in the soapdish
laminated in lye
Will you still remember me well
If I don’t get to two-o-o-five?
my dead line Gemini

When we’re on different sides of the globe
I thought we’d keep our veins tangled
like a pair of mic cables,
And if there ain’t enough slack to reach
that we’d solder them together
and across oceans they’d stretch.
Our faces reflected in separate windshields
and all our body hair pricked up
an elephant eyelash.
Should we be tempted by thief or saint
it seems I leave and you stay
to crawl the cage and curse.
But don’t regret the done dirt,
there is no life plan set,
you just swallow the cold
and follow your breath until death.
Now even if the will to sleep persists
I can’t ‘cause a harsh cloth, it grazes my blisters.

There was a moth caught in the soapdish
laminated in lye
Will you still remember me well
If I don’t get to two-o-o-five?
My dead line Gemini.

Today I fell asleep in a bath of hair.
Hair that once sprouted from my own
white wet chalk follicles.
I swallow a coal
and follow my breath
and I did it with the grapefruit soap
thinking of you.
Bathed, shaved, and oiled,
your legs are two skinny dolphins swimming
between the mattress and the layers of bedding
turning in your drug dry sleep.
When I ask you to kiss my pulse
you offer to start the shower.
I want a verb and you give me a noun.
What do you dream up while I tongue you down?

There was a moth caught in the soapdish
laminated in lye
Will you still remember me well
If I don’t get to two-o-o-five?
My dead line Gemini.

You know my build.
You know my size.
The degree to which my eyes
are astigmatic.

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