Greetings, fellow poets!

I understand that many of you enjoy my company, and those of you who do not often find my company interesting.

I learn a great deal from you.

I learn more from the sounds underneath the desert, the sky over the prairies, the way the shadows of the mountains cover the sun at two in the afternoon, and the feel of the wind, desperate with rain, but incapable of release, pounding against my face and flesh as I scream into it with the small bit of fury afforded a man.

I am flattered that you feel I belong with you. You are probably correct.

Still, I'd rather go looking for something bigger. It's not in L.A. It's not in New York. I don't know where it is, and I don't reckon I'll find it. But before you tell me it's not in Texas, why don't you come see for yourself?

last night i dreamt.

last night i dreamt of pretty things.
last night i dreamt of you naked in a public place.

last night i dreamt of you naked.
last night i dreamt of stepping off the bus and seeing you.
except you weren't naked, and
it wasn't you,
last night i stepped off the bus and saw some other woman.
an old woman.
an old woman who dressed like a rebel.
she was old and tired and bitter and she was not you.
i looked into her eyes, and she did not see me.
i recognized her.
but she did not recognize me.

but you were in the station.
you were in the station when i stepped off the bus.
last night i stepped off the bus and saw a woman and then i saw you.
you were not naked.
you saw me, and took off your clothes.
you saw me, and you took off your clothes, because humiliation is no fun unless somebody's watching.
you saw me, and took off you clothes in the bus station,
and we were there alone,
and everyone was watching.

there were other people in the dream.
we bought weed from them.
we bought weed from them and sat on their couches.
we sat on their couches and smoked weed and discussed the food in the vending machines.
we smoked weed and ate the food from the vending machines.
we ate food from the vending machines as though it were grape kool-aid.
we talked to the other people.
we made them laugh.
they made us laugh.
they made us happy, and we made them happy.

last night i dreamt we were happy.
last night i dreamt we were happy.
last night i dreamt that everyone was happy.
last night i dreamt of billy pilgrim's tombstone,
an image plastered on my door,
and everything was beautiful,
and nothing hurt,
and we would never ever ever wake up,

and
            of
                        course
                                          we
                                                                  did.

We woke up in a strange cold place and you were still naked but the people around us weren't happy, and they weren't laughing, and they didn't give a shit about billy pilgrim or weed or kool-aid and all they wanted to do was point at you and hate, and point and you and hate you and hate your nakedness and hate your humiliation and hate you and tell you where you stood in that strange, cold place

and tell you why you were there

and what you were there for

and why they wanted you there

and in that place, watching you naked, watching them point, and watching their hate
i knew
that only one of us
only you or i
would make it out of there
would live to tell about this
would live to write another word

and i knew
that only i
was sober enough to decide
who.
And now, you are gone.
And here I am.

But I swear
I never wanted it to turn out like this
I never wanted it to end like this
I never had this in mind
and I swear
I earnestly, desperately hope I am telling the truth.

The base unit of time on Mars is the exact distance between a human apology and a human suicide attempt.

I could describe for you
the way the Miami sun's heat
splays across my right cheek,
inching down my throat,
while,
by some trick of particles and rays,
simultaneously tickling the left side
of my belly.

Or I could go inside and have a good cry.

I don't think you're really listening anyway.

I'm sorry, what ?

You are upset because I haven't asked what?

You want me to ask you how you're doing?

For the past two months, I have survived
off the odor of your breath.
I have sated my hunger by knowing you
were next to me in bed.
I have dreamed your terror, over and over again,
trapped in your frail woman's body
under a man's hot hands

and somehow
you seem to feel
you aren't getting an adequate supply of my attention.

Maybe it's time I started doing more of the talking
because frankly
I don't ask questions when I already know the answer.

On Romantics and Liars

The "confessional" school of poetry was made up
of two greats, both of whom hated that term.

"I lie a lot," one said, in an attempt to refute her reputation of openness.
And when a poet that great
admits to being a liar,
it feels like the end of the world.

But if it was,
the world ended
                                    a long time ago

Let me share something with you:
Homer lied.
I don't care what Helen looked like,
wars are not fought over the appearance of a woman.
And Byron can say whatever he wants
about beauty
                        but
                               the place where you'd most like to stick
                               your dick
                               does not qualify as truth.

all my friends say that i pity
myself too much.

that's true, but i have to focus on self-pity.

they get angry when i tell them
how much i pity them.

It's not as though I'm unaccustomed
To the aphrodisiacal properties
of every possible flavor of drug abuse

but

what is it about certain women
that makes them impossible to leave
the moment a single shot of whiskey
is consumed?

Of all the love poems you wrote for me

my favorite is the imprint of your foot
upon my ass

I am sitting on the edge of the tub
where she last attempted suicide.

I would like to use the payphone, but it is on the second floor stairwell, and someone is getting dumped via cellphone on the third floor stairwell.
I would hate to intrude.

Quick word of advice to poets:
Avoid art communes.
Avoid Lake Erie at all costs.

On Another Promise Broken

Yes, yes, I know, I'm a liar, and you're a bloodsucking souleating vampire. Do these facts give you any moral satisfaction? 'Cause I get nothing.

Revenge

I hate you for this.
I'll get you back, I swear.
I'll never forgive you.
Someday, I'll get you back for this.

I hate to break it to you,
but I've heard all that before.
And while there's no doubt a great deal
I should be learning from that

you should really be learning
how tired these tactics are.

Wilson told
me yesterday
that you can't teach
poetry.

He's a sweetheart, but in telling me
that Justin, as an
editor and promoter,
is not a real artist,
he inadvertently said the same
of me.

Although more accomplished,
Wilson is younger than I.
I find it hard to listen
to the wisdom of the young.
After all, I know so little.

Today, I read Michael's words.
He, too, says you can't teach poetry.
Yet Siddhartha learned
listening from
a river.

I am done with poets.
They have taught me nothing,
as they told me to expect.
I will ask the mountains
for wisdom.
If they know nothing,
at least I will
find a pretty place
to die.

One thing you saw clearly:
                                        he was bred for sex,
                          and I was built for war.

For a moment, it was a brilliant coup.
Sandwiched in bed between Romeo and Tybalt,
secure in the knowledge
that you could have sex eight times a day
                        your enemies caught totally by surprise—

Still
when you make such drastic
changes to the script
the unexpected is bound to occur
(though you should have known better than    to make them yourself).
That, and your Romeo
had no more chance of killing your Tybalt
than he did of shitting golden bricks.

So now, here I am,
with two inept self-absorbed teenagers hurling their fists at me for all their tiny souls are worth.

Trying to decide if there is any dignity left in
slaughter.

Now, look,

I liked the "very platonic" line while it was working.
It's a choice, not an experience, mind you—
—a choice of convenience to ignore the fact
that we are all giant fuckballs that would screw anything
not nailed down—
—but it was, despite the inherent and situational illogic,
working.

But I don't care who you are
or are not fucking,
when you slash your wrists to get a man's attention
you can't call the relationship "very platonic" anymore.

So
watching your pale face and
mysteriously appearing ace bandages
I was left with three options.

I could scream.
I could throw your sidekick out and sweep you into my arms.
I could leave.

Given the choices you left me with, you have no right to complain.

Really, Truly The End This Time

If you've read this far, you are almost certainly a poet.

No one but a poetry geek would even understand the title,
And none but the obsessive reader of poetry would tolerate
                        the constant and constantly
                        pretentious literary references
While only someone with an egomania to rival my own would make it past the first page.

So if you are a poet, by now, you know this book is written specifically, and directly, to you.

And it's easy to say specifically, whether we've ever met or not,
since you've all completely blurred together now, and I can no longer tell a penpal from a fuckbuddy, a friend from a lover, a comrade from an enemy, or a rapist from his victims.

So it's safe to say that if you've read this far, you have so thoroughly invaded my psyche that any attempt to distinguish myself from you would prove so futile as to be harmless.

                        And usually I wish you hadn't,
            but tonight I don't.

The End

Not that it matters.

At some point,
either in this life or the next,
I have to decide that I no longer find
the stupidity of others
fulfilling.

A poet's lifestyle is not viable
and I learned long ago
that suicide is not an escape.