do you know where you are?

love like crystalline,
like mahogany,
(polished wood).

voice like gravel,
guitar like the end of the world.
voice like barbed wire,
like fingers on my skin.

you, writ large.

midterm haiku.

midterms suck, but i
have a timeline. i also
slept with your mother.

anarchy.

create chaos and i will join you in the bed.

salvation.

i tell you to walk on, but he can’t talk about it, crying,
such violence and i’m laughing, crossing myself.

resurrection.

this crucifixion is in the shape of a lie, the slip of my story, words formed where actions never happened – all talk and no movement; a heady proposition prefixes a quiet night.

doc martens in the sun.

i lace my boots to leave and step over the thousand words and line and letters of you,
all smelling of ink and iron. crowned the king of blood and salt,
i waver in between this and that, passive and demanding all at once,
making you blush (stains on your sheets indict us).
i lace my boots and leave, your hair smelling of me,
paper crinkling on the floor where we rucked it last night.
everything is messy but you like it that way and i like you, not complaining that the rug smells of the sea and plastic and the stale wood-smoke of a forest fire.
six feet away you’re beautiful, but as i lace my boots to leave you wake,
turning into the alpha, the omega, the sunset on the first day of the apocalypse.
i lace my boots and leave as you turn,
legs waving: gregor samsa and his commonplace death.

dan, why are you smoking in the rain?

i met you in the tunnels of the subways,
warm heat and damp hair drawing us together,

safety pins and the blue in your eyes.
we stared down the lights and winds of the trains,

and i watched you out of the corner of my mouth,
thinking how unnaturally the red hair matched the blue in your eyes.

threading your fingers together,
you smoked a cigarette,

uncaring and absolute, and,
dropping it, still burning, on the floor,

you smiled and blew smoke at me,
the blue freckling in your eyes.

you were playing with fire.
again, i can’t look away from you.

striking matches and letting them burn out,
i want to run fingers across your coat, and

wipe the water out of the corner of your eyes.