teeth.

and in the end the static you makes no sense as ever and yet the still in me and things is like pogo-sticks at the place where punctuation might be otherwise and the truth like blood leaves me changed somehow the wringing out of things evidenced like cracks in porcelain sinks and dripping pipes laid hands that know well as you did too once how nothing learned or seen or slept with or on can be unremembered blinked out like wayward lashes from within the space just between lids and its assigned seat place and too well i know this is how it makes calves and shoulder blade outlines out of what used to be palms outfaced waving friendly hinting suggestive of a sure certainty of next time we should meet but that was then and my sink is off-white stained glass sobbing hymns for us by now after the scrubbing i've done left it pink with stories to tell of how hands can't unhold one another after the fact a posteriori nor can we go back and fold up the corners we left frayed and curling on fire and spent like those summer sun spinning dizzy with all the scents of your shapes and missteps and heroes of summers' tales unable to let go of but stuck and weighted somewhere back in your memory at least like my sink and this smattering of unaware unassuming symbols arranged pushed alongside each other so as if to self-preserve the lot in making sure this will matter to me or the end at sometime later than this moment maybe one less-cheeky two more well-formed or at least insightful gainful and wise perhaps words here and there and breathing toxic things like you and i into life after death make sense less around the now of things and this and then by the time it seems like ever makes sense alone and even when followed by after in the math that comes after things like paperchains and keyboards you bought and sold in the moment when you were not this but something else otherwise and then vacancy signs lit neon more alive than i was back then i wish i could smile now through this but i remember too many colors and how the corduroy stitched navy through your sweaty shorts and came out in the wash with the rest of what was us and the truth like bleach tumble-dried with like colors in my mind even still i see you making room for new things and leaving me to hang on the line to dry or just blow away unfolded and frayed for all you knew, i was weightless and unburdened by clothespins and stories of past things and ropes i had no hope left for and not enough knots remaining to hold on to back then and i hit the pavement like chalk and it shakes my senses still even now in what has become this my nest safest in years with blackholes and time zones and lightyears now between placemats fancy napkins and the place where i peeled me back like onion layers tears unwilling participants in the bathroom locked door floodgates of what i knew i could still do to show you and the city and unlikeable mirror i never could pay for how deep the cracks in the sidewalk and forehead of mine could expand over time and with heat like doorjambs squeaky still but unable to fall through the floor like i used to force things from then to try and turn to the things in the sewers or other wasteland dwellers where i need only a faint vague sense of my moment long past where whatever went down there still mattered to me and when ever so briefly it seemed we were sticky twine like in netting caught dragonflies together you left me there broken open and spilling over and over until starting over again made sense like rhyming and plate tectonics and crevices between me better left unseen and written about in the glow of after and what endured these piles of words and outpouring of stories and purpose in lyrics and dancing word prose the levity in this lifts me aware and i am perspective in context alive and if only you knew it was always just words and the story that mattered and me and my voice the one thing you cannot unhear or forget you had memorized and would know anywhere that tingle of old of me and of things you threw out hot breath arousing your ear and your truth is what i have i cling to the rope of woven sense-makers and things like eyelashes and popsicle sticks with truth sticky sweet licking it off and now it's just me and what i know is long overdue in a story about you now mingling with sugar in between tastebuds and edges rough and brutal truth is often elusive like you were and brown paper bags are suggestive of the contents and curious wandering nomad hands as i have always raised honestly discover things like flesh and secrets and people and stories go forwards as always they will but never smart people try to rush things like decaying of skin and flesh and us or predict quakes and plate movements and me on a curb in new york and how you left me pinned unsure of where things and flags and we were standing ever or still and whether or not the earth was still spinning i heard it was left reeling as panicked as i was from sources unquestioned and blouses you'd already sold to other women by now. and when the next day and many elipses and stuttered introductions were lived through and you bore the look of the after example in the way my head hangs you next to old stacks of tee shirts i bought you too small always seemed a better guess back in days where your greasy conical fingertips still could sear me like bullion melted down out of all that you robbed me of and re-sold then to pay for things like new and fresh and make believe this is square one and plane tickets out of this as if the states and iron rod turnstyle you put between all of what you need to forget and the stuff of marshmallow fluff and sprinkles and tickle-wars we had as always these are real things since they happened and mattered and there in us past storied and true and while you made escape hatches and trap door trapeze stunts to get away from me and my scars and things like luggage labels attached to your confused guitar case, i was in something closer to chokeholding my own self and blinking long moments between mirrors and face unlike what i knew of the ghost i had left there but still it served me well the pain and world i got so used to slathering in smells of hell's pits and limbo and you and slimy vaseline in brooklyn streets i grew and now i get to play with words and win like checkers as a kid would perhaps against your chubby fingers and laugh at you for all that you lost in the meantime and back at the ranch where you forgot to put decimal places and puncuate sentences that needed less words and more something anything heard like a power outage your silent dismissal of the was and your manhandling rampage where you tried and i told you but still you had to force things like stories and sounds like my voice and doors to destinations unknown and us into underground places where they fit less now than they did when your waist was not so obvious like your flushing face flesh and the focused effort constant pressure you must feel since then when you made it not easy to find you in today over tablecloths and relevance in vegas and other noise and in this you don't need proof i believe but you realize certainly what potential energy of this and whats next and mended hems of mine on clotheslines outside drying warm in this new type of life and sunshine and how things surface the specifics of which particulars and such i may never hear about and that's just fine and peacock feathers with me in this new perspective here perched with a birds eye view of things that remain and what was lost in time and you and my peace is like all the puddles worth stomping through and other things like rainbows that reward the fighters and bullet-biters for the easy true the best way out is always through and where you missed that boat i swam out and found out truths of my own that still sound like reverie on a crisp autumn morning to my soldier star soul and looking down the flagpole now i can only see ahead and up like geese honking ahead of me and you left behind to mummify me in your tomb and your rotting denial the joke of which makes light of you once and for all i can still crack a smile at sidewalk cracks and teeth that fall out still making jack-o-lantern grins and shadow puppets and all out of hell and off the wall i'm humpty and dumpty and i put myself back together again the process of which was better off written than peeled off my flesh or splayed out on display in the snow perhaps and then my new and freshness mint smell shiny beginning shook me awake early some morning after you were part of the after picture malignant in memory and suddenly you and your face red with alive were dim and unaware of how i was back and better than you and houdini illusionists arsonists playing with fire and i came out breathing fresh air and without tangible suitcases in my wake all awake and pretense certain of me and what's next on the other side of stories untold of me.and.you maybe you will recognize me on the street in a paperback bestselling copy of widespread attention winner and me pulitzer prize maybe all grinning all-knowing and thanking the you's in my life for giving me anything sensory and tragic at all to make words with and find at the end of the line a clothesline or otherwise and if you see me then just remember how we are not friends now and then but feel good about this my voice you always heard hinting about loss and trust and emptiness in my hands filled to the brim with you and in the what since then i filled myself and fingers with sense and pens and lessons i know cannot unlearn me then as this- the case of what looked like the end turned me inside and out and filled me full of air and purpose and in the end, i did what i could do all i know now and then was stories shouted outloud sounded better at the end of ink spots spotty vision clearing, i see now my vacancy sign neon lights blinking and finally making sense of violence and other ends and a way to make it mean something a means i find now, as it turns out that in the end, i write for the beginning.