BURNING HOUSE PRESS

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ALPHA-PLEASURE

You’re in the driver’s seat. 

We’re playing the alphabet game. 

Later you will kiss me,

This is a fool’s errand. 

I cannot be poetic or loving.

I am exhausted

Ambiguous 

Bedroom

Cathartic

And yet, I cannot let go of

This slippery, elusive future.

The road flashes, infinitely.

You mutter that my father has issues, 

I reply, “Doesn’t everyone?”

Two men miming.

No words and enormous 

Pain calcified like mountains. 

I fare no better. 

My easy phrases that 

Once brought comfort,

Are meager and hard to finesse.

Devilish

Erotic

The heat swells from the inside of the car.

There’s no way for us to 

Turn it off (????)

Your foot is pressing on the gas

And some mysterious electronic nightmare

Is burning through the soles 

of my fake leather shoes. 

Fascinated

Galivanting 

I think about you all the time.

I think about all the times 

I waited for you.

Why now do you finally show yourself? 

Hot

Implied

The feel of your chest

And your eyes cast down (lovingly?) on me —

Jizz

Kitten

Lovers

Moaning

All the annoying ways you love me,

All the stupid, silly things that make me 

Want to set myself on fire. 

Nefarious

Orgasmic

Plaything

I lap you up everytime

And resign myself to the simple fact

I want my own annihilation 

At least as much as you want your own. 

And of course

There is the problem of love.

Cross it all out. 

I’m not sure what terrifies me the most –

Losing you 

Or keeping you. 

Ravishing

Seduction

Tumble

Undress

Then there is the problem of time. 

I could be poetic about this but, 

You would still judge me nonetheless. 

This is my writing, 

This is my life, 

This is the juicy, car wreck mess

We make movies out of

Voluptuous 

Whenever

XXX

And now,

Without you, 

Already missing you terribly

I take a last sip of breath

And look at the road behind us, 

Folding in the dusk. 

Yearning

Zeitgeist

Answer me one last thing. 

Was it 

Amazingly, deliriously, darkly

Actually 

So much fun? 

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WAITING

I was waiting for someone 

to give me the answer to the mystery. 

I remember my Grandmothers–

loving, and me, fumbling

Through broken Spanish

and humble gestures,

To craft an altar, like them,  that 

Would sustain me

I stood there, twenty-five years, waiting. 

thirty six until eternity, waiting.

Waiting for love.

Waiting for love to 

Knock me down like a 

Tidal wave.

Somehow, 

While I waited, I forgot

The old stories –

The ones that say

Joy comes.

And the more there is,

The more it becomes a shield.

Shining, metallic, laced, 

Resplendent.

No seams left undone,

No crevices for dark things 

To creep into

While you turn for an instant

Distracted by the 

Whistling of the tea-pot,

Or the rumble of the train.

I also remember 

When the two of us

walked side by side

On a gloomy winter night

Passing the garbage

and the stench of piss 

And the screeching rails.

After yet another train ride,

Seeing misery

Carved into face 

After face 

Like some awful

topographical map 

I asked you

How does anyone live?

How do people live so small and

So fucking fragile?

How do we

work day after day

Like my grandmothers

In the in the factories,

In the fast food chains,

In the offices

In the salons

In the Laundromats

And you said

They do it with love.

They make it because of love.

And the waves crashed all around me,

And crushed my heart with the weight

Of a formless, endless depth.

My grandmothers waved

from below.  

In oceanic darkness. 

Because at the time

 I never would have imagined 

That answer, 

In my quest for

Ambition,

Recognition, 

For all things tangible and desirable.

For the place

At the top of the tower.

The most obvious answer

hidden.

And immediately,

I imagined those people

With faces serious, and revered,

Worn and paint-chipped

Like some old Catholic statue –

At a dinner table

With their kids 

And their grandkids

With lives 

Full and rich and overflowing

Even in despair. 

And that’s when I truly witnessed the ravines

Laid across my face

And every other face in midtown.

And every other face in the world.

So I went home 

And said thank you for my house

And thank you for my wounds.

Thank you for the kitchen 

When it is crowded,

When there are no more chairs,

No more beds

And we’re scattered everywhere

Wrapped in each other’s arms

The beauty is to be shared.

Then the cracks don’t seem as deep,

The depths, not as dark.

The hunger, not as destructive.

These days,

I wish to see my face,

And in it, the faces of my loved ones

More than I wish for the things

I once imagined I wanted.

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