i.

can't tell the words from the colors anymore
sink up like sync-sync-syncopation.
like the ladybugs on the boat-sides?
blend like kamikaze lightning bolts
across the eyes of sunken-bellied kids.
and the little lazy lizards who lick
flies away from eyeballs,
i spy frenzied faces on sidewalks
looking for a dollar one-way into sidestreet freak-shows.

maybe we could hop those diners
where they let you smoke inside
and i'll sew up your trousers, mister
you keep wearing them with holes
and i don't really like the looks
of little dancing, waving wounds
across the knees you like to dirty on your
roller-coaster feet.

cuticles only look good unclean
when you bash your hands into your meanings,
hey, define this for me,
i can't find the ways out of my dreams
and they're all enclosing counter-tops,
aphrodesiacs for sale and i'm not buying
this no more because i surely can't find reason
underneath the price-tags.

god i wish i was a man so that my
words held any kind of weight,
hey dad, are you listening?
you only chose to hear me while i was
fucking on your couch.

ii.

i don't need another mother, lover
friend or fool to fuck around the sides of
every situation. the funny flickers of your
fingers when you like that funky song,
rocks beating, beats rocking, listen to the way
you change everything around,
i think your lying, i never believed it,
don't want a god-damned hero
just say something true,
didn't want a fucking virtue,
don't want anything from you.
just give me substance and a cup of coffee
from the corner of the road
and we'll sit pretty whistling
to the old men as they go, and i'm not waiting
for the end cause it'll come whether i pause or run
i'm living as a martyr and i'm dying with a gun,
so eat your danger under covers, hide the latex
and your wives, from finding fiction
through your diction and a boner through your thighs,
you think i'm crazy, well i know it, but i never
fooled around so spread another sonnet
and keep your face close to the ground
cause you are easy, little boy, and i've got you
all figured out, and i'd bet you every penny
you don't know what it's about.
so find another fleeting fling to
cling to when you need her and i'll
stay your statistic, and i'll save her when you beat her.
it's all good when it's lasting, turns to shit
after the thrust, don't come rubbing at my shoulders,
i'll laugh hard at you when you rust.

iii.

walked by myself for a long, long time
and watched fake clouds for dissipating
and i thought of every second that i wasted
on weathered wishes and lying proverbs and
differentiations between the buildings and the skies.

you lied when you said there is no danger,
and i listened because it's cute to be naive,
but i remembered all the bullshit like you asked me to,
didn't burn up the image with the pictures or the
sweater, it smelled like rancid headcheese
but i stayed until the ashes.
i was always a perfectionist,
i rolled around into the soot and walked back home.

and what about language and the gestures
and your motives for me, and who are you?
i never even asked i just trusted what you said
and it was over and i never made that trip out to the west
because you told them i was nothing but a waste of time,
but don't be bitter, cause i never pitied you.
and i still love your mother, and you too,
when you're real.

iv.

ends to sentences and long-shot throws,
we might not ever get there,
but i'm not even really searching.
it's just a point on a map we once marked
when we were stoned.

fake like a hair-piece and the calm of turkey dinners
where your waiting for the first dish to be thrown
or the drunken truths to fly across the table,
sitting listless drowning in your gravy,
watching cranberry sauce swaying, never saying anything.
the awkward lines that run through blood.

taking a long drive down a dirt road by myself
to find out what it is that i've been seeking.
half-sighs and fragments, build-ups with no climax
broken chairs and one-handed clocks so brutally wound,
trying to be a sort of strung out worthy.

so much silence when there's nothing to say.
is there really any symbol behind all this concrete?
any hope between the bars?

03/08/2006

Posted on 03/08/2006
Copyright © 2024 Lauren Singer