for god's sake don't let the deadweights drag you down mcgowan

sometimes i think that instead of walking thru the cold to go to club nights i could just convince you to stay in bed with me and watch movies

which could be heaven or hell... depending who you are. me, i'm in paradise

these are not mistakes.

Orange Cream Savers

It must have been in the high 90’s everyone was laying around in front of fans drinking things slow so they wouldn’t have to get up for more.It was the first time I had hung out with a boy alone. He was a year older, but held back a year for bad behavior, so still in my grade. We both got dropped off early to school and have to spend an hour inbetween doors. He was chains and baggy black sweatshirts. We would split headphones. He would tell me he thought I was cute. I hated the way he said it, like an exception to some rule.

His house had sheets hung as curtains, the kitchen was filled with dirty dishes and pots on the floor where the roof leaked. His room was in the basement. I had heard rumors on how his ex-girlfriend gave him bjs down here. The floor was wet and the stereo glowed green. From across the room I saw painted in white, a heart with her initials.

He hands me an orange cream savor. We sat there not touching, listening to Incubus' Drive, sucking on our candy, waiting for our mouths to be free. We moved in and it tastes like orange creamsicles, its wet and sloppy. His tongue runs against mine and I can feel his hands move from my knee up my shirt, then across my bra hook. He without a flinch, pinches it off. He has done this before. I can’t stop thinking about the white heart on his wall.

Plan B

Grandma had an affair. It was always assumed and never spoken of, but now here at his funeral, instead of typical tears and sharing stories of the "good times" the women are gathered in the corner of the VFW with plastic punch cups and pinned back curls, whispering ...Helen Marie.... It just couldn’t be.... Helen Marie. The men stay out back by the keg, arms folded stern brows. I knew before my mother. When I was five grandma said she needed to tell me a secret, because she has been waiting for the right ears to tell. Grandma is magic. Her hair in perfect set curls, red lipstick at 6 am. Won’t leave the house without her pearls and a splash of channel. She loves murder mysteries, feeding the birds in the morning, and honey on her toast. She gives caramels to the dog, plays cards with the paperboy, tends her raspberry bushes. I would go into rooms I shouldn’t, snoop through drawers and boxes. Grandma said I was a curious kitten. Today she caught me in her vanity. On the side she had a picture of man with a mustache. I had on as much jewelry as I could fit on my fingers and around my neck. Red lipstick smeared on the side of my lips. Grandma came in... “oh kitten. Here I know what you need.” She pulls out her channel No. 5 and gently turns my wrists over to put on just a drop. She shows me how to rub it in behind my ears. I ask her about the man and she grins and taps on the bed for me to sit. “I hear he was a B movie star” “Well I am sure it was when she took that trip to Germany when Bill was stationed in Wales.” “ Like I said a German, B movie star, why else would she have learned the language” “Well its obvious Helen Marie is German, I don’t know how Bill could stand it” I am standing with Grandma in the kitchen. I am 14 now. I open up the bottle of wine and our us both a glass. She kisses my head. We just stand there and listen to the women talk. I grab her hand. I love the red stain left as she pulls the glass from her lips. My mother comes in the room and cries.I have only seen this once before when she stubbed her toe on the coffee table while vacuuming around my sister and I watching tv. Grandma tells me to go collect the bulletins in the pews. I walk toward the hall and hide behind the door peeking in. On the car ride home my dad had fallen asleep on the passenger’s side and my sister was listening to her book on tape. Mom hasn’t said a word, just keeps the radio real low and a cigarette lit. “I guess you make a lot more sense now” she says to me.

written with black magic marker on the 35w bridge

you wonder what you'll do when you reach the edge of the map, out there on the horizon, all that neon beckoning you in from the dark.

"He was clearly overprotected while growing up"
"Feels neglected by the world"
"Fears social disapproval"
"Lacks positive personal relationships"
"Is afraid of his father"
"Sees his father as inadequate"
"He may have had an excessive number of premature sexual affairs"
"He has had homosexual relationships out of desperation rather than desire"
"His Oedipal problems are not yet resolved"
"I see no significant damage"
"There is little hope for recovery"
"Seems fatalistically resigned to the rejection of the world"
"Has an ingrained hopeless pessimism"
"Seems hopeful for the future"
"...a dominant drive for security"
"... and enormous amount of hostility"
"... a great deal of love to share"
"... a decreasing ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality"
"... an exceptional imagination at work"
"... a pathological loosening of an orderly thought process"
"... seems to be in the early stages of paranoid schizophrenia"
"... the depression is so powerful that suicide could be likely"
"... I think he is very creative"

A pulse felt for through garments.
If I lean into the desire it starts from
If I lean unbuttoned into the blow




Of loss after loss,
love tossed
Into the ecstatic void
It carries me with it farther.

I mean, things decay

the life span of black ink in disposable plastic pens is estimated to be about four and a half years.
the blue fade away in two.
newsprint is only intended to last a day.
a color photograph thirty years.
videotape fourteen.
magnetic tape, seven.

I know

I cannot quite clear the jump And I can’t wash my hair clean Or get rid of this tattoo Or sedate an angry spleen 
I shouted to a marble wall And my screams bounced back and knocked me out

Learned Imitations

Joe Wenderoth thinks poems written in school are just learned imitations of poems gone by. We need to be unsheltered. That's why I didn't know I preferred poached eggs to scrambled, till I had to make them on my own. My roommate reads a lot of fashion blogs and once I heard her say: For what is inside of you is what is outside of you,and the one who fashions you on the outside is the one who shaped the inside of you.And what you see outside of you, you see inside of you;it is visible and it is your garment. Which made me think yeah, everything you choose is a part of who you were, a part of who you are right now, and who you want to be.