Destruction

There are nights you can't escape the day he ripped your cat in two
where a choking in your throat
and the nonexistent smell of uncombusted gasoline
adds to a lightheadedness
normally reserved for Mt. Everest
or the last moments of some famous author
that no one else in your high school english class enjoyed
or even bothered finishing the book
'cause no one gets laid when they're affected—
a finer point your fat friend would never grasp,
wrap her lips around,
eyes screened by hanging locks to hide welling tears.

You wonder if he ever thinks back to that day
but that's like pondering the visibility of specters across other wavelengths
because really, empathy is just another frequency
and you just want someone to resonate with you
but be careful girl
because love hurts and so does fire
so it's best to know which you're falling into.

You've stocked your kit with the appropriate cream,
readied your bag before the door to leave it behind—
you visit like a conservationist on the moon
carefully sweeping to leave no trace or footprints
just a massive crater where you first touched down
and from where you take off.
Now at the terminal you stand upon the painted line
flickering displays vie for attention but your gaze is set
towards tracks and the source of liberated air
fixated on the thought of how that train
would fucking destroy you.

Heatless Engines

If you were here I'd tell you stories
about how all the broken hearts from the 70's
ended up on New Jersey beaches
but tonight it's so cold I can barely remember
if I'm wearing any clothes at all
so I know that you're cold too
in your room and in your poems
filled with heatless engines pleading "let me in"
oh, you know I'd let them in.
Like wound watches you are intricate,
filled with gems, and loaded springs
but for me you'll always run like new—
what's a boy to do
in love with the weekend
and a sweetness his tongue can't comprehend.
I think it's only fitting
if this is how all great civilizations end,
collapsing in the pre-dawn
with hair like copulating snakes
tangled and adrift in the darkness of space
and against their better judgement
hissing for more.

The Blizzard

Buried beneath snow drifts and bookshelves

you awaited my engine,

whose pistons and fires drove rubber through compacted snow,

but spared no heat for the cabin.

With precipitating breath and gloved hands

I followed tracks to meet you,

amazed by the continuity of open roads and uncautious drivers—

somehow oblivious to coefficients and inertia,

'til your warmth did greet me

and my hollow bones filled.

I thought about entropy

and at what cost we breached the disorder,

to share this moment,

as coffee became cold and my cheeks flush

and I learned in your room,

amidst chatter and mixtapes,

why watches should never glow

as the night became timeless

and on my way home,

I searched for an answer:

"Who are you today,

when you've fallen in love?"

Astigmatism

I can't come home anymore,

and I can't trust your willingness

to see me until I can at least remember your smile,

and pretend what you're wearing now is the same thing.

I so want to pretend;

I swear I've gotten better,

to the point that even my friends are recognizing

the floor is lava and I'm on the wrong side of the room,

but that's hardly enough

to make this place real again.

It's like everything is coated in mercury

and I'm afraid to touch anything,

afraid to die, slowly, from a heavy metal

replacing my insides

and reducing metabolic flows to stagnant pools

where electrons whirl like clouds of gnats

dogging me and occasionally dying in my eyes.

They're no longer unpredictable—

I could tell you their colors

and why the blue lights are always doubled

and you could know how sick we really are

just by looking:

mine a bright red and yours a pale yellow.

Silent Territory

Long drives just won't let me--
keep the music out of the backseat
and half-raised antennas can't hope to hold her stations
or any FM band we used to play for
on those trips to Fords in search of rare polycarbonate
and hand-written notes we'd talk.

About then I first knew you
and while friends held their breaths past cemeteries
l could never escape the smell
of your strawberry chapstick I imagined on my neck.

These nights I wish you were still my second observer
'cause when I blink the lights are bound to saunter differently
and what if they never came back?

Self Titled

We swapped stories

about how I wore a cast to my first birthday

and the history of the bite marks

on all of your first grade classmates.

You told me that by eight you already packed to leave twice,

bindle and a hand full of cheerios,

while I practiced my disguises

and steadied my aim with orange tipped guns.

(The small white pools of nitrate

would crack and darken as I trained not to blink.)

Together we would follow dirt roads to their ends

with six foot cattails and the meadowlands--

populated with tall leaning antennas

and the crooked birds' nests they housed.

You captured it all in the facsimile of instant chemical reactions,

somehow the horizon perfectly level

in every shot.

You would have made an excellent marksman

if the targets were all sun splayed leaves

or the abandoned city streets we jaywalked,

our trespasses declared and documented

according to the appropriate naming convention.

I can't help but think of these things

every time I catch your eye

and I realize

this generic drive cannot be stopped.