Bad Reasons to Die (March, 2013)

You were a fever dream,

My hot cheek,

Lapping on my waters,

J’adore ton embrasse, et je t’accompagnerai

Into the swallows nest,

The abalone hotel, paradise

In trailers and pink flamingos,

Shining needles in my skin

And your lipstick smeared over

My fat stomach, grown large. 

This is the year of the influenza,

My bitter tongue touching your depths,

My ragged nails digging into the lace

Of your luxurious soul,

Your satin black skin,

Your stench of Budweiser. 

Heil du, heil du,

Tearing apart my pale back,

My erotic sorrow.

Our child cannot wake, our joan,

Her pale body, small in childhood,

Submerged in the claw foot bathtub,

Her gold hair rising around her like a medusa. 

I cannot say her name, I fear

I may awake the God in me that starved to death

From my plastic silverware lies,

My food stamp childhood. 

But no one in my home knows poverty, now,

My golden faucets, my Loubutins,

My sick, sick woman, all sinew, bone,
And soul that
Bleeds into her body,
Her sweet laughter bare
As the blue china plates before her. 

I am charred, my throat raw,

My knuckles scarred,

I remember our making love

On floor-lain mattresses,

And drinking white wine at Josie Woods,

And all those non-confrontational memories well, 

But my swelling stomach in pictures

Makes me retch, I gag at the past,

It is acrid like you,

Her thin blood pours over the eternal whiteness of the bed.