mania (august 2013)

I spent my life today

All hundred years of it

Lighting american spirits

Under the rose dusk

Of light pollution,

Rising rising

High in my own smoke dream,

Arcing my fingers deep

Deep

Deep

Into a girl with a lion heart

Taken from the chest

Of my father

The alcoholic. Take me

Heroin fiend

I will forgive

Your emptiness;

I am a ghost too

A feverish woman

Like a burning altar

An ashy memory

Only remembered in the dark

Of an evil thing

This love

Not for you

Not for me

But for this city

That you just exist within,

Lighting white sticks

Of surrender.

Don’t you recall

me

Loving you

Here

Here

Outside the 72^nd street entrance

To central park east,

With this sprinkling

Of cigarette butts

Around your feet. 

My lips touched

One of them

Or ten

I have been in this place

My body heavy

With vodka and pinot

Laughing and coughing

Laughing and coughing

Coughing and manic

Ten fingers in.

I saw god here

I bit the apple here

And knew your soul

Your night heart

Your white powder

That soaked through my lungs

Filling my veins

Blurring

Worlds to infinity

Your soul to firewood

Charring the damp soil

God to Anaheim

Hidden in the tourist shops

Fingering the trinkets. 

It felt like retribution,

Touching your lips, it felt like eden

(it felt like velvet stiff with love).

When you kissed me

For the four thousandth time

A wave washed

All the shame

From the first thousand

Loveless fuckings,

The sting of your body

Pressing me to the cement,

The scratches healing

Just to be ripped open

Again

Again

(again)

Some days

I still watch the dawn

Fill the world

With fog

Until it bursts

Into day—

It feels like you,

Filling me with nicotine

And cherry wine,

My lost body brimming
With smoke.