Zooline

Your house was dumplings with bones in it
Cautious hugs, fresh grass smells and gravel in my flesh
I was commended for my toughness
You were proud and I was your favorite
You hung me a tire swing
And kept him away from me
Your neighbor's orchard and mean Shetland ponies
You handed praise out with vinegar
And hatred with sugar
You broke my little sister's heart
Continously as you did with all the others
Without apology
But you never directly hurt me.
Sliced cucumbers on your front porch and swords from your garden
Christmas and the way my daddy loved you
Just like all the kids did until they knew.
You ruined so many hearts and lives you took them so early before they needed any guards from pain
You kept them there under your thumb, under the guise of mama or grand mama
You taught them to fight like the dogs you saw
Chained them to torment
Called it love
You spoke flowery, sweet words and wrapped them around your venom
Some never knew happy
A few saw you as you were
They fled from your grasp
A few lived to and through what you were
Blood stains, sweat, tears, bone on flesh and pure hate smeared lives
Left in the bottom of a bottle
Of alcohol, cocaine, heroin, pills, a gun.
Wasted breath
Wasted heartbeats
Wasted tears
Wasted years of love
Wishing it were truly possible for you to truly know
What love was
Wishing for you to love us.

E.

Maybe you and I could leave this place

We could just chance it and sail away

Find ourselves on a desert island in the Caribbean somewhere

Literally, literally find ourselves there

Maybe we could just get lost in time

Stumble around history and hangout in the trees

Watch the world turn before us then come back to these

Thoughts and these places that seem so familiar

Baby we could live nonlinear

Do you wanna run high into the mountains

And leave these low tides?

Build a farm house from mud and hide out inside

We could make love all day and plow fields at night

Rain dance under the moon and teach the stars to cry

We could can memories like pickles for when we get old

Push a spoon under the edges when the lids are too hard to hold

Taste the youth that we savored back in the day

Hold each other forever  

Curled by the fire together

Only we would be so bold 

disconnect

I miss the old days of color coded walls that facebook was born from

Scary chat room late nights that were mentioned in slight shame

I miss gay book stores and seedy adult places

Where push pins in note cards on cork boards

Expressed needs too dark to speak in everyday

I miss manners and shame

Shame was an everyday occurrence in some ways

I miss social accountability and human interactions

Some things have slipped too far away             

Now all meetings are in chat

Social circles are infinite

Now everyone lives in Warhol’s fifteen

All the bright and dark places have smeared into gray

Networking was once for business   

Networking was once for politics

Networking is now for all things

Buy me, fuck me, fuck them, hate them

Like the picture, like my idea, like what I do

It’s all so diluted

So empty

Not a novelty

Not a phase

Some things have slipped too far away

Now shame is a commodity

Now gay is a political stance

Now sex is on your phone

Now your phone is a part of you

Now technology is a fashion statement

Now food is a movement

Now disconnection is the norm

Now faces are found only in pictures

And voices are disappearing

And conversations

And art

And life

Are all online 

ch ch

Nothing is lost in the sound of a woman’s grunt
Breath labored, pushing sighs
Mounting you
Cramming fingers into welcome places
The surprise of the femme façade fading away
She is the aggressor
This would scare her ex-boyfriend
Maybe he saw a hint and pushed it aside
I remember when she first planted her seed

My brain swimming
There was no confusion
But I was taken at the time
She waited, so did I
And all things end

Her hips help press her wrist to work
She enjoys her position
As I do mine
Her status is top, alpha, yes!
She giggles at the slip of her lube
And palms my breast in it
I’m lost in the swim
In the viscous reality
In the scent of her sweat
In the way she presses tired, against me
She is insatiable
She can’t be long enough inside

Her makeup is smeared
Her façade non-existent
She smiles sleepily and giggles sweetly
Then rolls me onto my belly
She tells me about her toys
I appreciate the threat in her tone
But none come out
Only organic
Only fingers and flesh and tongues mingle

I am enamored
I am obsessed
She is straight………
yeah right