[Scrap] Heap

The only thing a vagrant wants to erode
more than himself is other vagrants.
Anyone who writes beautifully thinks
ugly, ugly thoughts. Don't ask me how I know
because i can't. This is law.

My gums are decoupaged with clippings of Eliot
books and transatlantic journals I've spent a
decade matting. They only flake when I lick
my lips or flick my tongue from my hard
pallate to summon lahs aloud: Law law law.

This week I've traveled the Cape with a recovering
lawyer who taught me self-defense is impossible
when you still testify in drawls thick as the guffaws
from harbor geese; we both spew shit from different
ends and leave portions of ourselves oxidating in
the saltwaves of the tidal air.

When I practice my account, I bend those laws to
the tip of my tongue. Lah. I bring all "G"s to
complete halts like I never learned the rules of the
"rotary," but i remember when one was installed in
my town: the "Roundabout," roun'bout 4, 5 years back.


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I did not expect the first
thought to come to mind
to be a Bowie song. "Always
Crashing in the Same Car,"
though it had been the second
car of the week.

But it came of no surprise
after the car rolled its third time
across the embankment of 278
that I'd rather crash again and
again until the pieces left of me
numbered beneath those of the car
than to hear the clay-thick static
of my mother, spilling shame like shale
from every half-rusted cell tower
in this corner of the state.



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When I met you on the street floor,
I forgot why I don't sleep more.
In the thoughts I'm not awake for,
I'm a pipebomb in a rainstorm,
And yet you're still standing, damning how you've got no place to sit
All the benches that weren't burned out turned to feel a little wet.
But what a sin you won't remember what it's like to be astride the city's breath,
And I hope you'll never know the pain you take on to feel 50 miles in breadth.

We were missives, we were orphans
To voices we can't record and
We might never outperform them
But you'll never battle boredom
Till the noises stop, and then you'll want the static to resume
There's a certain comfort covered when someone else's in the room.
But the curtains you've unturned have earned uncertain spirits' urgency and trust
And your windows might be closed but know: there's some ghosts that you'll grow from your own dust.

Did you toss aside the tissues
You excised inside my fissures
From the malice; from the misuse,
I don't even fucking miss you
There's a miscontruance tattooed to the grooves around your breasts
You're the product of the problems never pried off of your chest
But your surgeries were forgery. I felt better when my organs were dissolved
And the inches you've removed won't sooth the sutures you've forgotten overall


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I found you
today, but she
wasn't "Maddie."

"Liz," she claimed,
hair promulgating
in spirals, cabin

descending. The city
was alight with
grounded

constellations.
reminders that we're
two worlds apart.


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"ISTP: Cold. Calculating.
Compartmentalizing."
She called out the reasons
I couldn't love her.

I so hope your T is forked
Enough for me. If I can't
Curve your S, please don't
box me away.