Sketches, Volume I

Come apart, little wonder
Drink in your earthly sentence
Atop your broken filament world
Tapped out like cigarette ash
Into a rippled reflecting pool
Cradling day's last light
Gone are the hours of pitch tar despair
Still you miss its quicksand embrace
A malicious phantom limb
Bleeding through each wound dressing
Each bandage discarded holds something you lost
And are we not all diamonds
Too scared to be crushed?
Left as some hateful child's
Christmas reward?
Hell is not here but its chair is still warm
Its cologne still in the air
And I can't remember anymore
Who's chasing who
I guess I'll take a coffee
Try to wait out the storm


The way you say his name
You'd think he kissed venom
But I think he preferred rye
Not that your anger isn't founded
Sometimes I wonder why you never got
some poison of your own
I hear it just tastes a little chalky
Nothing a tart lemonade couldn't hide
And you'd say, "For all your hard work"
And if he looked at you funny
You'd add, "Straight from Lynchburg!"
And he'd be nothing but a doorstop
in less than ten minutes
Then again, you were never a good liar
And I was never a good accomplice
So here we are again
Room 201, above the swimming pool
And I know the Lord can't be too pleased
(Carved it in stone - twice!)
But I wonder if he can't look
the other way
When I say:
"Hey baby - how about another round?"


The last time I was honest
Sunk my teeth in like a tourniquet
You'd have thought I was announcing
that I was joining the circus
Their eyelids blown back
like a hurricane wind
or a full moon blooming
Nature over nurture
their little cub to save
When persuasion failed they
addressed their prayers to the
pituitary goddess
Hoping it was merely hormonal possession
But if biology is to blame, I fear
there is more of my animal left within
Perhaps I should stop shaving
Let my face grow long
And next time
Go for the jugular


The little muscles in my fingers
Never worry how they'll one day lose their cool
Shake like branches on a California tree
The pupils of my hazel eyes
Never fear the darkness that must one day come
Replaced by pennies on the closed lids
The little drummer in my chest
Doesn't realize that he is slowing down
That time was never something to be kept
But oh my damned mind
That keeps me up, then prods me
in the depths of sleep
Cannot sit still and cries out
like a child
Who senses he is near to something wild
Whose hot breath tastes of
peppered chamomile


I fell in love once
Emphasis on the "fell"
I think I've been in more graceful car wrecks
For future reference:
Chinese takeout can in fact get old
So can a pair of tits
And kleptomania isn't charming
I asked for a cigarette
She asked for the keys to my apartment
"C'est la vie" I thought
Looking back it's easy to see
where I went wrong
But Christ, that girl could dance
And when she'd stand in the doorway
and tell me:
"You're the prettiest piece of shit
I've ever cried in front of,"
Well, all I can say is it really
felt like home