Purpose
Tonight.
Tonight is one of those nights
that fills me like morning,
and I have no cigarettes.
My neighbor chuckles
at the panic in my face
when I knock at nearly midnight,
barely clothed,
with restless hair,
pleading for a cigarette
and some scotch tape.
I'm plastering all of the pieces
to my bedroom wall -
poems, letters,
pages from the dictionary and the newspaper.
This map, these directions,
they're necessary
lest I forget where I'm headed.
Who told you to grow up?
Who told you that you could just
walk off
and forget where you came from?
I'm fevered and sweating.
The collage of my forgotten purpose
reaches the ceiling
and the walls,
they are receding around me.
But I'm laughing,
and my head's just spinning at the tempo of it all.
The Bed
We fuck through clothes,
dry hump like children
and barely make it -
flies unzipped
skirts shoved up thighs dripping with war paint,
underwear brushed aside like foliage.
You have lips like
dirty bombs;
your cock is a landmine.
I'm stomping across the open field.
Sunday Morning: Florida
She's so small,
kneeling with her back to the ocean,
begging the surprise shove of waves,
skidding along -
light and fearless
as a sea stone.
Her smile
shines the inner workings
of a conch shell.
Grit gathers in my navel
and takes residence.
Absentmindedly, I snap the leftover parts
of broken shells
between my fingertips,
sunlight beaming from my face.
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