OhSoColorific

Belly full, eyes half-shut. I am warm, and you are not far. Contentment may not be noble, but for tonight... it is enough.

There is a stranger sleeping on your floor but you wanted an artist.  Beautiful things aren't easy. I am tamed, comfortable. You are wild, sir.  Smoke slips over my nose when I think of you.   Alcoholic sweat, fingers down my throat and I am North, Northbound. Ivy League meets the yellow rose. It's a shame my writing peaked at age sixteen; I could have been your biographer.

I am here I am staying here I am the same I am unchanging I am the goddamn perpetual motion machine crank me up I will move back and forth and you can see me keep the time I am a grandfather clock wind me up let me go and I will move back and forth and you can see me keep my place stand me up strand me on a desert island I will survive by eating sand I am here I am staying here with my back to the sun my skin will burn I will curse Mendel and his pea plants and the recessive traits of my father I will regress into the days of caves and I will paint my face on the walls and I will paint my face on the stones so thousa

I am a moth, give me your halogen light. I have never had this sense of direction, this certainty of life and you are drowning the moon and I am hitting your window. Spiral, spiral. I am a blank page, give me your doggerel. I have never felt as insightful as I do now with your clichés and I am nothing if not grateful.

It’s gotten too heavy, child. Much too much for your weakened knees, your delicate wrists. You’ll never be a dancer, or a poet.  A singer, a lover, a sister, or the President. Baby Boomer lies, baby; we're going nowhere and it’s heavy. Heavy like your breathing, heavy and full like your blue moon eyes.

Rag doll: All painted eyes and pouting lips, she sealed her fate with her clever hips. “I always thought death by martyrdom would be so much more… rewarding.”

Hand over hand, day climbed into night, our noses bloodied and our eyes bright with the glare of neon signs. Empty laughter escapes from the lips of a woman, like little drips from a gutter. Gutter hands, gutter voices.  Is this our Renaissance, sealed with a kiss? On and on the world turns, and in her hand a cigarette burns. Breathing in humidity, a thousand evaporations: alcohol and enmity and sensual sidelong glances. “I had the taste of blood and chocolate in my mouth, the one as hateful as the other.”

I am reduced to:   Ten fingers. Twenty-eight white teeth. Two firm arms and two strong legs and three parallel lines. They tell me I'm supposed to (let the scars show).