Reading Faulkner in the Dark

2am and I heard the front door slam.

She stumbled in and tossed her keys
on the counter, lit a cigarette,
and propped her long leg up
on the chair to unzip her
knee-high boots.

I was sitting in the corner
sipping whiskey
and reading
Faulkner.

The ice in the glass made a sound
as I raised it to my lips. It
stunned her and she
looked over.

“What’s the secret to this fucking life?”
I asked her as I blew smoke rings
in the dark.

She rolled her eyes
and with her hair all tangled
and an ornery smile,
shimmied her silk
panties down from under
her short black dress
and flung them
at me.

They smelt like the answer
to it all.

I fired up my last cigar and
sipped whiskey in the dark
to a Chet Baker record
I had playing lightly
in the background.

With her bare feet on the wood floor
and a drunken sway, she slowly
made her way towards me
as she raised
her middle finger
and told me to
“fuck off.”

Faulkner once asked:
“Who gathers the
withered rose?”

Indeed, that is the question.

She straddled me in a clumsily
sort of cute way and then took the
cigar out of my mouth and
dropped it in my whiskey.

She took one last drag of her
cigarette before dropping
that one in too.

The street lights lit her face.
I heard sirens in the distance.
I grabbed her ass tightly
and looked into her
mascara smeared
eyes.

Faulkner made a thud on the floor
as Chet Baker played on till
dawn.

Self-Loathing

my mistakes are not
petty mistakes

no no no

my mistakes are monumental
and glorious mistakes
that completely
rip the heart
out of the people
i love most

i’m undeserving
and i take for granted
most things i have
in this brief life,
especially
her unconditional
love

and tho
i’m so far beneath
the kind of man she deserves
to be with
i just want her to know
that despite my
madness
and despite
the hell
i sometimes
bring to
our lives,
I love her,
I love her
fiercer
than the fire
that continues to
ravage
what’s left
of me.

U Hate My Love

u
mistake
my love. u
can’t grasp the
utter depth of it. you
don’t know what it does
to me. you will never know.
you will never understand my
cravings, my needs, or my ways.
or what I must attain with this love.

u hate my love.

you hate the magnitude of
my love. you hate how my love
challenges you. you hate that
you can’t love like i love.
you hate how it sends me into
exotic lands far away from
where you are.

u hate my love.

u hate that it throws me into
a raging melancholy, lost in it,
unable to function in your world
for days. you think it’s strange,
lazy, a phase i have to push thru.

you despise
the books i read. u loathe
the art. the things i write
and the words i say. they’re
painful to you. you don’t
know where i come up with
this stuff. you’ve never gazed
in at your own soul, let alone
in the eyes of one who is
drunk with this furious love.

and just like the average
Joe who gets told
an uncomfortable truth,
you’ll attempt to destroy
this loves purveyor. and
you will be mad with venom
in doing this.

your love fears the dark. my love
rejoices in it. my love is rapture.
my love is daring. my love doesn’t
yield to security. my love is
free. your love is ruled. my
love feeds the world.
your love dies
with your
notions.
and u
hate
it.

A Night to Remember

She’s like a sacred flower
forever in bloom,
forever yearning for
the divine rapture
among the sorrows
of the earth.

And her soft whispers in my ear
dissolve the walls of
security
that I’ve gotten
too comfortable behind,
and the taste of her
love lingers
on my lips and fingers
as I’m left trembling, driving
off into the mist
before dawn.

Isn’t funny how the universe
has a way
of nudging us into
enchanting circumstances
that our rigid culture
would otherwise
have us elude?

Everything is Better in the Dark

“The moon, like a flower,
In heaven’s high bower,
With silent delight
Sits and smiles on the night.”

~ William Blake

---

Everything is better in the dark

The air turns a little purer
and the division between
the heart and ego wanes,
and our pupils swell
as our vision rescinds,
leaving us groping
dauntlessly
into the
enchanted
forest

Everything is better in the dark

Forbidden Night

Our quest to feel intensely alive,
Moonlight dripping in those outlaw eyes,
Oh, how we can get so out of control
At times
Finding ourselves so often entirely
Alone in the fertile fields of chaos
As you, the goddess of chance
Dance madly, barefoot
To the rhythm of the sky
And i drink whiskey
As the scream of the
Butterfly
Ushers us into
That forbidden
Night

God, look at you there,
So primal in your lust, so exotic
In the way you sway in the
Mushroom fields of a dead world,
Look at you, untroubled,
Revived, so carefree
As the ancient rain falls
On your silken skin
forcing my bloodshot eyes
to weep tears of rapture
At the cosmic beauty
Of it all.

Damsel in Distress

She loved me early on because
of the mystery and the potential
she thought she saw in me.

She liked the edgy words I wrote,
she liked the art, and the way
I carried myself. She fell for
those worn-out Red Wing boots
and that leather flask of soul
forever placed in the ass pocket
of my stained jeans.

She was curious over that
battered old rucksack
stuffed with poetry and pain
that hung heavily from
my shoulders.

She was enthralled by the allegory
in the tattoos and the hardback
vintage books of Baudelaire, Emerson,
and Poe I carried to that dingy
dive bar at the edge of town.

She said it did something to her,
I was dark but pure, she saw it in
the language of my eyes. I was
unlike the others she said, I
didn’t give a damn about
what most cared for.

She liked that.

I never understood who she thought
I was. I tried to warn her but she
just clung tighter to the man
she thought she knew.

My intense hunger for solitude started
to take its toll on her. She hated that
the art was a priority and she refused
to reckon with that ragged old shadow
that engulfs the core of who I am.

It pissed her off when I skipped out
on the cocktail parties, the beach trips,
and all the other festivals of her life.

For her, it was impossible to fathom
how a man could dwell so comfortably alone
in the back alleys of the endless night.

Now she throws ashtrays at my head
when I come home at 3am,
and she
takes a knife to the art,
and laughs
at the poetry
as mascara tears
stream down her
pretty little face.

I tried to warn the little
high-heeled damsel
before the distress
inevitably
took her to that
crazy place
they all
go.

Once again,
she ignored my pleas.

Shacked Up

I was shacked up with a beautiful
alcoholic brunette
who liked to make love on rainy
hungover mornings.
When we’d get done
she’d make us both a stiff drink
and we’d dance to music
as the sound of rain
hammered the windows
in the grey dawn. After 5
whiskeys
I’d start reciting my poetry
on top of our kitchen
table. She’d screech out
“you’re never gonna make it,
you fuck.”

“Fuck you” I’d retort,
“I’m a fucking genius,
you just can’t see it
cause you’re a fucking drunk.”

Then I’d make us both
a stiff drink
and we’d make love again
as the rain came down
and never stopped.

Resist

Prejudiced eyes are blind
and hearts full of conclusions
are dead.
Love is the ultimate act of rebellion.
But they don’t want you to love.
They want you and I divided.
They thrive off of our hatred
and disharmony.
They know if they destroy love,
the essence of who we are,
they’ve got us in chains for life.

my only luxury

she thought that I could keep her from harm
resting her head upon my tattooed arm,
I knew that any moment
that her raging torment
would pop off like a screaming alarm.
she knew my problems and I knew hers,
i drank too much, she smoked too much,
i read too much, she bled too much.
she was never meant to be here,
neither was I, and we knew that fate
intervened in our unforeseen state.
so hell, we took advantage of what
was not meant to be,
and we threw our souls
eagerly into this harmony.
this is the world man, this is
how its supposed to be.
because the most alive are ones
who live unguarded, who roll with it,
who heave their hearts into whatever
chaos life throws on their porch.
even in the dreadful storm
they still carry the torch.
one night, with gleaming
lights over Manhattan,
she came in, sexy, scheming,
i swore i was dreaming,
lingerie, heels, sexiness unearthed.
she gave me that damn look,
as she pulled off my tie, shirt, belt.
i mistook her fear as love.
god, there’s such beauty
in her fucking insanity.
she got up on top of me
rotating them hips so I can see,
then the mysterious look,
frantic eyes of an absolutist
while the knife slowly
melted into my throat.
somehow, i knew it man.
i knew this beautiful catastrophe
that I’d thrown my whole self into
would be the utter death of me.
this was my only luxury.