meanings of the word

it's better: in a word,
better like it's better to be beaten bloody
than killed outright.
better that you let me down easy,
baby into a cradle of reeds and set
adrift on choppy riverwaves.
is this for my benefit?
better not to break my heart down
the road, better to spear it here,
now, roast it over an open fire
and lay it on bed of cloves when
you nudge it back in my direction.

if i'm looking at you in shock, it's only to say:
it's yours now, why would i want that back?

but its been yours before and before that it was his
and before that it was hers and it was gnawed on
by ravenous wolves or passed over by spoiled
and choosy cows and now here i am with a heart
dotted with puncture wounds in the shape
of someone else's careless teeth, with stamps
of disapproval over the font - side - back.

do you look at it and think it's useless to you?
i think it would serve you just fine.
she's a good heart, she's just been trampled on
a few times.

if i'm looking at you funny it's because i don't understand -
she's yours now and i cleaned her up nice just so you wouldn't be ashamed
to carry her around next to yours.

better, in a sense, but only because you said so
and not because it's true at all or even a little bit.
i hurt as badly as if i'd been scalded by bathwater or
choked by an aggressive lover - no better.
no worse.

the us-ghosts

slay me
with all the things you really are
covert and stealthy sweetheart
second kiss and I felt nothing
but I dream and I feel it now
and I don't get how it works
or why I just know that every
time I close my eyes I see you
and you're kissing me and
loving me and protecting me
and it's backwards you and me
not how it's supposed to be or go
when I love someone else this time around
and you're not looking in my direction
anymore and it's better this way us
as friends and me not wanting to feel you
against me and you not dragging me down
just to build me up again sick cycles in
a fucked up courtship and that's all this is
is fucked up and I can live with that but
I can't live wondering why it's you loving me
when I'm sleeping when it ought to be him.

post-it

Thanks for:

underwear
on the floor
crumpled up fabric black and blue

holes in the lace
in the shape
of your thumbs

& bruises on my hips to match.

anti-venom

Speak to me of poisons,
that's something I understand.
Blue eyes get under skin,
burn lesions into unsuspecting thighs,
corrode fingers once functional.
Slow-acting and dangerous,
dizzy with an onset of invisible vertigo
and this is how I am going to die.
My heart shot through with it,
makes me clumsy, makes me sick
pumping it faster and faster through
my body from vein to vein to vein.

Jellysting - spiderbite -
slick flesh of little jungle frog -
none can be as deadly as this, can they?
I'm breathless, falling fast, it's all
going dim.
Dead to everything in the world that
isn't you, coursing through my
blood. black streaks on my brain.

Quick! Pour me another.
shot to the arm.
Direct injection of this deadly concoction.
Ask when I'm conscious:
am I an addict? or am I my own personal savior? or am I a goner?
always falling, always dying, always another victim
of someone's potion.

I survived again, though, so speak to me of poisons.
That's a subject
I know well.

sugar spun carousels at chocolate-coated carnivals

- smooth as peanutbutter silk, the kind you spread across a body with the flat side of a blunt blade, carefully sweeping it up and over inches of creamy skin, chasing the taste with the flat of a tongue. that's what you are to me, guilty pleasure, catching eyes like baby-blue icing painting a seascape on some avant garde wedding cake, and mine are plain as chocolate kisses but they melt together like its what they were meant for, mixing in swirls of light and dark, creating something new, something decadent, something not everyone can appreciate.

dark room with hip hop playing in the background, thumping beat, catchy hook, and the taste of beer is sharp on the back of my tongue but i imagine it would be sweet on yours and you're standing so close to me i can barely resist the hungry urge to find out. share smiles like handfuls of m&ms, the yellow kind, the sunshine-y kind, peanuts nestled in the middle like prizes and that's how i think our first kiss could be, washing away the sour taste of something else with sweetness that takes time to enjoy, chew once to crack the shell, lap up the chocolate, chew twice to taste what's hidden.

legendary starlets smile at us from paintings hung on carefully painted walls while the smell of smoke and smoke hangs thick around us and we're bonding, we're all but sucking the air from each others' lungs, lips pressed together in secondhand kisses, fingers tangled over the smooth plastic and glass of lighter and pipe. i'm breathing but all i'm thinking about is you, two feet away and beautiful, you, two minutes ago and holding me tight, enveloping me in your arms sweet and gentle as caramel and just as hard to rub off my skin.

left stained in you, sticky with you, craving more as soon as i'm left with nothing but an empty wrapper and the taste of you in my mouth. sixty tiny minutes and that's all i get and then it's over and time for goodbye, careful hugs and smiles and my eyes following you through the room and out the door and my teeth aching for you as soon as it closes with a snickt and all i can think about, beer and marijuana heavy, is how you are -