In Which I Miss Being Able To Stay Up All Night.

ain't no comfort here, oh no.

ain't no good-time-girls tonight,
no whiskey shots and no
fireplace stoked, 'cuz
ain't no warmth inside
this shanty town this time

ain't no comfort here, not here
where that breeze blows hot and
the Big Man's the only one who'll
give you a ride

well, ain't no music here this time,
boy, ain't no
jazz, no swing,
ain't even no blues hangin' 'round
these crossroads tonight

ain't no comfort here tonight.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson_%28musician%29#Devil_legend

In Which My Skin Feels Like I Have a Fever.

can we just live in
arms, please?
in my arms and yours,
wrapped
wholesome and warm,
and never leaving you
nauseous from your thighs
to your ribcage
aching from your scalp
to your fingertips,
never leaving you burning
bones to skin or
shaking in between --
never leaving you at all?

In Which Music Is Influencing Me, Again.

pounding, that beat
slams,
that song hits with
every dark or dusky word,
with every
lung-wrenching riff,
each cymbal crashing like
eyes clenching closed
or wounds sewed shut,
the very sound is body is
arms-legs-neck-shoulders
thrown hard against
walls of air or
your own life,
brain against skull --
the only struggle you have
left within you,
inescapable and
pounding.

In Which I Have a Headache.

so here's another
lost-soul-baby-girl
crying at four a.m.,
inhaling her failures
along with the nicotine.
life is oh so tough, isn't it,
when you're in-between
and underpaid?
when prayer is
less effective and
harder to come by and
burns your insides more
than the contents of the
bottles on your
nightstand.
give it up, give it up,
baby girl,
cuz no one's gonna steer
this ship to shore.
no one's gonna anchor you down.
no crew to help you weather
this storm.
i'm not here to unmix your
metaphors, not gonna
take the wheel or
be your wings or
carry you home.
no one has the key.
not you. not even you.

In Which If It's Going To Be This Humid, Then It Really Should At Least Be Raining.

they think in promises or
fragments
of spiderwebs between
curtains and windows
or spells and magic words
floating on certain kinds of smoke
(not inhaled not burning throats
but) silken
across the room,
or sometimes
every once in a
blue moon they
think in weather formations,
and that's when you get
those storms those
lighting-hot boiling-rain
thunderstorms
that make you weep
and at the same time
be.

In Which Lame Things Are Happening to Relatively Good People.

they say bad things happen
in threes, so
one -- you woke up
this morning
before the sun, even though
it's summer and at this
time of year, the sun rises
even before the birds
start to wail and
two -- glass on the asphalt
glints prettier in the daylight
than the stars ever bother,
cuts so deep and smooth
you don't even notice until
you're bleeding
and then, finally,
three -- you're lost,
standing in the bright hardness
of this panting city and
wondering
how you got here,
where you were going,
why no one cares enough
to help you home.

In Which I'm Wearing BPAL's "Ulalume" and It's Making Me Feel Like a Faerie.

it's easy forget
(or pretend to ignore)
those little things
those
add-it-up knock-you-down
slings and arrows
when you're freshly showered
and smell like a poem
or when someone sleeping
is beautiful enough to merit
kisses that
only you will remember
or
when you never leave
your bed,
your
soft comforter and clean sheets.

In Which -- Holy Balls, It's Fucking HOT.

there's too much sweat
running from my scalp
to my fingertips
in rivulets through my
fingerprints
to really write
anything
tonight.