Apartment 187 - Survivalism

We never look at each other anymore.


Not really, anyways.

I stood next to my own dad on a bus
for forty five minutes
before I turned to look at him.
Before that
I was just sizing him up for a fight
out of the corner of my eye...

I don't see other people.

Every meat-sack on the street is just another
stranger,
another fucking mugger,
a future fistfight.
Something to keep in the crosshairs.

Living here...
you keep your eyes
aimed at the sidewalk,
ready at a moment's notice
for the fight of your life.


They told me in high school
we lived like clans or some shit in cave-man days.
I piped up with
"Yeah, that's cuz one dude
dragged a bunch of bitches back to his cave
and then took on all comers."

That's how we live these days too.
Kill or be killed.
Keep to your cave.

You look at someone cross-ways,
you better be down to defend yourself...

I can't take a piss without prepping
to put a hurt on somebody.

I can't walk to work
without some thundercunt
spitting on my new Nikes
to prove he's still a man
in spite of the fact his daddy used to
corn-hole him so hard his brains
beat up against his skull until they swelled
like a teenager's dick on prom-night.


Fuck, man.

Sometimes I wonder
why I'm trying so hard to stay alive;

this isn't living...

This is dying one breath at a time.

Apartment 329 - Absence Makes the Heart Despondent

The toilet seat was still warm when I sat down.

                The bastard's been in here masturbating again.

The absence of offending odors

and the lingering heat in the seat

belies his extended presence here

without utilizing the toilet for it's intended purpose.

You'd think that after 7 years of marriage

it would occur to him that I'm profoundly aware

of what he gets up to in here...

because we damn sure don't get up to it

in the bedroom any longer.

Where's the intimacy in titillating yourself with a picture

of a woman that only exists on paper?

Because I assure you, she's not naturally that perky...

Those tits have been touched up more than a prizefighter's face.

You'd be amazed
how easy it is to photoshop perfection these days...

The computer can remove wrinkles
that God himself would struggle with.

Age melts away at the touch of a button.

Smiles can be morphed to transmit the proper seductive sentiment.

It's like crafting your ideal woman-

Frankenstein's sex slave.

There's no love there.

But, then again, there's no love here either.

For him

there's more in a minute of fantastical ecstasy

than a lifetime of true love and affection.
His life is mired in delusion-

However-
I was once told that the definition of insanity
was taking the same course of action repeatedly
and expecting a different outcome,
so maybe I'm the one who's crazy...

What I can't conjure is why I stay

when he's cheating me out of love at every pass
and he'll never understand...

Infidelity is not the act of intercourse,

it's all about intentions:

and by that rationale he's been leaving me since the moment we met.

Apartment 464 - The Inferno

If love is a fire,
this is a funeral pyre;

ashes falling

like a nuclear winter...

Like a blowtorch,
sex had soldered us together...

I'm too paralyzed by fear

to hope for something more.

Only in the black of night do we truly see each other.

We barely speak
outside the foul-mouthed foreplay
and passionate epithets exchanged

in our sweat-soaked moments

of collective agony.

Like so much of my life,
this has to hurt to feel good.

This is love to me...
true feelings

trapped within

chrysalides of enmity.

A smack on the ass must suffice
when a kiss on the lips can kill you.

I don't dare look her in the face.

There's so much I say

in spite of myself...

A litany of confessions

in my expressions.

Not that she would notice...

Her eyes are outside-

aimed at a horizon I can't see.

We sit

and share this silence

because it's the only thing

either of us still cherishes...

Apartment 380 - The Morning After

My girlfriend and my ex-girlfriend

follow one another consecutively

in my cell-phone directory.

It's as though the alphabet

is conspiring to ruin my life.

Apartment 281 – It has to be Written Because It Can’t be Said

I write, but I wouldn’t call myself a writer.
Most of what I’ve written
are the things other people have already said
that I just happened to hear and wanted to
make more memorable.

I have a half-full notebook
lined with words of other people and
when I fill it up I think I’ll just throw it away. Or burn it.
No need to keep a reminder
that I made a living using real writers’ garbage –
their throw-away lines that
sound so good I instinctively
whisper the word “fuck” because the
freak genius in their words makes me wish I had
been brilliant enough myself
to come up with what I’ve seen.

I’ll fill the notebook and throw it away.
Turn a new leaf and start
quoting myself instead of someone else.

Apartment 258 – Handicapped Romance

I know the time
by the sound of their steps in the hall:
it’s one forty-five
give-or-take a few minutes.

Most Saturdays like clockwork
she and a new friend
walk past my door
on the way to her place
with magnets where
their lips should have been.
Soon the magnets
will droop and find a home in their hips
and by the end they’ll fall away completely
never to attract each other again.

I don’t know how else to explain it
except that she must constantly
need a witness to her desirability.
Why else leave the blinds open every time?

And, of course, I watch –
not voyeuristically, but ashamedly
making sure he respects her boundaries.

And when I can watch no more I
unlock my door in repayment.
So when he leaves
(and they always do) she can
sneak in quietly
place the contents of her pockets
on the nightstand
and fall asleep next to me.

Bon appétit mon Coeur!

Like leftovers from an extravagant meal,
I thawed my heart and crammed it down her throat
like you force charcoal for an overdose.

I'd hoped it would enliven her
and purge the poisons plaguing her vitality.

She disgorged my offering soon after consumption.

She believes this means she's dying inside.


She's afraid she can't sustain
the buds laboring to bloom in the cavity
between her hips and heart...

Likewise,
I'm starting to suspect my gift was spoilt before I'd frozen it...