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...

Apartment 202 – Disastrous to Want Him

Sometimes I think about fucking my roommate,
so I brush my teeth to make up for having dirty thoughts.
Clean teeth is the path to a clean conscience
but the couple on the Close Up tube always taunts me.
Their cardboard eyes are the only things in this room
that scrutinize the unburdening and the purgation.

Get off your knees. The toilet bowl ain’t an altar.
And tell him that your bulimia has made you better at giving blow-jobs too.

Looking in the mirror I see as a voyeur does.
Both of us bent over the sink like question marks
racing toward heaven and ready to stain the world with sin.

Have your fantasy. It won’t make the cravings go away.

And sometimes, too, I wish he had cancer
instead of herpes, so I wouldn’t become infected.