Apartment 179 – Emergency Exit

We had a love affair with fire.
You helped me burn down all my bridges
and with the rubble you built yourself a way out.

Up in flames. Now that’s the way love goes.

Apartment 159 - Sleeping with Past Perfection

Years ago the nightmares were so commonplace

they never waited for me to close my eyes;

it was always the dreams of

being happy that kept me up at night.

I grew up living in the subjunctive -

right on the corner of ‘Maybe If’ and ‘I Hope’ -

so I’ve always been aware that the future

belongs to those who live in the suburbs.

It’s been two years now,

since I woke up next you…

since I opened my eyes inside a dream.

I dreamed of a heart etched in concrete.

Trapped inside I was the A in P+A

but I became jealous because I was not the P instead.

And as always I stood inert, as if handcuffed

in between hating myself and loving the

dreams of myself, wanting to be first but

settling for anything I can get.

Dreams have a way of reminding and

creating something self-aware – a wound that

laughs at itself? – a dividing line,

separating what

was and what could have been.

Nothing more

than a single brush stroke

on my blank flesh. A reminder, definitely,

but also an opening

for blackness to seep from.

You kicked me out and I

left my heart on the doorstep – a

contemporary Trojan horse,

this time doomed to fail.

Apartment 315 - The Soundtrack to A Snap-Shot

I'm scared to death of silence.

These days

I'm speaking just to keep the thoughts at bay,

the way you clap at flocks of birds to drive them skyward.

I turn on the television and beg for a newscast.

I scan the channels praying for a televangelist.

I tune in to talk radio.
Anymore, I'm a fiend for infomercials.

I miss your clamor:

your constant hum-

the comforting white noise

acting as the metronome

to my insignificant routine.

When the silence started,

I couldn't keep my thoughts straight.

I listened to the faucet drip.

I noticed the refrigerator compressor kicking on and off.

I heard the parties across the courtyard.

I caught the faint reverberations of some 

           God-damned dog barking...

                                             Barking...

                                                   Barking.

There are so many sounds contained in silence-

it's suffocating.

Silence is a cornucopia of sound.

Is that the word?

The pilgrim bullhorn?
I struggled with that one all through grade school.
I guess that's not exactly what I'm trying to convey...

The silence is cacophonous.

That's a little better...
But what does that even mean?

I just can't make sense of anything.

I need your babble to anchor my thoughts.

Everything congeals when you're ignoring something.

These sounds are like schoolyard bullies I can't evade...

they push me this way and that,

depriving me of quiet.

Taking all my sanctuary.

I can't even seem to sleep
if I can't hear you breathing.
The steady rhythm of the air escaping your chest...
the slight whistle of some accumulation in your nasal passage.
All these creature comforts I crave
and can't sate without you.

It's like not knowing your leg is broken
until someone steals your crutch.
I didn't realize how necessary you were
until my world went quiet

and the chaos sought me out...

Apartment 420 - The Funk in Dysfunction

I danced with the ghost of romances' past last night... 

greedy fingers prying open wounds nearly healed;

but not quite. 

There's something particularly masochistic 
     in being romantically bulimic. 

You engorge yourself with love- 

filling to capacity, 

but expelling it emphatically

before it can sustain you. 

You're an emotional accordion. 

It's not as though you're suffering needlessly, though. 
There's a wealth of people profiting from misery. 
     Just turn on the radio from time to time...

   Pop songs are plagues set to melodies. 

     Honestly, though,

what good can come from the gluttony of love? 

It simply isn't enough to find joy anymore- 

          No stories begin at "happily ever after."

That line's a better closer

     than a fucking coffin nail. 

So I scrape off some skin, 
and call the last girl I slept with. 
     For the first time since that night. 
         After nearly a year has passed. 

I throw a text message at the suicidal chick 
that sent nude photographs of herself to my cellphone. 

I even send a note 
to the woman who gave me the worst head EVER.
You know...
     the one who's responsible for the scars???
Who basically lapped at my foreskin for forty minutes
and occasionally made actual contact with the head, 
           causing spasmodic contortions 
that thrust my dick directly into her gag mechanism. 

I figure round two ought to garner me a Grammy nomination. 

That's how you get ahead in this life: 
     you suffer so many setbacks 
that with even a mediocre depiction of events
     you're given fame for a consolation. 
The door prize at the rehab clinic 

          is 2 million copies sold on your next album. 
5 million copies of your bestseller fly off shelves 

      once it hits paperback. 
                     Easily. 

The way I see it, 
I'm one bad relationship away 

     from writing that ever-elusive hit single.
A few tear-tinged evenings away from a world tour 
     and a nickel-a-day coke habit. 

I've just got to find someone to put me into my misery... 

Apartment 411 - It's all there in Black and White

No matter how many times I fold the paper, 

it just won't seem to close.
No apologies printed.
No corrections tendered.

Not that it would make a damn bit of difference-
bigotry is headline fodder
easily enough recanted
in the smallest print imaginable
on page 6 or 7.

We don't even warrant that, apparently.

I get it.

Misanthropic missives
and hipster epistles
in the editorial column of some obscure publication
can somehow paint a saintly halo above your brow
in the eyes of the swine
herding in and out of night-clubs and coffee shops.
Addressing inconsistencies in treatment 

will merely get you buried.
So they get buried.

Sure, letting some redneck rant about
how he questions the moral integrity of a nation that lets it's
"nappy-haired nigger of a president
take away their bullets and
scrape out all their infants"
is an easy way to sell papers.

That doesn't make it right;
it damn sure doesn't make me wrong.

Infamy is not fleeting, friends,
and unfortunately
it's the precipice with the furthest fall.

It would be pitiable
if it weren't criminal.

Their only aim is deconstruction;
the only glory achieved
is through debasing any opposition.

Is anyone exalted anymore?
Is anything?

Another crease in the page
like the folds of my brain...
I still can't put the issue to bed
when there's ignorance all over it.

I need to stop people like this
from telling the world that it's okay to discriminate.
I need to shatter the lens
that insists on focusing on our differences
to create our definitions.

They used to be the moral majority.
That term has been usurped by "we."
If you don't fall under that heading,
you'll become the enemy.

Fuck them,
and then fuck you
for distributing abuse
instead of news...

It's not as though I haven't spent my entire life
under someone's scrutiny...

But, hell, who am I to criticize?

I'm just another name on the opinion page.

Apartment 348 - Pushing the Envelope

It's amazing what you're capable of

with your back against a wall. 

I sold smack on a playground today; 

      just biding time to scrounge the rent-

Two months ago I had never even seen the stuff. 
     I'd never procured it for personal use, 
     let alone sold it.

Now I'm a full-time profferer of prescriptions 
 for problems that can't be cured...
A modern day snake-oil peddler
 with a panacea for every conceivable ill. 

Trying to cope with depression? 
     This'll give you a shot in the arm!
Your boyfriend just broke your heart
mere weeks after breaking your hyman? 
     Here's a prick that you can depend on...

I thought I was better than this,

but who can afford to have scruples
when there are bills to be paid? 

Internally

I guess I'm still struggling to compete

with people who would never deign to take note of me...
My revenge is in undermining their immaculate lives, 
some drug-peddling Socrates
trying to keep the creditors at bay...

I'd always envisioned being someone's hero;  

at least being remembered for an act of creation. 

Instead I'm an enzyme for eradication... 

A cancer cell at best- 
     A fucking wrecking ball.

Somehow...

I'm not sure how it happened...

One day I woke up a sidekick 
to a heroine that's never saved anyone...

Apartment 206 - Even the Dead Need to Eat

Another year gone and I can’t
believe I’ve still got this millstone on my finger.
Crossing the threshold
as a married woman filtered me;
out of the world and
into the kitchen.

I used to write.
I used to be funny.
I used to be caring.
I used to run.
I used to be passionate.
I used to have a home.
I used to be in love.
I used to be a lot of things but
with every revolution these things fell away from me.
A friend gone here.
A dream lost there.

I jumped into the colander faithfully and
came back with dinner…and with all the
important pieces of myself missing
like the Wizard of Oz characters rolled into one.

This year our anniversary
fell on the day of the resurrection.
And as someone who needs to believe in such things
I was hoping this day would be enough
to bring our relationship back to life.
But watching him lay there
I’m reminded of the flood instead, and
with the rest of the dead we’ll just wash away.