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.

Apartment 415 - Mirror, Mirror

You can identify your own flaws by scrutinizing strangers...

I watched a woman
      from across a platform
at the subway station...

Straightened dishwater-blonde hair
glimmering in the subterranean fluorescence;
          striking posture,
      a dancer's figure,
and a thrifty ensemble that bespoke good taste
in spite of budgetary constrictions.

She extricated a circular compact from her purse
the way people in films exhume a pack of cigarettes...
    Then, in a very deliberate fashion,
she removed a pill and swallowed it.

              Birth control is like receiving a governor's pardon
          in the process of planning a crime.
              I resent this woman for that kind of indemnity.

I don't even know her.

Strange, how the mind can pass judgment

on assumptions of character.

It's easy to feel high
on the blissful soapbox of bigotry;

As that pill crested the ridges of her teeth
and met the soft tissue of her tongue, then esophagus,
my mind conjured a phantasmagoria of lewd images
on the surrounding subway walls.

          Sadly,

that's more of a reflection of my character

              than hers.

Apartment 311- To the Victor go the Spoils

A surging flood of panic, riding a wave of adrenaline

like a jockey clinging to a thoroughbred,
crashes through my veins at the sight:

She stopped breathing.

The steady undulation of her breast ended as abruptly
as plans for peaceable disarmament in a middle-eastern conflict.

It's ironic that her attempt

at liberation from daily trepidation
might have freed her from this mortal coil...

She stopped breathing.

That does not mean you should do the same.

You can view human beings as machinery.
A million intricate functions operating conjunctively
towards a singular purpose: to exist.
Life sustaining life for life's sake.

She was breathing to facilitate the circulation of oxygen
through her bloodstream and to vent carbon dioxide.
Oxygen is required to allow cells to produce energy
via cellular respiration.
Carbon dioxide is produced by passive diffusion of gases and,
due to it's toxicity,
must be removed from the body by exhalation.

However,
she stopped breathing.

You can desensitize yourself with logic.
That's not a human being lying prone on my carpet.
It's a malfunctioning machine.
It's a piece of equipment
that you don't own
that has ceased to function in any productive way.
It simply has to be removed,
and it ceases to be your concern.

The machine was supplementing its biochemistry
with external chemicals (see also:
Opium
Cannabis
Lysergic acid diethylamide)
leading to irregularities in its primary functions
and ultimately an abrupt cessation of its prime directive.

She simply stopped breathing.

This is nothing to become emotional over.
It's a fact of function.

Thousands of people die daily
for myriad reasons.

This is simply the final stage in a process labeled existence.
The sentimentality is a bi-product.

Existence is a label attached by certain machines
attempting to convince themselves

of a greater significance to their functionality.

You can divorce yourself from emotion
by disconnecting from labels

that would otherwise cause confusion.

Think of it this way-

Your lover is not dead on your floor;
instead, insist that your toaster is broken,
your microwave is on the fritz
or your washer/dryer unit burned out.

Perhaps it's time to purchase a new one.