Purple Elephants

I am covered in bandages; my fingers are skinned to their veins. I’ve been torn down. I’m clumsy and I bruise like soft fruit. Sunboy, you have ruined me, being wrapped up in you makes me sick. It’s not bad sick, it’s good sick. I’m all jumbled inside, my heart is beating but it’s somewhere outside my skin; I put both hands into my chest and it’s empty and it’s full and you and I and oh- it’s too, too much. Your mouth is open, eyes are rolling back in my head and our lungs are beating furiously into each other. Spontaneous combustion. Gasps, drowning, the salt of sweat on skin. I will strip down and dive, splinters in my sides, deep down into that abandoned pool. Snap a picture. I’ll hide behind this shattered chandelier and I want to hold your hand- yes, this way, not that way- through the gaps in the glass.

My head is full of poetry, I want you hungry. I’m hungry. You make me feel seventeen, I’m clumsy and shy and sixteen, even! Your jokes shiver down my spine and I swear I’ll never stop laughing. Let’s make up languages and speak in accents, brew tea in your storybook house; I want to sit you down and cook a million gorgeous dishes on that big, black stove. Let’s run. That stage and those shelves will feel our bones yet, Sunboy.

Everything is ruined forever! Where are those purple elephants, I want them here, I want them sinking softly down on their knees and pushing their magnificence into my little striped carpet. I’m going to get down off my bed and wrap my arms around their heads, push my forehead against the heavy folds of eyelids. I’ll cry for both of us, it’s terrible and it’s true.

- What do you love?
- Orthography.

I’m seeing bicycles, lots of yellow bicycles, the room is flooded full of synesthesia. I am lost in redness that halos out around my hands. There are long, slick creatures sliding over my lampshades, but they are transparent and I can see their insides glow. Misplaced beating hearts.

- What do you see?
- Neon lights. Lips that give electric shocks.

Everything is ruined forever! I don’t mind.

Symptoms of the Sun God

Dark rising sun. No need to knock before coming. Pulling your shirt up, your chest opens; I see ripples- muscles and ribs under your smooth skin. Could I reach in? You are David, can you see it ? I said your body was a painting but I meant a sculpture- I meant it as the sighs of Michelangelo, as they must have been, as he stepped forward and ran his hands down your back, his tongue against a stone thigh, one limp hand holding the chisel, the other cupping a cheek. You have both made your home in me.



Pagan, I lie. In the shadows, Ra rises up.

Bare skin. Trees split with single cracks- an ax against stripped oak. Pools of water. With an earlobe, and four hands pulling, we can mold sinews. You dig rivers with your fingernails, come up gasping for breath from beneath waves. We wake early in the morning to escape the afternoon crowds and skinny-dip in oceans. Minutes to dip our toes in. Do you find my ankles daring?

The riverbed is scattered with golden and purple stones. I’d like to bite into your palm like a peach.

When the Stars Threw Down Their Spears

The productivity of this week has taken a severe downturn, while the stress level has swelled up above my head. This is due to a resurfacing addiction to voyeurism (stumbling mindlessly through other people’s lives) and to a boy who makes my heart stutter.

High Light, Dark Night

Found the palm-sized music box she sent me, toyed with the lever, twisting it round clock-wise, just like she said. It was bells and the Beatles. The door was ajar, and my fingers were embarrassed, but in the way you accidentally do something cute on the subway and secretly hope all those people you will never meet are watching.



Looked for the beautiful flower he grew me, that I’d pressed- in spite of all the heartaches are regrets- between books. My hands came back up through the rubble empty.

I kissed her in March. What did that mean? Freckles. Scared of breaking everything apart.
-What are you most afraid of?
-Fear.



Is someone without thoughts alive? Were these characters ever really birthed? What irresponsible authors!
A day ago, I was so drawn to my desk to write these things down. I could not wait to hand in a sheaf of papers, to see her unsmiling eyes draw in these words as if breathing. But:
Death, is nothingness and to humans, can never be known. But, in that the heimlich of death is birth- the process of coming from nothingness, experiencing birth (both technical and figurative) is the closest that any human can get to becoming dead without becoming dead.

I suspect I am talking nonsense. The only thing we know is that we know nothing. Thanks, Socrates. If you were here, I’d share the juice. That statue would have been prettier with the both of us.

“For the purposes of this paper, I am breaking down the fourth wall.” I’m writing a paper that is a meta-discourse on itself. I’m lost in this hypocrisy of loathing and wielding hammers and sticks and- god, I am aching for you so much I can’t think. It’s not your fault, it’s mine. I try not to get lost in those who will lose me. No wristwatches, no mountains- it’s straight back to high-school these days. Trading secret smiles across the science classroom and everything too shy-making. I won’t tell, I can’t tell. I can see freckles in your eyes up close.



One of the boys who told me he loved me- years ago, now- says, today, I went to the zoo.
-How was it?
-Everything was asleep.



As in my heart.

Don't Ever Feel Lonely

What I like best is sitting out in the sun, writing postcards, flipping through polaroids, falling asleep with my arms around you. Waiting for that tremor in my stomach that says, no, that says, yes, that says, it’s too late no no no no what are you doing. Felt an inner tug when he curled up my bed, shook his hair out of his eyes, and said he moved around her in the music. Could have been anybody else and I wouldn’t even have heard. Right? Every time I hear footsteps, my heart skips a beat. I don’t know why but I know why. This won’t happen, I won’t let it.

Button says, don’t hurt him, he seems nice.
She says, do not break his heart.
I say, I won’t.
She says, we all know you will. People tend to fall for illusions. They think themselves in love with you.

She would know. Button bought a unicycle and went to town. I wish my name were Circus, she says. She’d be glittered up to her eyelids, in slick blue shorts and a helmet made from horse hair. She says, the apples are so shiny and full that it makes my insides break. She says, Will you come into the woods, strip down, and paint your cheeks with dirt?

She says, When you’re going mad, is it better to be quiet, or to be loud?


Lighting my cigarette from an ashy stub feels like I’m giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Today, another notorious three hour breakfast. Let’s divide lips and spoon up buttered egg yolk and toasted pita. Brie and bacon. Crackers and chai. Juice.

Bitter Boy broke his eight year fast, sprinkling pieces of maple bacon. His tongue darted, popping out his teeth for Victoria, in vain hopes of a scare and a smile. Victoria said she once kissed a hillbilly in New Orleans. He hugged her right round the middle and whispered promises through his gap teeth. Bitter Boy had been high and smiling in the early hours, bobbing along aimlessly in halls of water, his eyes now wide and painted like a harlequin dancer. “Bacon grease is the best conditioner,” says Bitter Boy, running his fingers through Bruiser’s hair as she tugged away.

Bruiser and I began the morning as twins, but when the sun climbed higher, she emerged in plaid, and Bitter Boy stripped down in the kitchen, plucking at his skin and pulling with insistent fingers. His eyes to treat the day, kohled up to Cleopatra glam. I snapped polaroids of your fingers spreading open the skin of a kiwi and plunging inside, and kissed you in your blue and black shirt and squeezed your fingers and watched you run away. Bitter Boy says, these photographs are of the most awkward party I’ve never been to.

Rosemary’s words flip and twist. She says, “I miss not knowing certain things. When did friends just become people to rant to about whether or not we feel loved or unloved by our lover at that moment?” I unbutton my shirt down to my bellybutton and push my ear up against the door. I hear her echoes. “Do you know who Gia Carangi was?” I still don’t know.

With a Ghost

Just keep fluting forever, my darling- my darlings! Don’t forget! I treasure you more than gold. Your soft voice is feathers. I’m choking on silver, lay me down in blond overtones.

A singer in a pink cowboy hat trailed fingernails down my face. “We’re on ecstasy,” he said. “All of us.” The whole band raged down with open mouths. I could feel the pulse through my fingertips and the speakers moving in tune to my bloodbeat. I thought I loved you when you reached forward and grasped the microphone. Your girl’s mouth dropped open every centimeter that you seemed closer to the crowd. So close, I brushed against the stage, dreaming of those words that came ever closer from your lips. Thrown forward, those speakers always tumbling over, the boy with the cigarette tongue, and those girls always bumming from me and laughing with their hair falling down.

Fall down fall down fall down. I’m holding on to you, deep underneath, soft and dark. I will keep moving until you move in me. I kiss that girl and that boy and I am holding words from you in my hands and they illuminate my eyes. My wrist is white-hot from the burn of your cigarette and my neck is white from the halo of your gaze. I’m looking for something I’m not finding. But I saw that girl catch eyes with me from across the garage, and what? What. I don’t know what you want, but I’ll empty my pockets until I give it to you.

She Used to be a Wallflower and Now She Is a Raver

-What will I do?
-Well, what are you interested in doing? Other than author and rockstar. Let’s pretend those aren’t options.
-Princess?

It is summer in our school, summer in the city. Tired hippies pull guitars along the ground to a decent patch of sunlight. Hipsters swap spit under trees. There are doves in our arms.

He tasted like dirt and water. Mud in my mouth. I leave you, am sucked back in. I have been swallowed. Everything in the morning is wet. Everything in our mourning.

Fell into a ditch, slammed my knees into gravel. Bleeding and bruised, holding hands with Bitter Boy, feeding him hummus and pita. All the bodies pounding into each other were beautiful.

French boy says, “Are you waiting for your girlfriend?” I see the side of his profile bathed in a hazy glow, light diffused from the lamp by the door, and the discoball of the rave behind us. Someone has projected “Johann Sebastian Bach” over the wall graffiti. Things quiver and pulse. We have bubbles in our mouths.

I say, “Yes,” and he looks sad.
“Do you ever,” he says.
“Boys?” I say. He looks down.
“I’m not looking at your ---,” he says.
“It’s okay,” I say.

I glow in the dark. Eager fingers reach forward to touch my circuiting.