The Day After the Last Day Ever

When the snow was falling, when the scent
of gin was rich on our tongues, we knew

where to find her. By candlelight, by a string
of warm white bulbs, we can find the form

of her slender frame. Her sharpened features,
our favorite parts of her altered structure.

The details have cut us open.
We are refusing treatment.
This is how we like to live now.

The sounds of the marching apocalypse have subsided. We are left

with a quiet hum,

a buzz crawling through our tired bones.
We need that warm bed and warm body

to calm us down, but she is flying now.
I wish I could fix her for ever and a day.

No radiation.
No second families.
No potential flight risks.

One good jolt, a dipped wing or blown
engine, and she could ignite the sky.

Bring about the end of days, but this is how we like to live now.

Terrified but happy. We want our arms
wrapped around that atom bomb, to keep

her from exploding. To keep the core
uncompromised.

She doesn't need me to defend her,
but says she likes it when I try.

End Times

Take back your apocalypse,
we have no need for your prophecies.

We have found girls with sharp bones and cities
who don't know our faces, but welcome us all
the same. The wind has been kind
to our hairstyles, and the trains wait for us.

Take back your apocalypse,
we have no use for your end times.

A younger us, an ignorant us, longed for a
change; a violent shock, a blackened sky.
We have found new homes, have practiced
strange rituals of our own.

Take back your apocalypse,
we have no patience for your fear.

There was a time when we wished to join
the fray. (We were going to be firefighters
when the floods rolled back.) The time
has passed, like your relevance.

Take back your apocalypse,
we have no room for your words.

We have no room for your scrolls.
We have no room for I'm Sorry.
We have no room for stockpiles.
We have no room for the end.

Knocked-Down Homes, Burned-Out Hearts

The season brings knocked-down homes, replaced
with burned-out hearts we can burrow into. Make a nest
for ourselves and sleep for months. The accommodations
would be a fine place to curl up into. Won't you host us?

We don't ask for much, just a place to keep us warm.
Maybe a cocktail before bed. Simple creatures demand
simple lives; we are no different. We demand a room
for rent. Somewhere to get the mind right, the body clean,

the needs serviced. Though they may be simple, our needs
are many. Care for us, beautiful girls and beautiful boys,
and we will buy you a wedding, or a rent-to-own bed.
We can treat you all like saints or burdens. Friends

or paper dolls. We can tie you down to four stanzas,
locked to sixteen lines, so you can't bother us ever again.
And maybe we'll take you out every so often, just to say
hello. To say: we used to live there, but that was forever ago.

On Reflection

There was a time when you
were enough. You were built

to love and you owned me.
When the honey dried,

when the season

changed, there was a time
when the idea of you was enough.

Something to get me through
the day, like a kind word

from a stranger; a moment

of accidental contact. A hand.
A stray hair. The small comforts

could only replace so much.
I wasn't made to love you,

but my wires got crossed.

[Broken hearts don't exist, for the organ...]

Broken hearts don't exist, for the organ
cannot be snapped. It's a pulling kind, a motion
that wears out wrists and jaws. The rip

is the new break. A tear mark, like a dark
spot in an open chest cavity. Broken hearts
don't exist, as much as we'd like them to.

We've never been ones for stitchwork,
the slit is too small to work with. Our fangs
would do the job just fine,

but we've been warned. Eating our own
stupid hearts went fine until
we filled up. Floating and drunk

off wine from our living vessels.

Modus Operandi

HER: When are you moving in with The Variant?
HIM: Who?
HER: ...
HIM: I don't know who you mean.
HER: But you do.
HIM: The first and last woman I move in with will be you in fifteen years.
HER: ...
HIM: ...
HER: That was weirdly romantic.
HIM: That's my modus operandi.
HER: Kisses.
HIM: I love you.
HER: I know.

Green Like July

Something about the light of this day makes me feel
fourteen again; when we'd walk
everywhere forever & never worry about tomorrow
or the day after. Upon re-examination,

it may be the scent. The air is full of Halloween (the cold
smell that always gets mistaken for "wet".)
Days like today have never heard of A/C units
or soundproof windows.

They have no need for such decadence & will not entertain the thought.

We want four-piece garage bands & girls
we don't know sitting beside us in backseats of cars
being driven by older friends, committed parents.
Give us driving too far in one direction;

a destination, or none. A mission that means nothing
to anyone, but everything to us.
We are good soldiers in this way -- we don't ask
questions. We are here to fight. To serve, indiscriminately.

Something about the light of this day makes me feel
fourteen again, and I can't help but think
of that terrible dream, or the best forgotten memory,
when I was young like I feel now:

A house in a Carolina. A girl I don't know
sitting beside me beneath a willow tree, keeping ourselves
from the rain. And in that moment, I think she kisses me,
but I don't know if this really happens

or if it's just the weather or something like that.

Parking Lot

The car she was in pulled up alongside a car she was not in. The engine was cut, and the girl's driver left the vehicle for the convenience store. The girl, alone in a hot and locked car, rolled down her window and dropped her arm out over the side, letting her palm brush against the hot metal door.  She turned to her right, looking out the window, to find a passenger in the driver's seat of the car ride beside the one she was sitting in. The boy had a look about him; it wasn't sad, nor was it happy. He looked completely absent, like his light had been drained.

The girl made a face, an over-exaggerated pout, and looked at the boy, wondering if she knew him. She craned her neck around, to see if she could look at him straight. She could not. The boy sensed eyes on him, and he slowly turned his head to the left to find a girl hanging out of her passenger side window, hand brushing against the side of her car door. When the two caught eyes, the girl raised her arm up slightly, now holding it in the air parallel to the pavement. The boy looked at her, confused. The girl held her hand out, palm down like she was reaching.  The boy, for a reason he still doesn't comprehend, hung his left arm out of his window and raised it, level with the girl's. And their two hands were hanging in the air, level with the ground, and their fingers were so close it felt like touching.

[I had the cruelest dream last night...]

I had the cruelest dream last night that you were mine.
I wanted to love you like the whole world, and you
wanted to let me.

Still-clothed, the furthest from Genesis figures, but that's
how we knew each other. Biblically, stubbornly. With
longer lines

we could talk of the serpentine, but we'd end up doubling
back on ourselves. And this is not what the half-light should be.
Waking life

is two knees, pinned down hips, on carefully made beds.
Hair hanging, brushing curtains on my face and the lips say:
Hello. This is how

I've missed you.

[Tan bodied, clad in simple white cotton...]

Tan bodied, clad in simple white cotton
panties. Modest bra. She looked bride-like, presenting herself

like an early Christmas gift. A grand reward
for good behavior. There was understanding,

without pressure.

The afternoon held importance for her,
but for different reasons
than mine. She had reached
a conclusion, electrifying.

Cathartic. Kept it like a secret as
I pulled down the white cotton, unhooked
the white clasp. She offered

a gesture; something between pity and love,
and she was smiling.

No Six (We Lost Paul)

Strange vibrations in the office space. Miserable bastards are looking at nothing, running around with their damn heads cut off. "They're jacking our account," says the receptionist. "Why don't you call and bitch them out?" I look at her, uncaring, and turn back around.

Two road dogs, stinking and loud-mouthed, pace and bicker in Dispatch. They are missing teeth, or toenails, and look like they've not slept for nights. The filthy creatures have been flapping their terrible jaws for hours like they're not on the clock. Or are they? We don't know anymore, for the bosses have left town.

The hours are slow-crawling. The days are long and the evening barely lasts. This is what it's like in a cubicle space. This is what it's like, right before the great explosion.

The 26th of April

It's somebody's birthday.

I had the vision of calling at 12:01 am this morning, probably waking you up. Or interrupting a phone call from your father or your baby boy. Restraint is adult-like, perhaps. It's not so much fun to grow old.

Someone had commented on a poem I had written for you. They said they liked it; that they could taste the pain. In it, I talked about being in your passenger seat, driving back from the Norman Rockwell museum in the rain. I kept falling asleep, and would wake to find you humming along to Feist's 'The Reminder' and tapping your steering wheel. I'm sorry I fell asleep on you.

I hope that your day and weekend is filled with lightness and cocktails and girls' nights that are all wooooo hooooo. You deserve more nights like those.

Happy Birthday, Darling.

xoxo,

Dylan

[This is the way, she says, for girls...]

This is the way, she says, for girls

in white bathtubs with grey walls and hard

features

that cut the glass in half. The image is all

split, like visions

from an alternate timeline.

And a back is showing, and the beads

of water slide down

and disappear, prompting the viewer

to yell Wait/Don't go/Not yet.

The girl has gone away,

fading into the glow of a computer screen, trapped

in the frame of a site, of a picture

that we will share and stare at

for years.

http://nikkimartian.tumblr.com/post/21329751848/want

After the Long Break

God damn us for

our arrogance, we

knew not what

we were doing.

Forgive us --

the terribly un

inspired transplants,

for our insolence.