Sam

Sat, 23 May 2009 00:38:40 GMT

~~||||~~ ||

not dead yet.

Mon, 05 May 2008 23:34:35 GMT

You saved my life he says I owe you everything.

You don’t, I say, you don’t owe me squat, let’s just get going, let’s just get gone, but he’s

relentless,

keeps saying I owe you, says Your shoes are filling with your own damn blood,

you must want something, just tell me, and it’s yours.

But I can’t look at him, can hardly speak,

I took the bullet for all the wrong reasons, I’d just as soon kill you myself, I say.

You keep saying I owe you, I owe… but you say the same thing every time.

Let’s not talk about it, let’s just not talk.

Not because I don’t believe it, not because I want it any different, but I’m always saving

and you’re always owing and I’m tired of asking to settle the debt.

Don’t bother.

You never mean it anyway, not really, and it only makes me that much more ashamed.

There’s only one thing I want, don’t make me say it, just get me bandages, I’m bleeding,

I’m not just making conversation.

There’s smashed glass glittering everywhere like stars. It’s a Western, Henry,

it’s a downright shoot-em-up. We’ve made a graveyard out of the bone white afternoon.

It’s another wrong-man-dies scenario

and we keep doing it, Henry, keep saying until we get it right…

but we always win and we never quit, see, we’ve won again, here we are at the place

where I get to beg for it

where I get to say Please, for just one night, will you lay down next to me, we can leave our

clothes on, we can stay all buttoned up?

or will I say

Roll over and let me fuck you till you puke, Henry, you owe me this much, you can indulge me but we both know how it goes. I say I want you inside me and you hold my head underwater, I say I want you inside me and you split me open with a knife. I’m battling monsters, half-monkey, half-tarantula,

this at least, can’t you?

I’m pulling you out of the burning buildings and you say I’ll give you anything. But you never come through.

Give me bullet power. Give me power over angels. Even when you’re standing up

you look like you’re lying down, but will you let me kiss your neck, baby? Do I have to

tie your arms down?

Do I have to stick my tongue in your mouth like the hand of a thief, like a burglary

like it’s just another petty theft? It makes me tired, Henry. Do you see what I mean?

Do you see what I’m getting at?

You swallowing matches and suddenly I’m yelling Strike me. Strike anywhere. I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you’ve taken something out of me, and I have to search

my body for the scars, thinking

Did he find that one last tender place to sink his teeth in? I know you want me to say it, Henry,

it’s in the script, you want me to say Lie down on the bed, you’re all I ever wanted but I think I’d rather keep the bullet this time. It’s mine, you can’t have it, see,

and worth dying for too

I’m not giving it up. This way you still owe me, and that’s

as good as anything.

You can’t get out of this one, Henry, you can’t get it out of me, and with this bullet

lodged in my chest, covered with your name, I will turn myself into a gun, because

it’s all I have,

because I’m hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own. I’ll be your

slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue and final resting, walking around with this

bullet inside me

‘cause I couldn’t make you love me and I’m tired of pulling your teeth. Don’t you see, it’s like

I’ve swallowed your house keys, and it feels so natural, like the bullet was already there,

like it’s been waiting inside me the whole time.

Do you want it? Do you want anything I have? Will you throw me to the ground

like you mean it, reach inside and wrestle it out with your bare hands?

If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.

Do you know how it ends? Do you feel lucky? Do you want to go home now?

There’s a bottle of whiskey in the trunk of the Chevy and a dead man at our feet

staring up at us like we’re something interesting.

This is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard,

and make a wish.

Wishbone - Richard Siken

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:59:14 GMT

Oh hey,

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 14:27:53 GMT

Your energy went into the smiles of busboys, beachbums.
No matter how little you cared about them, they always made you blush.

Who liked you? Fearfully counting,
uncertain of even your fringed suede jacket, your studded jeans,
you thought that the college men and garage attendants
only liked your walk, or your perfume
floating in the air like China silk. What did their fantasies
make of you?
Courteous, distracted, tangled in dreams, you might have been Juliet,
Rosalind, Miranda. Doubled over your abdomen, you rocked back and forth
in the dark, a woman in need of herself.

On a Chinese screen, courtesans with bandaged feet
weave brocade. They're ready to be wanted.
You try on all your clothes so you can pass around
your nakedness, as women have always done,
offering, with your neckline, suggestions of your breasts.
Men are themselves. But you, you're a work
of the imagination. You wipe the violet from your eyelids, the persimmon
from your lips, then off goes the forest green Garbo-style gabardine suit,
the rose satin tap pants and camisole; off go the black patent pumps,
the patterned pink nylons, offering the real you,
a length of plain stuff.
Making the bed in the morning,
you cry at the strong, good smell of the sheets.

In your imperfect house, you wonder
if he loves you. He loves enough not to accept
your apologies.
And you, you have enough love
to encourage him back into town, making him a gift
of your composure. For tiny holes in the damask drapes
are enough to undo you. You're still learning how
to stand up to furniture, beauty, surfaces, wounds.
You'd cry for a satinwood table, a rosewood sofa,
dinnerware made from the shinbones of sheep;
you cry for your dresser-top arsenal of hope and captivity,
cry for your skin and how long it won't last,
then for all that you spoiled with excessive attention:
the crocuses, troutlilies, oxe-eye daisies.
Cry, too, that there's not yet love enough in you
for you, who sit as if stuck in a picture,
like women whose images men first painted in stone.

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 21:58:55 GMT

"Actually, you said 'Love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love. It's like a religion. It's
terrifying. No one
will ever want to sleep with you.'"

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 21:21:22 GMT

Comment to be added.

Anyone and everyone else:
I want to know what you really think about me. Please be as honest as possible.
Just leave an anonymous comment.