1. FUTURE WARS

(crows, wipe the blood from the end of your claws.
Said the vulture
Lets gather like storms for the war.
Crows, as the night turns its skin into coal,
Dark as corpses but cluttered with gold.
They will label you thieves, wolves, and whores
But you are nothing less than angels,
Cast down and covered in black.)

Ain't this the bloodiest mess in the world? Said the virgin, a torn little girl.
Boy, you went and made a sweet wreck of my soul, and i've already forgiven you.

And blood was running down
Her dress in streams into her hands where she
Was stitching on the flesh had left
In sections on the carpet near a bed that
Never slept while she was sleeping
In her clothes that he had laid with on
The floor with all his fingers crossed
In hoping that that distance
Wouldn't grow.
But how it grew,
And how it hurt,
And how it hallowed every memory had
Never felt was threatened by a thing the world
Could conjure up to kill them, but he let it kill them
What a bunch of fools we lovers are.
And now shes smiling, with her self put back together,
Just a shadow of the past before the war.
All sewn together, like a city sick from storms
And sick of waiting for a god to call the floods out of her home.
What a bunch of fools we lovers are
When tempted by the taste of flesh.

"my boy, you are nothing more than a thief and a whore
In a suit of the finest of armor." laughed the vulture.
"pathetic little child, i am embarrassed for you."


2. A WORD OF WELCOME AND OF WARNING

Pick up the phone.
(blessed be the thief, disguised in skin,
And blessed are the fingers that gesture him in.)
Paint the receiver
To the side of the fake, lying at the bottom of the staircase.
Broken elbows, and your coming through the window.
And whoever called night a blanket,
Had never the felt the cold.
And whoever called the night a blanket--
So use your fingers, darling. And
Tear away at the restraints they call the body.
It's the temporary things that rip us apart.
For the body is but a piece of art for you to tear to pieces.

This is history to thievery.
These are only games we play.
Hang up the phone.


3. SEE YOU IN VANCOUVER

I'm reading over your shoulder,
It says it in every line, in every curve and crack.
It says it in every detail of your face,
Unmistakably apparent in this dull light.
Tracing a separate letter, forming a separate word.
Twisting together to build the same beautiful sentence,
The same painful realization.
The cracks in your lips
Open with the books. And
The smile shows the lines in your face.
Perfectly crooked, and
Perfectly familiar.

And for the moment, uncovered like a statue--
Lay perfectly still. To show the cracks in your lips.
Give purpose to this pattern, and start to smile.
Burst into flames, disappear
Before your best intentions can no longer hide her ears
From that which will make them bleed.
Before your own two hands become too weak to hold the blood inside her wounds.
Before reality explodes before you in a brilliant flash of spectral fires,
Into a thousand fragments of a past, long dead and gone.

(this is remembering the last time we touched,
The last time we spoke,
Words ricocheting off empty tables.
Vandalizing the pictures on these smoke-stained walls
And i can feel your mouth as it opens from across the room.
Your tongue and lips forming the shape of your laughter,
Its the curve of your stomach, its the bend in your legs.
Its the remnants of the pages framed in the cracks of your bleeding lips,
Its the curve of your stomach, its the bend in your legs.
Your crooked teeth.)

I'm reading over your shoulder,
It says it in every line, in every curve and crack--
The same stupid message in every stupid bend and in every stupid stitch,
In every inch of our peeling skin.
Its tracing letters in the same sentence,
(its screaming the same stupid thing,
Like the howling of a plane playing over and over and over and over and over...)


4. TO WITHSTAND THE FORCE OF STORMS

Oh, you've a pretty mouth
Leave your lips to linger on my skin and
Kiss me one last time
I will roll off your tongue like a whisper in the winter
Sleeping in the sutures of the city's skin
Make yourself remember me in cold and concrete.

When will you realize this city/your demons make(s) you real

Oh, you've a pretty mouth
Leave your lips to linger on my skin and
Kiss me one last time
I will roll off your tongue like a whisper in the winter
Sleeping in the sutures of the city's skin
Make yourself remember me in cold and concrete
It's the way my hands felt lying still beneath your dress

(i am transparent,
I am a greenhouse filled with ghosts)

Oh god, oh dear god

Whisper secrets, speak in a hushed voice
The first thing that you learn is that you never let them hear you
In a soundproof room, in a windowless world
Keep your voice down or dull your words
Then
Put on your bedroom face for him
All pursed lips and half-closed eyes with pink-stained skin
Screaming for sleeping hands on downed dresses
Screaming
For dead legs come alive, for dead legs come alive

Oh dear god, there is no excuse for me


5. HE IS HERE, HE IS NOT AFRAID

We move by instinct, darling
Let our hands be hatchets, let us
Wander blindly, swinging madly
In a forest made of flesh.
We move by instinct, darling
Let our eyes like lepers drive
The doubters from our homes and
Into the bottom of the sea.
And we speak in signals, darling
Let our smoke stitch pictures, let us
Twist in patterns, dull the horror
Of a city still on fire. For
We are like medics handling
Suicide by cyanide with bleeding
Fingers. Let us suffer
Completely inadequate.
And we move like lovers, lover
Let me run my fingers down your side
And kiss you right below the eye.
We sleep with shadows but
We never give them bread.
Horror, dress yourself in shame
Or i will tear a hole in you, you harlot.
Burn your eyes, (i will hold your
White-washed bones unto the sky and
Scream "oh god, if you are there,
I hold this body to your judgment--
Give it your wrath or your mercy.
But please pick wrath.")


6. THE SURGEON AND THE SCIENTIST

Don't call this an art project
This is science, this is progress
And don't pretend these are heartfelt words, we are
Children dressed as surgeons but disturbed by the sight of our scars
And now we carry scalpels to trace the scarring resting somewhere
On the line between my house, your heart and into your home
Where you lay sleeping like a ceiling fan in winter
Gently turning as the wind reaches its fingers through the window
Just to hold you, like i held you
Pressed like a rose between my fingers or like stones
I keep in pockets meant to weigh me underwater

Meant to keep me underwater
Meant to keep me underwater

These scars will fade away but never disappear, my dear
We'll raise our fists like lightning rods to god and
If he strikes us down
Then he strikes us down
But first, let him hear us speak
We are like the legacy of thunderstorms we watched and swore in doorways
And we will never be the same again

I can feel your healing and i hate it
Like a harpist without hands, you only bang the strings
You used to love to touch so much
To hear the dissonance drain violently into the air and then dissolve
Like all the songs i sang but never once could make you smile

My god, i would kill to make you smile
My god, i would kill to make you smile
My god, i would kill to make you smile
My god, i would kill to make you smile
My god, i would kill to make you smile
My god, i would kill to make you smile
And reach out to my hands, soft and frail
To make good on the love that you swear still exists, and still thrives
Though we've buried our bodies in blood and old lies
Like, "i'm fine" and "you look so much better than him"
But don't trust the surgeon with your heart
She's drunk and sips from poison cups, and
Don't you trust the scientist
He says "life-is-like-a-wineglass" as he spills his drink
Like secrets
All across your dress and says

"my dear, i must confess, i never thought you ever knew what love was like for real

I never thought you needed me"


7. FAIRMOUNT

(oh crashing airplane, where were you the day she left?)

Underneath the laughs there lies a need
That nobody is getting.
And an honesty that doesn't stretch far enough
To show us all how much this will mean to us, my dear.
And when we're old we'll tell ourselves that we did
Everything that we could to save this.
But now--we do nothing.

I've slept for twenty years, but i've acted strong at least
If you're leaving again, then you're leaving again
And you're gone.
And i feel nothing anymore, so just keep walking away
Thirty-thousand steps,
I'll watch you for every second and never feel alone.

I've been sleeping
For at least the last two years
My dear, my princess, my sister, my lover, my friend.
I made you a bed of thorns for every rose you ever left outside my door,
That's all you ever left me.

Lay your scars out in rows,
Lay your scars out in rows,
Lay your scars out in rows
To show me what i've done to you.

Lay your scars out in rows,
Lay your scars out in rows,
It was my weakness that couldn't save us.

So lay your scars out in rows,
So lay your scars out in rows,
So lay your scars out in rows for me.

We were one, and what are we now?

(act strong, at least
And don't turn around.
If i'm leaving, then i'm leaving, and i'm leaving, and i'm gone.)

We move as one.


8. UNTITLED

It's perfectly ok,
I'm afraid, too.