Hunting Season

“She wept maps onto her face that lead nowhere at all.”

H un ti ng S ea so n

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T he U na cq ua in te d  R i v e r D a n c e  ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––  ––––––––––––––––– –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ––––––––––––––––– It is well known that the most effective solution to any problem is a bottle of strong spirit, a good record and a back porch– everything else is just bad advice. So it is here I now write you; two bottles in too late to be writing anybody but these words are relentless, and though the alcohol may be dangerously low, my spirits are high, because the music is okay and the cigarettes are on fire and I have fallen for the words that spill from my fingertips whenever I begin to miss you. I remember skin that smelt like wildwood, a kiss so toxic that it burned into my lungs and throat for months, and hairpins that inhabited all of the dark and impossible places. I sometimes wonder what the goddamn point of it all is– we all hate each other eventually– and love is just a brief moment between desire and incredible resentment. We’re all caught in the same cycle of beautiful oblivion; everybody praying they’ve got game like it’s hunting season, everybody hustlin love away at house parties in dime bag quantities, everybody sweating the same songs, in the same bars and fucking for the same hopeless cause. But you were different.  You were a fault in the th e equation. I remember for a time happiness  was hearing the symphonies symph onies in your breathing: Beethoven and Bach and Mozart, all of the classics conducting as one in the great hall of my heart. I am writing to let you know that losing you was like leaping from a bridge. I am writing to let you know that I believe most lives are only spattered raindrops of greatness amidst an ocean of passing the time– and you were a downpour. And I believe I now understand why people call them skin cells, because each time you touched me now feels like a terribly lengthy sentence from which there is no parole. I simply cannot forget a thing. From where we stood each time we kissed, to the force behind your lips, the times you closed your eyes, and the times you didn’t. I miss them all. But I understand now why you had to do it, because the simple, terrifying truth, I’ve learned to come to terms with– is writers are old even  when they are young, poor even when rich and a nd full of loneliness, even when in love.

2

H un ti ng S ea so n

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T he U na cq ua in te d  R i v e r D a n c e  ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––  ––––––––––––––––– –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ––––––––––––––––– It is well known that the most effective solution to any problem is a bottle of strong spirit, a good record and a back porch– everything else is just bad advice. So it is here I now write you; two bottles in too late to be writing anybody but these words are relentless, and though the alcohol may be dangerously low, my spirits are high, because the music is okay and the cigarettes are on fire and I have fallen for the words that spill from my fingertips whenever I begin to miss you. I remember skin that smelt like wildwood, a kiss so toxic that it burned into my lungs and throat for months, and hairpins that inhabited all of the dark and impossible places. I sometimes wonder what the goddamn point of it all is– we all hate each other eventually– and love is just a brief moment between desire and incredible resentment. We’re all caught in the same cycle of beautiful oblivion; everybody praying they’ve got game like it’s hunting season, everybody hustlin love away at house parties in dime bag quantities, everybody sweating the same songs, in the same bars and fucking for the same hopeless cause. But you were different.  You were a fault in the th e equation. I remember for a time happiness  was hearing the symphonies symph onies in your breathing: Beethoven and Bach and Mozart, all of the classics conducting as one in the great hall of my heart. I am writing to let you know that losing you was like leaping from a bridge. I am writing to let you know that I believe most lives are only spattered raindrops of greatness amidst an ocean of passing the time– and you were a downpour. And I believe I now understand why people call them skin cells, because each time you touched me now feels like a terribly lengthy sentence from which there is no parole. I simply cannot forget a thing. From where we stood each time we kissed, to the force behind your lips, the times you closed your eyes, and the times you didn’t. I miss them all. But I understand now why you had to do it, because the simple, terrifying truth, I’ve learned to come to terms with– is writers are old even  when they are young, poor even when rich and a nd full of loneliness, even when in love.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Untwined  And that was it you know. kn ow. Smiling over coffee steam. Had you paused the moment there you would have had your happy end. But life doesn’t often work out that way. See, it flashes by quickly. So fast you know that thinking back on this  will feel more real than th an the reality of actually being in the center of it afterwards.  You take pictures of everything, eve rything, the  violet sinking into your you r nostrils and the rain pouring out of sun.  You don’t talk.  Your mouths dance; their corners twitching into sorrow.  And you say goodbye, before you run dry of hellos.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

And

then

you

kissed

me

like you were saying sorry

or goodbye

or both.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Marlboro Lovers kisses with ex lovers are like cigarettes on back porches addictive stress releases secret and on fire and you swear each one shared cuts 24 hours off your lives but you don't quite care all that matters is tonight and him between your fingers or her in your lungs you breathe each other out in great plumes of smoke and secretly you pray you hope the other chokes.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

L as t N ov em be r I knew a girl who was even skinnier than she was sad imagine that  and her knees sounded like wind chimes  when she walked and when she cried it was always in her inside voice. I wished I could take her away from it all; a forest or a lake or a nowhere town somewhere beautiful, somewhere she could start over. She was in such a broken state; a smothered flame; snowflakes spilt into ponds under warm rain, and I wondered if she remembered what it was like to smile under her own strength. Nobody else seemed to comprehend that you could not mend a gunshot wound by firing off more rounds into it.  Their answers to her pain  were limited to more pills more 45 minute therapy sessions  with men who had more doctorates on their walls and zeros in their bank accounts than the words she most desperately needed to hear: "It's going to be okay," "You are beautiful," "I am here."  And I wish I had have spoken up, I wish I had have written her, more than a too-late poem and a eulogy last November.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

7 Places I Might Find You 1) Perhaps I might go to Europe. I may find you in a tavern pouring pints of Pilsner in Norway or reading Les Miserables by Lake  Annecy in France or riverdancing in Ireland; your skin as white as snow covered Greenland and your hair as red as a sunset in Barcelona. 2) Perhaps I might board a vessel headed towards the frozen oceans of Antarctica on the bottom floor of the earth and fall in love; standing side by side on the bow of a ship fighting to protect the blue whales from the cruelty of the “science researches,” all covered head to toe in coats and scarves, our hearts melting at the exact same alarming rate as the continent itself. 3) Perhaps I might fly to South America and find you in the lost city of Ciudad Perdida in Columbia, ascending 12,000 steps slowly like my fingers were sliding up the bones in your spine from the back of your waist, or maybe I might find you in Brazil by the sea, cooking underneath the suns heat and sipping from a bottle of cachaca, or covered in gold and peacock feathers, dancing the Samba in a street parade for Carnival. 4) Perhaps I might make the journey to the plains of Africa and sweat beads as big as your heart underneath a burning sun as I watch you carry a child in your arms as skinny a model in Hollywood only twice as beautiful. I might find you in Uganda with a scar dragged down your cheek from the bayonet of a child soldier who thought it the only way to prove himself a man. I would love you with all wild and majesty of an entire pride of lions and together we would show the country what “TIA” could really mean. ........................................................................

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H un ti ng S ea so n

7 Places I Might Find You 5) Perhaps I might travel to Asia and ride with you on the steppes of Mongolia, and travelling together in the wide open spaces of a country that once thundered underneath the hooves of the most powerful conqueror the world has ever seen, we would conquer each others hearts. Or maybe I might find you in Japan, swaying underneath a cherry blossom tree and I could write you a haiku that gets your heart beating with the speed of the Maglev bullet train. 6) Perhaps I might return to North America and watch you burn brighter than the lights in New York City or maybe we could barely get by in Mississippi or even live by the Muskoka River bass fishing in Ontario, Canada. I might find you hitchhiking on route 66 or singing for a travelling country band in Nashville Tennessee; your accent southern and sweet and your eyes as green as lake Michigan in the summer. 7) Perhaps I might stay right here, find you in Melbourne or Sydney or Adelaide or Perth or Brisbane, all of the places and cities I’ve broken hearts, and broken my own, in before. Maybe you will feel more new than old. Maybe we might build a house in the hills or the country or the city or suburbs. Visit all the places we know and some places we don’t. Your hair could be dark or light or a little of both. Perhaps we might travel the world together, arm in arm, rather than alone with the hope that we might find something more beautiful somewhere else when there are 22 million people at our front door. ........................................................................

But for now, I know all I need decide is where I will go.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

 Y o u r S e c r e t J o u r n a l  When you kiss me, I want it to be the same way you write in your journal,  when the light is low, and the night is late; scribble in my margins, pour me full of your secrets, erase me into pieces  when you get me wrong, don’t hold back, I want to be personal, hidden, I want to be yours–  with all of the intimacy and fury that brings.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Sleeping You Off Nobodies allowed to leave my heart unattended especially you. Fireworks launching from out between our eyelids in mostly shades of blue. I sing you like a dated song on a station nobody tunes in to.  The “with-it” kids are locking lips like doors in mental hospital wards. I could break you like a knuckle and restore you like a wall.  You’re the only thing I could get close to anymore and that is why I’m gone. Our love felt like a very long one night stand so when I scoured the floor for clothes and snuck quietly out the window you did not miss me at all or even stir.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Bad Anthem  We wasted hours; gripping each other like shotguns shoved in the form of burning questions like how many lover’s before me made you scream like you were skydiving off one of Saturn’s rings and the thing about new love is it’s like just about everything else that is young and raw; a freshly planted rose seed easily displaced in a soft wind or a newborn hatchling scurrying down the hot sand to the ocean, it is too young to hope for success it is only instinct and adrenaline and a death wish. That is what we had created, a chemical storm unabated and racing through our veins and if hours became days, if days became wedding vows and  wedding vows became shared lots in the cemetery then that is all  well and good, it doesn’t change that moment one bit. In that moment we  were inside it. In that moment we  were sparks in electrical circuits. In that moment we were wasted hours, sharing skin and organs.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Oceans With No Floor  There is a place in my heart that I keep for you that all the oceans in the world could not fill and boy have I tried. This morning my skin swallowed the sunrise and I still didn’t come close to rediscovering the way you burned through my insides.  Your mouth was God; bruises bloomed like May flowers wherever your lips met my body. There is a single molecule of you in me that has not yet extinguished and that is the only reason my lips can twist into something that still looks like a smile. The heart wants what the heart wants and mine wants to be devoured and broken in between your body and the bedpost; electrons crashing with the headboard, our breathing fusing together with the words we reserved only for each other. I’ve slept in too many arms that feel like chains keeping you away from me.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

A Thank–You For Smashing Me Out Of My Skin my magic word is my name out of your mouth in the middle of the night. say it and my knees will swim, say it and my heart will spin so fast the scars shake right off and god, in the middle of last night our bodies moaned like floorboards in old homes, hands were dragged down spines like we were smoking menthols. your mouth swallowed mine like it was a warm ocean and mine was an iceberg, I lost all form, broke each and every law of the universe  with my bones bent around yours. sweat storms poured out from our pores in such volume buckets overflowed. Everything rocked out of swing and our fingers grew around each other’s throats like flowers burning in the dirt. I think I needed you to hurt me sweetly and I think you're pretty unusual and I think that's what I liked about you and i haven't smiled in between somebody else's bones in forever so thank you.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Headlines i. the morning you packed your things and walked out the door, everything stopped making s ! ns e.

ii. if i knew that  was going to be our last kiss, i  would have SWALLOWED your face. iii. do not believe the headlines, i only jumped into the ocean because there  was nothing left up here for me anymore.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Wishes  we own king size beds  with the expectation that they will someday be shared but instead, often we spend the long nights slinging from one side to the next, staring through phone screens,  waiting on them to flash, one text message unread. some nights we get so desperate that we actually count the seconds between them and when they come we pounce like foxes, taking much more than we need, so much that it begins to spoil and gets us sick in our chests but it is best that we remember the bliss in crawling into bed, spreading your arms and legs end to end, salt lamp glowing like a deep sea fish in the ocean and the incense burning thick smoke into your every breath. if that is what you call loneliness, then i do not wish for anything less.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Stage Mic

a smoky red roomful of liquor and you are making all the boys stutter. your mouth is looking like the barrel end of a burning shotgun and i'm thinking it might just taste

like one too. i want to fuse my bones to yours like molten rock to a lakebed and there ain't a thing you can say or do that  will stop my heartbeat from giving out when

you shut your teeth around my neck. honey our notoriety will be boundless, our love  will be narcotic. no remedy for the removal of you from my organs only a brick and a rope and the bottom of the ocean. you whisper something dangerous into speaker blown ears and i nod so hard my neck snaps like a snare drum and in that moment it

becomes awfully clear that falling in love with me, and falling in love with you, will be like jumping off the empire state building into the roof of a parked car on thirty third, but it will be beautiful.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Keep Me Like A Secret On The Backs Of Your Teeth  We switched sundowns for sunups, slept naked, skin against pulse. In the moment, infinite energy roars between our bodies (And the night was so young it still spat baby teeth).  You showed me your scars and secrets and I kissed them all, snatched them in a jar, and watched them glow like fireflies and my smile was so crooked your tongue could ride it out like a water slide. This was chemistry of the explosive kind. Sweat drowned skin, mouths bled blood red. We wrecked each other’s waists in the best kind of ways. The lateness of the night gives way to the beat. Teeth sinking whiskey, we twisted our fingers around each other's shirt buttons. We were clawing our nails into the bed sheets like we were digging to hell. Or somewhere near. We figured the heart is a muscle: if it is not worked out often it would shrink and boy did we give our hearts a beating. Leave the churches empty and load the gun chambers quickly. We are breaking a sweat like bones under too much pressure. I worked to get you wetter like a desert underneath an ocean.  You were so damn quick with your lips they felt like fiction.  You fucked my brains out ‘cos you knew how tired I was of thinking too deeply. You loved me so sweetly you gave my heart diabetes. But the next morning, we picked our clothes up off the carpet, never spoke again, simply  went about our business.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Forecast It is funny how lonely people, gravitate together,

 when nobody ever cured a cold by running out into bad weather.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

A Reminder you said, "never forget me" as if the coast could forget the ocean or the lung could forget the breath or the earth could forget the sun.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Home Sweet Heart  when i think of home i do not

think of four walls, or a fireplace, or even a front porch, i

think of your arm bones, your beating heart, and your very loud snore.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

The Late Hours one night is all it takes. sweat melting back to gold like we were a couple of alchemists and  we crashed our waists together so hard the earth spun off it's axis and everything became instinct. this was the hunt, the kill and the feed, all rolled up tightly between the bedsheets. We made love like the gods made the oceans and the beasts and the goddamn entire cosmos and i pressed my lips to your lips like the little red button in the president’s office that puts an end to everything. our clothes fell to the floor burning like bullet casings and our bones begun a war where there is no loss or peace only victory and we screamed things that have never been written down in an earthly dictionary because we were hell rising from the basement of the world to our bedroom for a moment. you and me, catching infinity in between our breaths.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

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 H o n e y w a t e r   –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––  When it came right down to it, I didn't have the courage to say goodbye. I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps I am truly so self centered that it is preferable to be unhappy than risk you going off and making something of your life with somebody else and– dread the thought– somebody better than I am. One thing I do know, is that love can be a form of self harm– an ex-lovers kiss can be the touch of cold steel on soft skin that sparks a sad and lonely heart back to life– and I believe that is why we find ourselves panting and pushing and sweating and swelling against each other's skin time and time again. But when I am lying face up in that swimming pool of stormwater we poured out in the night, I wonder if the heroic thing to do is in fact to break a heart, and hope at least one of us learns something. The dawn will swallow the liberties we took in the dark after all. There will be no escaping the act, the awkward smalltalk and too-bitter coffee. Perhaps a brief instance of blinding pain is preferable to this slow draining between us. This is the great question– hidden between the teeth and behind the eyelids and under the fingernails of so-called romantics everywhere. We are such goddamned liars. Preferring oblivion to the inevitable, we hide our intentions and disguise the truth in bad poems and  iloveyous and bouquets of red roses. There are those who do not even have the decency to wipe last night’s mistakes off their mouths before  whispering I’m sorrys in scattered showers hoping one catches and drowns out the consequence of their actions. That’s the trouble with relationships– whether you put in all or nothing– you’re still just as likely to win as you are to lose. You forget which side you’re on– his or hers or yours and in the end you’re fighting for nothing. Sometimes the only sensible response is to run and for some of us that is a drunken text message one hundred times more honest than any of the bullshit you spilt sober and for others it is hours of showers crying soapy water out of your eyelids and for others still it is just forgetting about the future and the past and the present and  what you expect or hope to happen and to instead just look over to the person lying next to you and come to the conclusion that maybe– they just aren’t supposed to be in any of them.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Landmarks she showed me the carvings in her wrists like they made her less lovely but the truth i told her was human beings are not like old belongings tarnishes and markings do not diminish the value of her body

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H un ti ng S ea so n

N oi sy J oi nt s there we were, a couple of wasted and misguided youths with a bad case of the munchies. Clawing into the cheapest junk food you can find this side of the sun, honey  whiskey bubbling in expensive glasses and so goddamn badass the cigarettes smoked us.  when we snuck into your room our bodies fused like two halves of molten metal thrown into a miniature swimming pool and when you wrapped your mouth around mine it felt like i had been plugged into a lightning storm and jolted back to life. you and me –– all black everything as if Johnny Cash wedding crashed the bat cave then swallowed the night and chucked it all up into the bottom of the ocean. you had a smile so big it caught light and bounced it around the room and you had a kiss like a kite in a hurricane i chased all morning but whenever i caught it, it would be like i were just watching it soar high while everything stormed down around me and baby, when you wrapped my fingers around your neck, shit got real and to me you're kind of a big fucking deal and i want to dig my heels into the sand and let your tsunami take me and i want to know  what you taste like next week so call me.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Sweet Things Grow Here  Years ago, Galileo once said that the sun, with all of the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do.  This is what I think of when you say, I love you. I wish I could hang lanterns to the wall of your throat so every time you spoke, everybody else could see your words shine as brightly as I do.  This is what I think of when you say, I love you. My body is covered in bruises and burnt bridges blacken my heart and you have got me weak in the knees like your body is a goddamned baseball bat and I am behind on a gambling debt.  This is what I think of when you say, I love you.  The very first time we kissed I slipped out of my skin and watched because there was something beautifully tragic about seeing the way my pulse stops at the touch of your mouth for myself.  This is what I think of when you say, I love you.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Heaven Would Be Hell Without You Stars explode, years ago.  The flash of light is only a ripple, Its origins oceans  Apart from you.  When I woke to an empty room, there were Still ripples of you in the linen, I would know, I  Traced them with all five of my fingers. Cruel indentations Covered everything, dust gathered where your Clothes were and my bones ached where your touch circled Like sharks swimming in so much sea. I have a fear of dying alone, I want to rot into Somebody's bones, come back a honeycomb and Carry swarms of you; sweet and dripping wet. Oh,  The failures of the past will outlive the successes of now. Funny how we're taught wishes are down wells rather than up In the clouds, like the Devil is the only one who Can get shit done. Counted My blessings by the days since you first Poured into my lungs like Cigarette smoke. And love is cancerous so I mean, bad luck. Fuck and make love and tear apart; they're  All the same in the Eyes of God, and we're all going up or down Or round and round, so I suppose I should be used  To falling in and out of you by now.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Co sm et ic Pr od uc t B oy s you kept rubbing him into your skin like he was the cure to something and wondered why you got a rash. he kept leaving little blue bruises all over your body and you made out like they were lakes. you often like to tell yourself that you are his to break.  when i tell you that you are beautiful i do not want it to be like a setting sun or waning moon and though it is a tough thing to save somebody from a nosedive into hell, if i have to i will strap cinderblocks to my ankles to beat you there and catch you.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Tiny Marks

Lovers are like piercings,

they mostly heal over

but always leave a tiny mark.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Fireflies Most days we feel like moths rolling in paint and that's okay because then we are beautiful for who we've become, instead of who God intended us to be and please know that whether you burn like the sun, or soak like the moon, that you are still who i look up to when the wind is blowing strong through my window morning, evening or afternoon and maybe this life can often feel like a stone in the sole of your shoe but that's okay too, slow down, remove your shoes, lose the stone and feel the earth spin under you because we are most beautiful for who we become  when we are the most unsure of ourselves.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Hangover–Hearts tonight there are more apologies in my body than bones but i would spill both if it meant you would not leave me alone because i am just so afraid of what i might do and by that i don't mean sleeping pills or lakes at night i mean i might fuck each and every pretty young thing in sight and how anybody passed the age of nineteen is supposed to associate goodbye with anything other than the taste of cigarettes and whiskey is beyond me but i will sleep on the couch and eat a truck load of takeout until the rings around my eyes are so thick they could orbit a planet because that is the only alternative i got to nailing my bones to yours and never letting go and neither of us  wants it to come to that (well maybe i do).

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H un ti ng S ea so n

H ea ve n K no ws  when i said you have my heart and meant it figuratively, you  were disappointed so i disjointed all of my ribs for you, cleared a path and let you tear it from my body. you stood there holding the bloody still beating muscle in your fingers and you told me that you no longer want it, like it was something that could be returned or rewired. it couldn't. so i  watched you drop it, and i am not sure who hit the floor first but i just know that we both  watched you turn and walk with ruby smeared across your mouth and a bag slung against your hip like a hunting rifle out into the night to find some other boy’s parts to play with.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Inhale You, Exhale Me  When you told me that to you, love was like oxygen, I knew that my fate  was to be drawn in, used up and ultimately replaced but that was okay, see i  wanted to swim down your throat and sleep in your lungs, because to be inhaled and exhaled by you  would be better than to simply pass by on the wind. and to sustain your beating heart for even a moment is much more than most men can hope to achieve in a lifetime.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

The Bones Of A Catalyst  Tonight we misplace our maps. Charter a new course. We release Our hearts; beating like white Knuckled fists against the prison  Walls of those solid bone cages  That contains them in isolation, Out to the void. Our insides  Will scream like misbehaved Children, pelting great drops of Liquid gold from our eyelids, shed Straight into the dim-lit vaults Of our consciousness but there they  Will compound in interest. Our Eyes will redden like pellets of burning Molten iron in our frustration, but  They will form into cities free of the  Tyranny of a world that wishes us Chained in pieces. We will become Strays, haunting by the doormats Of an owner crueler than can be Imagined: Ourselves (and our doubts).  We will breath the sound of Brass bells, signaling our arrival. Flowers will storm, rooting themselves Into the wet fertile ground of our Bones and we will crawl out Of the long black night brand new.  And if we do, we must thank that  Which threw us into the wall with such Force we broke right through.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

A Concerned Lover "But to be in love is not a leisurely activity, it is an obsession and since I've learned hearts are like gifts; they need to be given before they can be torn into pieces, I will go against my better judgment and confess to you this evening that darling, I want amnesia. I want amnesia so I can relive  what it was like to fall in love with you over and over. What it is like to trace the outline of your bones and skin and breathing for the first time, learning the lengths of your smile lines, familiarizing myself with those big brown eyes burning like a nickel hubcap underneath a southern-state sun. I want your nows. I want to cover my lungs in your name like rust on a car hood kissing the years off. But love, you've crawled out through enough windows to learn a thing or two about opening up. You look as lonely as an insect trap on a front porch that kills whatever gets too close and I think that is why you think I should back off. Like hell I will. I won't. But I need you to know that you are the only crowd I ever lost myself in.  And the only thing to ever leave my lips and matter was your mouth but how could I expect your heart to beat for me, when you do not even wish it to beat for yourself."

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H un ti ng S ea so n

My Golden Record  You're beautiful like how everything sounds better on vinyl. i  Want to play you in the dark, let you fill my ears and head and Spinal column. i want to watch you age and weather and grow in value every Day, from now until the universe and all of the music in it collapses forever.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

A ok ig ah ar a H ea rt  You ditched me like a half-smoked cigarette, said you had a dirty habit to kick. Your smile looked like a goddamned firing squad but the joke is the shot missed. See I don't think you understood me, I don't think you meant to break my heart into so many pieces that they could cover the entire ocean floor of the lonely Atlantic, but that does not forgive the fact that you did. I don't know what to tell you except that you had a smile as thick as a textbook that took just as long to read and you had a touch like a rose; wilting away in the winter and flowering back in spring and whenever you spoke my name it  was like a storm cloud full of rain and I only wanted to be the blood pumping through your veins.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

M at ch st ic k K id s  Tonight we were matchsticks sparked off boot soles, burning into the floorboards like truck wheels on rain-washed roads. The room's full of liquor and blind faith, like it's an ice-dammed lake melting underneath the strobe. She is concentrating hard, moving her bones fast in great arcs of burnt gold light like an entire swarm of fireflies surfing on the crest of a tidal wave. I think she is the way the oceans teem and the forests crawl but I am the way church halls vacate at the first sign of god. Everybody's got their bruises; the only difference between us is how some people let them keep their backs to the wall, and others battle through, and she's got one on her ankle that can't do shit to stop her from spinning like a tornado through the room. We sweat our hair into broomstick thistles and ride the winds out like witches and wizards and the backs of taxi cabs shiver underneath our bodies shaking to the sound of the road underneath the tires and the headlights set to high beam. I mean how am I supposed to think of a goddamned thing else than her lips squeezed tight to mine like peach juice ground with shots of tequila and teeth crushed like ice cubes into cocktails sucked up through long black straws into the night because we were a couple of young things; reckless and full of mischief and high on living.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

And Then There Was You And Me And God Threw The Towel In listen closely, we are infinity.  we are miracles the world can believe in.  wherever we dance the earth quits spinning.  we are light off the moon.  we are fireflies at summers dawn.  we are anthems singing back to the throats they spilled from.

 we are shotgun shells loaded into pea shooters.

we are not gods but we are grander.

 whenever we speak the skies ignite in fireworks and thunder.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Heaven's Neon Vacancy Signs  A boy was born in a hurricane.  The hospital held him close. Word  Was he may have been the last hope for the human race so He wrapped his little fingers around his tiny throat.  The world once wild is now alone;  A better tomorrow swallowed in the bottomless mouths of nows.  We attempt to dislocate ourselves but the joints are welded down.  The second coming will be a combination of unnecessity and bad  Timing and any Way, sequels are mostly always tragic.  We are tone deaf, singing off-key, but all the same, beautifully, Because  The words hold more meaning than a pretty note or face could ever Hope to carry. Let me know when the world is ending because I  Will destroy everything before the stars explode and the universe Begins Crushing atoms like nail heads under hammers. I Cannot fathom meeting God and enjoying his company, and if  Anyone can, they are fucking lying. I mean  What is that conversation even going to be, "Thank you for giving My Grandfather throat cancer and wiping out populations with HIV,  What  Are you up to this   weekend?" I mean Goddamn .

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Hu mmin gb ir ds Fo r Ha nds I got a head rush  but I don't know,  Whether it's blood or gold.  Writing you Shikigami   goodbye-notes. Because they will follow you Further than I could ever hope to. My heart is a picket sign but you  Are kissing teargas. For a time I  Almost shook you but I am afraid I relapsed. I have forgotten a time when feeling something For you was less like a curse and more like a blessing. I bare everything for you to see Until you have seen crowded clubs in red light districts  With less skin showing.

 Thing

 About love is, it's played dirty even  When it's clean. But then it comes easy to a pretty Face don't it darling.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

C ar a D el ev in gn e Cocaine dime bags in your hands like holy crosses. Nightclub bathroom stalls are the new confessionals (we're visiting often).  Your God is the boy in the dark shades and Doc Martens.  We are swallowing 8-balls until our heads do the Harlem. I want to prescribe myself to you like Ambien  When you don't get much sleep and Steal a motorcycle and ride it out from here to  The world's end. I want to kick it with you so hard they Call us the Beckham's and  Tonight let's pile up our bodies like bibles and burn them  And I want to be on your  Tongue like an anthem  And the night is young just Count the rings on Saturn. See if this life ever had a point it is surely  The shape that your tongue makes  And nothing was ever so pretty as your Lips Like Pink Lakes But I digress,  You bruise my neck so bad my Blood blues,  And each of them echoes a phase of the moon.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Sugarcane Here’s the thing Sugar, I’ve rubbed my eyes so red over you you’d think I were handing you bouquets of roses every time you told me there’s somebody new and my heart is heavy because it carries you too and my blood is blue because you’ve sunk through and and I’ve got a dark room and a bottle of bad news and I want you somewhere between the two.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

 –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 S i l v e r C r i c k e t s  –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––  What many fail to understand is that writing is not an occupation or passion or pastime. To us poor souls, us midnight maniacs, it is like breathing or dying and usually both. It is born into our bones and it is with them that it forms and grows or fractures and stunts. Our imaginations are infinite and that thought saddens me; I will never have the time to dream up all that my mind is capable of, but I will do my best and slip the harness that holds us tightly to the breast of so called real life  as if eating and fucking and working your hands to the bone is in any way more tangible and corporeal than books and adventures and romances and kissing the lips of somebody you've loved since as far back as you can remember. I believe once you accept the notion that you are not special, that you are only ordinary, that your destiny is not written in stars, you are set free. Because that notion means that anyone who ever achieved anything great begun just like you and me, ordinary and full of hope and ambition and determination. We make our own destinies, carve our names into the stars ourselves. And home doesn't have to be four walls and a fireplace, it is our breathing and our pulse and our skin. We're all looking for the same thing, something insubstantial, something so delicate it cannot be touched but we know is there. We are such fragile things, we are not designed for strong weather or great falls let alone broken hearts or bad news. See I believe the closest I've come to something indestructible is my ability to nap in any given circumstance, at any time of day, for positively no reason at all. And don't let a single goddamned soul tell you that isn’t okay. And I believe that making something worthwhile of yourself is much like lighting a fire– strike the match too fast and it will snap, throw it into coals and the wind may blow it out– but if you are patient, if you shield the flame and let it breathe, I promise you, there ain't a goddamned thing you cannot burn to the ground. And do not be so desperate to find yourselves– how dull– why rush to solve the greatest mystery of all– ourselves. And even if you have acquired all of the friends and lovers one could need, keep a secret affair up with loneliness, sneak out and buy it a drink now and then. I promise that if you do, it will be kinder the next time it’s needed. But most of all–   inhale and exhale, sing in showers through hair comb microphones,  write through the good days and write through the bad ones, court death and break it’s heart– remember that this life is a grand firework show– and it’s all ours.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

 is a title bestowed on a collection of remarkable constructions of classical antiquity now, for the most part, largely lost to us, yes sort of like how you are now lost to me Because see, to me, your hands are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon; great high walls and stone pillars covered in paradise; the shade of tall trees blocking out the burning sun and your bones are the Statue of Zeus at Olympia; strong and mighty, carved in the image of a God and the times I have knelt before them with my head bowed in prayer are numbered beyond count and the locks of wild auburn hair cascading over your collarbones are the  Temple of Artemis; a sanctuary built in resplendence and dedication to the goddess of the wilderness. Plus, Antipater of Sidon once said, "The Sun never looked on aught so grand," so there's always that and your ribs are the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus; a grand tomb housing your dark beating heart and the memories of all your past lovers. There is much death here but also great beauty and what I would do to discover the  way in and sleep forever and your smile is the Colossus of Rhodes; a tribute reaching from earth to sky celebrating the victory of you over me while straddling the harbor of your cheekbones. I know that when I gazed upon it I shook with fear and marvel all at once and your eyes are the Lighthouse of Alexandria; guiding me home from dark oceans, always promising safe harbor from an often-cruel journey. When I looked upon them I felt warm in the knowing that where I had been could not hold a candle to where I would soon be. These  were the last to leave my memory, see though all of these things stood for  what felt like centuries, the moment you left they began to fade from me but, your love, your love is the Great Pyramid of Giza; still standing for what feels to me like over 4000 years since you vanished from my head and heart and skin. This is the part of you that will never leave, long after our bones dust and our skin rots and the last thought of what we once has vanished from the memories of all who knew us, your love will stay with me. You, truly, the greatest among the Seven Wonders of my Heartbeat.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Ap ple S ee ds It's the way I think of you  when I kiss someone else. My tongue only moving because I trick it into the thinking that it's on the inside of your mouth and Love is blind, is really just another way of saying I  want to run my fingers down your ribs and across your wrists and around your cheekbones until I have you read inside out and my fingers cramp up  whenever I attempt to write a poem about somebody else and you make me wanna scream Hell yes  at the top of my lungs before I've even heard the question.  This is the kind of love that God intended  when he first let it loose from the center of each and every sun in the entire universe and shut it tightly inside our chests. I  want to smother you in proposals that make knees bend and tears jerk. I want to be the man that you deserve. See this is not a love poem.  This is a  you  poem.  Always was. If the thought of you  was window glass, it would not have collected an ounce of dust.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

M emo ry L an e  When you tie your ha nds around me it is like a bandana to a man before a firing squad but I do not give a fuck. Good luck is waking up beside somebody who wins out on anything you have the imagination to dream up in your sleep. My imagination is something else.  The night before last I dreamt of honey bees swallowing the sun and the galaxy and the entire universe, pollinating new ones in shades of colour they don't have names for but hell,  waking up beside you was incomprehensibly more strange and mad in comparison. Our love was chalk art on a sidewalk. Really fucking beautiful to look at– ruined by a raindrop.  Your mouth tastes lik e the barrel of a gun. (You taste like a desperate way out) I am yours, only I am not talking figuratively, I mean more like a house or wallet or dog.  You are an ocean withou t shores. I was foolish enough to let you run riot in my heart but not expect the overthrow. I am drink driving down memory lane.  Again.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Raven Feathers  You deserve everything there is to give. breakfasts in bed, diamonds on your doorstep, little secret notes hidden everywhere. I want you to have all of my secrets, and all of my demons, because you especially deserve all of the parts of me I'm too afraid to share.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Making Out With You  would be kind of like a science project; an experiment in discovering  whether or not it is possible to smile this big and kiss you real deep with the same set of lips at the very same time.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

The First Night you said it was like hiring a hitman on your heart to assassinate the love. you throw out his things, scrunch up his notes, you bury his name deep in your lungs and it feels like hell swallowed heaven whole. you wonder if you gave him everything of you then what are you supposed to do  with these scraps and skins he's left smothered between bedsheets and bad television and day old chinese. and you miss how he kissed your lips raw and you hate that he left you with red eyes that cry into your palms, so hard, they could water the planet and all of your nerves are screaming, and all of your bones are burning so you check yourself in to the madhouse of the memory of you and him and tell yourself it's treatment.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

De ad Ch rist ma s T re es you and me,  we were just a couple of dead christmas trees  we were too softhearted to tear down in the new year and though  we kept all of the ornaments and all of the fairy lights that new evergreen scent had vanished and our leaves had blackened covering the carpet in pine needles like  we were proof that even the most beautiful things must end.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

This Life It is a string instrument, Requiring careful affection,  And your fingers may bleed  A little before  You learn a tune  That can carry  An audience’s attention. Every breath should taste like Little victories, love even more so. If you find somebody  Who gets your heart beating Hold onto them So you won't need  To work even half as hard to. Style is important. It let's the people know  That you are a success Mostly when you are not.  And we are nothing if not Cosmic Creators.  Anyone who ever Put a shotgun to his mouth  Was only trying to Create a final work of art. Now and then Make love in the mornings,  And nap in the noons, Eat breakfast foods at midnight Because it fucking tastes good.  And we're all just living or dying anyway But if you're doing it right  You'll know the difference between the two and you’ll do just fine.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

S il ve r S cr ee n  Your kiss  was like a film; I’d seen a thousand times. I knew every line; each twist, each surprise,  You simply passed the time.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

The Young Sisterhood Of Northern States I'm mostly sure  That God tore a page or o r two out Of my favorite films and folded  Them into the four of you yo u because Nothing else makes any sense.  All I know is that now I am alone, In the basement of the country we call home  With a rainstorm hocking hockin g at my window Like a smoker at a street curb and  All I can think of is how ho w I know it's so wrong, But I want to sink my teeth into your lips Like a doomed ship and wake up in the afternoons  With you curled up to my m y chest and I want every stranger we meet to secretly  Wish they had what we have h ave built Out of 412 bones, two beating hearts  And nowhere else to go. g o. Our days would be coffees  And long naps and love making  And poetry and cigarettes cigarette s  And we would spend our ou r nights  Wondering how it could coul d get any better than this  And it wouldn’t but where whe re most good things Must come to an end ours would be the exception.  When I saw you swimming swimmi ng through a crowd  With three of your friends, frien ds, I only saw brilliance, Like a headlight in an attic, and I want to Get to know that. I could get used to it. I  Would wait 24 months and a nd count each minute.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

 Y o u C o m p l i c a t e M e Listen. There was no me before you. There was only matter and molecules and wasted energy; unfocused universe. Each Saturday evening rehearsed to precision– pretending to belong in some stranger’s arms and drowning sorrows in a tall glass– I had forgotten how to be touched and feel it in more places than one.  Then there was you. Waking Wa king up beside you for the th e first time was like remembering oxygen after an age under ocean. You swept hurricanes into my knees, destabilizing the order in my heart to revolution, red flags blowing in the color of my cheeks. Before you I was afraid of letting people in; my heart was a vault  with a passcode only I knew. k new. Yet you taught me m e how hearts are like houses, they are designed to be inhabited, made a mess of, even torn to the ground now and then; a rusty drainpipe or broken floorboard only adds value. She taught me to admire my damages. Did you know that the Grand Canyon was formed by rain and wind and sea, cutting into the earth over millions of years , she'd say, see even our planet has scars, and look how beautiful that can be. Listen. There was no me before you; a yellow bird without a song to sing; a sun with an empty orbit, burning for nobody.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Miles Between Skin Most of my friends say I should be over you by now– but you are not an ocean between two destinations, there are no maps to circumvent my desire to revisit you or destroy the longing in my veins. Certain smiles can be as permanent as scars– they do not just go away. My heart is not an element  with a half life, you are a re still radioactive; mutating each electric buzz in my body and brain, each bent in slow sways like young lovers on smoky jazz bar dance floors, and when I catch sight of those cheekbones like deathblows I want to kiss your mouth hungry under the same May moons that birthed you two decades ago. Most of my friends say that I am supposed to learn from my losses, so I suppose that explains my recent penchant for exchanging saliva like souvenirs with strangers and sleeping in other states  with a wider smile than I do at home.  This poem is long overdue, over due, but less like milk gone bad and more like a library book I just didn't have the heart to give up; read it back to back more times than I could count and see, there's something very romantic about the thought of calling you off a pay phone in the rain to say that I will see you soon.  And old sweetheart, I've I' ve learned misery is something very close to missing you.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

Same Love  Two blushing girls splash in a pond smothered blue by sky. One keeps a secret and the other a waistline that could weaken the knees of anyone nearby. One studies the architecture of the other’s bones; the ribs curve, the palms shallow dip, like satellite dishes circling her planet. She wants to kiss all of the  wrong answers at Sunday school onto her lips and spark a love on her mouth like matches. She's thinking it's funny how she's got the courage to fight the world for her right to love the girl in front of her but not enough to declare her heart and risk losing it all so she swims in close,  water droplets falling off her shoulders like autumn and smiling confidence in great rays of light; i swear you could see the gold in her eyes. Her heart is racing as they stand face to face in perfect symmetry and an aura that could reinvigorate an entire flowerbed of unwatered roses. She reaches out to sweep black locks of hair off her sweethearts face and opens her lips and says, "The moment I lost myself in you  was the moment I found myself and no law of god or man can tell me that isn't love."

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H un ti ng S ea so n

A Mourning Coffee Poem I really wish people would stop asking what my "type" is since it only reminds me of you, and when you left I think I starved myself paper-thin because of how desperately I  wanted to slip between the cracks in the floorboards and fall straight down to hell. I hid letters signed  your one and only  in my drawers but now you're just my only  and nobody bothered to tell me in school that love is like a line of coke and loss is dying slowly and holy water I'm sure is something like a puddle of your kiss and my heart is a fistful of thorns and this is the part where I split into so many separate pieces it would take an armada of thimbles and thumbs to stitch me back together even if I wanted to and you don't even know how I still think of you like a body breathes and a garden blooms and a blue bird croons do you? I am not half of who you are or who you will be or even who you were but i would crush all of the planets in the galaxy down to the size of pearls and string them up with a thousand stars to prove you were my universe.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

How I Remember The Morning We Met  That evening, I went to a bar nestled between buildings so tall they blocked out the gps –– I maneuvered the dark alleys the old fashioned way; navigated the stars with a head hazy on brandy and the thought of your body burning like a sun drenched coastline on the horizon after 48 months of ocean. I light my last cigarette to calm the nerves; the smoke crawling down my throat and into my lungs, exhaling the extensive list I had marked down in my head of all the things that could go wrong in the first few minutes. I had spoken a grand total of six  words, one smile, and two nods to you when I saw you smiling coffee steam over a newspaper headline on the 7:58am morning train and asked for the ten digit code to the little black box in your left jacket pocket that would allow me to ask you out without the little trouble of tripping over my  words or falling onto my face or making a fool out of myself in front of an entire carriage of bored men in business suits. I have been rehearsing  what I am to say next for the last six blocks. I want to let you know that  when I saw you in the corner of my eyes that morning, my vision blurred like I was staring directly into the sun, and when you looked up from the paper and into my eyes for the first time I saw my entire future in fast forward and when you read your cell number out loud all I heard were  wedding vows and whoever said love at first sight  only got it half right because when I heard you laugh sweetly from the far side of the carriage I just knew, that  whether you were 20 or 60 or even 102, I was already in love with you.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

The Social Loner I am nothing special. There are far too many people in the world dying to leave their dent in the earth when we would be much better off spending our time mending it instead. It's not easy– finding a point to it all– but it becomes immensely clearer the moment you begin finding them in the corners of a lover's upturned mouth or  water so still in the morning you would swear the sky fell down and cradled itself in the lakebed's curve. I heard that love is like the wind and I have encountered one too many hurricanes and I have been so alone in my head the sound of my own breathing has frightened me.  At times I sleep for hours because I once read that energy in the universe is somewhat finite and I can not justify wasting another molecule of it on me. If only you knew how badly I sometimes  wished I could be saved you would strap a cape around your necks and fly from each and every city just to tell me that it's going to be okay. That is the reason I get up each day. I think the loneliest people must communicate with each other in some form of sonar because when I am in a room with you and see you in the corner, smoking your cigarettes, kissing your boys and shaking your body  with your heart completely still– I hear you, I see you, I understand you in all of the ways nobody should. But the truth in it all is this  world is cruel to most of us– some are just better at hiding it. As for myself, I'm out in the open, running between trenches, dodging stray bullets and land mines, thinking back on home, all the while with the knowledge that nobody really returns from the war that is growing older and losing more than you ever believed you could hold. This life is learning that the first one to ever say if you love them let them go  was almost certainly God. Yes we are alone. Yes that is beautiful. No we are not slaves to time or death or anything else. We are rogues and vigilantes and pirates and fucking everything that means something close to freedom in a  world gone bad. So smile wide and show you're teeth like they're little white flags you're waving in surrender to all of your doubts and insecurities and pressures and deadlines because you are here for you and nobody else. We are– all of us– our own heavens and our own hells.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

I Can Do All Through Her Who S tr en gt he ns M e She is a celestial event, a brief moment of burning light; one  which I would not exchange for even an entire eon of summer suns. She is something else, young and beautiful. She could be in a stand off with the fastest draw in the Wild West and win without so much as reaching for her gun. She's got big dreams like a star on Hollywood Blvd. Me too, I pitched myself a small role in her heart and I hope to God I get the part.  And the moon, I learnt in preschool it circles the Earth but I have reason to believe that ain't true, it circles you.  Yes, you. I keep finding myself changing the pronouns in my poems half-way through because I know how somewhere, some day you  will find these words and know they were written for the way your skin beams like June moons and your eyes are proof that all the biggest things in the world are blue; like oceans like whales like sky and you are  who I think of when I am asked  what I would like to do  with my life.

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 –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

 D a r k F l o w e r s  –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––  The air of mystery about you could choke lungs. Though nothing  was ever so deceiving as the freckle on your left cheek. There was a study in Sweden: 9/10 said girls with freckles would make it to heaven. I wonder if that is the beauty of them; blank checks for mayhem; a personal gift from God. I think what I found most beautiful about you was that you could have been whoever you  wanted, but instead chose only to be yourself. You smiled like red roses by old gravestones; nobody was sure who put them there but man were they beautiful. It was all quite strange– white blonde hair, garden green eyes, doll-like dresses, a tiny waistline– there was nothing quite so dark about you but I’d be damned if the inside of your head didn’t read like a Charles Bukowski poem. I remember how when you were very sad, you would soak in bathwater or stand out in rain, for hours, as if your sorrow were sunburn, or a house up in flames. I remember how you wanted so badly to be touched but I  was afraid you might break. And so things pass. And time heals all.  And sometimes they don’t. And sometimes we write books about it.  And I apologize but sometimes scratching ink into a page is more effective than carving a scar into skin. And sweetheart, I dearly miss your impressive talent for making moments feel like forever– particularly the ones I knew never could. So here’s to your memory– I’ve never come across something so hard to remove that was neither a weed or a wasp hive, and to your old pictures, lost hairpins and forgotten clothes– I wish you  wouldn’t keep finding new ways of saying goodbye.  Anyhow, I hope there is a place for me, somewhere, someday, but if there’s not then I would like you to know that you were my favorite of all the nowheres I’ve been. And as for you, I only hope the Swedish focus groups got it right, I hope you make it to heaven old darling, or wherever else. After all, it’s funny– all the good ones go to hell. So I suppose I’ll be seeing you.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

TOD: 6th of June 2013, 11:57pm  The day and night are fundamentally connected yet forever apart and I cannot for the life of me figure out whether or not that is a curse. But one thing I do know, old darling, is that when you said goodbye and I went to respond, the weight of the word broke my jaw. You said you hoped I'd meet a girl some day and that I'd fall for her like twelve months of autumn. But this letter is just me letting you know that my lungs, they don't breath right when your name ain't in them, and I can count the moments we spent together in nanoseconds, and some days, I still feel you on my body like a phantom limb; each touch and sensation sparking electric up my skin like little biological reminders that you belong here, that without you I am only partly me. Well lately baby, I've been drowning in bottles of whiskey and I've got salty leaks underneath both of my eyelids and I cannot bring myself to let somebody else hear the way my heart beats after-hours between the back post and the bed sheets. I don't want  to sweat into anybody else's skin. Please don't make me. If you were everything then without you I'm nothing. But in writing you I have now learned that though like the day and night are doomed to follow each other around the earth until the end of time we will never touch or kiss or laugh together again, you will always be just a moment from me, you will live on in the clouds of my breath and the corners of my lips whenever they turn up and I don't know where to address this letter so if you are somewhere up there watching down I hope you're listening close, because I need you know that some day soon when I catch up with you, I promise I'll never let you go.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

My Lovely Blueprint nothing ever compared to the rush of blood i felt  when your mouth met mine or my fingers navigated the inside of your thigh or  when your eyes and my eyes caught the light off the fire but i would like you to know that night has burned into my skin and you have become the blueprint to everybody i've taken to bed since.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

You Got Stuck In My Throat Like A Song i was afraid to ask if you loved me because inside I knew that you did not and it was very hard to let the words leave my throat  when every kiss on my cheek felt like a goodbye note and i think i preferred to pretend there was an "us," because the only alternative was "i'm not good enough."

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H un ti ng S ea so n

S ho we r H ou rs on the other side of the shower door  we would kiss so hard  we couldn't be sure if the fog came from us or the very hot water and she would wash my problems off of my skin and  wrap her arms around my ribs and i don't think i've felt that clean since, see, i don't think i've ever felt dirtier.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

S ep ar at e C it ie s somewhere our names are still carved into the thick bark of an old oak tree and we sleep in strangers arms in separate cities but see when you  weren't looking i etched you into my  skin and there ain’t a blade, body or bottle that can rub you out of me.

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Vices if i could bottle up the feeling of you on my skin i would give up on cigarettes, pills and drink and all of the things i now take just to sleep because we all have our vices, and mine was your love and I never had the self-discipline to give you up.

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H un ti ng S ea so n

The Survivor’s Song somewhere around 12:45 a.m. late last night you turned up to my house  with a bouquet of bloodshot eyes you had swollen bruises on your lips, your arms, your neck, your thighs you said this what coming home a little late looks like he does this all the time, but when i asked you where it hurt the most you simply said, "inside,"  because the love you know now is no longer quiet films or honeymoons or romantic dinners under candlelight the love you know now is only a matter of surviving another night.

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A Goodbye Note Exchanged Between A Moth And A Butterfly On an evolutionary scale, butterflies and moths are remarkably similar, sharing many characteristics and behaviors. Some species can be virtually Indistinguishable to the untrained eye. I want you to know.

I want you to know that late at night when you wrapped your wings around me tight like a cocoon, I never slept a wink.  The cold evening wind sang for me.  And each grey-feathered wing ached to navigate the quiet world  while you were long asleep. I want you to know.

I want you to know that in the mornings and the middays you were beautiful; great veins of yellows and burnt blues stormed out from your body like Anvil Crawlers, illuminating your insides like X-rays. Your elegance  was a symphony but it was a song I was not born with the vocal chords to sing along with. I want you to know.

I want you to know that  we were different and that was okay but it was time we said our goodbyes because the day came where I was made to choose between you and something a little more dangerous, a little more on the wild side and I think deep down you knew that I would always choose the light.

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D es cr ib in g H er She had lips like two large slices of ripe watermelon you just wished you could bite into on the beaches of a hidden island somewhere in the north Atlantic and

collarbones like rolling hills you could climb with your fingertips and be rewarded with the most beautiful of  views once you reached the top. She had a mind like an

ocean you would navigate for months on end and it  would not matter one bit if you got lost or even drowned because the seabed of her thoughts was so much more

than you could ever hope to see up here, and the secret corners of her heart were cave tunnels that carried more light than even the most sun drenched deserts on earth

but if I were to describe her perfectly, in one simple turn of phrase, I would hold my tongue in silence, then whisper you her name.

70

H un ti ng S ea so n

Unfaithful I remember summer and burnt amber afternoons; fire pits and sand underneath our fingernails and despite the kind of permanent soft rain that showers in my heart, those 90 days we spent  were the closest I've ever come to waking up each day and feeling good about it. I loved you so much your hellos felt like hurricanes, and holding hands with you reminded me of the great universal forces  which hold planets in orbit. Sadly, a lesson in flying must also be one in falling and I learned the worst thing about the words I love you  is if they are spoken and meant once they will be swallowed as truth even when they are only dried vacant husks of the promises they once were. I do not know when the last time you said those words and meant them was; you were very careful to keep the bruises he kissed onto your neck invisible. Perhaps it's not important.  You were pretty. I was not.  And sometimes bridges are meant to be burnt. Even the beautiful ones. But I've learned forgiveness and forgetting are entirely different things and I cannot seem to master either.  And I've learned that love is not meant to be dammed like a lake it is supposed to run like a river, and honestly I am grateful for the time we spent together- it was never in your nature to remain still.  And finally, that although I don't love you anymore, perhaps I always will.

71

H un ti ng S ea so n

M et ho d A ct or s  The blood is pounding like two brass bells in an old church tower.  You are disconnecting your head and heart and siding with neither. His hands on your bones are old captains at sea navigating bad storms on stomachfuls of rum and he has plans to go down with the ship. He is drinking you in through a clumsy tongue, swishes it around his mouth as if he is savoring the taste of the moment and nothing else. His scars are permanent just like your smile and his skin smells like tobacco and pine and your eyes are rolling so far back all you can see is him in the back of your mind.  These are the death throws of the stowaways, kissing the lonely out of each other's veins and you think he may be the greatest accomplishment you've made passed 3 a.m. and he might just think the same.  That is what you hold onto because this is sweat and noise and nothing more and in a few hours or so one or the both of you will be gone but this moment tastes enough like love to get you through the next few months.

72

H un ti ng S ea so n

Eye Lashes I cannot for the life of me stop wishing on your lashes found one stuck to my rib cage another caught in my throat  And when I watch you undress to your bones slow dance in my room or kiss me  when I'm cold I can't help but notice that perhaps one came true.

73

H un ti ng S ea so n

Daisy Buchanan, Part One He looked at her, with the same longing that comes with the sight of land after months of ocean.  The two of them, both of age enough to know a thing or two about life and love. But with so much youth in their blood, they did not give a damn.  The summer dripped in grandeur; swift winds cradled her white dress and the heat wet skin in all of the creases.  There was food and drink aplenty; crab and duck and champagne in ice buckets, all laid out on a large yellow silk sheet that hugged the grassy hill. She was quite beautiful,  with just enough misplaced to entertain the eccentricities of a man with more money than time to spend it. He was well spoken,  well dressed,  well everything.  With each word hurricanes leapt off his tongue and swept into her heart. I never imagined a life so extraordinary as one with you in it, he would say, and I have been told to have quite the imagination, he would finish with a smile that seemed to carry itself more in his eyes than his mouth. She laughed, covering lips painted in red and champagne and a greeting kiss she wished had lasted a little longer, and cut a little deeper.  The park was crowded, children flew paper kites and couples walked pocket sized dogs. It was a Sunday afternoon after all, and there was no time in the week quite so suited to pausing and swaying with the spin of the world. So that is what they did. He parted her lips like so much curtain, inviting in a morning sun and they kissed with the fragile and ill-fated infinity that comes with this young and endless lust.

74

H un ti ng S ea so n

Rib Bones Like Heaven’s Gates she had secrets hidden between her teeth like fire lanterns coasting the sea and reflecting off wet champagne lips but never quite reaching out far enough to leap off them. she was a deep bruise kissed onto my skin, one I wished would never fade or leave. I wore her palms after hours like gowns, growing like vine around each other’s arms we knew the longer we lay the more trouble it would be to come apart. but that was okay  we were handsome  we were young  we had no where to be. I could taste her tongue ripening on my lips like peach trees and she breathed ripples into my nerves that could travel the length of a sea. she was troubled, eyes blacked out like empty galaxies and when we fucked everything made sense and also kinda not.  when I lay with her I wanted to go to heaven gather everybody up tell them to shut it down because something better had opened up.

75

H un ti ng S ea so n

V is it in g H ou rs  The hospital hall between her and room three zero four was an unfathomable ocean, each step constituting a thousand fathoms of sinking. She hadn't seen him since the candles on her birthday cake numbered six and you could count the years of his absence by the absence of bruises on her pale white skin. She was very beautiful, though somewhat sad, her eyes hid the majesty of a mid-autumn afternoon and anybody who spent more than a moment with her bared witness to the deep and wide scars left by the brutal abuse of her cruel past. Hospitals had a habit of hiding misery in plainness; the hall was vacant aside from a disillusioned nurse hugging the corridor scanning a clipboard, perhaps accessing a patient's troubled heart rate, or perhaps not, all that mattered now was that the nervous young girl was nearing her father's room and her own heart rate was spiking something terrible. Turning that last corner felt like a thousand mile free-fall. There he  was. Not half the man of the monster he once was–– like a deflated balloon stuffed with matches and water. She approached him cautiously like a hunter carefully approaches the carcass of a vicious predator– always aware of the danger in the terrible death throes of a cornered beast. He breathed through tubes and machines and nothing else and all of the windows in his room  were open as if he were already somewhat in the burning heat of hell. He noticed her enter through the doorway and went wet around the eyes, waving the two fingers he had the strength in his arm left to rise. This was a man  who created a very strong argument against the phrase respect your elders , since all his age really proved was that he was all too adept at staying alive. He had peace in his heart like the border of North and South Korea; quietly violent and always on watch. He coughed heavily as if all the pain he had ever caused others pounced out at once from his throat. The young girl was confused. She came here with hate in her heart and burning anger on her tongue, but now that she was here she had no words, only mercy and silence now held sway in her lungs. And with that the old man wept. He gave notice to his heart. He shut his eyes and breathed his funeral songs– “I will not sleep easy, my daughter, I know where I belong, but I’d like you to know how relieved I am,  you turned out nothing like the man I was. I will not ask forgiveness, I could not make this right,  just know I’m so very sorry little darling,  and goodnight.” 

76

H un ti ng S ea so n

On The Misfortune Of Wanting Only What We Cannot Have

 You burst into my life on a sunny day in a pretty bow  with a freckled face.  We talked for hours our dinner went cold you laughed at my jokes and i laughed at yours.  We traded numbers and i kissed your cheek but i never made plans or even bothered to ring Because It is always the love that falls easy at our feet that we kick the furthest and with the strongest swing.

77

H un ti ng S ea so n

Sad Eyes crisscrosses and red roses blossomed on her wrist as if her skin  were a canvas for her pain her sad eyes like long stretches of ocean I prayed I had the strength left to drain.

78

H un ti ng S ea so n

G o o d B o o k  She had eyes like an opening line in a good book I was hooked I could not put her down from the long kisses she peppered like warm rain onto my mouth to the way her hair smelt like sunflower gardens and dried apricot. I dwelled on her every word searched for meaning between each godly crafted smile and elegant movement. She was all i could breathe all i could see when i closed my eyes all i could hear in the music on the wind but like any good book I completed her much too soon  when the magic in her dulled I moved on to something new.

79