Getting there

We had met, as constellations meet.
Every night, clouds or naught.
He: Orion.
I: Ursa Major.
I shown more brightly, but he was clearly more identifiable.
Under the cloudless strobe light of a bar bespeckled by urns of ash and ashtrays overfloweth, we were dancing.
Stars once still with worlds rotating around us, we reversed the polarity of an entire universe.
I, in utter disbelief, found a quasar of confidence.
It shot through me, drawing and quartering me standing up and cognizant.
If not for the whiskey this all might have hurt.
When through the penumbra of countless waste galaxies he out his arm around my shoulder.
The room became white hot heat.
I catalogued every flaw on my person: back hair angel wings, Jew nose, gullet full of cheap beer and self-loathing, and job complete with curfew at nearly 30.
When the sun began knocking on the stage door, we collected our garments and made for the inn.
We were staying in different rooms, but he made room for me.
Not just in his bed, but also in his heart.
I lay in both, remembering how glamorous I felt to be a celestial sensation.
Now, I wax and wane against the metallic tumult of our new bed, alternating between the smoothness of one another's skin, back to front and back again.
I'm dizzy just thinking about it.
I'm steadied knowing it to be real.

Wintry Retrospective

I am one more errant pubic hair away from ending it all.

Your houseboy I may be, your mother I am not.

I will not teach you to be good mannered, well groomed, or soft spoken.

That was someone else's job.

My job is to unearth your toenail clippings from the carpet, throw out the condom wrapper you've doubled as a bookmark and left conveniently dog-earring a passage from Leviticus, and goddamn it I will even organize your dildo collection by order of ascending length and girth.

But that's where I draw the line.

I use Grindr not to get off, but rather to get out.

I don't keep regular hours, and it's nice to know exactly how many feet away I might be from the meth-addicted former selectman who raped me in front of my fireplace over PBR tallboys during a roaring February ice storm.

I am not looking for a hero, just someone to be here.

I don't need to be saved; I just want to be spared pocked innuendo and flowery language.

If you want to fuck me, then just stick it in.

Let me know first, ideally not through text, SMS, Skype, FaceTime, IM, Manhunt, Craigslist, Adam4Adam, OKCupid, or whatever creepy new site the Germans are working on.

Say it.

With words.

Out loud.

[Dis]Connecting

I am two hours of wasted space
Examining the not so subtle differences of Missed Connections across multiple states.
New England: you have me totally fucked.
I long to write with abandon about my flagrant displays of unrequited affection
Thumbing through the Garth Brooks titles at Wal-Mart, in Salt Lake City, as a doe-eyed Mormon scratches at his undershirt because I make his teeth sweat.
I want to eat at an Applebee's because clearly they are a hot bed of heat lamps warming up the inner thighs of so many young boys in Minneapolis.
I will kiss that park ranger in Spokane who narrowly escaped my grasp.
I will hang on to his few remaining hairs, forget the need to define his ethnicity and know all I need which is his lips fit mine.

New England, I will stop dating unicorns.
I can no longer see a face pic online, seeming so fierce and unafraid, cower in the shadows as I scoot by on my fixed speed.
We will talk,
Not type,
Our love.
I will wear my grammar as a condom, protecting me from communicable diseases and bad syntax.
My relationships will end not with a preposition, but with proposition.
I will speak the words.

Three Fingers Short

One day closer to snow,
and one hour short is the day.

A game of dive bar hop scotch means never skipping a chance to double dutch a double scotch, three fingers short of a Tom Waits ballad.

Whiskey makes me beautiful,
at least that's what I tell myself when I'm touching my face against the bar bathroom mirror, speckled with has-been band decals and inscribed with dime store lipstick poetry.

Last call incense lingers in the air.

One pour further from boredom.

One pour closer to divinity.

I own no watch, so I watch the time pass as my cigarette packet diminishes.

Four cigs left: clearly, it's 3:00 A.M.

Trouble is, 20 more reasons to stay awake are just a deft discarding of plastic and foil away.

I just need to find the pocket they're in.

Where did I leave them?

Who's jacket is this?

A couple new ones

Grey Dog Refrain

Sweating icicle daggers onto the sidewalk below me, with each step another casualty.
My tardiness is deadly for the daydreamers on 16th Street.
For them, time moves as snails over nasturtium petals, a slothful eclipse of orange and grey.
My heart, however, beats three paces ahead of my gait and my body is a shaky steering wheel in a foreign car.
The skin on my lips begins to peel from backpedaling into forward-thinking strategies of how to abscond my vanity.
It really takes a 14-hour work day with a 37-minute break split into two followed by three hours of binge drinking with strangers and a six-hour nap on the train to look this disheveled.
I don't believe in outsourcing.

Nowhere at Night

Leather pants the color of straw and a heart black as tar.

I am prey for a pride of ravenous singles doomed to pretend they're alright with themselves enough to swill PBR cans and update their Facebook status on their iPads in a rollicking gay bar with Prince blasting in the background.

I am so many eyes as fingers working shiatsu down my back and lingering on my ass when the focus should be on my calves, taut and shimmering from 57 hours of work in four days and refusing to rest on my day off.

If this man where man enough, he would have said hello already.

I am sat alone writing under the pathetic light of a sacrificial candle purchased in the ethnic foods aisle of the supermarket.

I'm anything but unapproachable.

If anything, I'm slutty.

I'm dressed for a Halloween party I'm clearly two months late for.

But I"m not wearing a costume.

This is how I see myself.

I am paisley on a Manhattan subway in December.

My laugh invokes transformative properties in otherwise listless souls because they yearn for more of it.

They conjure spells, stir potions, and crack yolkless eggs in an attempt to be funny enough to elicit my giggle.

What they don't realize is that I speak no language.

I feel words.

I know funny when I feel it.

Karaoke Justice

If there be a hipster among us, let him be the first to cast stones.

So I bought a shirt that says Brooklyn on it while I was in Brooklyn.

The story behind where I left my other shirt is what's important.

May I continue to dance naked with the drag queens of Bushwick, tired in their faces and humble in their loins.

I am a stanza in the song of life.

This is not Gaga.

My eyes open as the cracking of quail eggs.

I see the elegance in so many glasses accumulating on a table: coffee mug, water glass, Bloody Mary Collins, Champagne flute, whiskey thimble.

This is a timpani devotedly to be wished.

This is music I understand implicitly.

My body is a temple ... in Chichen Itza.

Weathered and dilapidated, yet intriguing to the brethren that make a pilgrimage to it every weekend as it moves up and down 8th Avenue.

My howl will be heard in the belly of Brooklyn as I scream at the theater geeks of Hell's Kitchen.

Karaoke is a means to an end to get Japanese businessmen to cut deals.

Calm down, queen.

You are not getting signed for a weak rendition of Pokerface you performed for a bunch of PBR-swilling hipsters on a Wednesday in Midtown.

Our time will come.

It will be a Thursday.

Champagne Flutes and Teaspoons

Can every day be prosecco and coffee with a faux-collar sweater in New York on a Wednesday with nothing to do?

Give me a life as translucent as this prosciutto I wear as a monocle.

If Tom Waits and I produced a child, he would growl phlegmy giggles from a basinet constructed out of Champagne boxes and hung from bass strings.

I am desiring not of a partner, but rather a playmate to go in on a bottle with me so that I don't get looks when I order one alone.

While I could be sleeping, I could also be boring.

I want my life to be sweetbreads and chanterelles, with polenta dredged in robiola and tomato.

I will not accept Splenda as anything but for the weak.

If you need sugar, there is no substitute.

I love that New York rewards you for drinking during the day.

I feel that my most rewarding drinking happens during the day.

While I'm quite skilled in evening imbibing, it is an afternoon on the porch with Tom in the kitchen where my socialization is at its prime.

There is a beautiful time of day when the clothes people wear change from outfits to costumes, and it usually coincides with the popping of a second cork - a harbinger of an imminent nap, and still no playmate.

One of my biggest regrets is not being able to see myself as others see me.

My eyes must be ravenous.

Every person that passes me by looks back as though I just unbuckled my belt ... or theirs.

Some smile.

Most don't.

One of these days I am going to dance on the subway when the mariachi duo strikes up a tune.

If the refrain is easy, I may even sing along.

For now, I will continue to sip on brioche bubbles and stare into the face of New York with a shit-eating grin on mine.

I get this city.

I get this afternoon.

I get it.

Now, to be had.