She dyed her hair again,
as if red would chase away
the memory of his touch
that dark night in the park.
A fountain throws water
high up into the sky,
I imagine it evaporating
before it falls back down
to join the rest of its self.
The water mixes
with my thoughts, high in the air.
Thoughts I let go of,
cast free of my mind,
the thoughts I cannot bear
to keep any longer.
Memories come back
and will not go away,
testing patience
like a stray cat hair
on the tip of your nose
that will not be brushed away.
There is a woman in Las Vegas,
that sells her body
for vintage gaming chips,
even though she knows
they no longer hold value,
they are hoarded away,
because they were once
worth something,
when she was still human.
We all lose our humanity,
if for a moment only,
a priest with fresh semen on his hand,
the junkie injecting his wife,
an unknown man running from the dark.
I imagine candle flames,
castles buried beneath the sea,
I dream of masks that hide nothing,
the death of an angel.
The color purple engulfs my senses,
the same color as the marks
I left on her body
that last weekend.
I hear music in my head
when people are talking,
when I don’t care to listen;
sometimes I sing along,
in my mind.
A man in Istanbul
lost his wife to cancer.
The village doctor
said it was a curse,
and cast him from his home
banishing him from his life.
Americans need more fiber
in their diet,
the absence of it
is the cause of obesity
in this fare country.
I keep my humanity in a wine bottle,
on a shelf,
next to books by
Crane
Plath
and Bukowski,
next to a bottle of whiskey
and engulfed by
the thoughts I have cast away.
Self Inflicted Gunshot Wound to the Head
