(mel)odic inky sin

“I heard a Fly buzz—when  I died—”   –Emily Dickinson

Strewn belongings left
to the apartment:
rent long overdue, rude black-on-white
‘EVICTION’
stapled to the door.
He—the King—
could  not be witnessed in a room
no longer mine.
                            Not that I expected Him to visit.

My feeble frame—disability services refused to pay,
split in halves at nineteen—sagged
on my one, good, arm.
I dragged my useless appendages
down the Atherton Pier,
alone, [no sobbing parents to
dote on their child, Everything will be fine]
with deathly resolve.

The pier gave out,
plashless I footed into the brackish
icewater of the bay.
                                        I belonged there,
with the corpses of the whores and criminals,
                       forgotten fish food.


Woven threads of my sweater
buoyed about me as stormclouds heaving
in the murk, tugging toward the surface.
No fly bequeathed its
                                      —uncertain, stumbling Buzz—
The bay would drown it, I am sure.

The cold set in,
and fear,
as rippling currents
pulled at my ankles.
            Down I go.
My lungs drew in the polluted bay;
drowning,
 I quaked—I can’t do this—
in muffled burbles. 
I reached toward the tossing wraiths
of orange city light,
the rippled hulls of barnacled tugboats,
summoning an empty prayer
at the bottom.  Pull me out.

No buzz. 

I’m sure I washed ashore that night,
my prayer answered.
Was it the hand of God
that thrust his cold palm
into mine, or…
                            I could not see to see—

Reaching for the instrument
long cast aside, he grumbles.
He longs in haste
to displace his sighs
into substance,
papered verbosity.  He loops
his eyes and marvels
in being tongue-tied,
                                silent,
hands still.

He rakes fingernails across
his cheek, feeling their crescent
moons slide down blushing
flesh, while reaching,
fingering the pen
that will liberate
his thought.

Punishing the cap,
his incisors gnash its frame,
a barbaric clash
of dentine and plastic.
He pulls it between his lips
into the open air to admire
           his work,
humming in approval
at the marred plastic, coated
in trails of liquid
          exasperation.

He flicks the end
against the tabletop, drumming
an unknown beat of persistence
in mottled taps,
rapid-fire.

Suspended in air, the pen
is spared its beating.
Cast aside, the cap watches
Ball-point-tip swoop
down to the paper.
Silken lines--midnight
mutterings--are drawn,
as he finds the words
penned across the page.
        At last,
                    his story.

I sink into streaks of rust
and scum, lock my sagging door
and smirk.  I cringe
at the seething tiles that hold
my feet and green fur
that adorns the toilet.
Yet, in this surrounding filth,
I jut my lip out
        [I want
              this too badly]
and bite down,
hard.

Reach into my pocket, pluck
the small, two-tone paper
tube from its cardboard house.
Cheeks round and pull.
I want to watch it burn.

Slip the paper between my lips,
lick the end
and feel the spread
of lipstick folding into the paper.
The taste of red that rings
its body is of clotted skin.  In longing
for charcoal and heat,
I light its head ablaze.

Suck, drawing
in the steady burn
of toxins across my tongue,
saliva laving the spongy tip.
The cigarette curls
its toes and sputters
trails of white heat.
                             [God, yes.]

I ignite in the surge of chemical
clots, press against
the wall, pant and puff
the poison out, eyes lolling in the flicker
of lights above me.

Flicked into the toilet bowl,
I watch it turn
on itself,
hear it wither
in a cloak of hiss. Bent,
its ashen face looks
at me through the foggy water.
I choke a garbled sigh, moan
that it is over.

I am unsatisfied, but it is spent.              

                                         I reached for you as a beam
                                         of pine, supple and sanded,

dipped my cheek into

your cautious breath.

There were paper kites and brush strokes,

and an empty bottle of whiskey,
the last amber rivulets pooled
over your wilted pout.

I used to bend,

roll my hips into
the ebb and billow

of your most tatter-torn
quilt on nights the floor was ours.

We carried our doubts in pockets
packed with lies and candy wrappers,
licked the melted remains

only when your lips,
pursed and buzzing told me

how the pages of your book
violently rowed together in the wind.

You left me wanting, scratched
my thighs.  I made you bite your lip
and whisper oh damn into folded
napkins.  We were redwoods,

swaying in breezes of nothing

and letters with extra postage required.
I sent you away with a dimple
in my cheek and a lilly behind my ear.

When you say 'the sparrow skims
the morn and we are the wrinkled
sea beneath him'  it tells me:

We will not flock.  We throw our breadcrumbs
behind us, but never look back.

You stare at me, your feathered

pupils pulsating in the hum

of sticky breath.  Your brows

pleat deep into mares of skin,
freckle peppered in mulchy hues.
I cannot reach your leafy
limbs, your tiers of tender plum
and greening skin.
So fold, twist and burn until--
like a match head set ablaze--
we glide across our cedar plank,
veins deep in murmurs
of climax and the flicker
just before
we are smoke.