a ship in a bottle

there's too much plum
in
the four dollar bottle
of malbec
i bought tonight.

and at this point,
i just don't care anymore.

lately,
we have had the conistency
of strangers.
where everything just drips
until one of us goes to bed,
with
neither one of us
saying our prayers.

but the only difference is,
is that i am here
and
you are there,
and
this bottle we sit in
is certainly not a church.

before it gets louder

in the deepest part of the night,
when you think
that everybody in this entire city
is asleep,

you just know better.
the quiet
leads to thinking
and the thinking leads
to a tiny siren roaming
far enough off in the distance
where you categorize it
as just another example of background noise.

it's not cool anymore

the puerto ricans
have been lighting fireworks
since
a little before
the first of the month.

tomorrow
will be the fourth of july,
the 7th straight day
of 90 degree plus heat.

someone opened the firehydrant
behind the elementary school
on kedzie,
and now
children wade in gutters.

you try to cut the sky
just to relieve the haze

but the knife melts,
and
nobody thinks any of this
is funny.

post haste

hi.

i want to fuck you.

i love you.
let's move in together.

i have dreams
that could fit the size
of
one of your hands.

and just before i give you the first one,
you will have decided upon a wall
in which you want to slap.

moving day

you win.
you have burnt
an image of your face
on the right side of my chest,
just below my crow and heart
tattoo.

it's now
that i decide to pack some scabs,
a white flag,
all of my belongings,
and a piece of rope
in a few plastic containters
and bring them home.

another definition

i've sat here before,
more
than a million times.

i believe in everything
when this room is quiet.

i trust the dark,
just as long as there is some type of
light
that i can hold,

and sometimes that light pulls me
to places that shine
on the alphabet
of the letters
that form
the meat
and bones
of something
that i am trying
to describe.

the first saturday without a cigarette

the entire city of chicago
could be on fire again,
and the only thing
that i'd want
would be a fucking cigarette.

my cousin had a birthday party
for his one year old
today
so i decided not to show,

and inbetween the miles of procrastination
that this produced,
i still decided not to tell anyone
that i wasn't attending.

i'm odd.
i know i'm odd,
and i'm fairly certain
that my girlfriend
and everyone else i know
has
caught on to this fact.

everything,
the birthday party,
the odds
that everybody thinks
that i'm some giant weirdo
from the planet Zeetron,
and all i ever wanted
was
a fucking cigarette
to save me today.