I want to make connections
between the coffee and the sugar
my mouth and your mouth
string our theories along

jesus strung up on the cross
jeremy strung out
with the wash
they're the same, right?

with a want to die
to allow my body to be finally connected with the earth

I wish I were retarded and
could only process certain things
limitations and parameters with which to make connections
instead of this eternal torrent of senselessness
downloading me down
always different, never the same, indifferent
always the same
in its difference

a kiss

underneath the spaghetti sauce

and the chocolate and strawberries,

I can taste penis

still on your breath.

plains

poppies,

poppies,

poppies,

like contours of red velvet cakes.

put some in your purse, honey,

and beware of diabetes.

hold onto nothing as fast as you can

For the first time, I guess in my entire life, I have a place I can call home.

There was my mom's house that I lived in for eighteen years, but it was always just that: my mom's house, with her way of life, her energy pervading every room, a big black negative gas that sifted under every closed door. There were no locks in that house, not even on the bathroom door, so I locked and bolted everything into my head. When the air there became too clouded and toxic to catch even one breath, I left.

I went to a boyfriend's house. He lived in a two-bedroom with his Lebanese grandparents, uncle, and cousin, none of whom spoke a word of English, or pretended they didn't. I had known my boyfriend two weeks when I began living with him. There I traded the repression and suffocation of the senses from my mom's house for a full-out emotional vomit. It was like when you get alcohol poisoning, and you vomit violently until you can't anymore, and then dry heaves, and the only thing you can think about is making your stomach stop convulsing. Everything was allowed to come out and be said, and the hatred was sickening. My boyfriend hated his family. They hated him back. I swiftly began to hate all of them. It was difficult to navigate around all the hatred, lying in stinky pools throughout the small crowded rooms of that house, without accidentally stepping in it.

Then there were the college dorms. I have never been to the Bronx, but in my Hollywood imagination, I imagine it is a lot like my dorm hallway. Beer vomit, used condoms, and greasy du-rags on the floor. A communal bathroom, where more often than not, people had drunkenly mistaken shower stalls for toilet stalls and had shit to their heart's content. Gang-bangs and drug busts in the room adjacent to me were regular. It would have been funny if it was a movie, but it wasn't, knowing that's what I would come back to every night.

Sunday night we moved into our new house. In my head, I call it the Farmhouse, the Farmhouse on Odell. It was a bit of a religious experience. Each box that came up the stairs was like an offering of thanksgiving to whatever god pulled the strings and let this happen.

When everything was moved in, we lit incense and put on recordings of the three songs we have written together: "FAT WHITE MEN," "Do You Feel It?" and "Heroin Song." As the music played, we carried the incense around to each room of the house.

Then grilled chicken breasts , spaghetti with tomatoes and garlic, and wine. And nudity, and Tori Amos. Tori is our patron saint.

There are seven apartments in the house. The first neighbor I met said, "I don't want to freak you out, but there is a spirit that lives in this house. Most of the tenants have had direct communication with him."

There is a large papasan chair on the porch, big enough for two or three people to curl up in, a smoke and coffee nest.

There is a good sized niche with an altar-like step, oddly residing in the bathroom. It has no apparent purpose but to be a shrine, so there across from the toilet will be our shrine to Jesus. Ask, and you shall receive an easy, complication-free shit.

The one remaining task is to find a piano to share the house with us, that can put up with our weird lives, and is not shy about teaching us things.

And I am living with the woman I love most in the world. Last night we wrote a song. Home is where the heart is. I am home.

Stuff on My 2' x 2' Night-stand

1 Ashtray containing)

8 Butts (5 american spirit, 3 djarum black)

3 used Matches

1 joint Roach

6 strands mardi gras Beads (silver, gold, black, purple, green, red)

5 Books)

the amber spyglass, philip pullman

the power of now, eckhart tolle

smoke and mirrors, neil gaiman

the tarot, alfred douglas

tori amos: piece by piece, tori amos & ann powers

when you are engulfed in flames, david sedaris

1 heineken beer Bottle

1 pin-on amanda fucking palmer Button

1 disposable fujifilm Camera

1 st. anthony votive Candle

5 beer Caps (4 pbr, 1 heineken)

10 trojan Condoms

1 square sushi Dish containing)

1 iPhone

1 ring of Keys

1 Wallet

8 Figurines)

1 plastic green Dinosaur

1 plastic Duck

6 metal Gladiators

1 pair Fingernail Cutters

21 black elastic Hair Ties

1 box nag champa Incense

1 bottle wet platinum Lubrication

1 Magic 8 Ball

2 zorro-esque Masks

3 Photographs)

my mother & sister

Britney Spears, from britney album artwork

a row of 8 Toilets

2 dirty Plates)

1 navy blue with honey & breadcrumbs

1 cream with apricot jam

1 large Rock, paperweight containing)

1 handwritten move-in Checklist

1 papa john's Coupon sheet

1 housing Lease

2 rent Receipts

1 joanna newsom & 1 imogen heap concert Ticket

1 Rubik's Cube

1 pair Scissors

1 rider waite Tarot deck

2 dirty Teacups, (1 mustard yellow, 1 cream) containing)

coffee grounds

1 spoon

tea leaves

1 trident gum Wrapper

harlequin

Mutual love is not forever.

Here is a love that lasts forever: the unrequited love, the love with non-closure.

That guy on the street I smiled to, that didn't smile back.

The boy, that when I see his picture, pictures of us, pictures of him and friends, I find myself subconsciously saying "You motherfucker" aloud.

The man that fucks me, but that I make love to.

I am in love with him, and him, and him.

And I can't tell them, because they don't want it. And I hate it.

mafia

It is dusk - almost dark. Three large men dressed casually dressy sit in front of me at a table outside the coffeehouse. They are not nice men. With a nasty feeling down in my stomach, I realize they are speaking Lebanese, with the sporadic English word: "desperate," "half-breed," and once, loudly "...the fuck?"

One of the men, with a shaved head and four gold rings, pulls off both black loafers he is wearing, then peels off both socks, puts his feet up on the table.

A beautiful, dark woman walks by, and another of the men says "Sharmouta." I want to kick him in the teeth.