cinema vows

it'll never be perfect like 

breakfast at tiffany's, but

we can still get a cat named cat,

and i'll still kiss you 'i'm sorry' 

in the rain on 57th street.   

i promise to write all our fights like 

aaron sorkin, quick quips quilting

together until they hang between us in sheets,

all barbed wire and typewriter keys. (it's fine,

we'll use them as drapes). 

and if christopher nolan ever flips 

our hallway, i promise, i'll throw the gun away

before my subconscious can fire at anything

your mom bought us.  

and if kubrick's elevator ever opens up

and all the blood pours out,

i promise, i'll be there.

i'll have floaties. 

and even if this whole world turns 

out to be a fake, i promise,  

i'll unplug us from the matrix, 

and we'll go learn kung-fu. 

but more than this, 

more than any of it, 

i promise,

we will never, ever, 

become gigli. 

The PIT

Tonight I stepped on a lobster.

A live lobster.

Like really alive.

I ruined its escape. 

It made it out of the Whole Foods bag

and was headed for Coney Island.

Its sad little claws

bound by rubber bands. 

It's a hard life on the streets

for a lobster. 

One Year

It never would have worked.

You hate limes. You sleep with
one sock on. You dislike modern
art and Les Fleurs du Mal and you
were only so-so on Sufjan.

You never noticed what I wore,
what perfume I put on, if my
hair fell differently. You didn't
read Invisible Cities even though
you had it for five months.

You fought dirty, always wrapping
your words in barbed wire. You
like the Harry Potter films more
than the books. You run at 4am.

Who runs at 4am?

And whenever I'd lean over, you'd spread out,
taking up every inch of warm space under
the sheets and laughing when I'd kick you
and try to take it back again.

It never would have worked.

Though once in a while, I'll find
an orphaned sock under the bed,
a freckle of you,
left behind,
and I think,

what I wouldn't give
to have tired of you.

I Try Not To

But some days
I love you

from the top of my heart.

Basement Things

Tell me
we've shaken it off.

Tell me it's past and that
past is a thing that is buried
in a box in the dirt under
the floorboards of a house
we never lived in.

Tell me one ghost story
that's not about us.

sometimes words are useless things.
they make poor buckets for what
we mean to fill them with.

and mine usually have holes in the bottom.

It's at night - when you're
just about to fall asleep - that your
unbounded brain starts to write
out your grocery list and wonder
if he is really mad at you or just trying to
make you feel guilty and, suddenly,
you know the solution to the
debt crisis in Greece and the exact
way you want to rearrange that
top-left cabinet and, wait, why
do we shape our eyebrows for
aesthetic pleasure, isn't that weird?,
and could there actually be a meaning
behind all the the seemingly random
ways we come together and fray apart and
come together and fray apart and repeat
and repeat and repeat?

Then it's morning.
And all you think is -
I have to pee.

My Hipster Temptation

when you lean like that, 

all odd angles against brick,

laughing into my hair smoky and 

liquid and low—

i want to do it over again.

i want to drive into this

until we run out of road.

For Taylor

I was drunk,
then hungover,
then I had an
iced coffee.

Now I'm okay.

We come here
empty.

We leave
empty.

But there is something beautiful in
the barren symmetry of bones
to bones again.

Sometimes
I look forward to the lack.

City Prayers

Standing on a small bridge,
leaning, my face brushed by
sun, warm and soft cotton
candy rays, my fingers trailing an
old iron rail, exploring its
roughness, its divots, picking at
the paint with two fingernails
while I watch a tattered man play
a hurdy gurdy, coaxing a sweet,
aching note from its hinges as
he smiles to himself, to no one,
to nothing but the sound,
I think—
please,
please stay this way.

Don't say I never said anything nice about you

The sounds of the city
bleed through the walls,
settling into the room with us.

There are taxi horns freckled
across the kitchen counter,
a "fuck you, you fucking fuck!"
smashed into the fruit bowl,
a rumbling bus engine purring
from beneath the
bathroom sink,
the dull bleat of a
jackhammer
tapping against
the edge of
the couch,
in time with
the fan
of your
fingers.

There is an ugly tango to it all,
a graceless rhythm that
winds me up and makes
my nerves spark like
wires rubbed
too hard.

It takes the solid feel of
your chin tucking into the
depression of my shoulder
to remind me what
quiet feels like.

Some days
you're the only sound that makes sense.

sometimes i want to cut my hair.
but then i
thread my fingers
through the tips
and think,
you’ve seen paris.

and i don’t.

How to Seduce a Member of the Night's Watch

Come in closer,
southern boy.
Leave the wolf outside.

Claim me to my bones,
capsize me,
catch me in your tide.

Cold winds are rising,
but we can thaw,
fire licks through snow.

Come in closer,
southern boy.
Show me something I don't know.