the wrong Brooklyn

sipping Brooklyn swing-sets
set in the womb of a pregnant whiskey bottle
-this vomit goes down like
every sunset,
and each breath questions the next
with more exclamation,
yet even less of a swallow.

apples would have tasted better
than the dusty rinds of half past nine
clouds
that shuffled with heads down
around five county lines defined
by their rotten faces.
this city wears its smiles like tragedy
-with more docks then boats,
the tumble weeds roll into a-loan
spent on a minute of your time
to distract from their own.

the city dressing in black and white
-because the secrets of 1953
still bite at the burning
insides of every cloud
that still hasn’t past;
the silver linings have been tarnished
as the widow’s husbands
drop their hands and the sand
fills the bar
until the bottles are too dark to take another sip
without drinking their own hearts.

the streets are always empty,
and the homes never were full
-so they kept eating away at the stares
until we stopped walking there.

the gun shots fire in reverse,
as the bullets duck
to avoid his touch-
too sorry to kill, his stomach still churns
in the words he doesn’t bother to mutter
-with a face written in braille,
that everyone reiterates.

we all try to get high,
but the sky was sold to the south
and now we only smoke
ourselves
-as the north star falls from the sky.

oh sweet, sweet gust of lithium lung
-just, take my rain and make it sun
for the sake of having one.

everyone wears long sleeves
to keep the cuts at peace-
and we’ve stopped wearing our hearts
because they’re too scarred
from last night’s beating
-where the hearts stopped
as the bottle dropped, and shattered into a million pieces
that became the Brooklyn sea-
saw that cuts another wrist with a tight rope
sown with syringe tips and laid
under a fresh coat of Px-mashea
-that only nose how to masquerade
with a blood soaked sneeze
seeping into the coast of Maine.

here, we all make lust
-just because it cost less than trust,
and is a lot quicker
than making love.
the sex spills across the floor
from a bottle of Adderal-
and we fuck in the dust,
wheezing, because it numbs the touch;
I look into your breasts,
because your eyes want children
and mommy needs a new dress,
and I just needed to be with someone
at the hour when the skeletons
juggle hourglasses pass the knothole in my head.

so we touch, in the static of cracked tv screens
-with audiences to lazy
to get off their drunken asses,
past the stack of empty glasses,
and change to one of three other channels
with missing buttons on an artificial panel
-where our silhouettes cuddle in plastic wood-
grain bottles, hefty bags and crooked moans
that choke on the sound of rape-
but play the mood on stage.

the un-assembly fields peel away
and all that’s left is gray-
slate faces drowning in the rock quarry
decorate the bodies standing on their heads
-lynched in the blueberry patch with bare feet
and blistered palms dipped in ashes
from the lobster pot
that was smoked in-stability and blackened
thoughts;

the suicides pile in the author’s footnote
-he wanted to write an ode to home,
but got as far as the pregnant prom queen
and lysol whip-its in the needle’s throat,
before he saw the eulogy
that he had wrote.

searching for russian roulette
he left yesterday to taste life on a whim;
his broken wings led him right
into the deep end of art’s very own self destruction-
its original depression
wrapped in the ocean tides
where I lived and died twice,
before I lied every sentence
in a bed of freshly killed roses.

holding tonight
in the starlight of a glass pipe
-looking back at the constellations I created
in the city of midnight I took in
by accident-
the tides have changed but I never left
the ocean side that I cried
in the looking glasses cracked meniscus
-because the few breaths I took in
will always rewind the tapes I thought I threw away
in barrel that gave out holidays
-that I met blindfolded
inside the crooked smiles that created
a chalk line
the wrong Brooklyn painted
like homicide
with cocaine and snake skin.

I’ll never call it home,
more like the perfect place to settle down
-and have one last go
at suicide.

Brooklyn, Maine
1820-2003