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I am not my scars.

Not the sum of my tears.
Not the boy I was or the man you are.

Yet years later,
ripples hit the shore
and I know this will always be part of me.

The rage dances with shame,
and the shame dances with guilt,
and …

I dance in waves of Limited Liability Companies
visions of stock options swirling in my head as I
work for frenzied hucksters
with smiling faces and fuck-you eyes.

Polished liars who think "Glengarry Glen Ross" is a comedy
and quote lines from it as often as "South Park."

Here it …

I:
Rain falls with a knife’s intensity
and unity of purpose.
I am wet.
I stand in the middle of this barren world.
This ocean of mud.
I feel the rain on my cheeks
and see it on my glasses
as I look up at the sky,
and feel …

I go to Tacos México at midnight — the one on Broadway past Ninth where the Latino gangbangers don’t have much patience for the homeless black vets who ask them for handouts and the for-rent girls from the dance-hall down the block come by after a hard night of dry …

You sat next to me on the bus
like a panther on the hunt;
licking your lips at my taste:
musty and stale like money
but it was sweet to you.

Your tastes were familiar;
but different
than the women
I had known.

Spicy with citrus tang
like the ceviché …

The void, the hole gapes open tonight;
jagged, ragged edges,
and you can look down
and never see bottom,
just looking down on endless blackness
till you lose your balance,
lose your focus,
lean forward and teeter on the rim,
and just a breeze,
just a feather touch and you'll …

I want to make love to a tattooed lady,
intricately patterned flesh heaving under my touch.
Her art glued to my skin with sweat.
And then, pulling apart,
to delicately trace my finger over her lines,
as I soften, spent, inside her.

I do not want you,

but I wish it could have worked.

I miss the feel of you beside me
as we squeezed into my single bed.

I miss the quick touch of your lips
at my neck as I worked at my desk.

I do not want you,
but …