You Are My Only

Hips are happy tonight
along with the flowing fingers that feel flesh in a frozen flashback
and I just missed a moment.
Shoulder rolling to shoulder, and count
two three four fuck it
five six sucks and still the music plays great
and loud in the waiting room of my nervousness.
Brief silence and I just missed a moment and I
just stepped on beautiful toes and you are my only
but someone else can always do the dancing...

Scratched floors shine with confidence like a Chilean smile,
and I must have left mine in St. Paul, New Brighton,
on the shadowy overpasses of 35W,
locked in a cologne bag of ineptitude, which I left the house with
so long ago; it seems like so much more than a moment ago.
Finger licking and rapid kicking wearing fish-scale
flowing outfits, unmatched in the wide open
competition of beautification. I haven't spent a single
penny and my pockets are dimeless, I threw them all
at the epileptic parking meter, in the timeless void of

vocal lesson and arm-burrowed weeping and snow-drift
recollections at the Cosmopolitan.
I am unspeakable, which I dare not speak about, neither
in my midday sanity nor full moon toothache, regretful
of the long nights spent wishing it were the past and
future at the same time,
because now it has impregnated my gut with
sullen suspicions and fragranced rejections, which I taste
with chocolate-cupcake intensity.
It is a happy birthday tonight. You are my only

and what this means petrifies all but my swollen
flickering eyes and thrusting unfathomable unconfidence
in the general direction of Winter.
Can't you see the tango twirls tessellating as if it
were my own kaleidoscope nightmare!
And the hand slips, to tucked stomachs, invisible bra straps
and frozen shoulders, shoulders.
And the clock strikes Not Yet so the ball continues to
sputter down the unforeseeable hill of pathetic, which I
am the King Of! King Of Chapped Lips! King of the Failed
New Year's Kiss and King Of Forever Lean and Miss!

Semi-hydrated particles of liberal sweat and teenage tears of
breathless joy crash against the wall of Time, seeping through
all its weary cracks slow and unbearable, slow and no I don't
know what's wrong so quit asking me and quit dancing with your
helpful strangers and quit leaning towards the ever-present possibility
of Moving On, towards a new river-soaked chapter of loving.
So much time passes when the music moves quickly through
glittering salsa halls and explosive shopping malls though every
single store was closed and I just needed to get the hell out of there
get the hell out of here and debate for a very endless birthday
the sincerity of so many glowing moments, until one two three
friends is what we are and I'm sorry for having missed four.

Can you believe in the exhaustion affliction that so desperately
rears its flustered face in the coldest night of the year?
Believe or don't it is becoming my perfectly acceptable reality,
crossing the inhuman void between My Self and My Other, who
so desperately wants to look across the mirrored room and
flash a frozen grin -- dresses fluttering and prisms reflecting
back the intolerable whiteness of strange and stranger smiles.
Pain and swirling prisms and pain of the past dozen lunar
cycles eclipsed by the holy madness of the full moon, marking
the first day of her period and a series of periods I have
maniacally induced into writing, here on the back of Miss
Hurd, which tonight is bare and flawless and ironic.

Erstwhile the after-party oracles consult each other, smoking
stories between each other in valiant attempts to ignore the
trembling pen with glasses and a chipped face. Spare me of
further restlessness and press softly on my temples to relieve
the swelling. Rid the absolute squid of my incompetence for
Eternity, which tonight means tonight, because what else could
matter but the dancing fairies I see in the mirror? Happy
Birthday. And happy birthday to my dad on the day of
my gentle bludgeoning, and happy birthday to the New Year
for being so productively boring and for inciting hollow
excitement into the steam-boat of January. I can't thank

you enough for your consideration of my un-being. That is
what would be best, after all? To be without the muttering
pen and uncertain glances of certainty. I'm sorry for having
ruined nothing. Perhaps if I mattered more (or less) I would resign
to being all (or none) that you think of, and who can think
anyway when lying on salsa/hospital couches, with flutes and
maracas and romantic guitars boring holes into my open
secrets, and I can't even begin to imagine what that looks
like, but all I see are holes and endless cha-cha into the nest of
them, and even that I cannot see, only the gentle wet-sand waves
of bare arms, and flowing foothills of frozen hair, and all the
moments retreating back into my mouth, where they scream with
hoarse voice, YOUAREMYONLYYOUAREMYONLYYOUAREMYONLY