"The Needle Exchange"

“The Needle Exchange” punctured Our exchange of careening sweatied sheet words.

Stale, stagnant air, and an uncompromising topical tropical oral humidity,

possibly reminiscent of the topographical tenderloin prescription stripmalls

caved in, hollowed faces, toothless solicitations, empty black hole abysmal eyes, and sliding-scale relief

Black, brown, or round and white

A nearsighted spectral chart

Various nanometers of obliteration

Your arm, Ed McMahon’s recipient

a large Rx check

Inkblot bruises like nebulous mood ring faces

Purple to green, Green to blue

Splattered with Jackson Pollock carelessness

Smoking a fag with shaky, ravaged cuticle fingers

Retreated nailbeds, nervously eroded by aggressive saliva

Sheets crinkled as the whole tattered bed inhales,

And with the exhale

The sheets slide straight

Relaxed eggplant paraffin wax

I sympathize

Inquire

And our two seaweed tongues thrust up a tide

Momentarily transferring your breath into my cheek pockets

Like sweet, tingling chewing tobacco.

I offer bullet point kisses, tracing the reclusive translucence of your veins,

Following poison’s path,

But knowing that this journey I am unwilling to take

I even refuse to pack you a paper-sack lunch

All my willingness was shot up my dilated nose long ago

leaving snotty disdain, and unpresentable pity.

Unwilling to be maternal material, or some oedipal edifice.

Powerless

Troubled

Both of us?

Cooking up my own necessary defenses,

While you do your own spoonfeeding

Your Lady O! Is too misleading

And I cannot promise star-sapphires exploding and stretching under your skin

Reveries diving in and from your every pore

A million feather fragments dusting epidermal crevices, searching for Lady O’s chalky white fingerprints

My onion skin arms cannot compete with her surging occult charms

I know too well

Her brother was a dear friend of mine

I know too well

How to cross that thin white line.