She reminds me of fire, the way she loves me, the way she travels across my skin, the way she marks me, mars me, scars me. 

She reminds of fire, the way she strips off my clothes and throws me across the room. She holds me down like a strong idea, and she pokes around inside my mouth like a bunch of dirty words and phrases. “Good dog.” “Get back down on your knees.” “Open your mouth.”

She, ah. She puts her hands on me, her lips on me, she covers me in herself. She burns like needles just under the skin. She burns like its something she could do for a living. Yeah, she could hurt you for money, all day long.

I wish I wanted anybody as badly as I want her to end me. If I could just fucking die at her hands, I might stand some sort of wicked chance of making my way into heaven. If you know what I mean. Metaphorically, and all that.

Except the death. That part’s real; that part’s always real. She slits me open and pours me out, across the floor. I love her I love her I love her I do. 

Or maybe I just love things that take the time to hurt. 

“I love you, I love you, I love you, I do,” I said.

She punctured each one of my phrases with a bullet to the gut. I sucked up lead in my midsection and spurted blood across the parking lot like a sprinkler trying to grow grass. 

“I want to be yours forever,” I explained, as she put the blade in between my ribs, tickling my heart with the tip of the knife. Yeah, she tickles my heart like I’m falling for her, like I’m falling and falling and falling.

Head over her heals; she wears those big long jagged things; they’re decorated with the hearts and minds of all the other men she had to step over and through to get to me.

If I could be anything, I’d be dead in your arms.
I’d be dead-on accurate. 
I’d be dead on arrival.  
Dead on impact.

The trick, with smoking pot, as with loving lovers, is to remember to hold it all in for as long as you can.

Oh yeah, I saw you there, noticing me. I was pretty sure I did. I mean, I was watching every little fucking thing you could do, and I was just knowing that eventually your eyes were going to wind up on me, and why wouldn’t you like what you were seeing?

I feel a little funny, I feel a little off. I’m milk that’s been left in the fridge for maybe a couple of weeks too long. I’m chocolates with nuts inside with maggots inside. I’m something that looked so much tastier than it turned out to be. It seemed so cheap, before the hospital bills started coming in. 

Oh, yeah, I thought I saw you there, dancing slowly in that coolly indifferent way that girls like you have of doing everything. You wanted me to see you, that’s why you wouldn’t let me ask you any questions. 

I saw the window breaking in, as you stepped out. I felt the surging push of “you know whatever” as you looked into your drink and then, before I knew it, we were dancing to some other stupid tune. 

I spent five years living in the woods, splitting wood and carrying water like some stoic zen monk. Thirty litre bucket in each hand, a cord of firewood stacked against the house. Sweating with an axe in hand, feeling icy coldness spilling out of the buckets and down my legs as I struggled up the hill. 

I didn’t feel like a holy man, or an apprentice to learning. I felt cold and alone and frustrated, a feeling that persists to this day. 

I feel suffocated by my life; I feel burdened by the weight of my responsibilities, which is only truly sad when you see how paltry all those things are. I feel like I’m running away from everything I need to do, just because I don’t want to look any of it in the eyes. 

Cigarette ashes on my apple; I eat it anyway.

Fuck, am I ever a big tough guy. 

I have to stop when I walk past the mirror, not just to preen, but to threaten. I can’t stand being looked at like that guy looks at me. I got a sense of pride, you know?

I keep an eye out for weaklings when I’m out strutting, because being tough is all about showing it off on other people.

If being stronger than the guy you’re fighting isn’t heroic, then how come Superman is the most heroic man in the world? Hell, there’s no problem I’ve ever met that I couldn’t just beat my way through.  

I like to take off my shirt to show people just how comfortable I am with how awesome I am. I like to talk to girls ‘cause they like to listen to me, when I’m talking. I like the attention. I like fear and sexuality and people just, like, looking up at me.

I eat human life and I exude pure testosterone.
I could shoot you dead without ever picking up a gun. 

Because, fuck, am I ever a big tough guy. 

I’ve got your song stuck in my head, and I can still smell your scent on my hands. You know what I mean want, I don’t have to come right out and say it, do I?

Just wanted to (be mean) to myself; heard somebody say this was the party to come to die at. I thought maybe we could do it together, I thought maybe I could fade away with your lips still riding up against mine. 

She comes up on to me, all confusing gender signals and sexy fucking eyes, and I just melt. You know me. I fucking melt like a candle on a cake, you put me next to that sort of heat. Well, my resolve weakens and melts. The rest of me is still sort of strong and bitter like a bad taste looking for an ass to kick. 

She’s all over me like a bad taste I can’t quit pin down. She’s all over me like a lover who wants to be pinned down and taken - just not by me.

There’s too much psychic feedback when I touch your scars; thoughts leaping light lightning through our skins. I wish we could just curl up and forget about the world sometimes. Other times I wish we could kill all those fuckers dead.

She makes me think of old songs, old songs and isolation. She makes me feel like I’m an island, falling off from the  main shore. She makes me feel like a borrowed good time, on loan from down the street.

She comes on like the lights coming on in the dark, like something shocking and willful and necessary. She’s so fucking necessary. She’s my favourite necessity. She wraps my throat in bandages and puts me down for the night.

If I could make an escape, I’d make it out of stray bits I found in that cupboard in the kitchen; I’d make my escape out of half-used tripple-A batteries and loose clips of string. Twist-ties and take-out menus.

If I could make an escape I’d take you with me, but you’d hate to escape with me, wouldn’t you? That’d just be moving into a different sized cage for you.  

Nineties music and post-modern magic talkings. I must be getting into some Grant Morrison again. I must be verging on another one of those weird poetic exchanges where I put my emotions on display; building a little arrangement of letters and words for others to observe and categorize. 

“He loves me this much but not in these ways.”
“He never remembers that time we-“
“He’s so obsessed with that singular part of things…”

Whatever. Like I don’t do it all just to be noticed, just to encourage hunger and bad behaviour.  

She kisses me like velvet, like a cheap motel painting, like softness and a lingering sense of somebody who’s about to step out the door. She kisses me like she’s trying to remind of something, somebody else. She shifts her profile, and I see my other lovers hidden just under her skin. I gnash teeth and threaten the sky with, lets call it, a sort of tragic sort of rage. 

You might know what I’m talking about.
Then again, maybe you never did.

You could make me feel like a song-bird, like you don’t understand a word I say, but you keep me around ‘cause you like the pretty noises and it suits your ego to have me pay all my attention to you.

We stole jewellery from the future and taught ourselves to fly. We were dancers, liars, lovers… We were people who thought we could be anything if the moment suited us just right.

My suit was smooth and black and built of a billion incredibly intelligent and always moving, independent organisms. Living creatures, communicating throughs subtle chemical signals and protecting me from all possible harms. 

She’s built out of firecrackers and inner-city smog. She’s darkness and sparkles of light. She’s a shadow full of broken glass, reflecting the lights of the city in her endless deep and imposing eyes.

I’ve always wanted to spend a bit of time with a girl who looked/tasted/smelled/talked like you do. I’ve always wanted to get spoiled with something delicious. I always want so much, and then I get to the party, and I mostly just think about sneaking somewhere off and quiet with you.

We went out to be people like our parents might have been - brash, loud, sloppy drunks. Happy proletarians, bashing their heads against the wooden doors of the dark little empires. 

Somebody pluck a guitar and somebody scream a song at the night. There’s dead souls to bury and mourn, and drinks to be spilled. Fat little couples gotta breed fat little babies, and somewhere there’s a table-top that needs dancing upon.

It was another place, with those people, an epic bit of myth I’d never trail my steps back to, ‘cept maybe for love or money. Their past, their world, is a burning house I’d rush into, to save something dear to myself, and then back out again, before the shirt could be smouldered off my back.

Because I ain’t going back. And I ain’t those people.

But I know where I was from, and I know what I’m missing out on. I know exactly why I’m not going back, and if you sit real patient sometime, I’ll do my best to tell you why.

I throw myself onto the teeth of the storm. She’s a jagged thing, as long as the sky and darker than the darkest portions of my heart. She bites, chews, and laughs, straight through me.

 She follows me around like a cat stalking prey. She searches me out for warmth and attention. I have some, so I give it. I burn like fuel on the ocean’s surface, a bright light at night for little fish to dream by.

 She gives me an idea, a taste, a scattering of rain across the most naked of my flesh.

 She wears it all tight. She’s collared and unleashed. She’s looking for places to happen, stopping to eat along the way. She’s darkness at dawn, she’s the wanting of something that wants you back.

 A trick of lights throw all the ideas up into the air, where they scatter like lightning-bugs, illuminating impossible little trails up and on and into the night. I follow little trails of light, only to discover they’re following me as well.

 They follow me home, and get into my stuff. I realign my desires so as to better do battle with the rest of the world. I battle with jests and warm hands. I battle to obtain peace, and piece of mind.

 I raise myself up like a sword into the storm.

 The sky rains down like fire.

We throw on our tightest outfits, and go out to save the world.

She throws me a wink. Her skin looks like something I could eat off of. She makes me bite my lip hungrily. I’m attracted to her youth, her hair, the way she looks different from me. 

We go out running until we’re moving so fast that our feet can’t touch the ground. I leap a hundred yards through the air, and she follows along behind like lightning with a C-cup. 

Sex And Violence! We’re those kind of heroes, the kind who get screwed up on drugs and come into a fight looking to bust heads and get the work done. We laugh in the faces of our enemies and we give pithy interviews to the mainstream media. 

They get scared enough to leave us alone, and we fuck in the streets. We leaves holes in the pavement, cracks in the sidewalks, scorch marks in the clouds. People cheer when we approach, and they look relieved as we fade away into the distance. 

Solar radiation has left me drawn and at odds with the world. I need solitude and shadows today, to heal up the singing centres of my mind. But I don’t know if that’s what’s best for me, or if I should be reaching out to the world and trying to involve myself in stuff.

Her weapon is six feet long, and luminous. Her weapon is a knife that glows, and it cuts through deception with the power of her mind. She cuts through the air, making figure-eights in the clouds, and she makes the ground tremble when she touches back down.

I grin, rattled by the snakes and other imaginary enemies that plague me wherever I go. I lick my lips, so that I can taste her blood on my face. I kiss the morning sun, the long shroud of night thrown off its shoulders so it might gleam down on the rest of us, a cheap bauble of all our hopes and dreams.