Sex on a Budget: Love and Other things I Can't Afford
Selected Poems
Warning: This Poem is not Meant to be Read, but Consumed
This poem is about food
and
Sex
and
Drugs
or:
all the things I would become addicted to if I had time and money
You feed me in French
all this les poisson passion
I’m not biting
cause the last time I was on your hook
I thought I tasted gold
it was just the sour lemons
you were trying to spin me
And I’ve seen the girls you’ve got on your spinning wheel these days
Rapunzel’s blonde
lock-
ed
in a tower
I bet you look so radiant
climbing
down
her slender back
to basics:
I know she’s spun you
all the good drugs
your bodies bending together on benzos
YOU’RE SO BLESSED
it’s beautiful
how all these girls look like sheets
strung out to dry
Well we haven’t spoken much
these days
so
you should know
I’m so high on how to be a lady
I keep spare
etiquette
in my back pocket
tell all the boys
raise your expectations as high as you want
I’ll surpass them till they are cracks in the motherfucking sidewalk
keep mine low in return
so you can step right on ’em
break a back
To basics
See
all this sex
is subtext
it implies attraction
I remember when we were main
squeezing
the life
out of each other
I’d be making faces at you while you sleep
you couldn’t discern from your snores
so it won’t matter if this face
is frowning at you from a distance
paramount to a diameter
cause you were always sleeping so subtle
undercovers where we
fornicated fore
you passed out from all the drugs
See
all this sex
is science
and you’re just playing with my
Chemistry
Well that’s the inevitability of desirability
beauty meets beast
and all my anecdotes become incidental.
99 % of my adult life has been lived in a language I don’t speak
tripping on
tongues
like they’re transient
I take all the things you say in one ear
switch the pronouns
and it’s out the other
under
oath
Intimacy is a vow that ends in
til death do us
PRIVATE
part (s)
of me
see
that as God’s go
I translate to the destruction
so I can’t expect this feast to feed much more
than our egos.
But
honey
I’m a sucker for the sweet things
saccharine sentiment
guess you could be the sprinkles on my Sunday
dinner
party
dress-
ed
to kill
I guess it makes sense to dine and ditch
before dessert
when
gastronomically speaking
I’m gluttonous
for good loving
and a little
gateau
still
I’d like to keep my head in this matter
LET THEM
boys
EAT CAKE
*********************************
First Time
The first drug I ever did was heroin.
The rapper sat across from me.
He was on the phone.
He motioned for me to wait for him.
Fernie lit it.
He worked for Wells Fargo.
Fernie was a nickname.
He was the same one that carried me to the couch.
Passed out and anorexic.
When I went down my very small tits were exposed.
They could not call for help only helpings.
That man that lit the fire
he saved me;
and I wonder,
to this day,
if he is alive.
*********************************
Hunting Season
I watched a grown man
shoot a bird
and then sob
because it couldn’t fly
we sat in silence
the entire car
ride
home
I ask too many questions
I tell too many tales
he said my name in the exhausting way
one speaks to a child
as if to say
not one
more
word
just
stop
I want to ask him things
I know
he’ll never answer
are you scared?
because I am
even air
is
toxic
these days
I think we shared something
the moment
that bird fell from the sky
a kind of
mourning
for every action
we’ve taken
we’re just killing ourselves
slowly
and now all at once
upon a time
I used to think I could make any man love me
so pluck my
feathers
until I’m bare
flesh
boned
and suck my marrow
until I’m dead ass
stoned
there’s no cure for dying
it just takes one shot
there’s a fear of flying
but that’s all I’ve got
*********************************
Life by Numbers
3.
pregnancies
2 living
1 dead
2.
years old
our daughter was
when your girlfriend graduated from high school
1.
cancer scare
2 procedures
3 levels of dysplasia
0.
times I’ve been divorced
married
arrested
*********************************
Vital Signs
At the doctor
Blood Pressure: 95/63
Do you normally run low
Lady
I run so low
I run solo
Weight: 122
You’ve lost quite a bit of weight
Lady
I don’t eat
unless it’s my feelings
I don’t eat
unless it’s my words
Pulse: 77
Well, lady
That was a good year
guess only my thoughts are racing
He trimmed the fat
said he’s better off without me
Well, there’s truth in that
Cause it’s $169 for therapy
don’t even get wined
or dined
It’s three easy payments
of 19.99
to get to me
Don’t have a warranty
just
return
policies
*********************************
(L (p x f) + C (t x s)) - (P x A)
Things I’ve lost:
my mind
my figure
that one
sock
Those
Miu Miu glasses
Well:
I gave good face
once
I focus on that damn sock:
lost in tangled bedsheets
like the thoughts
on my tired
tongue
Gone to the dryer
in heat
like myself:
We are both too strung up
to dry
Every time I think I’ve
Found
the right words
I’m overextended on the metaphors:
I become a meta whore
Well:
Losing your life is a sure path to
Sainthood
Finding a penny’s
A sure sign to do good
And lost socks sit silently
Wherever they go:
Warm heart
Cold feet
with nothing to show
*********************************
Heartbreak Haiku
I haven’t shaved since the last time we were fucking
call it mourning bush
*********************************
Waiting for the Recourse While I Consume Four Courses -or- In Which Gretchen and I go out for Lunch and Encounter a Mean Woman
Today I sat
head of the table
Lunching
on some conversation
par for the porridge
I was
goldilocksing
my motivation
to make mistakes
clockwise
or counter
cause I’ve never met a man
I couldn’t convince myself
I loved
one feels too hot
one burns too cold
and this one is
just right
testing for the taste
smells like rose
bud
ing romance
til it’s time to put the fork
down
ate my own words
now I
wait
for the recourse
cause love is best chewed
before swallowed
take it down deep
girl
cause it’s gonna come out out
shit
on
second helpings
sloppy timing
for such a
sweet thing
well
you said a little heartbreak never hurt anyone
unless it was an attack
of the myocardial
degree
an infarction
infracted
from the social norms
your talk is cheap
and pretty girls
make the best
conversation
fodder for your
feature
broke in
bedded down
ate my way through the meal
til I was quickly your rumor
mill
ed
about
this milieu
put YOUR fork down
eat YOUR words
judge a girl by her cover
read her book backward
start with my last line
up
go
tit for
tattoo
cause lady, I’m just trying to dine
here
and you think you can shame me?
starved for attention
or binging on
bad feelings
you bit off more than you could chew
now give me this metaphor
so I can swallow it down
lick my lips
to taste
how sweet it is
**********************
The Migratory Patterns of a Rare Bird
A fixed-winged aircraft generates
forward thrust
when air is pushed in the direction
opposite
to flight.
I can’t fly
I have come
to
expect nothing.
fixing landmarks
hip width
flex and forage
Head
East.
always toward water
where thirsts are quenched.
Currently
I’m on a current
It could lead me to you.
or break me down
faster than the fear of this cold climate
I’m a Rare Bird
\
The instinct for the flight
I only aim to move forward.
all good formations
Flock in
V
I crane my neck
flee for foothills
The wind carries my sigh
I throw down dirt
for miles.
*****************************
If I Were a Poet-Tree, I’d be a Weeping Willow
Sister said,
“You’re nothing but a man-eater”
And I chewed on that
Long and hard
Cause diets
are a girl’s best friend
and my secret to satiation is that
I’m always consuming
being eaten
alive.
Ingredients for how to start me simmering?
Shit,
I like grammar rules
And long division
So boy
put your
Eyes
Before
Ease
Except after
See
all
you’re looking for is someone
To fill the intercostal voids
Where women were made from
RIBBED
meat
FOR YOUR PLEASURE
modern-day romance
Is all but dead
So sorry to snitch
On this sad
situation
snatch
what’s being sought
with a loosening of these laurels
while we debase our morals
Together
we’re a train wreck
On a fast feeding frenzy
Combating alone time with
addictions
No, I never did depend on alcohol
But your attention
is 80 proof
Positive
That I’m better off
Alone
I’m a woman
Of dark hair
Pale skin
colored
In the lines
So that puts me on the edge of VANITY
FAIR
To say if this were a string
I’d be dangling
on the precipice of your vowels
at the peak of your syllables
It’s an I
And a U
And a sometimes
Why
Questions seem concerning to me
So I think I’ll raise my voice
An octave above object
ification
hum these chords
through the phone cord
through the dime store
through the point where
what matters most is knowing
time is temporary
and I put a memory of you on my wrist
watch
the minutes tick into hours
these second hands sound silly
but for every sixty
I’m settling
My stomach
Ache
It was great
But I’m full on
Full frontal
and I’m French
so
j’ai faim
I.
Have.
Hunger.
For the human nature necessities
to
Eat
Drink
Man
Woman
It’s the BOOK OF RITES
My right
To consume
And assume
You,
Sister,
Presumed
wrong
About the Creator
Cali Loria
Over punctuating, under delivering.
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