For those of you who didn't catch it or forgot or whatever. I put a record out two months ago. It's pay what you want because I don't want your money if you don't have any. Lots of amazing people helped on this thing. Listen, won't you? Little Wars by Salvatore Rex and The Dead King Choir

Seven Love Songs

I.

There is a tiny glass jar on my desk. It is black because it holds black nail

polish inside of it. It is yours. I wish I too became what was inside of me.

Maybe a violet or an iridescent yellow. Something joyful.

  II.

The acoustic is propped up on the bookshelf; I can see spots where the clear finish was scraped away. I remember every time I closed my eyes and hit that thing.

  III.

My biggest regret is that I’ve never written you a really good love song. Although I don’t know if I’ve ever really heard one.

  IV.

In 1581 James Douglass was executed by guillotine. This sounds rather mundane, but James Douglass was the first person to introduce the guillotine to Scotland. He said it was clean and efficient. After they killed him, they left his head there until it turned leathery. This is all to say: I want to die from the thing I spent my life doing. But have words ever killed anyone?

  V.

You bought me flowers once and put them in an empty Jack Daniel’s bottle. Do you remember? I never told you, but I think it was the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me.

  VI.

I have this reoccurring dream where I drop my phone and it smashes into

hundreds of pieces of glass. I panic because I just want to tell you that I’m okay.

VII.

I would drive to Boston right now if I could. I could bring flowers, maybe roses. I would drop my bag on the floor and unbutton my shirt. I don’t know how to love besides doing it. It’s like teaching someone to swallow, in that way.

Hey guys, I put an album out today. I've spent a really long time working on it, and I'm really proud of it. I would be really grateful if you'd give it a listen:

Little Wars by Salvatore Rex and The Dead King Choir

Dear ,

I saw a woman picking up sticks this morning. She was standing outside of the fenced lot the phone company owns. There is barbed wire along the top. One white oak tree hangs over it, a remnant of the old pine barons on the east end of Long Island. Most were destroyed to make room for cash crops, vineyards and summer homes. Besides the one tree there is nothing but weeds and overgrown grass inside. I don’t know why they would keep people out of an empty lot. As a child I would cross the street to avoid walking near it, assuming it was protecting me from some avoidable electric shock. I still do sometimes. But the woman was there, picking up sticks of uniform length and thickness and bundling them under her arm. She would examine each as if they were slipped under the plexiglass of a pawnshop. These were precious things. As she bent to pick them up her white and grey and black and brown hair fell off her shoulder and nearly touched the ground. I wanted to help her but I didn’t; I just didn’t.

The Director

Five people stood in a half circle around the hole, We looked like pigeons around bread. I didn’t even know these people’s names. The pile of frozen dirt was covered with a tarp that waved in the wind. Behind the priest you could hear it slapping against the rocks. Everyone felt through their pockets, stared at the impossible February sky; we all wondered the same thing, even the priest. The two sons went first, picking up islands of hard dirt and throwing them down onto the casket. The sound was unbearable . The priest put his hand on the wife’s back. She stared at the soil in her palm as if it were a nail. It fell out of her hand slowly, each pinch being allowed to say what it needs to, until it was gone.

The most terrible thing the dead do to us is leave.

Thursday, September 19th 2013

I sit in the apartment and smoke cigarettes with the windows open. At certain times of day the plume refuses to leave; its presence tells me that it is the type of friend that will leave only when it is damn well ready to do so. I don’t rush it. Your work shoes near the door cough suggestively to each other. They wait; I wait. The sun starts to tuck itself neatly inside the houses behind our building. The last light bounces off the tin roofs to the west of the city, drenches the wooden floors in a deep rotten orange. At this time of day it is nearly impossible for me not to think about Halloween, about laughter. The smoke packs its things and readies itself, checks to make sure it didn’t leave the keys on the counter. It is a slow departure, one that says: you will miss me when I’m gone. It is somehow always right. Once it leaves everything is suddenly quiet like a leaf pressed into a page or like a dead dog on the side of the interstate somewhere. It is tragic to see something so alive become so still. I tap another cigarette out of the pack to bring life back to this place while I wait for you to return. 

Two Days

“What is there about fire that’s so lovely?"           -Ray Bradbury It's the way you kick your tiny ankles when you're reading with your legs crossed. Or maybe the things that you do with your hands when you don't know what to say. The way the summer surrenders itself  to the fall is the way that I love you. I have upturned myself; my arms always pointed in the direction of home. Sometimes I watch you sleep and I can feel the upheaval–the reddish light behind the clouds. In those moments I hear you laughing somewhere. I will spend our lives waking you up in the night with some ghost I created of wallpaper shapes or the disintegration of leaves under wind. Some days I feel I am shoveling the bones out of my self. Bringing them to you as a gift, a penance.  I want you to see every part of me that I would kill if I could, but I can't. You kiss me as if I were perfect. I have given you the worst parts of myself and you just lick your thumb and I am clean.

Four Days

"There were the roses, in the rain. Don’t cut them, I pleaded. They won’t last, she said. But they’re so beautiful where they are. Agh, we were all beautiful once, she said, and cut them and gave them to me in my hand."              -William Carlos Williams I walked home at dawn today. The moon hung there impossibly laughing at the blueness of the space behind the clouds. There was no sound anywhere; you should have been there. In four days I will lay in the bed we have grown to share. It will be dawn and the morning will be as cruel and as heartless as a stone. Daylight is the only evil known to sleeping lovers. You will kiss me goodbye and it will feel ancient. Ancient like fresh apples ancient like the May pole ancient like the first snow of winter ancient like laughter. Some days I think we are as old as honey. Some days, gold. If I could I would remove all of the sweetness that lives inside of me sometimes. It would exit me in my sleep like a plume of wind through my throat. I would catch in a balloon that would be as bright and as yellow as a sunflower. You would carry it in your tiny hands for the days and years that you wake into the world– because I could never write a love poem nearly as beautiful as the mornings I get to spend with you. But you will see that balloon suspended as bright and as heavy as the sun and know that I tried.

Folie à Deux

We listened to talk radio and watched the interstates slide into memory. Everything was simple;  the days tasted like honey on toast. You wore my favorite dress of yours and drank chicory coffee. We danced through the creole heat and at night we laughed and fucked with the windows open.  Love can be an unbelievably easy thing, like turning the ignition on a car or dicing onions while you smoke cigarettes in the window with your legs crossed. 

You Told Me Once That You're Not A Poet

I remember your glasses that you left on the table next to my bed.

They laid waiting like a bee hive and I knew I could never write a poem that beautiful.

Postcard From Alabama

Dear You, I had a dream of the interstate last night. The black asphalt serpent tangled around my wrist. I looked down at the armlet like a wedding band. Some days there is no separation between you and then sun. I don't fear the distance or the consequence, all I want to do hold it in my arms. Love, Him. P.S. I passed a small brick house today. There was a dog playing on the lawn. I thought of tripping over your shoes in the door way, your dresses swaying in the closet like branches. I will never stop loving you.

Packing for a trip

Three shirts, one pair of pants, one shirt, a carton of cigarettes, four books and a notebook full of unfinished poems and love letters to you: this is my life if it were boiled in a pot. The morning is a terrible time; the birds and cars and people talking casually on well-finished porches are cruel. They are somehow my captors, and somehow the exact opposite of that. I search for my keys, wallet. Without you, I can't seem to find anything. Almost everything I do is a love letter to you. I pull clothes on in the mirror that has stayed with me a decade or longer. This, I decide, is the only betrayal I have ever done to you.