Flowers and Tears

I was reading The Great Gatsby earlier this semester for my American Novel class and it gave me the inspiration for this poem:

Flowers and Tears

If personality 
is an unbroken series
of successful 
gestures, 
I am
a continuous middle finger
not tiring
from standing
tall,
even when slumped
in my chaise.

Exempt from
consequences
all my actions
steeped in
dirt.
Maybe my baby
is crying
somewhere,
in this drunken haze
I can't tell if these
tears are mine 
or hers
or the country's.

They don't belong to
the slaves of America,
but slaves 
of the American Dream.
When I smile
the S's,
two vertical blades
slicing through,
sparkle in my
irises.

The sparkle
is drunken
in thirsty gulps
and
when only ice
is left
my eyes reflect back
this 
dream of America,
devoid.

Broken Brick Red

I want you
but what is this want 
and how do I know it?

The lust thick in the air
making me thick in the head
I claw at it, feral

The sun swollen and high
like us
threatening to explode 
like us

I feel the grit on my skin
and the taste of your sweat on my teeth
as we paint our town
broken brick red

I feel your eyes down to my bones
this humidity, to my bones
it just sits
and it waits
watching Urgency pass, with a smirk

I know this want
when my skin is alive
humming and buzzing
like a swarm of angry bees
and I can shed it and
still climb your body 

Ten thousand miles and two boyfriends
away,
I sit in the heat
panting,
wanting you.