Childhood stress is not living in a two-story home
when your best friend does,
even though your mothers are the same. All day long we talk
about weeds and leaving our husbands for each other.

Then, you go on to ask
why should anyone wear clothes if they just leave scarlet
dents on our skin, then you will answer,
someone’s branded us with barcodes like cows.

I once cut my nipple, the right I think, while shaving my legs -
cried for weeks afterward wondering
if I would be able to breastfeed twenty years from now,
thought if I could not, I would be less of a woman.
This was before I met my girlfriend who has a penis and is
just as much as a woman as I am,
this was before I learned that womanhood is a fine powder in
your soul, like cocaine, but not only white, brown too
and black and mine is pink, and womanhood is
every color of the rainbow and gender is fluid fluid fluid.

Childhood was ignorance of ignorance,
adolescence taught you everything you needed to know on
hating the unique,
but in adulthood, that can change, we can know better.

Have you seen but a bright lily grow
Before rude hands have touched it?
Have you marked but the fall of snow
Before the soil hath smutched it?
Have you felt the wool of beaver,
Or swan's down ever?
Or have smelt o' the bud o' the brier,
Or the nard in the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
O so white, O so soft, O so sweet is she!

It’s dark, and I know you can’t hold it in anymore.
It’s over, your secrets rotting all over the floor.
Because that very first night,
with my fairy lights.
Stand at the stairs even though we’re afraid of heights.
In my head, clear as day, I can see it
all now, all now, all now.
And then it’s your birthday, with all your duct-taped packages.
Expecting a present but finding broken promises.
Your voice on the phone,
we’re both at home,
I can hear it
all now, all now, all now.
One week later and we’re both smiling,
ignoring the problems that have a habit of piling.
Four in the morning,
I hear your dad snoring,
I remember it
all now, all now, all now.
Then we’re listening to them harmonize in ‘Over Again’,
feeling as if we’re leaning over more than we can bend.
And the sunlight is making dots through my blinds,
like little memories I can’t help but find.
In my head,
never dead,
I can see it
all now, all now, all now.
And I can hear him now, singing you lullabies.
In four years after you’ve told your home goodbye.
Under the stars,
from afar,
I can picture it
all now, all now, all now.
Now I’m in class, ten digits light up my phone screen.
You tell me you couldn’t take it, you finally came clean.
Red and blue lights and distant relatives,
I hope you are starting a life that will let you live.
Cold metal bars and a filed case,
collected all the old family pictures you could bear to take.
I hope you find peace of mind,
I hope they learn they should’ve been kind,
I hope you remember me,
remember it,
remember them,
remember us
all now, all now, all now
all then.

The day sets sudden into summer shimmering
blind beasts patchy and lost
wander hopelessly along the tarmac trails of rubber foot caravans.
My mind races rancid thoughts forward
the winner takes all
that winter melancholy waving funeral flags at the finish line.
I'll bite down my teeth on the metal masculinity
and taste holiday nostalgia:
burning meat,
drunken rednecks,
fireworks just past dusk,
that mixture of sulfur and black powder,
fumes.
I can't keep on like this,
knees shaky from miles measured in ruby minutes.
I'll eat this city whole,
carbon emission load before my final marathon.
These teeth will shine down like symmetrical clouds in the sky
my mad mans brittle grin.
I used to wish:
for finer living in laps of luxury;
for nights wrapped in silk, sweat, shine, and infamy;
for heavens gates to open pearly white to golden streets for me.
Those days have lost their charm
beaten dreams that bellied up
and showed their starving guts.
Submitted and laid down
with their tails tucked between legs
and panting for mercy
my dreams play bottom bitch to realities sadistic hand.
As for now;
I hope.
Hope I can hold the fire in my hand
to burn my life and this city to the ground
the pile of ashes will bare no souls return.
That silent hour,
I want to be alone and involved
in the fashion of dogs.
I'll wander off alone to the trees.
My brittle ribs showing
the silent cage of my black and tired heart.
The trees will whisper their names to me
as my spirit shakes their shining leaves in rising.
Goodbye you lion;
your angel face was as quiet as ever,
slack and pale under a harvest moon.

My melody is the tune,
the happy feal of june,
sleep untill noon rise awake for the moon,
No school no cruel!
where that dress with out havin to stress,
cauzz your a beuty'
                remember.  Not on deuty,.
The heat the sun out-on-a-run,.
bein you, duss havin fun.
we've all felt rain,
          we've all delt pain
I'ts the natural I'ts the gain.
moving on will keep it sain.
bin there. done that.
she's odd, she's fat,

Cause you're "cool"         HA, you Fool!
          your'e word's you're slick?.
                                      Your heart.          your SICK,

     we take the left because we know the right,

down the road they'll be a fight, thinkin thinkin up all night,
words they say sure aren't right,
  the sky is blue'       they have no clue  your day got gray ,
                                        you're thaughts are cray, you're mind is clay!? wer'e in may
                         SAY GO!,  cant  stay!.  


yes,            
       it's long.       might do you none...
walk you long. read can't go wrong,.          
                so now your'e hear,
      You're sippin beer?
                       Look at that,   Your'e finally cheer, :)
sincere a real friend to all, answer the call catchin ya fall. Jesse  Mckush

I’m afraid of the ocean when its waves rush forward,
its translucent arms wrapping around the impressions of my feet..

The ocean is a mother giving birth,
life surging forward and then receding in the swirls of salt and sun.

Measureless
Its belly has captured the souls of sailors and broken ships.
Ghosts drag on the bottom floor choking on their entrails.

A 15th century wood-hulled ship is their playground,
And they gnaw on the golden coins that flutter down onto each floor
as the wood shrivels with the weight of plankton.

She is the undertow
And she is the rip current.
She surrounds us
And we will never escape her.