skin the citrus off the husk
and stain your hands
with the tangy sap
with hands around my throat
let me **** the orange
off your bones
peel an orange for me
and i will never love you more
split it
half ways
like sticky stringy thighs
let me drown
on orange juice

You take everything
she said,
everything.
I thought long and hard
about all the things I had
and all the things that
I can barely touch
and all the things that collect dust
and I thought about her fingers
reaching for things she thought
I held over her head
reaching up out of the waves
of the shadow her heart slept in.

Gloom rolled into town
like a caravan circus
vintage and ragged
rusty and golden
the metal tent reflected
a land before time
maybe from the old movies
when the elephants wore hats
still, and the women danced
long legged, **** and sweating
as their toes kicked up
leaving little to mystery.
The gloom has its trapeze highs
and it’s netted lows, a feeling
of falling through time,
through space, being caught
right before the big SPLAT.
The net between the gloom
and the bright lights
catches me like a spiders web,
totally and completely
but not enough to feel less lonely.
There is a tight rope of thought
instead of a train, in my brain,
i am constantly balancing,
a crowd of roaring people,
spitting people, animals
howling in the gloom
at me, laughing at me
throwing peanuts
at me
as i try to balance on the rope.

There is a Cerberus in me,
chained, like a captive.
The breathing of the anxious beast,
it makes my head quake when I forget
about getting old or watching lovers die.
The three heads argue with themselves
in my stomach, rattling my bones,
pulling on the chains, trying to agree.
The more I sit still, the more it wants
me to just go and never stop,
to keep running and running
in three different directions,
against my instinct. Whenever I stop,
to catch my breath, I feel the teeth
ripping at anything that they can reach.
The beast that guards the gates of hell
has dug a hole inside my inhibitions.

My sister fell, at the neighborhood pool,
on the cement, instead of into opal water.
She said the **** on her knee
looked just like a maraschino cherry.
Red like a maraschino cherry,
or a clown's nose,
or like the fire
in the center of our planet.
The ****** **** dripped cherry juice
down her leg
in between her sun burnt toes,
evaporating off of the cement.
She reminded me of lava,
constantly bubbling
always moving
always destroying
without hesitation.
The reaper of flowers
and ice cream cones.
Red cheeks, red like Geryon.  
Purposefully confused
and always wondering.
I hope I can answer any questions
she has, when the need
to know evolves to thirst,
and the fears she has now
as a little lava girl
become fears that we all feel
as destroyers in our own lives,
wrecking everything,
reaping the flowers
that are growing
in the ashes of our youth.

I feel lonely often.
I feel like the tide pulling back,
on every single day,
that I don't get
a minute to myself.
I feel like the white rabbit,
the clock is always ticking
and my heart beats fast
tap
tap
tap
to the rhythm of aging.
The breathing of the anxious beast
holds me close to it's lungs
like chains on a captive.

It sounds like a pet shop
in my head, the twitching
tongues of birds, the spinning
of rodent’s wheels, the tap
of reptiles on the glass.
The animals never stop living
inside my head.
On some days it feels like chaos,
like they’re all running free,
no cages
no glass
running free inside my head
while the world burns inside it
never silent.