/|\   °
            °
                 •
                     '
                          ¤
Can't freeze a caludron with only witchbone and cigarette dreams.

No sir; I live in the city not a
surreality.  The smoke can kiss my collarbone, not my vexed mind.

The only thing I am is the color of lightning and all I have to offer is my glass.

As in hour, not luminous wine.

                  ....

☯
this pain is white noise
sleepwalking through this body-
in search of heaven.

-
And it wasn’t nearly reality enough,
    So I skimmed this water of bone
Hoping that the blood beneath
    my fingers would only be temporary.

    

        But you can’t promise on broken love,
    Could you believe me when I say I’ve known.
        Lie behind your cheap lips and teeth
    Cross your heart and hope to die yet on the contrary.


Your empty threats of wishing to **** me,
    But darling I’m already dead.
You can hope on deeds of darkness but not anymore,
    It’s such a shame a poet must draw her scythe.


        So take a deep breath dear, inhale slowly,
    And don’t worry there’s nothing wrong with just a taste instead.
        I can’t help but smile as the ashes flood the floor,
    Such a beautiful way to die, letting a poet take your life.


Tonight she sleeps with the lions and like before,
    Dark as it may be she laughs when one offers her light.
“I sleep with demons roaming my skin,”
        “Beg your pardon I don’t need this pity.”


            And the truth was not a sin, she really had to pay for.
        A century of this and that really left without a fight.
    I haven’t decided on which degree of hate I let out and in,
But tell you what I digress this country and this rotten city.


    Mistake me for a witch, and how many friends will I lose?
I can hardly tell with all this nihility I now hold dear to me.
    Keeping words on chains, imprison me why not.
A bucket of silver is all I hold in my eyes.


    And keep the hounds in hell dear,
            Just let me say you are quite lovely,
    What can you teach me, what have you taught?
        Beware of the silver in the bucket child...
                      

Beware the poets eyes.
-

☯
my insomnia
holds a gun to my forehead-
and dares me to sleep.

☯
Full Lakota moon,
unzips me from her womb &
dismantles this love.

☯
you weren't looking but
the universe unfolded
in your garden's bones.

...
1.  Can someone
            anyone,
            please,
            teach me,  
            how
            to stop the running
            of blood
            from a wound?
2.   I don't like
            the way
            your body
            wears red;
            it's a warm
            stain
            I can't seem to
            wash
            from your cotton clothes
            or
            my porcelain mind.
3.  Your kindness; I have never realized
            that it was it's
            very own
            sort
            of torture.
            Even blood fell
            down;
            drained
            out;
     ­       cared
            about;
            left
            with­out;
            someone blissfully stupid
                             like me.
4.   I should've,
            I would've,
            I could've,
            listened to my father's instructions
            but I didn't.
            I still chase it,
            the second glass star
            to the right.
            I wasn't ready
            for what guilt
            I found;
            I never would've
            been anyways.
5.   Captain hook learned
             how simple
             it was;
             and used a
             black gun
             to ****** Peter,
             and rob him of his'
             favorite lost boy.
             He left the weapon
             in the sleight
             of my hand.
             "Time to grow up, my dear."
6.    Nine years later,
              between now
              and long ago;
              I still create
              after
              images
              whenever I give someone
              the power
              to mention
              your name.
7.     Father always told me
              fairy tales weren't real.
              *******;
              You were mine.
              You were real.
              I still don't listen
              to father.
8.    You are the dauntless touch,
              to my sense
              of adventure
              to my flavor
              of judgment,
              to my frigid heart of
              bravery.
              I don't have what it
              takes
              to change.
              Not anymore.
9.     One day I will join you.
               The sooner,
               the better.
               So how pointless is it
               that I write
               these letters,
               and remind myself
               that I am much older
               and very
               lonely?
              "Do you miss me as much as I
                     miss you?
...

--
is a ***** liar
  that insists things were
  better than they  seemed.
--

Alabaster teeth at the crack of dawn,
Blossoming storm with a crooked smile,
Can't shake this mist,
Drink the wine that is paradise;

Endure it,
Friends that stray the streets at night,
Grown in the rivers of jealousy,
Hatred is a sword of ink as well.

Is it the way desolation kisses my neck?
Justifying the ghosts on walls as I tire,
Kindness is it's own sort of torture,
Love is just the aftermath of a tragedy.

Misfortune is the deity with the sun in her veins,
Nothing worth losing in my heart these days,
Open riots in the flesh of old graves,
Purpose is just a nickname for pathetic;

Quickly now,
Rinse off all that happiness in the sink,
Spoken in tongues of moonlight and snakes,
Trust me, death is the poor man's doctor.

Unless, it was fate itself,
Verify my passion for silver,
Weighted by the selfish love for wolves,
You are a paradox in the white twilight,

Z is a broken letter, look at how much we have in common with it.

Scarecrows dance in violet sun rays
in time best broken over my wrists

I steal magic from chalk bones on the sidewalk
and learn to read where children left their roots to become fossils

Clouds sinking into my skin as rainwater floods
my blood and turns my steady heart stream into livid rapids

Fate tapped on my window at 2a.m. last night
and informed me that I still am a poet and I still write to injure gods

Jealous frost infested the soil and trailed kisses of death on earth's cheek
but oh how pretty envy sparkles in hues of first light

But as I beckon stars to lean from their thrones in heaven,
I have realized that it's useless to continue watering a dead flower.

☯
I kiss gravity,
& the light leaving my bones,
"This is how we fell."

I'll ***** out the candle whicks,
Next time I won't be your match.
It goes to say,
I cannot be lit by light anymore.
I won't let your love strike the fallen fire.

Guess the darkness is more filling than it appears.
.

...
I've been homesick,

It's been a long time since I've last given birth to gods in my poetry; so to the old truths and the new: 'hallelujah'

My tongue was a slave to lovely things---I'll admit it was easier that way, but now I've been writing it down again; turning spiders into stories and cancer into planets

who was I to begin with,
who was I.

I'll say it now. I will never escape the wolves. Those wolves with their chalk outlines and their lakota moons. They'll try to teach themselves how to walk back into your life again and don't you dare forget the ruin, oh don't you dare forget how the fire kissed you

she was moonlight sonata,
but he was clair de lune.

He fed me to the bullet feast when he saw fit and I left his ashes on the sidewalk; daybreak can have it for all I care now.

"I don't know if I'm in love with you anymore"

I remember my body as a garden of stars disguised as flowers; my roots merely empty spaces dismantled by the light. I remember the bullets in the soil he planted, and the wars that grew in it's place. I became a walking example of death; a soul in the process of decay.

Who was I,
who was I to begin with.

Dear all that has haunted me all these years: I am ready for you. I have always been ready for you.

Tell me where to sell my soul, and I will meet you there.

---Swimming in the moonlight

The black sun coiled around you by morning,
Gingerly tending your wounded mind
You basked in the tall shadow of two lovers;
Waltzing along the line of indecisive love

Seven has always been your favorite number,
As we embarked to raise the tiger-eyed moon
That desolate soul wrapped in your inked bones
Couldn't silence the riptide that conquered like our kiss.

You were an addiction that took five months to sober,
Feathering every "I love you" with a pitiful look to me
I guess we just headed off to war in different directions
We were spilling blood in agony for each other.

There are regrets surfacing in your heart
I would know,
It's in my palm, right?

"I am unwelcome and detatched, it seems.*"

Rotten turquoise hangs like
that promise I made to a
dead man.
I can hear the stars wailing
is heaven a truly peaceful place to rest?
In the fields of grief I found you,
picking dead flowers,
because you couldn't stand the sight of them
anymore
I asked you,
"Do you hear him?"
and the words fell like fists
into your silence,

"I died all alone."

☯
My wolf girl was a
lantern among the sea of
ash & the afterlife.

☯
Alas, i've written
to infinity before;
but he wasn't home.

——————
i.
a dragon's claw;
merely leftovers of the moon
from last night's revolution,
and he beseeched a god long absent:
"how'd you forget my name in the grave
last week?"

ii.
i break bones like i break bread,
and hell recoils at the rare mention of me;
"—we're using blood for watercolors baby—"
'cause sometimes,
i don't think they understand
my heart.

iii.
god took the world to the doctor,
and asked for a cure he couldn't afford;
for the sun has already set in the palms
of my hands, o' father...
and there can only be so many
bones knitted together in this womb.

iv.
recall that,
reality only reveals itself when it feels
like making a fool out of someone;
and i don't know what stage of grief
i'm in—
or if I'm even in one
at all.

v.
i drink tea with ghosts
every other tuesday,
trying to make sense of it all;
because at some point,
—i'll stop eating bullets for
people's whose eyes
pull triggers.

vi.
mama always did raise me to be a sword,
and i killed when she told me to.
because, you see—
the fragile things die
in the cold, and what i find interesting
is that i've remained;
and ultimately?
it's a beautiful thing.

vii.
and when will i learn?
that mercy is false hope amongst all else, darling,
but enough already;
this poem's got universes full
of emotional baggage.

viii.
you said
you're a dreamer?
great, get in line kid,
you'll get a chance to change the ******* world,
just take a number
—like the rest of us;
but, then again...
"the world has always been ready
to receive you, hasn't it?"

☯
Tell me where to sell
my soul, and I will meet you
there; ode to myself.

☯
The first lie that my
mother fed to me still tastes
like expired love.

how do I fall in love with pieces of myself
that died many years ago?
emptiness hangs in my mouth
like some fickle aftertaste.
and deep down, my thoughts are like
frightened fish.  
i cut the world out of a magazine and
held it in my hands. . . how easy it seemed;
to crush it.  to crumple it.
turn it into heartache origami.
i suppose i'm possessed;
a mourning era––a morning light,
a bowl full of teeth.
i have laid myself to rest so many times that it seems i celebrate my funeral more often than my birthday.

You told me the sky was your favorite poem.
"What do you see?"

Silver switchblade eyes cut the horizon into dozens of little clouds.

"I see a crib and a graveyard."

Why?

"Because if you'd think a little harder my love, you'd understand the true meaning of 'this place is both my home and my coffin.'"
.

...
This morning:

The quiet bleeds when you're not looking.
i did not know that the quiet could bleed.

Depression enters my room,
the garden wails in protest, death kisses my stomach,
Sadness whispers that she will not take my chalk outline and teach it how to walk today.
Today the sun stops working.

My mother buries
whatever slowly died in me
under the duvet.

Last night:

i guess,
anything can be a gun
if the darkness surrounding it
is hungry enough

i don't know how i make it to his bathroom
in time, but i can already feel the autopsies
they will preform on me;

i tame ugly screams beneath it all,
tell myselff it's not suicide if
love hangs in my mouth.

The other day:

"i have no sympathy"
"if it's killing you, then why are you still with him"

This particular stain of anger never quite
reaches my reflection in the mirror.
But it sets my clothes on fire.
All the same,
i seethe endlessly; and slit the throat of forgiveness so
it is not an option i could consider.

My father wakes up inside of me sometimes;
i am not afraid to be
a weapon in which i was designed,
a nuclear war in which i will return home from.

A while ago:

"you need to figure things out between just the two of you, none of your girl friends should be threatening my baby boy"
"i would have married a man i didn't love..."

for the love of GOD---

To ALL the adults who have tasted false wisdom
and wish to share it with me;
do not speak to me as if you could translate my suffering
for me, you do not look like a ghost to me,
do not treat me like i do not know that trauma is a thief to my innocence, you do not look like a victim to me,
do not ******* tell me that i am to contain myself to your benefit, because you know nothing but the way my name tastes on your lips,

i will
paint targetson your back,
with your own words--
and i will feed you to
the bullet feast when you least
expect it.

Don't patronize me with your ignorance disguised as watercolors.

Later tonight:

A little like all at once,
all over the world,
i fall out of love with you.

i used to baptize myself in
the things my phoenix would whisper to me,
all his solids and shadows
oh, the world was so beautiful in his eyes.

And how i wish there was a softer metaphor
that could lower me into this grief,
cause isn't heaven heavy enough,
isn't this hurting plenty?

Now:

i don't know how to describe the aftermath
other than----

"there is just a lonely hum in my mind
where my name used to be."

dead man's requiem,
how does god weep when he's laughing?
shadow puppet queen;
it hurts, doesn't it?
the grip of life loosening
rapidly, rapid fire...
welcome to the bullet feast.
Go outside and play with time now;
chess with the past,
checkers with the present,
poker with the future.
howl at the sun for a change;
smoke on some of that science if you think it'll save you––
eat names for breakfast.
break every mirror
that pities you,
water your houseplants
with holy water.
drink tea sap.
107.1°
Fever wolf.

☯
Death; just an old dog
still trying to learn new tricks;
To soften our grief.

☯
"imagination
is the mother of terror;"
hums these old nightmares.

Circles of ash and wire~
cupping the last diamond flame;
in palms outstretched, he'll forgive
but we ourselves decay
"all in the flaw of my love."

Darkness dipping beyond the jaw of the tiger,
Killed so softly by the mountain's hum;
We ask the lotus to bear sky children
unto the bleeding water~
and call the wounds of the world pretty.

"You have a beautiful way with words..."
How naïve, how flattering,
English of dead flowers served on a silver platter,
beautiful is a battle scar my words wear proudly~
tuck the saints beneath my piano and I'll play them all night long

In the dragon's house tonight,
questions claw at the stars, like my fears often do
I'll ask you this;
will you be my shelter?
will you be my open arms?

☯
You have never once;
lost the translation of love
in the moon's phases.