Come on pilgrim,
vamos east
to Jerusalem and Mecca,
ferried from Algeciras to Tangier.

King James told me some stories,
he'd give me a ride, and

we can pull what we want
on abortion and abolition,
strung on a thorny rope
out of H. Christ's tight little *******.

Black Francis, Picasso, and S. Dali;
chicos guapos, you are good to me.

I fight Pablo, a different one,
through Robert Jordan (ingles)
Pablo, eres un cobarde, go and
get gored by your bullheaded stupidity.

General,
I'll wander the labryinth,
slicing up eyeballs (oh ** ** **)
unable to leave the room.
(they're only cow eyeballs, don't worry)

You Spaniards!
Yo hablo un poquito,
but those men
speak to my heart.

In a brutish manner
I raise a glass to Billy Collins
my lips stained purple,

from

seven ninety-nine ($)
dark Chilean wine

that is infused with strawberries, cherries,
and do I detect the taste of…alcohol?

My packaged delights, basics from Safeway.
Green, red, white vegetables with origins unknown
had clattered, frozen, out of a bag, not fifteen minutes ago

I snap the bag with a satisfying thwack,
the chicken is ready from a microwaved attack.

But the noodles, oh, so sweet.
Plump little bags of cheese and oh--brie!
Sweet no matter what sauce, I drown and I savor

Wrapping the package with greens and with flavor.

I curl up in repose, stuffed to the brim
swirling my glass, getting seconds again.

When I was a child, I did not wish to speak as a child. I wished for adulthood.
I may have had a lilting laugh, but I spoke and thought like a child shouldn't.

I wished for adulthood every day, for the horizon's beckoning light--the guarantees promised by windows and my family's opportunities--of a life worth living and getting all I both wanted and needed, and I did. By the time I had grown in stature I had already put away childish things.

I find great satisfaction in being an adult, and a woman.
I belong to no one, but others belong to me. I feel whole.

and sitting in the corner of a blessedly quiet McDonalds that is so old they haven't changed their booths to be uncomfortable to sit in, yet and wearing a black dress suited for vamps,
tarnished serpentine earrings whispering in my ears

not yet not yet not yet

speaking also to the stolen ring in my bag
that I am not yet a bougie eccentric

made to burn money and carry cigarette wands
and travel to tangier and have a little exotic pet

until I become more educated, eloquent, work on
my elocution until I am someone, who's someone

that deserves and has the gall to take, and possess
the world's most most beautiful blue wolf fur coat

I made you a crown of dried chicken feet,
it goes with your snake eyes,
like how dice stare back, irisless.

I bet fifty clams on Steady As She Goes,
I dug them up in Maine for chowder.
Well, my Friday dinner just walked away.

I put your hand in the waffle iron and closed it shut.
That's for trying to make a better pancake, good suggestion,
pretentious Belgian *******.
Next time I'll just stub my cigarette out your sweet Sunday brunch,
you'll eat the ashes out of the little cubes that are so fluffy and crisp.

Cleaning up a broken pillow after a pillowfight,
that's rough stuff.
**** feathers, it's a cotton from now on.
Let's practice making out.
Gross, I don't like girls, I was kidding. Get the ******* me.

They snuck syrup and chemicals into all your drinks,
but don't worry, I removed it.
You spit it out and say GROSS WHAT IS THIS THIS HAS GONE BAD
fine. keep ******* down on those chemicals cancer kid.

stop
making
liking
me
unnecessarily
problematic.

please.

do you become a bad person when you start snuffing out half a pack of cigarettes in your daily six pack of beer

Effaced, with myself removed from yesterday
I can think without unyielding pressures
******* my heels.

"It's always hardest the first time, the first day"
someone said. Maybe it's true?

I think repetition is getting to me,
so I must give liege to liberty.

grown too big for my britches,
I run my fat, fat mouth until I
look like a fool--a happy one.

flirting up a storm with his friends,
antagonizing my brother, my friend,
until she yells, and he kicks my ***.

I went for a hug, and he kicked my *** (!) physically pinning me, I can't move
I rolled him over once, at least I got that, and he later apologized for be a ****.

I mean, he's got three inches
fifty pounds of muscle, and

actual fighting
training on me

How long could I really last?

I am a woman, I am weaker.

Kate told me that in Nepal, the men backhand the women and children, very easily, and she was backhanded for not remembering how to say her name in Nepallian. That must feel awful, to have a feeling of power handed over to big fists because of strength, not money.

I watch the trees, I break a beer bottle on accident
I flash the cars over the bridge, I wasn't even that
drunk, I am just sad--very tired of feeling nothing.
It's just sibling rivalry, and we'll both get over it.

my family makes a tall crowd;
my mother is 5'10", the shortest

we were raised to party, hard, and we entertain, flamboyantly
we were raised to clean it up, efficiently, to take responsibility

I might be a fool, but at least I'm going to be happy later.
That's not guaranteed though, I am sure of that, certainly

He might be too jaded to be as successful as he could be.
That's not guaranteed though, I am sure of that, certainly.

you-blunt-smoking-instaweed-post-on-facebook-****-smoker
you-blon­de-at-the-cvs-pharmacy-that-had-a-high-school-abortion-and-was-os­tricized
you-proud-and-sober-born-again-praise-the-lord-believer
­
that posts
pixilated baby photos
peach-flavored blunt wrappers
a bad picture of a lonely flower

who are you

you are looking more aged every year
I don't know who is sadder.

I am sorry I speak poorly of you

I do not know what happened to me
I do not know what happened to you

self-reflection churns out an image of a clicking cicada of an aggressively ****** young girl, who due to the pressing weight of a blue silk chord around her throat possesses

a shiny dark, green exoskeleton (refracting light and resistant to moisture)
(SO ******* KAFKAESQUE) (!!!)

who sings as she rubs furry legs together and has decided to spill pain whenever possible onto screens and sheets, throwing up wherever she lands, without true cause in a careless disarray, breeding narcissism (let's throw a party)

biting into shattered satin, like a moth feeding off of human wetness and stains while punctuating words with mispronunciation and self-absorbtion
because she is deathly afraid of being boring and a daily routine, how predictable

(the crowd looks on miserably, fanning their faces with paper plates, sweating profusely)

this poem is predictable;
sorry.

I never have tried to **** myself, it would be silly to think that not killing yourself or killing yourself would have an actual influential impact on most of the world, except in rare cases.

Death is looming, I am grinning, I have not yet seen it so I guess I will live forever and subside off the hearts of men (no, not really, I'm kidding).

little creature
little creature
little creature

You talk the talk, all sunken-eyed from a not-so-scant dilaudid habit
but you are a dilettante and can't straight walk the walk
compared to she and I, the comparable brunettes.

You go to the bathroom and snort drugs off your lap b/c    u     r     v   sick.

When your girlfriend goes to rehab, don't call me to *******.

You want to **** me because you like the idea of being loved
and you are two-years-too-late out of touch with being a scene queen,
draghino druggies into bathtubs and baking with Lil B.

You're slipping
and I know that, for sure,
because you tried to kiss *me

I may not be all contented
but at least I can be alone

not roasted with my skin crackling by boredom
in the presence of a long-winded nerd who's cringing over enthusiasm brings out
the mildly grey abuse of power in me.

I curl up in the dark, alone.
But I will find contentment sometime within me.

one of those mornings
where I want to lay on the floor with my legs in the air
where I want to smoke cigarettes as skinny as arms
where I want to wear dark sunglasses that spell out

C-O-O-L C-A-T

and these shades would allow me to be callous
and my apathy and I could make snide remarks

about you,
you little ******

Boy, I hope you can smell my contempt over there.
You deserve it. But I don't really care anymore.

I don't dislike many people, but if I could do it,

I would tell you that I look upon your character
with the same adoration that I would hold for a
parasite-infested rotting mountain of rat feces.

Which is to say not a lot.
Which is to say I dislike you.

It's just one of those mornings,
where I want to stop knowing you, and wish you wouldn't know me.
where I want to do something, but you see, I can't feel a thing, for you.

I have nothing for you, really,
I am fresh out of ***** to give.

I don't regret anything since I learned a great deal.

I wouldn't say I was heartbroken, just exasperated
by your contrived and un-authentic *******-ery.

I am better than you. I put on my darkest shades,
I laugh when I remember that this sunny morning.

Thick, pink pads of fingers scratch at her back.
Affectionate touches? She doesn't like it like that.
A grimace, then smile that she thinks looks real,
It doesn't crinkle her eyes, he knows how she feels.

Kicking the cat off, to the shower she moves
she doesn't shave her legs anymore for you
or buy the best brand of food for their cat
because it's their cat, she doesn't like that

Soft, annoyed sighs and loud mewling cries
he pours it a dish of her inferior food buy.

The cat knows the difference,
and scratches a little more deep,
asking for sustenance that tastes a little better
than dried, cobbled scraps cut from bad meat.

She wants to want him, she wants to want back,
He stays because he wants her, and knows she wants that.

last week's episode:
I look into the mirror, pink staining my hands and face
a pale shade of red inflicted by the incorrigible monster
(makes the pink tints of the world incredibly exhausting)

this week:
racked with fits, I plead

"
how many times
will I cry before I decide

you're too mean

to be all mine.

"

*******. *******. *******. *******. *******. *******. *******.
*******. *******. *******. *******. *******. *******. *******.

next week:**
I blow a smoke ring into another young man's face
before I incinerate his two closest relationships with women (sister and girlfriend)
by wrapping my legs around him, corrupting his senses and integrity

"You should've said 'no, I have a girlfriend'.
Instead you said nothing, which shows she isn't anything"

I lean against the rail, to hold steady as Royal Gate reins.
I lean eyefucking a stranger, trying to remember the last time I felt a **** rub against my legs.

I lean on unanswered messages and unanswered calls as the sticky *** that holds this ******* social life together doesn't show it's protein background,

and I ******* own ***, trying to forget why it take me a half an hour to rub a half one out

thinking of their names.

thinking

those kids aren't worth it
while I hang up my *******
in the shower

to dry.

Call me Bukshittski

For I am no Vonnegut
For I am no Burroughs
For I am no Kerouac

and I am no good man
I am abusedive, corrosive

and hold all the talent in a rotten teaspoon of a dead, dear friend.

shedding hair
everywhere

and having no qualms, a masterful alchemist, when it comes to mixing medications and liquids with no fear of death.

clicking

quiet glow

slipping into a world of silver and green screens
to know the more interesting people than I know

"Is it a boy?"

the cab driver hands me the receipt,
"You're too young and pretty to be so sad".

I agree that I'm too young to be this miserable.
I burst into tears as I scrawl a signature on the piece of paper.

But this boy I cry over. He hides behind a white doorway while my head is in my hands,
and I am crying, I am drunk, but I am not drunk enough to be excused from calling him a coward.

He doesn't understand,
my coping mechanism--catalyst--and the curtain that pulls the facade down is the *****.

Not that un-understandable, in my opinion, really.

And he thinks it'll be better for me to talk about it sober tomorrow
And I thought it would be better for it to not have happened.

And I think he's not going to get much better,
         and it's too bad because he think I'll turn back into my desensitized self,
    which is better
                          for him

but there is light that cannot be turned out now
without burning out, blazing, in this way
and all he needed to do was to hold me tonight,
and everything could've been better, would've been best

woulda-coulda-didn't

and now my bed is made, I'll alone rest.

spiky hair that I clutch too hard when I'm drunk
and you write twee that makes my heart both sad and leap

with the joy of a pied piper

and you

and you
and you
and you have a cute smile, shy, teeth

"I was in a band for two weeks in college. I wanted to get ******."

and you play the only song you wrote in college for me
nd. you wrote a song
for a girl you met on the internet
and I closed my eyes when you played so you wouldn't get self-concious

and you play Bright Eyes

and I like you
and you like me.

"I don't want realism I want magic"

                     lapping up liquor like a cat

and the man who loves me won't talk to me back
and the man who doesn't is the one I love

and he tells me of the girls he's dreaming of

the caked on makeup melts of my facade
as I spend all my money I saved for abroad

you're not clean enough for me
you're not mean enough to me

cold and heavy with illness and spite
there is no rest for the wicked this night

he has hair like
an anime character

and

perfectly straight
eyelashes

and

I like it when he's sweet to me
but not so much when he's mean
-----------
but I deserve it, the littlest bit

we're both very mean

sinking into the sourceless fog
sinking into the view from across
sinking into the detached crowds
sinking into the hot, flushed shame
sinking into the worrisome slouch
sinking into the city streets
sinking into the bleak thoughts
sinking into the humid nightmares
sinking into the silence at dawn

while I sink with a slump towards the bottom of a down
where is the fight against the deep and dark drown

nyet
it's Russian for no and my cobbled language of bourgeois slang for not yet

and

I think about you

a lot

too much
for me to be okay with you and other girls

rainbows of oil
where your f ingers t ouch
leave mar ks on marble
leave ma rks on slate
leave waves in wa ter

and I know you can touch the surface bec
ause I pulled you back from goi
ng deep
before you fell too hard to rea
ch the bottom

--
--
--
--

I imagined your fingers reaching up

Aspirin sticks deep, hot in my throat
while I choke it down, up I cough,
speedily burning up all my thoughts
into the power of steam and smoke!

Pulling at hair, I must retract all I wrote,
all these scowls, and these scoffs,
the running, the running, and pushing off,
that came with the want to sow my oats

The pain, oh the burn that taunts my head--
for I took my trust from your hand,
now I am awake, with regrets, in bed,
for not seeing you--at once--as an awful man.

***

half here in a 1.5x body
six inches above the national average height
I didn't notice when I was marooned in the clouds

now a pariah afraid of birds (SQUAWK)  

(CAWING)

"It's too foggy to notice much here"
"Too bad I didn't pay attention"

(RIBBING)

too b a d
so   s a d

That nobody sad I was sick till it was too late…

…now I've got smack on the brain, nothing in my ****, and empty pockets for innumerable bills

except I always find money for *****, whose blurry touch tells me not to feel, too feel, and to speak.
I wonder when I became ******** and when I stopped being exceptional.
Maybe they're synonymous?

IDK **** K I L L ME, maYBE
This is too long of a poem for anyone to read it

Every want of ours is a need,
an everyman's need is unnecessary,
it is already fulfilled with a snap.
slip, slap, snap, just easy like that.

You are the funniest person I know. I am too.
We are the weirdest creatures,
so when we do normal things with normal people,
why, it's hilarious.
An ironic mockery of the everyman everyday.

Instead of being angry or rising against the system,
we play it like a fiddle,
and laugh at everyone and thing while we sit
smoking fat cigars and counting our money
before we dump it into our art and clothes
or set it on fire.

It's just so funny,
because we aren't like that
and we know it.
The world is our plaything and we just
laugh and
laugh and
laugh and laugh.
everything is just so manicially funny...

I subside on the constants
in waves and meters.

three am or pm:
one in the same.

apathy begets
apathy
in a circular swirl.

I remain insaitable
in my thirst for fluidity;
I foam at my breaks.

I remain solid;
jaw jutting against liquidity.

despite my pacifism,
I still cannot dissolve.

curled up with La Dolce Vita
and all I'll admit to is how I missed holding your hand at night
and your seeming naive affection for Tarantino.

And how you got offended that you weren't my muse,
baby (not baby) you rocked my world.

I came from your mouth and you inspired jealousy
we can be friends that **** but by God,

we are both too stupid to do as much
because I want to snort coke off your massive ****
and remember that you know nothing about Kantian ethics
from what I said
and what you did

and how I felt

from breaking up with my boyfriend'
to *******

and your expression
when you found out you were no longer my muse

"Find the loophole, step on through;
to a fantastic place; to you it's new!"
the Ringmaster bellowed into the crowd
his corners all quirked and perked.

"If nothing is aboslute, then isn't that an absolute?"
"Your clipped wings and speech have tethered you, birds of a feather!
whisper Can you not see? (They're all on their toes)
Someone else controls you and he and she and we and you can't do anything without them knowing exactly what you do!
Your revolutions? Why, they are only circles!"

"All you can do is stretch and push these rules and binds.
Shape them as you will with the will of your mind.
There is always an exception, there are no exceptions.
Tend to your flock, I'll tend to mine
In this we have our own confine."

They all jeered with comical cheer
for the show had been quite queer

It's okay. I brush my hair. I can listen. I hear the cars that have replaced the crickets and frogs.

I light. I **** in smoke. Hold. Exhale.

I always plan how I'm going to kiss someone I'm seeing, and it never works out like I think it will.
I mull over plots and tricks and pick up lines. I smile, giggle, and have conversations with imaginary figures by myself--on a bus, in my kitchen, in the shower. I noticed one day my Dad does that too.

But planning for the kiss. Versus the actual situation of the kiss.
I haven't gotten to use the move that I want to, where I try and give someone a palm reading in a cute and enchanting manner and then I seem to fumble. I "forget" what to say, I bite my lip and look shyly at them, telling them it's hard to concentrate and "I seem to have forgotten what comes next because it is very overwhelming being in such close proximity to someone so. . . cute". Then I'd giggle and blush.

I swear it would work, but in the situation where I had planned to use it, well. . .

We were sitting on my old apartment's couch, making dumb jokes about this berry juice I was drinking because the ****** tension was practically palpable. He took the juice bottle from me.

"Beet juice." he remarked casually, examining the ingredient list.
"That must be why it's red," I said, "The natural dyes in beets."

Then I looked at him and he looked at me. Then Jesus-*******-Christ, that set off a chain of events.
But beet juice. Really? Really?

But.

What happens in my head versus real life.

It's both nice and exciting, but it's always disappointing when I have to throw out a box of memories another person and I never shared. Gritty and distorted, I had imagined us (so many us's) laughing with warm and tanned skin, freckled shoulders and a night where we both look at the stars sitting somewhere cold, and nervous. Accidentally bumping hands in a manner reminiscent of most starts of young, summer love.

I can't remember the last time I looked at the stars with someone.

I can only remember one clear night in July.

But, I can't remember the last time I got a warm, unexpected kiss from someone who made my belly flip once-over, twice and my cheeks blush. Who made me look sideways, shyly.

I know it might come again, one day. But I have to be patient, and that is not easy. I don't want to finish, because this is unfinished with a pointed effort of not concluding with poignancy.
I don't want a flourish at the end because I haven't ended this thought yet.

pink sunsets crack through the blinds
along with dawns and afternoons and (maybe) better times?
hidden under covers of cloth and sheets and curtains of hair
I have burrowed too far to begin again (maybe)
I curl in my shell and I have fed on the whites that existed in my shell for so long
that I have drunk every last drop I came here with
I wonder if I have enough energy
to break out of the shell

Standing, waiting, my face blank, uncaring and staring
at the garish colors of their cheap and ill-fitting clothes.
Cramming in, fingers all greasy, raucously laughing,
jabbering *******, braying useless information, loudly.
Swarming, idly in hot  little dark holes of rooms, making
a suffocating stench from ragged mouth-breathing.  

Obnoxious.
******* disgusting, everyone.
Don't ******* touch me.
This is overwhelming.

"There's too many people in here."
You sidle up to me, saying what we're both thinking, and then we leave.
Both of us glaring at the ******* shuffling slowly,  in the way,
unable to meet our height or eyes, they remain glued
to the tiny screens in their sweaty and hot little hands,
as their annoying children are screaming and running.

You.
You, with your ****-brown eyes.
Silent and stoic, with a hard-edged jaw. Are you ******* me?
Like not making eye contact with me is going to shame me,
stripping me of something that you never even bestowed?
You think I'm obscene?
Mister, look at you.

I am tired, but, I am okay. I am fine.
I don't care what you otherwise say.

Alive and sober, awake and dying.

I am improving, actively evolving.
I am not devalued or retrograding.

*******.
Don't not look at me, as though I were a freak.
Don't sneer and scoff, and judge me, as meat.
*******.

You think you know me better than me?
You think you could even convince me differently?
                am I right, or am I right?

Go ahead, lock your jaw, frown and furrow your brow, you magnanimous hypocrite.
We're both autonomous, and rich, in Ameri-*******-ca, with freedom out the *******.  

You're free to judge me.
I'm free to say *******.

We both bleed red blood.
We both will do as we will,
loving, *******, fighting,
drinking, *******, coping,
hiding, hurting, smelling,
crying, begging, hating,
breathing, needing, eating,
sleeping, living, and dying
under the great majesty of

                                                               ­        A *******
                                                         ­            INDIFFERENT
                                                 ­                       UNIVERSE

where we both need to
stop thinking differently.

Oh Yorick, you little crunchy skull, tell me, baby,
answer all the questions in "Blowing in the Wind"
on pacifism and what-is/how-to-be a man, please

and then play the piano while I lie on the lid of it
and let's sing the blues about being and nonbeing
and get drunk on scotch, as old as little young me

and the places, faces, and names we've forgotten
all while my rusty-stringed guitar gently weeps,

and geese run in droves over my grave, shivering
up and down my spine as my ears just burn alive

with the sword of death on a frazzled dried string
hangs over our heads to remind us we are young

we must not waste a second of life with "frivolity"

we are young, dead, all roguish,
we are real, but not broken--yet!

it wasn't all about
the proverbial lighting of the post-****** cigarette
the white sheets wrapped around inseparable sweaty bodies

holding hands, tangled legs

staring
at the ceiling

these sheets all tucked around my *******, his waist

it was the mediocre
it was the scurry across cold plastic floors
to go ***, quickly,

so I wouldn't start ******* blood 20 or so hours later

and forcing myself to ***
and splashing water to stop dripping *** across the floors

while I looked in the mirror
nonplussed
but
hair mussed

sticky with sweat
dripping with goo

thinking

man,
that felt really good
and reveling in that brief, delightful feeling

of a man's weight
on your chest

breathing heavily after ******* inside you

because there is nothing, there is something
an engima, some colorless-genderless name
that holds me by the scruff-nape of my neck
and pours me a glass of water that now fills

fills me up more than a garish kitch thing-y
with a name and a brand and a plastic case

I sweep up the broken glass and pay,
to make it better, I'll pay for mistakes

I wish I could have a big cry or a big bitter laugh
or bind up a wound, but, they would be falsified
it'd be fake and contrived, all crocodilian in ways

but there is just nothing, which is something,
which is to say that in here there's not a thing

I will wait on the banks, I will shine my little scales,
and I will be golden, and not be a thing really, at all

I close my eyes,
while walking,
remembering

"To Autumn" by Keats

and how it feels to crush an acorn under my heels
and how it feels to pluck a red leaf off an oak tree

and how it felt to be young
and how it felt to be young

and how that every memory is shrouded in fog
and how every recalling warps their accuracy
and how it felt to be an unwanted outsider

and how after I was wanted, after some some summer, heat faded, I came

it was marked, everything changed, because I chose to be different and difficult,
and that was better, like the dry leaves, it is delicate, crunching easily underfoot
spidery veins all brown and beautiful, thin and papery, but it is interesting, and

red, and orange, and purple, and leaves sweep up in the pull of the breeze and

I have never truly believed in God, but I have always believed in the wind

I felt it on the nape of my neck in my youth it held me
by the scruff, but with age it was covered and my own
and my hair grows long, brown, tumultuous, tangled,

it is my trace, billowing, behind me as I walk, steadily
facing the against wind, neither breathing nor praying

because the wind in my face, swaying
filling me with smells of earthy decay
as the machine of leaves crumble, that

is more beautiful than all
and the ending of this is
all my beginning

I get scared that I don't do much, and I get scared when strangers yell at or touch me. I get scared of whizzing cars that go so fast that they'd turn me into pulp and broken bones under the weight of their axels because I'm afraid of broken bones and of falling. I'm scared of being a coward and of sullying or destroying my integrity.

I'm afraid of people--especially boys--and how and why they make me feel because it seems I either care too much or not enough, and I get scared of both. I get scared and mean when they say nice things to me since I'm not very nice to myself. I get the jitters when they talk to me and I get scared because I feel and act dumb.

I'm scared of being stupid and I'm scared of being overestimated. I'm scared of apathy, and I'm frightened by the willful ignorance that exists everywhere.

Most of all, I'm afraid of causing others unnecessary suffering.

I want to be better, I sincerely do. It is just all very frightening sometimes.

silk slip, kimono
washed the worries, permanent press
standing naked, very unimpressed

can you? will you?
swill me?
why?

who's heart breaks
in the ache
between the "hi" and "why"?

when I recoiled from your kiss
I only knew why
it's because my bed and I we were amiss

why I last told the other goodbye

I cannot put my finger on my dissatisfaction

I cannot slake my thirst
I cannot sate my hunger
I cannot itch this scratch
I cannot imbibe it better
I cannot forget it, worse

deaf--dumb--blind--limp--sad--stupid

I feel I am seeing in the second dimension
when I know the fourth is called for, now!

I cannot expunge this record, these memories, or the lack thereof
I cannot remember the effort, or, where things stopped or started

I cannot describe this inexplicability,
I cannot remember the introductions

criss-cross logical thinking
twanging words, tungsten,
copper, and sheets of steel

sautered, bolted, shorted
circuits crackle and spark
blue like the ocean water
burning the water in skin

and I find nothing on an endless loop around the
Möbius strip, no, nothing, neither starts nor ends
I'm stuck in some Escher stairwell, so frustrating
I feel like an imbecile that knows not of a named
thing that stands before me, if it were a snake, it
would bite me, what, (                    ) it is so close?

boy, this stings,
this ***** to be

struck by something, and
                             I don't know
                                                             what

I cannot find relief from catharsis
no, that hasn't ever worked at all.

dizzying, myopic thing that keeps me awake
show yourself, show me how, or what, wants
this thing thing thing this thing of something.

I cannot find my (          ), no,
I cannot find anything at all.

Unfinished business lies here and there and everywhere
All it needs is a wet napkin/better communication/glue
We broke your pupil,
the black has leaked into your iris,
turning the blue to black into
one is now purple and bruised and
a small fissure of the black is escaping into the whites.
I'm be sure to staunch the bleeding with
some insulation or sawdust or my finger

Deep as the motives of an empire,
his chest rises and falls
as quickly as kings through centuries.

---

You may be marooned in my bed,
     but of all the boys that have been lost
in the blueish depths left on my neck,
     I'm glad you lingered there

I balance a beer off of the white mound of belly that holds my food baby
I have named him Alberto, and he is tacos

and I am hearing, and but not really listening
it doesn't matter, we're having fun, it's alright

as the chatter of girls and boys, joking,
and full of charm and giggling, poking fingers
I look at their beautiful faces, grinning

smile stretched ear to ear, tan and freckled, lightly pink
on my striped bed with good food, good beer, crumbs in the sheets

ready to kiss faces, to break in my bed,
to blush scarlet, thanks to them, me too
and I am an amiable animal, for now

The salt is taken with the sugar, taken full in stride
No word or sound could ever take your mother's brother's pride
The trick is in the shimmy that gets you through the door
Getting naked under clothes, clean the bathroom floor
Slip the key and turn the lock
Tell him you just forgot
You weren't supposed to visit the craig of his mind

The ink of your skin smells like sin
Of tangled legs and sheepish grins
Your heavy eyes tell me lies
Your neck leans, your shoulders cry
You've slept and fought and thought a lot
You weren't supposed to stay in the craig of his mind

You're new and used but news to me
A stag before you're now set free
Damp and twisted, your fur is mussed
Stamped and bothered, too much fuss.
You now wait in the dark crook of your sleeve
But by and by I have taken my leave

Meant to go so mean, my stomps weren't kind
I wasn't meant to leave the craig of your mind

Broken focus with broken dreams, everything isn't always what it seems.
It's a faux facade, a selfish show
I look back and see I did not grow
Look at the reflection,
all you see is the beauty in your strong jaw.
Hold it with your strong hands. You look strong.

If you appear to be strong, do you eventually become strong?

People with lean and depend and take shelter
with and under your jutting cliff,
your face turns to stone, your body; stiff.
The drizzling sizzling acid rain is your fault.
from you taking too long of showers or not taking the bus
This       will become your drowning glory.
Those    that have taken shelter have taken root,
they      will help hold you steady,
they      will absorb some tainted rain like it singe.

But you can see their silent screams in the brown tips of their hands/leaves.
They are suffering from your mistakes,
seeking shelter under you from your acid rain through your completely selfish strength.

red jawed, aspirin(s)
waxy swollen gums
grinning white teeth,

grinding down to spiked nubs,

^^^^^^^^^

little points,
chewing up.

;'.',;.;';'.,';.','.';',.

all the better for spitting acid.

cut your nose off to save your face

a girl I know got the tip of her nose bitten off by a dog
a girl I know got the tip of her nose bitten off by a dog
a girl I know got the tip of her nose bitten off by a dog
a girl I know got the tip of her nose bitten off by a dog

and I drink out of a broken crystal goblet
over a man who made me feel feelings for a month