1.  Sit down and cry. Cry until you have no more tears and don’t even remember the reason for your sadness. Realize that nothing, not even misery, is permanent.

2. Close your eyes and imagine your dream home. Don’t skimp on anything, not even the tiniest details like the doorknob or the lampshade pattern. Keep it always so that whenever you are somewhere heartless and cruel, you have a retreat.

3. Discover a song you love. Listen to it as loud as possible, listen to it as softly as possible. Listen to it backwards, forewords, sideways, and upside down. Extract from it all the truth and magic you can until you’re sick of it. Repeat.

4. Try and realize who your real friends are. Not the ones who will smile at your jokes and laugh at their own, but the ones who will walk with you even in the darkest of nights and never have to reassure you that they’re there.

5. Cut your hair. Cut it as short as you can without making your mother cry. Recognize that when someone says they don’t like it, what they’re really saying is that your appearance is for their pleasure. Know that it is not.

6. Choose a day just to watch. Watch the wind whispering to the trees, the grass reaching for the sky, the clouds hanging on by a thread. Make eye-contact with the moon and see that everything is watching you back. They’re rooting for you.

7. Learn how to make your favorite food. Learn how to make it exactly like your mother does. And every time you taste those familiar flavors, know that home is wherever you are.

8. Draw yourself. Don’t look in a mirror while you do this, draw yourself as you truly think you are. When you’re finished, take a photo of yourself. Compare the two. Realize that how you perceive you and how the world sees you will always be different.

Affectionate flames.
Licking up at your ankles,
Flowing through your veins.
Playing with fire,
Lapping at your fingertips,
Swishing past your eyelids.
Stroke the burn until you’re scorched,
Float your fingers through the heat.
Feel it breeze past your thoughts
And entangle in your personality.
Who needs to be a human?
Who needs help existing?
When one is alive,
One is a flame.
Feed the flame,
Care for it,
Kindle and rekindle
Until your hands are calloused
And black.
Pet the flare,
Until you can no longer feel.
Love the fire,
Before it causes you to cease.
For a peculiar thing,
When one plays with fire,
Fire always wins.

I can feel my body
Pulsing
Through the aisles of your mind.
I'm spinning
Stopping
Falling
Through your fingertips.
I'm water,
Flowing in and out
Of the made up souls.
Self conscious migraine
Seeping through my
Eyelids.
Flit your
Lips
And seal your
Kiss
On my unmade,
Untamed,
Undone,
Undulating
Pathways.

Save me from this.
This paranoia cut throat demonhead.
Save me from this.
This painstake thoughtless morning dread.
Save me from me.
My foolproof gunshot motorcade.
Save me from me.
My faceless nameless nightshade.

And when I need you most,
Leave me,
Set me free.
And when I need a smoke,
Cheat me,
Leave me be.
And when you need my taste,
Drink it,
Sip your veins.
And when you go to waste,
Follow me,
Down the drain.

Mediocrity,
Life unmoved.
Is it really all so true?
If I know
My life is bland,
Does it change
Where I stand?
Arcade, Jukebox,
Floor covered in dust.
I can feel my eyes
Growing rust.
I can’t help it,
I’m romantic,
I’m unoriginal.
Ain’t nothing worse than that.

I want to be loved.
But who would love me?
I'm not a rock
Or a goddess
Or seraphim or angel dust or light.
I can't lift drooping eyelids
Or cause sandstorms
All without a breath.
I have no interest
In picture frames,
Or watery exit gala moonlight.
I long to smoke with the devil
And teach the soulless to waltz.
I want to sing with daffodils
And tease their sweet bees.
I need to know what I'm creating,
And be exactly that.
Why is that so difficult?
Why,
Oh, why?
Am I not beautiful?
Don't I have eyelids?
A soul beats within me,
Tired and useless.
You're all I ask for,
My prayer in the cigarette prison cell.
But you need someone who won't love the thieves,
And chuckle at misery.
You need
A goddess.
Oh, me.

I wish you were a flower.
So I could keep you in my pocket
            and read to you
    and you would listen!
           The works of Ginsberg,
     and Twain,
who contradict each other beautifully.
            We would drink tea.
      And start a war,
Accidentally.
      Bunches of Chamomile,
          Earl Grey,
             Darjeeling
Would join the ranks in our brigade
          Against the world.
   But that's too harsh for
              A flower.
                  But.
Couldn't you be something else?
         An atom bomb.
     A butterfly.
A girl with roses for eyes.
          Two headed and beautiful
  You would fly from the last explosion,
Till your eyes wilted
    And melted
     And you slept.
With me and Ginsberg and Twain.

Eerie spinal crack crack crack
keeps me awake as I dream in and out of your beautiful self perception
you slippery queen
who inhabits my every waking sleeping seconds
like a crushed shell underneath my foot
you inhabit so many pieces
so many forms
so many truly fascinating listless traits
that you choose to give to someone that I am not
but that’s alright,
I say that’s alright
because your love is yours
and not mine
but if it were mine I know I’d do something ugly
like hoard it so that the world could never see it
until I die and rot just like the insides of my skull when you aren’t around.

How fast can I make the days go by if I live them safe inside my mind?

How quick will time go down the drain if I'm locked tight inside my brain?

Daydream, daydream, hours blown away. Nightmare, nightmare, starts a brand new day.

All the people I see are alive. Shallow, frozen, realities of life.

I would rather waste my time away than be with them for one more ******* day.

You’re sitting on the barstool next to Ronda and the fool.
Both are getting drunker than the man on the moon.
And the isolation kicks in till you’re locked up in your room.
Where to go, where to gone, where to die.
And your shirt is stained with incense dripping down between your toes.
Beneath the floor the liquids slipping to where nobody knows.
But the drinks just keep on pouring in the pockets of your clothes.
Where to go, where to gone, where goodbye.

And you feel the record turning
While the waitresses start burning
Into the floorboards or your eyelids,
To a place nobody knows.
Your temperature is busy rising
And you’re having trouble crying
Out about the things you have to say,
About what nobody knows.

Your body’s run away and now your nothing but your eyes.
Catching raindrops in your eyelids, tears for someone who can’t cry.
But will these tears still serve you when it’s you who has to die?
Where to go, where to gone, where oh my.
These lifeless souls all float around in their velvet parade.
You’re drinking whisky swaying slowly in the stillness of the shade.
You can’t muster up the courage to be the one who was saved.
Where to go, where to gone, where to hide.

I’ll come to you when the rain is at its final leap.
You won’t be tired if I can’t manage to sleep.
All I need is a quiet place to wind down the roads in my head,
So that you, darling, won’t ever leave this world dead.

Close my eyes and I see you with your friends.
Their bizarro world of coffee never ends.
You’ll speak of leaders and readers and the numb.
While I prance in deaf blind and dumb.

Why is it so many things are in existence?
How can I learn with all of your insistence?
I don’t want to be a burden, but I don’t understand
How you can hope and love with the lower hand.

I still love you.
Even in my dreams.
Even when the moon is bursting at its seams.
If she is what you want,
Leave me pale and gaunt.
I don’t deserve you.

You would leave if you could dear, wouldn’t you?
On the road with Jack Kerouac and the other cuckoo?
If you could leave me alone inside of my mind,
I know you’d run away and away from my kind.

You want to hold me sometimes, I know it.
If only I weren’t so awkward with my tea and my throwings.
I think you’d love me, I know you would too.
If only I could form a sentence without needing you.

I don’t feel any comfort anymore from them.
Your friends have all melted, mine turned seraphim.
So its you and me now, against no one at all.
Can’t you see we’re only ants on an oversized ball?

I’m tired I’m tired of being so tired and so lazy and so dull and such a large mess of drip drip insomnia. No chance no chance I’ll get up? My body works for no one my mind frames itself day after day as the villain but will I ever be caught? Hit em right between the eyes hurt me crush me I need to feel it’s all so dull it’s all so boring help help help Christ almighty I’ve been thirsty I’m forever fat and ugly dull and smoggy fighting back and forth with the lies I’ve been wearing, disguise I’ve been blurring. Lightning bolt shoot me down out of the sky the sky I’m polluting nothing more to say my eyes are choked.

Jobs are useless. We are useless. Life is useless. Art is hard. Art is pointless. I feel I feel I feeel I feel nothing I try I try I try there’s nothing I blur I blur I blur I see nothing I fight I fight I fight for nothing. Bright future brute natures cracked backs make good snacks try too hard try so hard not enough not enough where’s the childhood? I’m a child still I’m a child still why the *** why the drugs why the painful throbbing in my head it’s constant consistent never misses a beat no no I try to make it far away with lace and *** and haleyhaleyhaleybaby cmoooon reality is a dream a lie told to you by the A team the ones who know who can make you last with drip drip drip into your pores your veins your poor veins your mind alright? mind your mind and mind your soul for nothing is real when chances are fleeting and time is a flat circle where you relive you relive over and over would you want to relive today? because you’re going to.

Fight the urge to resist to persist to exist to resist I need to find the new people the blue people the better people to lift me up out of my self pity sleep in my overdose chair made of silver and bones. Low self esteem low self esteem worthy of anything besides their life dream. Play with me so I know you aren’t asleep play with me so I know you aren’t asleep why do you want to hurt me why do you want to love me is this abuse or am I just happy we go out and you reject me I’m so low but so high high as the sky can’t touch the sky my fingerprints will leave a mark that’s too much, chocolate covered hands in my saccharine shell pulse pulse pulse little embryo crack your little sugar skull on this plaster world you’ve created berated manifested in this concrete overdrive over overdrawn and overdose stop telling me your story stop trying to change my life my door is not open close it close it keep it closed I’d lock it but then I can’t get out I’m a sucker and self esteem is a lie no one has it no one has it except for you and everyone like you we’re all alike, aren’t we? Same hair same eyes same heart same lies sleep with me sleep with me I’m really not a sad person but won’t you sleep on me and step on me where is my spine oh in a jar.

Leaving my beautiful world behind.
Torn apart, tear me apart.
Keep my face in your mind,
I just want to be lovely.

Being beautiful for you,
Remember my words.
I’m cloudy, you snow.
Ripped to love’s shreds.


Can my life start going wrong?
I need to feel.
Show them all I’m really gone.
Nothing’s really real.

You’re nothing but godly.
Pull me away.
Save this mind from this body.
Don’t breathe today.

No way out.
Drink me down.
Save your shouts.
Homeward bound.

You’re reoccurring in my eyelids
You’re pirouetting on my dreams
You’re caressing all my knowledge
You’re true to the underlings.

Let me touch your spiny stars
Let me pledge my true intent
Let me drip into your slow pores
Let me drink up all your scent

Death cannot contain us
Love will not berate us
We’re more than this life has to offer

Please keep your lashes black
Please kiss my favorite mark
Don’t let them cut you open
Don’t let them play you dark

Open eyes and scarring minds
Dancing through my overdrive
Keep the fingers playing truly
Keep your heartstrings tied unruly

Strange gurgles and open wounds
Flashing upon closed door rooms
Heads abound and masters reel
As you feel exactly what I feel

Mix up our sickness
You’re dying of quickness
Clockwork like mind
I never could find

Find all my freedoms
Alight my true colors
Burn my intentions
Disconnect oh my brothers.

Is she
Floating through your dreams?
Like a
Kerosene butterfly warm with perfume?
Is she
Kissing your eyelids?
And caressing you to sleep with her blonde blue entanglements?
Her lips will part,
And with it your beliefs,
For if she exists
Does anyone else?

What makes you sad my darling?
Oh, everything.
The nightclubs are broken,
The fifties have ended.
My friends are all ghosts
Who’s lives just upended.
I was in love with a girl
She’s frozen in time.
I was in love with a world,
That will never be mine.

What makes you cry my lovely?
Oh, everything.
The war’s taking over
My mind and my heart.
I’m still young in my body
But not in my parts.
I can’t contact you,
Though you haunt me.
Every dream about you.
Just leave me be.

But then I’ll see,
I’ll see everything
Through the lens I’ve been given.
And I’ll stare at,
At pure everything,
And I’ll know I’m just living.

And I want what everybody wants.
To be someone else.

When the images collide
In a swirling dark lovely heaven
That’s when
I’ll really be able to see you.

You’re filled brimming with flowers
And choked lyrical flow
For a girl that doesn’t exist
Are you sure?

She can’t cut you with her fingers
Like you sang about off key
She won’t float through your photographs
Like I’d hope to.

Born in a bottle rocket
Couldn’t quite describe her.
But she was.
She had to be born somewhere.

Sitting in a soda fountain at the edge of the world.
Her in her nightgown
You with your two heads.
Don’t spill your malt into the abyss, dears.

The girl in the moon is grinning down at you
While licking her white lily chops.
She’d gobble your songs if you’d let her.
Floating up like cigarette smoke.

Veins are the angels of the body.
The flowers in your hair are my arteries.

Your eyes are like lilies
Oh now my pretties.

When it all comes to an end,
Why will it come to an end?
I’m not
Special.
There’s no uniqueness
Coursing through me.
I don’t see things
Differently.
I’m no asset to anyone.
And I’m happy.
So why would something
So
Beautiful.
So
Tender.
So
Passionate and light,
Take me?

And if keeping my arms around you
I squeeze you much too tightly
I hope you don’t forget me,
Your eyes oh so flighty
And if I can’t keep your mind off
The drastic measures you take
Our dreams will suffer softly,
For they’re awful things to fake.
My mother will stare helpless
As I experiment in you
The Paris longing feeling lovely
To stay inside our dew.
Fashionably late
our eyelids will become
Staring into sockets
To save growing numb.

Holding hands with a demon,
Chain smoking in his shoes.
Keeps me human.
The Devil argued with me,
Over the relevancy
Of taste.
I stayed breathing.
But when I
Skip with the seraphim,
I feel darkness creeping in,
I'm done for.

Seeing your face in the light,
It’s so hard.
To keep walking toward a life I know
I can’t start.
You want to help me create a new one
I know.
You want to help to be a new one.

I’ve never been you,
Nor do I want to.
I love you.
I do.
You only love yourself,
Can’t love anyone else,
But your supposed to.
You know who.
You know, me.

Tracing the cracks in your spine,
I can’t help
But think of my new life with you.

He is standing at my doorway,
He is looking at his feet.
The moon was rising as he stared.
The stars were calling
And the wind was drawing
Pleas of just don't be scared.

My mirror broke when I cried and spoke,
'Keep me in your sleep.'
He tried to dream, but stopped and screamed,
'Can't you stay in one piece?'

He drained the alcohol, threw me down the hall.
My heart was breaking in his whims.
He held up his head, and woke up from the dead,
Said 'Broken, just like my limbs.'

I hadn't though he was capable, the tears were so palpable,
We hugged and I cried a goodbye.
Then I woke up from my dream, so real it had seemed,
'Till I noticed the note and the signs.

'Haley,' he wrote, 'I'm sorry you're broke,
But I think I've been mislead.
'I can't help that I'm gone, but I just felt so wrong.
It's lonely living in your head.'

I don’t know where I’m going
but I’m not sure if that’s my problem
or if I’m unhappy
because I expect myself to.
I’m asleep, truly,
for I can feel the seawater dripping from under my eyelids,
seeping down down down through my pillow
and rotting my floors with dreamy mold
all throughout our living space.
No wonder we cough,
no wonder we choke,
no wonder none of us are able to have real relationships
we’re being poisoned by our dreams until nothing is left
but the choking exhaustion
of a day spent laying on our backs
and thinking that tomorrow is the day we’ll fall in love
or next week I’ll finally jump on that train
and away from all of them who do me harm.
I’m trapped in my own personal heaven that’s
halting me from bouncing into reality.

Voice like cobwebs
A face like a glove.
Standing on the edge with the devil,
Checking up on the rest.
Can’t you save me?
You wait for no one,
But you can save me.
Half an hour,
Maybe more,
And I’m crying on your floor.
Save the sugar,
Saccharine sweet.
Just let me be someone.
Anyone.
You.

I hate the Space Around the Stars.
He’s like soft cold stumbling love.
He pierces my mind and pours me out onto the sidewalk.
He falls in jigsaw into my conversation.
He’s impatient and leaves me without words.
He runs away and leaves me with nothing,
Except the stars themselves.
And what are those?
Are those any better than the Space?
Balanced and kind, they wait.
Oh, sure, they wait.
They wait for destiny.
And for help to come without them asking.
Well? Has it arrived, oh dripping starlight?
Your taxi cab to a new life, oh starlight?
Is that any better than leaving me?
Waiting to leave me?
No, it’s not. No.

so much love is spewing my way
from the boys who love me
and the ones who want to love me
and the ones I want to love me
but don’t think they can.
Christ almighty.
I’m melting
from all of this ****** liberation taking it’s time
too slowly drip dipping down my too young leg.
all of a sudden it’s not pretend,
it’s not fake,
it’s not painted on moans mixed with brushed gold caress
but a cardboard bite on my collarbone
that should feel good in my dreams
but only leaves marks.
these scars are real and won’t flake off into stardust
but will grow and bulge
until they swallow me up
just like I swallow up all those who ask politely.