I think my lips are chapped because I've kissed so many boys who don't love me.
You ask me 'what do you taste like?' I don't think its very **** to say regret and sadness.
You say 'when can I taste you' My taste has been passed around so many tongues there is nothing left for you.

He tells me 'I'm here for you, I'll always be here for you' as he kisses my neck. The next week the bite mark on my belly is fading and I can barely remember the colour of your eyes.

My sister says 'you will change your mind' she says, 'all woman want to be mothers'.
I have stumbled in at 4am with the taste of strangers in my throat to see my mother sitting upright waiting for me, I think of the night I spent crying on my mothers lap in a&e;, certain I couldn't make it through the day, the way my brother scowls at my mother, my sister telling her that 'you could've done more, you could've walked away.' I. Dont. Want. Children.

My mum tells me she is old, she is tired. She desperately needs a man to hold doors open for her and carry her shopping. I am trying to remember that needing someone does not mean you are weak.

My grandmother gave me waist beads to encourage fertility. She says 'god gave you those hips to birth children'. Ive never told her that i lost my faith in god the year i lost my virginity.  And if there is a god, i don't want his ******* fertility. I want to break these beads and let drugs engulf me to prove my grandmothers blind faith wrong.
I laugh and pray before our meal and kiss her forehead, 'god bless'.

He tells me 'i know youre *****, its natural'. I laugh and play along for his delight. 'women are just like toys, television, easy puzzles'. I think of my father beating my mother, my fathers face all the men ive walked past in the street. My mothers face is my own.

'if you don't want boys to touch you you shouldn't wear tight clothes'. I think of all the boys who have run their fingers over my back when i was dressed in clothes from neck to ankle. I wonder if god is a sexist man. I wonder if there's any men who aren't implicitly sexist.

He tells me, 'I'll spend hours on you, I'll make you believe in god again'. There is nothing I can do but laugh. I ask him, 'does your mother know you speak to girls like this?'
He ***** his teeth, 'do you always have to be so difficult?'  
I kiss him but I think of his mother, foreign and lonely, 2 sons and no husband.

He says 'you need a real man' I think of all the other boys who have told me that before leaving me.
He wants to know why I'm in hospital so much, 'how are we going love each other when you can't tell me what's wrong with you' I don't want to tell him that I've cut my arms so badly I can see god in my blood, and sometimes the voice in my head screams so loud I black out. I kiss his chest. He doesn't ask again. I resent him for that.

I've been ignoring my fathers phone calls for two weeks because his voice sounds like absence and I don't want to hear another 'I love you' from a man who doesn't know my secrets.

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and ****,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart.

You take me to places only nightmares
are allowed entry to; the juggler in our midst
has now taken your hand and my head
and we are lost somewhere between wonderland
and purgatory. Bound to you with strings,
I am no longer an instrument of love,
I do not make music, nor do I burn
with impassioned colours. I only hum
the songs you've forgotten, and I refuse to.
We were born in a wrong time and we've got
to get out of this place, before the maze
in your thoughts swallows me
whole.

He's been an orphan since he was sixteen
That's when his parents kicked him out because he was so mean .
He's been living on the steps of every backdoor
What he can't get begging he will steal for

Once he was his mother's pride and joy
That was before he started drugs and there was no wonder anymore .
His skin turned hard and his heart harder still
His eyes became vacant lots lacking any will

He was living for a shot in the dark
Instead someone shot him down by the park
He died with a silly grin on his face
Don't worry there's someone who will take his place

Just another American dream disgraced
Another person slips off the face
He was dead before he hit the ground
His life ended with out a sound

And every day we say I don't care
He wasn't going to make it anywhere
All he was good at was getting high
Now he's gone and no one's asking why

His skin was as hard as a memory
He kept then in a bottle of pills he got free
No one even knows his name
Bud or Buster , it was all the same

No one even knows his name
They put him in a black bag that's the shame
He'll never be around again
And no one really cares

i showed up at your work with a bottle of wine
and stood in the parking lot for two hours
with your skin in my thoughts like
sin and sun-heat on a garden of blacktop
twisted my ankle, leaning into the wind
with a sign that read
'i feel alright
i won't stop dreaming
i feel okay'
until you quit your job with a screech
took off your apron, spinning into bright oxygen
and crashed into my majestic arms
showed me your legs in a sundress

we ran and danced on a july breeze
and sang to each other the songs our souls
kept secret for so long until
your father and brother found us
and dislocated your arm when
you said you loved me like
the wind at night

i repaired you with kisses and tears
the next night when you snuck out
and we swayed to jazz in the dark on
the old bridge a mile behind your house
as the moon wept radiant heat
we giggled and smashed windows
the trees exploded with laughter through
the canyons

you caressed me with your eyes
this morning between shrieks of tightness,
your father and brother long forgotten
in a field in our hometown,
as you wipe last night's lipstick from
my throat and chest and stomach
your heated cheek-flesh screams whispers
of being free as you lap me

and i drink milk from a cold glass.

i remember the taste of my own blood
fondly
i remember my broken nose bone fellating my own
grey brain-mush
and how i could smell my own
ocular nerves
and my scattered smile
like a third period hockey player eating
a puck
and glancing at his mother in the crowd
i remember a moment suffering in the opposite of blindness,
and a canadian wearing a sombrero and chinos holding a guitar
i remember high testosterone levels
and blurred vision
i remember what knuckles taste like
and how bone feels against bone

but he remembers it too
he remembers how concrete tastes
and how embarrassment runs
like blood to the head of a man hanging by his feet
he knows the conclusion of concussion and
how much a hospital visit for a broken arm costs.

Your skin
On
My skin.
The luminosity of curiosity twinkling within.
When you touch me,
Do you feel me?
You could heal me
Of
My sins.
An
Angel
-from every angle-
Are you able
To shed skin?
I will shed you
Of the evils
You harbor within.
I will harbor
Your
Sins
I will harbor the DNA you shed on my skin,
I will anchor on the harbors of your depths deep within
-you could heal me.
Tell me again;
When you touch me,
Do you feel me?