The basement of my mind.

   Cluttered with shit storms and broken promises,
          Withered alongside reminiscent daydreams of passed past nightmares.

I stare...
   Into the internal dwellings of my deepest catacomb.

          Unable to process what resides in my literal unconscious dungeon.
   It's everything i've attempted to hide.

To die.
   To let dwindle between cobwebs and dust bunnies.

My breath falls short.

   Sifting through the residue of forgotten treasures and material shackles.
          They bond me.
Surround me.
   Overwhelm me...
          The unresolved burdens have taken residency within my hindered chakras.

My chest  is heavy.
   The weight distribution of disappointment is sharper than expected.

It eats away at me.
   An elusive daily ritual.

Tucked away it remains far from common thought patterns.

Waves of emotion.
   The tides roll in.
          Upon their migration my muddled secrets and hidden betrayals are uncovered.
               Discovered.

The look in your eyes when they fall upon my frailty.

My internal stack of unfiltered, unregistered, and unassured disheveled boxes.
   Full of disheveled useless things.
          Covered in a thick layer of problems i'm incapable of handling alone.

Alone.
   It sits unaltered and ever growing.

The piles.
    The filth.
          The remnants of what should have been happiness.

It all falls into misplaced sediments.

I'm a mess.
It's showing.
I'm naked.

    This hell.
This murky chamber of unwanted mementos from failed attempts and lost friendships
          This dreadful, endless room.

Oh, to live in a home without a storm shelter.
    Without room to store unnecessary baggage and all the unclaimed items in my mind.

To find solace in meager living.
   All this weight fitting into a backpack.

To minimize my insanity into a carry on.

   To leave.
To go.
    To be light enough to feel the light.

To escape this cellar.
     To live.

To release my self from my own idealogical prison.
    To penetrate the bars of fear.
          To dig myself out from all the things I never want to speak of.

To be free.
     Ahhh, to be free.

To breathe fresh air over molded dust clouds and stale particles.
     To touch without needing to rinse my soul clean.

To re-stack, rotate, and Tetris these piles of insecurities.

To break habits
           that i've reinterpreted from childhood addictions and failed father figures.

To be better than what i've become.

To set fire to this sham of a lifestyle.
     To be reborn in the ashes of this outgrown armor.

To let go.

To make you proud.
     To find pride in myself.

To not be embarrassed by my place settings and mismatched knick knacks.

To allow souls into my temple without them stumbling into my isolated lunacy.

To welcome love.
        To love.
    To love even the darkest crevasses of my being...

I need to renew my license to live.
     Overdue and out of line,
           My past self has expired.

One step at a time, breathe.
    One box at a time, breathe.
       One thought at a time, inhale.
    One lust at a time, exhale.

Inhale.
    Exhale.
Breathe.
        Repeat.

Awaken.
      Accept.
  Change.
           Repeat.

Out of breath and sweaty
You turn as you roll off me
The barest hint of a question
Forming behind those eyes

You've been here before
A hundred moments to shrug your shoulders
As if to say
Whatever, who cares anyway?

Lips pursed just so
Whisper shocked suprise
Instead of the usual "I should go..."
Demurely ask "Can I stay?"
Suddenly start to cry

And our hearts break as I reach out to you
Cause you start to say you love me
When I interupt abrubtley
My thoughts are of someone else
But I guess you'll do

~ ~ ~
And in the narrow vision of my half closed eyes I see
Dark shapes emerging
And descending into every favorite object
Of my long harbored hopes and fears
And yours.
Inflicting my beloved place with darkness
They mount and dive into the realms of physics
And of clarity;

And so we sit
In our favorite coffee house with tea and cake,  and ache
And ache for we can feel their presence
As they invoke in us that fear
Of breaking mirrors and of shaking ground;

And now partaking in our gestures and our face
- They come into this world
And break what we had hoped for with a grace
That only creatures from the underworld possess
To lessen our role in the real world –
They grab hold of our arms:
Yours first
Then mine
And climb with us onto a mountain top so dark
And so remote that we now feel
As though our eyes half-closed again.

And in the beauty of this sleep
I am no longer able to shake off the beasts
Of non-reality.

the break of day
is unwashed
with newness

because Tomorrow
will reign.

She
               (my mother
is not of softness but is of steel reinforced concrete.
she will give what she feels is deserved.
nevermore {beg if you like}
neverless
regardless of the cost to herself.
                                                          . . but deep, deep
as fair as rock is she.
her greetings are tolerations. her goodbyes, predictions
- of my forseen failures.
                                                           . . still     i seem to remember . .
a
* glimmer *
of a laugh, a  
~whisper~  
of a touch                  so
                                               very    
                                                             ­  long
                                                             ­                    ago . .  /  

perhaps one day as she lies resting I will take my mothers hand
and kiss her upon her marble forehead
and speak "I love you mom"
and a single tear will drop from my face
onto her face
. . . and the coldness within her will bre-
                                                             ­     -ak

and my mother will break.

...on this Saturday afternoon there is a street fair in Greenwich,
You step off the 1 train at Christopher Street station and all along 7th Avenue,
the little sidestreets, Bowery, Commerce, give me that old Dutch sensibility
Street vendors and street people eating, laughing, trying on five dollar leather clogs
On a day that is slightly drizzling, we pause to consider the trees

In a flash I understand the world you come from when you say you normally stay on the East side of Lower Manhattan, you start counting the colors on the street and ask where all the Spanish people at?

there is this reversal, a turnaround, a recognition in me that binds me to you, when I realize you can teach me how to be young and dance with my hips, when I know that you can give me what I've craved for so long, freedom-the opportunity to face all my fears- and the chance to be a wild thing. I am nineteen, for the love of God, and I never got the chance to rage and abandon all cerebral intelligence and just live in the realm of the senses! But for now, I'll settle for to know myself better and to live without apology-but of course, there is a certain fear with taking that step and giving all of myself to you.

Yet I find myself considering it as we walked with your arm around my shoulders and my hands on an eight dollar bag of Swedish candy. I know you know the effect you have on people, other women especially, I see the way they eat you up with their eyes. But then again I'm only beginning to notice the same kind of attention from men as I walk down the street-though I owe that to you too, giving me enough confidence in my body-to sway a little bit more.

And the fact that you repeat thoughts and ideas that have been constantly looping in my own mind makes me believe we are on the same wavelength. Like when the lights suddenly flickered off on the train and you glanced up at me and said how much you love it when that happens? Goddamn, it sent my head spinning.

And now we are together, supposedly. But of course I always keep in the back of my mind the possibility that everything you are is a lie and you could wake up one day and say I don't want you anymore and just walk out my life with both hands in your pockets.

If that happened now, I could say fuck you and move on.

But if I love you the way I want to love you and the way I long to be loved, all of that mind body spirit crap, a piece of me would just break and float away forever.

I guess that's a risk I might have to take one day, and I find myself considering it as we race each other to get burritos and later on I flick some water in your face and you just stare at me with a faint smile on your lips. So, at this moment, I am too much with you. It scares me when I think of what I might feel for you, and so I am on the edge of a precipice here-wondering whether or not to run with you.

Electric Wonder.
Exciting Beauty.
The girl with the smile.
The perfect storm.
Wonderful. Just. Wonderful.
Skinny Love.

Aren't we a shy pair? The names
you use to describe me to others are cute indeed
but I'd like them better if you used them with me.

I'm more than Lauren, your friend from school.
I'm the electric wonder who you deemed "too cool"
to pursue back in eighth grade. So you sat back like a
fool and let me get my heart broken by a boy who didn't care.
I forgive you though,
my friend,
because you were there when he let me down.
And it was your hug that I'd wished had been his all along.

And back in tenth grade when another stood me up,
it was you, skinny love, who picked me up. From a
lonely cold night outside the movies. It was you,
my friend,
who took me out for ice cream and it was you,
my friend,
who told me he wasn't worth the trouble.
In tenth grade you deemed me an exciting beauty who
could never fall for a man like you. But all along it was
your hand I wished had been holding mine.

And my senior year when we parted ways,
and we reminisced about the days we had
you had a look on your face. Like there was something
you just had to say. But instead,
my friend,
you told me you'd miss me when I was at college
and nothing more. You made me the girl with the smile
that ignited the light in your heart but you did not tell me.
You let me go. And I never let you know that I wish it had
been you in school who I called my own.

Summer after I came home from my first year away,
you said I had changed. I had purple in my hair
and the care I once had of the opinions of others was
gone. We spent weeks together, like nothing had changed.
And when I cried because I had to leave you again you
were the one,
my friend,
who calmed my fears and promised to visit
once you'd moved in.
I was your perfect storm of grace and tragedy.
And it was you,
my friend,
who I wanted to share every moment with
during those warm summer nights.

Sophomore year you brought me to a party. I
didn't know anyone and your friends were rude.
And when I wanted to leave and never come back it was you,
my friend,
who stood up for me and told them I was perfect.
You said I was Wonderful. Just. Wonderful. And after all
the times I let the truth stay bottled up inside I finally
let it out. That kiss on the porch was not the wine, nor the
weed. It was me. It was you. It was us. It was all the times
you were there for me and all the times I'd secretly wished
you were those boys who'd let me down.

So why? Skinny Love? Why continue on this way?
No need for another heart break. Let's admit the
way we feel, my friend,
the way we've always felt.

For tenth grade me.
For senior year you.
For the times we cried together.
And hid our feelings for each other.

Come now, skinny love, tell me how you feel.

As light shines through my bedroom window, casting shapes upon the wall
My thoughts drift to days long past, which I'd rather not recall.
The shadows start to twist and turn, my hands begin to shake,
And as I shift to get a closer look, my heart begins to break.
No longer do I see a wall, with shadows splayed across,
Instead I'm in another time - my reality I have lost.
Even knowing I'm no longer sane, I'm not ready to return,
Maybe if I relive the past I'll have no bridges left to burn.

and then there are those days

when one minute your smiling
enjoying the gleeful moments,
wishing the day could never end

and then the next minute
you become a gloomy stew of sadness and pain
crying out for someone to hear you,
someone to relate to.

you begin to break down,
piece by piece
you remember the flaws
the nightmares
the torment
and you want it all to end

you dont want to do it
but its the only thing you know to do
though no one knows your internal sadness
they soon wont be able to fix whats been done

their words
their actions
they all come together
as a deadly force
that can and will take my life
and they call this
society

the mere presence
of one kitten
- would break Hell.