Floating through a crowded space
Of turning heads and curious eyes.
An echo of the worlds embrace,
A fleeting struggle your mind denies.

Once accepted, strong, a friendly face,
Yet as earth turns around each day,
Confidence falls, sand through lace.
Each moment poised a shade of grey.

A ridiculous cry you know its true,
Yet something gets ahold of you.
It grasps your breath and feeds your soul
Of bitter noise, now less than whole.

Just snap out of this silly game,
A dangerous sport too much at stake,
A lifes at risk, more than a name.
Endurance more than you can take.

This too shall pass, repeat, repeat,
Struggle on, hold your head up high,
Stand and stay upon your feet
We never want to see you cry.

I wanted to lay for awhile
in the incomprehensible darkness,
eyes needling all the things
which they could not see.

I'd imagine I was on Mercury,
where the hot, hot sun turned the ore
to slag rivers which carved up the surface
now the miasma of heat roams
the barren hilltops and plains
starving
for there is nothing left to consume.

Or Venus,
breathing poison,
weighted down and cooking me,
hotter even than Mercury,
where I'd watch the lightening play
across the saffron sky,
from the calderas of spent volcanos.

Or Earth,
where I lay awake in the night,
dreaming.

On Mars,
digging up fossils,
prowling riverbeds,
searching for memories in the broken rock
and bloody soil
Olympus looming in the distance.

Jupiter,
where my heart would break,
amid all the thunder
shouting itself against the gales
There is Ganymede,
silent above the endless storm

Or Saturn,
floating in the shadow
of those celestial rings
where Titan guards over them
ready for thieves in the darkness

Uranus,
where there are oceans of liquid diamond
glittering endlessly
through the alternating
decades long days and nights.

On Neptune,
beneath the sky so blue
and torn apart by the winds
nearing supersonic
over the burning ice.

Or lonely Pluto,
where I'd forget myself,
there in the dark.

Never forget
there is poetry in dirt
in greens, in beets,
especially in rutabagas.
Three-dollar-a-bag spinach,
you are a symphony of compost
with which an old man’s teeth are smitten;
Rosemary sprig, beneath all your flavor
you are the staff-lines of a madrigal written
in loving anticipation of the mason jars, weighed down with water
where you will grow and swell and bud and spread out strong purple flowers which say
that you are part of a song which sings
every year
a little louder.

This coming September, I will miss you dearly.
I will be days of travel away from your roots, your mist,
your six-in-the-morning-before-classes tonic of rain
which saturates my skin so good I’m surprised when I shake the dirt from the leeks
all over my bare feet & you don’t crop up green & white from between my toes,
that my arms don’t grow heavy with peppers
after they cake with jalapeno & bell seeds from all the half-rotten
to whom I have given baptism to in shallow plastic tubs of water
floating like elations of fire
in the grayness of the morning.

Know how to tell if a pepper’s rotten? Wash it & shake it
& if you can hear the water swishing inside,
if you can make a maraca of its innards,
then give it back to the dirt.

This is the wisdom of peppers:
when you grow soft
when you have been chosen
& plucked,
& washed
& thoroughly loved
& shaken,

when you have called out like fire
beside your brothers in a basin,

lay down in the compost
the kindly compost,
& listen, just listen,
(there will be nothing left to do
but listen)

to the poetry of dirt.

Hold on while I explode,
my mind is pacing,
my heart is racing.
Don't let me go,
I can't be left alone.

Your love is a light
that shines down on the darkness,
that protrudes my mind.

Your love is a guide
through the thick black forest,
of my crippled mind.

I can feel you,
when you look into my soul.

Hold on while I implode,
the feelings inside,
no where to hide.
Don't let me go,
I can't be left alone.

Your love is a beacon,
shining high upon the hill,
high above my heart.

Your love is the reason,
that I have the will,
to try and restart.

I can feel you,
you make me whole.
I can feel you,
when you look into my soul.

These simplistic,
complex feelings,
leave me floating,
touch the ceiling.

But in the end,
something will,
always be there,
to tear me down.

Hold on while I explode,
my mind is pacing,
my heart is racing.
Don't let me go,
I can't be left alone.

the faces of everyone I know turn gray as they push themselves further and further inside
pointing in every direction
uniformity
i shouldn't need so much alcohol for this
at least not god
trying to defy gravity by turning myself inside out
just floating across the raindrops from under your gray expressions

why would you stop beating?
vibrating?
why would you stop sweating whenever you love someone?
why would you try to lift something that shouldn't be lifted?
why would you fear what's intangible?
why would you stop throwing yourself in the stench of the town's hollow eyes?
why won't you fall when you should stay upfront?
why would you push yourself away?
why would you calculate fear? especially when it's so beautiful? even if it's unreal?
why would you turn pale? so you could just say fuck you!?
so you could join the grey faces?
so you could think that there's a difference between what you feel and what others love?
so that you could just stop shouting from the top of your lungs until your heart would tear apart into hundreds of thousands of gods of your own?
so you could see only for a moment and then be blinded by your own reflection?
so then join the group so others can take your place
even if it's useless
even if it's horrible
even if it's just your lungs giving us everything we need
sometimes
even if it's just carelessness
on their part
even if they're imperfect
even if you're perfect
even if it counts
even if it could actually mean something
even if it will kill you in the end?
will you please stop now?
just stop sitting with your head pushed so hard against yourself that you turn into a mosaic of the town
stop making bridges out of yourself
stop reinventing everyone's love stories and
stop living your parents' lives
stop thinking that they love you because they do
stop painting flowers on every broken window
and stop harming what isn't there

even if you want it to

Struggling in the coldest of rooms. Feeling blue, saddened smiles. Empty. Bloodshot eyes and fractured bones.This is all that's left. Vacant eyes. Black eyes reddened. Everything I touch turns into stone. The whispers in my mind fade away. I kind of feel like, I am meant to be this way. That this loneliness is destiny. This sinking feeling which rushes through my veins , then leaves and trickles down like autumn has met winter and the sun has failed to shine. That the motion of nothing has given more purpose. Fading shadows and life which is breezing through my mind, through dark shadows. How do I cope? When everything goes wrong. Who do I trust? When people do wrong. Longing for purpose but closure is so far away, the hearts of those that are beating are disconnected from the smell of ignorance floating through the air, and consequences of my mind will destruct. I can't focus solely on anything anymore, and I wish I could end everything, every spec of dust which falls over the mountains and rushes down the hills, trickling through the paths of despair. I would end it all. This world has lost all meaning. I have lost track of everything.

You tell me that I am young
That life has merely licked me, not stung
That I do not understand, that I have not yet lived
Enough to grasp the substance

I have known disease
Slow tears, muted pleas
Pain that nothing could appease
I have known the smell of hospitals for summers
The beeping and slurping of machine in massive numbers

I have spoken to voiceless loved ones,
Loved ones with teethless mouths and twisted tongues
Distorted jaws and wheezing lungs.
We have spoken with little green charts
And broken hearts
From the inability to connect the mouth to the thoughts in the head
And I left without understanding,
What they had said
Because I eventually had to let it go
(I still don't know)

I have spent countless summer nights
In nature’s garb, floating silently in a river
So warm that my limbs, skimming the surface, didn't shiver
Under a clear sky, the stars like paradisiac lights
Without anyone ever finding out
About these wild and primal escapades

I've drank, I've smoked
I have burned my throat
With coarse lemon gin
Until I could no longer feel my skin.

I have been frightened
Yes I have felt fear, like a noose around my throat being tightened
Like a gruesome black crow, perched on my shoulder
I have often awoken affright at night,
Longing, praying, for the morning light
I have felt fear, wild, fierce and turbulent fear
More than anyone will everyone will ever know
By men, by life, by myself
Desolate under the sheets, like a forsaken toy
All by myself

I have seen Paris in the rain
Traveled the French countryside by train
I've woken up to New York window views
And seen New Orleans afternoons, filled with heat and blues.
I've swam the Mexican Baja waters, turquoise and clear
With snakes as sharp as spears

I have known humiliation
Causing my cheeks to turn carnation
A spoon, emptying my insides out
Like a gourd

I have loved
I have known the aching pain of a swelled heart
And the way it can tear you apart
I have gushed torrents upon my pillows and sleeves
Tears running down my chin like guilty thieves
From a lit-up house

I have known death, and grief
The meaning of "never"
Whimpering in the school bathroom
And cold, lonely nights

I have seen the works of Van Gogh, Mondrian, and Miro,
Modigliani, Cezanne, and Frida Kahlo
Of Monet, Gauguin, Matisse, Magritte, and Picasso
I have wandered through hallways of masterpieces
Holding tight to my grandmother's hand
And I have wept shamelessly for joy
Before Degas's La classe de danse

I have been diagnosed
I have undergone computer programs designed to shift my brain, to better it
To get me to be normal, to submit
I have had brain-altering medicine shoved down my throat,
Like stuffing a goose,
To make my brain run a little less loose
And I have submitted and gotten use to my brain being altered.

I have had kisses that were mere trifles
Frivolous, yet fierce and acute like shots from a rifle
Lips of mere flesh, not sweet godly nectar
And gazes that meant everything
That seemed to connect with an invisible yet indestructible string
Iris like distant galaxies and pupils twinkling like black jewels
Eyes that seemed enkindled by some ethereal fuel
Speaking of emotions far too secluded, cryptic and cluttered
To be worded and uttered

I know the way in which violence resides
Not in commotion, brusqueness, nor physical harm
But in silence
In the time that covers pain and secrets
In the slow impossibility of trust
In the way that some secrets become inconceivable to tell, time has so covered them in rust
In that dull, dismal ache
In all that is doomed to remain forever opaque.

I have read, for pleasure,
The works of Balzac, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Voltaire
Of Bobin, Gaude, and Baudelaire
Of Flaubert, Hemingway
and good old Bradbury, Ray
Émile Zola,  Primo Levi
Moliere, Rousseau, and Bukowski
I have read, and loved, and understood

I have known insomnia
The way a beach knows the tides
Sleepless nights of convulsive, feverish panic, of clutching my sides,
Of silent hysteria and salty terror.
I know what happens at night, when sweet slumber seems so far away
The worries and woes seem to multiply and swell in hopeless disarray
My lips grow pale, my eye grow sunken
As a time ticks by, tomorrow darkens




I have witnessed horror
In the form of a blue body bag
Being rolled out with a squeaking drag
By two yellow-vested men
With apologetic eyes
That seemed to say "Oh god
We're so sorry you had to see that
Please, please
Go home
And try to forget"

But you are right
I am still just a child
Naive, innocent, and pure
I have known nothing dark or obscure
I have not yet lived.

conceited and overconfident of knowledge, but, poorly informed and immature

embodying the definition, I lie in bed, quiet, thinking,
face down, shirtless, in a pair of cheap purple panties,
breathing in a smell--cotton sheets, sweat, and coconut

I am not nothing, not miserable, but not happy
I am not frightened or bewildered by anything

I am an elder amongst the young
I'm a youngster still, to everyone.

all trash talk,
                not new news.

I just sort of quietly revel in the experiences
unravelling above me in a floating memory

adding up my mistakes,
until all pressed into me

+ that doing the right thing hurts, sometimes,
+ people are going to do things that you can't

and still that's okay, but don't get discouraged
if you work hard and get nothing out, that just
means something, that if you like it, fight for it

I don't know.

I also learned this year not to trust the bad liars,
that sometimes people are bland, but even still,
it doesn't mean death, and it's really going fine.

I learned this is as smart as I'm going to get,
so maybe I should try a little harder with it.

turning on my back, I flick an imaginary cigarette,
I put on a little blush + a long-sleeved black shirt
then I did what I was supposed to, maybe for me.