Sleep deprived
Deranged just a little touch/just a little
Tip
Crack your
Knuckles work your bones
All around this town shaking
Shiver
All the ways we get horizontal
We get down, always a little off
Always a half-second early, drop
Devolve your way the light we're so god damned
Enlightened here/stagger on my wayward friend
We get weird but
It ain't so strange
Tie your hair up in tangles like you've been had on the ground
Alley dirt on your ass
Dance your way to the front
Alternate between confident and terrified/cigarettes naked fall
Asleep alone
On a weird couch
While somewhere your best friend
Fucks your ex
Forgivable, forgivable
Can't be mad at the poet/drunk but it's okay just breathe
Your way to the next day sit and look at pictures be jealous
Of the you you used to be
Shower like you're poison
Fill your car and
Head South Head South Head South

loneliness
grips me by the heart
and squeezes me into a pulpy mass
of tissue and blood

dripping

because you're miles and miles away from here

and i am scared
of spending time with other people
in case you finally decide to call

so i stay in,
watching the rain make the grass greener
sipping some coffee
watching some tv
writing some poetry

watching that pulpy mass grow mold
                                    it is in the corner of my house,
                              i'm trying not to look at it.

i'm trying to ignore the loneliness


but i'm hurting.
my throat is choked
and i haven't worn make-up in days (what's the point
it just comes off when i cry)

but you,
you have the sweetness
and the kindness
when you wrap yourself around me,
i feel like home

but
you're
miles

and miles

away.

the world grows darker
as time flies by,
it will not stop for a second,
will not give me a second to breathe

it is like it is suffocating me,
things pile up one by one,
but there is not enough time to get it all done

the walls I build...
keep me trapped in my own mind

I need to escape
from this treacherous place

I will not  waste
one more second this way

You are the universe, the star dust flowing from within
Such beauty radiates from your iridescent skin
Glowing in the sunshine, welcoming everyone in
So inviting, like a doormat with a wonderful saying,
You are the flowers, the trees, and the leaves, infinitely swaying.
© 2013 Christina Jackson

it took until this summer
to realize that you are a liar.
walking up the stairs you avert your eyes
so you won't watch my hips
steady
slow
recently untouchable.
I watch you out of the corner of my eye
looking sideways at the floor
and fidgeting with your hair.
seated at a careful distance away from me in my armchair
and pacing around the room.

and then I see the bruises on your neck
again .

this is the last time I crumble before you
now is the time that I scream at two a.m. with open windows
now is the time for you to fuck off
so I say so
anger tightening the corners of your mouth
and pushing the lids of your eyes out so they bulge
you look like a fool
and you are.
it just took me until this summer to realize.

one foot in and one
foot back, well it don't
pay to live like that, so
I cut the ties and I jumped
the tracks

The more I think about it
the more I realize that it
goes both way, but you
never jumped the tracks,
chris, you never jumped
the tracks

but
i
did.


because one foot in was
more than one foot back
and I was tired of standing
in the doorway.

my heart’s an old motel room
all filthy carpets
and no hot water
no fresh towels
to dry yourself
from tears that won’t roll over
like i do in bed

when the sun kisses the earth
i surrender
to 9 to 5 lovers
that kiss my cold corpse
my eyes at ceiling fans
my body in hands
that don’t belong to You

rolling in sheets
rolling papers
the smoke between my fingers
is it the night mist?
or the cigarette silk worms?
I exhale between make believe
love making

the rain raps at the window
asks me why i’m in hands
hands that don’t belong to You
but i can’t roll over
so i wait for tomorrow
to come back down
and start again

Your body was once my atlas
The lines of our hands
Play the latitudes and longitudes
Across the Seven Seas of Sheets

The compass between your ventricles
Was once the brightest star
An eternal celestial sphere
In my constellation

Lover, be other worldly
Let your limbs run free
Like the roots of the Angsana tree
Down, deep and dark.

night after night
she walks into wonderland
under hazy streetlights
to let thorns
shred her delicate petals
now her rosebud, gone forever

her eyes as dark
as the rolling tires
on the highways
that she sells herself on
sell your soul to the devil
he will let you keep the change

drunk on despair
and living on borrowed time
the wolves of yesterday
the dirt under her fingernails
linger like the voices
of the monsters under her bed

creamy thighs spread wide
for an endless audience
to spoon her milky honey
lick their fingers clean
clean of their conscience
the white washed walls

may the prickly blood
of the cold winter
not stain the white walls
or shrivel the leaves
but lead her to the water
and set sail in a teardrop

The train
Sure goes smooth
Sure does not feel as reckless as it really is
Sure goes fast
Sure can’t take you fast enough
Past these fields and cities, images
That fade in and out of the window’s view like a wafer melts away on your tongue.
Can’t look too closely or you’ll make yourself sick with the speed
Would be better if the train was so fast everything was a blur instead of pictures going by
Like being immersed in the ocean or careening around in the sky.
This train
It feels like a secret
Your favorite secrets, the kind no one tells you and the kind
No one knows
But you who learned them, the ones
Not whispered between cupped fingers,
But seen from in hiding, without acknowledgement.
This late night train
It runs past windows and shakes the legs of bridges
And only a few were awake to see it speed by
Maybe saw your face on the other side of the glass
And thought about this face they would never again know.
The train
There’s a runaway on it
Who looks out the windows and listens to the still air in the car and
With a somber optimism
Tosses to the racing pictures that hound the windows, hungry,
A name and all the strings attached to it.