I was just the intern with burning red cheeks always trying to say
something quirky yet sophisticated
always rocking on the balls of my feet
happy to lick your envelopes
press your stamps against my manilla folders

we were all speaking one day about parents
I brought mine up a lot to signify my determined love for them
and I noticed you had a picture of a young girl on your file cabinet
she was pretty

You spoke of your son and what a fuck up he was
but you didn’t say that you only whispered it with a practiced sighing grin
and to lighten the mood I asked what your daughter was up to
only to have you respond in the most concrete comment with commas after every word
that she was murdered

I would have liked to tell you
because my arms were aching and my mind was straining
and I wanted you to feel better
and I wanted to feel better
I wanted to sneak little letters into your ear at night that spelled out
it’s ok
and
my daughter was murdered too
but my daughter was not
I do not have a daughter
and now neither do you

It's so still
No Silence in no sound
Apathetic masks are torn asunder
I can't hide the pressure I'm under
Stonefaced burdens
Too much to bear

I'd kill for joy
I'm fucking for love
We war for peace
Backward doublethink of the scatterbrained
Driving me insane

It all seems so hopeless
Fatalism chisled into my face
I scream for justice
You order me cake
Are we all so faithless?

materialism means so little
for the bankrupt soul so brittle
You see it in my eyes
I hear it when I cry

The emperor has no clothes
Nobodys home
Markets empty
We believe the big lies
To stay alive

-Azrael Always James
© Copyright 2013

Presumptuous ass
Wishing Happy Birthday
To the past
It's all unfolding so unseemly and strange like reality itself imploded and was then folded and compressed like an origami universe with no beginning we can discern and we toss out all the thoughts that come first questioning and second guessing ourselves until we're simpering suffering simian simpletons acting out our lives in mock parody of what have might have been and then were thinking so much about the past that we bought a time share there to begin but we loved it so much we just had to move on in with everything ever hidden every single skeleton that we regret so much we can't bear to look at the truth about what we should do should have done differently and you see I know you miss me and you are supposed to be here right next to me sipping coffee and kicking my ass for being too promiscuous and drinking too much and wasting my finances and then we'd both laugh and I'd call you an asshole but I love you you're my brother and there's no one like you in the whole damn world and the we'd look at girls and talk about music and bullshit politicians and how to work on guns and ammunition and you knew so much about everything you were a walking store of knowledge and I miss that too cause there is never any absolutely a replacement for you and now that your gone and after everything that happened it's hard to give a damn in a world without you.

-Azrael Always James
© Copyright 2013

I'm tired of living my life taking orders from fate in a language I cannot comprehend let alone understand
It's too intricate and complicated to start to untangle all the excuses we're using to confuse things
I can find momentary happiness at the end of the bottle and some solace in the pills
I can lose myself to the pain anger and passion when I take possession of another soul that succumbs
To all of the darkness and silly rigidity of all of my sorry dreams and pathetic hopeful fancy
You thought it was love when I choke fucked you until you came like stars singing and fading
I just thought of someone else I love hate can't have to hold and humiliate
I guess it's about the same thing

-Azrael Always James
© Copyright 2013

I’m so tired but mostly from you
I am tired of other things too
By other things, too
You are not the only thing on my mind
but you take up most of the vacancy
and everything else is pushed to the sides and pressing against my ears
christ I can hardly hear

I am so sore but I keep walking like my shoes aren’t too tight
like my dress looks fine
like it’s not riding up the back of my butt and exposing my ass for all the city to see
this is not happening instead I am busy slideshowing myself
the first time we met then the second time we met
then I am fast forwarding to when we first had sex and how I was so loud
your grandma hated me after that

I am so busy but the papers keep stacking
and I’m just some filthy college slut who can hardly handle her final critiques
all I want to do is call you and hope you’ll eagerly pick up
or even want to pick up
or even pick up
but instead all that is between us is a missed call that I can’t take back
and a bunch of papers that I have to examine with amazing skill
I know I don’t have

I should get my priorities straight, the bathub is grimy
my nails are bloody
my grandmother is sick
I am not a kid anymore and you are not my boyfriend
and what we had was really quite terrible and how
dare I sentimentalize a kiss on the cheek or a squeezing of hips to mean
that you promise to love me eternally how dare I act as though I am fourteen
with braces of steel and a heart made of mush and a brain filled with lies from
dramatized shows flickering in my room in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep and my periods heavy and my arms are too fat along with my thighs and I’m thinking of true love and when I’ll get that

It’s quite hard to concentrate
the cement has cracks
my forehead is sweaty and my face is red
it is hot outside and wish you were here to lick the sweat off my chest and boldly say
“does that feel good baby”  but you’d say it in such a boyish way but I would still get turned on but I hate you now because I am too busy for you to be all over my mind when I have other things to do it’s all your fault if I fail out of college it’s all your fault if I don’t get the masters program I wanted and it’s all your fault I can’t concentrate at all
the sky is gray and work is shitty and the missed call is still pending and blinking and buzzing on your phone
I’m sure you notice it and I’m sure you’re home and free and able to see that
calling me back would make me happy
I shouldn’t have called I shouldn’t have called I shouldn’t have called god!
you haven’t been in my bedroom in over a month
and I haven’t cried either
and I haven’t gossiped about you to any of my friends
the paint is wet on the canvas
and my jaw is clenched
and I am thinking of you and that is all

I love how you can see your breath in the winter,
It's like some sort of poetic justice,
A beauty to make up for all the leaves that die in the fall,
Something to cope with the tragedy of it all,
Funny,
It happens every year like clockwork,
And no one notices,
This is proof that magic is taken for granted