I want to embed our names in the sand
So the crystal-sweet ocean can take them away


Lost at sea - Lost at heart

Dripping off petals
Of silky soft red
Standing tall and strong
In an earthen bed

Running down the stem
Covered in knives
Off of one bush
Comes many more lives

Each small red gem
Silently sleeping
The dew running down
As if silently weeping

Mist hangs in the air
The white breath of the earth
While calm and peaceful
Also seems to drain the mirth

The tight weeping bud
Awakens to dawn
Stretching its petals
At the birds morning song

Sunlight rains down
On the silky red flower
The energy to live
That it does devour

My darling,
upon the mountain's caress.
My ******-friendly mess
in a pineapple dress.
I couldn't love less
or less of you.

Young explorer,
drifting from world to world.
A huckleberry eye
that shifts from trembling duress,
with my hands onto her back.
Why can't life cut you any slack?
The chair is going out under
as the skies are mumbling thunder.
My violin underneath the sin,
sounding from within
"...I love you."

Broken water
bounce from cheek to chest.
Your breathing sounds the best.
With my words onto your lips,
and how the saliva drowns and drips.
I grip around your hips,
with the world releasing a boulder,
that drops upon your shoulder,
and I shake you senselessly,
why can't god set you free?
I can feel from you to me.

Blood, down, to ever and let go,
with your body in the snow.
My river-drowned girl,
engulfed by the swirl.
Love, oh no, from year to year.
Your words so everclear,
"I love you, too."

Silver-shiner,
moon-kissed and ever so,
your feet on the bathroom floor,
the kills from the handled snore.
What I wouldn't give to drink
from your fountain.
What I wouldn't give to die
on your mountain.
My darling, from colored-t.v.,
with a kiss and a motel fee,
I could know what the known couldn't,
with my fingertips where they shouldn't.
Turn down the volume and say
that you'll stay another day
or three.

Out of all the words in the human languages, almost is the cruelest.
                                              I almost loved you.
                                              I almost won.
                                              I was almost there.


                                              I was almost *****.

When he snuck into the room like a wolf stalking its prey, my stomach didn’t almost tie in knots.
            It became a sailor’s masterpiece.

When he laid beside me as quiet as a stone, I wasn’t almost shaking.
            I was a leaf on the San Andreas Fault.

When his long, spidery fingers began trailing down my back, it didn’t almost feel like razors.
            He cut so deep the skin began to peel back and expose every    
            insecurity that I’ve hidden away between my vertebrae.

His fingers didn’t almost dig into my arm,
            they became shovels that dug a hole big enough for a casket.

Bruises didn’t almost blossom across my skin,
            I was a primrose bush in full bloom and he was the gardener.

When he coerced himself between my thighs, I didn’t almost scream.
            Years of ancestral abuse surged through my lungs and out my lips  
            into a battle cry.

When he tried to force his hand inside of me I didn’t almost feel spoiled.      
             I was a fruit rotting from the inside out, something that no one  
            would ever want.

And when my screams finally drove him off of me, I wasn’t almost okay.
             I was paralyzed with fear and disgust and shame.

Everything I’ve ever believed in slapped me in the face as I told myself:
                                      This is what I get for liking ***.
                                      I shouldn’t be so easy.
                                      I was asking for it.


                                      It was my fault.

I felt like a butterfly, beautiful but ruined by a man’s touch.
             Never to fly again.

But the truth is, a butterfly sheds scales throughout its lifetime,          
             regenerating its wings.

So when a man reaches for your wings in attempts to rip them off
             remember that you are not what he thinks you are.

Remember that it is never your fault.
             Not even almost.

Winter's days have become one,
Mashed together to form one dreadful night,
As my eyes become bloodshot, another gulp of pungent whiskey.
On this night when the moon's luminance reveals itself through a sheet of blank clouds,
And I'm left confined in the purgatory of a lonely bedroom, Whose once blue walls have all but burnt to black,
As they seem to broaden to maximize my desolation.
I question my existence.
I question my sanity.
I question when I will see the sun again.
For the moon may be the only soul who is as lonely as I.

But the moon seeks solace in himself,
And does not comfort me as the way you once did,
On these drunken nights where the enemy was the bottom of a fifth of Jack Daniel’s.
What took away my everything,
Was the only thing that could aid me in my resurrection.
So now I lay here,
Alone.
Questioning everything,
Scrambling to fix all that's been broken,
Building these deplorable ramshackle buildings on top of broken rubble,
With shards of glass and stinging tears as they mix with the blood on my hands,
But that doesn't matter, does it?
It will crumble, no matter how many times I try over and over again to rebuild.
This idiotic tower of sanity.
Why not just lay in this defeat?
And accept the harrowing fate that failure is upon me.
Let myself reek with self pity.
And drench myself with vomits of slurred words like,
"I miss you, I love you."

In my melancholy rage,
I'll take what is left of my body out into the cold,
In attempt to feel something real again as I dance with frozen tears in the numbing blanket of snow,
Convincing myself you will soon join me as I glare up at a flavorless, charcoal sky,
Cursing the bland stars who don't comfort the moon like they once did,
As I throw up the final chunks of the parts of my body that were still alive.

I watch in horror in front of me as they crawl out,
Like spiders as they trickle into the night with eyes wide.
For now I'm stuck here,
Glancing around for help that will never come,
Trying desperately to gather pieces of a broken puzzle with weak hands and shaking fingers.
So now, I lay here.
Bare.
On the ground.
Everything splayed out for the world to step on and see.
All my mysteries drawn out,
All the secrets are no more,
All my thoughts, read like a book.
And as my insides spill and leak out further and further from my abdomen,
The crimson splurges and spits out.
So I clench my last hope,
The few drops left of honey whiskey in a bottle,
And I close my eyes,
For one last time.