The weight of my love
Is not your burden to carry
Just as you are not obligated
To be burned by my eternal passions flame

my feet are killing me
we don't talk anymore

someone entertains you
you leave me all alone

ignoring me for someone else

must be nice to have someone to hug at the end of the day

no one ever makes me food anymore these days

and when she leaves
I'll be waiting for you

the door is unlocked
you're my sweet poison

must be nice to have someone who cares
I don't think I've felt loved in years

dying to have someone touch me
even if I flinch and scream

we always come apart
this distance I recognize

must be nice to have someone by your side

~for those who can’t sleep, and know why~

you say “how much is too far?” and I think yes, more scars,
a man surveys a lifetime of errors and cowardice,
my soles, scarred from nite-walking new york city sidewalks,
days of haven’t slept in years, weakness is my prejudice,
tally sums-ups as no forgiveness, the pavement paying is a
continuum of  paying on, there is no atonement for wasted life,
the concrete cracks wedded to my body, stepped on each one

marvel at the disastrous disappointment that I’ve engineered,
how creative in disguising a life of accumulated self bruising,
applaud my season’s greeting card, 2020, me meeting me,
in a laptop I am contained, global boundaries thus defined,
crumpled coffee cups, emptied wine glass, zoom loops of repetition,
still I wonder why, every day, how, so many missteps, wondering
not at the lackluster will that carried me;  every minute sorrowful

so much hidden begs for revelation, murdered souls, theft, jealousy,
but the punishment is brutal; a conscientious conscience continually
punishes my blackened hours and there is no retrieval, retrial,
just a grounded plot with neither headstone and grass,
for I’m marked by no marker, and the wounds inflicted are my
afflicted leavings, my bones+soul confined, and the hallelujah
word excised from my vocabulary, forbidden me, justifiably so





————————————-

Mr. Tambourine Man
Song by Bob Dylan

“Though I know that evening's empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand, but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me,
I'm branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming...

And take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time
Far past the frozen leaves
The haunted frightened trees
Out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow”

I promise,
I’m a good girl;
I stay away from
narcotics, alcohol, sin.

Traditional stuff you’d find
at parties:
bustling, joyous laughter,
celebrating their momentary acceptance.

Girls my age are supposed to
lose her individuality in the heat of the moment,
find herself as the collective energy of the crowd,
dance, fight, scream.

They fight off the night’s
darkness, silence, coldness,
for the party’s
brightness, sound, warmth.

I remain
alone,
allowing the night’s emptiness
to swallow me whole.

Surrounded by darkness,
I notice its layers—
the infinite depths of reality
threatening to tear us all apart.

Just as anyone else,
I’m not as good as I should be.
Despite the comfort I have in
barely keeping myself afloat,

I want
to feel
something
too.

I drink energy drinks at night.
Not so bad, right?
I thought the same
against my mother’s warning:

"Never drink those!"
Despite being able to recall
coloring within the lines of a coloring book
at a hospital:

seeing my dad be pushed in a wheelchair
out of the operation room.
His spirit was stolen,
and his heart would tick forever as a reminder.

Compared to the other girls, I
lose my individuality in the loneliness of the night,
find myself in the emotionality night wraps me in:
watch, listen, wait.

My heart struggles to keep up as I drink
more, more, more.
I smile, and finally my thoughts run as quickly as my peers—
beat, beat, beat.

I’m tired of being a girl,
of failing to live up to inhuman expectations,
or fitting in with those sweaty bodies.
I wish the glory of femininity didn’t end with girlhood.

Instead of playing with human sensuality,
I play with human mortality
in what I’d like to call
a college student’s version of Russian roulette.