You're my stillborn butterfly
afraid of your new beauty
with limp wings,
pried from the safety of your cocoon
by my old hands
in a forest where everything
is charred.
Only the skeletal trees
once lush with life and birdsong
can admire your strange elegance
as you lay listless on their roots
that thirst for a storm of passing love
and thunder.

I want to carry you away
to my field of wildflowers
and resurrect you with the unmasked glow
of the shy moon, who only shows its face
in this meadow of lies.
I'll watch the breeze wake you on my fingertips
then let you fly away, carelessly
into a world of color
I'll never compare to.

I lost a friend last night
because my poems are too dark.
She said they scare her,
and make her cry.
She said she can feel me slipping
with each verse,
and that she'd enjoy them
if they were written by a stranger
she never loved.

She said she feels her heart going out to me
but she had to pull it back
because she needs to keep it
for herself,
so she can see though her own issues.

No one ever stays
because once they see me naked
of my walls
they stare into my sheltered world
and see things that would make even the Earth
cringe.

It's too late to destroy it,
because my thoughts have evolved
into a race of beings
far more powerful than myself.
They'll be the death of me,
but their empires will stand
long after I'm gone, before my time.

But every once and a while
I can hear one or two of them praying
to me,
begging for me to bring peace to this world inside my head
that I have no control over.
They don't realize
that I'm not a god,
and that their whole existence is nothing
but the product of years of abuse
from a universe they cant comprehend,
that I can't comprehend.

So I sit nailed to the couch, suffering for their sins
while pointlessly checking my phone
for a text from that friend that says
“I'm sorry”

Lonely and cold,
I wait for love
beside the frosted window
while dreams of fireflies
sparkle in the snow.
I sip black coffee
from my mug, quietly,
so I don't wake them...

Because I know when summer comes
I’ll have found someone
and I want to make sure they're all well rested
so they can swirl around my lover and me
when our soft lips spark
for the first time
like flint,
so I can watch them drown out
in that new lovelight
that'll glow furiously when dusk
cinders into darkness.

But for now
I'll have to deal with the darkest months
alone
while they lay on the lawn
asleep under the moon
with beautiful dreams.

I took a walk today
and listened to the birds
choking on the smog,
broke my mother's back
with every step
and outran a stray dog.
I picked you a bouquet
of dandelions from the field
because flowers can't grow
when the sun's always concealed.
I put them in a vase
and filled it with water from the tap
they died within an hour,
now I know for sure you won't come back.
I always swore
I'd never own a broken home
but it's hard not to when the only one's who stay
are the garden gnomes —
but someone's been smashing them
in the middle of the night,
or maybe they're blowing out their brains
to escape my company
and the blight.
There's no magic left
in this city, so chronically gray
storms are always passing though
and the rainbows are too scared to stay...
I wanted to run away with you
from the hood and past the burbs
to somewhere where the air is clean
and filled with singing birds.
But instead I'm stuck here on this couch,
microwaving Ramen
while I search for words.

I was detached
so I could wander
hand in hand with the wind.
Who am I now?
I feel so frail
and my flowers are long gone.
“Look what I've become”
I say to no one
as the buzzards cry.
Their shadows circle me
like dark moons in a galaxy
starving for life —
am I not alive?

I've never seen flesh
that was still carrying a soul,
but the wind tells me stories
of slinking through their hair
when the world was young —
I can smell their skin on its breath,
its breath that’s carried me
to the edge of the earth a thousand times
to find only stars
that those ancient, mysterious people worshiped
before I was even a seed.

Am I qualified to pray
to those stars that have lead us
to a thousand sunrises?
Will they even hear me
with this voice that is only a rustle
across rocks and dirt,
this voice that is literally nothing but a ...

my soul who shapes the clouds
who possess my dry body, and countless others all at once
interrupts me
and whispers yes.

I smell the gods in its voice now.

Hieroglyphs on my ancient soul
foretell the end of me,
they say I'll die by my own hand
when I’ve reached god status
and every knee has knelt
before me
and I have nothing left
to achieve.
This prophecy has been written
on me for many lives
each ended by a pill,
bullet, or brilliance  —
I can feel it.  
My fingers are my slaves
who type a pyramid of words
that'll hide my body
in a maze of *****-trapped metaphors
that no thief
would ever dare explore.
So shut me away
with my mummified poetry
so the gods in the next life
will worship me.
Let me hold the empty orange bottle
like a rosary in chalky hands
folded stiff
into forced prayer.
Let me rot away
and be forgotten
while my poetic pyramids
stand for thousands of years
in the sun.
Let tourists stand under their shadows
in awe
while my bones turn slowly
to dust
somewhere deep in the chambers
of their brilliance.

The painkillers in my pocket rattle
with each step
toward the unreachable moon
in strange harmony
with the untainted snow
crunching
beneath my feet.

Two or three
aren't enough to numb me
anymore,
no longer enough
to shut my brain off
for a little bit...
to quiet these thoughts
that stalk me
and whisper
how no one would find me
if I just lay here
on this nameless road
with a mouth full of pills,
face to the stars,
and die in the arms
of a snow angel
who'll carry me away to a heaven
I only believe in when I'm high.

I squeeze the bottle in my pocket
almost to the point of crushing it
as I turn away from the wind
and look back at the light of
my grandpa's cottage
drawing my attention
away from my midnight daydream
and the moon
that hangs like a sliver bullet
stained with the blood of monsters
from my mind.

How many times
have I walked this path high
praying to God's gleaming eye
for death,
as it winks slowly
with darkness
as if indicating something
beyond my comprehension...

All I know is
the cottage is warm
and I should go back.

I want to starve for my art with you
until our faces have sunk in
and our shy skeletons have shown themselves
through our skin, scarred with regrets and tattoos.
I want to write with you
until we hallucinate those skeletons leaping from our bodies
and waltzing with each other while we lay
limp and high on the floor —
until we have nothing left but each other
and stacks upon stacks of 99-cent notebooks
filled with testaments of our madness
and love
like some kind of unholy matrimonial vows
that bind us together
with a silver coil.

I want to paint on the walls with you
until our ****** apartment becomes a gallery
the best gallery in New York
that no one will know about,
at least until we OD
and the stench of our frail bodies leads them here
to these walls painted with the last of our strength.
Until you know how it feels to have death
breathing on your neck
and offering to buy you a drink
and take you home
to pick your mind like a gentleman.

Let’s write our story
then jump from the bridge of sanity
that connects the pointless gap between reality
and the brick wall on the other side
that looms over humanity—
so fall with me
until you know what it's like
to be loved by a poet
who most think is dead inside.
Until you know that I am beautiful
when you step into this little world
that I’ve made up like a god
with one big bang
of imagination and lies
spiraling forever into a darkness
that no one but me
will ever comprehend.

After your death
I'm rummaging through the drawers
for your bottle of Vicodin
hoping your ghost
isn't watching.

Why can I never stay clean?
Is it because I'm weak?
I see myself like your husband
in 20 years
a tired young drunk
sick of feeling old,
who died before his grandchildren
were even born.

I hear footsteps in the kitchen
and wonder if it's you
hiding them from me —
but I hear lots of things
when the floor beneath me
crumbles
and I'm left dangling
from my barbed sanity
with ****** hands.

I swore I'd keep it locked away,
this heirloom of addiction,
but right now I need to hold it
and feel it
because I miss you
and I'm not strong enough to accept the fact
that you're gone
just yet.

So far this is the only moment
I've told myself you're not here,
when I find and swallow the last
three pills
that couldn't stop your pain,
then wash them down with gin
that wasn't enough
to stop mine.

While running my hand
across your casket,
I leave fingerprints
on the polished wood
that will be lowered with you
into six feet of obscurity,
telling no one, only the darkness,
that I cared enough for you
to watch your unbearable decent
in to peace
while the January wind
further numbed my core.
I have nothing
so these are the only things
I was able to leave you with,
but at least I know
no one will ever wipe them
from the cherry oak surface
that even my tears slid from
so easily when I cried...
But my hand
the hand that felt the last twitches of life
in your fingers
and squeezed them until the warmth escaped
has left such delicate mementos
that will never wither
with the expensive bouquets
and flowery wreaths.

Inhaling your breath against my lips gets me high. Love this potent should be illegal, it feels so bad... like someone sold me your heart in a little plastic bag from the pocket of their hoodie in the cover of night. I lit it on fire and breathed in every panted wisp of smoke pushed up from your burning core. I bet distant cities can see our flames on the horizon, and the citizens are rushing to church to kneel before God and pray to be spared from the glowing apocalypse crawling towards them. What a beautiful way to die... but the world has already ended to me, because nothing matters in this moment but you. I think I can hear their screams beneath yours, as the ****** of Armageddon firestorms falls from the angry heavens that generously matched our souls.

Then silence... the beautiful silence that drapes the earth once everyone and everything is dead except for us, at least until the sun returns, and the alarm clock rings and resurrects the world from its hallucinated grave, and I head out to work hungover with love.

lying together
in the last of the darkness...
I awake
to the hiss of flames
and plumes of candle-smoke

safe inside a box
the christmas bulbs
from our shattered family

Don’t you dare pull me
from the wreckage of my life
when I lose my high
and fall from the sky.
Don’t even put out the flames,
I want people to see them
from miles away.
I want the explosion to shake
a thousand cities
and wake the children
from their nightmares of monsters
to a reality that drove millions
to suicide.

I want the debris of my thoughts to scatter
and shatter windows nearby.
And when it's all said and done
I want the land to be scared forever
and cursed with my madness.
I want kids daring each other
to walk up to the spot
where I fell from sanity and tore up the field
they now fear.

Don't mourn me
for I will not be gone,
I'll be hiding behind the flames laughing
at all the different parts of me
killed by the impact
of whatever drug or drink
has rotted out my mind
to the point of brainless bliss.

So don't you dare pull me
from the wreckage of my life
when I lose my high
and fall from the sky,
because I want to enjoy being charred
of every brain cell
and every agonizing thought,
until I'm finally crushed
by the settling debris.