It's a little melancholy.
You awaken feelings which pang and pull,
A soreness from misuse, feelings full of
Memory.
And I am too old now to follow them through
The way I want to

I'm a seasonal *****,
A bit of a witch,
An emotional sucker
I'm predictable as the weather
And I wish we were together

(Because every winter and spring I'm sad again,
And on a high all through summer.
Fall I like to cuddle up,
And admit I liked your place better.
Looking for someone to nest with
Anyone to last.
But when the weather falls I'll be depressed,
And by next June it all will pass)

A feather drops, center stage.
I'm of a mind, to misbehave.
I put on that dress, and I start up a song...
It's no mystery, what we've known all along.
Because alone in my room, when we dance,
I'm not interested in arguing about the past
And it's one step, and then two,
And if there were many eyes in the room, they would all be on you...
But I'm here, and you there, and the steps feel like magic,
Gliding on air, glitter hair, when we move real slow,
I think you already know
That hearts will melt and doors will open,
With everything that, can't be spoken
And winding down, those last notes
With everything my hands have wrote,
Shining and smiling, glittering alone
Panting as I stand, holding a pose, arms open
Where you were in them, when we took up the dance
If you knew how to make use of an opening, to take that chance
Here I am when the stage lights fall, when the ballroom empties and the night runs wild
Laughing into a fantasy, and starting the song up again
So we can dance again, like we would then,
a feather drops and all is forgotten.

Eclectic songs from foreign lands, spiritual and wild
Are his voice,
And he is nature and attention with behavior as the river flows,
He loves as a buck and carves as a woodsman,
A home and a hearth to heat.

His eyes betray the ghost of eyes I knew before,
But I do not know their story, only
That it puts me at ease in his front seat.

Exhilaration in the act of climbing again,
In sitting on the riverbed naked, fed grapes by artful fingers.
Wonder in the sunbeams shifting through the trees
Awe in the act of a kiss, and
Comfort in a beer and a drag and the warmth he has
to offer.

Were I the primordial force I would claim to be,
I would take his hand and bid him to come away with me
To live in the woods and love by the water.

I haven't got money,
I haven't got time,
No I haven't a second,
I haven't a dime.

And I don't need to be rich,
Only wanted a poor man's love,
No prince to save me, I ain't need saving
Since the day I put on my first mask

Now I'm walking away again
And you can mourn the loss this is-
What you asked for, and I
Aim to please

But please me best,
I am not wild, for this is not a war
I'm just me. This is just living.
So here I am, living.

Lost in the waves again. Goodbye for now.

I lost the 10lbs I wanted to.
I'm at a healthy BMI.
I don't starve myself, I've lucky genetics
I work hard, I exercise on days off.

But now I want to be 115lbs, beautiful,
With a voice like Karen Carpenter,
And a heart as careless as the weather
I want to work hard to understand the long hours my ex worked,
Though my mom reminds me she worked much harder, longer hours, 16 to my 12.
I want to be as exciting and vapid and beautiful as the girls you like
Though that's not why you don't want me, and I'll never be
As beautiful as they.
I want to be as capable and desirable as others would have had me be
In order to have kept me,
When they never would have wanted to keep me anyway.
I want me to be everything they wanted me to be because
The reality that they just didn't want me is too heartbreaking
And my heart's too broken to keep living with rejection for just being me.
So I'll keep wasting away until I'm so thin and perfect I just slip out
Of existence.

I'll never let myself be held soft again,
These shattered slivers of my heart won't glow again
But I'm learning to be happy with the welts from when they shone so bright,
I only want to make it past another night

And maybe in the spring you can find me in the Ocean,
Collecting seashells and singing with the waves,
I'll be a fishwife and my father will take me home,
That moon over the water, murmuring to me low

But I won't say goodbye, not in the end
You don't know my plans, they're cemented in my head
And I'll put our record on when I drive into the dark
Because it's peaceful in the quiet, in the headlights I can
Remember how I used to spark

Until then, please remain,
My precious friend.

I'm drowning.
Check back later.

I get back up, every time. I get back up.
So maybe I don't get back up the same. So maybe I'm a little lost
And a little bruised and a little fed up.
I get back up. And I let you look down on me and belittle me,
For staring you hard in the eyes and panting as I hoist my weight off my knees and elbows, and rise back up to spit at your feet.

I let you see my tears and my pleas and my need, so maybe it's not your fault if you've forgotten
All the times I've gotten back up from having fallen,
And I do it on my own all the time.
I don't feel sorry for how many times I've grabbed a shovel. I feel sorry you haven't seen all the things I've buried and gotten on top of, when I've used the shovel to dig myself out instead of hitting rock bottom.
What it is, is a pity you forgot everything that made me strong.

Because I will keep rising, long after you're gone.

Lord,
don't let my feelings take me down sober
It's late at night, and everything's over
Disconnect, and let's have it over-

What's the use in telling you how to be my friend
I remember saying silly things, like this won't ever
end
Now I'm sure we'll each hear it all the time but right now

I gotta just let it out

So I swallow pride like an overdue book
I bet I bought every line, hooked
But this is how it'll be-
Sorry

I don't need to hear the words, they don't change
Signal's down, went out of range, and I
Got the skid marks to prove it
But I wish you'd try to say them anyway, ****

When the rain falls down it makes a pretty mist
With everyone we've kissed, could you even miss
Well I'm sure the next one will at least remember my lips-
Until the next one

So I tell all my friends I'm testing around
Shooting game, jobs and boys and doctors
Who won't remember my name
Well, if it's all the same-

I'd rather you dropped me like a stone,
I'm skipping here, and I'm all alone
But I've grown fond of the lake and I've made it mine
Come on in, the water's fine!

But maybe I'm not-

Lord,
don't let my feelings take me down sober
It's late at night, and everything's over
Disconnect, and let it be over

I let the sticky fingered kids grab me
Collected forced fingers like candy
Again turned away from the bottle,
Trying to leave this me and us behind full throttle-

I'll be a social butterfly in the house of a lepidopterist
Be another number on a manager's list
Talk to someone I pay to hear me instead of you
God I hope I do as well as you

Hiding out my pain somewhere else
Because it's not easy trying not to be myself
Until I wash it all away with pain and time
Well, my worries shouldn't be yours.

They aren't even mine

Why don't I tell you everything? Or how about how I'm feeling?
I don't share that much with my friends, of course.
If you want more, you open your door more!
Men.

Lord don't let my feelings take me down sober
I'm chill as ****, so now this sad poem's over
It's behind me now,
I feel a lot older.

She was a girl who listened to music boxes and dreamed of ships, stars, old country lanes. A girl who kissed gin and twisted ponytails in and out while studying her pupils with the lightswitch up, down, up, just as erratically as with her hair as her teeth set on edge trying to think of unfathomable words. Melodies whose names simply did not exist no matter how she tried to pin them down and press them for perfume.

She didn’t belong to the recently cleaned room she called hers, the term home not resonating. The house in Canada, not home. The house in Duncanville, TX, not home. Not the estate in her favorite book, no house belonging to a friend, no dream limbo, no college. Tormented by the feeling there was something there, in her reach but slipping out like oil. It felt like having a long distance affair with someone who, through lack of proper documentation in any census, simply did not exist. The pained, intimate knowledge of the characters in her head, of the places she’d only researched. If she opened her eyes a little wider, turned her head to a shadow quicker, took a side road, they’d be there. She’d forget why she ever doubted, and then, accompanied by the slow setting relief that she belonged somewhere, she’d smile easy and drop the stitch in her forehead. Somehow she supposed it was the same for everyone.

Everyone must be incredibly lonely, she thought. Driving the slow, dingy roads home. The balance between dry painful eyes and the darkness folded around the coarse street lamps found comfort contingent on perception. The familiar 40-minute crawl from town to town to home was wearing her gentleness thin.

So she lifted the newly washed sheets and took one last gaze out at the street lamps and glass for the day. Her heart had no place in it.

Laying in the recovery room,
Bleary from the pain
"It's an 8.5!"
And waiting,
For the medication to drip in
I lay alone in the bed,
Pump on my arm,
Weights on my legs,
And a tube blowing warm air
Under the thin hospital blanket

I looked to the gap in the curtain,
And imagined you walk in,
A smile on your face, so certain
Like being there was where you'd always been
And your eyes lit up when you saw me,
And you said to me, "let's take you home"
But I was blind and it was hard to breathe
Thinking, would you have come, if you'd known?

Once upon, a foreign dream,
I used to know so familiar
A girl like me, but oh much older,
And the world was wider, kinder

When I knew the world was big enough
For both my hopes and bad luck
And life seemed to cradle me as yolk
Reaching for something to move me

That unsteady, high note, catching in my throat
And though I reach it loud and determined,
Sound's a little broken,
All I'm hoping,

Is I keep hoping
On a foreign dream

"I was there somewhere"
I can't help but to cry
But the people in those photographs
Are dreams I held which had to die
They don't remember, and life moves on
But I can still hear them laugh,
Hear the fading notes of another song
In the smiles within those videos
I was there somewhere
And I can't find it in me to regret
Though I wish I'd stayed for one more set
I just wanted to be someone they wouldn't forget
When I walked out of SoCal the same way I came
In exhaust fumes and a cloud of shame.

Now all that's left are these photos and music videos
And I was there when they filmed them
So search them, you know I'm not in them
But I was there somewhere.

Lazy afternoon,
Sitting passenger side
Driving out across statelines
Chasing the sun and the heat
emanating off the blacktop
Hand out the window
Wind blowing past,
Country on the radio
No love, no commitment,
No destination
Just a map and a full tank of gas

There's a room,
Within the little shop
Behind the girl with the sign
That says "dreams for sale"
It's usually kept locked
But some nights, they open up

Inside the room there's an orchard
It's endless, and sunny
There's names upon the apple trees
I stop and trace one with my finger
Then, there's a man with me.

"I'm sorry," I say, his eyes are bright
I don't remember them that bright,
I only remember when morphine took their light
He smiles and says, "For what?"
But I just tear up, and hug him, and then
We talk for hours, but when I leave,
It's still night.

So one night, when you're hurting,
Come find the shop, and visit my tree
And then I won't be lost anymore
Because you can always find me.
If the dead are gone, it's hard to move on
But we'll always be with each other, see?

Do not tell me to be soft
To trim my claws and
Hide my teeth
For I am not
Timid, nor weak
Though my countenance may
Have convinced you otherwise
I will not conceal the venom
In my smile, nor the
Blaze behind my eyes
Do not tell me to be soft
When you aren't sorry,
Just sorry you got caught.

Do away with the doubt
And the fear
And trust the block,
Trust the blade above my head
I just want to say I have a small issue
Not big at all, I don’t mean to criticize
Only it seems a little rickety
In your craftsmanship.
And in the disdain in your eyes.

Who am I?
Behind this screen,
Am I the culmination
Of all I might have been?
And where were you-
When it all came crashing down?

You remember me from Highschool?
That was six years ago!
I'm nonbinary now, and I'm gay
Dropped out of college, moved to and from LA
I've had four separate jobs
With different levels of pay
I've fallen in and out of love,
In and out of more beds than I'd rather say
I've had cats, and Jury Duty,
I even changed religion, okay?
You remember me now? I don't remember me then!
So spare me the back-when, what can I even say?
It's been six years since Highschool
I don't remember a single day.

Eve of Christmas Eve,
Cross-legged in my reindeer tights,
Sipping stew from a spoon,
Spoon should be bigger, stew needs more meat
More seasoning, I should adjust the ***
Simmering, boiling, stirring
Christmas record playing in the living room,
Lights above the door frame, lights about the fireplace
Lights on the trees outside in the drive

So it's warm in the kitchen, warm from cooking
Baking cookies, chopping onions
This old wood house gets cold but that's alright,
While we keep the fire alight
You'll come in from chopping firewood in the snow
Spin me round and bury into my neck, your icy nose
While I yelp
"Put me down!
Or else kiss the sugar and cookie dough that I missed
Off my cheeks, and just for good measure, my lips"
I forgot to hang mistletoe

It's eve of Christmas eve, my toes tucked under your thigh
Under this blanket we've curled within
There's nothing but a hunk of bread left on the table, the record's spent, and on the TV, credits roll.
A small plastic tree on your desk,
Presents in the closet ready to go
The fire laying low, as we drift asleep, the snow drifts grow outside,
I've got nothing left on my wishlist, no more dreams I can never unwrap, if you just promise...
No, just this is quite alright.

.Heat.
Must hold on,
Closer, until, meld ontop of-
Body against, heat of body,
Holding on, to someone,
Someone I love- like a ladybug,
Like a lizard, so cold, just want,
Body heat. Just need reptilian comfort,
Drunk, cuddled, human to human,
Hold me. One sec more. One more minute-
Such strong arms-
Wrap around me, I drape across you
You don't mind? Do you?
Only us, no other, no one else in all
In all the city, the country, provence, world
Just us. So just. Please
please.
Remember it was just us, once.
And you, you couldn't tear yourself away from me and I
I tried to slip away but now I
I can't move away for all the
Motivation in the world
warm
Let me be a lizard
Let me be dependant upon your warmth
.Let me..

Empty aching, missing, forgetting
Waiting on a face to appear
Through cloudy memory,
Do you remember me
Dancing through our minds
of smoke & mirror.

Aching, missing, forgetting
Waiting.

Let me tell you about Puerto Vallarta.
How cool air comes in over the ocean,
and how even in the rain the boardwalk
is beautiful and serene.
Let me tell you about sipping a sangria
in old town and the bouncing bridge
and the old fountain in the square.
Let me tell you about the new club
they opened in the basement across the street
and the top floor suite where I lay
with a man for the first time.

Let me tell you about Mexico.
The way the poolside music wakes me at 11
Let me tell you about El Panorama,
watching fireworks from the pirate ship below
Lighting up the bay as I dig into the
best steak, best views, best service
Let me tell you about Quimixto, Las Caletas
Days spent dancing on boats, and scuba diving
The same waters we fish and surf on
One with nature and the city

Man, I miss this and Gerry,
Four years to the day we met I'll be there
Telling the ocean about you, just for one day.
But you may never see these things you missed,
Your bare feet are no longer welcome upon the sand

Let me tell you....

*Let me tell you of
Taking my two best girlfriends there,
From the market to the marina,
And the flowers the men would give us-

And in another week that'll be me again,
Older but still free, soaking up the sun,
Flirting and dancing and swimming
Just my 23rd year down in PV,
And my story goes on

Are you cold, my darling? You're shivering-
Shrugs me off, says she's never felt warmer
Throws on slippers and disappears past me down the hall, I'm left
Hand outstretched
//
My girl can't stand to sleep alone
I work all night just to come home
To strangers in our bed, and I ache
For how lonely she must have felt
//
My darling girl, why don't you rest your sleepy head,
You can't face all the demons inside, can't go to sleep,
Instead you've fled and I,
Pinned your wings to the ground, like so many,
But like only me, I let you go and so,
You chose to stay, it's the only way you would
I'm afraid,
You're always ready to fly away from me
And I, can't stand to see you go too far
I'm frightened.
Can't keep the tears away when I see you turn
away with a frown, concentrate too ******* spreading jam
Stirring tea
Artificial warmth, like the heat you swear radiates off my shirt
I gave you and the forced desire
To always keep things civil, traditional, a facade of happy-
Just. nice.
But we're a cluster of stars, burning and dying.
And you can't blame me for trying to keep you wild,
Nor for wishing you'd let me in and take me along.
I'm just a man.

My cells are renewing all the time,
You've never touched this new skin of mine
Yet I feel your touch on me all the same
My old cells can't die fast enough
One day my mind will deteriorate
To where I won't remember my own name
But I will still remember I'm missing someone-

It's all the same

"I love you"
Funny, mechanic, polite
Sticky flypaper
Chewing paper
Tobacco filter
Pretty, warm, sugarcane
My *** and whiskey lies
I'm trying to abstain

Like passing off my straight coke
As *** n Coke to a drinking friend
Who will never understand
And I don't love you,
But with a watered down reply
And a smile wound too tight
Think maybe someday it won't hurt

To not walk alone at night, or to
Swim with someone watching out so
I don't. Disappear. But instead I'm unwillingly ensnared
Netted so I can't
Dive away in the stormy sea
By you
It's immaterial, I could go, should go, any time
Though how many have I hurt by... shredding their
Expensive ****** fishing gear

When I go night swimming alone
All I think of is someone else beside me

And when you're in the car in the drive
Picking me up instead
I feel oil, dust, condensation and ..
...
I'm heading for a reparation, instead,
Because "I love you" makes my heart, head
And tongue full of lead.

I keep checking to see if you've called
(you haven't of course)
I'm just tired of feeling stuck on hold-

So I take each step, heel to toe,
On this tightrope, swaying
Alone
I used to do cartwheels
On the balance beam
And fly through the air
Parallel bars.

I jumped off a bridge, climbed myself up rocky ledges,
Zipped over canyons
Dreamed of repelling down mountains

I'm afraid of falling like I never have before
Trembling here on a rope beneath the stars

There's just one thing I want you to know
Please don't catch me if I decide to let go

Hold my drink as I take the stage,
I drink too much, more than I gauge-
Hold my lighter, cigarettes,
I'm dancing for the strangers' gaze
Watching me, watching them,
Throwing my head for a good time
Only a good time

Before we leave, slow dance to Bowie,
You don't know the words but I
I know every instrument
Could that be what you meant
When you said "I love you"
And I'm freaking out on your
"I love you"
Because

I get it if this night was enough to
Throw you over the edge into
but I'm still stuck on a preface,
Preface, intro, first chapter
Did we even open the ******* book, dude
I just want to
Fall into the music and I
Can't back out of your confession so I
Said I love you back. Before you could ask.
If I really meant it, I'll just pass out and

Then you can't ask me to say it again
Maybe I can just pretend it never
Will happen again.

Falling.gasping. Desperate.scared
Wet concrete, colder than the laser light dome
tendons aching from the running.
Collar bruised. Lip bleeding.
Costume... tor n at the waist.
It was. Well it makes more sense
When you know it was a big bad wolf
who threw her against the-
Blood. Biting wind. Headlights passing.
But there was warmth
Green eyes. Sunshine hair. Toothy grin.
Arms saying "everything will be okay"
Not like.
The wolves.
With their rough palms. Leers. Cars.
Heaving. Sobbing. Spitting. Running fingertips
across the cold concrete until they bleed.
A broken cell phone so like a broken bottle
Its so much worse to be betrayed by
One's own last hope.
Starving.empty*

Black

I can feel an echo of the kinship
I felt with these songs in the cold and dark, isolated on that hill
I can't feel them resonate now, though,
I remember still, and so think I should feel
But I don't see the path back, or ahead, the light I desperately
Asked someone for once,
The memory of dreams
Desolation at reaching futilely for them,
Or peace with this rooted spot
Whispers flow through me with the music
Whittling away the hollow bones inside me,
This brittle bark shedding from my skin so like the tree
Inked to my ankle,
Dying and dormant and bent
An echo of springs past like
The outro of a song that hasn't played for a while
And clouded remembrance of the lyrics
I haven't lived in a while

I miss Texas - My family fighting,
The smell of the hot concrete,
That full-bladed grass and the fire ants
The southern drawl and the heavy air-
Sticky and slow like molasses
Down where you nap through the heat of the day
And eat fried chicken, corn and mashed taters for dinner
Playing in sprinklers and
Patios made of tiny rocks,
Acorns and sunflowers and furniture
That weathered the great depression and WWII
The little creek, the metal slide in the middle of July,
Those mcDonalds toys one grandma collected
One grandpa bouncing me on his knee
The other taking me to the zoo
And great grandma playing scrabble,
Those baby pictures of my dad,
Back in a place where I would've culturally said "pa"
Sometimes I miss it all back in Texas,
Sometimes I say I'll never miss it,
Now that I see how grandma's a racist, family don't believe in LGBT,
In liberals, in me
But then I think I've lied
I just miss Texas from back when I was too young to notice,
And before everyone died.

Where are you going?
You've packed your cold heart up,
Got up early to warm the truck,
Well that sunny smile don't shine
So well in October

My lipstick's all over my face
Don't want to do this
You told me to be brave
I'll leave pieces of me in all 50 states
....instead..

Tried being perfect, tried being worth it
Tried being an outlet for plugs and giving my energy
To light broken bulbs which shattered in front of me
Even if they weren't broken, I wasn't enough to keep them lit

Netflix and chill,
You really just meant Netflix. Didn't you.
But this time I'm on the pill?
I didn't offer you my heart, I think you're being too greedy
Paying attention to my hand and the TV
I went through the trouble to disconnect my body
Why won't you just take me

See I'm tired of sleeping on my own and gazing at others' souls
When they'll never be home maybe
Just looking for baggage that goes with mine and
A temporary halfway house to stop for the night would be fine.

But my chin's red and my eyes water, my headache's screaming for my voice to be softer, I'm trying to make it right
I only wanted someone for all my life.