And how can you say I think nothing but of myself! Am I as narcissistic as my father?
When I memorize every detail garnered of those I speak with, on a daily basis. When I take their history and position into account when regarding their words?
When I often choose the phrases which will please them most? When I am counseled and skilled in only my words. My concern is often naught but for those I love, my own desires be ******. Though when they make appearance, I cannot reconcile them to silence.
It's true, I am a vain and pride thing, that regards herself as well when she speaks,
But I thought you knew better than that.

For I am lonelier still, surrounded by those who cannot fall and break along side me, but only stand in my light when it matches theirs.

You might think your battle over,
You might think you won
But I'm still fighting battles,
I know I'm not the only one
So don't sing of conquest
Don't poet out my heart
For you the politics are over,
For me they've yet to start.

And it's a bad business,
To war over love
But we lost the ones dear to us,
We're drawing blood just because
If I lay my sword down, let my armor rust,
Indiscretions and betrayal will never settle,
In the dust left by my travels, it's gotten out of hand
I never meant to leave it to the inheritors of my land
I'll not be a coward, even so I'd rather be
Than to know things thereafter, I'd rather not have known

And you can tell me your stories,
Of fights so long ago
But my fight is far from over,
And it's time to take it home.

Birds chirped, the smell of bacon and wildflowers coming from the kitchen, the smell of cedar from logs in the woodstove. It seemed like heaven to her, though she knew not what heaven looked nor felt like. If she could write it the way she studied it in school, those long languid days spent in the arms of her lover and learning the ways of Whitman and Dahn, it would look somewhat similar to this. To the stubble grazing her chin in the night under cotton sheets, not a plan for that day or the next. Only the hearth to keep fed and the nights to keep warm. Heaven, she thought, was a combining of two souls in one spot.

(Though the problem with that is that not only does it require trust in an undiluted state to such a point that judgement cannot waver to the extent supplied by doubt, but that love also requires a feeling that most are incapable of pursuing)
If two hearts are in tune yet only one feels it, love can fall apart. Every single time.

It's cloudy, the ***** is hiding up there,
In her own starry grave, but I know
She's watching me as she has thousands before
And she'll die eons before we see her light go out,
I will never live to that day, though she'll watch me still
I wonder if she's seen my children thrive, watched them age?
In a way I never will, and she's laughing, I know, at time
At my frail mind addled by drug and drink
Will she coddle them? Will she coddle this love I hold?
Will she fight for or against me? Beg me to let go?
If she is not a guardian, she's a poor excuse for an enemy.
And I will always be, eyeing her
Cursing her stars while ever reaching towards them
Mayhaps a symbol of a man I lost. May be the throne I aspire to own
Across the sky from my own Orion,
Carved into my skin
Driving me home.

But you are a coward,
Even in your conviction of being courageous,
You will remain alone. And this is ridiculous.

I know all you want is to come home.

Listen to songs of what had been,
I know it's hard, you chose what happened
Waves crash down and close the gateway
When memories flood them wide open
Oh, come home to me, before I sail away

It's a dreary dawn you've settled down in
It's a misty town you call your medicine
Weather and women work your fingers to bone
You swear up and down this is all worth doing
Come home
Close up shop and rest your face in my arms

But you bar the door of your lonely hotel room
Rest easy in your misery and listen to men
Crooning on about love, of what could have been

Maybe you should have brought your raincoat

I'm upset,
I'm unhappy, but I
Don't want anyone to fret
So I'm stable enough
To just get by

I need to get out of this town
I want to feel alive
I need to feel the fire
Because I'm dead inside

I can't kiss a thing,
Without tasting ash
You're the last good thing
That made my armor crack

Now it's rusting down
And I'm feeling the burn
God I'm chasing this town
A jail I did nothing to earn

I doubt I will ever get better again
But my doctor just tells me "take your medicine"
One happy pill, and one for infection
One to stop my organs destroying themselves
One for the pain, one for indigestion
Some are required, some are suggestions
Some really work and some are just liars

Kelly came over to steal my boyfriend yesterday. It was a Monday.
She wore baby pink lipstick and her favorite new labret piercing
That meet-me-outside thunder-rolling-in hooded gaze
And a judgement call towards me that I could never meet. Well, maybe on a Wednesday. But in that I was out of luck.
It was dangerous to watch her pull up on her Viper, trail her polished fingertips along his truck. I saw her hike her skirt and shake her choppy mangled hair out from where it matted under her helmet.
I thought, at least, he'd noticed when I'd taken the brush out of my pack that morning and groomed as he bustled around the house. No?
He always did like his women wild. I'm not jealous, I'm envious.
She crept in the door and removed her shoes where I'd just ***** inside, and with her barefeet padded into the livingroom.
Now you can tell I was on my guard, but I wasn't in the mood to pounce.
You have to be, to do what she did. You have to make that decision early. Bite a lemon, shave your legs, set the intention in your mind. That someone's heart is going to get broken, some guy is going to get stolen. And this time it was mine.
So I just sat on the couch bewildered as she broke him into a smile, on a subject only people in town would understand. Do I look like I'm from town, or know hell about it? It ached so to be prodded in that scab.
She left after dropping off some bottles and a snide comment at my expense.
She didn't come back today, but neither did he. And I know.
I let him get away. Or if he's stray then he deserved to get got,
I still love him, however,
Now I love Jack, Jim, and Jerry, a heckuva lot!

Water bubbles up and over into a steady pool, in an island in a taxi circle. Where strelitzia dip low over a stone bench and the palm trees shade the southern sun. The fountain runs languidly into its blue tiled basin, clear. Inviting. It only runs in moments when I think of you so dearly that my tears over flow without a sound, welling up and onto the tenderness of my eyelids. I have no thought but that of our dear Mexico. And no better a place to store my sorrow, for I cannot cry a river nor an ocean; but a steadily working spout.
Hidden by taxis. And strelitzia.
Where you will never see.

I wonder if I'm as lost as they say, if everyone is on the edge of discovering it. The footsteps in the snow are mine alone, you know. As we hike the mountain ***** together. You've put on his face, his jacket. You've warmed your hands to his temperature when you hold mine inside your pocket. And lift your head at just the angle he would, when I point out the breaking clouds. The sun is just on the edge of coming out, turning this icy tread into a blinding canvas above and below us. Just on the verge of turning you into a shadow and reminding me. Ever present, ever longing for you, that you are not here.
That there's somebody else wearing your face. And holding my hand. And wearing your jacket.
There's only one set of footprints here and behind
And where you were there's only me.

Echoes of memories we don't even have, you'll know them
By the tang of flambeed strawberries at the back of your teeth
When you walk through the village main
And see me beside you in every reflection, in the shop windows
We are laughing and pointing and leaning against each other
You will smell my perfume in the snow on the mountain
And feel my caress when you topple in the powder

We can tire each other out putting our blinders on
Focusing in the motion and control of each leg
bound to each skii in a beautiful machination
of each day we spend living in isolation

We can drive until we lose the road and
Lose our culture, lose our language
We can drink until the lights become loud
And the ringing in our ears is deja vu
To all the times we said we'd stay together
And each body passing us in crowded clubs and bars
Will have a hint of me, a hint of you
So much so it'll send you reeling

Always in your peripheral
I will never be there
No matter how I wish you were still here

Last night I had a dream
You left me again,
this time you hesitated.

It is morning in early April. My spine’s a little sore.
My eyes, a little bruised. But so are yours.
We’ve spent all night staring out at the horizon, straining to see the sun.
But it will never come. Vacantly, my mind wanders, my hand rests atop yours.
There is a forever in the stillness, settled in the damp cling of my dress laced with dew.
Your brow is covered in sweat, sticking sweeps of currant-colored hair to your forehead,
Which is creased in frustration.
You’re getting fed up. Still, I am waiting.
Because when the daylight arrives, I will have to go.
I will uncreak my bent knees and step heel first into the muddy hillside,
And there, just across the field from my outstretched hand, you will be waiting.
With your pleased smile, and eyes glowing full as Ophir. We will stop wilting.
And you’ll say, you’ve been dreaming of me. You’ll say we’ll travel the world.
I will look behind me, where you were so weary just moments ago, and you’ll have dissapeared.
Yes! Will be my answer.
And the day will take us far from here.

I hear my neighbor's daughter's boyfriend's chevy pull up
I smell her smoke and feel her drink
And wonder if it's the same
for every girl
Well I'm not like you, I hope, but I'm going through the same thing
Puts us both on heartbreak lane
And there's a jr high dance pounding in the background
As we pour another drink
And I wonder if it's the same
for the boys whose lives changed by us
Being their new thing
So I'm sorry if I hurt you,
Down on heartbreak street
Just trying to beat the same as when
We had nothing worth losing

On the night you left
It was a clear, dark sky
But inside my car it was raining
And the engine rolled into a storm
I saw the lights off a coastguard's boat
Heat from my ring, your name engraved with mine
An icy welt melting against my skin
Then you ask me where I've been,
I've been in the hail of Seattle
Throwing tantrums in front of speeding cars
Kissing the railings off every tall bridge
Lifting myself high in the rigging and tipping back-
I've been teaching myself to breathe where the air is thin

I.
You believe them. You tell them otherwise

II.
You write little post it notes, and catalog their promises
You make a calender and put your dates on it in red pen
You smile and expect to cross them out again

III.
You believe in their dreams, but you do not believe in their words
Even when you want to so badly that it hurts

IV.
You reason with yourself, and with them, and with your little red pen
That untruths are just as truthful as outright honesty,
Because honestly, deceit is pure
And who knows that they're lying when they're lying?
If they plan to follow through and say their lies as 'simple' truths
Or if they lie to you and then follow through
So is it really a lie? It's okay, you don't have to feel used

V.
You realize that you love them
Then you consider it more
And the more you think on it, the more that you're sure

VI.
Then days turn into a year, which is only seasons
And their promises become ever more few
Then the seasons break down into months, into days
Into hours

VII.
You're so lost in counting that you forget to fact check

VIII.
You believe them. Without the back of your mind screaming "justice!"
Without bothering to write it all down.
You hear them out, for the first time, and wonder if they ever lied at all
Or if you're just used to being lied to

IX.
And that's when your reality crumbles down
That's when you really love them but lose yourself
If the days you can't remember, and the time you can't forget
Coincide
Maybe there's some hope, a little, that everything was worth it
It's just a phase they went through
but you miss the lies

X.
Because when they tell you it's over
You realize it's the one thing you wish wasn't true.

My renegade prince
Is holding a noose
Made of wild flowers

Beckons to me
What is it, darling?
Don’t you like the necklace I’ve made?

It’s not that it’s just that I thought
daisy chains would never be enough
To convey the love
I just want your love

And he smiles, this wicked ****** smirk
And says my darling, then that’ll never work
I’ve made another of yellow roses and buttercups,
He says take my hand, try it on

It tightens as he brushes my hair back
I see discarded daisies scatter, he’s humming our song
Where it just fits his fingers take up the slack
Then I know that he knows, those petals are all I'd wanted all along

If I’d never asked for more
If I didn’t cry at the sight of them slipping away
My darling how is it? as pretty as your vices
As precious as our love is?
How could love be wrong?

My renegade prince
Is holding me
Made of wild flowers and sin

and we are lovers,
daisy chains
made for each other

No matter the meadows
we lay in

I know a guy, never wanted a kid
But he loved his daughter so,
Much so that he was afraid to care for her,
Coddle her, and through the years he
Began to pull away
He blamed her mistakes on her mother,
It was easier that way
He didn't want to see her eyes when he shouted
He couldn't control his threats or his temper
And it made him feel good to get adoration,
No commitment, just a little fee
Did he really love the woman to whom he said,
"I love you more than my wife and child combined"?
Was it warmer than the isolation of sleeping alone in their bed
I know a guy, who never liked children
Even his own, but who would've known?
He never was with them.

You slip from the bed,
Remove the gauze, pull on your long johns
Jumper and coat
And the sutures on my heart begin to itch
Grab your keys, head for the door
I'm running, but I don't know what I'm running for,
Hear the rumble of your truck's engine
Beating on the wood, the brass doorknob won't turn
Why do I know you're leaving?
Through the fogged up window I can see your exhaust
But it's not processing so I lay my head against the floor
Well it's 2am so don't give me a reason
Just wish I'd gotten there before
I just have to go back to our bedroom, just to be sure

I lay on stained mattresses amidst oil paintings and mirrors
Lattice veils of mascara run down my pallor cheeks
As I stare down at the blood pooling in my outstretched hand
Reflections stare down at me, winged ******* and soldiers
All eyes across the room staring down with me, to the checkered floor
My pale pink toes brush the tile, the soles black smudging the gloss
White, blaring, chandeliers above, candelabras with jeweled adornments
Gracefully falling downwards like tears, my own indenting upon satin sheets
Wrapped tight around my legs, falling loose around my shoulders
Caping me, hanging open at my ******* bruised and swollen
Though I've no babe, and so, I clench my eyes against the staring
Chiding me, beguiling me, burned in behind my eyelids there,
you. are.
Whispering like chiffon, along with the fabric of my dress beneath your manicured fingernails
Tracing the edges of my gooseflesh and regaling me with tales of woe
and wonder, of the conquests of art, fine frames and fantastic auctions
Our freedom, held capricious on the winds of chance, before
Now love, our love, your love, provided such an opportunity, a chance to fly away
This you mumbled to my neck with adoring kisses
as relieving as fresh rain against my skin, hands tuning the zipper along my back to play such a fine melody like a phonograph
A pretty thing, to be molded by such hands, with as much regard as handling a Monet painting

I see it clearly after all

The merry go round sailed around on its rusty, squealing hinges. I could feel the chipped paint beneath my fingers over the metal bars serving as handle holds. The platform ridged to better stay on. My old friend swung into view among the blurring trees and swing set. He looked aged, weathered, with his unruly hair sticking in places by sweat and the light rain that had begun. It needed to be cut back above his ears. Though this way I could braid it, or let it curl around my fingers.
My laugh rang out against the cloudy playground as I went around one more time. His answered, a lofty, deep-set sound. I could hear his shoes squelch in the muddy rut around the merry go round. It wasn’t going as fast as I felt it was, but I couldn’t care less. Watching the muscles of his arms heave it before he began in a run and hopped on gave me a high. To me, we were flying. We could be superglued here forever and I’d never care. Even as my shirt began to cling as the weather worsened.
Then the weight of his sudden landing brought the contraption to lurch, then slow, and we fell as a heap on its side. “Just one more time!” I remember pleading between breaths, his heavy and gaping. His green eyes flashed, incredulous at the idea.
“It’s your turn!” he bellowed. Though we both knew I hadn’t the strength to turn it, much less with him on it. My stomach was starting to flop even as I thought about giving it a go.

I ******* let you in
And together we burned everything

I stop running and the nightmares find me
The mast creaks
Within the rotted core the ghouls call
Alone on the high sea
Whirlpools dip and carry me
And winds run us aground

I stop running and the helm locks
The sand swells
Leaves in heat chitter
As sun bakes through my skin
The salt boils
I become leather

I stop running and I’m buried
By the thoughts you once had
Little memories that kept me afloat
All the time in the world that we had made
If I don’t run, they begin to overflow,
And a captain must go down with her boat.

My friend asked me today what melancholy means.

I didn’t know how to respond without her getting upset that I was sad, again.
She guessed boredom. Well, a kind of.
A nostalgic boredom, longing for a when or a why. Then I reconsidered, and I told her, “I feel like Pittsburgh”. Like the snow outside when the heater was too high inside, or a cup of cocoa at cafe Rachel. Like texting a friend and writing for the paper while wearing lined leggings under my pajamas. Like being lost in love, buffeted by the storms that held me.

We sailed under spotty streetlights. Cutting through cold air, listening to an empty radio station. I thought again, and then, agreed that melancholy was my nothing. Because somehow, all the little things took my everything.

But that isn’t true either. Is it.

Slicked in the let of blood,
Rain softly melting on her face
The earth opened up
And I had no idea, you hit the keys so well
Played me in minor C and let me believe
Kisses that sent me straight to hell, yes
(on a sofa, in the night, with a secret in our eyes)
Would save me

But you've been the death of me,
From which her grip has no release
Meadows of peonies
(and flower crowns and water lilies)
Cigarette ashes for fodder
There are flies in the teeth of all men, but then
My illusions only grow fonder
That you would come find me dancing here,
And join me in laughter again.

I don't remember kissing
you,
I must have made it up in my mind
We stood outside my front porch, hand on the ****
Your eyes wrapped around my belt loops, fingers wavering
I smiled and said "this is my stop"
Between puffs of cigarette smoke
The flies caught between door and screen
I waited but half a second, sad smile waning
Blood dripping into my glass shoes
Unseen,
Were the erratic poems underlining all my nerves
You reached for me
Hand on my shoulder, questions on your breath
My mouth answering back yes,
We're going to take this step
As you leaned in the angry voices in my head drowned out
By the music of your soul beside mine
But the spell broke, somehow
We'll never be entwined
And the secrets got out, somehow
Then you left me behind
So though I know we've kissed many times,
The first and last so vivid
The histories written in my fingertips don't recount living on your flesh
So I don't remember kissing
you,
Or how to return to a life without you in it.

I'm sick of this christmas music
The holy and tinsel and
The way my too-tired friends will jaunt around
Telling me the girl who stared them down in their first week at College was a *****, and the guy who never slept alone was trying to make up for the Lab he missed last Tuesday, and how they snuck a look at the group behind conformity buildings one and two on game night
Then we'll walk into the consumerist shops glitzed up, marveling at the sales, and we're broke, but I'll pay for you,
And we'll ***** and fit and smile tight because we missed each other we missed these outings we missed this performance we used to put on
We'll run out of things to complain about.
In the middle of World Market or Ross I'll sing a verse from the song on the speakers and curse when it cuts out for a cashier's announcement.
You'll groan and promptly leave me in the aisle.
Not entirely lost, but I'm sick of trying to find you. You never leave me in the store anyway.
There are children who witnessed our display.
One is lost and yet not lost like me.
"Hey!" I shout for you, for you'll come and grin to the child, not the fake teeth you flashed me bared, you'll ask if they need help, I'll sing them a song, and I'll carry them.
You'll find their mother, who will look at us as if to say "couldn't you have waited to return them?"
It's now dark and snowing and I can't drive. So I drag you to party city and buy something stupid I'll wear when we get to our other friend's party or your house for dinner, or the junior high to delight in misery and our mutual hate.
But I love you.
I love singing songs to you off key.
I love showing you my scars and letting you rip them apart.
This is my favorite kind of Christmas.

The stars on my ceiling turn my room into a galaxy,
Suddenly standing on the precipice of another world
Where little comets race down like snow
It's so cold, outer space is so, so cold
But it's my secluded little world, so here,
Pull on a blanket and grab a mug
Tea steeps much quicker here
And oh, how much deeper we fall in love.

You're a **** I watered until you overcame me

noun: the fact or process of losing something or someone.

The empty chat logs
Turning swiftly to empty bottles
And crackling logs, burned to ashes
You were supposed to feed the fire,
Fire consumed weeks on end
Loss is a pretty spindle poised
For blood, spent on nightstands, on hot iron
Wedding one heart to another
Melting without a soldering gun
Loss is cataclysm
Wrought with despondent accuracy
Loss is alive with the dreams you built with me

I’m the one I think you’re supposed to hate
Because I’m the she when you find a spot to lay all your jealousy
I’m the his of the past,  that’s poisoning your beginning, and,
I guess you don’t know this, but I’m your best friend.
I’m the whirlwind that picked him up, turned him on his head,
The ******* that soaked your hopes in an acrid frailty.
I am the first red-lipped ice queen to bite at his neck
I am the first to coax “I love you” out from the pit in his chest
And he won’t fall for you as easy
No he won’t ever look at you the same
Because his boyish fantasy was a slender girl with a lopsided grin,
Who started games with his mind, that he never did win.
And you might dust off the memories, try to enroot more for yourself
But picking off the scab of me will only make him sore
I’m so sorry that I hurt the one you love, that I stuck around
I’m deemed unworthy of redemption,
I will still, always, and forever, love him more
You can't take me down.

Here, take the messages
from the air waves. Pin down the wind. He was
full of hot air. They’re all full of it. I need cold.
Their heated arguments made me nauseous.
Northern ice storms, bury me in one. I can weather
it. I can weather anything without a traitorous
stay from the cold… body heat…. None of them
were built to last the winter with me.

                 And look, it’s begun to snow.

Resting is never easy, with the stirring of empty thoughts, like clanging little bells and spilling mold from teapots. I sit and drink of folly and greet my guests there, for I’ll never get to resting if I don’t have my fair share. Though the poison may eat me up, I tie wonderland’s ribbon round my neck, and jump the spout into the drink to take my given due. Again I kiss the teacup’s lip and mumble “I love you."

Cottony smoke curled under my nails, on hands too clean, clearly, for the task that would send them one day to bones. Perhaps without the cinders and ash burning peacefully away at the underside of my tongue, I’d find the strength to understand. Though in the darkness, one little gnat of color was a world of fascination. My mind withered in the fire and ignited in that small, red-black glow, wrapping into its strings. Wishing I could burn away too, and burn away everything.
It is no wonder, that….
Being toasty in frosty air, unable to feel my toes, and quite unable to care.

They say I can't chase you next
Can't seek out the moon over Mexico
or relive the tears I shed on the plane
home,
I can't feel the tirelessness of our forever
like the hope that dawned and set inside your eyes
I memorized every stitch in the broken couch
and I can still see us there
You're studying, I'm sleeping,
Planting rhubarb and watching our trees grow
Lightning shorted out the reception tower out back
As I sat on the end of our bed, mind blank, and laughed
All the glitter on the stone patio and the shirt left in the rain and the socks hung to dry on a hook you
Forgot
We kneaded pizza dough and watched Roseanne
That I jumped on you in the middle of the storm as you held me,
Kissing while UMF raged
In one loud, still moment
You are stopping me at the towel shack
Finding my legs under the restaurant table
Shoving my mittened hand in your pocket
Asking me to stay
Messaging me
and I know I'll chase you again
I just can't be with you now.

Black striped knee-highs in your old photographs
Black knee-highs on me
Your face blurs under the breaths you take
Lips, skin, absorb, kiss, breath
His rough hands ghost over my shoulder blades
Her eyes are scorch marks on your hips
As you're pulling me into your mouth I can't help
Teasing behind an earlobe, trailing along your jawbone on my way
Remembering memory foam, imprinted on my tailbone, precarious
Beneath the divet of his thighs
And she's on you, in you, around you,
He's with me, caressing, wanting
Their scents linger within the sheets
Your scent lingers on my tongue
And I dip my head to shut them up
Shut them up - "I'm so glad I don't hate you"

"I'm so glad you don't hate me"

                                                And I know they've won.

You will always have my heart, but
I'll start ******* out the numbness
That's leaked into my body.