I can see the fog horn hasn't been lit
Staring at the wall of white
I hear voices of my friends, in the trenches
I can't help thinking,
"How could they all make it?
With you here, trying to fake it?”

It's icy cold in the winter
And it gets colder as you get thinner
As you pull yourself into doubt, into grief
I was in danger of slipping

Always in danger of the cliff before my feet
I've been sitting here on the ledge
But it's time to walk along the lonely ridge

Someone once told me, you've got to know your cards
If you see a bridge, well, it's your choice whether to burn it
But burning's not so easy when the match is in their hand
I tell you friend, I ran along and fell
The future has always been tomorrow, forever
But now the future's here in the palm of my tattooed hand
I can't see it, but it's glowing so brightly
Maybe I'm blinded, but it's as dark as an abyss

I see mist is floating towards me
Holding closer, dreams ignore me
Will I ever escape, will my boat come in,
Or did it sink?
I sit and think, again.

I want nothing to do with your ill cigarette
Rolled by filthy fingers
Cushioned by pretty, mock-up lips
I just want to lay beside you,
Without tasting your ***** breath
I just want to lay beside you,
Like we're going to live.

I was wild, with a hunger in my eyes,
It's still there, but faint
Still, I feel,  most of me has died
I can feel the planet breathing. I can
feel the seconds ticking.
There's the knowing, and not knowing, and painful crying
For no good reason.
Until I fall back into rote.
I'm a ghost. I'm a glass child. I'm stinging.

In the museum of hands and arms and moving bodies,
There is a door.
Beyond the smoke and fly paper and Cheshire grins.
Had I made it to the door.
Had I become just like them
My flesh torn raw and tendons burning
Against their acid, make-shift garb
Had I not held readings of poetry,
To garner their harrowing attention
As I sought to free myself of the Pupa
In gauzy tops and linen skirts did we dance as the criminally insane
To a waltz of unsung potential
Did I not willingly take the potions and laugh, as they laugh
Did I not willfully indoctrinate the freshest among us
Those fighting, frightened souls, eyes trained on the door.
The door.
How I see it now, a beacon and damnation
That I can never step outside it, now.

I talk too little, too much
I expose too little, too much,
I live too much, too little,
I'm too happy or I'm too depressed
I live my life one extreme to the next
And I'm just waiting for the day I'm middle-ground,
I'm just waiting for someone who pins me down,
Without pinning me down at all
You know it's hard to figure out a pendulum,
Fighting yourself is tough, you know,
I just want to be enough.

I am lost and alone in an empty home,
With as many tears as would make a sea,
I have written and fought and gallantly lost,
I have utterly forgot how to be me

This is life, not heaven, and when our angels cry,
We cry with them

I sell dreams and memories at the marketplace,
In a back alley of this bustling city
We set up our stalls at noon, or 3, or we don't set up at all
Every third Sunday, or second Saturday
Amid the leather rings and pastel postcards and records,
Of artist that have yet to be,
I stand against an old brick wall with a hat at my feet
"Buy a dream, sweetest of black cherries,
Dripping waterfalls and lovers' gazes,"
I chant throughout the day.
I've got a little notepad with a magic pen,
They draw a circle and they see
Confused and drunk they sway before me,
Hooked on whatever plays behind their eyelids
They touch, taste, smell, hear, whatever I wish them to
"Buy a memory, repressed or treasured, melancholy extra,
3 quid for a memory"
Therapists have sent weary patrons traveling far and wide to me
I see their suspicious eyes as they throw money my way,
Some regulars come to me as druggies,
Some need me more than others,
They leave me bright-eyed but weary,
I never give a fantasy for free.

Maybe I'm incapable of love.
I keep it all boxed away,
Like matchsticks.
Until they leave,
And then, only then,
I take those matches out
When I want to burn myself.

I want to know how my name tastes on your tongue
I want to make your blood sing

I want to recreate the warmth of summer in Williamsburg
With the cool breeze by the willow tree

I want to know the places you've walked and trace the footsteps
As I walk through gardens and hills and cities
And I will do it all alone, if I must

I wish the world for thee

I'm trying to love him - the way I should have loved you,
Like someone who's grown, like someone who knows
How to heal with someone, how to slow
How to forgive, and how to talk
%^&$, how to calm down and how to unlock

I'm trying to give him peace
I'm trying to find my own release
I'm trying to let go, find how to say no

I'm trying to love him - like I should have loved you,
In another time, with a better mind, with a clear conscious
And a blatant state of intent, with the words of love I kept hidden,
If I'd been better, what then? but I,
All I can do, is fail to love him,
The way I will always love you.

So I'll try to take control of the darkness again,
If only though, the pen in my hand
If there's nothing to gain, then there's nothing to prove
If there's nothing to lose, then there's nothing to lose

And just like that,
I know my magical world is gone
It ended in a drunken haze,
On the last note of a higher-octane song

And where did the magic go,
When they spent the very last of it
And can I get it back,
If the old lyricists ever re-writ
Their last musical pieces
Capture the stars again from the sky
And re-map the venues with them,
To play one night like we will die.

I'm trying to protect the little girl inside of me.
Protect her from reality.
Of losing skin and losing faith.
Of doing more than she can take.

Kiss me quick,
I swear I'm going nowhere
But you open your eyes
To tell me I wasn't there

I want to be the needle
In your lobotomy
I want to see you writhing
On the floor in agony
I want to be your dreams
When you sleep at night
I want to be the vice
Holding you tight
I want to be the poison,
You can't help but to breathe

I want to hear you say that you'll only love me

So kiss me quick,
I swear I'm going nowhere,
But you open your eyes
To tell me I wasn't there

Sometimes I wander to my broken heart, though,
I whisper the names which used to make it sing,
I take it out to the Ocean
And cast a line out to find the missing pieces
But what I told you, the truth is,
I wouldn't want them back
Because then I'd miss this,
These fishing trips.

I miss you so—
I've been so sad, kept, unloving
Though you used to visit
So many eons ago
It's been empires rising
Sands shifting
My marble hands to flakes then dust
Worrying memoirs and records
You're a pious devil
Reading them
Laughing at our gardens, overgrown
Shaping the stars and commanding them
To burn

I pace this room like a ghost / picking up books
Trying to fold myself in them. I want to be a soulmate,
another half, I want to be like stardust, some white powder
You can inhale or **** on to get you high I want
To be the reason and the drive but like a drug I am also,
I am the reason you shake, you sweat, you worry and turn from the bottle, syringe, or pipe
Until I'm some forgotten college memory you were just trying
Like a memory either fond or full of regret but a memory you won't forget all the same /
While you hope your child doesn't try something like me, doesn't get hooked on someone like me because I am a stain on a perfect track record,
An expulsion from school or work, god if you'd only hid me better
I promise I can get you out of whatever you need to escape this. time.
Only I can't promise I'll get you where you're headed and if you
survive
See I'm not the heroine of your story, I might just be an echo
Of a star trying to burn her way home, through any means necessary
But unlike that star, that drug, that ghost, I care if I hurt those people around me and in that, around me, I'll always feel alone.

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

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.

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that hurt very bad.
Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.

Good morning, moonshine.

Sitting at the park, pen in one hand, knife clenched in the other
When the sprinklers go by I can see the children on the swings,
Lost souls running on the playground
Some day soon I won't be able to shake off the delusions
It's not safe to be a practicing witch,
And no one should play with spirits.

Ghost kisses across my skin,
Gleaming white from the blade,
Music notes seeping out under my sleeves,
The days I cut with rib-bones like a knife,
They dreamed they could save me,
Drag me from the depths of my self-hate sea

I said I was made of stars, they burned bright,
In phosphenes and fluorescents in the night

Said love could save me, be the one thing that wouldn't hurt
Only self love saved me, though I'm content to have the memory of notes unsung,
Of nights unspent,
Of kisses too long ago to have had,
to have burned.

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 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.

It's like being stuck in a cave,
I want to find the light and claw my way out
But sometimes I wind up deeper than before
I don't want to lose my family, found or otherwise, nor my lover
But oh, did I mention the cave is underwater?
I only ever wanted to be a perfect daughter.

Lost in the waves again. Goodbye for now.

I'm halfway between "**** you" and "**** me" and it keeps sliding.

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.

Please. Leave the light on.
I didn't mean to be gone so long.
I didn't even know what it meant to leave a light on,
Until I saw the porch light through the fog and trees.
So please.
One more time, for me,
Leave it on, to guide me back to where I need to be.

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 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.

My heart is a ******* traitor

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.

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

Tock, tock, tock
Blocked, unblocked,
Hurt me? Tick
Stop,
Did I learn?
....
Tock, tock, tock


Sometimes my life seems like a blur.
I loved once? Did I love again?
Did I just pretend? Based on that first love, did I fake to love?
I married once

I'm naught but lost

Tock

You win some, you lose a lot.