Every time the butterflies come,
they crawl up my throat and start to choke me
but it's a good kind of choking,
like scratching an inch even though it makes the rash burn
or liking the pain of dotted blood lines on my skin
after a long day of holding in monsoons and earthquakes
beneath calm serenity.

Or like telling myself I can never get better
even if a part of me knows, knows I can.
It’s like deciding never to speak again,
or stop eating just because you can.

And why is it that pain tastes so much like love
when I willingly dress myself in it,
yet someone lays a finger on me
and I feel the same way
when my friends are mistreated
and animals are abused,
I feel a surge of fierce hatred
throughout my whole body
and don’t you ******* touch me
ever again.

I believe the world can be better than this.
And what does that say about me?
Does it make me a hypocrite in a sort of vague way?
Because I keep wondering
if I do things without thinking
that another me would hate me for.

I see shapes in your sunken eyes,
pressing like last night's lifeline,
telling you to keep your heart safe,
but I have to look away.

Please don't cry,
I can't possibly turn tears to gold.
I'm not the type to indicate
what should fill these empty spaces
and I don't know what to say
when you don't say it first.

When the shivering starts you'll see,
I can't be your blankets and late-night radio,
or anything you used to believe.
When those eyes mean oceans in mine,
you'll see how nothing I can be.

To write food in the stomach
Of every hungry child.

To spell war as peace,
Metaphorize flowers into the barrel

Of every gun on Earth.
The poet has responsibilities

Beyond those of mothers,
Of kings and presidents.

I refuse to give up hope;  
This could be a poem world.

Come on, write your worst piece
Of literature.

Even misprints may give other
Meanings to a word,

Write me a green sky, blue dirt,
Trees the colour of air.

Sometimes the best poets
Have the least to say,

So keep writing, write until your
Fingers fall asleep.

Write until you havent slept
For weeks in search of that word,

That one right word,
Then rest on a notebook pillow

And dream the world right.
Write the world right.

There is no such thing as
Wasted poetry.

I don't want to disappear into the crowds
Or dissipate faintly like vaporous clouds
I want to be heard without having to shout
Even when there's nothing to talk about

I'm so faint,
     I'm barely here
So translucent,
     oh so clear
Paper thin,
     I'm blown away
So ****** in,
      lost in days

I just want
     to be heard
          and seen
    loved
and dreamed

I think I'm going to be a recluse. Write novels in a shack with cats until I get arrested or evicted for not paying taxes or something. Then get arrested for vagrancy and go to jail and write more about how messed up the world is. If I get out, I'll go back to being a vagrant. I'll let my hair get long and matted and I'll let my nails grow long and black and I'll dig my own grave with them and I'll smell like dust and decay and death. I'll give up. I'll resign from humanity.

"You're beautiful" isn't the compliment that it used to be, you know. Because what happens to beautiful girls in this world is anything but. Your beauty is used against you, used to target and mark and blame you. "I couldn't help it, you're so beautiful." When they touch you without your permission. Girls hate you because you're beautiful. Men turn their sickness on you. You're scarred by the greed of someone who wants to touch you and thinks they can because you're beautiful, scarred by the envy of people who can't look like you, who don't realize what beauty really does to people. They notice you because you're beautiful and they don't care about anything else. You're just a pretty doll that they think they can play with anytime they want, that they can blame their actions against you on you because you're beautiful. Because "I couldn't help myself" is said in a way too complimentary tone from someone you didn't want to touch you. Sometimes you just want to take it all away. Shave your head, burn your body. Waste yourself away into nothing, till there isn't a trace left of beauty to blame. Till you're invisible and not worth targeting anymore. But there will be other beautiful girls for some sick **** to target and destroy. Someday, you're all going to destroy the beautiful girls in the world. You're going to destroy all of them and complain about it. Because how dare they take their beauty away from you? Even though you're the ones who ruined it. Ruined it for everyone and made all the beautiful girls destroy themselves to get away from you. Make girls afraid to be ugly because you're all focused on the beautiful girls, when really, you're the ******* ugly ones. Punish them for not being beautiful. Punish them for being beautiful. Punish them for everything because you can. Say what you will, but beautiful is twisting. I've ceased to make sense. I'm not sleeping right. I'll make this make sense later, maybe. Or maybe I won't, because even as I write this, I'm afraid of not being thought of as beautiful. Because you're punished either way, and is it better to be targeted than ignored? I'm trying to remember when I was the ugly duckling kid and nobody talked to me, versus now when I'm targeted for destruction. I don't remember what was worse. I don't remember, so it scares me either way.

I keep cutting windows into my cardboard walls
Square-shaped snapshots of sunshine
They remind me that there is a world outside
Of my dark and dusty paper cage

I don't bother with panes of glass
(I do not want to see my cold reflection)
But instead I leave the gaping holes wide open
And try to remember the taste of fresh air