I confused agave
for Amber
when you spoke
Drank a glass full

Choked on all the flys
In elementary school
Muesem of sepia boxes

Sluggish down my throat
Petrified My heart
buzzing
Pathetic, and filthy
frozen in carbonite nectar
Like a classroom fly

blush my cheeks
make my cold hands touchable
Harvest my Amber heart

I never was
A mourning person.
But I have always been
An exhibition.

I make you pancakes in the morning
Strawberries and whip cream
Just like my grandmother used to make
They call me the trash monster

Those tattoos of wings on your shoulders?
Those were the first two tattoos I ever stabbed into a person.
You were my first.

Remember I was the one who told you to pluck your eyebrows
How you cringed and refused.
plucked them the same direction
they were growing.
One by one.
So you wouldn't feel pain
I made you beautiful

They call me the trash monster

I paid for your world of Warcraft subscription.
I was at every birthday
your second mother

They call me the trash monster

My face is on national Televsion
Photographs of my living room.
The same one you woke up in every Saturday morning.

You wouldn't even recognise it.
Hidden beneath all of this spilt hourglass sand

So much between us now.
Prison bars
fast food shrapnel.

They call me the trash monster

A baby boy.
His little sister
Swimming in this filth
My depression hording

Their father left us for a 19 year old who lusted after his motor cycle
joined a gang
sells heroine

Left his autistic son and daughter
Taken now, my everything
From the nest

I was left to clean

They call me the trash monster

This filth
The broken wooden horse
The wax paper backs of sticker sheets.
The McDonald's bags n' grease
Scrapbooking strip cutters.

They call me the trash monster

Did you hear yet?
Do you remember me?
Did you throw me out?

I've got my warrior ******* on
Wolverine lent me these acrylics

Lasso your credit card with my weave
Tuck your tunnel vision in my G-string

This is my ******* song
Got my bad girl heels on

You can't get me off your mind
So how you gonna get me off

Come over to the throne room
I've got an after for you baby

What other religion costs $25 per song

Give me your devotion
I want Matronage
Ritual

When I was 19 I turned days into kalediscopes
Water into water
Paper covers rock
And coke cures a bad trip

Trip over my perfume

You won't spend money on me High on life
So let's get you depressed

Tell me your story sad boy
I've got rent to pay.

Ever given an apology
when embarrassment
was your true feeling?

Is there space between them?
Or is one the wrapping paper?
Silverskin on coffeebean.
Parchment.
Ornate half mask on a dancer in all black
Between Pointed nose and chandileier
Same infastructure as churches
Decorated to make others look to god.
Up, with gargoyales and bells

If embarrassment is the root of an apology.
Does it ring?

What time of day?

Embassy of embarrassment is your apology.
It is no secret, it is kevlar.
Harder to break.

If you are never embarrassed.
You cannot be sorry.

pride and abandon
As honest as they are to a man
Who loves to love
Strike offensive on ears set
To red at your past.
Own the honesty like a magic shield.
You will not have the kevlar of apology
If you do not have the embarrassment.

You'll need to fake it.
This takes delicate work.
Convincing the world you are not selfish
When born in america
Is not easy.

Loving your own failure seems proof enough
To learn from mistakes
But intellect.
Is not the opposite of selfishness.
In abundance you carry both as a burden.

People see you as a man, honest.
People see you as a man, who was not honest.
People see you as a man, selfish.
People see you as a man, who would rather be wrong and manic than human.

And people see through sometimes the armor
Of your *******
And magic armor of your smile

Because you talk too much

When all you want is too be heard,
Your biggest weakness is when someone listens.

You are so powerfull when no one hears you.
And you are so seen when you never open your mouth.

But the second you do.
You are ugly.

Underneath the ornate white mask and pointed nose
Without the smooth pleasentries of a nirror for a face.
You are seen a bulbous boiled blemmish.
A red infected wound for an ear.

It hurts to hear their testimony
Wittnessing you when you are without protection.

This is not embarrassment?
You are not embarrassed to be seen an ugly thing?

And no.
It just hurts.
And the pain callouses, making it more ugly.
Until we got to where we are.

Indestructible in all this broken.
Untouchable from all this infection.
Unlovable from all this attention.

A greiving suit of armor

The pharmacist at CVS says I am not prescribed an inhaler anymore.
so in it's place.
I prescribe myself cigarettes

I need something to inhale
cigarettes seem a logical alternative to inhalers

deliberatly I decide to not drive
to the cigar store.
i walk to the cigar store.

it is far enough to be inconvenient
which means maybe
If I am not destined to buy this cigarette
I will receive an overwhelming sensation to turn back

I always add time for potential divine intervention to my agenda.
It happens often enough to be logical

we may have different definitions of logical

the cashier asks my age
And I tell him 21.
I am 22.
somehow In the confusion of waiting for god to prescribe me an overwhelming emotional reaction to not buy cigarettes
Instead of an inhaler.
I forget a whole ******* year of my life.

this is great context for
How I trust myself when making decisions.
which is to say
I don't trust myself to make descisions.

I buy the cigarettes.

upon searching for the optimal location
to loiter and slowly **** myself.
I stumble upon the old teen center.
the first place I was a mentor.

Out the side of the building
There's this rock
Long enough to sit five or so children
two laying down.
it's Perferated like a candy bar
each rectangle curved slightly
custom fit to years of munchkin ****

this slump right here
this slump is my munchkin ****.

each break of chocolate
on the candy bar rock
has a ladyslipper growing behind it.
tips of the five purple flowers
stretch to align perfect with the tips of our childhood belly buttons

humbled, I brush the leaves
excavate delicately
this heirloom.
I had forgotten.

The sky is recovering When I lay myself on the rock.
light grey clouds that want to cry
an optimistic sun that won't let them

I Cover my face with an old journal
made of old book smell.
I smile into the pages.
my lips barely touching the silk threading of her binding.
I've never breathed so intimately
a new lover.
the tip of my nose tucked into her spine.
honeymoon phase, Intoxicating.
Still excited to be in love.

there's breath here
wisdom in the records of
loving young,
cherrishing this new book smell.
Filling your chest with it.

When memories are tangible
There are no more expiration dates

Fill my lungs with
the crisp of unturned pages,
worn leather covers
Soft silk crosstitches

Kiss air into me
from the space between your lines.
I know how intimate an untold story can be.

Today I started breathing
I fell in love With a metaphor.

I never did smoke that cigarette.

You ask me if having a baby in this world is selfish.

I imagine two stout bodied genderless dwarves.
with beards.
hand pumping a minecart down
subway tracks in Boston.

Hear the rattling
cart wheels along iron tracks.
the crackling fire of a lit torch
Illuminating an obvious macguffin
a glimmering maguyvery boulder
in the side of the tunnel.

This vision is a testament to how well I pay attention
When I have tunnel vision.

One pulled lever slows the minecart to a screaching stop
the dwarves zelda bomb their way inside

There is a man behind it
the size of a mountain
hooked up to a bypap machine
umbilical corded to a television

he does not know whether he is nocturnal,
trusts his wristwatch to tell time
Which was over $5,000 dollars.
trusts this watch
about as far
as he can throw his money away.
So He collects watches.

I ask you.
Does this man sound alive?

Do you think he more closely
resembles a metaphor
For children zombied into media leashes.
another pet to pitch in the graveyard
of working class
blades of grass leaning on the T
nodding off to sleep?

Or is he more like us.
escapists
wandering eyes
With roots in our mattresses
Shackled in the entertainment
Always breathing
inflating never creating.
or breathing out.

Would a child help us out?
would that be selfish?

breath can we still
tubes of oxygen up our noses.
can we rip out the catheder
save with will power
would a child somehow spin
eugenic honey
royal bee propaganda jelly
Would we see the world without sepia
no more screen filters
less headaches
less screen time
advil addiction.
Two less pills taken
comitted to attention.
stuck in tunnel vision
smoke and mirrors
are so shiny after blue pills

This mountain of a man
said to ask the man on the mountain
and I was so deep in my grave
I decided to dig down thinking
If This is hell I must be at the earths
molten core, so the road up
is just as long as the road
in any direction so long as i went straight.
But I change directions all the time.
And I still haven't hit the surface
And I keep building boulders
to keep out the cave rats
and making them obvious,
glimmerig macguffins so adventurers
will zelda bomb them open
and find me sitting here
watching the world go by
losing track of time
But always checking the clock on my wrist.
Because it's so beautiful
and biological.
The ticking is so loud
I'm deafened to the humming
of my oxygen machine.
the television,
screaching minecart breaks
My front door being blown open.
By zelda bombs

I'm stagnant with nothing but
my dreams and a metranome
Counting down to the day
I hate this television enough
To turn it off

Trust this clock enough to turn it back.

For a breif moment hear the
screaching subway tracks
The whirring of my bipap,
The bombs going off
not just at my front door
but all over the world.
blowing open my eyes to see finally

that life isn't worth a bomb shelter.
If I can't be selfish,

**** repopulting the earth.
I am going to paint drooping clocks
eat non-parishables ironically
and Die an honest man.