YOU HAVE
TO WANT IT



MAN
“go outside,” the doctor says,
“stand on the grass for fifteen minutes a day.”
you’re here because today you want to get better.
“tell me how you’re feeling.”
“I’m scared.”

“I mean physically.”
“so do I.”




ANGEL
an angel can come in a burst of a blister,
on the tip of a finger.
he always starts small
with the whispers,
         “i know about love,”
   like you asked for it.

he prefers to come at the end of the month,
            amid deadlines, another set of blood-soaked, ruined *******,
some traces
     of the relationship with your father and failure.
but you like that: having an excuse that sends you
   scrambling for car keys.

    at first it’s forests, their fires,
the flowers that follow once the ash and skin and soil
are mixed. at first it’s earth and rubbing it in,
     seeing god behind your eyelids.

so you clean the pipes, keep washing sheets.
      the voices they stop coming; once in a while you
      read online how many kids this week have overdosed
    on ****** and it’s foreign. kids with dirt
under their fingernails, kids in basements, kids
with ***** canvas shoes and overgrown cuticles.
           they don’t look like you. you still look like
you.




MAN
                   mike sparks a j in the basement.
        we chew on xanax and no one’s paying attention to the TV.
some white static and early afternoon rain. it’s made me gone
ghost, sitting on a leather recliner, silent with a cigarette.
              it’s a right of initation to carve your name in mike’s
coffee table and sign on the back wall. this summer I added
   mine alongside the kids I used to get nervous around in high school.
                       his mom comes downstairs with a joint of her own rolled
and a French manicure. her lip liner is too dark for her
lipstick, and phil’s warmly lit and ivan leans so far into the
couch he isn’t human.

mike sits up, “ma,
you know you owe me some money?” he changes the channel.
she laughs throaty, her insides a swamp. she’s
prettier when she’s high like this.
                       “I got your money,” she promises. it gets soft
from there and phil smiles over his body and ivan moves
further into the couch. she touches mike’s hair.

“good kid,” she tells me and I smile up at her. I wish I had
a body but I left it wandering through
the thunderstorm outside. ivan nods his hazy head.
          mike hands her a diet coke and she hands him a fifty and she goes—through the walls—
       phil digs his hand into the couch cushions to find papers. I go
ghost in the seconds it takes him to spark his lighter.

the ghost lights herself a cigarette.
   the ghost lights herself another cigarette.
               the ghost lights herself a cigarette. “are you chain
smoking now,” phil slurs playfully. “yes,” the ghost agrees.
     “are you having fun,” ivan turns to her.
                “yes.”

HUMAN
i don't want to know what love is like i want
                                       air that
                     tastes like apples and
       i want real raw
         brown sugar
       i want to shoot up every
grey second for two weeks— get frantic then
       take benzodiazepine until i shred my
stomach lining, singing
                                                    
            i want bud light and
a backyard. bed time stories and
            white furniture and ritz crackers
             with fancy party cheeses
                              i want to complain about the drinking age,
                              new york’s black-dusty wind charm. complain like the
                              moon is still lonely and not a destination
                                          i want to wake up in the sun spot
                                          i want to wake up to a baby crying
                          soft like mothers do, going to
                                     that dear one to quiet them down,
                                        i can be here to kiss you calm
                                                              i want to get out of bed
                                                              i want to call friends back
so winter can come and i can still
                              go home.



       WANT
         throwing on the rag&bon;; jeans,
         neither rag nor bone more milky skeleton-ized, eyes
         pin headed. faces struck yellow all tops of the heads
         with umbrellas and sorry throats. "here take mine" no
         "you'll get sick" it's fine
                                                        the gothic church with social strangers
                                                       ­ tweakers and nodders all smiley side-
                                                        eye­-Y
                        i know the gimme gimme
                        i know the routine
         and blondie (they think) here she comin she twenty years clean
         blondies a baby she weak as **** she dont know what she got
but i know the "i want" "i want"
         and the ok baby,
         Got U




HUMAN
i dont want to know what love is like,
                  i want to walk the manhattan bridge at sunrise
                  i want
                       grass wisps and capers
                       chicken noodle soup
                       a night at the new york city ballet
                       and pauses in sentences, in breath
                       the breath before a kiss or the breath
                       after it. i want instant hot chocolate
                       and reality television, ugg slippers with
                       faux trim. a bicycle painted lilac with a
                       basket, and clear skin. i want pier 63 on
                       a 70 degree day, the weepies playing
i want to be a ghost
            where ghosts are white sheets with two button eyes
             and make jokes about halloween and their past lives
i want to go there
to street fairs
and watch fireworks and write out names
in fresh concrete patches
                                                     i want to eat blackberries in the bathtub
                                                     i want skin to make me feel safe again
                                   i want to want to live
                                   but i know the "i want" "i want" and the ok baby,
Got U




WANT

they were right,
                               they were all
              going (right
they were righjt
they were right

air hanging eyes to dry
blood pull in push out brown golden push IN
  

they were right they were all right
nothing could ever make me as happy again



WANT

it’s a hold on something so quiet and soft in your hands and no one knows what it is and you dont know what it is. it’s the pin drop in a hospital room and so lemonade refreshing. im in a snowstorm and i cant see the city, cant see past my own two feet. im on a long highway drive and it’s rain that comes in sheets so hard i cant move. i walk and the world writhes underneath me and we put needles in our arms. and we wait for the blood push. and i watch my life go away in warm *******. and i watch it go this way like it’s not me. and i’m going home to ****** and i’m scared, i say outloud to maggie, “i’m scared i’m going to do something stupid,” and she is so quick to say “like what” that i know she knows what it is. and i’m so scared.





WANT

give up on me , I Know where im going. don’t follow. don’t even look for me. keep
Counting sugar cubes and stirring your coffee , it is my wish for you that it always tastes sweet.
I love you












WANT


i just wanted to be kept warm by something that looked like love



MAN
i walk slower on the streets of manhattan; stop at
   the strand, look for the man with eyebrow rings
asking "do you know where a girl in this city could get some relief?"
         he laughs, says he just looks like someone who would know
            that. he asks, "is that Monster Blood?”
                             &nbsp

Nuts falling as psalms,
From storied arms of Hazel tree,
  .  .  .  Blue jays turning leaves.

If you find it so offensive
that I don't passively accept the *******
you so zealously defend
with phoney statistics and appeals to irrelevant authority,
perhaps you should try to empathize
with how offensive that ******* may be
to a person who values and respects
individuals' divergent opinions.

Then again, in thy defense,
they don't really seem like thy opinions,
they've just been programmed into thee
from a malleable age
by others
who cannot stand a bit of honest dissent
for the sake of earnest
social and spiritual progress.

You're a proper product of your environment.
Your upbringing is bringing you down.

If you want to overgeneralize
and make less options available
that many have fought so hard to make possible,
go live somewhere where you won't have the freedom to choose for yourself
even if it does tend to be an illusion.

But, I know
you don't want to have fewer choices,
you just want others to have fewer choices.

As a philosopher,
I find that ******* disgusting.
Appalling.
Abhorrent.
Evil, even.

If your school of thought
is said to be so 'holy,'
how can it produce such evil people?
I guess it's *******,
either on the teachers' part,
or on the students' part,
or, not unlikely:
both.

A boat that cannot be rocked
is probably an unsafe boat.

A boat that can take a rocking
is more likely to be seaworthy.

It is worth it to find out which boat you're in
before you're committed to it on the open seas of Life.

(Maybe they put you in the unsafe boat on purpose..)

Thy traditionalism
binds thee to a bygone era
of sexism, feudalism, and prejudice.

If it is thy choice
to sacrifice thy free will and curiosity
to that ages old cult,
I venture to claim that you deserve to,
just don't expect any sympathy
from this devout skeptic;

I rock the boat
not to destroy what's good,
but to try to **** out what isn't healthy.

It's nothing personal,
I'm just fond of Devil's Advocacy
in the face of a straw-man argument.

The only thing more blaring
than the fallacies in your claims
is your blind and willing ignorance.

We all seek comfort,
but allowing your intellect to be usurped
for someone else's benefit
is a self-sacrifice seldom worthy of existing.

Some falsely believe that knowledge brings comfort,
but I know that it is only the willingness to deny such comfort
that makes such comfort attainable.

You aren't comfortable,
you're just shut off from the world.

Have the courage to step outside your own mind,
have the courage to step back from yourself and your ego
even if for just a little while,
and perhaps you shall find
that it was only you holding you back,
all along.

Do not hate:

learn;
forgive;
transcend;
seek to understand.
Grow;
nurture;
live;
love:
before it's too late
to reconcile yourself with your truest self.

Stop being used by your mind
and start utilizing it's potential:
be yourself and become the greatest possible actualization of your Godself.

No philosophy is an enemy,
only One's philosophobia is.

I want to be married and have kids one day
I want to have a real job, both work and play
I want to be a bridesmaid for my best friend
I don't want this life ever to end
But these dreams won't come true
And it's all because of you
You never take care of yourself
All you do is ignore your health
I want to be able to write my own song
I want to be able to sing alone
I want to impact someone's life
I want to be someone's wife
But if you don't control your disease
You cannot do any of these
So I beg you please, there's only one thing to do
Take care of the most important person; You