I must admit that I am bored.
Utterly bored, actually, with the overly romanticized construct of dominance.
How easily one can claim to be dominant.
Shocking? No.
We as human beings aspire to attain the intangible.
Exponential wealth. Immortality. Fame. Power.
We live in a world of illusion and fallacy.
We drive cars that we can’t afford,
often to jobs that we despise.
We attain validation through the media,
from blasé people that require it in return.
What I have found- and take this for what you will,
is that my longing for external dominance is simply a translation for
“By god please take control, and ground me to something real.”

Language drips from his tongue like honey,
skin kissed by the light of God.

when the smoke clears
and silence rings like static
Oh, shotgun in September
to my broken heart

crush my breath
like coal canary
Leave me gasping

red claws on your wrist
Was it truly her you kissed?

Drip
Drip
Drip

I try to keep my anxiety in a bucket
Some days I can empty the pale with cold and sluggish hands

Other days the thoughts trickle out and so I grab my mop put out my “caution” sign

But today there’s a flood
I have a teacup during Katrina
Not filled with Earl Grey

But I try anyways.

They say love is wild
Wreckless and unforgiving
Graffiti tears from glassy eyes
Flickering florescent lies
But his words soothed
Like black coffee at midnight

is that there has to be a top.

He will tell her to kneel
Like a cog in the wheel
Don't dare question or feel

Merely harness her thoughts
Simply bind them in knots
Her time has been bought

I am the wolf of Wall Street
I am a woman  
My empire, my rules
You invested your heart
And I brokered it for another

Enjoy the fruits of your labor,
or the fruits shall become labor.

Black craft paper in hand, you watch as the snowflakes land
Your kindergarten teacher explains that each one is "beautiful and unique"
But now as you look in the mirror you can see neither

When you were little you used to love to catch lightning bugs
You would watch them float in the Mason Jars, as the July air kissed your cheeks
But you don't notice the seasons anymore, do you?

For you, time passes unnoticeably
Lost between the coffee breaks and the heartaches
You push life aside
Until nothing
is really
left.

Life’s a game.
I am about to flip the table.

For once in your godforsaken life, just be happy for someone else.

like the shoulder blades of a panther
my attention slowly rises and falls
you think you are special baby
but your name I can’t recall

you’re lost within the Amazon
away from everything you have ever known
as the rain fills the river violently
you're scared to be alone

the world doesn't seem so friendly
when surrounded by every language but your own
suddenly the things you loved the most
will shred you to the bone

I'd draw you in
Following the careful line of your jaw
Down your neck
Across your shoulder
Letting the memory mold the natural curvature of your body
Pressing my own subjective view of your ascendant gaze into the back of my mind



Oh, yes my dear I'd draw you
Just to watch you burn

Whatever happened to “with liberty and justice for all”?

You say all lives matter, but you have never known when yours hasn’t

No, because you were born with an invisible knapsack full of privileges

While I was born with imperceptible shackles around my feet

And the system, praise the political system, because it has done you right

Because your self-worth, and your value in society was assigned to you at birth

But you claim you cannot see color,

And the truth is, I believe you

With your white schools, paid for by your white neighborhoods,

Embraced by your white government, sheltered by your white police force

How could you?

But I can see color.

For our jails are darker than the northern Atlantic sky,

While our government is lighter than the hoods slung up by the KKK,

We must embrace the permeation of a rigid political system

Segregation. Cannot. End. Without. Integration.

write as if your heart
were your lungs at the summit
then gasp for air, breathe

you're a sunbeam in a box
i am lost in summer equinox
taste like candy, look like gold
waiting on you to hold

Harley Quinn in Pop-Deco,
in padded rooms her nightmares echo.

Tragedy is heavy
It rests upon a gradient of scraped knees and broken hearts
Only those with tenacity will ever see the light

My friend Billy stated unapologetically over earl grey tea and orange zest scones that the premise of his all-time favorite novel consisted of a man having *** with a goat.
With some resistance, and perhaps skepticism, I asked him, “Why?”
“Because the world would be incredibly ******* dull if we all just wrote about humans containing stardust.”
“Well, we are all technically…”
“I understand that. We are also full of water and feces, animated toilet bowls if you will, but I doubt that would flow exceptionally well from my calligraphy pen onto a textured piece of paper. Humans are often no more than a messy and selfish group of animals, governed by the illusion of creativity, law, and morality.”
“Is that why it was your favorite novel?”
“No, I liked it because it was ******* hysterical.”

gotta get my **** together
embrace the change like the weather
simply move on like a feather
but pain holds me as a tether
maybe i'm a boat docked forever
waiting sails up for the zephyr

Those that doubt your will
Will stay fixed upon your failures
But pay them no mind

They needn't waste that too.

You will take me places, places you wanted to go, but never could

You will explain why it is that we wish upon wishing wells,

And I will take it upon myself, to learn how to dance upon your two big left feet



You will check the closets at night for monsters

Monsters made of coat hangers and misplaced sweaters,

Then you will leave.



I will wait for you to come home by the front door,

Mommy will drag me away, but I will always return

Not understanding that your absence was permanent



(Like the scars on my wrists)



You won’t be there to catch me when I fall off my bike,

No instead I will scrape my knees, wipe the blood on my pants, and try again



Then he will come into my life,

And he will tell me he loves me like you never did,

And I will believe him, and he will take everything



(Like you did with your suitcase, and my heart)



And then one day I will meet the one,

And he won’t understand why it is that I am so ******* broken

He will try to show me the beauty in the world and in the stars

Not comprehending that I can’t get past these scars

Under translucent layers of coffee cup rings,
Aged cigarette butts
And wrinkled receipts
Sits our picture...

It isn’t in a frame,
Pristine and pure like my wedding dress,
It is drained of most of its color,
Stale as the air that surrounds your lungs

It was the color of the sheet covering his body,
And the pigment of my bloodless face

“He shot himself.”
The sentence laced through my body like static.

Soft palmed cops offered obligatory condolences
While contemplating tonight’s dinner options

White
It was the church walls as your mother cried in silence,
And the film of dust now covering the kitchen counters
But it wasn’t the color of the walls, was it?

Across the sea upon a foreign land
In a language you could not understand
A daughter asked a father
How much longer?

And with a weary grin fixed to his face
He told his love about the place
Where freedom sung
Like church bells

I’ll be your house wife,
Red heels, and dinner in the oven
Yes Sir, you will live the high life
We can create our very own coven

I asked him what he wanted
to drink, and there was silence.
I cleared my throat and tried to search for some recognition of my existence in his eyes.
Yet, to my displeasure they were glazed over and deserted of light…
except for the mute reflection of his Ipad screen.

Look Up! I wanted to shout, but simply stood smiling.

His (I can only assume to be...) brother, nudged him after what felt like an eternity.
“Jack!” His brother grunted and returned his attention to a text he was sending.

“Water.” The boy snarled in response, barely flickering his eyes away from the screen.
I returned with his drink and the boy said nothing.
I glanced at the seemingly perfect American family of four from a distance feeling sad.
Not for myself, but for that little boy.

He will never know the luxury of a completely uninterrupted and benign conversation over a family dinner;
He will only know the comfort of having a game at the tip of his fingers.

And he will never know what it feels like to be at a sleepover where they really did play games.
The kind that required patience and not always getting the monopoly piece you wanted.
**** that thimble.

He will never know the excitement of rushing home when the street lights came on.

Will he even know what running barefoot through the grass feels like?
Will he know the sadness of catching a lightning bug and having to let it go?

He will not know the comforts of reading a book with a flashlight underneath his covers while a thunderstorm passes.

He will never be able to write a girl a hand written letter
Knowing the way to her heart through the careful art of making words with beautiful loops, crossed T’s, and dotted I’s

Nor will he know the anxiety that emulates when hoping to receive one back.

No, he will never know the privileges of an extravagantly simplistic society.

I never understood how it was,
that poets could use words bigger than themselves.

I wish someone- anyone would give a ****.
Just a curious soul that would appreciate my being, my poetry, or my photographs
Yet as I drain the last of the whiskey from my glass, I read the room with heavy eyes
Twelve. Twelve men are here, and three are staring back at me
All gawking at my body like hungry, brute, animals.
They do not care about my intellect, or my desires
They just want to wear me from the inside out

Is a *******
If seasons were people
He'd be Gregory House
Vicodin hungry
Volatile, Pins, and ******* Needles

i wondered once, upon the sea
in search of something beyond me
and in the storm i made my plea
please take me God, and set me free

but bow did rise against the wave
whistle of wind oh so grave
and storm of black she did brave
to new morn light the path she pave

as the tendrils of the night fog
slither around thick oak
bull frogs sing  and croak
when grey dove coo
the morning sun stretches
and fawn bed close to mother
all peckers begin their work early
with red robins following suit
today red fox trots to the river
as honey bees rouse beneath quick feet

Have to confront her
People pass, smeared oil paintings
But oh there she is

Surrounded, but alone
The frenzy moves in catacomb
Public twilight zone

When you were seven,
You had been conditioned to react to the closing of a door
Like Pavlov’s dog, your reaction was impulsive and assuming
Only it wasn’t Pavlov’s dog floating in the above ground pool
Behind existential and translucent eyes
A worn Louisville rested in your left palm
You sat behind that open door,
Begging him to close it with every fiber of your being.

You're the jazz that melts around these tall tall buildings
Smooth as the smell of Château Margaux
Bold as the city lights that accentuate the night

The word pierced my heart,
then pulsed into my mind like warm venom.

Music has the ability to strip us raw.
Regardless of color or creed we are connected through the crescendos that expose our shared vulnerabilities.

Our love isn't stardust
nor songs on repeat
oh no my dear,
our love is semisweet.

It is tired eyes
and messy hair
the screaming of obscenities
into the air without a care.

It is knowing
on days I am too much to bear
that you love me for who I am,
and you aren't going anywhere.

I will own your soul.

Perhaps for just a moment...
As your right hand caresses the page
I will procure your consciousness
As the dishes in the sink rest
As the ceiling fan lethargically laces the room


I will make you feel unapologetically alive.

Language ripples thought
Through soft Spanish undertones
By beryl waters

The frustrated poet runs his fingers through his hair,
then strikes the last word of his final verse in despair

Across town, a painter incinerates a wooden facade of a steeple
For the existential artist, hell is truly other people

But the sculptor who whittles his work with a knife
Is solely the one who values his life

For he understands that the process of creation,
Does not rest within pre-calculation

It was an esoteric statement,
Perhaps one only a beast could understand