paint me the way i used to be
before your vermilion dried in my veins
and clotted in my heart.
paint me the way i was
when my arms were lined with
yellow lace
and my very existence was a symbol.
once upon a time, in a far-away motel,
you painted my chest with green.
it looks like the forest floor, i said,
green moss and leaves,
life and growth.
you laughed soft,
dipping your brush in olive,
and told me it was gangrene.
the good only die young, you said,
tragic brushstrokes blooming on my chest.
i whispered words to you in the night,
and you tried to do the same
but all you managed was to mumble colors and techniques,
waiting until daybreak to show me what you meant
colors and shapes in the cold light of dawn.
february choked you
and you were a study in blue:
“cerulean figure with palette,”
“cerulean figure at window,”
“cerulean figure trying to find words that mean the right thing,
but coming up empty
again.”
you loved to hear me speak
but hated to respond
so you’d draw for me instead.
on a bus running from the city
you drew a picture of me,
face like christ upturned to heaven
halo of refuse ‘round my head.
the savior of abandoned things
the messiah of rot,
who would die for the soul of every landfill -
you drew me bleeding by a dumpster,
holy bruises on my arms.
paint me the way i used to be,
before you taught me of cangiante and notan
before i spent all my words on you,
ripped the pages from the dictionary
to explain your thoughts to you.
paint me the way i used to be
when my heart was yellow lace
and every word was alive.
paint me the way i used to be
and i’ll drown myself in your watercolors.

that should be the name of a song
or a poem
or a memoir of a man who remembers nothing but
danger that passed him by,
ruffling his hair as it passed,
ignoring his pleas:
stay please stay please stay
i just want to mean something,
he would say
(that could be the subtitle
or the blurb,
something to draw the reader in; if floating bodies aren’t enough)
i just want to mean something,
and near-death experiences are the flavor of the day.
i’m not brave enough to do it myself,
i’m not a hero
or a villain,
just a lonely boy, undefined individual,
and your 350 teeth can help me mean
so much more,
350 individual teeth that float above my head,
falling out one by one as you bloat with seawater
(and here the first chapter would end,
here we would break for intermission,
audience smiling over martinis.
only 32 teeth, did some fall out?
too many maraschino cherries will do that to you.
too much sugar on the rim of that glass)
dead sharks in the current and none glance twice
i keep yelling but they just
deflect my bubbles,
and the surface swallows them like the heartless ***** she is
i keep yelling but they just move farther
i keep yelling but stay please stay please stay
i just want to mean something.
i just want some blood on my hands
is that so much to ask?
i just want some of my blood in the water,
to be a survivor
or a victim
(whichever gets more press coverage;
who cares about a memoir that nobody reads?
who cares about a memoir where nobody gets hurt?)
i just want shark teeth in my heart,
he would say,
i don’t want to make a mark on the world,
i want the world to make a mark on me.
that should be the name of a song
or a poem
or the eulogy of a boring man.

i heard a girl once say,
if i could
i would drown
in poetry.
i would throw myself
into a sea of verses
and sink in splendor.
oh, no, i thought -

no you wouldn't.

if there was a sea of poetry
the coasts would be ringed with barbed-wire
and electric fences,
and signs that yelled warning
keep out
undertow
and swim on risk of death -
the beach would be littered with broken glass
from all the drunks that took their last drink
on the edge of a stanza.
the water would be turbulent
and *****
and cold,
and you might admire it one twilight,
when the sun is drowning and turning the sea
red,
and you'd say, oh
that's beautiful.
and you'd take a photo of yourself
grinning with the sunset at your back
and leave.

i heard a boy once say,
if i could
i would drown in your poetry.
oh, no, i thought.
no you wouldn't.
why is drowning such a common theme
in the minds
of readers of poetry?
i imagine it seems
romantic,
in some twisted morbid way -
but i think seeing a bloated corpse
pallid with seawater
missing a limb
or two
would put these delusions to rest.
i imagine seeing
the corpse of a poet
missing a heart
or mind
would put these delusions to rest.

you don't want to drown in poetry.

you want to watch me drown.

i heard a boy once say
if i could
i would drown in your poetry.
so says the boy who calls himself an artist
because he can play
'hey soul sister'
on guitar
and will prove it every chance he gets.
you don't want to drown in my poetry,
and even if you did
i doubt you could -
if poetry was bodies of water
you would throw yourself into a hotel swimming pool
miles away from the polluted lake
where i wash in stagnant water.
if poetry was bodies of water
you'd have someone build a koi pond in your backyard
and call yourself a poet.
if i could
i would drown in your poetry,
he said
and i told him to prove it.

if i could
i would drown in poetry,
she said.

the only people who say
they want to drown in poetry
are the people who don't know what it means.

the only people who drown in poetry
are the people who have no choice.

to tell you the truth – sometimes, I feel quite withdrawn.
sometimes, I feel so tethered down like a hot air balloon in the clouds with an anchor on the ground.
I feel like gravity is holding on too tight, and not tight enough all at once…
the truth is, I don’t know whether I’d rather be up there or down here.
I don’t know where I’d go if I actually thought I had a choice.
the green grasses of Edenborough, the sandy shores of Greece,
that one spot in the middle of the ocean where the waves lie still, and silent,
or the eye of a hurricane making it’s way to land.
or would it be to the furthest star, hidden in the darkest corner of time?
or the smallest atom, hidden in the darkest corner of your mind?
if I could go any where, I don’t know where I’d actually go.
there’s just so much… so much… so much.

I've never been in love, but it must be like waking up from a lovely dream.
It's probably something like a road trip without a destination.
I hope it's that feeling in your stomach as the roller coaster is dropping, electricity coursing through your veins.
Maybe it's like a camera, freezing moments that feel like forever.
I bet its something like the glittering embers in the sky, just after a firework burst into a dozen lights.
I'm sure love is like a constellation, where you can connect the dots to create a story.
Love must be like rain drops on a window, accumulating slowly, then racing to the brim of the frame.
I think love is like an eclipse. The sun and the moon circling the globe, in search of each other. And when they finally meet, the world stops to watch.
For me, I know love is a dusty typewriter, waiting for its story to be written.

So you say you want your life to be beautiful, filled with adventure and exciting events at every corner.
So you say you want your life to be teeming with love, friends welcoming you at the door, family laughing with you, and your lover close by.
So you say you want your life to be happier, because it isn't looking too pretty now, your hopes dripping from the faucet into the drain.
So you say you want your life to be better, so
Make it.

just addicted to lovelessness,
i guess,
addicted to the feeling of something that could be
a distant cousin of loss,
but can’t be loss when it wasn’t there to begin with.
a cousin of loss and brother of bereavement,
a lexiconical gap
in the english maw,
a space where the definition slipped out
but the word never grew in.
a gap where a word should be,
a word meaning missing something you never had,
losing something that was never yours,
grieving for something that never looked your way
or graced you with its pain.
insomnia of the soul,
unable or unwilling to droop into the catatonic stupor
of love,
until my eyes ache with open,
and my heart aches with empty
and just beautiful aches and pains,
like stiff joints filled with sterling silver
or arthritic necklace clasps.
my tongue is tin because the argentine
is in my hands,
silver in the space between the carpals,
oozing precious metals
onto the page.
writing in second-best so that it’ll stay.
writing second-rate love letters
and pretending they’re real,
like the words i moan mean something other than
hello
i’m lonely
who are you?
like i’m not the girl who cried love
because the village had already learned
that wolves are lies,
and vice versa.
because faking it has always been my favorite pastime.
i’ll write love poems forever,
keep feeding my addiction for as long as it stays,
let my loveless track marks bloom cantankerous sores
on my ribs.
while i’m young
i’ll write poems of arthritis and weakness
and death,
because oh now i am immortal
invulnerable and omnipotent,
but when my bones are brittle and my flesh is loose
and my spine makes me bow to the earth,
my poems will be of life and strength
and god
because darkness is only beautiful when it isn’t
an imminent looming
future.
when i know i may die tomorrow,
i will write of bluejays
and of a love that never found me,
though it knocked on all the doors and called all the numbers,
waited on my porch while i hid in the closet,
nursing my ache
trying to fill a lexiconical gap
with bukowski
and insomnia.
supersaturated with emptiness
because all the words in the dictionary
can’t make up for the one that’s missing.
it changed the locks when it came,
shutting me out of my skull,
taking residence in my chest
and growing larger with each slow breath.
every huff of oxygen fed my
resident,
every injection of
late nights spent just writing,
every pill popped -
the lies that went down better
if i said them with a gulp of gin.
so my lovelessness cracked my ribs as it grew,
replaced my marrow with sterling silver
and i watched it happen like
a glacier devouring a desert
because i knew i would never survive loving something.
deserts were never made to run bounteous
with water.
just addicted to lovelessness,
i guess.
addicted to silver joints
and words that don’t exist.

The closest I have ever been to anyone
Has always been a spark to start me
My inspiration, the heat that lights it all up
Such fiery passion, longing and desire

I gravitate towards it
Ever so slightly addicted
Lusting after the lustrous glow
Illuminated by the moonlight

But set ablaze
By the Arrow.