he had low-grade
tattoos on his neck
and his clothes
wore transparency.
beneath his eyes
held a dying sun.
he spoke in thanks
and respect, the cuts
upon his wrists called
reached a finger out
and called my eyes
to say hello,
he spoke in gratitude
for the smoke i gave him.
he smelled like cigarette
stained couch cushions
he spoke a respectable
ebonic intellect.
his fingernails
were unswept
floor trim
and his teeth
were smashed
dinner plates
at his mother house.
departing he said
thank you
and i offered him
a cigarette for the road
and he refused and said
“for talking to me”

she is an asylum,
her walls drip blackness
writing every word
that neglected
to slip past her
teeth,
she sleeps on
****-stained spring
mattresses as the
clod tiles bite
at her heels,
hair and skin hide
beneath her fingernails
as palms are twinged,
the padded walls
whisper screams
of coercion; wrists
bound by silence and
tightened by insanity.
to bedposts
rusted,
her hands retired on
ridged thighs
hugging her
goosebumps with
convulsions of agitation.
her mind
scratches melodies of an
insomniac,
the flickering lights choke
her vision and blind her speech.
a room of contradictions
irregulating regularities
intoxicating sobriety
hallucinating reality,
the muffled screams
that weave through
the fibres of the
pillow clinched tightly
in her lap harmonize
algorithms that pull
each padded wall
towards her howling
being — centrefold the room,
as the walls hug her body
she awakes and paints
antonyms to
perpetual despondency

I drink in order to write
and, often times,
I write to be able to to drink
without the fallout
that surely would
accompany it
otherwise.

There is a madness,
an itch in the back of the throat,
hoarse from screaming,
broken now and caught
on the knowledge
that no one has heard,
let alone understood,
again and again and…

her innocence is soluble
when dipped in
expectations,
her mirror;
like the bottom
of dinner plates,
her wrists are
tire marks on
gravel roads,
she sees not
what we see
but in what he
sees is what
she cares
but who is he
now?
a riptide splitting
face paint
saturday nights,
veins of toxins,
staring at roadkill
and streetlights
and garbage
hugging curb-sides
mixed with dust
days followed
with headaches
and remorse
dying not
I can see it in her
eyes
she’s only 16
                           MJB

i'm drinking
out of
the bottle
on a tuesday
and i have
to ****
but i'm
glued to
this chair
and the keys
are glued
to my fingertips.
the room smells
like cheep wine
and fresh
duvets
i can't seem
to leave
but i always
find a way to