My elbow pops
Like the way the word
Snap dragon sounds

My freckles aren't constellations
They're reminders that I am not
Dark and ancient
Like my ******* father

My hair
FRIZZY
Like a pumpkin on fire

Voice
So sweet it makes me sick
And now all my teeth have fallen out

My throat swollen
A cave with an avalanche stuck inside
Dead bats
And stalactites like toothpicks
I don't need

Nails
Like tree bark
Hollow in all the right places

Scars
Like a record
Of the way I hurt myself
Put it on Repeat
Till it scratches

Cheeks like high school
Like humiliation
With four eyes perching
Not lucky clovers

And eyes glued on
With one glued on wrong

And knees that I'm constantly falling down on

You lift the blinds
blinking
A message in a bottle
in the ocean between our homes
But you are a jellyfish

(When I was a child
you laid there
tender without oxygen
you blue little jellyfish
in innocence i tried to save you)

But you are a jellyfish
And I am a lighthouse
I can't save you
Only (mis)guide you

You stack Eiffel Towers
in your flowers
then cut elevator ties
Like it's World War II

I'm still so sensitive
in parts of my body
that have not been rubbed raw
by human touch

Sleeping on the edge of a cliff
  facing Northwest
I moved the sun
Now I can wake to its golden bloon
bathe me in the fresh air of daylight
           Caressing the nine minute old streamline
Pulling it closer
Like time does to me
              And I become ash

I wish I looked more like my heritage
So I could be exposed to hate
Without looking like a hypocrite

Today I will go binge eating the alphabet
And coughing up peacock feathers
from my fox like habits
Of being sneaky
       And writing in the dark
  Or in my dreams

I wanna wake up
With stale breath
So I can ******* own venom

The night crawls under my skin
Fever delirium laced with heartbreak
in the cracks of my chapped lips
I let down my walls
Now kite drifting away like balloon let go
You were the walls of this maze called home
fog blanket me into Limbo called fever delirium hot and *****
icecream cone by the fireplace
defy the logic
cut the shoelaces
defy the logic
jump and walk on the sky
defy gravity
Swallow the whole **** ocean
Do the impossible

Have *** demand icecream for breakfast
throw punches in the street
Do drugs you don't know what they are what they do how they can hurt you
trusting abuse like a unicorn but it's just a horse
hear the dragon roar
Underneath the bed you make love on
your friends are sometimes the monsters
Spilling the probation all over the floor
Realize he's not sleeping next to you
He doesn't love you anymore

You can tell she hurts
Lives away from home
Digs teeth into words like wounds will heal like they are stitches
Fall for boy in coffee shop
Leave dream boat to pursue reckless thought

You give leaves
He gives you hope
Helps your lighthouse at sea float
Secretly as you sleep inside the sun
When your lighthouse work is done
He paints over the stripes
He thinks it is like the love story of your mother and father

She is angry with a tiny clustered house with the smell of her smoke filled lungs
He paints every room like reversing time
But it's all pretend, just men being men

Let the leaves burn
Steal the words from books
Cut them out
Cut your heart out
And try again

The bonsai crawls
with trepidation(of the sun)
from her belly button
not wanting to leave the safety of her
Mother

I didn't want you in my pants
So I put on a dress

Poetry is like laundry
And sometimes,
all day
You just want
to fold origami

I'll be on the front lines
Fighting fireflies on a Golf Course
With a butterfly net

Collecting ghosts in mason jar
to plant back on the cemetery
The crows are making nests
in the skull of your family

They accidentally put
the wrong name on yours
And in Latin!
It's ok though, because you're
(were) Are?  a nihilist

The river Nile is the
best stream of consciousness
Known to man and of
Course that's where you drowned
your metaphorical thoughts
While you hung yourself above
a treadmill trying to pretend
you wanted to be a better
man

But you only ran away

The Stonehenge is the front gate
to your home
          It's made from
      billboards and
Pictures of static
When you're dead you
                        Live in White Noise

You're turning my lights
on and off
               as I'm trying to sleep
haunting me in
my over easy eggs
making the yolk run
in words "Miss me?"

And of course I do
But you are as good a my imaginary friend

When I'm walking in the
park with all the scarecrows
you make the dandelions
float, no amount of
wishes is bringing you back

I know boards of wood are
easier to you than the termites
eating the tumor in my brain
          from the insanity you're causing me

So instead I paper mache my
room with love letters from you
that got lost in the mail
because you stole them for me
A banksy bankrupt in original thought

I'm building a tiny forest
             of matches
If I can't sleep I'm joining you

So you pack your bags, hobo
style but with
Picnic baskets and dead leaves
Seancing yourself
With the crystal ***** of my eyes

I lost you in some newspaper ad
about a Home for sale
Does it come with a family?
How is that legal?
But I lost you because I bought the wrong copy and couldn't find that one blurry word that was you saying
Good morning

I lost you at sea
  And in my dreams
      And to your own hands
   And to my own memory

I'm dancing with wolves
Called Alzheimer's
because I'll die
with a disease of age
Instead of house burning, building leaping
Front Page

Then we'll go live in abandoned
amusement parks with creaky
Ferris wheels turning
Like you in your grave
And me with the Cycle of Life

You sit in sunshine
While nighttime caresses my lips
And sleepiness is a war keeping me
from your morning
You fit into tomorrow
While the past is a circle trying to be a square

We met on 9/11
Not the same as when
But years later
You're my twin towers
And I should have known
We were gonna crash and burn

Collaboration
Bundles and fibers
Soul and science
Defiance

Da’ Vinci took my hands, Galileo my logic
Aristotle and Plato my mind
Gandhi and Theresa my heart
Others the ability to dream
The King Jr. compassion

Jews the capability to forgive
The oppressed the willingness to live
Darwin took my curiosity
Who handed it down to Einstein and Marie Curie

Others take some, many take none
But all the power of ambition
To strive to become
Human

I was given a Pet Plant
like a dog
collar and all
Ohh wait
That's women

              ≁≁≁

She coughs up metaphors
like it's consumption and the 1920's
All that blood looks like freedom

              ≁≁≁

Tentacles like teacups
And I drink the poison

There's something so sick about
        this emotional capacity

Before breakfast we plant atomic bombs in our neighbors yard
                                                            ­   like bulbs of (glad)iolus
Haven't you noticed how much gardens look like graveyards

My cereal, ceiling, bathroom, and skin
        All say Made in China
This homeland is looking more like that land
Ughhh and you can see the blood in my pink nail polish from that sweat shop girl
It's not supposed to be RED!

ooOooopps did we just learn how to commercialize genocide
I'm wondering when I'll wake up with a barcode
Will it be on my eyelids
             my arms                                           my soul

Maybe God was in the bees
And now
Now there's no more honey, flowers, or trees
  
                       Just time.

My brothers both went to war
It's not Wal-Mart
But it's open 24/7, checkout through Heaven
And I don't think they're coming home

Not without bones implanted in their brains
sharp, jagged, broken ones
That kind that make you uncomfortable with your memories
The one's that make it hard to sleep

Last week I found a dead cat
  A dead bird in the snow
When I turned around the corner, I saw myself

I was lying in the street
          Dead, dead
And I felt nothing

I don't want to think about you
So I read about the latest Plane Crash

Talking to you is riding a roller coaster
I can feel the adrenaline
i remember the crash

Of the waves
And a bath/ a shower
It doesn't matter
No water is hot enough
To wash your flesh a  w     a       y

Underground
Hair still growing
My curls fall like the fibonacci sequence
Convincing me there's some pattern to this madness

And now
All that's left is
A mirror, a maus, and a Cashmere Cat

The mailbox hangs open/
Trying to breathe

I've written soo much
But I haven't posted
Like marshmallows
Instead of I've roasted

(Me) With hair of cotton candy & bird's nests
(You) Sticks for legs
(Me) Pieces of glass in my knee cap
                   in the curve of my cheek
(You) Bleeding heart, it's getting all over
                                the carpet

You're like a window
Light shines through
But it's dark inside

Cardigans for Curtains
All those lovely shapes, beside
Depending on the weather
Sometimes you're blue (Don't forget I can see through)
Sometimes you're black
Sometimes stars get stuck
           Fixation, Oxygen deprivation
Where would we be without you...?
                    dot, dot, dot, Question

The stars get stuck in the cracks
Obviously a metaphor for your flaws
And these lines/curves/obscurities
                  of my vision
Help me see you

Prism, dancing, and trying to age like wine
Getting, getting better all the time

Reflect it back
   Childhood
Magnolia leaves
Currently being abandoned
             Streets
Real Estate
   And different Paint

Then College
NOT taking you're money
"Too bad, see you next time honey"

Lanterns and Moths like houseguests
   Here to assess the property damage
You are not Real Estate

You are a Window
Light shines through

Ivy like a crown
Curtains like a blanket
You're looking from the corner
Feeling like the abandoned streets
Ex boyfriend like kids throwing stones
                      their blind, so they usually miss...you're beauty

You may crack, fracture, fractal
But you are Urban
                   There will be renewal

Here comes the repairman (Not that you need a man)
            Band-aids & stickers
Heartache like a stomachache
And he's looking in

There's the Windowsill
Light Shines through

You are more than a Window
But it's dark inside

You stare at a black box
You say you like it better this way
Where the disconnect
Cannot affect

Troubled by this regurgitating behavior of  
Reducing our senses to sight
Because we barely listen

The box doesn't stare back
A disease lies hidden underneath
Asking permission to speak

She pulls the wires from her wrists
Audible pops
Like octopus suction cups
come from her brain

Shocks like jellyfish
And static
sizzle sizzle
In her eyes

Her lips on mute
Like she is the device

-You'd be healthier on another planet
-You'll be happier in another life
-You feel like something is missing
-You still care
-Every(no)thing is never enough
-You wait for death because of
                                what comes after

I'm thinking about that boy
                       Lost at Sea
His eyes glazed over like a dead fish
                      Death is a form of knowledge

She was a storm
        He never knew he was in her eye(s)
But Tempest is, as Tempest does

He was lured by Siren song

Coral reefs,
                  Hands, with nails too long
I swear bees lived in them
              Jellyfish like flowers
              Pollen from their electrical Zaps!
And they burrowed deep

Messages in a bottle were collected
        by the Hermit crab, not some mermaid
His library ancient like the ones in the desert
                                                          ­  Or the CIA

ii.
I'm thinking about that boy
                       Lost at Sea

He was swallowed by a Plastic Whale
(He did try to escape Media & Capitalism &...)
A(t)las he was in the wrong Hemisphere
    More like Pinocchio
Just really good at telling lies

Nets from old volleyball games
                   from the Future
dance like river sprites
            far from home

Volcanoes are failing
                             At making new land
Wolves become whales
Pyramids sink and are like cheap motels of Atlantis
We're all just gambling on one Apocalypse or another

iii.
I'm thinking...bubble..bubble
            He's drowning
Or maybe he forgot how to breathe

Suddenly hooks catch his ankles
        Harpoons & Atomic bombs melt
     the plastic right of the bones                            of the whale
Like a WWII fighter jet and target practice

Blood limps in currents
Jaws plays in his peripheral of his hippocampus
The Great White passes him by
Because he's not seen as important, we're not talking about ego here

He takes off the anchors from his shoe laces,
He was just trying to stay grounded
But now he was just a Bad Pun
with his Lungs the punchline

His airhead carries him to the surface
He's just a boy

He can breathe
This lost boy at Sea
He makes a raft from his memories
      And ties them together with ropes of trauma
The kind of things you don't forget

Like your name,
         your parents
that time you were a piece of wood split in two and later when the splinters finally settle       you're thrown into the fire
The kinds of things you don't forget

He floats towards mirages
Typical, it's not paradise
Ships and planes
           A Sunkyard
As if we built a factory in the sea
            And it got sick  
Coughing up decades of gears and
pieces of a time machine
             Oil and blood being same thing
             Of course
And Seagulls melting into toxins
         Like the new, like mini dinosaurs
A cycle of Fossil Food

iv.
Amelia,
          The reason this boy was lost
                                      at sea
Looking for a woman real mythology
But it should've been Lockhart
Because unrequited is easy to come by

The compass was made from his blind love
It was obvious, this misdirection
A Bermuda Triangle kind of affection

So...he explores the ruins
   Of Japan
Tsunami and temples
Cute girls and dimples
Fish food only made the news for so long

Sometimes when you put a seashell to your ear
you can hear Shōnagon
             or the screams of little girls in Sailor uniforms
Their own uniforms like an arranged marriage

               Tectonic plates roll the Earth
                                into Sushi  
Last week California
                   took a swim
She was feeling a little Hot

v.
I'm thinking about that boy
                       Lost at Sea
And he's trying to walk on the waves
                       Like a Savior
He can't even save himself from his own ego
      It's like the Mariana trench
If she didn't have all that depth

She was just Another girl. His lust was vast, that compass might as well                                        
                    ­                                                                 ­ have been in his pants

Soon he can't tell

The sky from Sea
Or himself and Humanity
He looks down and can't see his toes
                then his knees

He's been lost at sea too long...
Fog like *******
Sea ****
He's been lost at sea too long..

So he becomes a Seahorse
Tries to be a Father
              without any Sand dollars or a Safe Harbor

My mother was beautiful,
              She was an Iceberg
You hurt her with all your global warming

She moves on Slowly
     Settles for a Lighthouse
Who only looks at her so often

The Moon reincarnates me
Because I am the tide.
           Rising, falling
   Constant
Just the Historian.

The clouds outside are like a pale suffix to your name

Wired like a loaded gun
Waiting for the morning sun
Hello! How are you today

And I wonder
My love
Should I take the sun from you
Put it in a box of darkness
Like setting

I spread the ashes of a love never in love
just a circle venn diagram make believe but not Peter Pan
And love
I love you so
I am the sun
And I shine for no one

So box of darkness
Here I come

Speckled star dust farm eggs
Fresh renewed self conviction
Moon born
Phasing through to a life
Without you

Hedonism blood pulse
Still sentimental soul
Selling out to the lone wolf
Sneaky fox

Flowers tainting memories
Hand holding cheek kissing nostalgia bliss
Don't think
Of the one you will miss

Just kiss
Supernova
Little sunhat at nighttime party
Don't don't listen to the lies you whisper to yourself
You are the one you'll miss
If you don't help yourself

Feast on sin and self-righteousness
Reincarnation is second chance
Listen to the hands with the carnations outstretched
Fellow stranger with star burnt eyes
caring for those self told lies

You cheat
yourself
with handholding cypress knees bending towards
neurons collapsing
into the one who
Binary stars you
Binary stares at you
Holds you in your sleep from far away
Dream meeting past life fleeting into the now
You answer to this highschool crush pop quiz invader of reality
Who questions what color to paint the moon
Never almost drowning
But who has only ever taken a life
that belonged to them alone
relating in fictional patterns of physics
Undeniable wavelengths
colliding crashing consoling
You knew from the first eyes
that seeds of doubt would sprout in what you mislead as love
And you ask
Why not?

Hello,
        today is not tomorrow.

There is a man with a TV head
And he is screaming
But no one can hear
Because he's on mute

Deep sea memory diving

I'm excavating your ribcage
Looking for answers
Of when things went wrong

I'm no mathematician or buddhist priest
But I'm really good at French toast
And overcomplicating myself

I convinced my coworkers I'm a vampire
Even though I'm vegetarian
The only kind of bloodlust I have
Is for loggers
(They took away my Mother nature)

I'm also really good at being over-dramatic
In a non serious way
You're wearing broken ankles on your wrists
How did those get there?

                                                         ­            Did you walk all over me
                                                              ­       With your hands
                                                           ­          Around my neck

Your hands were the noose that will pull the trigger and make me swallow all those sleeping pills so that people realize my pillows aren't made from the ocean

                                                          ­            You are that critical blow, K.O.,
                                                           ­            last breath,
                                                                ­      That push over the edge                                              

I'm really good at letting my
Scars be neon flashing lights
and/or ants that are
crawling,biting, poisoning
my memories

Letting my past,
                    Make me a Ghost of Today

I'm excavating your ribcage
And everything checks out
But I think you left your
heart at the train station

We met during a meteor shower
at a party on Cloud Nine
And we were high, high, high
         out of our minds

Drinking the Elixir of Life
     From Vampire bartenders
The bumble bee of time
                whose sting is reality
And idealism is a crime

You were trying to plant trees
with seeds inside rain drops
Like Redwoods and Populus tremuloides

I  think your father was a giraffe made out of sticks from the Swahili language
              by the carpenter that is your mother
Who you look like

I wonder what you would carve from the
   wood of your harvest
A Wife like the Blue Fairy?

But you only saw in colors of green
With absinthe stuck in your teeth
you wear windchimes and windmills like earrings
and hummingbirds nesting in your ears
Your blood is honeysuckle

You caught me a Shooting Star,
              Calling me Eyelashes and Pretty dresses
I  like it best when the stars fall,
sizzle sizzle pop Like the beginning of time
and water fighting for its Life

I asked you, "Have you ever cut down a tree?"
            Pause button lingers on your lips
"What does that feel like?" I ask.
Your reply, "Hot, like the burn on your chest from the sword you made for the King of Aliens."
"He was just an Ex boyfriend" I reply.

You continue your work, eyeing as ghosts
     linger like houseguests on my shoulder pads
Pretending to be my consciousness
I put my morals in the recycling bin last week.
     And threw my soul into a Wishing Well.

You said you were going deep sea memory diving.
Amnesia a Past time, last time, previous life girlfriend you had
Who cheated on you with Reincarnation

You say that's why the dinosaurs
are extinct

I ask you if you need a ride home in my Time Machine.
It's made out of cardboard and childhood memories.

Connection
You might be confusing that with discretion

Lesson
Yeah I'll teach you two
Exactly to your heart
Is what I'll do

Second thoughts
Maybe that's
what you should do
Speaking truth or speaking rhythm
Now tell me what's the difference
I can sense the tension the friction the whole she bang
But bang not what I do

Teach I don't preach
Leech on your money
No I got my honey
Goin ham
No I am rabbit

Can't trap me in those lies
Seeking truth and denying
Bureaucrat wanna be
Just wish I could call my family

Family see no evil hear no evil
Do all evil
Believe father ******* whatever you call Him
He is no God
No gift of life
Just whole life struggle
Original sin from blood you were given
No choice
Mama too young
Almost not given her own voice
But thank God you
Rhythm helped you come alive
Scarecrow born in the field
Magic land but no fairytale

Modern society an epiphany of hell
Because we're still spillin blood
In our own streets
Serenity and peace
The enemy of greed
Feed the capitalist horse
Let's go Trojan
Owin to our past what our mother's have lived in
And
Overcome the sin that we falsely believe in plant the gardens in your heart
A seed is just a beginning

If so maybe I'll kiss you

"Hey, what are you doing tomorrow?"
Social Obligation like stress is a dead weight or a blood clot in the drain
And all I want to do is stay
In bed
Staring at plastic glow in the dark stars on my ceiling      in the daytime

Or sit in a Chair
Pretending to draw
Holograms like Finger Painting for a future
That's just as boring

I told you,
you'd forget me
Like that penny in the washer
On a Sunday afternoon
Or the dead bird
in brittle grass
with winter sun

The clothes are dry
The snow has melted
And memory fades as the seas turn to deserts
like the love you had for me

I gave him hickeys
  In the shape of the Summer Triangle

I'm finding replicas of you in my insomnia
Smoke pouring from my nose
A manifestation of self destruction

The fear of death playing my lover
Sleeping on my bed sheets in my place
There is no shelf for my carousel thoughts
Heart of alternating magnetic poles

The quiet and the noise of night
Condradictons becoming rule of life
Forgetting how to breathe
But still remebring you in this insomnia

Are you my father?
Or is that my grandfather?
Or my step-father?

Maybe the clock? Or Darth Vader?

Maybe I am only Mother.
Maybe I am only Earth.
Only Woman.

I'm angry
You think we are the enlightened
Still we are sheep
Followers not leaders
and were swamp deep

You devour words like 'porch' chops
The place with the swing
'Cause you're all just along for the ride
Buying in to cliche
Lying to ourselves that that
That That
is good poetry

I found you sleeping with price tags
             like tea bags
little men inside the barcodes

Dragging you to the forest
I plant you by your shoes
Digging your heel into the Earth
  to feel its heartbeat

I told you this story once before
       The little men are trying to build a cage around you
But I won't let you be
no Gulliver's Travels
I send them scurrying like ants
to Noah's Ark
They set sail for Wall Street

Only one sprout comes from
          your veins
And waterfalls have hope for you yet

I'm as faded
As that time you left the window open

And all my ladybugs & fireflies got out
            People started glowing
like my bioluminescent bonsai trees

And the spots from my ladybugs
         Fell off leaving black holes
Like the sewers
Where you hide your secrets from me

There is an alien who watches me sleep

He was from the moon
He said he wanted to see the ocean
               to me in my dreams
Sometime between time, Somewhere
Like 2 or 5 in the morning
             Sea Bound
                                     We took his spaceship

We settled in the ocean
Waves from home
Tide like a telephone
Just how they say hello

I think he just wanted to
             be human
I think he was
                  more than most

Repeat.
Rinse your hair
Is this (your) hair

My eyes big
     my vision small

Breathing lumpy
Like my mother's mashed potatoes

Dreaming
         Too bad you're not asleep.

You hate (them)
like electric teapots
and you wish you could stop
Stop the screaming

All I want to do
is make those fevered lights
fade
Make you the only creature in my world
And I try

But I can't

Stuck in this liminal timefold
              Rabbit Hole

You have cacti coming out of your eyes
Toothpicks in your teeth
Buzzards living in/on your feet
Content with eating the footsteps you follow
So you can't trace your way back home

We ate Frank Fleming's Tongue Cake
Smoking cigarettes in stone gardens where we're not supposed to
Looking Down Yosemite Valley and yeah we were in that valley
"They moved the piano." I tell you. I don't know where it's gone.
"I guess it was contemporary art."
I say, "You're contemporary art..." "Don't worry death is at the laundromat, not here." and I pull out my best Mona Lisa smile.

It's silent here, the color white seems out of place

Kerry James Marshall is speaking history to us
Renaissance is falling on deaf ears
I tell you I want a Native American cradle if I'm ever a mother
And the kids will have fishbones and legends
                                                       instead of Pop Art Princess, barbie

Sally Mann, she left me heartbroken
with silver prints/photocopies of childhood like ghosts
Botero's Reclining **** looks comfy
And there's a Dali missing.

We locked ourselves in boxes
& called them Relationships