Sometimes, it is not about
rising to the challenge
because falling from grace

Just hurts.
It just hurts.

Teeth stained red-
This is not a smile
And this is not a success story,
it is just a story

about life

and it hurts.

You're looking for him because he's family

Simple as that

Ain't no thing but that, dear

He's family

So look for him

Find him

And let him go

Because darling,

Just 'cause he's your family

Don't carry much weight

In the souls of the wandering

Call me when

All that matters is
Empty pop bottles lined up
like toy soldiers
beads of summer rain slipping down the glass

Call me when

All that matters is
The garden bed dusted with snow
imprinted with little ticks of sparrows' feet
small enough to fit on postage stamps

Call me when

All that matters is
The chair in the living room
next to the blue bookcase
that houses all of the books by foreign authors
from places we always wanted to go

Call me when

This is home to you again.

Come, faith
Steady my doing
And bless these thine crooked paths
That they may never lead to ruin
And if they do, that ruin be as breathtaking as the walls of Jericho before Joshua
Or Bathsheba’s smile

And if we be but mortals
Take my hand, anyway, dear one
And we will walk the path together.

The thing about women
is that we are taught to be nothing
Consistently
and yet
still, after all this time
We manage to be something

Nations and nationalism;
Religion and re-legend

Grandmother killed the wolf, didn't she?

There is another, separate story
the retelling of an old legend
(all things important are lost in the retelling)

The man turns into a monster at the sight of a
full moon,
turns back again only when somebody loves him.

I think about that grandmother often,
sitting by the fire with a
rifle in her lap-

The things she's seen

The wolves she has left to ****

In the other story, the other legend,
It's the grandmother who loves the wolf
and turns him back

And I think that this one is truer, somehow

Because we are really all just fury things
with barred teeth
that need to be told to come back into the house
to eat the dinner on the table
to stop howling at the sky

all of it, give it all up, for the sake of somebody you love

and if that is not enough, at  least for the sake
of the old woman in the woods
who loved you before your bones were thought up

(hide the blood on your claws, little wolf/monster/thing,
she's just washed the sheets
and they're bright white
the color of the moon
the color of her eyes that were blind all along)

Red boys worth blood
listen to the things they can’t hold in their hands
like sun and color
and the supposed shoes of a Cinderella girl
who was really their sister
and didn’t run away from them,
just the angels in the front garden

Burn the house
Burn the garden
Take the gut-punch
Grab the slipper

The watery grave she finds herself in-
tears shed by parents over the rejection of a suitor

The boys are only red because they faithfully cling
to Cinderella’s heart.
She gave it to them for safekeeping

Oh the things that brothers find themselves holding
past midnight.

People bleed, that’s just how it is

They say head wounds bleed the most; do not be alarmed

So what about the invisible gashes in the head and the heart?

How much do they bleed?

When do they stop?

Well go ahead and box me up, I guess
The funeral will be nice and they will not say
"oh, but she is still living"
in the literal sense

They'll use it as a metaphor
instead of the rallying cry,
the encouragement

"but you are still living"

maybe I'll never die, at this rate.

So box me up in glass ceilings and
social norms

We'll call it the practice run

And let's go ahead and put "here lies a person"

So I can practice being equal when I'm dead.

Let me tell it to you this way-

I have never been brave

I have only been afraid

And when people are afraid, they are supposed to do extraordinary things

So I have never been brave

And I will never be brave

Let me tell it to you this way-

I am the worst type of coward

and I will never not be

Just ask my own flesh and blood

It runs in the family

Grief is far from straight

It’s a crooked, winding line down half of my heart, half of my lungs

Permanent scars that make it hard to breath sometimes.

I hate that you’re fighting to catch your breath now, too

The air feels like poppy seeds
ominous and warm
clouds heavy with yellow-green thunderstorms waiting to drop.

True love is a woman's color-
haven't you ever wondered why all God's angels are men?
Boys with wings that come and go and go and go
Ephemeral, fleeting

Yet mother earth continues to turn,
hiding her children in the folds of her skirt
a dance as old as time
older than the sun

And a weather girl laughs up at the sky
twirls in the image of her mother
pulls up the flowers

True love is not red
the sun is red

it is brown like the earth
like women
and it belongs to them more than it ever belonged to Gabriel.

Lucky charms with all the marshmallows picked out-
picture this:
rainbows and leprechauns
smiles full of gold teeth
angles on the ground with chipped nail polish
on call but for the discounted prayers
the poor neighborhoods
the not entirely righteous
demons of gasoline
guardians of the latchkey kids

I meet angels all the time
they put their wings on my lungs,
fly my breath away

There aren't any marshmallows left
guess I'll have to make my own luck.

Yeah well here's what you are-

Cold blooded

Gold blooded

They cut you on the truth and I swear I've never seen such golden youth flow from anyone's veins

Like ice water over a burn

You laugh it off, your voice cracks, body turned grey

You polish yourself on lies

You little gold blooded freak

And if that's all you ever are

It's still something.

Sometimes I get thrown a little off balance
When I look over expecting to see
Boys I grew up with
Boys
Messy and sticky and smiling
Boys

But now they have five o'clock shadows and broad shoulders and car keys
Dangling from their fingers
Instead of Captain America action figures

And
Slicked back hair like mini movie stars
Instead of wild cow licks

I get thrown off balance when I look over and see
Childhood in a time warp

Proportional bodies,
Thinner faces
But
With smiles still reckless

Except this time
It's not the innocent kind.

Heart cold
hands clean
words gold
tongue mean

You're a liar
You're on fire

So why's your heart cold?

Why're your hands

Clean?

Can you codify a feeling?

Is the question bouncing around
the study group meeting a few tables away
from where I write my government paper

I think maybe you can't
I think maybe that's what poetry is supposed to be for:
to codify feelings
to make a container for a color

the color words taste in my mouth
when they make my bones ache

the color that leaves when you leave
that leaves when I leave
that spoils when we both leave-

Can you codify a feeling?
No. I don't think so.
And I don't think you can codify two people either
so maybe
we should just be.

We should just be
happy
You and I, uncodified.

It's the oldest story in the book:

I thought you were mine.

I thought you were mine but I didn't make my move

I sat on my hands and studied the chess board because I thought I was the queen

I didn't pay attention to the pawn working her way across the board

It's too late now.

I don't have any more pieces to stop her.

The worst part is, I think she deserves you more

That little common pawn Queen

I think she deserves you more than me.

Like I said, the oldest story in the book

Older than the knowledge that I wasn't necessarily born to rule.

I can see your ribs
Jacob's ladder holding your organs in tight
Count them up
Un deux trois
Cats on your socks
And the world on your shoulders

Are you a god that you can stand the weight of seven billion souls?

How many times have you seen night turn to day and back again?

You've got history stenciled into your skin
Your father's complexion and your mother's fingers
In a combination so significant that only the youth can relate
Hard to be, hard to grow
When your ancestors have already grown so tall behind you

Set down the planet for a while
Give it a good kick
Watch it roll
Time spun the wrong way
A million sunrises in a moment

Is this not better?
Teeth flashing in backtracked frowns
All the laughs before they happen

Jonah swallows the whale in this one

Maybe you should eat something too.

I don't like to read your words-

A wry smile, bittersweet.

They're too real, too mundane for a dreamer.

This, whispered to me.
What is that supposed to mean?
I was not born with wings
I am from this earth
What is that supposed to mean?

Would you rather me forget
about the blood stained teeth of an old god
the ruined smile of Grace

What is that supposed to mean?

I am not even a writer,
I am only living
and I have never once seen life
walking around without dirt in her nail beds.

Tough pills to swallow,
all these little moments
sweet under street lamps
smiles between white sheets
white teeth
bared against
words too big to chew

Drink up sunlight
soak up moonlight
wring out lamplight
from the corners of the room
to make space for shadows

Hard to see in the day
what I feel in the dark

Drink me, Alice
See what happens when the bottle spills out
moments that add up too well

Hard to swallow down.

And she looked at the man mostly named for a color

He had a real name, of course, but the color was so much more true than that
Names are just sounds, identified

“Oh, you.” A smile, recognized
Maybe she knew him from his own words
or a long, dark wall filled with names from a war from before she was born
or maybe it was more than that

“Oh, you.”
Homecoming
Cliff jumping
A Bildungsroman novel in 18 years

Here it is, hear it coming? You have to listen closely,
it’s in the whisper between two friends
then and now

When is it that we realize we are all just mirrors of each other in the circle of time? Soon, very soon-

We’re coming around the bend of it now, hold on tight and-here: immortality

Oh, you: immortal.

Body politics
Is this my flesh or yours?
Hard to tell, since I never loved you
I just wanted to be you

So he sleeps behind his fathers counter,
little prince of a general store neighborhood dynasty

Is he a king, that he should doze on the throne?

Kings and boys- they’re all the same, anyway.
Anyway, make it three if a kind: kings + boys + Gods

A full hand, royal flush, this boy-king-god in his palace of cereal boxes
cheekbones polished by the flickering fluorescent light
the type flies are too afraid to land on, the type they land on anyway-
and here, he sleeps on; unbothered.

No one will believe you but me.

He will keep sleeping and you will keep stocking the shelves of his domain and nobody will believe you but me; justice passes by

The fly gets fried by the light overhead.

You saw it, he slept, and who would ever believe you but me?

Sooner or later
you're going to have to realize
that the color of your promises
doesn’t match the silver
of your tongue

Let me tell you something:

You are worth more than the roses

You are worth more than anything he gives you,

More than kind words and compliments

More than loss and heartache

Let me tell you something:

You are worth more than the roses they will throw at your feet when you win and they do not

Worth more than the fake love and the crocodile smiles

Let me tell you something:

I can’t tell you how much you are worth to yourself

And I can’t make you see that you are worth even more than that

But to me, I can promise you this-

You are worthy of the world.

And so I hope that you take nothing less

You’re real.

You’re raw and you’re messy and you’re real
Beautiful

You’re real beautiful.

So let him go gracefully lord knows
boys like to take-
Don’t let him take any more of your time

And don’t let him make you bitter

I know he was a nice substitute for sweetness
Because he was sugar and spice and everything nice
once upon a time for me, too

I’m not made for love

But don’t let him take that away from you

Life’s gonna hurt
And he’s gonna hurt

But darling you are real.

You’re fascinating and smart and real
Strong.

You’re real strong.

Here's the thing,
It will be alright in the end, I'm told
And if it's not alright, then it can't be the end...
And sometimes I want everything to end,
To bring the world down screaming with me into the flames.
So thank you for stepping in and making it alright with your laugh and your hugs,
For bringing an end of your own that made way to a new beginning,
a healthier way to rise from the ashes of my own making-
A Phoenix.
Because you and I, my dear,
We are made of the same stuff deep down,
So that has to mean that it wasn't a mistake.

I like you more than anything that I could ever hope to become.
I want to see you one day on the movie screens and smile
I want to see your face on a billboard and think thank goodness, thank goodness,
That not all of the good die young.

What I treasure most about you
Is not your smile
Not your clothes
Not your strength
Not your beauty
But the way you give and give and give
You'd give up the blood of your body
The second I loose a single drop to a scratch.
Be carful that the world doesn't bleed you dry.

"Happy endings are just stories that haven't finished yet"

  Is that why only the good die young?

  Why young people seem so desperate to leave this earth?

  "**** me now" thrown like casual greetings across school hallways

  Makes it so hard to tell who's really hurting and who's bluffing

  In this strip poker game against life where life always wins

  Takes the clothes right off your back and leaves you naked with a bad hand knowing soon you'll have to sell your body

  And maybe I want to live long enough to see the world end

  Would that be enough compensation?

  I don't think so, because nothing will erase the pain of seeing something beautiful for the first time.

  Except I think that's what they call happiness now, isn't it?

  Because tears don't count unless they're shed over big problems so fake it,

  Bluff it

  I know the moment I get my cards that this second chance was only a play to keep me in the game for one more hand-

  Let's see how much I can loose.

Ghosts love stories
They say

So if we are both ghosts
Does that make this a love story?

Or will we drift apart back to old graveyards
Where the endings are familiar

Says it right on the stones, don’t you know?

Look at this one: died of a broke heart

Is it mine or yours or both of ours?
I can’t tell.

I scroll through pictures of us in the mountains and I hear her voice so clearly
Written on a crumpled page
Years since she left the flower city
For the glitter kind
And I only shone because of my honey gold hair
Not jewelry or bright eyes or highlight on sharp cheekbones
“I’m lost and I only knew myself when I was with you, and I was only with you when I went outside so I’m going kayaking in Alaska. I’m sorry I let myself get so lost. I’m sorry I made myself too hard to find.”
An apology in vain

I had already forgiven her.
I forgave her the moment she left me barefoot in a field because
I knew her heart once
And I knew she had to go

Girls like that, they grow up half money and half spirit
Bound to want to taste what paper can buy them at some point
And me, always in the field. Safe.
She left and I never blamed her and I still don’t

She makes contact now
“How are you??”

Oh, my dear.
I am living out the dream I worked for
Cried for
Laughed for
I cannot ask for anything else
My feet feel good at the school I’m at, do yours?

I scroll through pictures without me
Click on the girl with her instead, before she went to Alaska to lose herself and find herself again
(She didn’t have to, I could have told her exactly where she was. In the flowers by my hand all along)
And all of these girls are so lost and lonely

Money in New York and parties every night and ten thousand comments
And still, they couldn’t escape it
Couldn’t escape what we all feel

You can see it in their eyes
It’s the reflection of glitter
Golden fear

Go stand in a field, I want to say.
Go stand in a field and take off your shoes and rest.

"Maybe you should write a poem about grace"

Well, She was anything but graceful
crooked smile and sharp eyes
more akin to justice
or liberty, even
except sometimes
in the afternoon on rainy days
Grace came to me and held out a hand-
angels with chipped nail polish
and girls with reckless souls.

"Maybe you should write a poem about grace"

Grace comes suddenly
but she lands softly
on rainy days
in the afternoon
sometimes.

How do you know when the
desire to sleep turns into something more than
simple sleep deprivation

How do you know when smiles don't add up the way
they used to

How do you know when emptiness in your
chest cavity starts to define
you

How do you know when you begin to give up things you like to do

How do you know when these aren't just characteristics of a

Well dressed

Stressed and

Unimpressed

Student

Trying to get by

Depression makes everything grey

For me,

Depression makes everything grey.

And it's hard to see the warning signs in full color when you get used to seeing in grey scale

How do you identify these warning signs for such a grey area disorder

How do you tell the real thing apart from life

I guess maybe

You don't. Because

It is a part of my life that comes and goes in waves

Gradually so that you don't notice the tide pooling around your ankles

The color bleeding out at the corners of your vision

Until your feet are stuck in the watery sand

Until it is all grey even though you know the leaves are green

Until it is too late

But how are you supposed to know?

I don't know: Grey Area

There's a hollow below your neck
and a scar on the back of your head

easy. Trick or treat.

I know you, the way you move-
you wear masks all the time, one  made of rubber won't make a difference
I still know how to find your eyes

And that heart of yours that you wear on your sleeve
is not as disguised as you think

And besides, you're the only person I know who smiles
like that;

candy.

Tell me, God, tell me

For real, this time

A good question, if you’ll listen

Where do the gnats go after they get zapped in the bug light?

Tell, me God, tell me

Okay, this one is a good question for sure

Very important stuff

How many times does one need to curse to loose their spot in heaven? Asking for a friend

Tell me, God, tell me

This is a kicker

It’s been keeping me up at night

Why did you decide to make sand? I mean, it’s pretty and all, but it gets everywhere

Tell me, God, Tell me

So, now here’s my biggest question

When am I going to make up my mind? Is that ever in my future or are we just planning on an indecisive personality forever?

Just let me know when you decide, because we both know I won’t

And hey-

Big guy in the sky, this one really is for you, if you’re there

I’m just wondering, you see

Could you tell me one thing:

Where does all the happiness go?

If you're going to bleed, bleed sunshine

Spill light from the cuts on your knees

Paint the grey thing in your chest cavity that looks nothing more than scarred tissue gold

Pretend you are the sun

Pretend you are the sun

Might as well scream some, too.

Only call it laughing.

And when you try to explain your sadness to them, let them not understand a word you're saying because you're supposed to

Be the sun

Even though you didn't ask for people to orbit you, they did so

Give them warmth, give them light

One day you'll burn out but

If you're going to bleed, you might as well bleed light.

Here is what I know:

You give and you give and you give

You give everything to be his daughter, want to be just like him

Want to be loved

Want to be wanted

And he

Takes that at face value

A father must earn his title

You gave him his in advance in hopes that he'd earn it

Instead, somewhere along the way

You mixed it up, thought it was the daughter who needed to provide

Here is what I know:

He takes.

He takes.

He takes.

Give him one last thing, my dear.

Give him up.

How many prayers does the devil say at night

Does he pray for the ******? For the lonely, wretched souls?

How many Hail Maries does it take to make a poor man smile

Does he know the difference between love and a bottle?

Do you know the difference between love and a bottle?

Oh, the feeling

Of looking in the mirror

And knowing in your heart that maybe you could be enough

If your chest wasn't hollow

And maybe you would know how to be happy, remember what it was like to be calm

If the head wasn't on fire

The brain is making a funeral pyre for the loss of the soul

But there's nothing in this body left to burn

So it's throwing itself up in flames.

Everybody wants to rule the world

But to become god it the loneliest achievement of them all.

So hold onto the memories
And I’ll hold onto you

And we’ll rule the world together:

Two lost souls clinging to fragmented pasts-

Better than loneliness,
better than loneliness.

The air always smells of rain
somewhere, right?

So somewhere, you're always knocking on a door
And somewhere, I'm behind the same door
And somewhere, somebody is saying,
'It's for you'

Even though you're not for me, and I
can tell that
just by smelling smelling the air

(Which does not smell like rain)

But these words are for you,
They'll always be for you-

And maybe someday I'll open the door.

It won't be you,
or maybe it will be you
and maybe you'll be here for me

Isn't that a nice story?

You wouldn't believe the stories I tell
myself
while I sit here in the sun
and dream of rain.

Well here is the thing, my dear

Love is not for everybody.

They tell you if you work hard, then anything can happen

But they don't tell you that there are right and wrong kinds of work, right and wrong kinds of 'anything'

So put your shoulder to the wheel and chip away at her walls

Even though she wasn't asking you to.

It's the wrong kind of work, but do it anyway

And when you finally get to her core you will see that she is not something for you to protect because she's made of lava

She burnt out her heart a long time ago

Because love isn't meant for everyone

So get burned on her for all of your hard work-

Not the right kind of 'anything'.

Spit out bitterness on the pavement when it gathers in your mouth like bile

Work harder, try to fix her

Oh, but what they don't tell you is that she has already fixed herself the way she wants to be and you, you cannot change a thing

Try to make her your princess in the castle, try to make her yours

And it will never work.

It will never work, she is making a life for herself that doesn't have you in it

The worst possible thing you can do is try to force yourself into her future.

Don't you know it's the 21st century? Don't you know she's got to make it for herself and not for anyone else?

I'm sorry you're learning this now

That I'm the one to tell you

But sweetheart, love

It's not meant for everyone.

The garbage truck sends noise crashing through the air
A plane adds to the din overhead and there-
A helicopter, hear it?
Thwup-thwup-thwup of the rotors
For a moment, there is no lockdown
There is not even a college or a crew team
Just me on the back porch in the mountains, looking up
Time bending full-circle.
I am eight and eighteen, looking up
The helicopter passes and so does the plane until all that’s left is the garbage truck and me on the back porch and my college professor begging the class to please, please pay attention over scratchy video feed.

You're an absolute menace
Who taught you to break hearts like that?

Who put a young man from the backstreets of a city in the 1940s into your body?

Not a care in the world, it's brash confidence, you love hard hit hard
All or nothing
It's who you are.

Young woman.

Braids and a baseball cap
Complexes piling up behind your eyes

You wear fake smiles like they're going out of style
Smile real ones at the people you'll grow up to hurt the most

Who taught you how to use your womanhood as a weapon?

Maybe nobody,
Maybe nobody.

Maybe you taught yourself. Dumb lucky teenager, scrappy as hell and ****** to boot

Sins on your shoulders, a good heart.
You're a menace, a freak

It's unbelievable, truly,
It's obscene, really

They worship the ground you walk on and you go home and cry in the closet.

Lilac girls sitting in the garden-
expressions once sweet and look how they harden.

Boy turned man and man turned mean, heart replaced by a grinding machine.

But rose bud boy, he aged young-
Lillies and honey dripping from his tongue.

And golden rod girl, she aged old-
they put her in an apron and she fit in the mold.

Lilac girls sitting in the garden.

Candy melts in the sun, but here it hardens

Boys don't cry
and girls are quiet
so how is it
that this world
is so full of
silent screams
and messed up kids
you ask?