your happiness should NEVER be based solely on one person.
your home shouldn't ever be nestled inside of someone's chest
or tucked into the creases of their arms.
your happiness shouldn't be measured by the amount of times they say i love you
or by how many times their fingers intertwine with yours
because if you want to get brutally honest here,
happiness that's based on a person will forever and always lead to disappointment.
because the second that they even as much as threaten to step out of the door,
you're back to the way you were
or even worse.
you're left with a shadow of your former self.
you can't make a person your home no matter how sturdy you think the foundation is because their arms will always crumble around you and leave you cold.
not because they meant to,
but because they weren't built to.
they could have had every intention of holdin' you up steady,
but no matter how hard they try,
their arms will never compare because
they weren't made to be your brick walls.
you have got to understand that.
you can't put that much weight on one person.
one human being.
one soul.
they can love you.
they surely can love you.
they can love you with all of their heart.
and as you to them,
but your home should not be composed of
veins that do not belong to you,
and arms that aren't attached to your own body.
your happiness shouldn't be solely based on the way
that your body seems to perfectly coincide with theirs.
they can surely be a factor,
a part of your happiness.
but babe,
you're in some trouble if they're your whole.

How exhausting it must be to be the enigma.
To mean everything and nothing at once
to everyone and no one in particular:
To let them down just to pick them up;
to make everyone go nuts.

A casket
A journey, long road, comes to  an end
Life, perhaps mispent
But fate might always be smiling
Just beyond that coming bend

Broken bone
Calls to home but home is not wanted
Not mine to go, not mine, I grow
My own
From gardens of wilting blooms
Another season will see it soon

In comes the monsoon
Dripping life, drumming against the boards
Of a balcony where strumming I hum my lonesome song
Lamenting the ending of something gone wrong
Though this river's journey to the edge of the world
Has only just begun

Temporary regrets and missings
Of memories that crawl underneath your skin
With a flourish this night turns over its leaves
To reveal another day
You breathe out the ragged dusk
Shakes, bristles, shedding the husk
Avail the morning air
Lest the mourning of a midnight's dream
Breeds despair

Sometimes it is, poor Sylvia,
that we cannot find the answers. They're
not to be found clinking about in the stars,
blowing about in the August wind,
or blooming among the tea flowers, no matter
how scented. No charlatan soothsayer discerns.
No pull of the cards deciphers. If answers come
at all they'll be found deep within yourself, only.
Don't we all prove that countless, wretched
times? But know this, dear Sylvia, even though it's too
late for your sanity and your life, your daddy didn't
die because of you, for you, by you. Death simply
drew the line and pulled him across.

What were you to do when life puzzled you
to the limit, when all poems disappointed,
when the ink failed to flow smoothly,
the pen tore at the paper and the paper
turned to ash before a line could be written down?
What to do when your child's smile failed to ignite
motherhood, when Daddy's image floated in and out, when
emotional pain dragged you terrified under its
black cerement, that cold, wet, smothering grave cloth?

Fear, oh my God, fear, and the doubt that you had,
the whirling about of a shattered mind, bouncing
from this trap to the other - your muted, stifled inner
screams unheard, or worse, unexpressed. Yes,
you found a solution, poor Sylvia, but suicide
doesn't always equate with an answer. You found a
sad poem, a dirge to be exact, something that moves
us, but there is no rhyme to it and the ending is an
enigma, a great puzzle yet to be invoked, understood.

----

Come on
This willow, this hull, this breach, these roots are mine
Sunken ships, barreling, down we go in time
Burrow deep, fallow, fine
Let the reeds, the weeds, swallow us and taste the brine
Bubbles and puddles we muddle and huddle

Past the reactions of chemicals
Silver pedestals and blooming petals of metal and bone
Of sinking and sinking and sinking like a stone
Come home, alone


Close eyes
Breathe, lungs, they swell before the collapse
Punctures and stabs, scratching the scabs
Crash, break
And turn, turn to run, the road ahead
The wars you thought you won
You run
Haunted
As the mad dogs of the past
Come catching up
Nothing ever lasts

rest, girl
rest, mother
rest, red disco queen

rest, white willow singing
rest, wind chimes
rest, redbone dog

rest, black sky
rest, yellow moon
rest, opaque stars

rest, *** on stovetop
rest, toes cracking
rest, boy typing

rest, sister
rest, child
rest, soul

rest

the sun machine
is coming down

rest

the children are
watching fire

rest

the thunder is born
with the night

rest

you too will know me,
sister
you will catch my wind
it smells of

tea tree oil