“You’re in line.”

I fall asleep on the suicide hotline

Have you ever thought
That maybe paper cuts
Are a tree's last revenge?

Tree: You cut us down, we cut you up.

he said,
babe you're running out of
false alarms
your arms are full of trial scars
i say,
self care is the same as
self harm
when the so called help
put self on the shelf
and chaos conquers calm
when a cry for help
is seen as
a cry for attention
a life can become
a hell of a life sentence
because everything
is a false alarm
when everyone else can
but you can't
i'm running out of false alarms
one day i will be truly armed
when i finally do it
you won't be around
it will take you ten years
to believe
when you finally do
you will still blame me

You went to the trouble of buying me a leash
Except my neck was already occupied by a rope
So you tried to use the rope as a leash
Marvelling at your ingenuity
Only to find you were dragging along my dead body
I suppose that dead is better than nothing

When people annoy me with their
constant complaining or their
non stop arguing, or even worse,
their illogical demands:
"For the last time, you can't buy
***** with food stamps."  Or,
"There is no way a crow took the
rent money out of your hands and
flew off with it."

What I do is close my eyes and
pretend they're squirrels chattering
in squirrel language.  
Then they don't bother me so much.
I just want to reach out and pet them,
or give them a handful of nuts.
It's not hard; half of them look
like squirrels anyway.

I met a woman
brutal in her mercy.

Her embrace was a clinch
to prevent hard blows.
She pulled me close to push me away.
Seeing my nakedness
she leant me a dream
of chainmail and shield.
Taking love from me she gave a reprieve
to a mind resigned to the slow death of feeling.

Ignoring my words she heard
my faint silent heartbeat and
understood that it was music
too quiet for the world to hear
and turned it up louder
than I could stand.
I wept in my deafness
as she danced.