A circle goes 'round
still after these years
you pained that sweet
little girl
and pained that sweet
little girl
and pained that sweet
little girl
and pained that sweet
little girl.

And are you not surprised?
She is numb to you, now.

I am swelling amongst the waves
violet petals crash hard about,
dash me onto hard dreams.

Every stance is futile here,
mouths opening to receive me,
knife-edges awaiting my blood.

I have so rescue,
and so I think to you.

I'm on my third jar
and I never drink
more than two
but now this pistol
looks lovingly at me
more than you do.

And there's
no girl
in the passenger seat
to keep me
in my lane.

When wakefullness holds me captive,
stirring ceaselessly at 2AM,
I rest on memories of you,
on the spot you once lay,
on my bed.

I'm leaking thick drops of lust
into the naked nothing
surrounds my chest
breath, a Liliputian task in your absence.
My weariness, a tourniquet,
gauze, wet, etches the corners of my mind
I'm swallowing water, child,
and this undertow is just too strong
for treading.

This morning I  smelled the sunshine,
and thought of you.

Immediately.
Suddenly.
Instantly.

And like
the storming ache within my heart,
the longing of you
left me
vacant.

Why won't this
volume go up
anymore.

Everyone so lit up
drunk on drink
listless or the hope of a new year.

My mind is circling that black dot
growing larger by the minute.

It's cold, metal frame
eclipses all that remains.

You were
my time machine.
With you,
I could see a future.

In peace you sleep
next to me
every breath
an acrostic
spelling my name.

Your skin, a
magnet
to my
hands.

We may step
out of time
but in these moments,
we are finding
our new song.

Fly, little bird
find your peace
know you were loved
fighting against growing up
for years
together.

From "we love Satan"
to "Franken-Mamma"
to late night rides
and jumping medians at 2AM
facing head-on collisions
with life.

So fly, little bird
the time is now,
fly.

I am just a ghost in your machines
low as binary, weak ink traces
a lost little girl
justice is never wrought
the leftover heart break I thought
and you still occupy
the cracks in my heart.

Broken images
flash through the mind.

All the joy and togetherness
of family
gone.

When you live in a kaleidoscope
the loss of colour to life
leaves more emptiness
in its absence.

And your tears
are useless platitudes
to the thought
of ever having it back.

And her love
has become
the very thing
you always feared
it would.

And this broken family
has broken again.

I have a box of tools,
useless,
and debris.
Pistol-pin,
rifle-lock,
shorn and ****** knees.

I lay here only
motionless
in a flood.
Turn me over,
face to Sun,
mercurial soul of blood.

I weigh down on you
through sunset
and into the black.

I nearly crush your little frame,
reducing you into your safety.

Can you feel me?

Who are you?

I'm here,
waking in a sweat,
from a dream too sweet,
to let go.

To refreshing winds
where new things grow
and green
permeates
the dead.

Even in all this difficulty
I still defended
a woman
who didn't exist.

To think
you'd hurt me
worse than the one
you healed me from.

I'm worse off than when
I met you. How
does that feel?

And to think
I've felt GUILTY
looking at ****
since our issues started,
the whole time
you were ACTUALLY
******* someone else.

To think
I felt guilty
playing video games
while you were
*******
another man.

******* out,
through the back of my skull.
Let the soul fly free,
into your nothingness.

They say it is one of the rarest things in the whole universe
that there are only three known to exist,
(coincidentally enough)
but there is a fourth I know
that is so close it makes me wonder
how rare can they be, really?

I realize it only speaks to my fortune
to be so close to them.

Hollymylove, orbited by two smaller bodies
white flaming hair that blows in stellar winds
lighting up the insurmountable darkness.

There were little ways, once, when things could sparkle and spread the light
just like I spread your legs
then.

Away I could turn,
and feel your eyes on me,
the breath for breathing in always fresh and free between us,
the staleness now punctuating every sentence, drooling from my lips
and off away somewhere…

nowhere.

The infant
me lying next to the mother
of you in the creeping sun

running away over the edge of the world
like Magellan.

I could chase it,
I would,
I swear I will,
if you would ask it,
and I would tumble over that dark cusp
and off into a six-year terror of death and disease,
just to return,
spinning the Earth under my feet,
pushing it with my hands like paddles,
kicking it back with toes,
sweating bleeding shaking
and collapsing
back into
you.

How that camera captured the unseen rays of crystal sunlight,
it is almost 1990
but our young bodies
are stuttering in grainy silence,
spinning film on a machine that wasn't even made back when
it was almost 1980.

Look at you,
taller, stronger
sister
towering from that diving board...stronger, taller, older -
but I was always bolder.

Boldness.
Bravery.
A glamorous fearlessness towards the dangers of life.

You were always jealous of that,
weren't you?

Notice the toes.
Yours are so very close to the edge, aren't they?
But look at mine.
They curl down at the joints, peering over the edge,
ready to fall
pull my smaller body after them into a deep blue oblivion,
like the one you've abandoned
me to now.

And we are pouring away
like the words
that won't
stop coming.

And we choke down
like the pain
that won't
stop coming.

Who am I?

My heart is turning in knots
and I never was
a Boy Scout
a knot master
and the thinnest ice
is crisp like
this year's
death.

Sun fades into the clock
as calendar days
are stricken off one by one.

And all my dreams are memories.
And all my hopes rewind.
And all the listless days she's had
begin to multiply.

Blankets never had it so good,
and I just need someone to hold.

Little girl,
lay your weary head in the black space
that is unwinding between us,
a void to lose yourself in.

A train-station railway burning down to bare metal,
a dove flying away and spreading the ash.
If only that dove could carry you away somewhere
safe inside my mind.

The bone in your heart
chokes you sometimes.
I'd ease all of your concern
with a touch.

Your heart is dark-clouds.

Lay your weary head in my lap,
little girl,
dream of dandelions floating away
through this cloudless, broad blue sky,
bend your chest up into the calming sunshine,
let go,
and rest.

There's a threaded zipper on your pants
made of little stitches of red
which grasp the zipper's brass teeth,
which match the enamel tools
which grow from my pink gums
which pull at that handle.

As it slides down, the teeth of brass
pull apart
(skin from a peach).

Little coquette,
I can see the smirk of giddy shame
as the denim drops
and you are bare.

I haven't cried in three days. The napkin-white petals,
an Alyssum White blanket of snow,
piebalded by Slipper Orchids,
flows beneath my skin
as if it were the thinnest layer of water
under oil.

The feeling is the consistency of pungent Valerian,
the active ingredient the smell
of well-matured cheese,
cuts the tops off  mountains
as it fills the bottoms of canyons
with asphalt.

It's given a brain back to this anencephaly.
Where there were stitched lips,
now only paper-heart kisses.

Because everyday I fall
a little bit
behind.

We aren't on speaking terms
but
we **** nightly
that way
we don't have to see one another.

All day long we are:

coarse hair fly legs under each other's skin,
black drops of ink in a jade bowl of milk,
genocidal gestures.

There is a part of me that loves you
(despite all the harm we've conceived)
it slides in and out of you as I write this.

"What are you doing here? You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets."

"Obviously, Doctor, you've never been a thirteen year-old girl." ~ The ****** Suicides*

The smell of teenage lipstick and sunbeams
Why are they different from us?
(it's so great they are different from us)
These memories of our youth,
transient,
will mean more than the permanent ones of adulthood.

The flash sparkle of amber in her eyes
high and low pressure air combined
my name on your *******
breaking smoke circles
the sound of vinyl stabbed
just listen to them,
the taste of peach schnapps.

"You don't have to talk to me."
terrible sources of information
"We weren't talking if you know what I mean..."
And off they go to join the thirty-thousand plus

My fat, fleshy pale belly
pushes the inside of my shirt out,
and I'm ripping off Bukowski.

The sign for the travel section was far too obvious
for me to have noticed.
And you can tell you are by the woman's magazine section
by the perfume scent that burns your nose.
Strangers watch me type these notes into my phone notepad
thinking how superficial young people are these days
texting all the time.

And suddenly,
I am shooting **** into the current.
tossing my wedding band into the ocean waves
reflecting the moon like...
trying to write fast enough to catch up to my thoughts
and the words come crashing into them
a train going off a cliff.

And suddenly,
weaver ants are carrying eggs,
devouring albino widows.
Ochroma flower licked by Kinkajou,
insects lapped up from their grave of
sugary water.

Abnormal, she waits
his kiss not enough
his love suffering
from self-esteem issues
as she courts danger
like a mouse
trapped in
a wall of sound.

I can bore you with talk
of women and children,
but it is simple enough to say
human beings.

Human beings
run in gathering storms
of concrete dust;
run from misting
of meat.

Explosions are sudden fatal therapy
for human beings
suffering dissonance,
and there's nothing quite
the same as losing words.

All of these
human beings,
cut-off
quick
in Tourette syndrome
(****!)
Pu.nc-tu-a.tion.

Caught in the concrete cloud
darker than Krubera Cave,
lost out on a betrayed Silk Road,
as bloated blue bodies
wash up on Indonesian shores.

This city of centuries
built by human beings,
has now become
almost-five thousand corpses
who dangle their toes
out of shrapnel windows.

Pieces of me sweat
away in an instant of swaying black burqas,
rocking on knees at a cemetery.

I’m standing in Beirut -
nineteen-eighty two.
I watch towers fall.
There has to be
a way to make the world relate,
even if it takes
nineteen years.

I could watch it
I could see
If that could ever
be enough for me.

A tongue across top teeth
brittle spaces they hold
inside the guts of an urn
spray painted indigo,
and that
is your color.

You always say you write
Water,
while I write
Fire.

I write flame
and I burn brighter than most,
my love.

And you are the water
that somehow held me
alit
until the moment you
no longer could.

(my neglect, my taking for granted,
my mental illness [Bipolar etched ****** features], death and loss)

And now,  I've slipped
and been doused.
I no longer write flame
I write the snuffed out
I write the ones who lose
I write the loss of
purity
innocence
childishness
love
My little girl...
... gone.

And so it seems I've been drenched
in November Rain.
It's true, you know:
The pain of loss remains.

The sight
of you,
bled out
in that bath
steam rising
like the soul
from a corpse
will haunt me
until the day I die;
I'm sure it will be soon.

I couldn't get high
with all that guilt
if I were you,
either.

Oh son, my porcelain prince, if only your eyes were flesh and not glass
you could see that these things will pass.
Oh child, my fragile leaf, if only your roots reached deeper,
you could feel that this is only a short while.
Oh little one, my broken boy, if only you would grow up slower,
slow as nature deems,
time will give you foresight -
be patient.
I say this to help you avoid stumbling over roots,
or falling under the weight
that will surely come,
and too soon it seems.

My son, my pride, my knight,
my willow branch,
you will grow strong,
but remember to bend,
and do not let them break you.
Do not break under
the weight of words
the cold of shoulders
or the pollution of popularities.

Hold to those around you,
with deeper roots,
who have grown through the rough dirt
you are pushing through.

Hold to those around you,
because we love you.

Kind words
Pure love
Tender care
Open hearts

We used to lay out like cartwheels singing songs
as the world spun around us, uncaring
we danced around it until madness stole
our innocence.

And I've never been more convinced
that ruin, like the horrors of leftover war,
can be overgrown again
and green.

Maybe you'll be alone
for the rest of your life
empty connections
and no future.

What am I to think
when talking to me
is harder
than the **** that ****** you?

Is that
in the end
you're just like
the rest of them.

When my bed doesn't
smell like you anymore
When the bathroom isn't
cluttered with your stuff
When the closet
hangs half full of a ghost
When the kitchen
no longer smells like your cooking

And when all your smiles
fall off the walls
And my refrigerator
(so happy to have it)
screams at me with
newly bare metal...

What will be the point?

When the memories of
how I was your first love,
all engulfed in flame,
and how I am your first regret,
wrapped in the cellophane of disgust,
I feel the black maggot
churn in my heart,
defecates into my gut,
makes me sick,
all over again.

When I come:

spilling nova
fractal collage
globe thistle - electric blue
the end of me grinds into your fleshy, pierced pearl
a civilization pours out in tremors of hand-pumped Dial soap
ghostly pink Peonies brush my skin
rupturing continental shelf
swept aside moraine

Will I just think,
"Yeah, wasn't worth it,
I should've left years ago"?

Sparrows burst from my head
like a broken breeze
an explosion of feathers
black and blonde,
and I can't hold your memory
as much as I'd like.

My churning gut,
full of sour milk,
running like a river,
full of playing children,
and chemicals.

And like the pointless energy
of these words,
my fists crack pointlessly
against the depth
of a black-water ocean,
filled with you.

I won't even speak to you today,
I know it.

And I want it to be your fault,
but I feel it's mine.