I am a piano, slightly out of tune
but my dissonance makes you notice me.

I am a steady nurturing rain
and I keep you cool and wet.

I am the sunlight on a blackened world,
that brings the music of memories
and the life of fresh precipitation.

I am writing a new story,
but don't look here for the narrative,
because
I am not writing it with these words you think you are reading,
or the patience that I have found.
I am penning this new manuscript,
and all the illuminating circumstances that make those reading
wish they were the characters in the joy-tear-jerking plot,
the parts everyone passes eyes over in order
to make their own lives richer...
I am scribing my way through to the end
not with words, letters, jots, tittles,
but with
actions.

If there is a ghost of you
these are the edges
the cheek-turn,
the second-guesses,
the body-lean
the back I face
as I only cry this blood
wishing for your grace.

Leprous ash,
the soreness of atrophy, caught,
a terrifying tenderness,
and my numbness just cannot sway.

I just cannot give what I want,
what you need,
and I'm dying
in my attempts to provide it to you.

And she's doing cartwheels
inside my heart.

Your hips rotate, counter-clockwise
and I breathe deeply into your
honey ***,
my wet tongue coaxing you out
your button shows.

I press it
tongue it
gently
then not so
gently.

Worship at the temple I present
Hard stone, broad
supplicate yourself
in prayer before it.

Face down now
spread
open
invaded
consumed
release
***

I carve you like marble
grind and push my chisel over every inch of your body
feather your skin with a brush
buff you with my rag
rub my polish into you until you glisten
push you down the elevator shaft
touch myself as you fall
come as you explode.

When life turns against us,
I choose you.
When scars are all it seems we have,
I choose you.
When the easiest way is out,
I choose you.
When the easiest way out is not easy at all,
I choose you.
When the end seems like the only way,
I choose you.
And if you walk away,
I choose you.
Until my end and beyond,
I choose you.

Conquistador
claiming you
night after night.

In those hot and
cool May and June nights.

How much could mean
nothing?

In memoria,
our ashes sing
songs of sadness.

I watch the ticks tick away
seconds, to hours, and into days...
Scratching my eyes out
to get you to stay.

But time kills everything,
including this, apparently.

And so I can drink until
there's nothing left
(of me).

And so I can wet this page
until it melts away
like so much sewage.

But how long can I hold on to this?

I don't mean to you, or him, or any relationship or want of mine.

I mean to life.

Shudder the alarms,
I won't burden you with this weight
so fly
free
and come
back to
me.

All I want is your attention,
Your fingers in my hair,
Your soft voice in my ear,
Your cradle made of arm bone and flesh
to rest
my head in,
Your chest
to rest
my ear on
as your heartbeat murmurs its lullabies
to me.

It comes to fill an empty space
to fill in the spaces left by the loss of

our pores opened
our saliva blended
our sweat mingled
our velvet moments
our staccato line of site
our time spinning in reverse
our words spoken with our eyes
our family held together by a thread
our love stretched so thin over our bones

It comes like a dead wind
filling the emptiness left behind,
and I don't want that inspiration.

I would spread my life wide open
if only you'd come
fill this bed,
my empty head,
and too- full heart,
force me back to
sleeping lengthwise.

I've got a ring
I don't wear it.

Even though it's on my finger,
you see,
it wears me.

I have this gold wrapped
around my finger -

For when you aren't near
For when I can't lay in your arms
For when I need to be held,
your ring holds me.

Just before bed
I turn out all the lights
and for a few moments
I am bathed in darkness.

In the moment before
I turn the bedside light on
I imagine you'll be there
In bed
smiling,
in love,
when the light comes on.

But you never are.

And this nightmare-come-true,
tallies on another day.

I shake like a drooling fool,
exhale a snore
am spent as my drizzle creeps towards her ******.
The loose flesh of me weighed down upon her,

but she wasn't there

She was running through fields of fresh emerald spears,
chases the wild horses of Patagonia
never catches them as she is overrun
carried away by the stallions from behind,
blooms a water lily opens and closes over and over,
Cereus opens with the touch of the Moon over and over,
feel the dust hear the waves of trampling hooves

as her face, a tense string,
shatters into an open mouthed smile and shout of,

"I am life, and you are the most blessed of creatures, here.
I am the glamor of everything.
I am Mother Earth in this moment,
screaming, fitting, wailing, quaking, coming.
Your diminishment has made this possible.
Bathe in the spinning cradle of life,
and stay still before you retreat from it."

You ****** someone else.

"Don't say that, you're berating me!"

So I can't talk frankly about
what you've done? What
the **** am I supposed to say?

"Call it 'an affair'!"

But you let some other guy
*******
(more than once).
I can't talk frankly about it?
About how you let another man
enter you?

"*******!"

And the door slams.

And the car drives away.

And I feel a weight lift off of me.

I'm sorry
I can't field the answers to questions
I won't relapse into.

My heart is hurting,
and I can't stop it.
I want to feel again, so badly,
but it's dead.

The muscle is not alive.

Just like my writing,
this boy isn't real.

If the world
is ending
then why not
end it all?

If today were my last day,
taken away by my disease,
I want you to know
that love has never been
so pure,
easily because of you.
I would want you to
smile,
love,
live,
even if I couldn't any longer.

I'd want you to keep her safe
because I couldn't,
if today were my last day.

I deleted your photos
from my ******* facebook
cover album today.

I went to change it and your face,
beautiful,
took me by surprise.

You left is such a hurry,
in such a dark plastic wrap gesture
that I've already started to
forget what you look like.

I bet your strings could be pulled,
Marion...
ette.

Raspy in motion,
the scars you bear could, would,
will show me the path inside you.
Tongue traces,
**** this brittle bone beware the accent marks on my vowels;
they always catch the lips.

If there is a star, and if it has a name,
I would never reveal it.

My Star had a name,
she blew across and away from my world
left everything burned like
Mercury's surface,
too close to what gives life,
to ever live again.

"If you love something, let it go.
If it doesn't return, it was never yours,"
they said.

Well it WAS mine.
There are no two ways about it.

What they don't tell you,
is that some things don't return,
not because they weren't yours,
but because they die
without you to hold it.

...and I cradled your head
on my chest
hair a rarest substance
onyx in reflection
eyes black holes
whose event horizon
arrests me

the feel of your skin
cheek cradled in my palm
press of your body
like a reflecting song
I can't get out
of my head

and I could breathe
again.

"And every time he woke up in the coldest sweat
Scrawled to the bone with her nails
was the promise that she wouldn't let go..." ~ "Momento Mori" by Antemasque*

I was dreaming
about you
and realized
I haven't dreamed
about her
in weeks.

Yeah,
that's what Rex said.

You're in good company,
I guess.

What the **** else do you
want me to say about it?

Right back there
in the basement
dark,
Dark Crystal on the television.

Right back to age six.

It's funny how betrayal
will nuke you right back
to the Stone Age:

No comfort.
No relief.
No touch.

No touch...

And so I sit
six years old
and watch
this movie
again,
alone.

Well at least
we answered
that debate,
didn't we?

I've only got so much left
and no ones listens to me not screaming for what I want,
my mouth full of feathers and blood,
weakened to the state of living past the point of dying,
to the point of numbness
where I can cut this skin like construction paper,
stretch it over love you never had
and find something that can carry me forward
into somewhere I can finally rest.

There's a clear stretch of land ahead
of that broken dessert landscape
shattered in atrophy and assumptions,
wrong.

The things I took for little,
weren't.

That stretch is ahead,
though our heels are leaning back on the precipice
behind.

Ahead may seem empty,
but it's not.

I'm filling it with a road lined with dates,
trees a girl draws in journals, hope and want.
And just like those tree sketches,
skulls growing into cartoons that are non-threatening,
in black and white
like your face concentrating into that mirror
on March 5th,
the road will lead to wherever
we need to go.

I'm busted, baby.
Swollen and brittle
Soft and pliable
And there's just nothing I can do
Excluded lesions collect in pools
In sorrow, I've dug for you
But I'm busted, baby.

To the flesh,  
let it cut,  
press our palms together,  
and in that mingling
of red iron and DNA,
we are family.

I miss you,
I hope for you
someday to return embraced in my
arms of chicken wire,
brittle in this cool breeze blowing across
cracked earth that surrounds me, grey,
the only precipitant;
drops of suspiration from my eyes.

My world skips to slow motion
as I observe with the eyes
of a million unwoken promises,

and it hits the ground,

each drop splattering like a cloud devoured in a
pool of flies.
My body yearns, it aches for you
like a honey suckle longs to be
plucked,
torn in half
licked clean
by the tongue,
moist with desire,
that makes it home in the preoccupied body that will soon discard it,
barely noticed by the taste buds; it moves on to consume another.

Hope leaves me
as I realize
I miss you, but I don’t know who you are…

I was dreaming of things I didn't want to,
and woke towards your comfort

but it wasn't there

and that's what has hurt the most,
so far.

That
I hope
you're sad

that you get that special kit out

that you look puffy-eyed from crying

that this poem ****** you the *******.

I just don't have
time enough
to suffer love
that's been poisoned
for years.

I'm so close to slipping away
burning life into irradiated ash,
slipping beneath the waves,
and escaping.

Baby, let me break.
Make me happy,
lonely, aching to
love.

Able only
to hate.

I'm sorry for the toll
my mental health took
on your sweet soul.

The nights of worry
watching me disintegrate
in a grey-shaded room
where you must have felt...

...so alone.

And if I could break
this time-line error
I would save the baby girl
that was being suffocated.

Take her hand
(Fight)
Tell her it's alright
(Fight)
Cradle her precious face
(Fight)
And never look away from her doe-eyes
(Fight)

I'm so sorry
little one.

I'm so tired
of laughing without the eyes
of crying without the tears
of wearing this mask
on top of a mask
just to keep
people
satisfied.

I still turn to talk to you
I still expect your smile
I still hold on to your soul
I still see the rest of my life
in you.

And so...

I'm still fighting.

She only has so much weakness to bleed,
so much effort to save,
so much anxiety to drain.

I've painted enough words.
You get the point,
but there is less a period.

I've often wondered if, why, when, and how much
it weighs.

It weighs exactly as much as the leaves
you wear upon your hair.

I love you
I say a thousand times
Would say
has said
wrapping my arms
around you
I will protect you
I will fight any battle for you
I will be the warm water
pouring into your empty cup
Filling you up,
pulling you to shore,
mouth to mouth,
you gasp...
you're back.

Scrawling drawings in bone coins,
desperately attempt to pull you from a hole of
skipping heart and
tightening chest.

My pen is crooked,
my lines are numb,
and I'm wishing you were awake.

And baby,
you are my perfect world.

How dare you
take it away.

I want to spread you open
like the blank pages I use
to write on,
and cover you in the poetry
of my lust.

Like the cracks
between the sea.

I hold out loud
conversations
with the ghost of you
in my bed.

And everything broke,
in the end.

Like the teapots
we so delicately
cared for,
now shattered.

My heart is aching,
if it weren't so numb.

So I disappear