There was a little bird I knew, clamoring on and on about the little things
Such as why we line leather with wool and why the sun moves round in circles
And how the boat floats on water.
Bright as her white feather, with eyes wide, taking in the world with
blatant skies filling her.

There was a little bird I knew, learning and pestering mentors and teacher
For the secrets of the earth. What lies underneath the dirt and rock? What holds us together?
Whispering winds to float away on, always too far horizon stars.
Long, fluttering, and dragging feather worn and torn away to her content,
and a disappointing mother saying, “why’d you pluck such beautiful feathers.”

There was a little bird, clawing for knowledge and wisdom from the elders
who said, “no, stay and fly around the same trees and make a nest, be content with this.”
and she did, saying, “I will be content with this.”
and she stayed under the dark canopies and hid away in her nest.

There is a little bird I know, silent and sullen in the reeking shadows
waiting under the leaves, through rain lashing and sunny vibrance
that never touched her feathers.
and her mother said, “why’d you turn your eyes dull. You had such beautiful eyes.”
Disapproving stares, distraught apathy, and cavernous hallways

with no ceilings and no beginnings. It started like
this.
       Brok
               en
sentences.

Broken can be repaired.
Can her eyes be bright again? Can the world shut up and
                                                                ­                            stop breaking?
Lies have clawed at her              L
                                              ­ B              U              
                                  ­           E                   F                   Eyes
                                               A              I
                                                ­    U    T             But did not turn them ugly.

But the lies made them             G      Y
                                             U       L
In the way that muck on white leather is distasteful and
how crimes on another are leeches between toes.
                                                                ­                                            And so the bird I knew,
                                  died.

Tin’s in the shed
So is Auntie who drinks too much.
I often wonder, who’ll go first—
Mary Jane or the boy next door.

The sky was shedding tears yesterday,
Who died? Or rather, who didn’t?
Music rhythm swaying kids in the clubs
And overdoses treated as criminal thefts

There’s a crab cake on the table,
Don’t know what it’s for anymore.
No one’s left to eat, no one’s left to eat
And I’m stuck in utter agravity.

These lungs we share, saturated with
Drugs trying to revive,
And drugs trying to pitch overboard
I wanna just lay down and

Forget the stars
Forget the moon
Forget the seven billion souls

Cursed pits under eyes of
Grey scaled photos to hide
Paintings of blacked blue
Look, there’s God standing over all

Saying nothing, saying nothing.
See any miracle? huh, neither do I
Cause I’m not sure whether direct opposition or
Indirect consultation ever shaves away Alex’s eyebrows.

There isn’t an ounce of bread left
To feed those seven billion souls, isn’t that
Right? Cause waste from hearth is worth
Less than their left pinky.

**** tired of this mess
We livin’ in a cupboard, in
A kitchen full of paper thumbs and
Punctured eyes.

I want to skip forward to the best parts,
Talking until my throat is raspy and,
drinking burning coffee at 6am as the sun rises over the line of houses.
Pale painted skin as I wait in nervous anticipation for your test to come back—
hoping that the line will read positive, and dreading the line will tell us that too.

I want to skip past our fight about the time I got too drunk, run past the part where,
I, in my self pity, collapsed against your porch door, unable to reach the cheaply made bronze.
The time I snapped at you for another self derogatory statement, trying to tell you, your scars aren’t a sign of weakness. I tried to tell you how strong you were, to stand there and live against all odds, but…
Somehow I made it about me, and at three forty two, I realized my mistake.

Red lines mark our history, and my mechanical pencil can’t erase these grades,
Signs that told me to stop, but I had no intention of leaving.
You told me you didn’t understand, why I stayed,
And I had to tell you,
It was because I couldn’t love you.

You, who loved me
And me, who couldn’t
          because the heart I had failed.
but I choose to love you anyways.
          a choice I haven’t regretted.

How about we skip to the night I held you in my arms and refused to let you go? Or the day I surprised you with your favorite dinner, even if I was a terrible cook, you smiled at me and we ordered pizza instead?

A choice, a choice, will those kids ever learn?
Love isn’t a feeling in your breast, or clogging your senses.

Remember how I said I wanted to skip past our fights? I changed my mind.
… those fights made us,
and so I hope you say yes, will that cute half smirk you always gave me,

when I hand you your favorite book, a ring dangling from a chain, marking my favorite passage.


Lets not chase after these next few years,
Let us just live them first.

with love,

It’s weird how much
I love times new roman and
how the sight of Jordan Maron playing
below Zero Subnautica makes me clap and grin.

I’m the nonbinary watching youtube to sleep
and to feel comfort. I find the sound of the Misfits Podcast
soothing. The first degree black belt resting on my shelf
means I worked seven years, but when I learn Jiu-Jitsu
I’m up against the wall, stuck in another corner.

My closest friend group full of a bunch of LGBTQ+ and
mentally ill kids, from transgender to bisexual, from depression
to panic attack disorder to separation anxiety. We’re all just trying to survive.
Living comes later.

I’m writing a poem to express who I am, is
this enough? To the heart of me, the soul,
or whatever you want to call it.

Does the horse tattoo I got three weeks ago,
on my left shoulder blade or the way I fold my clothes
in my suitcase tell you? How about the green of my eyes,
that my best friend describes as a soft jade with small streaks of gold,
the outer rim a pillowy chocolate blue?

I love the sound of acoustic guitar and the powerful choruses
thrumming through the air. Editing is always done on paper and
grammar is a learning experience. I go horseback riding every Sunday
with my campus horse club.

But this tells you nothing of my times, when I found myself
Alone, utterly without hope and trust. Or I could say,
I trusted that I was not enough and that I could never amount to anything.
But it’s taken me a long time to take back what was always mine,
and I’m fighting for those rights yet.

I need to wash my water bottle more,
I need to say I love you to my best friend more,
I need to… to…
Love Myself.

And maybe that’s what this poem is for.

Your words are powerful—
take away the sterling silver glint of a blade
buried beneath your rib cage and you will
see
how they sour stones and reverberate down Cyrpus Wells
full of venerable solace.

I cast my line into the sea,
tangled in the web of what’s in between,
searching for a meaning that’s not there.
But… your words wallow with me,
sultry in day’s spine, rambling long a serenaded coast,
fallow beach umbrellas railing against coarse high tide
as I weathered the hard won sanctity.

You once fetched a high price, trying to lose the tumbled mass,
scattering around your ankles.
Your lips drank unearthly bitterness at the salt in their veins,
and you tossed the words, traded them for a rope to spin me
from underneath lame hooves.

Tattered, whipping polyester strains to break free
snapping at the wind for sailing too quick and I can
see you
landing on your feet, seizing that of which was thrown away,
an old recorder full of rotten seaweed and fragmented shells.

“Words will not break you.”

See as you surge up from the Cyprus Well you peddled away,
watch as you claim the skies with hawk eyes and a beak born of bleak bitterness,
Lashing language into unrecognizable shapes,
and behold the verity sewn strength in your words.

See that

“You are incomplete and the universe and ever-evolving.”

And stand for yourself, endure their words
and remember—
your own words are powerful too.

She stood up, her hair pulled back into two braids,
A question lingering on her lips as she stared at me.
“Why don't you want to get better?” She asked, a face of intrusion
I looked at her, feeling for an answer that I knew existed somewhere
“I think,” I started to say, “That I want to, but I've grown so used to feeling wrong,
That I no longer understand how to feel right. There is a monster inside of my body,
he bears my name, he haunts my mind, and whispers to me. He has me wrapped around her finger, a delicious little nightmare.”
The girl stared at me with squinted eyes and a confused smile.
“I don't understand, you put yourself into your work, does he go to? Does your nightmare walk with you everyday?”
“He flows through my fingers into the ink on this page and every page; he leaves me behind sometimes, and when he does, I am less than nothing. Yes, you can see me then, but I am not me without her. My little nightmare's heart is my own. Learning to live without my pretty little nightmare is like being thrown into the ocean and not knowing how to swim.”
A look of dawning appeared in her eyes, spotted with curiosity,
In this place of white walls and white floors and white beds
This was the only color
“Wouldn't it help if you weren't left alone with her? You always lock yourself away in that awful room with no one to help you.”
I could reply with a sharp retort, a tactic of distance,
But she wasn't being mean and simply wanted to understand
Which is more than most have tried to do.
“I isolate myself because fighting her and speaking with you are exhausting to a guy like me.”
I gave her a weak smile, a shattered smile, but a smile with red lips and white teeth all the same.
“What kind of guy are you?”
My eyes faded and my mouth shut
A streak of memory burst through my heart, a twisted bolt poisoned
“A broken one.”
She gave me a toothy grin, a contagious grin
and skipped up to me with her little red shoes.
“Let me put you back together again. I promise I won't lose a piece.”
She grabbed my hands and pulled me out of my chair
Fear shocked my body as my sleeves were pulled away,
revealing the masterpiece I'd drawn on my skin with iron
But the little girl only took out a band aid and put it over a scar, saying
“I won't let you fall apart again. I'll help you learn to live again. I promise.”
She gave me her pinky finger and crossed it over mine. “Pinky promise.”
And then jumped up and down with excitement.
I looked over as a white gowned woman entered the room.
“Miss,” I called out. “Why is she here?” I pointed to the little girl
The nurse said with a sad truth, “She brought herself in, said her mother left her and she hurt and that this is where hurting people came, sweet child.”
I looked back at the child, grinning at me
And she stared back at me, a whisper caressing her mind
“Please don't leave me. Everyone leaves. Are you going to leave?”
I took her in my arms, and told her this—
“I won't go away. I'll stay with you and you'll stay with me. I promise.”

They can’t make out the stars
on this moonless night,
though the torn curtains lay
stripped of willful ignorance.
They can’t see the green left in the stalk
of a dying marigold bloom
scattered on the floor between
shards of a broken vase.

It’s hard to find the seeds after
Autumn’s breath stills the dirt,
the day is night-taken and the
undying questions tiptoe around
the tapestry laid out, unbelonging
from the crushing grief it has
woven into the well cared thread.

The lavender and ginger tea steam
whispers upward, toward the popcorn ceiling
where the moonstruck wander in
tight knit culminations, songbirds floating around,
wilting feathers dropping as stones fall down
in unrelenting storms of chaotic speeches.

Tap tap tap on the fifth story window
hollering up from the snow frozen grass roots,
incoherent language sauntering around the table
at thanksgiving dinner, dim faces
stretched out alongside the turkey.

it was a season of beauty
pick any one,
they flowed from one to another,
two birds flying somewhere they'll never be.

She had honeyed smiles and syrup eyes,
smooth and slow, content whispers and
galloping grins.

She had lovely hips and straight,
thin arms with short fingers,
soaring words flying through
candle flames.

care to see,
beyond the depths of
your ocean and
your stars,
they murmured into
each others ears.

and simple it was
in a complex sort of way.
going to a place they'll never be.

Breakneck words, racing around,
trouncing across the wooded tops
of long dead, roughened boughs.
Tongue deadened, heavyweight champion
without leagues to move around: breath famine;
the time of a hare loping down the barren barrow.
Sought out lungs, captivating oxygen in a symphony of
sanctioned Guantanamo iron poles.
Tense, rippling knuckles, wound round,
round the starlight of Betelgeuse
six hundred and forty two point  five light years
away.
“Away with you” patches the scabs and root bitten nails
of some lost keratin; peace—nought found.
Await the rush of overbearing insinuations
claiming now a dead solicitation.
Learning hath been done
and redone, a series of embittered eyes
collecting up images that retain singularity status.
One talk, one Breath,
It’s all bout
to change to—
something better than
the jacked up prices on petrol station boards and the lips will
no longer book it past the mind’s inconsistency, bereft of known speak.
A challenge for not the sake of self: saké drank: but for the
peace under the left breast.

With the waves crashing down on my mind
I struggle to breath, water filling my broken lungs,
Tears mixing with the salty sea, swallowing my body in it's roiling currents
Breaking down the elements into a dust,
Scattered dreams and thoughts floating on a gilded surface
With the fire flowing down my skin
I whimper as it consumes my identity, sparks lighting up my eyes
Burning my skin, hollowing my heart and stealing my cares
Boiling my blood away, into a vapor trailing through the atmosphere
Tearing my essence apart, the embers glowing like an abandoned forge
Crippled limbs of heavens long forgotten by time and it's friends

Water and fire, they burn and drown,
If I could say which was worse, I wouldn't have a blackened or suffocated mind
If I could choose one to die from, to go out in pain or peace
Both with arrant beauty as death and love take me away
into the beyond abyss, far into the depths, and high above the sky
In a place of nothing, of absence and complete nonexistence
Then I would have to say, the sound of home, a crackling fire
would be a remembrance of a life, but in suffering I shall go
Yet I find myself drawn as lead to paper
to the idea of acceptance in the sea's lovely grasp
A burden left behind on the shoreline, with the lost and unknown as company

So, shall the decision cost me a life?
No, I say, it will not cost me anything but a body already dead
Shredded by words scorned stones thrown by the living
Although they are murderers in each's own right,
I stand Queen to that title, for they did not cast those looks for free, nor alone
In the night I stood at an altar and bleed for my gods,
In the day I prayed for salvation from my nightmares around me
Seek the light, they would tell me, and you will be found
But I have lived in this darkness for so long, it has become me and my home
A shelter from the storm swirling outside these cobweb walls
Caught inside, a spider without a will to fight

Must there be an answer to the long abated question;
Is there a reply I can formulate without the harshness of their words to punish back?
The world is a wondrously tragic truth no one can read but those who are too, a truth
Born of the miseries and the deaths that bring about that talk of devils and demons
The ones that live inside my head, who made me an empress, the ones who stole me away
and gave me the choice; of peace or suffering?
Is it not so imperfect that I must choose, an unworthy merit to make me take
Of all the liberties given, the only one I wish not to see
Is the one standing in front of me.

With the waves crashing down on my mind
I struggle to breath, water filling my broken lungs,
Tears mixing with the salty sea, swallowing my body in it's roiling currents
Breaking down the elements into a dust,
Scattered dreams and thoughts floating on a gilded surface
With the fire flowing down my skin
I whimper as it consumes my identity, sparks lighting up my eyes
Burning my skin, hollowing my heart and stealing my cares
Boiling my blood away, into a vapor trailing through the atmosphere
Tearing my essence apart, the embers glowing like an abandoned forge
Crippled limbs of heavens long forgotten by time and it's friends

Water and fire, they burn and drown,
If I could say which was worse, I wouldn't have a blackened or suffocated mind
If I could choose one to die from, to go out in pain or peace
Both with arrant beauty as death and love take me away
into the beyond abyss, far into the depths, and high above the sky
In a place of nothing, of absence and complete nonexistence
Then I would have to say, the sound of home, a crackling fire
would be a remembrance of a life, but in suffering I shall go
Yet I find myself drawn as lead to paper
to the idea of acceptance in the sea's lovely grasp
A burden left behind on the shoreline, with the lost and unknown as company

So, shall the decision cost me a life?
No, I say, it will not cost me anything but a body already dead
Shredded by words scorned stones thrown by the living
Although they are murderers in each's own right,
I stand Queen to that title, for they did not cast those looks for free, nor alone
In the night I stood at an altar and bleed for my gods,
In the day I prayed for salvation from my nightmares around me
Seek the light, they would tell me, and you will be found
But I have lived in this darkness for so long, it has become me and my home
A shelter from the storm swirling outside these cobweb walls
Caught inside, a spider without a will to fight

Must there be an answer to the long abated question;
Is there a reply I can formulate without the harshness of their words to punish back?
The world is a wondrously tragic truth no one can read but those who are too, a truth
Born of the miseries and the deaths that bring about that talk of devils and demons
The ones that live inside my head, who made me an empress, the ones who stole me away
and gave me the choice; of peace or suffering?
Is it not so imperfect that I must choose, an unworthy merit to make me take
Of all the liberties given, the only one I wish not to see
Is the one standing in front of me.

Solicited news runs on a treadmill,
and drips from the mug reading
Captured in Words
full of things i don’t want to know,
another ******, another corrupt business,
another hate crime, another attack,
another school shooting, another ****,
another another another another another
It’s a loop i want to cancel out with my bluetooth headphones
while glaring at the world making assumptions
on my appearance.
Listening to the only music that makes me feel heard,
that makes the hungry, the crying, the insane feel
heard.
Can’t you hear me? The screams echoing around the empty
walls fabricated by your enthusiasm for |||||||||||||| Cages.
When i find the sanity i crave, you label it childish,
that i find hope in a face on the screen
what is wrong with you that you must also take away
what i cannot give myself?
Feed into the lies, feed into the apathy,
fed up with the screams and the silence,
you ask where i stand?

i lay on a path riddled with thorns
under a scorching, searing light
but i am not allowed to die

and you ask,
why i see a bleak future
or none at all.

Here’s to the girl who hates repetition.
Here’s to the eyes that always wander and
Here’s to the nights where she lived on a little longer.

Here’s to the skies that bloom with ambition
Here’s to the heart that races over the word no and
Here’s to the girl who never might know.

Here’s to the gun in her head, loaded with ammunition
Here’s trigger rusted with wear
Here’s to the heart strings yet to tear.

Here’s to the broken and shattered rendition,
From hells unbidden and noise unridden
Here’s to the girl who remains hidden

Here’s to the walls lit with a fiery ignition
Here’s to the times of late night fruition
Here’s to all that ****** repetition.

Start with a word, any word.
And then a year later you might find a hundred pages.
A story just begun, a tale, that, in reality, needs some editing.
But I didn’t find myself in these pages I’d written, like the inspirational quotes say.
I found my characters, I found a few bad habits too,
Like how I bite my fingers as I stare at my computer in frustration,
Or stare at the wall in blank fixation.

Once the word is picked, don’t bleed out onto the screen,
Hold yourself together, else you won't have to lips to pour forth a single key.
Some old dude told you to bleed, didn’t he?
I’ve found, I don’t bleed until page 71,
When I have bonded with Jonathon,
And now I must watch him mourn his fiancee,
Who never got to propose.

Be careful about your planning. Too methodical,
And you’ll lose yourself in the untold parts,
Too spontaneous and you’ll see your story turned from
An epic dragon escape to a horror filled romance.
Find a medium of crazy that suits you, and remember the details
Of the night you tried marijuana and coughed as the smoke hit your throat.

Hug the computer tight, don’t let anyone see
Until you’ve determined the story strong. Some people open up at the blank page,
While others hide it away until it’s a polished four hundred and sixty two, front and back.
Say, here’s an idea—don’t forget to study your grammar too.
Unless, of course, you’re poetry demands to be free,
then flow round the corner and hesitate not with commas
theyll be no use for you.

After all this advice, I’ll tell you one thing.
Forget all of it, it’ll be nothing to you.
We storytellers like to go on and on about how to write,
When we barely ever write a real story of characters in between speeches.
If the only thing I could tell you, the only important fact I can say with utter certainty is,

For god’s sake,
Write.

Somewhere along the line,
I stopped knowing
i was worth something.

I’m not sure where
I left this knowledge behind,
i have stopped looking.

Perhaps I might have noticed,
If the sun weren’t in my eyes
as I slept in dark corners.

No one else noticed it,
As I hoped they wouldn’t
and wished they would.

Somewhere along the line,
I stopped knowing
to be afraid of death.

And that is where the line ended.

Don’t expect me to say “I’m okay,”
because I started to go to therapy.

Don’t expect me to smile
because I stopped hurting myself.

Don’t expect me to heal
when I can’t go a day without the thought.

Don’t expect anything from me,
you’ll be greatly disappointed.

And don’t expect me to say thank you
when you stay,
I’m too selfish to say anything.

Or maybe I can’t talk, move my lips to form words,
haven’t you noticed?

And now that I’m here,
I can’t even cry without fear cradled next to the tears.
No, no crying for me. Not again.

Don’t expect me to leave my dorm,
When out there, I can’t hear their voices,
because somehow those who don’t know anything about me
make me the most comfortable.

Don’t expect me to say the truth “I’m empty and lost and emotionless and apathetic and so full of nothing, I don’t know how to break,”
because I go out from my dorm
or go to class or any of the clubs.

And expect me to say “I’m fine.”

It stood among no giants, no towers, no mountains.
Heedless to the wind, scattered without waving stalks and rusted leaves,
it chose to fall where it could not.
Jaded, perhaps, but not without sterling hands crafted to bellow.
A smattering of elbows chastised the woodpeckers pecking.
Ephemeral? Beautiful? Sober? Lassitude?

It fell among no gorges, no ravines, no swale.
Heedless to the rain, swamped in a dell without sliver streams,
it swelled up above the ratty woven sails.
Coarse, perhaps, but feather flew, vying for sky.
A copse of whitebark pine pillaged no battalions.
Mauve? Tender? Empyrean? Redolent?

It pattered among no small sorts, no ant hills, no chambers.
Heedless to the duke, sabotaged without sword, spear, stone,
it swallowed a hive of rabbits in no fields.
Desultory, perhaps, but not with quintessential ripples bent in space.
A harrowing panacea flourished in spindles of florid bristles.
Sempiternal? Susurrous? Honeyed? Irascible?

It churned among no whirlpools, no pots, no frosting.
Heedless to the maelstrom, sluicing in a myriad of slanted lanterns,
it chose to lure where it could not beguile.
Laconic, perhaps, but not without furtive gallows smoldering.
A candelabra of viridian mire spies spied genteel dragonflies.
Enormity? Enmity? Vestigial? Switchback?

It stood among nothing.
It stood enervated.  
It stood.
It.

What it meant to me
was what the branch means to the cardinal,
was what the pencil means to the poet,
might have been how the sky storms
to someone sitting on a window bench with
eyes seeking something solid, something sold.

What it meant to them
was a history of books that aren’t yellowed with age,
was the Sudoku puzzles in the newspaper only grandmothers use,
it could have been what ramen meant to a college kid who’s two meals a day
consist of sodium and carbohydrates, who’s eyes bend down, but they’re not allowed
to look away from something crucial. It made them gag.

What it meant was
we’re living in a cage and college debt (1.5 Trillion) is only one of the bars to freedom in a country renowned for liberty. That’s too expensive, but not for war.

What it meant was
I’m in the middle of my personally gifted depression and anxiety and my friends say,
“We all grew up with parents like that, we all got ******,”
and she was right. I don’t know someone who hasn’t dealt with
what this world’s handed us on a silver plastic platter.

Can you tell me after all these years
how we’re to cope? There aren’t enough therapists. There isn’t enough trust between our minds and our beliefs. (Ex: Do I deserve help? No.)

What it meant to me
was the words I couldn’t say, out loud or in my head,
was the crossword puzzles, titled “Emotions”,
might have been reading the news and
finding there’s another empty seat in a class I’m not in.

Do you want a pretty ending?
Maybe it’ll happen, maybe it won’t,
I’m not here to tell you how to live your life.
We’re not given much choice in too many matters,
but the cardinals are resting on their branch and
the pencil is tucked between my fingers,
and every storm ends to begin again.

He couldn’t see beyond the veil of mist obscuring the burrows
where the army of undead stood, where the price he had paid for living awaited.
In the gloom of a moon trapped behind a nimbus night,
they didn’t shuffle or groan or whisper terrible things,
nor did they appear grotesque and layered in slabs of their own blood.

He slunk forward to meet them, eyes darting in wild arcs,
skinned lips bitten a bittersweet rosy delight.
It was fear written on his face, not anger or pity or nostalgia,
or maybe it was under his eyelids, beckoning him toward what couldn’t be considered friends,
they were acquaintances of coincidence instead.

The sincere light had been snuffed out long ago,
back when people believed in gods who gave a **** about them—
now they had to make their own ******* miracles.
He might’ve laughed at the word if he wasn’t stuck in a place resembling the Asphodel Meadows…
they weren’t heroes or noble or mighty, they were the murdered, the slaughtered.

He joined his brethren, his body warded off in a grave he felt didn’t matter;
nothing changed because of his death or the hoarse public howl.
The ranks reminded him of the scene in Lord of the Rings with legions of men and women standing strong against a matching foe, but for the foe itself—
their foe numbered fewer, a cluster of pale beings with roaring eyes full of fallacies.

He couldn’t see back where he had burst forth from, but he didn’t try—
his fear hadn’t evaporated, it swirled around him… no, it coiled around all of them,
a mass of heaving exhausted dread spanning too many centuries.
They were all the same in one terrible condition, one method of mayhem done,
he fell to his knees and cried out, for he saw past the veil—

swathed in hopeless suits and scapegoat words, their nation had let another gun prevail.

I’ll look up and see a wasp
Or a bee, hunting around,
Ready to die.
Collaborations simplified in rivers abreast
Oh, the shores of Lethe are so delightful
With their ash marked eyes and solitude beggars
Potted plants of desiree, coal jutted shouts cross
Blanket crowds shoved in a bruised corner
With a madman screaming something about
Lasting generation and forced collaration.

See the basket cases? Claimed they were
From the devil, Dee did, muttering about kingdoms
and collard greens
With her stuffed, shrunk coat waddling round the
same Dickey’s, a corner from Westboro Baptist.
And kitty corner from the statues no one’s taking down
Cause Mr.White said nah son, that’s not right
As he bombed Bethel Baptist one more time.

And these shores are so delightful, don’t you see?
Harpooned sticks and scarecrows, oh sorry,
I meant social expectations, but who cares anyway?
Wondering why we all say “i want to die’,
Have you looked at the government mandating
People inhuman, or the money situation,
Should be on the news, but
No we here at Fox and CNN don’t believe that’s important.
Say, I don’t think we should have Onion headlines
On the New York Times.
So we say ‘i want to die’ and the Gazette tells us
it’s those **** video games again
or maybe it’s the stigma and lack of empathy from
The Powerful.

And you hear on the street,
“****’s ending this country,”
Sorry, I wanted a break from all this ******* noise
From a country pulling apart at the beaten seams
Of another unwritten book.
Anger, you’ll say, irrational, I’ll add,
But pointing at the statue in the park

And you wonder why all those wasps
And bees we look down on, the gerbils and
Hamsters
That we never pull a punch on
Why they escape through the way they know how,
Why, wouldn’t you too? But that’d require empathy, sir,
And apparently you lack more than morals, sir.

Look, there’s Dee, getting her collard greens
In her stuffy, shrunken jacket,
Round the corner from Dickey’s and cracked roads with
littered breezes blowing past cars open windows, honking and
brazen calls.

Welcome to the Lethe shores,
Don’t worry, you won’t remember a thing,
Slipped a bit of Liquid X in your alcohol.

With the sky’s blood stiffening
                  & plugging the holes in its felt fabric
I admitted what I’d known for a bit too long.

It was 19:24 when I told my best friend
                  how I’d had an anxiety attack in Poetry 310,
how I’d pulled back from the terrible ricocheting
                  bullet whizzing into each synapse, an attempt
to distract my analytical thought patterns seizing up &
                 found my limbs convulsing without command,
my breaths zipping past my lips, 100mph in a 30mph zone.

My father had emotionally abused me & I found out
                  about 14:00, staring at a wealth of information,
how emotional abuse affects kids and I was gazing

into my own scars with chewed up cheeks.
Do you know instant inabilities, froth the mouth,
lashed to ceiling, concaved roundabouts? Belligerent
                companions,  I thought didn’t exist, not like this.
Not like how I’ve been told. Hadrian, short for Josh, short
for Navan’s boyfriend, at least in most stories.
It was almost 22:00 when she snapchatted me, eyes broken:

I want to commit suicide. It was 23:02 when the police called,
& 8:47 when she thanked me. The blood,
my blood, braced for impact, was this going to be my first time?

Do you remember your first friend’s suicide? I haven’t yet.
But waiting is nostalgic, counting taps of my foot.
Bleating for help, cry wolf, cry & die. Stonewall had enough
death seamlessly woven into history textbooks. Say,
maybe I ought to up & lie about tension riddled bodies when
my parents materialize. Afraid’s a word I studied
until it memorized contours of misshapen, looming, dried out

pride. Baked in the imprint of my fingertips, bruised, bashed,
cantered to lissome ledges overseeing basket-sized lakes.
Now it’s 14:58 & the lights won’t turn on & tunnels don’t mind

loamy silences with crippled arteries.

If I knew, maybe I’d say something,
Why I miss my cats more than my parents
Why I miss the teal walls of my room and the full sized bed
more than I miss my family.
Why I miss the green trees and ravine behind my house,
all I hear is a withering beeping outside my five story window.

This room is so small
and I have to bear it with another
and although she and I get along,
Alone is weighted with wondering when she’ll be back.

Home is more an empty house than a room full of family.
Home is less talk and more birdsong in the background.
Home is…

Not these tight corners and partying bellowing music down in room 809,
not the concrete walls painted white, or the lofted beds I can’t sit up straight.

Getting away from my family was easy,
and my friends hard.
Leaving was easy.
And wishing hard.

I feel, less independent,
there’s only so many places to walk.
No car to escape, nor a room either.

The closest I get is headphones and online friends.
And yet they are so far away.

No words
I don’t write letters
not to myself, not to anyone.
The first time I wrote a letter
it was to my best friend in the hospital.

What does that say about me?

To my younger self,
who wouldn’t listen,
who won’t listen,
I don’t write this to you.

I won’t tell you about
what occured in October 2016
or the job in the summer of 2018.

What of that week in 2015 that you will begin
to learn how to hate?

No, not others. Yourself.

Dates don’t mean anything
but they linger around your head,
worming their way through cracks
in a well worn veneer.

I can’t explain the haunted memories that have silk bows
wrapped around the pinnacle of my fingers.

How do I explain the loss and grief
of losing myself without contouring the edges
into selfishness?

There aren’t words that strike
the anvil with enough malice to endow
the emotion with truth. A simple veritable power
taken away from my reaching grasp and I fathom the silence with
crushing, lovely anger you relish.

A letter to you? They asked me to write about the struggle
I would carve out for you? I wouldn’t wish that upon any child,
not even you.

You don’t need to understand the vibrance of hunger,
peeling scraps of skin to the floor.

So I say to you, don’t go looking for answers,
You may crave the sturdy oak floors, but
it’s better to fly than fall before you’re time.

I don’t write letters, I write
about people and aches that never pass
and stories of deranged hope but I
cannot write a letter to you.

You are not yet ready to write honestly,
the lies seep through and bury themselves in
layers of truths.
You’d say, that’s cliche
But how do you explain three long years?

I was told you write a letter to you…
I refuse.

Someone told me in English 254
"We don't give anything value without disaster"
and I found it to be true.
In American Society we label disaster
with monuments of metal and stone.
and then forget about the spaces between
trees
            and the wild open ranges.
And in class,
                         we moved on,
to talking about                                     fish and enjambment.

The falchion was forged in the twilight
Seared by flames that burned white with rage
And cast with sanguine silver stars
As the day transformed into night
The sky was alight, scorched by the golden rays
Deepening into a colorless void, grey mists unraveling
Creeping down the hillsides, rolling through dark vales
Seeking the sparks that flew as the hammer pounded every aeon
Scimitar, Dagger, Sword, Kris, Rapier, Sabre, Katana they called it
A weapon of many  names and styles

The Book of Fate they claim was written in the ages lost
When Death was just a man, with a dagger in his hand
And when the stars came out at night to show the path
Pages and scrolls, ink and quill
Decorated the papery papyrus with glyphs to tell us thus
With blood and iron they saw, felt, and warred
A cimmerian ever winter to freeze the story in time
Burn it's tale into the past and the future by desert days
Book, Scroll, Codex, Lexicon, Tome, Volume, they named it
A feast of knowledge for the learned to become wiser

A sword of mercy and a book of malevolence
Created in harmony to fight the battles of men
Against themselves they fought, wont to fall to weakness
Jealousy, Greed, Anger, Wiles, Dishonesty
Ruled them as a king does his people
But instead of a empyrean rex they received an avaricious gerent
Bound to the perfidious and the olid with pollyanna ideas
Hope left to be a lingering pain, with scores of ****** marks in its trail
A cost none should bear on their backs or minds
Yet they are herded as sheep to pens to sleep

Dragons they whispered, mystical fire and wishes turned black
Scales to survive the hottest embers and the coldest nightmares
With tails ending in barbed spikes, ready to beat back an enemy
And eyes that of which froze anyone who looked in
With a fear stricken stone toss they claimed their prey
Lain out in front of them bare to see
These are their stories past, of bloodshed and tears
They do not speak of the times
When with a swish, they killed a murderer and his men
Or when a single tear was shed from a beast that could not feel
As a boy died, fallen from arrows deep in his heart

Lining the courtyard of lies, rowan trees stood proud
Weathering every storm to this seasoned moment
Though lightning stripped away their shield, raking them barren
The ronïn never failed to appear at every fortnight's breath
Constant in their chaotic world of bloodletting
All to be ardent men of the watchers
Those who gave warning to the flying devils
A sword does not lie, but a book will hide it's lies in sweet paradises
Pick up a sword, call it home, and travel the isles without fear
Have the falchion to bear weight of words
Do not break it upon backs and minds, but into skin and scars
They do not fade like hearts and minds do
Dust and Decay, Fire and Ash, Storms and Skies
Cinders that never go out, voices that never diminish
These are the tools that must be used to conquer
Locked away in the dragon, a beast to tame

Wild and spirited does not cover the roaming creatures of this land
It only gives a brief concept of a larger idea to spin the story along
The truth of their frightening brevity unlocks all doors
Releasing all kinds of torment, of the tortured
Heads will haze over, mystified and lost in the fog they cannot see
And when the dragon do return at last
They'll find their jailors asleep in their beds with a dagger in hand
Fire flickering, dancing in eyes darkened by men
They'll meet them in the morning as the sun rises

By fall of the moon life will have drained out of somebody
Whether which beast it was that lays slain
Cannot be sought after as a prize or treasure
Smaragdine forests and grey fortresses dot the terrain
A token of the liberty taken
A Book of Fate, a Sword of Mercy
A Dragon of Tranquility, a Death of Ignorance
Affinity is the nomenclature, revealed to be the final key to the carven stone

With an Affinity for steel raze the cities
And with Affinity for books plunder the minds
But with an Affinity for choice can one find the truths in the lies and blood in the body
A fate to be forgotten and a falchion to be made yet
This story only begins as the words come to an end
With a dragon's Affinity for knowledge
And the man's affinity for stolidity

it was incomprehensible
inarticulate
maybe that's what he loved
him for.

the dark, cobweb corners,
and rusted wheel spokes
that
crisscrossed his eyes.

he loved him unspoken
unreliable
and maybe
that's why he
stayed.

I’m a castaway enjoying the rough winter seas
on the carrack of a late age ship.
Flotsam, flotsam, weighing back to a place
full of roiling stomachs and stubborn jaws.

Of waiting to fight and curling up under
a tale of adventure to escape the hurling words,
walking out to hide under stark snowy logs
fallen over, trespassing in frustration of
collected angers.

Pockmarked roads and rushed breath,
screaming in my head, lips ******* shut
wishing for the Shire to land
on my doorstep.

Stalking away, leaving behind,
My, maybe one time I’ll get there,
to rolling hills and bespoken not
against my nature.

“im human too,”
and my mother looks confused.

I have an extensive knowledge of things
many people might call useless.

I can explain to you the evolution of the Doctor,
the Dalek’s rise and downfall, the breath of a Rose.
Merlin and Arthur live in tandem, two sides of the same coin,
and it’s hard not to see, they mean more than simple friends in their reality.
Castiel, Gabriel, Lucifer, Hael, Michael, Eziekel, Raphael, among many are
the warriors of God, a man who writes comics about the Winchester brothers.
“Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” is my favorite quote from Russell Howard’s Recalibrate,
and Danial Sloss’s bit about jigsaws hits a note, a truth Ed Sheeran does too, in the last line,
“And before I get to love someone else, I’ve got to love myself.”
Of course, they mean romantic love, it can take someone loving you platonically to learn to love yourself.

I crawl around the corners, searching for this information, the tidbits I can throw at people,
Look and see me, I’ve got things you ain’t never seen before, as referenced to Secretariat,
said by Eddie Sweat. Tiny things, picked up from Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, ‘tis I, the frenchiest fry’.
I have a store racked with snapshots of a million different stories packed tight in my head and I’m desperately trying to shove these facts to fill this void I cannot fill.

I can tell you blue waffles are Percy’s favorite food, that Nico deserved better and look at me like come and watch the kid with a slowly declining mental health as he attempts to give you what he cannot give himself. Bo Burnham. BBS came from a video featuring a yellow school bus and a fuckton of shouting. Terroriser and Danisnotonfire are comfortable in their gender, and so is my friend Evan. **** the terms and conditions of masculinity, take the signatures and white out the scrawled names, break away from the lines we try to box you in.

Tumblr doesn’t always get it right, often times they get it wrong, but somethings I’ve found on there have helped me calm down a friend from an anxiety attack, have shown me truths I don’t want to see. It also taught me that carrier pigeons could fly eighteen hundred kilometers and were used as early as three thousand years ago. Have you ever seen what fan art can do? The stunning creations made by people who don’t expect any money or expectations? What of the fanfictions? We have to pay for food, water, electricity, but yet we can delve into books, a lifeline for many, for free? Kudos to them.

This is the world I have fought to live in since I can remember. This is the hunger I am trying to sate inside of me, but it only grows and I can’t keep up with it. When I can’t be me… facts, connections, the only places I can feel through are the books, movies, shows, YouTube videos. I make reference after reference, hoping to connect with someone else, to find a place I belong and…

And I can’t stop. I can’t stop. I can’t—

I can’t put into words,
the simply incomparable beliefs I heard
every ******* day until I didn’t have to
hear them anymore, and I learned to be paralyzed
from the mind to the fingers to the feet I can’t stand.

I didn’t understand how I grieved for myself
until I shoved everything down before I left for
the hospital one Friday night. I curled up in the blue nightgown,
staring at the cream walls, unable to feel anything at all.

Apathy is equal to unbearable emotion, two sides of a coin flipping
through the lightning cracked air. Waking up, finding the energy to
walk to the nine am class I skipped once a week, the skies did not breath.
Neither did I.

Navy sweat stained mats cover the wrestling room floor. The humid and
old swells without circulation. In the last thirty minutes of the MMA
I love and fear, everything slams into me. The fall I should not have had,
A heel stuck out to kick and I rise into suffocation.

I do not think I failed. I know I failed. Scrambling to the wall, because my legs
could no longer hold me, a piece of my body no longer mine to control. Tears
surge as a tsunami to the coast of Indonesia, cross legged on the floor, I try to joke, to hide.

I see the text my best friend sent me.
A theater kid drove off a bridge.
I swallow.
Grasping for breath. For control.

The coin lands on its edge, wobbling. I totter
off pillars thinned by rotten rain, into ruined fires.

I can no longer grieve. I don’t remember what I once was.
There is much I learned about myself in my psychology class.
Did you know I have an avoidant attachment style? It leaves
me unable to miss people, to trust any answer. What if they’re lying?
What if I’m lying?

See, I sour myself. Broken isn’t the word to encompass all that is,
shattered pieces across the carpet, slivers buried in the door, here
I am, scrapped off the pavement, dandelions bruising the cracks between squares.

I write to you, not for myself, not for you either. Dear depression,
Dear anxiety, I hope you stay. I don’t know who I’d be without you. Exhaustion without sleep,
beating to the minutes and the hours, laying in fear of falling asleep and never falling asleep. Recovery is terrifying. And so are you.
Love, me.

Fingers moving, spinning an eerie dangling tale
Rising and falling, stroke by stroke
Gleaming castle towers to decrepit dungeons
Rich, sumptuous royalty coated in silver starling laughing amongst themselves
Threadbare, holed, dulled eyes staring out beneath a thatched roof
Voices calling out in anger, fear, and loneliness
Wanting to be heard, to be seen by those in gilded gold crowns
Faster now, heartbeat racing across a shoreline
Waves crashing down, breaking on the rocks
Whitewater rapids burst through a hollowed cavern
Lost faces, bent minds, warped bodies
Strung out in a single note
Dancing in the gentle moonlight
Hand on hand, twirling to the beat of the bird's twitter
Slowly falling in love, and the sorrow of knowing it's ephemeral
Grasping at strings being cut with a crude iron knife
Empty eyes, sinking in despair under the calming storm
Nights of blood and days of woebegone
Years of lingering in the shadows
Forgotten smiles, and nostalgic memories
Imbued in a mellifluous melody
Joyous delight of a child
The summery silence of a violet sunset
Laying with a loved one, hearts intertwined
Sweet stories, happy ever afters
Sung out in the ascending vocals
Gone, world's faded to black and white
Melancholy of what used to be
Murky gloom, painted in tears fallen
Plucking away, living in the moment of flying hands on a bow
****** into a spiraling forest of lyrical dreams
High seas and low tides
Wind whipping through the smoke saturated air
Bodies broken fall as autumnal leaves
Winter seizes with an icy grasp
Gleaming and glimmering against a deathly drop down to the snow ridden plains
Gossamer webs of cracks in a sea colored glacier
Breaking apart to reveal green grass in violent shades
And vines creeping, choking tendrils fighting, struggling
And when the silence ensues, the music put away for the time
She plays the soul sound again, telling an epic, a saga of heartbreak, and healing
A poem about the seasons in intricate detailing, written to show the world
That broken bodies and minds can create ethereal and ineffable legends

There's a huge bean bag in the corner
the color of rusted tree
and a white painted outline to hold two drawers
of colorful condoms next to the Keurig Machine.
Three circular winded fanciful lights strung above,
shedding semicircular splotches on the walls.
Looking out on the Brooklyn Bridge in the 1893
painted on in black and grey haunts.
There's a magnetic pillar to the left of the too-deep chairs
that at least are comfortable,
but no one has legs that long.
A magazine rack to the right lends a variety of color, from
Love Match to Lavender, it's a mismatch island.
Smells like plastic and a cold air, with a hint of college sweat.
And there's the squeaky roller chair full of business textbooks and drawings of pigeons and bitten fingernails and arms that lead to the edges of the paper.
Masked with worn All Star sketchers and three clocks ticking,
Long labored skies and horcruxes gathered round the edges.
Yet somehow with all the oddities combined,
it's safe and sound under the flag including.

It's a simple matter
this feeling inside of me
coursing down the riddled road  
beating broken lips
taking tortured scripts
leaving filaments of time behind
I’m in fight or flight
the minutes pass
slower and slower without respite
and these thoughts won’t remain in chains
and help me, I’m falling into the flames

I can’t find myself I’m stuck on
winding paths I can’t escape
stuck in small moments I can’t shape

It's a simple sigh
breath gone out
time gone by
empty chairs collecting dust
all that’s happened, it’s unjust
all the same, they’re never used
house or shelter this isn't to be abused
splintered sovereign statues
and crenellations cornered cross castles confused
alliteration piled upon itself proving nothing
but this constant voice screaming
and screaming
no I’m not dreaming

It's a simple cry
no tears for me
no howling at the moon
coerced into my lovely cage
how kind
sincerely, my mind






day after day
these targets play with my veins
and the lies are calling foul play
finally I look them in the eye
and say ‘I’m not okay’

happiness isn’t something I can buy
from the obsessions I drown
pooling saturated focus
no hocus pocus
no magic can't save me
a flick of the wrist sends me spinning
down a whirlpool of darkened depths
a staircase made of broken steps

from the mess comes no poise
just another variant of chaos
and it destroys

It's a simple thought
but I’m unable to escape this flood of
words I can’t understand…

maybe I was meant to be ******.

Maybe I’ve read to many books,
Or maybe I was born unable to turn a blind eye.
But looking out at these issues I can’t fix,
most I can’t even name,
ingrained in my way of living,

…. how can I help? How can i pick up your pieces and set them back in place?

I can’t, all I can do is look on with haunted visions and
cherry picked blossoms.

People use ‘I can’ as if suddenly everything will change once you utter those two words.
That’s not how it works I’m afraid,
I tell empowerment groups and kids alike.

Maybe I’m horrifically pessimistic, calling myself a realist,
And there could be a reason, with what I’ve seen,
All the news we consume,
I couldn’t always ignore
the stories of deeds and people
highlighted in cheery cherry picked blossom lipstick.

Let’s not begin on the manipulation,
I wouldn’t want to bore you
with a million different and consistent stories.

Money donations make me feel important,
does that mean I’m only egotistical if I donate more?
What if I help out, build a park or walk down those crime scene lanes
with a hundred different people, demanding a constitutional right?

When I read, ‘equal protection of the laws’, and turn on my tv,
News station’s bias and political affiliation is not what I asked for.
And then they show me another crime to beget those simple words,
As if they are so complicated to understand by our nation’s leaders in court.

I can’t turn my eyes away, I don’t want too
Not from our history or our future, much less the present.
So, without speaking of these issues, after all, we hardly do that,
And when we do, it is bargained for and silenced, then…
Shall I present an idea?

I’ve not got a masters degree, nor a specialty in this or that, but love isn’t going to save us. Determination’s halfway there. But the humanity of it all always seems to fall away as time goes on.

This is all too much for today,
maybe I'll just...
read a book or write a poem.

He won't say he knows
what it's like to  
shudder in horror at
himself.

He won't say he understands
the frozen fear and inability to
control his own mind,
the unbidden beliefs that don't go away.

He won't say that voice
in his head, isn't very little
and he can't help but argue
against himself, who isn't really him.

He won't say that it's not
alright when the evening is dying in
splendid shades of soft autumn
and he's unable to see it.

He won't say he gets what it's
like to be frozen in the corner of the room
huddled in ball of silently screaming limbs,
eyes closed because it takes too much strength to open them.

He won't tell his friends when the
noise is yelling and freaking out
over a grade that has become his world
and it's stressful enough without them saying it doesn't matter.

He won't say
wouldn't it be nice...
to be happy?
Yeah, that would be.

He won't tell his friends
in blazing daylight that seems to single him out
that he wishes it would stop.
Please, make it stop.

He won't tell them
anything at all.

Waiting is Nostalgic

I've seen the collage pinned to your arms
thighs stomach and wrists
Pictures you sent to yourself so you

could see what you'd carved with little
paper clips. This is how its always been,
pretty tainted with blood and I'm stuck in-

between sounding romantic about the ugly
lines drifting into our caged minds because
I've been the one wishing, pastel green

rumpled and staring at the column of
warnings disappointed death wasn't one
of them. I'm waiting to get that call, you

know the one. I daydream about how I'd
respond and I still don't hate myself  
more than you hate yourself.

Slivers of glass from my phone screen
stuck in my big toe, bruised knees, sore
throat. I got a noise complaint from my

neighbor upstairs and isn't it ironic?
I'm allowed to swear and in the eulogy
I said **** at least 27 times and 27 was

our number. Was. You're still here.
But how many minutes will tick by?
The first time you counted out 62 pills

and downed them with kale ***** you
snuck from your parents stash in the
unfinished room they always said they'd

fix up someday. The second time: black
ice down the hill by the nature center, chevy
truck flipped, roof crunching down over—


concussion, sprained arm, bruises, health
conditions (heart), too many ambulance
rides and not enough $1000 bills. Specifics?

January 3rd 2018. Swing.
September 20th 2018. Pills spill.
December 7th, my phone is on,

Doctor Who theme song, David Tennant era.
I’m suppressing my anxiety around you,
can’t even whisper. Banter ‘bout death,

back and forth and back is the dot dot dot
at the end of each joke. I strummed 17
melodies we’d written together, you

struck the lyrics and I, the tune and we
named it Chocolate Blue after the candy
colored eyes of a boy I liked in tenth grade.

In The Book Thief, Liesel sees Rudy Steiner
die, I cried at 3am, characters evoke tears
more than real people because twelve

years ago I could only show anger, they
let me stay safe when reality crumpled,
crinkled eyes aren’t only for smiles. 584

pages blamed my personality according to him.
You revealed the abuse I hadn’t considered,
but you don’t see the abuse in that *******

of a house. ******* doesn’t cover the half
of it, but your favorite insult was from a book,
‘****-gurgling fuckbuckets’. Beep. Beep. Beep.

December 8th, 2019. No sound but a flatline.
It’s how I imagined it. A call at 16:57pm. And
isn’t it peace? At least to you it is and maybe

I shouldn’t have fabricated reality. Maybe.
8121900 was your passcode, a collage I
chewed my lips to—delete, delete, save.

They say "I'm not sure,"
and they know it's veritable.

Cluttered desk--hats and
textbooks and papers and
earbuds all askew, heart
pumping too quick

Sitting on a black plastic chair,
legs curled up underneath, eyes
flickering to The Latehomecomer,
stomach unsettled

"I'm not sure." of what?
head down, eyes searching,
mind spinning, lungs catered
like coffee at noon
"Everything."

Supplied lies, shaking hands
pouring chamomile tea into a
white cup, hoping for--
that too.

"Everything?" on their mind
is falsified and unknown,
twisted skin ruddy,
shoes all in a row,
nails bitten like marionette

"Anything." of confirmation
belongs to the stables
which blossom with the
stench of sweetness and
wild, roving insecurity

"I'm not sure," they
murmur, "what you mean."

Precipices are lonely business
and so are "People like me,"
Forks are steel but the
mind is molten
and rusted in decay

"dream of quiet," they laud
slick on thin ice of
the essay due tomorrow in
history on the death
of too many

Sunglasses are similar
to winter waters and
lightning spirals in;
they are in debt to
themselves, in depth of

"broken moments." that
clash and too much
to think
              slivers down in silver

carcasses of thoughts
"Okay, I can't help you."

"I know," filters out
behind lips of burning iron
"I never expected you too."
floats down the crowded
unfinished
                    street.

They're not sure of
everything and
I'm not sure of
me.

I know it's true.

Let’s make this my way
a dash of something I won’t talk about
a flood of thoughts I repress and a dozen quacking ducks,
where did they come from?
No, that doesn’t matter,
nothing matters, not in this world we live in
China’s ‘ethnic cleansing’
Venezuela’s corrupt regime
ICE and US Border Patrol
Must I go on?
Oh, alright I could but I’m not sure everyone wants to hear about
how wrong they are
because obviously the solution to a venal government who only wants ‘what the people want’
is to shove a horse in a hospital, right?

Ha, but what’s the point in talking about everything wrong when we could
just not talk at all?
After all, that’ll cover everything else.

Depressed? I’m fine.
Anxious? Are you sure?
Every other spectrum, fix isn’t the word
here we show you how to get better,
we don’t fish out a black striped tie because
that’s too much of a blanket statement
about what, I don’t know.

A flow of red sludge, is that blood?
No, that’s the sea bleeding pollution,
hey, while we’re on the topic,
how about the rainbow painted oceans
castrated by the slick money maker?

Meh, what with a shoreline I can’t really control,
there’s a bunch of squiggly lines over in the upper left corner
and a random splash of water all over the canvas that’s not waterproof canvas
there goes California, Virgina, Manhattan, and Iceland.

Do you have a morsel of food?
Take that law abiding citizen and toss her into the category of ‘alien’
because she looks criminal, right?

Hey, they said you’re not human, are you?
Nobody asked.

Are you listening yet? Yes, you!
Red or Blue?
Green or Labor or Conservative?

That’s how it goes, or so I’m told,
I don’t really know how other countries work,
but the War of the Roses was pretty cool.

Oops, there goes your head,
wait that was the reign of terror.
Well, it seems quite terror-y again.

Finished? Maybe, I can’t tell,
the thoughts just kinda blurt out onto the screen
between the neural connections and my fingers,
Science rocks!

Of course, silly me,
You want to hear more, what an idiot I am.
Here, just look online, you’ll find another ten thousand reasons
why my generation wants to die.

You thought that was the end?
What a fruckle bumbler. I made that word up in my head
but guess what? Urban dictionary already has it, funny how it works.
Or not funny really, just… cruncklesnajin.

Hmm, I’m good at this. No, I’m just tired
of living where sharks and quicksand is more frightening than
the money disparity
of living where religion isn’t supposed to be a part of the state
that’s what they wrote, and I’m nineteen.

****, I’m only nineteen.

Let’s make this my way,
without my control,
without my considerations or desires or thoughts or power,
who’s to say? Perhaps I’ll find out tortoises speak sanskrit, because that how that works, or they’ll find another dead body in some back alley and we’ll shrug our shoulders with apathy, it’s just another day, have some tea.

While searching for unladen skies,
he came across a magpie resting in
a clear patch of swept dirt at his mangled feet.
(and here the story begins, don’t you think?)
Wait—
Do I intimidate you?
With my silken sashay of solicited yet lavish and rattled ramifications?
Complicated, complex logic behind words you don’t know—
words like sonder, opia, and undulate,
euphonious, sempiternal, and sisyphean.
You called them ‘fancy words’,
as if they are dressed for a masked ball and
in elegant suits and dresses, or someplace in-between,
they are dancing the waltz across marble mezzanines behind grey crenellations.
I’m not asking for the meaning of life or great quintessential and quaint questions,
but yet you ponder what’s after death before looking upon my countenance.
Do I require an irascible attitude in ninth grade, forced to be seen,
a scathing cascade of inward curses, each more extensive than the last?
(*******, *******, *******, and a variety of words meaning **** and ******)
So ashamed to fail, as though I belong to a singular meaning and no other.
I tell you now, I am not
crisscrossed with sultry language and full of your ‘can’t’ attitudes.
Whether I make you work or lie in agony over a line,
the job is to provide not pain, but—
understanding, comfort, hiraeth, empathy,
a place for anger, loneliness, emptiness
and inexpressible language…
but as words are only one facet to this endless complication,
I think you should pay attention to the small things.
But I won't dictate your life,
I’m only a broken magpie confined to earth,
Clothed in feathers and ultimatums.

Blackbird, blackbird, whither 'way
Don't come down this way in
Sleek sails of five and six

Hither here, two and three
Come forth and fly in
Through the broken glass

Onyx separations carve
In six wings lost to starve
May the host slight the royalty

Blackbird, blackbird, whither 'way
Don't come down this way with
Sacrificial dust from seven circling

Hither here, two and three
Come forth and fly in
Through shattered self

Onyx separations carve
In six wings to starve
May the way be paved

Blackbird, blackbird, will I?
In the serene sloughs, call
Out from the dusk, ten sails high?

Blackbird, blackbird
Come around, see my gift
And sing your song

I go to write another chapter
But then I realize I have nothing to say
So I go to write another poem
And I realize that nothingness is all I have right now
It's burning hand reaching into my chest, into that void
And pulling out that emptiness
Leaving but a husk of skin and blood
With the brain lying on the floor beside the corpse.

The wind is cold
and feels right on my
skin.

It calms my heart
and I rush in with endless
exhaustion.

Tell me to believe
and I will not lash out, whispering
no.

My arms don’t belong
to me. I don’t belong to
me.

It sits on my chest
lingers in my head with its
claws.

I welcome the pain—
the sharp edges of wind feel
right.

I feel wrong.