Circles of ash and wire~
cupping the last diamond flame;
in palms outstretched, he'll forgive
but we ourselves decay
"all in the flaw of my love."

Darkness dipping beyond the jaw of the tiger,
Killed so softly by the mountain's hum;
We ask the lotus to bear sky children
unto the bleeding water~
and call the wounds of the world pretty.

"You have a beautiful way with words..."
How naïve, how flattering,
English of dead flowers served on a silver platter,
beautiful is a battle scar my words wear proudly~
tuck the saints beneath my piano and I'll play them all night long

In the dragon's house tonight,
questions claw at the stars, like my fears often do
I'll ask you this;
will you be my shelter?
will you be my open arms?

...
Drew,
the ashtray is full again

1.)  As I write this to you now, the doves were bleeding diamonds
2.)  And to this very day, I still find your name is in every cigarette the ocean's ever smoked
3.)  I wonder if you remembered the time we realized that flowers preferred the taste of blood over water...
4.)  Or the time we sipped some of the moon's tea; and realized that our teacups were gifts from her lover, the sun
5.)  Distance isn't constant, it's overgrown like the lucid garden that I planted in honor of my wolf girl; yet you were the one who tended it with me as if it was your own
6.)  I know, I know; I didn't thank you enough for all those moments as you held me when time melted into puddles at my feet
7.)  I wrote God a simple letter, still haven't heard from him about how you're doing yet...
8.)  "Unfortunately, on some nights my grief tastes all too silver again"
9.)  You feared all the talents that flowered in the dark and I remember the second you realized I too, was one of them
10.)  Your voice shed sapphire fireworks in my room and what I wouldn't give to see that one more time
11.)  Sleepy roses dribbled down the walls of your hospital room whenever I visited and played with your hair
12.)  The milky way shed it's fickle skins-- and sometimes when the dawn's shoulders snap into place I can hear your laughter echoing along the ribs of the sky
13.)  Your name was a natural disaster born on my pink tongue and delivered by my quaking lips and I can feel the clouds turning in their sleep
14.)  I suppose that you were a cigarette yourself
15.)  And you knew I was the lighter, but you hung around anyways
16.)  Every time I see a shooting star, I'll know that it's you in heaven just throwing away your cigarette so you don't get caught...

I think you were my bad habit
...

i.
aloe vera aftertaste;
as honey drips from the faucet.
let's leave this pile of bones
under the duvet.

ii.
been a long time
since venus asked me to write.
the butterflies murmurs beneath skin;
beneath this milky way.

iii.
**** softly;
let all nightmares bubble over––
––and over––and boil––
as your innocence walks out the front door.

iv.
blow your nose,
sign your death certificate.
tell your mother,
that it never was her fault.

v.
i leaned on the sink,
& took a long long look at the mundane.
i rinse my hands; the depression doesn't wash off,
––and the honey turns sour in the drain.

Scarecrows dance in violet sun rays
in time best broken over my wrists

I steal magic from chalk bones on the sidewalk
and learn to read where children left their roots to become fossils

Clouds sinking into my skin as rainwater floods
my blood and turns my steady heart stream into livid rapids

Fate tapped on my window at 2a.m. last night
and informed me that I still am a poet and I still write to injure gods

Jealous frost infested the soil and trailed kisses of death on earth's cheek
but oh how pretty envy sparkles in hues of first light

But as I beckon stars to lean from their thrones in heaven,
I have realized that it's useless to continue watering a dead flower.

What happened?
Has your silver tongue turned to lead?
Oh it's such a pity.
The alcohol stirred his blood in a caludron,
Now I'm as good as dead.

———"that familiar boiling yolk of a sunrise—comas richer than russian dark chocolate— & saturn smoking a cigar while playing chess with gravity... i have been here before."

ocean dove, pardon my excuses for not writing as of late; been busy fulfilling a prophecy that can't even look me in the eye and ask me to change.  in the june wreckage of two thousand and sixteen;  i retired my tongue with the dormant volcanoes  before the world could end in my mouth.  and yet my poetry informs me that there are some wounds too sophisticated to even flower into scars—kind of like how my words will never feel like honey again, (but vinegar nonetheless.)

how cruel of me it was; to condemn you to a death without one final cigarette slow dancing with your lungs.  i miss the shadows of you most: the belt of venus caged like a wild animal in your eyes, your rusty guitar silky voice dripping off the haunted house we called home, countless a.m. drives kicking up filthy moonlight in the rearview mirror, but most of all—the way you said 'i love you' like it was nothing dressed up in something fashionable.

it is now the june of two thousand and nineteen. this wreckage sat on a throne and filled into the moon's shoes. a crown crawled it's way home to my head and kissed me with knowledge drenched in your name.  this queen started from lesson no. 1: broken instruments, will preach broken sounds—  and how lovely it has been, planting a world war in my soul only to raise eden in it's stead.  i will miss your company, but your ghost is no longer a requirement for me to be complete.

i have learned to stop loving falsehoods.  i have learned to start loving the leftovers of who i am becoming.  we would have been star crossed lovers had you not tried to swallow that bottle of pills that famous night where we fought like madonnas— but it looks like you got to death's fortune cookie before i did.

"and one day, you will have lived long enough to taste your grief turn bittersweet too"———

Alabaster teeth at the crack of dawn,
Blossoming storm with a crooked smile,
Can't shake this mist,
Drink the wine that is paradise;

Endure it,
Friends that stray the streets at night,
Grown in the rivers of jealousy,
Hatred is a sword of ink as well.

Is it the way desolation kisses my neck?
Justifying the ghosts on walls as I tire,
Kindness is it's own sort of torture,
Love is just the aftermath of a tragedy.

Misfortune is the deity with the sun in her veins,
Nothing worth losing in my heart these days,
Open riots in the flesh of old graves,
Purpose is just a nickname for pathetic;

Quickly now,
Rinse off all that happiness in the sink,
Spoken in tongues of moonlight and snakes,
Trust me, death is the poor man's doctor.

Unless, it was fate itself,
Verify my passion for silver,
Weighted by the selfish love for wolves,
You are a paradox in the white twilight,

Z is a broken letter, look at how much we have in common with it.

A fixation of light
A point in the sky, frozen at will.
Steel clashing, gold splinterimg.
Dust off some humility.
Time has bent what cannot snap,
And trust me I've had my fair share
of traitors.
Injecting betrayal.
Rusted love on
Platinum shoulders.
The world is leaning because my right shoulder can't hold it up.
I will seize the planets and tuck them along my sleeve.
The waxing dawn,
And waning dusk.
I'm not worth my weight in silver.
I'm collecting my friends 'neath the willow tree.
Will it be the only one weeping when I'm gone?

☯ and all the wishes stuck in their throats.

(i.) when i throw quarters
i wish i knew
what the universe tasted like
in my tea; and then i wished
that i could hug my babushka
& dedushka again for the last time
before their hourglass ran out.
i wish i could still witness the way
the light dribbled like honey in
that foreign land familiar street.
Back then I was taught that love
was contagious by nature,
that love was unconditional-
---maybe that’s what the universe really
tasted like to begin with.


(ii.) when i throw dimes i-
wish that my antidepressants were more
like leftover echoes
that i’d eat for dinner.
i wish i hadn’t said that but it’s too late
‘cause this ode is too busy
tripping over it’s own shoes;
i wish my poem knew how to tie it’s own shoelaces,
and knew how to say grace.
but most of all...
i wish there was a softer metaphor
to lower me into this hurting;
just like the leftover echoes

(iii.) when i throw nickels
i wish i could erase the murals of flashbacks
behind my eyelids;
before i fall asleep.
i’m convinced that they’re to blame
for my eyesight that acts more like
a broken compass than a disability.
i wish i was blind to the way
the world spoon feeds us the dark;
like it’s a requirement for us
in order to flower into people.
i wish i could fish my name
from infinity’s belly.
please just never wish for
infinity.

(iv.) when i throw in pennies
i wish i wasn’t their daughter.
i wish i didn’t have russian strings
and american footsteps for bloodlines;
i wish i was born a moon somewhere,
orbiting or worshipping the the color of
space, which is coincidentally the color of poets
the color of ink.
i wish my forbidden fruit was poetry,
i’m glad it isn’t.

(v. ) and i think,
i will always wish
for quicker deaths.

——————
i.
a dragon's claw;
merely leftovers of the moon
from last night's revolution,
and he beseeched a god long absent:
"how'd you forget my name in the grave
last week?"

ii.
i break bones like i break bread,
and hell recoils at the rare mention of me;
"—we're using blood for watercolors baby—"
'cause sometimes,
i don't think they understand
my heart.

iii.
god took the world to the doctor,
and asked for a cure he couldn't afford;
for the sun has already set in the palms
of my hands, o' father...
and there can only be so many
bones knitted together in this womb.

iv.
recall that,
reality only reveals itself when it feels
like making a fool out of someone;
and i don't know what stage of grief
i'm in—
or if I'm even in one
at all.

v.
i drink tea with ghosts
every other tuesday,
trying to make sense of it all;
because at some point,
—i'll stop eating bullets for
people's whose eyes
pull triggers.

vi.
mama always did raise me to be a sword,
and i killed when she told me to.
because, you see—
the fragile things die
in the cold, and what i find interesting
is that i've remained;
and ultimately?
it's a beautiful thing.

vii.
and when will i learn?
that mercy is false hope amongst all else, darling,
but enough already;
this poem's got universes full
of emotional baggage.

viii.
you said
you're a dreamer?
great, get in line kid,
you'll get a chance to change the ******* world,
just take a number
—like the rest of us;
but, then again...
"the world has always been ready
to receive you, hasn't it?"

...
I like to convince myself that she's a walking solar system.
                                              (One)
­                                                          (It will never be enough;)        
She has the sunken cheek bones of Mercury;
~filthy shadows, caked in crimes~
they forge her face,
oh so well,
and engrave her smile in
stone; the sun
laughs sourly,
and then,
he spits on her.
                              (Two)
                   ­                    (Because sorrow is a sweet thing.)
         She reminds me of Venus the most.
         Her hair is the murmur of violet,
         her beauty, it lingers,
         ~like cigarettes beyond the boundary~
         the cosmos, the constellations, and the milky way.
         She is my dragon princess,
         draped in stars and wounds.
         She bleeds
         the somber color of night.
         She is royal, yet alas
         "The queen didn't come
         without a crumbling castle.
                                                                ­  (Three)
                                            (So take it in, don't hold your breath)
                                                      ­   Beneath the arc of her spine;
                                                         Is where Earth plays
                                                         poker with her bones.
                                                         It's such a shame,
                                                         that her ace is her 'unkempt heart,'
                                                         and she lost it to a pitiful bet,
                                                         with a certain ghost I once knew.
               (Four)
                               (The bottom's all I've found.)
            Her fingers gouge through time's fabric, and her hands
            remind me of Mars;
            Powerful and ******,
            Oblivious to what she's created;
            I'm afraid
            the phantom
            she wishes so dearly to see,
            is only getting hungrier.
(Five)
               (Diamond wings were meant to be torn)
Jupiter is the core of her anxiety,
and she basks in it every day,
never by choice, never by desire.
Muscles and skin of iron and goldenrod,
they carve out our very own Aphrodite,
which is you,
it's always been you.
A rabid angel,
a calamity of chaos,
frothing with  blackened fear.
                                                        ­       (Six)
                              (Spill every flower from your garden of thoughts)
                                             Subtle depression lurks between the
                                             the crooked sea of her ribcage,
                                             it's Saturn smoking rings,
                                             brewin' up the cinders.
                                             ~I reminiscence in the white lace~
                                             of the cobwebs that hold her
                                             heart together.
                                             I've plucked them,
                                             those strings play a mournful
                                             sonata, with her name written all over it.
        (Seven)
                          (Promises bend at every funeral we attend)
              In the graces of her palms we found Uranus,
              like teal teeth
              and whimsical witchcraft,
              I watched her thread magic into this world.
              Her hopes shift-shape into 'nocturnal fairies',
              and 'grim reapers' with broken music boxes.
              She is naïve, but that is
              a trait she needs to survive
              in our world of
              metallic dreams and navy nightmares.
                                                    ­(Eight)
                                       (Rejection is a survivable heartache)
                                                   ­  And so what if her heart reminded me
                                                      of Neptune the most?
                                                      The royal vastness
                                                      of­ blue and ivory;
                                                      ~rip­tides on the walls of her soul~
                                                      I want her to know that ambitions
                                                      l­eave more scars and
                                                      tear more crystal flesh;
                                                      tha­n her polished wishes ever will.  
      (Nine)
                       (Have you ever seen blood and water in love?)
And her lungs,
they remind me of the honesty of Pluto.
So small, and docile,
like an elliptical smile of grey fire.
Would you lay with me a while,
count your unconditional lovers;
like our burnt stars in mason jars?
Struggle is the birth
of the void and the 'rapture'
~Your king and poet will wait for you,
in the radiant abyss of our ink-hearts~
I will guide you to his open arms,
              a hug awaits my dragon princess.

                                                     ­                   He wears the stars for clothes,
                                                      li­ke an outlaw,
among the banks of the universe.
               Where disease can't reach him, or she,
                                          Cancer can't harm you anymore,
                                                       ­          "Not anymore, Belle."
...

the sun squatted just over the horizon,
a giantess,
a red bulb;
the pregnant flower––
enabling all flesh;
flora and fauna
alike.

the moon sank her fangs into the sky,
merely a anorexic sliver of a crown,
a knife, against newborn night;
a ballet dance,
eating her own heart out
as the monsters devour
her leftovers.

/|\   °
            °
                 •
                     '
                          ¤
Can't freeze a caludron with only witchbone and cigarette dreams.

No sir; I live in the city not a
surreality.  The smoke can kiss my collarbone, not my vexed mind.

The only thing I am is the color of lightning and all I have to offer is my glass.

As in hour, not luminous wine.

                  ....

...
I've been homesick,

It's been a long time since I've last given birth to gods in my poetry; so to the old truths and the new: 'hallelujah'

My tongue was a slave to lovely things---I'll admit it was easier that way, but now I've been writing it down again; turning spiders into stories and cancer into planets

who was I to begin with,
who was I.

I'll say it now. I will never escape the wolves. Those wolves with their chalk outlines and their lakota moons. They'll try to teach themselves how to walk back into your life again and don't you dare forget the ruin, oh don't you dare forget how the fire kissed you

she was moonlight sonata,
but he was clair de lune.

He fed me to the bullet feast when he saw fit and I left his ashes on the sidewalk; daybreak can have it for all I care now.

"I don't know if I'm in love with you anymore"

I remember my body as a garden of stars disguised as flowers; my roots merely empty spaces dismantled by the light. I remember the bullets in the soil he planted, and the wars that grew in it's place. I became a walking example of death; a soul in the process of decay.

Who was I,
who was I to begin with.

Dear all that has haunted me all these years: I am ready for you. I have always been ready for you.

Tell me where to sell my soul, and I will meet you there.

---Swimming in the moonlight

This full-metal house is both
my                              home    &
my                               coffin.

Watch me bury something of
mine                            in    the
depths                              of
                         ­           Neptune.

I call those things my problems.
.

i.
when my father's pride lands
on my shoulder, digging it's claws
into my collarbone; demanding
blood in return for his
acknowledgement
of my
existence;
I learn to receive his broken
version of what love is
without protest.

ii.
when my mother's judgment
runs it's fingertips down the
curvature of my spine, searching
for weaknesses in my
posture, pose,
and figure;
my weight, skin
and fissures;
I learn to endure her
backhanded version of love  
without complaint.


iii.
when my younger brother's anger
comes over for dinner, makes itself
a guest in my first apartment;
and cusses out my duty
as an older sister to
even give a **** about him
in the first place?
Tells me I've failed
at loving him properly?
I learn to cry without
really crying
at all.

iv.
you think you've taught yourself how to be ice;
only to realized you're just shattered water.

dead man's requiem,
how does god weep when he's laughing?
shadow puppet queen;
it hurts, doesn't it?
the grip of life loosening
rapidly, rapid fire...
welcome to the bullet feast.
Go outside and play with time now;
chess with the past,
checkers with the present,
poker with the future.
howl at the sun for a change;
smoke on some of that science if you think it'll save you––
eat names for breakfast.
break every mirror
that pities you,
water your houseplants
with holy water.
drink tea sap.
107.1°
Fever wolf.