.
Hello    archangel,
fallen goddess behind my morgue.


    Whose complexion equaled the moon,
craters and abysses,
    cascading like salt on
an empty

    wound.


With the crosshairs of nicotine
a mirage on her cracked lips;


“Leave me,

    lowly poet,

Your pity is unbecoming.

I am the 13th fallen sister,

    so linger here

no longer.”


“Death is an old friend,

    I fear not his company,

nor his demise.”


I’ve never seen such eyes;
glass-stained,
divine & unpredictable.


“I’ll **** you.”


“Darling, I’m already dead.”



Her monologues could summon the dead,
she preached of the lovers
who bore no fruit
and the heartless
that lay eternal
in the eyes of
her dalliance.


I’d often find myself
yearning at the pebbles at her gravestone,
impatient, to be graced by her
ink soul and  rhapsodic  presence.


“Are you my friend,

poet?”



“No,

I am much more.”


And for centuries
of cracked dawns and
folded nights,
shallow moons &
crippled suns,
we’d meet---
poet to god,
at her morgue.


“Poet,

why must the most beautiful

people die?”

She once asked me.
Alured, I answered:

“When you’re in a garden,

which flowers do you pick?”


“...The most beautiful ones.”


I’d spend my seconds ‘neath the gallows,
among the bones
of her brethren,
all had fallen before her,

from the house of god.


I bargained my soul with Ursula,
my sins with Lupus,

    I ignored their tempertantrums

& discord.


That very evening I stitched a universe,
upon her shoulder-blades.


“What are these?”


“Wings.”

The seven deadly sins of man
have just slaughtered a
mocking bird.

The sound of willow drums
                     & laughter at 1 a.m.

The Lion's sin of Pride
                   "Hail the poet within you."
The Dragon's sin of Wrath
                   "Your words forge death on the page."
The Snake's sin of Envy
                   "The clock counts more words than time does."
The Fox's sin of Greed
                   * "Crave the words as if they disgusted God."
The *Grizzly's sin of Sloth
                     *"Immortality flocks to your pen and paper."
The *Goat's sin of Lust
                     "Dress like a daydream or a nightmare to write with blood."
The Boar's sin of Gluttony
                      "Don't be afraid to **** to suffice your poems."

Oh poets,
for those of you who've figured
it's also a sin
to ****
a
mocking bird.

The secret is in the eighth deadly sin of poetry,
                                  Don't.
              ­                    Tell.
                                   Poets.
                                    What.
                ­                    To.
                                    ­Do.
.

You told me the sky was your favorite poem.
"What do you see?"

Silver switchblade eyes cut the horizon into dozens of little clouds.

"I see a crib and a graveyard."

Why?

"Because if you'd think a little harder my love, you'd understand the true meaning of 'this place is both my home and my coffin.'"
.

The stars aren't as tasteful
       as I'd hoped they'd be,
You fickle moon,
You eclipse of a lover.
           Vinegar.  That's what
those cosmic light bulbs we
call stars taste like.          Raw
and savoring, bold & eccentric.
          Kissing summer on winter's lips
          The cheek of spring still stings from autumn's hand
And I'm marooned in this fine
                            red wine hour,
  nostalgic in the art of reading
          The hum of dragons pulse~
The whisper of the wolven breath,
                         This time around your blood
                                        was thinner than ice.
Twisting the tendrils of our thistled love
across my snowy throat,
            Crimson is so ******* beautiful
It was your job to swallow sunsets and it
was mine to throw up sunrises.           We
followed the commandments branded on
my cheeks.  
                         It was the only bible we had,
                         Because my scars were worth
                                                         "s­omething"
When the roof of the sky meets the jaw of
the sun, the teeth are the clouds & constellations.
I fed the world my spine because it was starving.
         chinking off marrow, and mouthfuls of my flesh,
Devour me.
                    And in my wake you shifted the lapis void,
                     forcing my eyes open as gold tears spilt
Streetlamps groaning at midnight,
will you watch the ravens with me at 3 a.m?
I'm not one for fate but,
          destiny is mine for the taking.
Bones wish they're bending,
     yet promise they're not breaking.
I bargained my soul and sins with Lupus,
and now I am his poet.
                       A daughter of aurora borealis,
                     buckets full of silver  sloshing admist
                           my eyes.
                      When I no longer love you,
                               it will be silent,
                                and tragic.
.

-
“You are perfect,

in my eyes,”

       Said the moon,
            in disguise.
-

.
He had ascending eyes
                   of sapphire,
the kind in which angels sloshed in their
royal chalices,
the kind of blue Poseidon gnashed
                       his teeth for.


                                   Born in the 25th dying date,
Septembers’ autumn bleached scent flows along
his bloodstream.


A smile that belonged in the crooks of these sapphire seas,
a soul unholy as Adam
                          & Eve’s.

His love was not fierce enough
             to contain this poet's heart
my pitiful phoenix can be ripped asunder
by the wrath of
a dandelion.


He couldn't swallow the sun
                 so silver fire rained
                                     anytime it pleased.

We are the skylines
             not gallows
and yet we hang ourselves upon the night skin


                       and collect
the stars as if they were
                            our alibis.

If you love me,
                        let me go?
                         My silver eyes don't see you in color anymore.
.

The black sun coiled around you by morning,
Gingerly tending your wounded mind
You basked in the tall shadow of two lovers;
Waltzing along the line of indecisive love

Seven has always been your favorite number,
As we embarked to raise the tiger-eyed moon
That desolate soul wrapped in your inked bones
Couldn't silence the riptide that conquered like our kiss.

You were an addiction that took five months to sober,
Feathering every "I love you" with a pitiful look to me
I guess we just headed off to war in different directions
We were spilling blood in agony for each other.

There are regrets surfacing in your heart
I would know,
It's in my palm, right?

"I am unwelcome and detatched, it seems.*"

☯
We look back to how
we orchestrated our love
in those polaroids.

...
And just like that, I was drifting again. I was slipping into the folds of static, describing the abyss as I drowned. I fell from altitudes of happy to suicidal in only a manner of insidious seconds, because that's how it goes. You think you have what it takes to be ice but in reality, you're only shattered water.

It comes when I think of them. The urge to succumb into my own ghost has never been so appealing until now. But there are visitors here, the twins grief and guilt have been uninvited guests in a home held together by dried flowers for ceilings and walls of teeth. I have learned to confuse my name with wreckage under their supervision.  

The brothers tell me how to do it, ******* myself without hurting anyone else that I love. But they only speak their diseases to me when all my fight has bled out onto the kitchen floor as the latest mosaic. Then they feast, and teach me the art of being empty through their hungry wolf bites. I remember how to breathe in a shallow way so my skeleton won't fall apart. I haven't had to do that in a very long time. Guilt reminds me the idea of shrinking is hereditary, while grief tells me it's time to practice that now.

When I want to hurt myself I want to do very strange things. I want to ask cigarettes to try to strangle my lungs with smoke as weak as a newborn. It reminds me of what is missing. The sweetest punishment is often the deadliest. When I want to hurt I pick fights with my grief or guilt just so I can lose again, just so I can keep the moon in the same spot in the sky. Just so the stars will pity the same people. I am sick, I am sick, I am sick.  Welcome to the sickness, amen.

When I want to die, I rinse my soul out and leave it to dry.  Like a flower that will become brittle and turn into a bookmark to mark the page where my life left off. I allow myself to deliberately stop holding the weight of the sun and I allow the sky to crush me softly.

I let the tsunamis out of their cages.
I cup his face,
he is beautiful and he is holding what remains;

I will let love hurt me in unspeakable ways,
until death too, dies.

---"How to turn cancer into god."

☯
The first lie that my
mother fed to me still tastes
like expired love.

☯
My wolf girl was a
lantern among the sea of
ash & the afterlife.

☯
You have never once;
lost the translation of love
in the moon's phases.

...
This morning:

The quiet bleeds when you're not looking.
i did not know that the quiet could bleed.

Depression enters my room,
the garden wails in protest, death kisses my stomach,
Sadness whispers that she will not take my chalk outline and teach it how to walk today.
Today the sun stops working.

My mother buries
whatever slowly died in me
under the duvet.

Last night:

i guess,
anything can be a gun
if the darkness surrounding it
is hungry enough

i don't know how i make it to his bathroom
in time, but i can already feel the autopsies
they will preform on me;

i tame ugly screams beneath it all,
tell myselff it's not suicide if
love hangs in my mouth.

The other day:

"i have no sympathy"
"if it's killing you, then why are you still with him"

This particular stain of anger never quite
reaches my reflection in the mirror.
But it sets my clothes on fire.
All the same,
i seethe endlessly; and slit the throat of forgiveness so
it is not an option i could consider.

My father wakes up inside of me sometimes;
i am not afraid to be
a weapon in which i was designed,
a nuclear war in which i will return home from.

A while ago:

"you need to figure things out between just the two of you, none of your girl friends should be threatening my baby boy"
"i would have married a man i didn't love..."

for the love of GOD---

To ALL the adults who have tasted false wisdom
and wish to share it with me;
do not speak to me as if you could translate my suffering
for me, you do not look like a ghost to me,
do not treat me like i do not know that trauma is a thief to my innocence, you do not look like a victim to me,
do not ******* tell me that i am to contain myself to your benefit, because you know nothing but the way my name tastes on your lips,

i will
paint targetson your back,
with your own words--
and i will feed you to
the bullet feast when you least
expect it.

Don't patronize me with your ignorance disguised as watercolors.

Later tonight:

A little like all at once,
all over the world,
i fall out of love with you.

i used to baptize myself in
the things my phoenix would whisper to me,
all his solids and shadows
oh, the world was so beautiful in his eyes.

And how i wish there was a softer metaphor
that could lower me into this grief,
cause isn't heaven heavy enough,
isn't this hurting plenty?

Now:

i don't know how to describe the aftermath
other than----

"there is just a lonely hum in my mind
where my name used to be."

...
You're cupping embers
    in antique palms
    that were meant
    to harvest moonlight.

Raindrops ghost over earth's skin
   nebula clouds map universal eyes,
   and you're just a masterpiece
   who is best friends with time.

Don't let those pianos play you,
   serenade and masquerade you
    because we all seem to
    fall in love with the right music,
    and all the wrong notes.

That friend lit a fire in your room,
   seven embers destroying
    unfamiliar wallpaper.
    You burnt your dream catcher,
     to cinders and charcoal;
     Now you pray for sunlight,
     all you've got is a lonely candle's flame.

But from the nightmares and windowsill,
   moonlight slipped through
         and in your palms
         you held
         my words.

Fire doesn't last forever, Leonie.
...

Rotten turquoise hangs like
that promise I made to a
dead man.
I can hear the stars wailing
is heaven a truly peaceful place to rest?
In the fields of grief I found you,
picking dead flowers,
because you couldn't stand the sight of them
anymore
I asked you,
"Do you hear him?"
and the words fell like fists
into your silence,

"I died all alone."

let’s talk about it.
like the way you talk blood into jumping out of skin for the sheer fun of it;
or the way you can make someone who loves you fold in on themselves until they twist into paper cranes.
let’s talk about how you take chalk outlines of people’s soul and teach them how to walk right into your life only for them to walk right out again.
How you have this reputation of being a pitstop that breaks hearts for the sake of it.
Let’s talk about it.

How did this happen to you;
did the lonely carve you into broken hands,
did the dark burn too many nightmares into the backs of your eyelids,
how did your name collect cobwebs,

You were always a drifter,
born and raised in a blur, a lifetime of mistakes filtering through the palm of the winds;
You were desperate for the sweeter things in life and it drove you to harvest wings,
so you could glide instead of float
through the abyss into anyone’s arms.

You told me you loved me when we were young and I said:
“the moon cannot return her love,
just like the light cannot return the dark”
and so you wept but no matter where you wandered on earth I was still always right there in the sky,
an unblinking phenomenon,
a friend.

You told me love had you at world war with yourself and I stretched my limbs over the sky and told you,
“you are the wind,
you will know where to settle your soul soon enough”

And one day you wandered through the garden of eden in the flesh,
paradise unloved and decaying and you settled for the first time in your life.
I remember you telling me your feet were kissed by the soil in her garden,
that gravity spoke to you and convinced you to stay,
I remember you telling me she was beautiful in ways you never imagined possible and that her heartbeat was just too good
to be true.

The universe bloomed in her, and she tasted the concrete love you established.
Flowers learned magic tricks in the sunlight, trees bore fruit to feed even the stars, and even the snake could not convince herself she was broken when you were around.



So let’s talk about it.
Let’s talk about the way your love for her is like an echo asking a shadow to dance,
and why you ****** it up.

☯
God, give me the grace
to spend my faith spilling blood
for love that's worthy.

☯
Eleven years since
you left, your name still hasn't
died in my arms yet.

☯
you weren't looking but
the universe unfolded
in your garden's bones.

☯
the requiem dies
in the mirror this morning;
"the costs of lying"

☯
long story short, i
glued the stars to the sky so
they could sin again.

☯
Below the surface
rage falls in love with revenge
like yin fell for yang.

☯
my insomnia
holds a gun to my forehead-
and dares me to sleep.

☯
Alas, i've written
to infinity before;
but he wasn't home.

☯
i believe in truths
that would rather die tonight,
than speak tomorrow.

☯
"imagination
is the mother of terror;"
hums these old nightmares.

☯
this pain is white noise
sleepwalking through this body-
in search of heaven.

☯
Father ate bullets
for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and
sold his soul for me.

☯
Slow dying flower,
will you sleep within eden,
or in god's belly?

☯
oh, you fallen thing;
please just hang the world up in
the closet and heal.

☯
And you loved me so
loudly, that chaos mistook
us for it's parents.

☯
you sacrificed me
at the altar of your rage;
-the curse of friendship.

☯
we were the serpents
of yesterday's dark magic;
too bad I loved you.

☯
so, who you gonna
love—when the sun ***** the moon
and replaces you?