Sludge black driveways
holding hazardous mindsets.

Back of his head is made of
white canvas; red strap; yum-yum.

You can see body in the window.
Cut like a Valley Girl diamond.

Brown ***** hair, faint.
Narrow shoulders, pointed.

Brows arch like arrowhead;  
floating above callous constellations.

Snarls of smoke from his cig;
dragging filter like a conscience.

He studies her while she studies
how life looks around her neck.

Closer to midnight, says Darling.
Gotta let her live in a dream-mo.

Inside the piggy bank, gold looks
like memories 'round her nape.

Peeking into the mirror's reflect,
mouthing her name, twirling hips.

What a time to be a star; stable
inside the crown of debris.

Completely secure in nakedness,
a streak of light swims closer.

Black bear fur, harboring glittery
fleas; her eyes look out and up.

It is as close as anyone ever tried.
Non-stop destruction, seductive.

Darling says, look at her look.
He takes a picture with his phone.

**** beauty, ******* to
the assertiveness of annihilation.

Looking at the picture, he curses
himself for not upgrading.

A fire overflows, as she has
one hand on her stomach and
another on her purse.

They said they had to **** my dreams
because I didn't have enough zeroes.
In other words, Mr. Doe, you were
                     lied to by your heroes;
money isn't everything,
but not having it is being invisible.
You can work sixty hour weeks,
but only earn ways to be miserable.

My parents paying four-fifty, monthly
-- which is not a lot of money; we had
to eat out of cans and delude ourselves
into thinking it was funny. Sorry, Does;
                              sorry for your woes --
but America is the big hunter, and your
                            death is how it grows.

We were not equal; no account because
                   we had no account. Asked by
our family members if we bought junk
                      in a large amount. I'm sorry
to disappoint myself -- but I
                                         cannot afford
                                                   to lose.
I am the result of a flawed America
                                     that has learned
                                                to abuse.

They tell me to lay down
and to please look at the fish.
Notice how they glide
in-and-out of the cool-blue
water; how they don't have
a care in the world -- they're
fish: one out of millions;
mindless; alone in packed
tanks; alone, jammed in
metal cans full of corpses
and low-quality mustard.

Putting the mask over my
perfect nostrils, my straight
teeth, they say Don't be afraid;
listen to my humming; how it
will blend with the high-pitch
screech you hear, now; becoming
an equilibrium of torture and
fantastical strangeness, unbound
by Gods, by Persons, by Loves.

Inside this perfect dark,
you cannot think beyond
the giant broad strokes that
is the world sweeping by --
and it is marvelous, the
buoyant miseries floating
above your head; my head
of ambivalent visions;
the Earth's core, a furiously
violent brilliance, ablaze
beneath my feet, under
layers of confounded
deathly masquerade; a
mask much like mine:
an egotistical reflection
brought out by one's
feeling of gigantic import-
-ance, despite hanging
from the vastest of ceilings;
a wannabe church in the sway
of jungle mind; primitive instinct.


***

You know you can wake up
  at this point, or so they say.
What does it all mean, to which
I murmur, I don't know. It's
hard to say what I know; if
anything, all I have is doubts.
All I can muster are regrets;
I wish I could return to that
perfect dark, confused and
semi-philosophical; all-
pretentious: a feeling of
being bound by brokenness.

They tell me to chill out;
you use semi-colons like
they're heartbeats. Focus
on whether your chest
holds validity.

I approach most desires
like a competition; can I
**** better than him;
can I be famous at twenty-
-three since he was famous at
twenty-four -- I must be able
to sink better than him.

God, it is exhausting. I
feel like I'm dancing with
a machine; a phantom that
I can never catch, for it runs
on my blood; my insecurities;
my passion -- and, boy, oh boy,
can I attest to having plenty of
  that stuff, ladies and germs.

I think, truly, that I am
encompassing the American Dream
I think is utterly flawed; that I think
is futile in nature; that I am sure of
is the closest thing to Hell, in this
Godless, spiritually motherless
dark shoebox of sudden collisions;
this space of useful and useless
results, splayed onto and into
our hearts, asking for reverence.

There is nothing  I want more
than to be sure that my importance
is not illusory. I am not sure if
I am real.

The window is up;
sounds of rain crinkle in,
like the static in the voice
of a faraway caller.

My cats are perched,
one grey, one tabby,
listening with me, as
we stare at miniature
mudslides glaze gener-
-ations of ants, probably
clinging onto strands of
grass; waiting to become
the past.

I think of success and
what it means to me.
I look in my wallet and
count one-two-three;
one reason to like the rain;
two reasons to embrace strife;
three reasons to consume pain;
enough zeroes to choose a life
not smothered in mud, not one
where I cling onto the grass.

I dream of a dream where
my dollar bills can last.

I think she lost a part of herself,
picking up the pieces. And that's
okay; the universe works because
something is given for
something to be gained.

Her parents were red-blooded
Americans; they drank confirmation-
bias and the minimization of minorities.
They would make her problems as small
as the countries, they couldn't find on a map,
but could find in their hearts to demonize.

Oh yes, the demons: what used to
afflict her and corrupt her pure heart.
To them, she wasn't a teenager --
a child -- stressed from carrying a
family, featuring a mother with
a brain tumor; guest starring
'I-stunt-your-growth-with-Jesus'
as the understudy for mental
health awareness.

No, she wasn't a child; she was
a burden because she cut herself,
because her legs grew too thin;
as thin as the crucifixes around
the proud, turning necks, holding
dismissive heads of 'Why-would-
you-want-to-be-dead' Christians
and 'I-don't-understand-what-isn't-
in-the-Bible' fat, white relatives.

To make things short as her
life could have been: she dipped
in and out of drugs, featuring
****** and pills that would
dip in and out of her body,
like a fool's gold life jacket,
soaking in the waves of her
pale, transitioning to adulthood,
twenty year-old waters.

She saved herself, and
they thanked God and the
boy and mostly everyone
else but her. And the little
brother sat, sinking in a seat
softer than his deep-seated
hateful beliefs. But, the
truth is that she saved not
only herself, but also the
handsome, white, tall,
smart, talented image of
'Holy-****-what-a-tall-
drink-of-privilege.' A
tall drink who cared for
her more than the country
cared about being right; who
loved her more than the parents
of the degenerates living in some
unknown collection of poems about the
disenfranchised and American angst.

She was a protest, very wondrous;
a halting of the longest dark,
a breath of fog floating towards
a lonely, very deep pond.

And she was only beginning.
And it was all very exciting.

Solo, like Star Wars or women's soccer
I sit on a ***** chair with pure liquor
sealed from the rest of the world

Numb, like Linkin Park or lithium
they hold my wallet like it's a gun;
want to use it to gauge my meaning.

If you want a dollar, babe, then
you gotta work to separate
yourself from everything sane
or how else can you gain

the feelings you see on t.v.,
what E! says is reality--
because you're told that's
what matters, entirely.

Identity; conform to be something
marketable -- or, at the very least,
conventional. I want my insides
to be considered pretty, but
I'd have to hope someone
would give the effort to
cut me open and ignore the joy
that my bleeding out would bring.