This vacant warmth
I ******* hate it

I think I lapsed and missed my own funeral
Shrugged and felt my head roll off
But did nothing

Because what’s the point, anyway?
What’s the ******* point?

right now there are eleven empty containers of alcohol in my bedroom,
but it's fine, i'm fine.
i've been telling myself for more than a year
that i wasn't going to write anymore sad ****** poems about you,
but here we are.
most days i'm sure i don't miss you,
but then i listen to the wrong song,
and before i know it -
i'm screaming along to band of horses in the dark,
stalking your twitter favorites,
and somehow,
i've managed to get snot on my forehead.
yeah, nostalgia is an *******
but not all the memories sting.
there was that one time we went to the movies
and i slipped on some ice and fell flat on my ***.
i just sat there while you took a picture.
but i'm glad we could laugh about it.
i'm glad we were comfortable.
in my head, we still are.
in my head, we're oversized-goodwill-sweater comfortable.
we aren't as comfortable in real life
but i'm glad we still laugh.
this is the part where i don't bring up the time you told me
my laughter could cure your sadness,
because i'm pretty sure i already put that in another poem,
and it makes me really ******* sad.
did i ever tell you i used to play guitar and piano?
i loved them, but i never tried very hard.
i wanted to be good without having to practice.
i wanted to be good without having to practice.
i wanna meet the girl you write about
so i can ask her how she manages not to love you back.
because i've tried everything & i am so tired.
i forgot this wasn't supposed to be a sad poem.
i'm not good at happy anyway,
i never have been.
but in your absence i've learned a lot about softness.
so if i ever find myself back in your passenger seat,
i won't correct you when you sing the wrong lyrics,
i won't ask why when you take the long way home.
i won't ask you why you don't have your seatbelt on,
i'll just say a silent prayer
and watch for signs that you might be about to swerve.
right now there are eleven empty containers of alcohol in my bedroom,
and i didn't find you at the bottom of a single one.

- m.f.

you are eighteen and you're in love
with a boy who hates his birthday.
you don't know it yet,
but the world gets so much bigger than the back of his car.
you think he needs you to be happy and so does he
but both of you are wrong.
it'll take you almost a year to stop crying.
and then you don't talk for another three
and when you finally do,
he thinks he still knows you,
but your heart is heavier than it was then.
and you **** him because you're lonely
but it isn't the same.
neither of you can fake love.
at least he still makes you laugh.
you'll pretend it's enough
because at least he's a body.
at least you're not by yourself.
at least you're alive
and you're good at *******.
because bodies are distractions
from the things we hide inside them.
you have him inside you
and he wants to gut you of your ugly, your sad.
he scrambles for an excuse not to stay the night
and you laugh.
you know what this is and how it goes
and you both love someone else.
you swear you won't **** him again
but you do anyway because you're still lonely
and you like the way his hands fit around your neck.
you **** him because it's good for your art
and you get bored of your own hands on your body
and you're fine with letting him feel useful.
and you think about when you were sixteen
and how *** was supposed to be special
and it makes you cry
because you're not who you wanted to be.
it makes you cry, because the world got so much bigger
after you left the backseat of his car.
the world is so big and you don't know
how it ended up on your shoulders.
you would have died for him.
you have been ready to die for every person you have ever loved.
you have dreams where he dies
and you can't save him.
you have dreams where people die
and you can't save them
and you're the one who tied your hands.
your mangled heart and all its bleeding.
nobody asked you to die.
what good is all the love in your chest
if you don't leave any for yourself?

- m.f.

Lily erode
Eros rapture
To dust
To dust
To dust

Awkward pause
A bird drones on in the background
Unaware
You try to meet my eyes
Don’t bother
This life is just boredom trying to transcend itself
Someone somewhere lies on the ground
Traffic picks up
Voices in the crowd align with the bustle of the city
They fade into insignificance
Too loud to be heard
I comment
I stop halfway
Words elude words
Connections wither
A sprawled empty sentence meanders half hearted out of existence
Frustration tastes a lot like the memory of past relationships
I have noticed
So many people just want to be affirmed
They speak to be heard
Exist to be noticed
You’ve been repeating that sentence since the beginning of the year
A mockingbird singing at a broken mirror
**** the jays
Dissenters, right-wing *******
Yeah, yeah, ***** them, hella
Swallows the choir
It’s disgusting
Regurgitation has become the new culture
I realise I haven’t talked for a minute
You try to meet my eyes
Sorry
There are too many voices here
Repetitious wavelengths cascading into negative space
It’s all white noise
I don’t care about the weather
The whole city can drain into the gutters for all I care
It’d be better that way
Look there
There’s that homeless guy who has no one left
Family or friends
Let’s invite him to the house
He hasn’t read anything in years
Maybe he has something worthwhile to say

There’s too much air to breathe here.
A swirling mass of emptiness heaves through the crowd’s lungs.
Stop.
Won’t everyone just *******--

Someone sings at the bus stop just outside my window.
Wires hum, ignoring the melody that person has so carefully constructed.
A hiss.
Rising steam.
An abrupt end.

Another listless night.
A beetle flies in through my open window.
It takes me twenty minutes to help it back out.

I think about wandering the forest.
But am too scared to confront loneliness, and the frailty of human existence.

There is a gap forming already.
Here.
A dialectic that seeks to sublate my very identity.
Subsume those closest to me.
Until I am completely alone.

There is a bush down the street which is in bloom right now.
I think the sun is too hot.
The flowers are wilted.
And the pavement is littered with dead bees.

Voices.
An exchange.
A language game.
Two horizons meet, merge, melt.
‘Wait--’
The horizons drop.
If only for a moment.
And the abyss is revealed.

The only universal in this world is that we are all alone.
Trapped in our own understanding.
Forever interpreting one another.

I am waiting for the day the wind carries me out the window.
Perhaps it will never come.
Perhaps I will live a long boring life amongst friends, family, and all those people I despise.
Oh well.
No point, either way.

You are like
Smoke between
My fingers,
Like drops of
Liquid gold,
A love that my mind
Knows so well
But my hands
Can never hold.

We walk the cool January forest floor , every bird shares our happiness , my Dad is a Cardinal following us from tree to tree* ..

My appreciation for morning sunshine is serving me well as of yesterday , all things beautiful have removed a cumbersome shell I've burdened for many decades ..
The sailor without the sea to embrace .. Without a passion to define his legacy , a sad tribute indeed ..
A lover with no mate to share the everyday .. A cold breath of air in hopeless abandon , seeking salvation , longing to mingle with the warm tropical breeze ..
Explain vision to the satisfaction of a blind audience before interpreting my dreams , read my thoughts before explaining my minds disease ...
Wear these boots through the night with sworn enemies to each side , walk naked and ashamed , abandoned without the solace of a friend ..
I have delayed the inevitable last chapter of my being ,  formerly cursing and renouncing the gifts of creation to no end , swallowed as Jonah without hope of ever returning again ..
Return to the trees at the end of the loneliest road , lie beneath the base of a hardwood , close your worried eyes , take in every sound , become one with each living entity throughout ..
Retool your vision from sky to ground , control each thought from this day forward and chart clear paths beside your brothers .. Godspeed ..

To these Babylonians
Oh father, and I am a child of Abraham
Daughter of salt and desert
Daughter of the sun blazed beige dream mountains
Who roll together like sleeping dinosaurs
In the archives of my memory.

To these Babylonians
And I have withheld from them my true name
For their tongues are not fit to pronounce it
Written in black stardust across my ankle
Branded like the wandering sheep
In the blue hills drowning in yellow gnats and cloud.

My father taught me how to survive
Babylonia
By the seaside the shore was covered in
Transparent jellyfish and dark ocean weeds
Abraham inhaling foamy salt waves
Preaching black oil, blood and fire

Preaching this, Babylonia
When foreign lands resemble home
When homes revert to foreign land.
When earth and sky and water do not remember you
When you do not remember them
Singing still in the salty undertow
Treble clefs caked in the cracks of my bones
Barefoot fire altar, sticky sunbeam fractures
Progeny of Abraham
Singing sacrifice
Stolen seconds folding themselves into eternity.

To these Babylonians
And I am a child of Isaac
Violin strings shouting with the river
Jacob whispered all rivers and all rivers
Flow to Rome
And all salt water tastes of home
Find me in the poison current of the obsidian ocean
Jellyfish seaweed and petroleum-slurred sands
My father Abraham sang many songs.