You never did manage to see
The final nail on the casket nor
The 9 years it has taken me
To unweave it from my crown of thorns

You say you shout you scream
You could not have foretold
The bullet I held clenched between my teeth
Heavy to the touch, heavy and unbearably cold
Not as I my mouth became a steal barrel,
Not as it came racing out
Not as it came to meet your creased forehead's third fold

I shake with loss
I shiver with relief
My silver armor melts away and evaporates into flesh
The life you had left ahead of you was anyway brief
Unlike the fruits you stole from my long life that once lay ahead of me
An ugly, loud, rampant, hobbling thief

I leave my pills to you
For all the times I failed
Trying bleed your blood out from my wrists
Bullet blown, skeletons thrown, casket nailed
I walk back up the stairs light as a feather
A crested crow, my wings unfurled, a crested crow unveiled

His lover has the saddest eyes
A misty grey under a heavy blue
And he’ll see her again at sunrise.

Their love some seem to despise
Thinking of it as a ****** taboo
His lover has the saddest eyes

Though no one seems to empathize
No one’s aware of their little rendezvous
And he’ll see her again at sunrise.

He knows she’ll be hidden under a clever disguise
But he won’t confuse her with just another heart’s statue
His lover has the saddest eyes.

You couldn't convince him of your lies
Of his leman his desire you could not subdue
And he’ll see her again at sunrise.

Love her until their hellos become goodbyes
From the moment he’d set eyes on her to his final adieu
His lover has the saddest eyes
And see her again at sunrise

If this infinite cage
Means your undying love
Then give me the key.

Sure, I'm pretty on the eyes
But don't shade mine,
I need to see.

I've told you before
To let go,
to set me free

You say I don't understand.
But if I want to know
I've got to flee.

I don't want your love,
I want wings.
Don't clip them, let me be.

I'll be home by high tea.

It all started in my second-story room.
A quiet summer night, not a single sound,
And then a loud boom.

I looked out the window for a better view
And rushed down to the kitchen, out the patio door, and onto the deck
Because what I saw in the sky reminded me of you
A small chill nipped at my neck, and I wondered,
Could you be remembering me too?

Because with every reverberation a star shot through the sky.
A shimmering burst, like a fiery blossom, every one of its blooms.
But it lingers for just a moment, and then it disappears.

Remember when we believed that if we swung high enough we might be able to fly?
Remember when we thought we could be artists and authors by just the age of sixteen?
Now all we do is sit and sigh, waiting on the Wifi,
Telling ourselves that the dreams we had were just unachievable little schemes.

They say you moved to Spain.
Three years ago, I heard.
Tell me, did that rid you of your pain?
And don’t lie, because I know, behind closed doors for your mother you cry, because Cancer had her killed.

And I might have found a lover.
And you’ve probably found another.
And we might feel fine as of now, but someday,
Just like the pyrokinetic flowers that bombard the night sky,
My memories of you will fade away.
I just wanted to say goodbye.

My Dearest Molly Anne,
I hope you are now satisfied
With the sinking bags under my eyes and
The empty gap between my thighs, I hope
You know I can no longer sleep
Without you to rock me through the slow-rolling lake,
And sing your song of a thousand sheep.
You've started throwing
Thick red waves into my sink and
Messed with my ability to think and
Darling, you pull me
Under miles and miles of freezing sea
And you take and you take,
Never satisfied.

We were watched, making love last night
By her walls, painted plain and white.
I want to tell her,
If you love me, love me better,
You're doing it all wrong.
You just strung a dozen words together,
I wouldn't call it a song.
She says she's afraid to be alone
Fine, I guess I'll lead her along.
I'm not that cruel and
You're not very strong.
Four white, watching walls, night after night...
I don't think we can go on.

My Dearest Molly Anne,
I hope you are now satisfied
With the sinking bags under my eyes and
The empty gap between my thighs, I hope
You know I can no longer sleep
Without you to rock me through the slow-rolling lake,
And sing your song of a thousand sheep.
You've started throwing
Thick red waves into my sink and
Messed with my ability to think and
Darling, you pull me
Under miles and miles of freezing sea
And you take and you take,
Never satisfied.

Have another drink,
Why don't you?
Take another sip?
The bartender's watching us closely but
If I give him a hearty enough tip
He'll leave us be
And we can slip
Down to the train tracks
Like our slurred words.

We won't make love but we'll
Lay on the mercury speckled rails
Singing our heads off,
Drinking some more ail till
The horn blares and
The insides of our eyes pool with gaudy lights from
Heaven above

And we're rolled to bits,
Leaving nothing behind but a trail
Of blood and
The heavenly light of tails.

You cannot blame me
For when your stomach folds
If you keep coming
To my forlorn tree,
Starving.
Not when the poor man's fruit-bearing bush
Is just the other way
Within the same, short walking distance

You planted and preened the seed you destroyed.
Your midday whispers running up my legs;
You left behind a trail of innocent tickles that,
In the empty evening air,
Curdled into a sinister, aching itch.
You left my ankles and the insides of my knees abandoned to snap down on a mosquito
In one swift, final bark.

My thighs still sting.

The manic pixie dream girl wouldn't fall for you
So you fell for the poisonous girl in the red dress instead,
Thinking they were the same.
And they're quite similar, really, all mad and free.
But the difference between pixie dream girl and me
Is that she is sweet.
She'll do what she wants: She might love you, she might leave you.
Gently. Softly.
I am not so sweet, not so gentle, not so soft.
I will leave you, I won't love you, and you will come crawling back.
I want you to love me until you cry
And I want you to cry for me like a dying man for breath,
A starving man for a meal,
A soaked man for the sun,
And a deserted man for rain and
Even then
I'll leave you again, crawling through the sand.
All that, just because I can.

You are the diseased soil in which these doomed seeds were sown,

You are the poison tree from which these evil apples dropped,

And you are the acid rain that raises the earthworms from their
underground abodes
and eats

eats

eats away.

She says her lover's died in the plague
She buried him already,
Before you came
Last night, stars bright,
Glinting off her metal *****.

It'd be a disrespect, to uncover the body,
They shrug and say,
Poor widow, lover died of the plague,
And at such a young age.

But check her closet now, don't be afraid,
See the kitchen knife there?
Love's red on its blade.

You can probably catch me
f
          a
                    l
             l
     i
          n
            
                g  
                     for another

                     one of your lies.

1 am 06 and
My mother's just called the police on my
Daddy for hitting her in the face
'Cause he didn't like the food today.

1t
Doesn't come as too much of a surprise
They've been yelling all-day
They've been yelling every day.

1 am jotting it
All down in a little notebook, without
Lines because 1 want to practice my
Straight hand.

No one else in
My little 1st-grade class has a mother
Calling the police on their daddy
For hitting their mother in the face.

That is why 1 am special.

Trees bleed crimson in protest
Before the wind drowns out their last, dying breath.
I walk through the barren orchard,
Marveling at their grand, glimmering display of defeat;
Their bodies torn apart by the sky's frosty breath.
I am but a lone red blade dancing out
stamping out
my frail stem.
A fiery ballerina on ecstasy.

I'm going to
Throw our whole book
Into the river
And drown it with my screams

I am going to
Hope
It floats away
With nothing more than ****** streams

I am going to
Jump into the water myself then,
I am going to plummet and pray
That the waves are struck by lightning,
Setting fire to my body, our book,
Both of our dreams.

Haven't seen him smile right in
Quite the while but I know
He's a smart boy, so he must know
How to escape his little slump.

Peter does not know
The true size of his slump.
Only that She's got
A soft, pooling belly under
Plumes of purple smoke
Floating over her wax *******;
Perfect for forgetting.

He's trying to breathe through cold drizzle
Photosynthesize through linen tarp
I say he chooses not to leave the rain
And he nods.

Take me out
onto the roller rink,
where, under the neon disco ball, everything turns
pink and hazy

Make me out
to be your in-line princess,
your ribbon-bred baby

Spin me 'round and 'round
drivin' me crazy crazy crazy

Bring me to my knees
sorry, you whispered to me
"oopsie-daisy"

Drop me to the floor
my crustacean legs
fold crooked underneath me like a crab
i skip back onto the tips of my toes
i cover up quick like a lady

Still, I wait patiently for more
Still, spinning under these hazy neon lights
looking for someone new again,
looking for somewhere else to score.

What did you want me to do with your empty casket after I clawed through the cold cemetery dirt in search of you?
A mad rabbit on its hind legs. I was a rabbit gone mad with inanity;

In the dark, I am massive; a crouched heap.

Twitch twitch twitch,
Shudder shudder shudder.

I scrape the weeds out from under my fingernails with my teeth.
Sweet chloroform tainted by a sick, chemical sheen.
The hole looms between my shadow and me. The hole sticks out from underneath.

Will you whisper to me while I weep?
Your words carried by sheets of sleet,
Bite the tip of my nose, caress the apples of my cheeks.
Cradle me in your barren arms, lull me to sleep.

Burrow burrow burrow,
Reap reap reap.

I watched you turn young again
Lost in the supermarket
Searching for a place to be
Searching for my hand to hold

I watched my skin turn old and pale against the steering wheel
The way back home is long and
quiet and
all dirt road

Wise girl turned wiser
Wise girl turned free
Perhaps too gone to be my girl
Still, she returns to me

In this drafty bedside cavern
I lay with my feet up against the wall
tap tap tap
Held up over my hard head
Resting against the hard ground
Back here, where my pillow is my headstone
This palace is a burden,
Utterly insufferably forgiving.

Fantasy hits the ceiling
A dream shot from my mind
CRACK
Moonlight shines through the cave's newborn fissures
Useless to me
Uselessly groveling under shadowy sheets of sky  
I need this sterile fluorescent light.

It dances across my face
pitter patter pitter patter
It drops into my eyes,
Falls into the chasm between my lips
Cold and reeking of rot
Cold and tasting of an invasive species of mildew
I swallow, choking back tears
I eat it
It eats back.

She says,
"You should know, dear
"The world doesn't stutter when it walks,
"Not the way you
"Stumble through your thoughts." And
I wish I could untie
The spool of my mind
But I
Keep feeding it thread,
Hoping it will spill out my mouth in
A rainbow scarf

Hello, I'm not doing very well,
I think to myself.
I'd like to tell
You but my every apple, every cell,
Has been gutted and cored and you look so whole,
So pretty, such glow.
Hello? You're so nice on the eyes that
I never want you to know
The way I bleed through a shattered heart because these shards
Would poke holes
Through your sweet, sugar-glass wings,
Wings that could be delightfully clipped and pinned in a glass box
But I'd like to see you fly
Because it’d peal my dying, gutted mind from
All the empty apples inside
This holed up soul.

Why is the music industry showered in riches while
Doctors and nurses are left in ditches though
They save lives and music, you--
Well, I suppose music saves lives too but
Oh, not mine.
No, no, no, see I
'm
On a stage but they've all got their eyes shut and
Their heads are swaying side to side but Oh!
Oh, oh oh no I see a
Nother gay man hanging by the church's steeple and I
Don't think I've ever seen this many angry white people
And I'm not sure why no one's being called,
Maybe it's as it always is, the rich are bored and
The poor are just another board game to them but I yell:
"People! Look over there there's a
Man in need, look close and you can see they've even killed
The crown of flowers in his hair" But
No one looks, no one gives a single care.
Not when they're all dying, no,
Not when there's no cure, only distraction
Dialing the speed back on a train destined to tumble off a cliff see
Nothing matters
When everyone's dying.

Honey, I hope
You never know
How I long to love you
Back.

Momma what’s a life in shadows?
She asks the moon, because momma’s long gone.
Are they pretty, all faceless and shifting?
Or are they h a z y ?
Does the running woman in the rain believe herself a bird?
Where’s her flock momma?
Is she l o n e l y ?
Lost about the stone’s pure grain and glory?
I’m sorry you’ve got
To share yours with the sun.
Does he know, momma?
Does the sun know
About the shadows?
Maybe if he’d come down
He could keep them c o m p a n y.
I would
If I could.
Momma what’s a life in shadows?

Six children and a suburban home
Don't it hurt you to see me like this?
One of yours, and still so alone?

First daughter assigned third wife
I've done it all wrong again,
Haven't I?

Sprawled all across this spiky green turf
Drinking up the merciless sunshine
Trying to keep it down

Weeping about my friend's father
Watching for a hint of remorse in your stern frown
I wait for you to ask for my forgiveness
Go on, ask
Let me for once be the one to deny

Suzanne Berlinsky has ******.
That's right, you heard it all
Here.

She hasn't got any friends
Because she smells so bad
But if she did,
We'd ask her how Suzy smells
And her friends would tell us
How bad Suzy smells.

Suzanne Berlinsky has ******.
A fright, I'm sure
For the ghosts around her.

If you smelt Suzy you too,
Would perish.
That's why Suzy's got no friends
Because she smells so,
So sickening.
And she has ******.

Suzanna Berlinsky has ******.
And that's all for tonight, I'm
Afraid.

Every morning I wake up blind.
Bask in my reflection, I feel like hot **** I feel like fresh hell
I feel fine.
I want to strip my skin clean;
Tear off tissue like toilet paper spill blood red like wine
I want to stop this beating heart every
Every night but ohh
I just haven't got the ******* time.
Instead, I smother myself in your covers,
And you watch as I try and pick ants,
One by one
by one by one
Out my spine
And there are none to be found nothing to find.
I could've sworn I put them there myself, but who knows?
Every morning
I wake up blind.

step once
sit down
stand up
spin around

blink twice
tap thrice
turn that frown upside down!

cross your fingers
cross your legs
curl up
shut down

look left
                                                                                                    look right
run fast faster fast as your little legs will fly you
through the night

throw up
break down
blow up
find it fright it flight it fight it fist it twist it pop it smash it burn it **** it
stomp it out

scream

now go to sleep

Screaming baby on your end of the line
My static is your lullaby
The telephone is cradled against my chin
The cord is wrapped taut around my neck
I wait to rest my head against your phantom shoulder
Press my lips against the mouthpiece
Begging you to pull the trigger

Rocking myself to sleep slumped on the sticky linoleum floor,
The plug pulls off its socket with a pop
My vision grows dark
My song bellows through the air, it
Swallows the walls that keep us apart

You aren't as good of a person as you think
And I am not as bad of a person
as you have made me think

I wake up without you
Lying away from me won't solve your problems
Not even on your cold asphalt bed
Your mechanical graveyard covers twisted tight around you

Rain rinses your wounds
The blood is washed away
A river flowing into my room
I don't recognize you, sitting in the corner

Watch my chest heave with silent sobs
Picturing your gnarled face
I don't sleep
I go to bed with you still gone

I drive the screwdriver through my own heart and
Stuff the open wound with my fist and
Swaddle myself in threadbare cloth and
Get to work,
Gathering up the pins to
Try and stitch my skin back together again.

High on acid with steam-filled lungs;
I call my poor mother and tell her I'm fine,
I fetch my good brother and tell him to bring me the gun.