Don't worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually.

you make me ******* sick

with your vowels, hesitations and ******* excuses

******* and all of your unwavering moral righteousness

you ******* wealthy white man

how have i let myself believe you
could taste the terror dripping down my thighs?

like sticky nectar

******* and your misguided Nuture
i am last to grow under your warped hands of silk
and first to shrivel under guise of instability and the dreaded-

" b o r d e r l i n e "

the only line i toe, my dear, is your continued worth

the ******* think, you're not replaceable?

the words i spit to your mope last night might
as well be metal in my mouth

you don't do a **** thing for me

when I was born, I had
nine lives left, I was bereft
of scars, delicate as fireflies
in a jam jar
(the kind I’d punch holes in the lid for,
the kind I’d bring indoors
and set on my bedroom floor as a fairy nightlight, until I got bored
and one by one they died silent as the pollination of fornicating spores.)

anyways.

9 lives left, age: 2 months
but then one day daddy looked the other way and splash!
the baby’s in the *** and the ***’s still hot
(there are witches in the air but we don’t care)
looks like soup tonight! yum yum
third degree misery etched on her body,
one life done.

And nothing to show for all of her fun
but a twisted left arm and a ***** of a sun (burn)

One life down, eight to go, you know
because she’s a fox, which (if you peek over the ledge of your punitive box)
is like a cat. And that, as we know, means
nine lives, and that’s that.

well, eight now.
if you want, I’ll tell you how she (i) is (now) down several more.
worry not little one, fate always evens out
the score.

The second was me and a boy (THE Boy, if you know what I mean)
it would seem he and I had climbed two stories high
hand over foot over hand over foot over
the parking lot right up next to the sky
and then oh-
wait.

I’m falling.

(breathe in, breathe out)

(the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout
down came reality and washed the spider out)

and there are
butterflies on the tip of my tongue and there is
a word stuck in my stomach.

he held my eyes just like I couldn’t hold
the pipe as I fell, right towards the earth between heaven and hell
now there are hot knives in my ankles and I think (I can’t tell)
I’m alive.

(stop drop and roll)

yes I fell from the roof through the sky. No I’m fine.
just one more life gone, I saw it flash before my eyes in a short space of time
that was roughly
the shape of a stop sign, or maybe a wind chime, or maybe
it was the shape of the sunshine.

Whichever way, that’s two down, seven to go;
the next one I lost when I rolled off the road.

We were going seventy and
the love of my life was sitting next to me and
his skin was beautiful in its caramel coffee complexity and
he wasn’t
paying
attention.

There is air in my lungs when I should be history
but the SUV only bruised my knees as it rolled, glass shattering
pit-pattering over the pinwheel of perfect destruction
around us.

I felt myself decide that it was okay
if this was the end.

At least I’d go with my best friend, there’s some
good stuff. That, I conceded, would be enough,
I could die young
if who I was in that moment
could be the freeze-frame of my song,
the thing that’s left
after I’m gone.

Three lives gone, only five left-
the next one is casually snipped like a price tag
after a theft when I fell
(again)
from the banyan tree and flipped my pancake
(click-clack) like a jacob’s ladder
I should have broken my back.

As I fell I yelled in my head
there’s nothing to fear but fear itself
(till you’re dead.)

four down, five to go Indigo.

Here we go.

(to be continued.)

Where does it go
The descent is never slow
The best years of my life
Rope burning my hands like the string of a kite
As the wind whips it away
I can’t tell if it’s trying to play
Or if there’s something it’s trying to say
Will I miss this day when my hair turns grey

Now I’m choking on my spit
‘Cause I wouldn’t take the bit
And my skin it does not fit
Even tender caresses rub raw like grit
When the sun rises I’ll smoke my last cigarette
And I’ll bite where you kissed me to try and forget
That it all falls down

Now I’m drinking in the sound
Of the dust as it gently makes love to the ground,
It used to be our home
But now I’m free to roam
Back to the ocean who’s always alone
Where the tide will dissolve me back into seafoam
Right where I started a neat palindrome
There’ll be nothing to bury in no catacomb
I’ll be everywhere

I’m the answer to my own prayers
So I’ll fix on the mirror a far away stare
And say nobody promised that this would be fair
So I’ll kiss where you bit me to soothe my despair
Oh my honeybear