Well, you're a lot to look at.
Not much to talk to.
But, OH.
I still wanna give it up to you.

Oh,
You brag you're a winner.
You gotta face that looks similar,
To an actor from my favorite television series.



*Alabama seems so far away when you so Alabama.
Alabama seems so far away when you say Alabama.

I used to tell my mom
I'm scared
when the wolves came calling out back
but really I was shy.
was ashamed to admit
all I wanted was to be one of them
to slip into their paw prints
feel the dewy night kissing my ears
to lift my face to the wolf gods,
their bodies reflecting my dark eyes

I'd scrabble through the stale snow,
run until my lungs were scorched
I'd follow until they let me in
to touch them
feel them
lick their cheeks,
winding into their memories
with a slightly steaming spool slowly spinning,
ready to gobble them up
and replace my own

I'd yap and howl the way they do
Leap; spine arched,
into their midst
and match their moon choked tones

I'd want to be a mystery
Have those feeble humans claim they know everything
about me
but really, they’d never even scratch the surface
of the wolf who gleams like ivory
of the wolf who streaks like fiery song
pulsing through the snow

I'd want to be the invisible; you know, that thing that’s watching you
bending through the slip of trees
the thing your eyes strain to find
the thing you wait all night to see

I want to have them look at me,
the ones who think they found me first,
I want the poets
the artists
and writers
to look into my face and say
how beautiful, those eyes
how brave or fierce or wise
and I would grin my wolfish grin
bare my snarling teeth on cue
ignore their stupid human stupor
knowing what they never would
that being a wolf is better than sitting alone
inside
waiting
for them
each night
to lure me with their round raw voices
their silver heart shaped faces
their unforgiving bodies tensing
tails whipping
hammered paws sailing
like white frost oceans
the kings and queens
searching for castles
among the rabble
rubble
waves

--Lily

Six AM, on my feet and staggering. Eight AM, I'm on a poetry binge again.
You know, I've got no sleep and my words ain't deep but I've got so many dreams.

Who seek to find monogamy,
Pursuing it from bed to bed--
I think they would be better dead."

22.2
You mailed me a package with a note that said a person’s boots are the most intimate thing someone can own because they take the imprint of the body. On the other side you scribbled “Wherever I seat myself I die in exile”

15
Today I opened my email (well not really today, this was when my usernames still had words like ‘punk’ and ‘babe’ in them) and there was a little blond boy with the same gray eyes and a note that said “He looks nothing like me and everything like you – what a punishment.” The doorbell rang and I expected to find him at the door but this isn’t the movies and when I got back upstairs I realized I didn’t even know his name but my reply bounced back. I guess I never will and you won’t either.

11
You fed me ecstasy and popped my shoulder back in its socket so I wouldn’t have to go to the hospital. While I writhed on the floor you drove J’s truck into a church and punched a cop.

12
I got tired of competing over who could sleep with more of the other’s friends. ******* it even when I started ******* girls and doubled the pool from which I fished you got lazy and started on my ex-boyfriends and all I could think was “When did I start sleeping with gay guys?” But this was before we knew about more options than just gay or straight and I never thought about how maybe it was Freud who said we are all a little bisexual or pansexual or something like that

14
I was mad, both crazy and angry, when I saw the needles and the black and blue an association with T. D. J. W. W. sometimes hyphen R. produced. How pretentious to have that many names. Sometimes the explanation is worse than the action.

13
You broke into my (our) house in the middle of the night and these are the things you took: bedsheets, toilet paper, every flannel item on the second floor, grandma’s jewelry (mine, not yours, and she just died too) all the money in my piggy bank, *****, eggs, milk, cheese, actually all the food in the fridge, the **** you gave me for Christmas, the car keys but not the car, the prickly green welcome mat and one of the goldfish. Why wouldn’t you just take them both? The name Fishn Chips only works when they are both there, it doesn’t make sense with only one.

14.2
I think this was the first time I saw a grown man cry. How clichéd.

21
I don’t have to pretend to like coffee anymore and when I drink I inhale it deep until brown sludge threatens to invade my lungs. People say I look absolutely euphoric and once I said “Yeah it’s the only thing I learned from T” but that’s a lie because you also taught me how to pop security tags off clothes with a rubber band and what to do if you need to take certain things to or from Canada. Whenever I see a California area code I still don’t answer the phone. We haven’t spoken in years which I find remarkable considering how few I have accumulated and how few you have left. I saved the message you left me from the night you found that kid and I feel weird because the panic in your voice reminds me of when we got in trouble for things much less severe and it sort of makes me happy.

17
Oh how orange suits you (har har har). D says he thinks this will really straighten you out. This makes me laugh because I remember how you secretly like to sleep with the same boys as me. Then he leans over to a stranger, points to me, and says “That’s my only kid…a girl.” I don’t think we are coming to visit again.

10
The holler traps gasoline in the air and I imagine when coal trucks dominated these one lane roads it recycled dust the same way. You drank so much moonshine you swore you felt the mountainside breathing. Then you went blind for five days. When your eyes regained focus you drove my four-wheeler off the road and your leg burned pink and slick. A snake bit my left heel but no one noticed because they thought you would need skin graphs and you had such beautiful legs.

22
You sent a Christmas card to everyone and you were all the buzz at dinner even though I’m going to college and bought presents with my own money and J – forever your defender – says I should be comfortable in my achievements and you need a little more give and I made everyone at the table awkward when I told them that was exactly the sort of attitude that got you where you are now.

19
J and I went looking for you when you stopped calling for money. Two pounds for each inch we found your skin stretched tight over bones and while I coaxed the dirt from your hair you explained the proper way to tie an arm so a vein doesn’t burst. I can’t think of a single thing to tell anyone I know about you, so I don’t. I can think about all the speeches I would like to give to you – eloquent deliveries about what a selfish ******* you are. How you promised to pick me up and it was winter and I was so cold and embarrassed no one had come for me so I waited outside and walked to the store fifteen minutes away to use the pay phone and then walked back. Or how I insisted on saving my graduation ticket for you because you said you would come back to the state but then you never showed and called me ****** and still in California claiming it was February. I realized you were just like my dad and I cut all my hair off.

8
I was confused about how someone could live with us but not be related. When a birth certificate was just a piece of paper before you pushed me in front of a car but after you busted my face open – the definition of “taking it on the chin.” I still think you killed my cat.

Drip
                            Drop

         It’s

R
     a      
        i    
          n                 i
             i               n
               n          
                  g         m        
                              y

                head

glittery             b   i   t   s     of

                MEMORY

and
                        
                  e  v  e  r  y  t  h  i  n  g

               I

wanted               to

      
           F  o      r           g              e                    t ...

I am not allowed to care.

Because when I start caring, you start caring,
Hearts flowing, blood beating,
something rises
From the farthest reaches of my stomach,
Crawling up to weave its way into my voice,
Eyes, ears, mouth, coloring words,
Staining thoughts with an endless:
“Well that was stupid.... What do I do now?”
Because if I care, we’re through.

Through.

No more stupid texts about what wine we’re drinking,
Or times to meet, or places to see, hands to hold,
Sideways looks, or ridiculously awkward moments
When you laugh at me but

I'm smiling

Because that laugh means that at least
You’re
noticing me.

No more caresses, no more heat racing through
Veins that reshape to accommodate
The increase of feeling,
The sensation of you;
No more arms from behind
At 3am the first night I slept over
No more whisper, no more “Hey,
I’m right here. See? You aren’t alone.”
No. Not allowed. There is no ‘us.’
Not in words, not to talk about;

“I don’t want a relationship.”
Read between the lines, little girl,

“I don’t see myself in a relationship [with you].”
So many lies masked by smiles
And staged little chuckles

“Well, neither do I. So can’t we just do this?”
It’s too late.

I am not allowed to care.
But I do. And now the first lie
Is told, attached, stuck, leading out into the framework
Of a web already begun,
A sticky spider’s trap spun a thousand times before.

No.

I do not care. This means nothing.
Nothing at all.

And the only reason I'm
saying that, screaming that,
turning these words over and over in my head...

Is because I’ve already fallen.

My absolute destiny is to skull **** the **** out of life
To blast open the empty cleavage
To shatter all the deceptive phonographs
Those that you now consider “convenient modes of transportation”

Every dawn I will howl into your vibrating monotones
Your Dutch rambling will be reduced to ashes
Alone in a ***** hostel

You will be shocked by the sight of a desecrated ******
The fish scales still burning
Left in their natural preservatives

The lowest of all the adorned creatures
Is he who succumbs to mediocrity
An ordinary existence is worse then a wasted *** receptacle
If they cant see the truce in a setting sunlight

It is a sin to deteriorate comfortably
Making circles with the tracks of your laymen’s truck
of waking up happy with your plastic name tags
carved to resemble an ignorant life scrap

This **** disgusts me
It is the skull ******* that define a generation
Grab your sword a
and plunge deep into the night

A laudable combination of weapons of mass destruction
and drunkards
This is one less moment you spend being ordinary