&maybe; we are all empty,
useless and nothingness. To follow suit,
I've grown so irreparably damaged that a thousand cigarettes,
a dozen tiny pills could  do
                                                       ­                                                              no
good to ease the 'average' that we all
are prone to, that the media pretends to abhor. No other
kiss could take my breath the way this does and
now I see what losing
                                                                ­                                                  really
does to me; an imperceptible toll is the thing to tell me truth.
We're all breaking
but we keep it confidential.
Too  many months down the road and
                                                                ­                                                      I'm
utterly­ useless. Fifty pages of attempts at art  are nothing with
the way the average thrive on 'creativity.'
Every hour, I refine and redefine coping as
shying  away from all but rage and substance.
Anyone who touches my skin could say I
radiate the caption 'I
                                                              ­                                                       still
hate You' and I cling to that.
We've always said that hate hurts better than
anything else. You and I have
heard this from eachother, so many thought
through syllables aimed to ease everything that does
not look like reconstruction.

&I; still proudly prove to every pair of ears
that hear me that I do not
and I never needed you
                                                                ­                                                 here.

As summer air swaddles me from
ear to waist, the most benign of all sounds sets off a biological riot in me &nights; like these
take my breath away enough to stir up in me the awarenessthat
I
am not
what they want.

Neither Satan nor Substandard
could beg more than what I've been aching to portray.
Both less than and less than
hold their finely tuned scopes and too-broad knowledge to every detail I present.
Neither more eager to please than the other, I blend
devil's advocacy with indifference, but I still can't make either pair of eyes
lips or
fingertips
meet mine.
Oh & Satan,dearest when you take my hand I melt,
I'm desperate to stitch it toyours. But you've no use
for the doppleganger I'd become
to coax approval from the masses.

With that, I crane my neck to see the tower that you are, Substandard. Pleading indecency
and
scoffing at regret, I could almost
mistake your saccharine tone
of voice for the alluring Song of Satan.

I gather up my sins into a bundle and leave them by your side while I plead with fate to condemn my
soul,
elicit a wisp of affection from you,
something for me to hold onto
until winter returns.

What sort of discomfort can coerce a girl to pray for madness just to win inadequacy over?

Forever my favorite conquest, was this really
even about that, baby?
Well maybe that’s not the right word, a little too strong, a little too weak. I’ll never know who you were, what you meant
until I’ve forced myself to lose and commit you to memory
But you will remain my greatest adventure.

To fill with the way I smile in the
middle of every kiss not meant for parting and
the way your scent lingers on my skin even after
I’ve walked away.

Touch my cheek,
burn a hole in my heart and stop its beat. Let’s
wander the forest and pretend
that its paradise. You and I, only
one life: a hole in my heart,
a hole in my old self and you’ve burned away
crucial parts of me.
Where’s this girl whose incandescent fingertips held her
world one moment,
a pen the next. Recreating the world
in faux romantic colors, was my medulla.
Crisp pages dripping with lust and love can drive even
a cynical ***** to art and insanity.
“Medulla, I need you.
Muse, where are you?”

Tomorrow the forest leaves me lonely,
Thoreau all dressed up in nature, auroral colors kissing
my skin and eyes, cannot even console me. Searching for
my Muse, I’ll wait.

I need no medulla but my brain’s.
I touch the leaves, the trees, a cigarette.

And I will learn to find my own Muse.

Remember the way that
writing poetry used to be okay?
Your name was slowly inked upon my pages, our
pages, huh? And I strung so many words together, words to big to even fit
into my small silhouette of a girl. I put them together,
wonderfully, silently,
as you downed another sip of powerade and sat down
a little too close to me, and held onto my,
hand just to make sure I was still
okay. And I was. Just fine. All I thought
I wanted was you with me, and thats
exactly where you wanted to be.

But those books are gone, april’s poetry
should be burned and forgotten,
and our epilogue is this:
He left, and she spent the next months searching for his duplicate.

Oh&This; is how we do it here
in towns like this:
Build them up
just to tear them back down to the filthy
ground
lower than where they started. Maybe this
isn’t even about how high
we built them up.
Maybe its all in the way they’ll feel it after
we’ve torn them all the way down,
the ache inside when it all takes place,
So Honey, I’ve felt it before.
I’ve seen it: I wrote it: The moment you start to
feel something real, is when you
realize that you’re doing everything wrong.