there was a playful sound
calling on the other side
of the wall called life.
i asked for more soul
but no one responded,
even after i screamed for
someone to hear me,

give me soul or give me death

i don't care if i drown anymore

*(a.m.c.)

i never wanted
to become that person
who uses a knife
to heal her wounds
but i have become
a mixture of
have's and have not's
and i'm so cluttered
that nobody wants
to clean up my pieces
and i'm so *****
but flowers don't grow
out of my skin
i am only mud
i am only weeds
i am only poison

*(a.m.c.)

i'm tired of feeling dead inside
and having a heart
like scrambled eggs with toast.
when people start asking me,
"do you ever feel--"
i have to stop them there,
"no."
maybe i'm a black hole
swallowing itself into nothing,
or maybe a tornado
is taking me to the land of oz.

there's no place like home
there's no place like home
there's no place like home

every time i cross streets
i see lights coming at me
but everything is fuzzy
and then it's a dance,
a fun game of dare.
"hit me."

*(a.m.c.)

i kind of want to die
but i know that there are no
gold-tipped sunrises
in the basement of the dead.
mostly i dream in colors
that aren't black and white
because my head is full of spectrum
a copy of a copy of a color.
the only thing that keeps
my eyelids from drooping
is words on the pages
of the endless stack of books
in the corner of my room.
sometimes i think that
each letter is a person
and their figures join together
to form large crowds
that fill the spacious voids
around me.
my friends spill out of my mouth
and move around in my brain,
they are words,
not lifeless
but constantly moving.

*(a.m.c.)

my heart was a monotonous beeping
a soft old grandfather clock,
background noise at dinner parties
and a focal point for insomniacs
it droned on, neither increasing or decreasing,
neither rising or falling,
a steady beat of a steel drum on a hot summer night

i moved an inch closer to you

my heart was a ticking time bomb,
still steady as clockwork
but adding drama to the movie screen
it was stippling and a connect-the-dot photo of a sailboat
if you wired me up to a machine,
the line of my heart would be a steadily increasing mountain,
closer and closer to the destination
which is you

three inches closer

my heart was alla turca on piano
and impressionist paint strokes
it was dashed-dotted-dashed-dashed
it was swift like wind and current
it was nearly hummingbird wing
nearly death defying

you are two inches away

my heart has broken metronomes,
the tempo reached over five hundred
and chatter flooded into it
speaking words so fast
it sounds like a language from another planet
sometimes i wonder if my heart is really like mount rushmore
but it's not the head of founding fathers carved into the side
but the way you look when you look at me

you are here, i am here

the love i feel for you is plotted out on graph paper covering my floors but it keeps running off the page and i don't have enough paper

*(a.m.c.)

to me you are just a photograph
a five-by-seven rectangle
of glossy paper
pinned on my white wall
with a thumbtack.
all of you is crammed into that space,
a box that contains your smile,
two-dimensional and impersonal,
false.
there's a rip on one corner
where part of your forehead dangles
ready to be completely perforated,
because you have no control
over where i store you
whether it's in my arms
or just on my walls.

*(a.m.c.)

do you ever think about
crystallized heartbeats?
and capricorn fists holding
winter solstices within each crease,
palms like mountains
with riverbends and valleys,
cliffdiving into an ocean
of crimson skin?
the lullaby that plays over
and over
in my head is the sound
of your voice
cracking as you said,
"please don't go."
that three-word phrase
sings me to sleep
every single night.

i didn't ask for this,
you know.

i didn't ask for blown-out candles
smoke twirling into tendrils of grey
and ashy piles.
i never asked for your blank stare
when your memory was erased
by people in white coats with long needles.
i didn't ask for your arms
to become my stronghold
and my shelter against the night.

i didn't want this but now i'm addicted.

*(a.m.c.)