Make no mistake
I have seen cities rise and fall
I have watched my temples burn
I have stood, solid,
As the earth cracked and withered at my feet-
I am NOT weak.
I have buried my grieving fingers in the dirt
And tried to resurrect a love
Gone to dust, gone to seed.
I have wailed at the moon like the loneliest wolf,
Bereft of the comfort only touch provides,
And I have torn through thorns and briars,
Desperate to follow its cold white light to the horizon
But I have never
Knelt
And I will not.
I worship from my feet,
My gods are larger than to care if I fall to a crawl in pursuit of them-
My worship bids me run
Jump
Writhe
Sing
But never surrender
For I must fight to love this sky
These hands
This earth whose pain and promise I have received
With hunger.
I must fight to stand
And it would be a disservice to anything I were to love
To let it knock me to my knees.

Do you still think I'm beautiful, darling? Because I'm just itching to mar something lovely in your name tonight.

Slam me into that unforgiving wall
Take handfuls of my hair and pull
while I cry out into the home of dark
Drag your rough fingers up my hips
to my naked ribs while I fight you
Let your lips find their way to my broken ones
Sore from having done this before
Bruised because I asked you to
Pick me up and let me wrap my shaking legs
around your bare waist
Push me onto cloud nine
So beyond lust or love
we collide like light against dark
Constant
Oh, how good it feels to have your presence
touch mine
We're gone but together

Do you worry that I'll love you?
Sometimes I do.
But
I think that if I were to love you
I would love you the way I first learned to love:
Quietly, and with no demands.
I think if the worst were to happen
I wouldn't reach for you
Only tell you
That you are beautiful.
Perhaps
It has happened already.
I wonder if I fear it, sometimes.
But what I really fear
Is that you will fear it.
I wonder if you worry that I'll love you
And you are just too good
Too truly good
To do anything about it.
If you do worry,
You needn't:
If I were to love you
I would love you like you were made of glass-
Delicate, exquisite, and untouchable.

There is something beautiful about two sad people who agree to hurt each other.
Something comforting.
It is a comfort only very damaged people understand- the tacit agreement to cause pain, and to receive it.
Pleasure is for people who have what they want.
But for those of us who are starving, ours is best peppered with suffering.
Being with someone who understands that carries its own worth-
I don't want you to make me feel good.
I couldn't stand it if you did.
I don't want you to touch me gently, or ask if I'm alright, or stop to look into my eyes.
I am starving, and so are you: I want your teeth.
I want you to make me hurt. And I want to hurt you.
I want you to hurt me because I'm not him, and I want to hurt you because you're not her.
We want to see each other suffer because we are starving and we need to feel that someone else is.
Don't hold back. I want you to lower me because I'm too good for her.
Don't love me, don't caress me. Dig your nails in. Drip candlewax on my stomach.
One step down from torture is all I can stand in the way of human connection, when it isn't her.
Punish me for looking at her like a baleful puppy tonight, even as you waited in my room with your soft skin and your sharp teeth.
There is nothing you can do that will be too violent, too brutal, too sadistic.
I don't want to be loved right now.
I am too raw.
I want to be touched. I want to be ruined. Leave marks. Smear lipstick.
Lower me because I am
Too
****
Good for her.
Let this heart know on no uncertain terms that its needs don't matter.
Help me **** it. Help me pin my demons to the bed and make them writhe, and I will do the same for you.
Let's exorcise our loves tonight and banish them to hell.
Let's tell our skin that it is irrelevant.
Let's say "*******" to the things that bind us. I will cut your heart out for him.
I will kiss your scars, not to heal them but to remind you that when you put them there you fought for something, something we both fight for now.
Hurt me. Fight her. Do it for her.
Do it for her because I'm not good enough to hurt.
Do it for her because I'm TOO good to hurt.
Crush me.
You could boil me alive and it wouldn't make up for her, so at least leave me bruised.  
I will give you what you need, and you will give me what I need: not love, but contact.
Please,
Let my heart know on no uncertain terms that its needs
Don't
Matter.

There is something beautiful about two sad people who agree to hurt each other.

The jagged pebbles poked and dimpled my body
as I sat on the shore of Aleutian Alaska.
Each rock was dusted with patches of grass like an old man’s tangled toupee…
Not that the epic beauty of nature should be compared to
something so artificial and ugly.
The air was so cold and crisp that its fresh purity burned my peeling nose.
I am not a Native Alaskan.
I feel like an alien spectator, blemishing this astounding autonomous habitat…
But I am trying not to disturb the locals.
I haven’t seen any grizzlies yet, which maybe I should be happy about.
I wouldn’t want to be anyone’s meal-

What was that?
A puff.
An exhale.
A lingering ghost waltzed atop the water and faded.
Further down the bank I saw more dancing vapors.
Is that what it looks like when a whale comes up for air?
I have never seen how their breath shoots up the water like that.
The mist is like a ballroom dance class
swaying and skirting about the glossy, smooth surface.

Speechless…


Do you remember in elementary school how you knew everything about animals?
What was who and who was where and why?
I forgot a lot.
I forgot that whales are mammals, needing air just as I do.
Obviously, they can hold their breath longer… But I still try to hold on.
I guess those fun facts that you collected as a kid fade as you grow older.
All those little things get whisked away,
And waltz until they dissipate in the wind.
Against all reluctances,
We inhale.
We exhale.
And we forget some things along the way.

Drums beat the endless chords
Of something that looks like an agony,
A vague aftermath of a smoky carcass.
The crowd remained enthralled or detached.
In excitement, in boredom and in unison.
They seemed to know the routine of celebration,
Of enjoyment,
Of the rejoice.
But still not eat at it,
into themselves.
They seemed to even echo their claps and nods so parallel,
To the rhythm,
That they all became another maestro
The deaf Beethovens.

While the elephant,
danced.
               And sang.

In a pristine celebration only known to him.
Like the seducing dance of the King Cobra,
In the Jungles of a drenched Wayanad.
Green,
Yet so Aroused and red.
While nature became its charmer,

She,
the nature,
Juggled with the soul, vigour and energy of the King.

In one plate,
altogether,
The art,
The music,
And the rhythm became

The dirge of a new cemetery                  
                                                        of an old heaven.