She said,
I want to die
Just let me die.
And I felt her words
Throughout the entirety of my soul
Because I knew
I knew.

We sat there stroking her back
He and I.
As she kept saying
I want to die
I looked up at him
And I saw it in his eyes
And he saw it in mine
Because he knew.
He knew.

Three broken people
Sitting at a party together.
Her sober thoughts coming out
As drunk words.
I heard it in her voice,
He saw it in my eyes,
I saw it in his eyes,
And for one second,
None of us were alone
Together we shared the pain.
Because we knew.
We knew.

i imagine she is
so much more
fair, they all are
always blonde
and delicate,
I have to
tear myself away
from this place
where my body
is just a shadowy
afterthought in
the midst of a
hundred yellow
strands, someday
i will not stomp
through the forest
someday I will
be able to linger
and be the kind
of beautiful

the kind
of
beautiful.

Fish dance to cold water,
Unable to remember the tune.

The roads spread throughout
  and past the city, like
the reaching veins of
  my body.

Scabbed trees, **** and
smashed by my
    high-beams,
remind me of the time   I
  sat on the riverbank,  my
cousin receiving oral ***  
  from this gypsy girl.

You don't know the moonlight
  until it's all that touches you.

I don't remember her name
but she posed on motorcycles
and had *** with her uncle.

She was nice
  and the product of
a sad environment.

The thick earth around me,
smothered by nightsong;
it's getting so dark;
the light is escaping.

****** almost killed
  my true love.
****** kills everyone
  around here,
around just about every-
-where. This long dark;
  this nightsong.

The old man sits in the dark,
fire by his radio, listening to
John Legend sing about his all,
which I guess is a lot since
he goes on about it for
four or five ******* minutes.
I sit here and think about all the reasons
I hate 13 Reasons Why. I sit here and
smell my candle, to my future.
I think about Miley Cyrus *******
and wonder if she feels pleasure
  like you or me.

I don't know what kind of creature
  is out there.  I don't know
how  to  feel  about  the  world.
My bedroom door may be paranoid
for me,   and I have anxiety over
  knocking that may never come.
Or maybe it will come and I'll
  be ordinarily unprepared for it.
Unprepared for it, as I normally am.

Visions of Japanese women
  dance on the ceiling, like silver
statues in garments of gore.
Or maybe they're not Japanese
and that I am a racist or under-
-educated -- which is most likely
the  same  ****  thing.
  They dance on my ceiling
and I stare, no longer wondering
if I'm rude, if they're real, if
the house I live in is current-
-ly losing value. These type
of things just happen, swear.

My candle is burning bright,
reaching towards the hugging
  blinds; smelling like sea salt
and an ocean I will never touch.

Jazz women clap in unison, black.
All the boys in the club move
way, way over, for your health,
sister.
Some bartenders smoke ****
while polishing glasses, big or
small.
Cartoons play on box t.v.s
while people look at hubs on
smartphones.
Some gruff guy points at you
-- and, yes, it could have been
me --
we have a phone call, I think.
Who uses a payphone, any-
-****-more.

Choir children double for choir
mice.
Helicopter parents hover their
hands above their juniper drinks.
Gesturing at poorly dressed kids
has never been this in fashion.
Be perfect for the camera;
this moment will be captured
by synthetic eye.
Moms and Brads turn to
  look at us laugh.  Which has
always been in poor taste.
They say my poetry is bad
and your music is **** -- but
I guess it's nice that someone
  gave us those views.

Columbia and Harvard
seem like distant planets.
But that's where we'll be,
supposedly.
You with your Guinness,
me with my Tito's.

He bounced around
from town to town,
never becoming whole.
'Cause in his parents' eyes,
he was a parasite, hiding in
a hole.

And he let his friends down,
with promises and hopes
that deluded and destroyed
him.  Throwing his words a-
-round, never slowing down
to enjoy the beer and bodies.

He bounced around
from heart to heart,
gathering sympathy
like gold coins; hoping
that he could, if they
really would, stay and
cope a little.

And he let them down,
like his friends and his
parents. He thought a-
-bout dying and writing.
He thought about his
brother and every girl
he thought he loved,
trying to understand
if he could love if he
could not love himself.

He bounced around
from key to key,
writing about nonsense.
Or maybe it was important
and he minimized it, because
that's how he coped; or that's
how his father talked about
his son's accomplishments.
I guess his son would have
to ask himself if he ever
accomplished anything worth
making his dad proud.

And when he went to
the ward, Chestnut Ridge,
that was three years ago.
I guess he's still around,
working hard, New Yorker
something, something, something.
Dad is proud, likes Bojack Horseman
and The Walking Dead; all of this stuff
is so ******* irrelevant.

My dad is proud.

Some wolves mate in the glow
of a satellite so slow,
can't see it move -- not to
  the groove.
And music plays,
  from a radio, retro.
Gotta spill some blood
and add a cigarette
to my silhouette.

American Spirit for
my american spirit;
gotta tweet my thoughts
because my friends
don't hear the words I say.
  Ah, no; wanna live in
Los Angeles,
  Ah no; wanna live in
New York City.

Oh, no.
Oh, no.

Some babes in the hay;
laying in a pile, so deep
  cannot find my body;
cannot fall asleep.
  Random rambling to
what my media tells me;
cannot find my mind;
cannot fall for this.

They look like thumbs,
throbbing at me for
  my attention.
Yelling over each other;
yelling when
  I'm not allowed.

Ah, no; wanna live in
Los Angeles.
Ah, no; wanna live in
New York City.
  Wanna be
validated by the wolves.

She painted her nails
some shade she hoped
reflected her personality,
and she thought it wasn't
  honest that they weren't
chipped yet.

Her parents sat on a couch
that slumped around the
  middle, gathering the mass
of her parents,
  maybe the mass of her world.

And they yelled at this
boxed television; a t.v. so
******* strange you had to
  swear, swear, swear
you were stuck in 1997.

1997, our year of Jordan:
a unisex name that bled
'I am the same and name of
some place I'll never go;
so place I'll never be big as.'

And our Jordan looked
  at her nails; and she
looked at them again, walking
to her campus, thinking,
"It's not honest that these
are not chipped."

But she had dreams, or
something close to what
a dream used to be.
She didn't want to admit
she had the American Dream;
a dream that millions had,
because the odds of compet-
-ition didn't intimidate her;
she was bothered by the thought
  of sharing something with
millions of people she would
pass on by, asking for nothing,
not even the acknowledgement
  that, yes, we are all in this
together, and to **** each other.

You see, this isn't a normal thing,
Jordan Racer-Cameron would
throw-up all over the waves
bouncing towards the ears of
those girls -- you know -- who
sat around the edge of standard
  cafeteria tables; those girls with
perfect nail polish; those guys that
would write **** like this.

"You see, this isn't a normal thing,"
she vomited out, holding her phone,
"It's cracked but I am not. Every one
will think I am damaged -- but I am
so, so, so not ******* damaged.
I am not broken. There is no way
I can be broken. Ah, no; I wanna
live in Los Angeles. I don't want
to be some broken, fake wolf."

When she flopped home,
passing perfect green squares
surrounded by perfect white teeth,
she tripped, kinda fell, and kinda
  caught herself.   Raising her hand,
on her knees, under a coal dust sky,
she rose her hand before the burning fire,
smiling at the blood splitting her finger;
smiling at the middle nail's fragmented being.

She ****** the blood off,
feeling free of the prose,
found her home,  
and greeted her
   potatoes of parents.