wanting everything and
nothing
all together
and
unraveling entire
fabrics
by a single string.

how confusing
it is
to replace
dry, cracking knuckles
with magnifying glasses.

how soothing it is
to lean unseen
behind the masses.

these walls
might as well be mirrors.

there is no escape
from the cells
of the skin.

there's just a hope
that shedding
will provide
a way
to untangle the fabric.

alone.
I have no semblance of home.

There is nothing in
thickets
that covers
my disfiguration of a disposition.

I will lie
against the grain
and fight
for feigned love.

Nothing loves me
and I love nothing.

I am filing cabinets
infinitely.

I am faking smiles
ardently.

When the end comes
there will be teeth
separated from lips
genuinely.

in younger years, when my bare skin touched the cold porcelain, i would dance like an underpaid bartender on a tight-rope, and return to pockets of heat like nuclear winters.
but now i cannot find the energy to stand in the shower, and
i'd liquidate any inheritance from my last names and deepest loves to transform my thumb and pointers, molded into the shape of a magnificent pistol, into steel-

my fingers as a gun do not disintegrate my limbic system like a homesick child. i'm not capable of accomplishing any act of substance without outside assistance, explaining why every lover has looked into my eyes and seen enough thunderstorms to run and hide as fast as they ******* can.

i'm not sure there is a finite amount of broken clocks to convince me that time does not stop for anyone, and that for every vaccine you bring to their doorstep, there are seven more dead friends just outside the reach of your eyelids.

we keep our hands busy. we shift positions. if we can hide from the cosmos, we can quit biting our fingernails long enough to win Nobel Prizes. if not, we are pushing boulders up mountains, disguised as grocery stores, office parties, football fields, television screens, and pieces of paper just like this one.

there will be many more Nobel Prizes and one day, my hands will turn to steel. the final chapter of thunderstorms always contains some sanguine symbol, a motif mirroring soothing rain.

I have heard a heart
drop and a
heart burst,
but I've never quite felt
a contraction
or inflation
as red
or
as full of life
as you.

You are blue
in an ocean
that never knew.

Yellow paints
the sun,
and your hips,
too.

I gather flowers
in valleys,
blooming without
any stems
for you.

the ideas we forge are figments of our ideal reality,
flirting with pieces of firewood that haven't fallen victim to
slugs
and a winter too frigid to ensure development.
fireplaces are
visual, only
visceral in the right
heat.

why should we assume that the temperature will ensue the continuity of rivers? why should the dry creeks,
unseen but
unsipped
be simply sighted as resting grounds?

who ever claimed that sawed-off tree stumps or broken windows were casualties?

rhetoric is a vase made of steel and it doesn't give me any of the realities that i breathe in like
my sisters without water,
holding on to hope.

a cracked slab of
concrete
knocked
on the front door.

"i ache of
tread and
winter
wind."

it shuttered,
turned a frigid purple
(by
winter
solstice),
and looked
at its watch.

(5:55 A.M.)

another repetition
of an engine revving.

another star
brilliantly,
silently,
waving
goodnight.

another coffee cup
becoming
hot
and then,
becoming
cold.

abdomen muscle
sores.

floating inconspicuous,
intermittent,
along our constant wavelength of nullified measurement.

swallowing pills that were made to be my mistress,
it's shattered glass that hasn't yet numbed this instant.

everything is just a leg waiting on a shin-splint.

I wasn't born ready
for a faulty diagnosis
or bare shoulders.

My hand was born unsteady-
sweating like a prisoner tortured,
and always forgetting left from right.

Just like you
I was placed here.

You with a broken spine,
an affinity to wine
or a love lost too soon.

For me,
it was less.

A spine mended,
some superstition suspended,
but wires that have never connected.

I don't know
if we'll ever be ready.
But that won't ever stop me
from attempting to keep my hand steady.

the anatomy of your enamel is a gregarious combination of sunshine and pouring sweat.
Queen Anne's Lace is lining Prom West like a gospel chorus,
and your violets are screaming an unheard passion.

my hideous self-deprecation is a mute, static television signal in your ever-glowing radius-
a presence growing slowly and humbly, yet erupting all at once like a plentiful vegetable garden-
tomato plants, rosemary, and your Grand Canyon-eyes of brightness in full bloom.

it is here where your adjectives become potent antihistamines,
where these action words are soft fingernails on my scalp,
where your histories write textbooks of moon cycles and tiger lilies.

your palms on my chest and lips on the soft spots,
your amber irises are the key to the city.

I will dance with this infinity-
with each crack in your palm and rose in your heart,
under these golden, Northern streetlights for
the rest of time.

--

there are two ways to breathe.

one is through the splinters.
the carved out,
thickly bleeding
respiratory tract
receding.

a futile attempt to enjoy the air
blown over like
a house with
no foundation.

the other is to
close your eyes.
and hope
that the hurricane
does not
cut off oxygen.

because
nirvana
is not a choice.

it is an island
somewhere deep in the ocean
waiting to be discovered.

waking up
now reminds me more of
digging up bones,
rather than skipping stones.

water isn't all that I hyped it up to be.

I drove miles and miles just
to discover
that the heat was broken,
and that your affection
is more of an illusion
than an authentic token,
wrapped in ***
and compassion.

Through metal weights
and steel plates,
I make a living.

Through some sort of
endless storm,
I will live

the darkness will ultimately illuminate all of the light and altruism that we have to bring to this world.

--

my words aimed down the scope as heated blankets feel more like frostbite when hurriedly fired.

what if benevolence is not an adequate source of heat when the power lines topple?

when these ideas run rampant, they are an uncontrollable current-
a social trend picking at gnarled vines of dead skin,
a pair of open eyelids constantly looking at the only two pictures of you still saved on the cloud-
the remnants of your sapphire eyelids cutting my brick femurs like passive ash.

what if my words immortalized your fluttering agility-
a glass universally unbreakable?
what if the punctuation composted your faith like fresh coffee grounds in a drought-stricken garden?

would you aim once more,
or would the circuit breaker gather dust?

I felt your breath and smoke like
adjacent trains.

------------

I lost my heart in the war between
what took place in normal Syrian towns
(just like the ones I learned how to read in
and the ones I danced through your hair like
asymmetrically curling waves in,
and the ones where
I saw love die like a
half-lit cigarette still burning)
and  
what your skin looked like when the wind blew off the sheets so softly that mice could have ran marathons-
where shrouded shadows cleared vision like your cornfields of tightening nerves,
forever unwinding mine.

It was hiding in between your teeth and all of the other places that were too brightly shaded for me to sun-tan under,
where
you are sixteen acres of magnolia trees donning the darkest leaves that forests will ever see,

and we mirror each other's company so tragically.

----------

Inside,
your fireplace warmed our souls like
Phish Food
and whatever chemical reactions occur when love overpowers self-loathing.

i've fallen in love
enough times
to realize that there
are two hands
on the clock.

there are enough paths to travel
where hearts can

intersect

and where they can
separate.

it is never too late
to bring in the freezing
from the cold.

i will not
let storms
erode your bones.

horns, hollow-
ly followed by a public service announcement

you do not exist in simultaneous intersectionality

YOU GIVE US CARBON DIOXIDE,
AND THUS,
you are DEEPLY ENTANGLED

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

a web, spun by an anxious,
poison-cursed arachnid
holds us all by the finger-tips,
pressing each of our infinite, six-second *******
together.

gravity ensures that when the silk can no longer bear the weight of the world,
the rose-tinted lenses will shatter-------------
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
****
x

violently,
our brain stems will rot
alone.

i remember how those jeans looked when you put them on one pant leg at a time, and then when both flickered glimmers of future false hope and came together, met with a zipper. you always told me that the mirror was a lot less friendly than reality, but now I'm not so sure that the reflection was an inaccurate piece of diction regarding the color you drain from the world, first in wavelengths smaller than your pinky toe, and then all at once, like a vacuum.

the skies have smiled and cried and wiped up old tears and crusted snot since you left. it seems like i've brought every single ******* cloud to this piece of paper, rain or shine. it's trite, it's boring, but it's the only sick and sad way of coping with losing every drop of precipitation that changed the dry cracks in the ground into sunflowers. i never cared if they were yellow or pink or black and white. they were real.

it's time to accept that cracked concrete is still concrete and can still grow flowers, even if they are black dahlias or dandelions that the people in my life that have told me that i'll never be good enough deem to just be common weeds. you can't drain my life anymore by draining the color from it. your presence is everywhere, but your presence is gone. i've had enough of fighting the validity of this doubt. i've had enough of enclosing the zipper from the hazel-stained, green dream scene on my lips to mute myself.

we survive by love, and today, there is so much love for every memory i've ever made. your departure is not my self worth. my departure with those who cared enough to stitch up my infected knees is my self worth. sitting in your Grand Prix before Elm talking about potential and wiping the blood off of blades. listening to Parachutes and smoking enough to forget everyone who ever hurt us. sunshine and werewolves. elevators and Aderall. Canada and Virginia. stone walls, long-distance calls, salvia that looked like fudge, dehydration in Williamsburg, the screen porch at Meadow, and choosing not to print out my suicide notes.

today we evolve because you do not define my evolution anymore. today we evolve because i have a voice that deserves to be heard. we all have stories that deserve to be heard. today we evolve because love will always be the stitches that any of our knees will require, infection or not. we will blossom, in darkness and in light, in color and in absence, in faith and in fear.

no matter how deep the planet decides to cave in, our hands will always be there to help pull you out.

and i'll never need you for me to be absolutely certain of that
ever again
.

i'm afraid there's nothing left in the tank but fumes and false hope.

aluminum is not a friend, it's a recyclable material that contains happiness when the world turns a blind eye to its ubiquitous pain and i am only a scarecrow in a field full of bodybuilders and terrifying childhood memories.

it's all too much. the emptiness is only invisible when the music bruises my ear-drums or when i think of how your lips and teeth felt on my bones. the band-aids will fall off but your words are branded like factory farms.

the worst part? i'm a sketch left on the easel in an abandoned schoolhouse. i'm a half-assed mannequin. i've translated the seasons into colorless cycles in cyclical misrepresentation. astute observation leads me to believe i'm the product of a meaningless procreation.

shutting off my eyes doesn't feed all of the starving souls who actually want all of this oxygen, and we have false hope that some of these fumes might turn into rice and beans and
the love we've always wanted

but never swallowed.

I am January.
But you're better than snow.

You have enough light
to right the wrongs
done by the evil men
from a lifeline
to my favorite
spider's web
sewn.

You lack the thickness
to right the wrongs I've
implicitly justified
as a nail to my fragile skin.

I'm heartless.

You are a pin
You may take my kin,
bleed, multiply,
amplify,
and remain.

Take my soul
and leave him
to do nothing
but be.

sunrises and roosters have shown us beginnings since we were taught to walk and to be efficient,
but no one showed me how to gravitate away from darkness when soft skin swallows me whole and spits me out as truth in a poorly designed disguise
through molars,
through holes and
passion that I feel with every aching pain I'm told isn't actually real.

blood is real and bruises can't be healed with gauze and work ethic.
we're doors and we don't have hinges. we are not stones, even when ******, we are capable of productivity and love and forward progress.

the solution to over-depletion and unheard screaming was to erode together, but now i'm sprinting back and forth between pecuniary poles and pockets with energy that sunrises or roosters have never given me;

status binds us and we are
cutting off limbs with
flat head screwdrivers.

do you hide under the covers like i do?
does the Vicodin block the heat like your air
conditioner?

billiards and midnight jogs do
not swim like professionals do,
but they keep my memory from defaulting
to all the chairs you placed jeans or
leggings
or a hope for a swift removal of pain
inside of a safe with
fingertips stronger than narcotics.

a pass code for purpose is a pig in flight;

we have maps but we will not ever understand how to read them.

wax-coated tables
sealed with stains of
vinegar, cheese
and questions from my father

what is his story

Behind every story
there is struggle
betwixt highlighted glory.

snowy hills,
mountain peaks,
laughter.

there was a drain
******* it all away
as if today was always
a black and white yesterday.

and so I brought red into the equation.
a knife-
bringing dormant veins
to life.

silence is the loudest
silence is the saddest
alone and dragged
unwillingly
down one-way streets

chemicals misfiring.
They don't understand
development of false wiring.

The blueprints had shined-
there were smiles in between the notes.
The eights were serotonin,
the wholes were adrenaline.

Silence still screamed.
When nothing speaks for years,
the crust rusts eyes
like the underside
of the old Ford
in dad's shop.

Beats,
kisses,
*****.

The rust spread north
as my extremities
fell to the ocean floor.

I fear I cannot float on
any longer.

Somewhere between
pills,
plastic,
a princess,
and polycentric support
was the epicenter.

It tasted like fudge
on a warm winter evening
by the fireplace.

The silence still screams-
I doubt it will ever cease.
But the secret is always knowing
that the sun still shines during sleep.

this is where he lies;
this is his story-
betwixt his struggle
love,
art,
and
invisibly,
blinding glory

this sultry tease of summer,
skin peeling off of leather and cracked heels on the dashboard,
blisters on feet panicking like geysers,
this oxygen resembling cinder-blocks
slightly more carefree -

imprints of crinkled toes never left the passenger seat.
the bags in your eyes were unmined emeralds-
my bones shared strict resemblance to anvils,
and I was too ******* high to inject these sullen thrills.

the new car smell never comes back.

my stomach is no longer a carnival at the sight of freshly opened eyelids, only a dimly-lit, mold-infested dungeon.

may I begin the Spring cleaning by sweeping your eyelashes off of the leather?
or shall I leave your grace,
along dried crumbs off screaming green dopamine,
in the creases?

always,
always,
always
passionate visions of my chest smashing through the windshield like a steel-framed freight train,
fueled by every damning item on this laundry list of self-inadequacy.

salvage yards cannot simply exist as ubiquitous rows of lost souls
------
there must be hope for the hot season to melt away the rose-tinted skidmarks burning my irises.

far away enough from five pizza doughs per plastic bag or purple keys to a locked unit,
your multicolored hair lights up a coffee shop on days where thunderstorms keep the paper from being delivered.

"she's a sweetheart," the woman in the turquoise blouse says
to her wife,
noting nothing of stains on her apron or
the colors of California strife.

wildfires have lit your eyes for ages, parts per million of the cyclical, ecological division. anything hazel will fade into oblivion with enough self-doubt.

when you've tied your last sweatshirt around your waist, I will hold you through the memories of the wildfires, passing out on the bathroom floor, losing her, the lies that your mother told you, and when you flew just far away enough from the ocean,
but too close to the sun.

it scorches with agonizing pain but i suppose we all have to stare into the sun once more after our eyes have been burnt badly enough to burst.

In the end,
Who tells me who I am?
he tells me that it's him,
and she tells me that it's her.
And this entitlement is surely not universal.

We must decide ourselves.
Horrifically.
But how can I possibly be blind to all of this noise?
When the streets are filled with final blueprints
Of how my life will play out?

For all of us
The words placed upon us slither around our arteries
And up to our brains.
They insert venom into the soul gleefully.
And the poison is ubiquitous.
It's terribly malicious.
Because we must decide.
Who speaks fact
and who fiction.

In the end,
I must decide who I am.
I must dig into my heart with a rusty shovel and push.
My only wish
is that I don't hate what emerges from this abyss.

One step leads to the next.
Propels us
Compels us
to do more
despite what rewards we reap for idleness.

Don't forget it
you have to remember.

Another night of lost scarves and broken glass?
Another autumn wrapping winter in foiled paper?
Another snowflake to break the camel's back.
Another night  to be propelled
and compelled
to continue.

Stepping into another day
is much like stepping into a tunnel.
Our insecurities hidden
and our dreams in the distance.

There is a light.
There must be.

i'm not inspired to smoke cigarettes because i'm always trying to get in shape but every finger i lift is a freighter's worth of dead weight.

i envy their lack of conscious thought;
i **** them in my mind for the disparity between their capability for labor and apathy towards the thought of an imaginary savior.

faith means believing what isn't there. you held me tighter when i told you that i don't wear seatbelts because i'm always dreaming of dethroning lamposts and kissing trees on the side of the Pike. foliage is far more gregarious without all of the gore but you said that you'd stay forever and your ghost sits on my shoulders like a dump truck full of ashes.

i don't know if i've ever written a full paragraph without dreaming of this pen sprinting through my chest, blood like nectar.

drink me and feel your potential dissipate like dust bunnies.

you would have stayed forever.

lie to me again and tell me that i'll wear my seatbelt someday.

indigo and other new colors
are darker than scars to me,
but scars are not martyrs.

"I do not know.
I am sorry"."

I AM SORRY
THAT

while cold amplifies the ardent aura of
authentic hearts,
reflections aren't always viewed in light,
and retrospect fails to open the front door
to all of the curls in your hair that you never
straightened.

Nature is a force that beckons us to reconsider our northern destinations-
southbound state of minds deny
that suns are only one color.

Suns and hearts are
indigo scars
of past lives,
reminding me
of why I refuse to see
color in irises.

I hear you had an affinity to ink.
As I did
to whatever laid below
the creaky kitchen sink.

The first words
filled with the highest crescendos,
the blurriest jokes,
and an indifference
that connected archipelagos.

Your open pastures came sooner than fit
and all the cows were shocked by it.
The foundations your tendons
helped meticulously construct
were but a marvelous crack
in his narrow-minded speck of dust.
(And how it pained me every day to see the rust.)

But there was always a chrome polish
waiting patiently where you least expected.
And the kindling revealed your shine.
And your sentences naturally rhymed.
Your shores,
full of plastic bags and
oil-stained rags
had found miles of red rubies.

I would freeze for her infinite summer,
but I stand here motionless-
oozing self-doubt
miles away from her.

A new flower only blossoms with water
and rigorous concentration.
Good intentions just aren't enough these days.

You're in bloom,
your pistil rises and grabs the sun
like a new promotion.

Mine lies on the top shelf of my closet.
And sharp mahogany corners
don't bring me closer to any answers.

My kindred, my barren love
some meaningless God,
voided by logic and chemicals-
I have been told to plant my roots
within their soil.

They have been told to reach for me
just outside of arms length.

Absence doesn't make use weary-
it reveals to us the vast pastures
within mahogany boxes-
it manifests the bittersweet drought
I have swallowed like a jagged pill.

I watch you bloom in violent meadows.
I concentrate by daydreaming.
This way,
when blood fills all the small spaces,
the guilt won't **** the minerals
from vibrant, naïve roots.

There is rain
and it is Saturday.
But that's no excuse for shame.
Nor is it more of an excuse
to watch self-inflicted wound
run loose.

I think of the sweet
crackling of
a summer treat-
branches burning,
newspaper receding.
THC,
butane
and stems of
a neglected yesterday
meeting.

But today is what's to be missed.
There are floods-
even on the weekends.

I am a floating hoax;

I will always be
a box of half-peeled jokes.

To flourish within this exposed state
is to self-paralyze and re-create.

But the nerves just don't want to listen-
that's the biggest part of the condition.

This explains rain on Saturdays,
absence within summer's crackling,
and hollow bones
floating like stones.

With luck
my torn skin will reach the ocean floor.

The echo of such a collision
will resemble my
inconceivably
indifferent
indecision.

dreams are elusive ghosts,
but every once in awhile I will find my the dimples of my back grazing the frigid Hudson,
the treetops seeping into my grayscale skin like lotion.

it is within this reality that I may briefly forget the constant screech of your tired bones,
a relief beyond the sensation of any ****** or chocolate cupcake.

reality is not such a simple plot-line.
rather than spin you on the dance floor like a lavender goddess,
i'm punishing my liver for existing.

this is where my naïve psyche meets the memory of your golden shoulder-bones-
where my broken, bitten-down fingers feel your unyielding flexibility and stark vulnerability like sandpaper Hallmark cards.

it is a true talent to seep the modest current without searching beyond the horizon-

for the air feels like tar without anyone to breathe it with.
----------------------------------------

white coat covering solemn ground,
my palms are both cracking and mending,
my eyes both rapidly cycling and softly meditating,
my mythical equilibrium both scratching at the surface,
and tucking itself in for the night.

--

somewhere distant
but not far,

your lungs are the lantern in my attic-shaped heart,
maintaining a hushed illumination
and a delicate snowfall,
euphoniously humming a reliable tune,
foreshadowing cozier winters
of hope and comfort.

There are cliffs and
there are
ledges.

South of gravity,
cavities release color;
cataracts shade
what is too unconscious
to discover.

DO NOT
(under any circumstances)
fall.

Do not blink,
or allow hearts to accelerate in order
to decompose
like a token;
like a rock
interwoven
with moss and
history.

The bottom-
perhaps the best view.

I bleed, I ache, I pour;
I imbue a morbid yesterday
on your plate for dinner.

when the cold leaves,
I expect you to return,
but why have you ripped the hood off of your jacket?
Why have you put frostbite in a bucket under the kitchen sink?
You know that I'll never look because mirrors don't erode.
Mirrors explode.

I know I've never seen a true reflection,
and crutches are only temporary.
but the bloom of an iris or two
or the chemicals behind your fingertips on my scalp
or that drugs that made us feel slightly north of worthless
meant more to me than
mountaintops mean to mountains.

Or than nothing meant to you.

Hypocrisy is worse than
when the seasons take too long to change or
when butane and razorblades
can't scar deep enough.

My bones tell me
that I am a magnet to nothing,
too.
I know that apathy seeps into my veins while I sleep
just like you.

I know that skin only peels off if you want skin to peel.

I know that days where the sun illuminates my bedsheets through the blinds will only heal if I can eliminate hindsight and look into the light with enough intent to illuminate, not to blind.

I know that I am trying.

What hurts the most
is that you are capable,
but with instability, my love,
our love can never be stable.

Understand that where there is the tenebrific,
there is the lambent.
Their comorbidity is rampant.
But if you think luminosity is dead and gone,
we'll show you the love to go on.

My favorite outfit
was when your heart laid restless on your sleeve-
a paper mache
of a dream I desperately

DIED

to achieve.

Our senses merged in snow,
and before light,
we were buried-
shrouded by a part of you that
had
died.

Every sound you echoed
made marrow leak lazily to
a concrete road constricted
ambiguously,
with hazel
and green,
and the blackest
******* BLACK
that my marrow will ever manifest.

--

Wear your heart on your sleeve.
Without love,
death is the only achievement to achieve.

I'm not taken aback by the beauty of the sun or moon.

But that's okay, at least I've learned in time that there are very little differences between objects labeled mine and days considered wasted time. Entitlement is a false concept paralleling a religious purgatory.

That's not the point anyways. I'm left with unbearable heat and a pool of thoughts best resembling some sort of molten pudding left out in the sun for weeks of stifling inattention.

Let it just be known that the smell was not my intention.

Regardless of what fills your nostrils ephemerally, keep in mind that this stench haunts me perpetually. It's apathy towards my sensitive skull stifles me. It's as if I was able to just shake off these shadow-inducing invaders like a bad habit. But no matter how much you try to **** a shadow, it's always there following you. Breathing on you. Casting oxygen upon your neck until there's nothing but sweat and fear left to expose.

With such an affinity to what darkness lies behind me, there are few words to authentically compose.

How can I continue? How can the beat stay in rhythm and my words stay in tune when I'm a butterfly stuck in a cocoon? If these hollowed walls could speak I bet they'd entertain the idea on meaningless entrapment.

Go now. My words for this horrid state of mind have run dry. They do nothing but mask themselves and then exponentially multiply.

So leave me for the beauty of the sun and the moon. I'll never wish anything more than a simple, concurrent release of everyone from his or her respective cocoon.

we're lead claiming to be paint.

i never had the right.
i never saw black as all of the colors at once,
or as the absence of any,
i just allowed retinas to dance and be still without ever taking any of it in.

monochrome rhymes with monotone but no apartment or pasture has ever been warm enough to call home,
at least for hollow bones and eyes constantly shifting from a gregarious green to a more genuine grey.

no one ever hears the crickets, even when the floodgates are open or we're searching for that perfect shade to transform the canvas.

you were a monkey with a paint brush,
a brief rush of lust disguised as beauty and anything else that retinas could convince themselves to be mindful of.

chipping paint on the garage will remain and any lungs in proximity will continue to breathe in the dead crickets.

i don't have the right and we'll never get it right.

numbness, my old abusive life partner, trickle down my spine and gush outward like a broken levee.

stay up far past a reasonable bed time to think about a reality where purpose is more evident. work, work, work. learn the circuitry of computer programs that will never solve world hunger. listen to sad songs on the drive home. empathize with roadkill.

float above your body. smell the surroundings and mimic all of the textbooks you've read on active listening. grin and nod while your mind transforms more and more into pile of melted wax. become nauseated by the stench of your own life. let it seep into your bloodstream like a rotten batch of dope.

think about death. think about death during breakfast. think about death when the sun goes down on an uneventful Sunday afternoon. think about death during ***. think about death while getting drinks with friends. ponder why this earth decided to play the role of an impolite and overworked host. feel sorry for the sun for having so much responsibility.

cry until the faucets allowing your tear ducts to stop are broken. let your dinner become play-dough. be a gracious host to the parasites in your mind. swim with them like the dolphins. lose grasp of why waking up is so important. swallow whiskey like saliva. promise yourself that you won't drink four tall-boy Pabst Blue Ribbons on a Tuesday night. drink four tall-boy Pabst Blue Ribbons on a Tuesday night.

hold numbness while it cries in your lap and promises that it will change-that things will be different. allow it to feed you lies like someday you'll enjoy the sunrise and someone will realize that you're not too broken to love

rip skin off of limbs. try to make it another day.

I know a girl or two.

There's the girl that will dance.
She will mend your withering bones,
and deduct the sticks from the stones
But the teal and black
will always bring memories back.

There's the girl that will lie.
Your adolescent hand
held tighter by a broken rubber band.
The queen of "would-be"
indifferently using your insecurity
as a blunt tool of jealousy.

There's a girl who will give you hope.
Indirectly teaching you everything
while transforming your dreams
into bits of meaningless string.
The apathy with every rainy night,
the cracked fingernails and
every hollowed-out fight.

There's a girl who will actually care.
She'll  waltz and she'll swing
and her open wounds will sing.
A hand to help open the cocoon-
the glowsticks that lit up
the unyielding light of the moon.

There's a girl that will tease.
Opening her scabby heart,
taking a hit,
and a forgetting the broken part.
She won't care if you're there;
she'll show her bruises anywhere.

But most importantly,
there's a girl you haven't met yet.
She's tethered in between
your adolescent regret
and everything unseen.
Your journey towards finding her light
is only slightly out of sight.

I know a girl or two.
But the one I haven't meant yet
is the one who will give my life
it's dormant, yet effervescent hue.

everything is always out of focus, and the lens won't adjust.

i can't ever see lightning or romance. hell, i can't even see the top of the world when i'm comfortably on its shoulders and all i want to do is help bear some of the weight.

my bones have never known a shortage of blankets,
just anguish over idly watching the thermostat push the tea kettle to a breaking point where all it can do is scream.

glasses can't fix this.

sixty-eight cigarettes on the desktop-
ashtrays,
an absent post-filter prediction
shouting to the leaky ceiling tiles,
America, you've taken it all

marks on the wrist-
no freshly-fallen feathers, but
locks on every door and
allocated times to eat,

QUIET,
I SAID
QUIET!

i always want to be forty miles north of here where
the drugs are taken under my own free will and
there's an amp for Ringo's snare.

oh, bureaucracy, why do the men in blue transform my glass ceiling into linoleum?

the flagpole is not an adequate target for this diatribe-
this transparency is marching me towards a four-point restraint while I sob for the intersection(ality) of Route 2 and 116
and sixty-eight cigarettes
to inhale a Franklin County sunset in
symmetrical harmony.

Tonight the stars have reminding me of hindsight,
of the alternatives to drinking milk and of why I hated myself for so many years and then stopped.

I could never feel so comfortable lying on my back while rabbits and leaves filled my veins with an ecstasy that a past self could never cut or swallow into sedation and then oblivion.

Maybe purgatory still lines the ground that my shoes constantly conflict with, but if you are my nothingness then I have suddenly found everything in absolutely nothing,
or maybe it's in the way that death chooses to hug me whenever I am around you because she has always strangled me with enough force to destroy villages and any spec of a hope that the rope in the tree in the oak tree in my back yard was not my final destination in your absence.

this place is the softest of fabrics that kept me alive when my legs were bleeding out in a cloud where thunder and lightning yelled all of my failures directly into my eardrums while I froze to death and was left to rot.

They mostly leave forests to burn
but
I will pour hurricanes for you.

why doesn't the wind from the swings give enough momentum for us to pick up our feet or
teach us the difference between anger and fear?

my face is always in the dirt, like a colorblind politician or like some self-loathing gardener with no sun-screen.  i bleed daily to ensure i will not bite off more than i can stuff into my pockets while brothers and sisters can't make eye contact and the astrophysicists are left to the shelters.

my eyeballs have poured out onto the cutting board like broken faucets and we rubberneck but
who's actually here to see the show?

your cave was a pasture-
far beyond rugs made of the softest fabric skin could feel,
far along field of comfort resting in my arms.
oxygen just never seemed to make sense,
in scarcity.
stairs were just never worth the effort,
labor always coinciding with
disparity
and
nothing was ever clear.
you were as clear as the looking glass we have either all seen or will see when reality becomes as transparent as our minds wish it not to be,
so that we can wish it to be so.

I hope what I see is a dream where I can be
me,
wearing all of my skin, including
shards that you
took.

black ties
don't absorb sunlight
like their counterparts.
There are
instead
bullet holes.
and a man that can't breathe.

But this isn't simply
business casual.
It's a boost in morale
for hollow hearts
and the whipped counterparts.

My hands are free, my hands are free
Keep open eyes and remember me
And rage against this machine
that makes me seem
like I'm everything
they want me to be.

Life is tough but death creeps
on you like a spattered image of
your yesterday's self
on the concrete
mixed with paste and oil
and buried under six feet of cemented soil.

And when we can we are able.
And we assure apathy
is a right and not psychopathy.

We are able to identify with those
who do not feel.

All of my voices have told me to shy away.
They don't truthfully know what to say
when dying leads to something far more gratifying
than any euphoric rush of ephemeral dopamine.

We are unseen.
We live in dreams.
We touch with enough distance
to transform an absence of rust
into decay and indifference.

The path ahead is limited.
Lying six feet underground
is not adequate recreation,
nor daily transportation.

And so you ask my preference,
I'd choose my comfy bed.
But for repercussions rampant,
I continue to walk while dead.

what do you receive
when you trace my hand?

are there bones
sharpened by stones,
or
enough cushions
to take
something
poorly sewn
and wipe away skin
revealing doubt
that I'm not
meant for
the word
that I'm in?

is your vision rosily tainted,
or am I worthy of
finite
ink?

in previously dining with sultry, elegant fire*,
i was a gazelle with its neck bit to the bone-
breathing,
but not alive-
a fractured coffee table melted into a morbid pool of cheap, liquidized steel,
decimated via hazel iris communication and spilled wine.

my skin,
ablaze,
took the shape of your hip-bones,
outlined with red lace and childhood scurry-
a grey ghost changing weightless piano symphonies into expired canned goods,
dented to the severity of hairline fracture.

--

band aids eventually peel like browned, dampened leaves in the sorrowful days of autumn;
scar-ridden skin does not dance into the fading sun to never return,
but rather sits on skin like
wet newspaper
and whiskey breath;
it creeks a screech of attrition in your throat like an unhinged screen door,
the splinters down-pouring into esophageal tissue like ash.

re-dressing the wounds must not be a death sentence,
as the gauze is the clock-tower,
perched in the center of town,
striking noon.

it took far too many rotations around the axis to realize that a wounded, passionately bursting ***** behind a protruded rib-cage was not an expiring hourglass,
but that third degree burns could be the infinite list of ambiguous maps i've yet to navigate.

--

with the passage of ambivalent and nebulous suns,
i can now unravel the bloodied, endlessly flawed fabric to the newly optimistic idea of
her favorite peppermint tea,
her January habits of leaning on the sizzling pellet stove with sweatpants slightly too thin,
her perseverance of the books like a Nobel Prize winner.

but so help me,
if your are one more to pour gasoline on my dinner plate,
i will light the match myself before i allow you to complete the unfinished canvas of my curious skin.