i needed her
                                                             ­               
                                                                ­             so i bought her...

she was so beautiful, so moist
                                                           ­                
                                                ­                             but i ground her up...

if the police found her i be thrown in jail
                                                            ­                
                                                                ­             so i rolled her up...

but i loved her a i couldnt leave her like that
                                                            ­                
                                                                ­             so i burned her...

how could i let the smoke of her go to waste
                                                           ­                 
                                               ­                              so i inhaled...

i loved her so much
                                                            ­                
                                                                ­             my *****...

being a poet is not
sentimental. it’s not
pretty. there’s nothing romantic about diving off a
bridge just to hear the water reverberate the sound of your ex lover’s
name. rain sounds like nothing but
falling blood and you’re always angry that it ruins your
shoes but is never enough to really
**** you. being a poet is a degenerative
brain disease, i heard
once. there’s some things doctors can’t
fix. there’s other things doctors can’t
name. all medicine starts to sound like it’s named after
a god. words never say what you actually
mean. you’re bleeding stanzas at the
mouth and everyone files past
you like you’re a waste of
time. when people tell you you say pretty
words you erupt like the earthquake in los
angeles this morning because the words might sound
pretty but what you’re saying
isn’t. everything weighs so *******
heavy on your shoulders and you hold the names of your ex
lovers names on your
tongue until they melt into
blood. i don’t know where your
hands are, nobody
does. the wolves are the only things that even have a
hint of what your thriving heart is shouting. you’re bound to feel too
much and at the funeral service of a man you’ve never
met you’re going to be crying in the
corner while everyone wonders who you
are and why you even
care. your words save so many lives but they’re bound to miss a
few, especially
yours.

if you listen closely you
can still hear the titanic’s jazz
band lulling its mourners to
sleep, saying
they’re sorry it had to end this
way, the
iceberg was born with
revenge in her bloodstream and
as sweet as 1500
deaths tasted, she
is still bitter, because
everybody cries for the
passengers, but
god, dear god, what about
the **** ship?

the
people living next door to me probably wrote newspaper articles about their neighbour’s
promiscuity, thinking
we were ******* when
really doors were just being
slammed with an exuberant amount of
passion. anger
holds more truth than love sometimes and
often, winter forbids happiness to
be. i
cut my hair to teach myself
loss and i guess it came in handy when
you left. too much,
you said. i was too much. too much
hugging, kissing, writing,
clinging,
clinging,
clinging. i
was the dryer sheet desperate enough in
love with your tshirt that i had no
plans to ever let
go. i
don’t hug you as much anymore, and
i never kiss you. but
i do still call you twice a day. i guess
i’m still working on that ‘not clinging’ thing. i guess
i’m just as awful as my neighbours
thought. but
there’s a difference, i wore you out, you wore me down.

my aunt miscarried in october.
i remember thinking: strange, her
baby died in the
month when the dead were supposed to come back to
life. her
face sags more now, it's almost as if the
baby tugged at every inch of
her on its way down to the
underworld. my
uncle has gained a few pounds, too. the
weight of absence sits heavy on his once muscular
shoulders. i
thought i tasted true
sadness when he left
me, but i didn't account for the
bitterness of having to sell baby
shoes never once
worn. my
aunt still has her list of favourite baby
names hanging on her bedroom
door, but she turns it around
some days when she's feeling extra
sad. my
uncle doesn't talk to my
aunt much anymore. i
wonder if he blames
her. i
wonder if he blames
himself. i
wonder why the world takes things from you too
early on, and if you
complain you're thought of as a bad
person. i
wonder if you stop living when part of you
dies.

he asked what I wanted to do. I said
write poetry
or
die.
he said
they were the same.

you

forget the drugs. yeah, they’re going
around and yeah, they’re pretty
dangerous, but they don’t take as many
lives. stop searching kids’
lockers and start looking for the deeper
stuff, the things that leave heavier
inflictions. yeah, i
know it’s nearly one
hundred degrees outside, and
there’s girls in here wearing
long sleeved sweaters. they’re
hiding something more
sinister, something
that can’t be measured in
kilos.