i want you to imagine standing in the middle of an already collapsing house, and having everything suddenly flip upside down; or after years of homelessness, picture yourself being told you had somewhere you could stay for good, only to wake up just before being handed the keys. these are some of dangers of making places out of  people.

1. don't ever turn a human being into a home unless you are prepared to be evicted without warning.
2. when you start to notice their arms taking the shape of a roof over your head, you have two choices: run, or wait for it to cave.
3. if they ask you to stay and burn with them, you have the right to say no.
4. it is not your responsibility to save anyone, and it is not your fault when you can't.
5. salvaging the photos from a house fire will only re-break your heart every time you pull them out to look at them.
6. when the basement floods, hold their hand.
7. if you are not a strong swimmer, remember that the difference between love and codependence is that one of then will drown you.
8. love will never drown you.
9. i knew this from the start but let you hold me beneath the waves in spite of it, just so you could stay afloat. i can't do that anymore.
10. i don't think i'll ever set foot on your hardwood floors again, but i'll pray that someone new moves in soon.

- m.f.

He asked
"Why do you continue to be sad?"

Considering that for a moment

I replied
*"Because being sad is the only thing I'm good at"

Tiptoe with me through roads of mottled rainbows
We’ll build a city of coffee cream clouds and crystallized light
Our sticky shadows can stumble jump rope with fizzling stars
And our light will tang in the air with peace

Every streecorner will have an off-key symphony
Played with tongues broken from laughter
Raise your arms to catch the words that’ve ballooned into the stratosphere
I’ll tangle my fingers in your palm to lift you higher

You’ll collect liquid moon in a sandcastle bucket
Drips of silver catching in your spidersilk hair
I’ll pour it down all outside the doily mold
It’ll twist down to earth in fractured motion

Trust me, I never knew how to fly
Only to fall, and to fall with broken hands
Jump with me and skate down a sunset
Dorothy ain’t got nothin’ on this kind of color

I’m blinder than an arsonist with night vision goggles
But only ‘cause I see with my heart instead of reflections of light
Life is opaque when your soul is an old one
Though I’m still getting drunk on the learning wine

Take a rose and ***** a finger on a petal
The softest feelings always have the sharpest bite
The devil’s left the details to hammer her way up to heaven
She’ll shatter kaleidoscope bullets into mosaics of sin

Love is the game that all the best dreamers play
I think up slow nonsense that fills my lungs with longing
Bright towns are always blurrier than the grey
And my brush is shaky from absent disuse

So bring me home (my home is you)
Build love from the broken rubble souls
Sing for our voices reaching higher than the sun
As my hair links with yours in the summer breeze

Frozen bubbles can chime on every door
Our bare feet will press into wet desert clay
Smiles will be painted pure and golden
And all the colors will fill our footprints as we walk away in joy.

unregulated pigmentation causes race wars
on the streets of a melting ***
the strain of freedom ideologies are too great
for the masses to uphold
children taught hate and bigotry sit in pews
praying to the god of war
the same god that spawned jesus and a burning bush
daughters looked upon as procreation tools
seek to be both fertile and babrie-like
but child-bearing hips are too wide for Cosmo
and skinny ******* only think of themselves
this is the current world
needing babies, but afraid to wear stretch-marks
needing children, teaching toddlers to ****
through video game indoctrination
and mass media persuasion
I sit alone on martin’s mountain
wishing the world knew about skin color as manipulation
sexism and mind control
fluoride and unfiltered water
like hammers and axes to those who would dominate us all
tools of a trade
trading lives
on the new world stock exchange

I met a wilting ***** by the roadside,
she was barefoot and drowned by the riptide,
she said,
that had swallowed her up
over the course of her time.

I sat down beside her in the rubble,
hubble, bubble and a load of trouble,
she said,
that business must come first,
so she doesn't waste my time.

I told her I was just another waste,
another scrap of food without the taste,
I said
that I would stay with her
and live without clocks and time.

She waved off kindness with her ruined hands,
she knew not love but customer demands,
she said,
no man has kissed me since
my father ran out of time.

We talked for hours more in summer heat,
she was hungry but she refused to eat,
she said,
to find beauty I must
keep thin and defy all time.

At night she stumbled back onto her feet,
for some loose-skinned man she'd promised to meet
she said,
“tonight I have found love,
as if gifted from all the stars above,
but the city bells have begun to chime
and I'm afraid love cannot stop the time.”

you're not a saint
but keep beating that dead animal like you are
bring it back to life
put those strings on the limbs
make it dance
dance for your world
that you're still so desperate to impress
dance for your pride
dance for your ego
dance for yourself
that's all we ever were doing
spinning in circles around your sensitivities
spinning in circles around what i was doing wrong
i'm hearing a ringing in my head
echoes of your tantrums
when you couldn't respond
only cross your arms
and fall into yourself
where you danced in your self pity
danced in your despair
i'm not the composer of your songs
you're singing to yourself baby
and you have been all along

sometimes its easier for somebody to see what's wrong
when they can't hear you sob like
a hyperventilating storm
--------
i know you want to tear out your organs with your nails,
but please hold onto your insides for me,
because you are enough.
you are whole without needing love from people
who don't matter.
and you can't forget it, because you don't need approval from anybody but yourself.
and i want you to know
i'll never forget that time when we we're drunk and stumbling
and i saw that you had white scars slashed on your legs too,
and knew that I wasn't alone
because we knew one another's pain and we loved eachother for it anyway.
you are kind,
remember it. you are strong like a steel whip in the cold icy
morning of a december winter, but you are soft and kind and you are warm
like strawberry vanilla popsicles dripping and summer heat sweltering,
and please
never forget to be kind
to yourself
especially.

--------
please try to stop ******* everything up.
you make things ******* yourself, and maybe if you just learned to let go
and accept that your problems are no more important than every other single living being on this earth, maybe you'd smile a little more. your smile is beautiful, and i don't think you know that. life treats you so well, you just have to open your eyes and
WAKE UP.
you have to escape your little world sometimes,
and admit that we're all breathing in the same atmosphere into our lungs.
you can get better so easily,
you just have to let yourself.
because i know,
you aren't letting yourself heal.
let that small peach tree grow it's roots.

--------
giving yourself away to boys who only care about your body, won't make them care about your feelings. drinking until you fall asleep wont make the world disappear, it'll just make your memories sink to the bottom; you need to filter them out.
don't be afraid anymore, be real. be who you are under those layers of flesh and bones,
be the soul that screams and hammers to be let out. you are so real.
and worthwhile.
so many people care about you,
you are something magnificent and
it's not your fault. to be free, you need to stop blaming things on yourself.
let it go from your clenched palms, because things are getting better just as long as you make them that way.
i feel like you forget how strong you are, how you have so much power in those long, pale fingers. how you can create and destroy with the mere movements of your tongue.
i don't want you to forget that what you hide inside you is something gleaming and vast, and you should pull away the blinds
and let the sun shine through.

--------
i feel horrible because i was the girl who taught you that feeling was a horrible thing to do.

that because you let yourself
get too emotional over the fact that
i was too unattached to love you in the way you wanted me to,
and every time we tried, i would runaway from your waiting lips
and laugh like venom dripping behind closed doors to hide
from your confrontation about why i never wanted to let people love me
and return it.
now, you walk with a metal shield up
i remember you said a long time ago
“now i know every girl will be like you,
and i don't want to try ever again.”
i wish you would still tear up to really good music,
and let your barriers down.
because it's not true, there are women
who will treat you right,
and love your bad jokes,
and not lead you treacherously into their traps of poison and bones.
be true to the boy you harbor so reluctantly in your tough exterior
because i can still see him in your eyes when you smile,
and he's beautiful.

--------
you think that the words you write have nothing to do with what you hold inside.
you're wrong about that.
you are the things you imagine yourself to be, but you have to release them from the fear tight in your chest.
you aren't damaged, but people will see yourself that way if you hold your body like that. straighten your spine, darling, and pierce their eyes with the knowledge that you are
beautiful like vines crawling up gracefully over a window
you are smart like the cinnamon colored pages of old books,
you are mysterious like the deepest parts of the ocean,
and alluring like the soft, midnight tide.
nobody forgets about you, you aren't small in anybody's mind.
nobody thinks that your ordinary, they think you're fantastic,
and you need to break all your mirrors
and with scarlet dripping from your knuckles like rivers
on ice
you need to admit that you don't need them.
it makes me so happy to see you slowly blossoming
into the wild rose i know you are.
take care of yourself,
because that is the only way anybody else will be able to care for
you.
your soul is huge like the
morning sky
let yourself feel it.

--------
find your voice, and speak clearly to people who are shaking your boundaries, and tell them to BACK OFF.
yell it if you have to,
stop letting them invade you and squeeze your insides like they even have
any right to.
scream into their faces that you are not weak,
and let loose your mean side a little bit.
never let yourself be taken advantage of.
look into peoples eyes,
and search desperately for their truths.
if they don't hold their vulnerability raw and beating in their palms,
then they're not worth it.
never expend your energy to make somebody else feel better.
you can share with them your happiness, but never give it away;
because you are not an empty girl.
you are a fulfilled girl bursting at the seams with things it means
to be completely alive
and laughing
and feeling.
don't hide that.
people think its nice to be hurt
and it's so mature and creative and artsy to be damaged.
they think its romantic when you can be
“saved”
by a stupid prince who wont give you **** but a plastic crown and sore hips.
DO NOT GIVE INTO THAT *******.

your eyes crinkle when you smile,
and you have small teeth that are like
waxing moons.

nobody wants to be happy
because they think it wont last,
because they think its not beautiful
but you my dear are living proof.

we lay in the fields and on the dry hills
and smoked green out of a purple pipe and you kissed a boy who talked about crystals and rolled down under the stars
i shared my cigarette with soft lips and a strong jawline,
we all drew ourselves together on the hill that overlooked the world;
we we're the tallest, vastest beings ever to live, and the glowing lights that we're stuck like splinters in the palms of the sky we're mere reflections of what was within our glowing skin.