I want to scrub
Every last one of his dead taste buds
From my mouth
A toothbrush slowly sharpening
Saw blade
Spit out the blood,
Mud, and toothpaste

I want to find
Every way there
Is to destroy myself
To live without ever breathing
Or seeing
Or being seen

I want you to know
My worst fear came true
I never was capable of loving you.

Fourteen tolerance
With reminiscence
As the side of a sharpened blade
I don't know but I made
A reason
Because pleasure isn't enough
Smooth feels rough
Ragged ranges
Of pitch
Black to blacker
Pink to red
I long to understand human pains
Because nothing else remains
I long understand human blood
And the way it resembles mud.

I lost another bet
Met halfway through
A new razor blade song
Long to feel skin
Sin is the only thing I'm good at
Sat down and gave in
Pin *****
Pat down
to find your bullet
Still lodged in my spine
Line after line I articulate
Particulate matter matters a lot
Sought to numb the world
Curled hair around my finger
Linger longer
Stronger and stinging salt water in my eyes.

I want to understand
Mechanics banned
From working right
Under a thumb, light
Strokes dark
Mark down another thing
Throw away another ring
Sing low another dirge
Die a little, emerge
From ashes
Another plan hashes
Another man dashes
Cashes in on my desperation
Precipation makes things grow
Throw away another ring
Notice, again, another ding
Mark down anther thing
On and on
All this greets every dawn.

She knows more
than she shows,
Shows more than she knows.
Bows, ribbons, flowers, lace
Invisible mask
Cast iron and shadow play
May I understand this
Heavy air?
This feeling of despair?
Words like bullets
He pulls the trigger with his tongue
Rung out like a towel
Trowel to dig a grave slowly
Stinging sharpness
Darkness never knew light.
A hodge podge sea
Of words can't make a sentence
When I said this is me
I really meant it.

Stunted growth
Confusion
Loaf
A penny in the center
I need all the luck I can get
Ball set
In motion
Stopped, popped under a bully's foot
You learn fear
Then you learn pleasure
The difference between work and leisure
Flick a flame
Wild but tame
Tricks and bane
Become a diagnosis
Realize all their hypnosis
Turn anger into strength
Turn self hate into lust
Must you be this way?
What else could I say?

Mallet resembles
or reassembles
what it broke in the first place
face it: destroy and create
fate chose to put them both in my head
bed empty. Can't stand it any other way.
Say something to me I can't see right through
To you I'm just spicy trembles
brambles
is what it feels like to me.
Sea salt and vinegar
linger like all the things he said.
Bed empty. Can't stand it any other way.
Pay in love, I keep repeating
beating blood through brain and brawn
fawn over dreams that don't make sense
fence around my heart?
Try a million gunshots
lots of pain is all I see
pots of rain is what it feels like to me.

Cry off this expensive mascara
The salt makes lashes
Stick together
That's what helps, they say
Stuck together
That's what people become, they say
Peel you off like a toffee string
Lick you off like a pesticide ring
Pick you off like a bathtub drain
Get used to the pain
Because it's the only guarantee
Kick me off like an ant on the sidewalk
Dust me off like a spider web
Push me off like a rock at the top of a mountain
Cry off this expensive mascara
Ten down and countin'

You're a dark magician
there I stand full of contrition
you doing
and undoing
on repeat
in all the people I meet
You teach me how to feel pain
there is nothing to attain

I died that day
even though they say
"sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me"
I died under the sea
because I was never me.

Put on more layers
Until no one knows what came first
The chicken or the egg
Neither, last time I checked.

And if you aren't careful
With that bomb you hold in your heart
It'll destroy you slowly
From anticipation.

Precipitation runs down
The cheeks of this town
And no where feels like home.

I don't want to
But I'll teach you
the meaning of shadows
If you teach me to see light in a meadow,
If you teach me to speak,
I don't want to
But I'll teach you
the sound of struggle
Sadness isn't my only quality
They keep telling me
If you teach me how to hear
I don't want to
But I'll teach you
What it's like to lose someone dear.

Broken strings
Unplugged wires
Unleashed monsters
Unhinged imagination
I make this, you, a creation
Do you see a resemblance?
I don't.
I care too much
You don't.
The only rule
Avoid the action
Reaction,
Traction
What is left of me?
Merely a fraction.

Compose,
Gather, rather throw together
A set of words
Birds talk the same amount of nonsense

Translate these electrical impulses
Repulses of boys
Or men
(I can't tell the difference anymore)

Decompose
This body
Because its shoddy
It's not all have

But it is all
I am willing to give to you.

Do you try to remember his voice?
Her choice
Of words and socks
Oh, the shocks
Lightning bolt memories
Bold caresses of theories
Trapped in a timeframe
I do remember his voice
But it's not the same.

Imagine how salt and water
hydrogen and oxygen
ball and stick models
all the real things
create the intangible
obese sadness crowding out
skinny gems of budding joy
the moment I try to shed my skin
eyes cloudy
I can't see
straight anymore.

You stand in my mind
Solid as a stone
Eternally eroded
By my imagination
Into something smoother
Into something you weren't before
Something a little more
Iridescent like mica
Like a shooting star
Cutting sharply through me
See that girl I was before?
Neither do I.

I spread the floor
In the hopes you remain
Underneath it
Or the very least find
Reasons for why I am like this
Why I yearn for you
Why we miss
Each other every time.  
Rhyme to ice the pain
Rain to grow the flowers
Powers of speech I lack.
Back to loving you?
I never left.

I can hardly keep my eyes open
rope in hand,
I carry you behind me.
See this evidence? I don't.
won't you rise up from the dead?
Read somewhere that it hurts to heal
Peel away the sunburn, find a freckle underneath
reef of wood; I tear it away.
say, pull out these pins and glass
pass the pills because
Does a caged bird ever fly?

Take secrets
Sprint out the door
Burglar alarm malfunction
Wrong turn at a junction

Machetes cut a new path
Do the math
It isn't that hard
To draw the right card
I throw in rhymes
So maybe you'll listen sometimes.

All these things happened
I try to piece them together
To answer: why can't I find a single feather?

Dueling duo
Entangled
Entwined
Within my mind
Find a way to hold on another moment longer
Which is stronger?
I hold my breath waiting to find out
Bloodied bout
A calm before the storm
A cold before the warm
A walk before the run
A cloud in front of the sun.

Make one big push
Away from the side of the pool
I can feel the difference
Between tile and grout
Can you?
Guards at the gate
Tell a story of abuse and hate
Cry a whole salty sea
For my memory
Sliced, sautéed sick

I am no magic trick

Electricity through wires
cold tracks, torn tires
back alley where you forgot me
cardboard boxes
quick brown foxes
accent on the "see"

I wait for navy
to melt into a pink gravy
maybe we forgot how to turn the key
unlock the door
get off the floor
of the back alley where you forgot me.

The thought of your hand
Burns like white hot sand
Razor blade ridges
****** finger prints
The fabric of my mind
a phantom of you to find
If ever I change, give me the time
If ever you change, give she a rhyme
If I ever have nothing to demand but
The thought of your hand
White hot sand.

Dark velvet curtain
turned as course as sandpaper
Wrapped up like my life depends on it
white rubbed bones
Urgency is always what gets me
all the wax paper cones
crushed into triangles
Where will I put this
crushed-ice-sugar-slush now?
Unwrap this girl? You ask me how.
Reshape the cone and take a bow.

The combustion
Of eye contact
Nearly kills me every time
Half dead
Half asleep
I'll tell you which of those promises
I can't keep
Ridges of his thumbs
Match up with the grooves
Carved in my back
Give me some slack
Let me climb down
Or up
I can't tell which is which anymore
Don't keep score
Pour out the bottle of whiskey
To keep this wound clean
Don't you see now? I never say what I mean.

Oblivion should be a disease
Water vapor and antifreeze
Pool on the inside of my chest.
Do what's best
Not what's healthy;
Around everyone, be stealthy;
Build a metal barricade:
Mantras like a blaring cannonade
Teach me what it smells like to never listen
The only thing I wish had stayed
Was your smile, a glimmering glisten

your status symbol
a thimble
Over whatever remains
Leave my corpse, my aches, my pains
On his threshold
He won't see it until there's mold
A gray of some shade
Identify me by the scars I've made
Dental records show
This girl should have been happy long ago

Thrown out
Scrap
dumpster
hot blue
He doesn't want me
Lets see if you do
Last time I checked
The trash was filled with rats
a slice of bread thoroughly pecked
Torn baseball, broken bats
Pull a rag through the *****
Tap a hammer to nail
Iron out wrinkles, do whatever repair
Fix this machinery

It all feels black and blue to me.

Take all of this
Put it in a pile
Seal it with a kiss
Run a mile
Long ignition switch
Light a match
Remove a patch
Burn it to the ground
Sweep all the ashes into a mound
Grind them into dust
Dump them into the sea
Now, this becomes rust.
More beautiful to me

Half my head is shaved
The other half is bruised
You're a 2D
Paper cutout
Not yet origami
Looking for folding schemes
You don't know you're lost, it seems.
And I am no dotted-line-edition
It's all just simple addition:
Platitudes only get you thumbnail deep
Half my head is shaved
The other half, you can keep.

I pass the trigger
Like I pass the bottle
Say what you mean
I pull full throttle
But get no where in neutral
I never love anyone
Like what seems to be in-fashion
crashin' this life all in one go
a huge loop I sew
My fingers to my hand.
How is that possible
You demand.

I have your
Finger prints memorized
In case you burn them off
Or commercialize
Your hazy gazing
Killing me one look at a time
So I shake off all the titles
Like coils of a snake
And take
More than I need
How can I explain
The main
Vein of slack
Golden and black?

Shot in the dark
Whispers and fire spark
Pop and boil
Through the toil
Feels crisp
Against my cold skin, a wisp
Of hair out of place
I pull it away from your face
And towards me
Across a table, across a sea
But only in my mind
I'm afraid you'll find
A weapon of mass destruction
In the shade of this construction
I wonder about what you said
circles and chaos in my head

Whatever you do
Don't fall in love
At a masquerade ball
He'll destroy you
Mask and all
Beauty you cling to
A high light reel
Of the second base steal
Will replay in your mind
Whatever you find
Make sure it isn't love
At a masquerade ball.

Your memory
Nails on a chalkboard
The color of an orange lamp
Or the heavy paper stamp
On an envelope of illusion
Cliche delusion
I toss around these terms
Insides turned to worms
Squirming not like butterflies
Tell me what your money buys
Because it never bought me
I can't pick: hide, see, or flee
I long to be deaf
To a memory of the bereft
I long to be at home
And for my heart to be sewn

I married this charcoal
Fast as you took my soul
Dole out the pills
Monday Tuesday Wednesday
If-then statements that don't make sense
Read the side effects
On my lable
You see, I'm putting this all out on the table
My spirit is a flighty bird
You can't trust me, haven't you heard?
I don't have an owners manual
Oh my dear, this articulation is far too gradual.

I take cold showers
To save the hot water for you
One plus one isn't always two
Green plus yellow is blue
Black is the absence of them.
I know the monsters' den
All too well.  
You're a resounding bell
A deafening cannonade
For nothing was I made.

You wouldn't believe it if I told you
we can now walk
away from guns
put the safety on the trigger
put the razor in the gutter
stop running for a second,
look back to reckon:
is it still back there?

Very best
never quite enough
No sleep, no rest
As rough
As the Rockies
Mountains of pink skin
monster
What else do I call it?
How do I **** it?
These things aren't taught in school
Hot metal skewer to hand over to you
Here, I know what you want to do.
Very best
Never quite enough
It's tough,
So here are all my knives and matches
To take me out in batches.

I try to saw
My body in half
The gears and springs
Broken sensors
Machinery of my other half
never quite disengages
I pour out its contents on these pages
So as to not get oil
On your ear
It's broken? fix it.

Well
B'twixt you and me,
Who wants broken machinery?

Somehow the world
Has a vague flavor of you
Is this déjà Vũ?
I burn my mind
Looking for the memory
Location
Latitude
Longitude
Of where I went wrong
It is nowhere
And everywhere
At the same time.

All I want is to understand
Your mind
All I want is for you to forgive
My mind
The way I forgive
Your body.

I learned how to survive
By lying through my eyes
Through a teeth-bared smile
Actually a snarl
from an internal monster
Last time I checked
It isn't okay to be sad
Take a porclein mask
Paint it glad

I learned how to lie
By living in this house
Where the only way
To say
What you mean
Is through abstraction.
Truth becomes subtraction

Your fingers are blades
And your kiss is the same
Welcome to the game
follow the rules
No touching
No caring
No shooting the moon.

You sound cute
I sound mute
What you hear isn't me
It's something in here you can't see.

Your fingers are blades
And I am the queen of spades
In this game of hearts.

Jars on a shelf
Break upon earthquake
Screams through the house
Glass on the floor, douse
The fire I set
On the day we first met
I pull out everything good
Try to save it all
What do you call
A pile of should
Vanished good?
Cross you heart
And hope to die
Please, I beg you,
Stick a needle in my eye.

Rusty saw blade
I hold on
Grind the dull blade
across tethers and strings and ropes
mummifying
strangling
not a cocoon like I once thought
do you feel the panic set in?
Needle ****** on your forearms
twine frays
did I ever say
that anything stays?

I sit on the river bluff
Waiting for
This black hole fire *******
To fizzle out.
Waiting for
All the contents of my being
All the gravity
All the wispy plots
To be released
And placed back in their spots.
No one else seems to miss it
But I do, so there I sit.

Do you know the feeling
Disconnection
Stuck in a jar
Loss of power
In the dark
Light a candle
Can't get a spark
Crooked smile
Surrounded on four sides
Walls dark with dried blood
Loss of speech
The only thing left
A hallow and terrifying screech
Amplified so no one can hear it

Natural selection
Now just an impression
A first one
With the mass of one ton
Lowered down onto the tip of my tongue
Flowered through the tip of my handshake

Lick me like a cottonmouth snake
Sweet like lemon cake
Your charm is venom
And I yearn for its death.

The last time you saw me
Was the last time I was alive
Your charm is venom
Now unzip that denim.

Wall of pillows
Brick embroidery
Carries a simple bloom
Plume of smoke
Through a crack in the cement
City streets salty
With tears and sweat
Wet with ice
Slip, slice
**** and dice
The only games I know how to play
Why can't I ever mean what I say?

Clueless
I spin these tires in the mud
Tear up the foxes den

What's the difference between boys and men?
One can reach the door handle.

You don't understand what I'm trying to say
I can't get to this threshold, not today.