Feathers falling, flailing fast
As if they are dense
Like the star you fill up
Or that fills up you?
She can't tell the difference.

This bird struts pink skin
For all to see
How thin her neck seems to be
She looks around,
"Did you blow off all my feathers
because I perfectly blew off your ****?"
But all that was left of him was the smoke

Cutting up wood
Smells sweet
Smoky
Sawdust falling like snow
The foul vinegar of decay
Starts on its work
Chewing at the arsenic
Right from the moment of creation
Destruction sets in.

I find myself
leaning into
the pain.
Studying it.
Microscope--
blurry at first,
fiddling with the ****,
finding the perfect point
of clarity.

Mechanisms clean,
neat ball-point-pen
hand writing
describing the chemical
deficiency,
structure
of love.
Reduce me to carbons:
microscopic lines and arrows.
Maybe that is a little easier.

His finger tips
and more
demagnetize me.
Now, I don't work anymore.

Am I a fridge on the road side?
Am I a pair of red lips
folded like gift wrap
around your part?
Am I am an empty black coat?
You must understand --
I need to meet me.
Stop this destruction.
If you see me,
arrange an introduction.

Harp strings.
Heart stings.
Start things.
He sings.
Phone rings.
Rungs
on a ladder leading up,
Up,
Up, and away.
Say,
Why the ****
am I not enough?
No, just terrible, terrible luck.

Balance.
Heel-toe-heel-toe,
**** it
in,
chin up,
shoulders back.
These relentless echoes
resound through caves.
Waves:
certain frequencies.
Sine.
Cosine.
Tangents
I go on to avoid
your melting gaze,
your sand figurine
sifting swiftly through my palms.

Bullets making lace.
Lotuses growing from mud.
Beauty needs ugly.

I line up
all the things
I like about you.
I space them evenly
Precisely
Accurately
I shoot them
with a harpoon,
A gun,
A sling shot.
Then I smash them.
I burn them.
I bury them.
They beckon me
to go about collecting
them once more.

This pencil sounds
like sputtering,
a car engine failing.
It smells like
the sheets you just left.
It feels weighted,
heavy like a lead blade
that I can hardly hold up.
It tastes bittersweet,
like the tail-end of smoke:
as musky and infectious
as your kiss.
This pencil looks
at me sparkling with dew,
"did you lose interest in me
like the boys lose interest in you?"

I drew a portrait
of my memories:
dark blue and green
in purity. They are humming bold
circles swirling.
Red cores singing of
a fresh imagine.

Then,
Suddenly,
Just there,
the gray seaweed of time extends.
stabbing circles,
now the gruesome gray
intertwining twang of time
twisting itself into my memory.  

I asked him, "What does this mean to you?"
He said, "It is just a pretty pattern."

Hold on while I burn
my life down.
I've collected all the tinder.
I've chopped all the wood
Dead
Flaked bark and pale flesh.
I construct a magnificent
castle around my life--
tiny, buzzing, confused,
I've trapped it in a mason jar.
It's locked in a desk drawer  
Locked in a room
In the highest tower.
Now I drop the match.
Does glass burn?

You're a beautiful monster
powerful and dangerous
towering and infinite.

I am an ugly tower
wizened and stone-faced
but made of sleek marble
unscalable.

Smeared black eyeliner
settling into
newborn wrinkles.
I tried to tease.
Just stop, please,
because I can't tell
what's real and what's not.
Imagination constantly carving a spot.
So in some storm,
some torrential desperation,
I remain
warm.

"Draw things about relief,"
he said
(because he doesn't know I write too).

Relief--
The smell of California air,
hot eve in December.
Finding out he really does care.
Yeah right, that I don't remember.

Relief--
the end of a knife fight.
Tight pants unbuttoned
by his hands.
The last list of demands.

Relief--
a noxious pill,
the bottom of a hill,
the thing that often looks like failure.

So you'll realize
I don't make sense.
What usually happens:
they lose interest.
An inside-out umbrella.
A stained iron.
An oven-fridge on the roadside.

She walked home
in the rain and snow.
Indecisive sky she used to know
now etched with buildings
burning slowly at their core.
Termites wanting more.
I lost my power cord.
There is a bug in the system
because she's always bored
always running
up hill
on the treadmill.
Can't catch a break
or a breath.

Kids order coffee.
They are extracted and
addicted before they can even see
social media profiles, supply and demand.

Kids use hair gel,
mascara; they know how to type
"You're nothing without a thick shell"
Facebook. iPhone. Google. Skype.

A joyous blame game
Getting them to raise themselves
and each other.
Where, oh where, is mother?

Didn't know they could?
Welcome to the era without
Childhood.

You changed your name
I lost you that day
I turned to tell you something

But you had already left
And I stood
Surrounded on six sides
By the sick, sloppy snakes
No knife in-hand
No skin on my bones.

Bared, ready
to be received, held
a blanket of frost
a spike in my tongue
My eyes overflowed

Spilling a sulfur
Ensnaring the snakes
Circling their fangs
Collecting their cacophony.

Till life ekes out.
Dissipating like screams
Into a full ***** bathtub
and the soul escapes.

The smell sets
into your skin
while waiting for the doctor
while waiting by the phone
while waiting for things
that don't happen anymore.
You try to scrub it off.
Instead,
you scrub off your skin
and find
the smell settled into your soul.
Now you are left skinless
asking
How do I scrub my soul?

Giant, gruff, grinning
it grabs gratuitously
at my body.
Grumpily grappling
onto my arm
and throwing.
I grasp at green air,
I find only the graceless
graininess of gravity.
It, grunting,
grips my insides
and greases the ground
with my grimy gremlins,
my greatest, grueling torment.

Handful of doughy breast,
perfect caramel skin,
a mind messed,
memorizing a mesmerizing pin.
Sticking
Pricking
Licking
My heart sweet and tender.
What good is rejection from each
gender?
Only as good as a moldy peach.
Screech
Breach
Bleach
all I seem good enough for.
Around when it's convenient
never more.
Been there. Seen it.
Screen it
Clean it
Please, just mean it.

I'm trying to fix you.
You stupid girl
You sloppy girl
You glass girl
Knocked from the table edge.
You broken girl
Now just pieces
Getting smaller
Ground down under his boot
Soot
Blow
In his nose
Through his veins
Then
Into his brain.
How can I fix you now?

A map to treasure
An "X" perched sullen and unreachable,
Unchangeable
Immutable
Inedible
Intangible
In caves, dark
Scrawling crawling up my sclera
To blind
To bind
With direction more lethal
With words less lustrous:
Like diamonds
equaling crushed ice.
All this, a trick in the eye.

Threads get darker
when wet
with tears, salty sweat,
spilled water on a date,
beer slopped, slurred state.
Color is characteristic,
evidence, not mystic,
of time and results
of the feelings from insults
not spoken.
Here is a token
to show you
this is your cue.

Part of her skull
is dented,
filled with foam.
It is where you rented,
and lived for awhile.

Uncontrolled proliferation
of cells
like rabbits
or people
destructive and useless.
That is what you are.

I gave myself
the same haircut he gave her
but since no one
understands,
I cover it with the rest of my hair,
"Hire me,
I'm normal.
No, I didn't save her hair that day."

Lies.
I memorize the texture
of the dent
of her hair
of things and spaces
that you ruined.

Did you take
her to make
me stronger?
Make me suffer a little longer?
A little harder?
Did you want me to barter?

We said,
"At least it isn't GBM."
White coat replied,
"No, because now you get to watch her die
slowly."
This isn't dying,
this is living.

Was that what you wanted to tell me?

Dull and rusty scissors,
a body decomposing: full of fissures.
Your apple core
that you didn't want anymore.

This still life
of death
is smeared all in-between my mind's strife.

Because

How can you know how to live
if you've never learned how to die?

"Drop something?"
The sign asks.
Yes, I dropped the love
you gave me
somewhere along the tracks.  
"Leave it!"
The sign exclaims.
No, I would jump
onto the muddy tracks
if I knew.

Always dropping things just won't do.

I laid a needle and thread out on the table.
I whispered, "This is for when you are able
to sew yourself up."
Empty room.
I wait for my fingers to grow back.
Like sea star limbs--
nubs at first.
Then, with articulation,
my new sprouts grasp
the fine alloy:
thin and frail.
"Okay," I whisper, "now it is time to sail."

"What do you want?"
He said.
"I'm really just working
on the basics,"
I replied.
Wait,
in the movies
This isn't work.

I landed on a square.
No, no, no.
A square landed on me.
He said,
"Do not pass Go
Do not collect $200."
When I laid paralyzed
On this square,
No, no, no.
Under this square.

Did the square know
It was sending me
back to the beginning?
It.
That is what he has become.
It.
The square I landed on.
No, no, no.
The square that landed on me
next to all the other thimbles and irons
turned battleships:
Sunken.

They shove
poetry down throats
by putting it on the train.
They know you'll look at it
because you don't look at faces
you're afraid
they're looking back.

They shove
a definition of beauty
into your mind
through skinny arms
through masked skin
through red lips
Crisp
Advertisements
on how you need to look
to keep him
on your hook.

They shove
Their morality
into your veins
through religion
and tasty cliches,
Heaven forbid
You ask why.

Cold bath water
numbness
You added the ice cubes
To stop the swelling
Of my heart
In your honor.
Hypothermia sets in
And feels like warmth

She painted the bathroom lavender
The only part of that left
Is the glorious mistake she made
On the moulding.

I am scarred
Where I was trying
To be beautiful.

It turns out
maybe that is more cherished
In the end.

Spring bulbs rise
out from their dark prison.  
Escaped at last!
Greeted by
the unfamiliar whiteness
of a late spring snow.
Cold and unmoving
We wait
for rays of sun.

I told her about what he did.

Because she doesn't know about my poetry

But you do. I think.
So where is your excuse for your surprise?
Oh, wait, here it is:
You don't read this.

I didn't look at her.

I just looked at the curled tissue in my sweaty palms.

Then she asked me what my sadness feels like.

It feels like I'm drowning,

but can see everyone else breathing.

What is making me drown?

All this weight

that I'm holding onto

thats holding onto me.

What is the heaviest thing forcing you to hold its hand?

Losing mom.

You mean the mom you never had in the first place?

Yeah, that one.

The one who was never in the crowd

when it was Mother's Day and the class was singing?

Yeah, that one.  

The one you remember searching for?

The one who you were never good enough for?

But at least she never said it like dad said it.

The one whose memory is one without you in it?

Her, doing something else:

Reading the paper on the couch,

Curling her hair,

Asking why I got a "B" and not an "A"

The one that saved you from

literally drowning at the community pool?

Yeah, that one.

How can you mourn the loss of someone you never had?

Easy, I do it every ******* day.

When will this end?

I can see the pin-***** of light ahead

the cement used to be wet sludge

and now it seems to have dried

up to my waist.

White satin sand,
an expanding black sea,
calloused hand,
all stark against the lonely view of galaxies.

This is the moon beach.
Where I build them rafts
and, just to teach
me a lesson, they take them away.

Since I stopped making
rafts
there is nothing left for the taking.
Which someone once said is the definition of Perfection.

Lanky lizards
and crusty cockroaches
are crawling in the space
between my skin and the atmosphere.
Generated by the generator
he installed just below my naval:
On-fire, they are;
Sharp, they become;
Jagged, they march.
Over and over,
slower and slower,
deeper and deeper--
A never-ending game
of ring around the rosie
I don't want to play anymore.

Cinnamon whiskey
Burning hot like unseen lace.
Him and her: Frisky.
In my mind, her face.

Dark and structured
Cheek bones and jaw line
Imagination fractured
But all the same: Mine.

When I don't know
What he is doing
I imagine what is so.
Despite rationality shooing.

She walked away,
but looked back with a wink.
I sat there on a bench,
watching,
thinking about
how she just left--
To ride roller coasters
And drink tequila
And not be alone.

You implanted your
Finger tips.
Just barely
On the side of my cheek.
I search in the mirror
Just to get some peek
At your finger prints left there.

You implanted your
Lips.
Just barely
on the side of my cheek.
I search my memory
Just to seek
What I could do to get another
fix.

Why did you craft
all this sorrow?
How did you scrape
enough clay off the sides of my ribs?
Who are you,
and what did you do with that heart
I gave you?
Did you throw it
away?
Are you keeping it in a mason jar?
Does it get enough sunlight?
Do you feed it?

No.
Because I feel the death of it.
Deep, down low.
Please throw it down into this pit.

It isn't your mystery
Or history
That makes me stick around.
It isn't because you pound
Away at me,
Or have the right key.
I stay
Because you just may
Be a habit, an addiction,
Just a whirl-twirl fiction,
greasy slab of meat,
***** spike on the bottom of my cleat.

He doesn't remember
all the names
of girls,
or the chemical processes
he puts in his brain.
Vein. Blue or red?

Sprawled across his bed
On-repeat in my head.
Trying to find where
I couldn't convince him
to care
to read this
to miss my kiss.

Vein. Red.
I know
because I bow
a razor across it.
Matching his blanket.
Catching my breath.

Sometimes I wish dad
had hit me instead.
When he was mad
he threw words that led
to bruises unseen
beneath the skin
ripe and mean.
Just stick some sort of pin
and you'll see me bleed
if that is what you need
Because then at least I can watch that heal.

The men line up
Up against my brain
Too big for its skull
They bleed out my eyes
And eyelashes become their noose.
But you don't ever get in line.
So you won't be finished off.
Done, you sewed up creature,
Will you keep this name?

Go ahead
Finish me off with your broken
Neck intentions
I see how your eyes flutter and shut
Like a hospital bed curtain
I see the hangmen
Dangling from your
Eyelashes

Slowly fire red
blood dries to a maroon
and, there, a raccoon
mocks your crawling carcass

Ha ha you know the rhyme then
Again and again
I'm looking for someone who can understand
Awkward crisscrossing needle and thread
Your hands are stained red with my blood
Now you are gone
Your absence leaving
Bleeding bullet holes
That anyone can walk
By and put their fingers in
I love the quick high
The exasperated rush but
I wish now you did not leave
Such a perfect exit wound

Needle and thread shaking
But Why? Haven't I done this before?
A thousand times
Change his name.
Sew him up.
Scared every time.

*You changed your name
A thousand times since last we met
I am cold and tired my wounds deep
I love you no-name
Sew me up

I never seem to sleep.
I never seem to keep
promises or people.
A man on a cross, or steeple.
Mostly I forget what color
love is. Brighter or duller?
How do I kiss you?
How do I hold your head
in between my palms?
How do I remember what was said?
This pill, see? It calms.
Swallowed, salty
the taste of staving you off.

Careless head
filled with oblivion
and red.
Sun and snow
feel the same.
If I could only know
things are just things.
Bread and butter
fly wings
feel the same.
If I could only know
how to strangle
and untangle
my bleached skull.

Her leather jacket.
Making a racket
Out of sticks and twine.
The line is fine
And faint and often disappears
And reappears
But only when you want it to.
I didn't have a clue
When he shaved your head
That you would emerge dead
Now there are no rackets
Just Black Its
Consuming my organs bold
A chewing and chilling mold.

Golden light
Silver flight
Above the dark city
Bleeding pretty
Orange traffic streams.
Dreams
being lived below
Being shot slow
Blow
Jobs
Economic growth
A hope!
Cope
With the cancer taking mom away.
"Pay in love,"
I keep repeating
Unheard.
Heart stops beating.
Still the thrill of cheating,
And pleating
Your hair,
Swirls swift in my veins.
Shining and shimmering
In golden light,
The few threads keeping me tied together
Catch his scissor's eye.

I was a victim
Of your addiction.
One of your numbers
It's too bad
You don't keep count.

I was one of your poisons
You used to try
to ****
All the slices and scars
All the sadness and pain

I was one of your mistakes
A strong one
That put bars over the door
Kept all the razors at bay.
Would never run away.

Yesterday you gave up
Addictions
Poisons
And
Mistakes

Today I gave up
You