Keep you on file
they always say
good enough to string along
not good enough to ask to stay
can they all sense the wrong?
they certainly hit me down
with whispers, they drown
I drown
away I see,
your floating, golden, perfect
crown.

I lay out all the tools.
The ones for breaking
And the ones for mending.
I lay out all the steps,
Try again
Forget and laugh
Destroy and rebuild
Decisions and dreams
Glue and thread
Who cares what was said?
The art is behind the couch
The drums are dusty
Guitars, rusty.
Here is my happiness,
I'll trade you for numbers
And dollar signs
And whiskey to numb it all.
Who decided this? I want to give them a call.

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

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.

A magnetic torrent
Metal fingernails
Sharpened
Scrape
Scar
Splatter
Gray matter
Matters to me
Maybe not to you
Two windows closed
Posed a threat I can't describe.
Tribe of spiders spinning webs
Shreds of evidence
Laid out for you to see

Why do you wonder about why?
Reasons heavy on top of my
Body. Like lead bullets poison
Soil turning black
Magnetic torrent
A wind slams me into your door.

The hospital smells like home
Something's hurt your head
On-repeat, "me instead"
Lead paint wishing walls
Halls fluorescent
Reminiscent of looking for your shoes
Lose just this girl
Curl your hair like you used to
Do you understand?
On-repeat, "me instead."

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.

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.

You hit the right notes.
You see through the coats
Of paint and bone saws
All the undertone claws
At my fabric
Is this part of some elaborate
Plan
Or trick
Either will stick
Firmly to your web
I float through the ebb
Without really caring
If you, or anyone, is staring
At me caught in webbing
Of your plan
Or trick.
Because
Either will stick.

Cactus spines
Prickly gold cover
don't touch me, lover.

Nauseated by this life
All the anger and strife
Circles on circles
End up where you began
A ship on sand
Nature, with its blood
Death and mud
cactus stingers and moon
Nothing that lasts
Except the past

Your red eyes
French fry fingers
Only look when they won't remember
Loose trip
Tight grip

Your heavy sighs
A million angel singers
Only listen when they can't hear
A little sharp
A little broken harp

Your compulsive lies
Your scar lingers
Only comforting the next day
Sit. Stay.
Come what may.

I am an old shoe
Try to untie
These laces
With crippled fingers
And hot glue
Running into my fingerprints
Burn them off
One by one
Phase in and out
This old shoe and hat
Lock the door
Take up the mat.

I thought I could exchange
*** for love
Cat food for caviar
Knives for bullets
Nothing for everything.
The exchange rate isn't listed
And I've forgotten how
To kiss
To eat
To cut
To trade.

Feels like
sunbeams
under redwoods
in clover

eyes

boil over

Push away
Pull closer

Couldn't stay
Tried anyway

Unraveled pile
Of ***** yarn
Yearns and
Learns what it means to burn
And discern, finely,
The different flavors
Of pain

And create, kindly,
The eventual train
Of thought
Accept
What you've got

Run away with you
To you
Through you
I'm invisible

Down a tunnel
Light as a feather
But, oh, you stick to me so
Think about whether
You could love me as
I do
You.
You
The gold of every sunrise
You
The reason I live
And the reason I die

I thought I could
Fill this up
With whispers and eyelashes
Of strangers
I hold on
to their finger prints
With thread and barbed wire
I throw rocks
And listen for them to land
Maybe then I could understand.
I thought I could
Fill this up
As you would
With thread and barbed wire

"Eyes open"
You said to me in the mirror.
So I slice keenly
Urgently
At the stitches forcing them shut.
So I cut carelessly
Uselessly
At the ropes holding me up.

Flooded sharp things
My arm floating heavily
On your shoulders

Can you fight blade to blade?
Often not
As I drop it on my knee.
I watch the words fly out to sea
And all the things once within me
Have all fallen
Drifting now. Accompanying now
The pollen
Once within the rose.

Snakes wrap around
Tighter and tighter
Like the blinding darkness
Of a tunnel with no end
Like wrapped tube
Hanging from the rafters
Pigeons coo
Take flight
At the slightest movement

A single slight curl,
A memory seed-
Like sand in a pearl

the needle goes through
The thought of you
Now gathering a luster
Then and now I wonder
If I have the muster
If I have the sand
If I have a hand

The past
living in the mind, crisp at first.
A disintegrating leaf
beneath boots
it crumbles
pieces of you blow away.

Keep a beat
Of urgency
While
Weeds grow in my seat.
So, I stand instead
Tapping my toe
In the space right below
The thin pile of ash
Watching me
Asking, "do you see
In me what he never saw in you?"

Comb through the details
like a primordial
pitiful
primate.
Try to find the millisecond
moment
movement
where you decided to wiggle free.
Fake key
Far away

Throw my hood up
It's raining outside
And inside
Is a nothingness
Like my bedroom walls
Your words
Echoing
Maddening
Repeating
Defining
I swim toward the shore
But it moves away
So I drift and sway
Amongst the eels and beer cans
I talk to them like they understand
Out of the sky I demand
A satellite picture
Of how your hair might be
The image is good company
In a way they never are
Here and gone
Like a shooting star

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

You want to cut
out your tongue
because your tongue seems too large
and your jaw has stretched
to a loud hammer of a feature
this makes it hard to speak.
You think to yourself,
"What good is a person who cannot speak?"
When you really want to say,
"What good is a person who cannot say anything?"

Flock dynamics
observe
straight line or curve
arrive anyway
Seems like the only way
of reaching out again.

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.

Burned my last box of food
Burned black by solitude
Fortitude is as famous as me
Pity, that was my last goodbye
Lie or tell the truth
Give me some kind of proof
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
I played with fire
I played with trust.

Send a smile
A nod in an envelop
The stitches of a hand
To needle you together

And ears can see clearly
What others do not
So give me that
Lever
to pull
Give me your hand
To push
Through the everything

Things echo
But never stick
Too loud,
A trick.  

Teflon pan
Scraped the surface
Metal
Fork
Mixes

A sickness
I can hardly stand

Cut down the words
I'm never shocked.
I just pretend.
As I long to be
As stoic as a cherry tree

Listen
If I stop
Will my heart keep going?

Men and magazines
Teach
what each game means.
But I haven't had much
time
With either to know
What to do with you.

I can't seem to take
The past out of my back pocket.
Try to find
Cunning cells, exploding rocket,
Running through, constant repeating,
Instead of reading
Men and magazines.

You. Stupid shoulders and sideburns.
Turns
We take
To Make
Ways to harm
Charm
Your way into my mind
Only to leave me behind
Under folds of fabric.
Brick
Thick
Stick
Is your ooze to my brain
Crain your neck
Hold on, here is a check
To even out what I lack
Track
Back
Begin again.

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.

Your silence
On waves distant
You float away

Too much is never enough
Hand on skin
Nails on sandpaper
Walk on the shadows
Or with the shadows
All I could muster

Fire feels like ice
Like lace
Like net
Like bars and chains
Can you hear me?
Scream louder
Gun powder

Out with a bang

It wasn't the middle of the night
It wasn't wanted
Unsure if you'd let me cross your threshold
But I thought you might

I'm always on my Last One
And you're always out to get some
If only I could take those threads
Tie them in a knot
Make them work
Maybe now I wouldn't have none

Like a thin veil
It consumes me
And all the thoughts
Unwanted
In the middle of the night
Don't make any sense
Never work in my favor
Now they're all I have

There you are
A bird flying into the distance
And slowly I forget
If you were even real to begin with

Let me try to explain these things.
I slide a need and thread
through my wings.
Over and over.

All the dirt I've bled
stains your shirt.
All the words I've said
over and over

echo off the walls
never quite heard.
Meaning trips and falls
over and over.

I keep repeating
I keep grabbing at something fleeting.

Three words looking at the moon
Listening with eyes
I arrive here
Combing through the night
Looking for just a second
Away
Away...
Yes you may
Cut through this loneliness
As long as I don’t let on
That I need in any way
Away
Away...
Was there a time I was beautiful?
Come closer with whatever
You have to say
Away
Away
Please stay

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?

Elegant fingers
I created from nothing
Or something
A stranger said to me
Long ago
Zip down the zipper
Look chipper
They say that's best
I'm not like the rest
Hardly worth the time
It takes to consider
If you'll stay
They say
The good thing is
The bad thing is
Everything is fleeting.
Everything is bliss.

I've known the brakes
And I've known break-neck speed
I am need
Bundled with what it takes
To hold my lions in
I've known the rattle of tin
And the the tattle of sin
I am poker with high stakes
I know what makes
You the same as the rest
I try my best
But I don't know you
Out of us, that makes two.

Bad decisions and drowning
Like knives and matches
It all catches
On the end of my leads.
My needs
And wants
They always feel the same.
An itch and pain.
A stitch of disdain
What's the difference between
Bad and good?
To be or not to be.
They all feel the same to me.

I try to make
To mold the folds
Of this clay life
All buckling and slippery
Now drying too fast
And too flat from a past
Lapse in attention
Spitting water and tears
A salty glaze for a faulty fold
As the dust in the air clears,
I can see my creation
Full of empty diamonds,
And broken backs
Of mirrors.

I wear her sunglasses
that I found on his table
I can see him
touching her
how I wish he would touch me
I hear her singing
paint the roses red
so I do

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.

Time is an angel,
Decay, slow rotting
Love and vengeance plotting.

Girls drown in crowns,
whiskey, and tessellated tides
Sharp edge, triangle swords
Surrounding all sides.

Boys point arrows
Sharp, yet crooked
And fly from flower to flower
As a sparrow

All of everything ticks by
Into itself
Of itself
By itself

I see this pit:
Nothingness so vast
It becomes somethingness
And I see it in their eyes
Looking right through me.
I stand on the edge
Looking at my life on the other side,
They say you can build a bridge
I think they lied.
I scratch at the distance
With wild eyes
And razor blades
And memories of what emptiness looks like.
I see this pit
Standing right next to me.