Reptilian madness
Turns over in a second
Wash them off
As if it never happened
As I never happened
Sit underneath
An obese sadness
Sharp teeth
Reptilian madness
My world turns

And yearns
Always in the wake

A young machine
Three circuits too loose
Three days to lose
To waste
Away on blood
My own
Because no one wants it anyway
They say they'll pay
You back in love
How you wanted it
Instead
You're broke

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

In the night
People leave the streets alone
With the lamps.
yellow light clamps
onto your figure figuring which way to go.
With a hole in your jacket,
It's hard to find heat
Feet trudge through sludge
That used to be green green grass.

I wrote a message
carelessly to you,
filling your deficiencies
with notices,
"the power will be shut off."

Maybe a powerless life
has more fire
more matches.

Maybe a powerless life
goes to bed
with the sun
wrapped up in heat
sleeping soundly with solar flares
nestled into places unknown.

Maybe a powerless life
writes more letters,
watches the birds,
and can see me sitting there,
an apparition now uncovered.

Swimming through the dark
Just looking for your mark
A sign of your heavenly visitation
It is too bad I run into many a imitation
There are many who are fake who rake me across the coals
Because they mask their souls
When I catch a glimpse of you
A sparkle, shimmering through the shadows of life, please remember me too

I cannot spread my wings to fly with you
For my feathers are tattered and clipped and not at all new.
So I will see you fly up up and away
But your kiss promises me that everything will be okay.
I cannot help that I feel so alone as I wander through the mist
So cold and small
I await the very day when you will call
And tell me you are forever mine

So the fallen angel I am
Is not a white woolen lamb
And I don't know if white can love the sight
that they have drawn.

Black boxes.
Smell of delicate decay
like kindling first catching fire.
Pigeons bathing in the gutter
glitter and iridescent feathers
covered in the banal bile of boys,
their insides strewn on the ground.

Fire ant mound,
stepping on those was my childhood.
Coulds and woulds and shoulds
creating those is my adulthood.

How can you fell an emptiness?
Maybe that means
There is something to feel
Which makes it not emptiness
Anymore.

Five fingers pressed to my cheek
I feel them phantom
Random pulses of memory
Gripping onto an absence,
Like air molecules,
Cool to an unseen touch,
I feel a nothing.
Your body becomes a loaded gun.
Shiny and sparkling in the sun.

Shrill screams during dreams of you and me
sea salt and caramel  
pour her over my banana split
Fit for a king, I thought
not hot
not warm
no swarm
of butterflies
crispy and slight,
wings blow away in the darkness of night
might you come to love me in time?
Rhyme anything, anytime, anymore
pour me over a bed of hot coals
evaporate me over a head of cold souls
cut me up over whatever it was you said
piece me back together, tuck me into bed.

Cords stuck
To skin
Paper thin folds
Lines and numbers
Measure life
And shout as death
Steps closer now
Take off masks
Detach tubes
Check off tasks
Gasping slower
Come on
Come on
Let him run
Into the next world
Zero and lines
Straight lines
Are the final goodbye

I want to numb this
Into oblivion
For ten seconds
I want to feel
That it never existed.
I want to take
A dentist syringe
Full of pink perfection
Stab into this monster
And numb it way
So it might be possible to say
Goodbye.

Your bed is a projection
on the wall;
A turn style slammed into my hip.
I tried to crawl under
but fell asleep instead.
Suits get off the train
and step on joints and fingernails
in the Oblivion
they drank
and worked themselves
into;
The same oblivion
that doesn't notice that the bed
is just a projection on the wall.

Oblong pink pill
Amber smooth scotch
They are all just a bedpost notch
Romance with a razor blade
For you I was made
And I ask if I'm late
Or just in time
Without reason, without rhyme
I evaporate all the water
All the hope,
I slaughter

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'

Wipe me clean
a chalk board eraser
So close I can taste her
You're the worst I've seen
take it all one-by-one
I asked the sun
if it would heal me
I asked God to be
somehow closer.

I'm on the run
One hundred and fifteen
Miles per hour
Day after day
My bad person manifesto
Crescendos into a snorkel
Just below the surface
The stars map out
The way from you to me
The smell is free
But to see
There is a small fee.
A debt circle
Encircles entwines ensnares
Stare blindly at the slop
I'm on the run
And I can't stop

I am as alone
When I am with you
As I am when I am not.
Fat tears
Invisibly streaking down my face
Whiskey and lace
Pills in the cabinet, just in case
I feel like taking all of them
Because I can't look at men
Without thinking of the tricks
Slithering up their sleeves
The hearts they collect and break just for kicks
Whiskey and lace
Whimsy and taste
All the contents of me in this jar
Here, take it, I can't stand it anymore.

Claw at your eyes
Ties tied tight around my *****
As Plath would say
Mother may
I please just cut myself in half
Throw away the ties,
Lies, and sighs
Muffled by ruffled feathers.
Walk around free
On sea
Touched palms.

I sent you my body in a bag
Of ones and zeros
It waits on your doorstep
Unopened.

Slanted cold rain
each drop a sharp pain
bending below umbrellas' shade
Not personally made
Paid in full-bodied wine
He drinks her away, line after line
But she is a stain
Wash, shoot, scrub, rub, remain
Slanted cold rain
Pain turns into cleansing pleasure

I live on the moon.
Rocketed here last noon.
A Running Away
because of my mind and child's play.

I spend all day
building people
Out of moon-dust clay.
An army, A steeple
All without pay.

This is my punishment:
Slash at the sun,
Smell not a single scent,
And see no one
made of anything but clay.

They say the pills have
A long half life
Like nuclear waste.
Carbon.
Dividing and dissolving
Away the sadness
Oh-so tangible
A tangerine of despair.
"Orange is the new black,"
They say

I'm a black ash candle flame
Sheets made of sandpaper
Skin made of bugs
Nails on a chalkboard
Love pulls and tugs
When you're around,
I yearn to build
Rock solid block
Out all the sun.
I yearn to put my hand on yours
But I'm afraid it'll melt.
A cascade of butterflies soar
Orange air
Burns to black ash
By candle flame.

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.

You don't need a brief.
Briefly let me like it
as our,
Or
Your
Words slip around
Or sound
Just briefly
As our's instead of your's

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.

Orange bottle rattle
slowly fading is my paddle
beneath the salty sea
forever I only wanted a "you" and a "me"
flee fast, keep track of just the ends
floating out here, as darkness descends
stars sneak out
peek out
from beneath puffs of clouds
I give them a message
"Send someone to help with this wreckage."

Your rules are wallpaper
Over the bars, the cage
Scratch a circle:
Sandpaper on the edges of a page
Your world is full
Of emptiness
Your world is a desert
With cacti blooming
In the meanwhile.

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

There are echoes in stones
what they have seen.
How is it that you can dream
and keep tearing my skin from bones?

No one can stand anyone else
I am not an island
but a tired and sagging sack
patches upon patches
stitch me up again
Here I am, it is time to begin.

Beat the drum
Steady.
Fall into place
Whenever you're ready.
Trip on a pen
Land through a spear
I wasted my youth
Chasing the near
In this bathtub

Stand again.

Wanting to live
For paint that never stays
For not knowing the path
But going anyways

I line the pills up
white and blue:
almost patriotic.
You don't notice
my back against the wall:
a wild wolf call
for fight or flight.
I always pick flight.
Almost patriotic,
what happened to your American bite?
A helicopter hovers
over bleeding covers
and blonde news anchors
say, "its much worse then it is."
Almost patriotic
Almost pathetic
Almost an anesthetic.

Etched into life
Patterns of chicken scratch
Looking for crumbs in the dust
You only have to trust
Put them in spaces
Old with rust
Can you see through my faces
Enough.

I vaporize and materialize
On some occasion
Put myself back together
In time for the explosion
Repeat
Repeat patterns
Repeat you
Repeat me

There are wild roses.
They grow up through the cracks
in the pavement,
they have thorns
they have petals
the bees hover, but never settle
the bare feet step, unknowing
their soles then showing
thorns trapped beneath the skin.
they offer their dangerous beauty to the sun
they stay in one place; they never run.

Let me down slowly
Instead fiercely
In scarcity
We bare teeth
A step beneath
The intangible surface
Of the hi-how-are-you
Conversations
Perversions of things
We want to say

They can make you stop feeling pain
But they can't make you stop feeling love.
Strange brain
because they are kind of,
often
the very same thing.

You were three seconds
Too short. Come by
And spread the blanket
Across a sea and bay
Lay
with me here.
And how I long to know
Your fingertips
And how I search glances
With glances.
Chances
The last after the last
Clear the splinters from the blast

White silhouette pin pricked
Against darkness, licked
Like salt from in between teeth
Blood is made of iron
Can't you taste it?
Blue and red siren
Through the front door window
Coffee on the ground
Smells like the sound
Of you leaving through the door.
He tells everyone you're dead
But the only thing that's changed
Is your head

White silhouette pin pricked
They've all been tricked.

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.

We float
On and on
In and out
Lonely and numb
One inch from each other
Punch through
This plastic air
This skyscraper construct
Of should
Or shouldn’t
Of go
Or stay
A misunderstanding

Faked but believable,
her resolve to cut away
to throw away
to never resuscitate
all the bad parts
all the parts that chose her.
Replace the broken pieces
the useless pieces
with ones you pick out.

I'm circling the spongy surface of my memory,
Trying to underline the part
Where your touch became too rough
But I wanted you to pull my hair anyway.
Where you stopped wanting to touch me
But wanted me to continue touching you.
Where I am left standing alone, knee deep
In my fiery *****
As Plath would say.
A sad and broken piece of machinery
A rusty, wet tractor left in the wilderness
Asking the vines for some sort of final mercy.
I want to underline it,
So I know it was real all along.

He said, "I had a girlfriend
Who couldn't ***
SHE was SO ****** up."

I whispered, "that makes me feel
really good." I couldn't look at him.

I don't know if he got the sarcasm.
I don't know if I will get the,
No that,
Monster out of my mind.
Vines, please give me some sort of
Final mercy.

The world spins
Dizzy roller coaster
Pitch and yaw
I'll lie and say I never saw
Your evaporation take place
I was a clam
And you were some pliers
Or maybe just a liar
I replaced you with a sharp piece of metal
When I swore I'd never settle
But it seems I've stumbled into blank
Blankets of blankness
Rank this less than perfect
On a scale of one to ten

I walk through
the door marked "you"
A cloud of poison
I have chosen
because I crave nothing
but suffering
please tell me
that my sweet scene lingers
the way your words do
the way your fingers
always have.

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.

Rough around the edges
The start and stop
Fruitless pledges
Forget-me-not

I can't fill in the blank
Churn and churn
Fill up the slate
Crash and burn

Punishment as an award
I longed to be invisible
To see a clear path forward
To be a person - permissible

Now as part of a suitcase
I move slowly
Fears to face

Could I ever call your name
Loud enough
To be heard?
Words herded through your mind
In one, out the other
But I was just a puddle
On your living room couch
A sheer sweater draped over me
Ridiculously.
Every face I show you ficticuously
Shows you
Your reflection

Zombie eyes,
wide like the skies
covering up space.
Her: blushed with the pace
of the day.
Fifty reasons to say,
“no,” fifty less
in favor of asking,
“how?”

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

I always build them a lovely raft
Caring tied to attention
Crazy used as string;
And finally a sail of love,
Golden and scared rises.
Some stay on the shore
Admire my work
But you stepped aboard
Untied yourself from the shore
And drifted
Taking with you my finest work

You're vapor that
Claws at people
waves red flags
that say
send help

Watch them walk by

They always get tired of you
You get lonely of them
You cross them off your list
Crosses are your talent

Wait awhile
to become a raincloud