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.

Everything I own was stolen
From you
Or him or them.
Where have you been?
Locked in a den
But now I'm on the run.

Stain on your fingers
Maybe, I hope it lingers
Because there has to be evidence
Of existence at all
of the sadness, towering tall
I mark it on my wrist and on the wall
With clear paint and razor-claw.

Is there something to hold onto?
Everything I own was stolen from you.

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.

You put in a bendy straw
And ******
Out all the color of an already vanilla milkshake
Telling the difference between real and fake
Telling you something you don’t believe
Was a doctor rolling up his sleeves.

Piggy bank smashed
For the last coin and cash
Stash of licorice
Blends in well
Swell with butterflies
When I see her
On my wrist
And in my blood
Flood my veins with fire and flames
Tames animals I don't know the name of
Not a single dove
To love
Above a harrowing landscape
**** my mind
Before my body
Shoddy, I give it away
Don't have to stay
I'll even hold the door for you
Piggy bank black and blue
Do what you need to do

I used to be a vase
You used to have a young face
And he used to use me
And she used to see clearly.  

Smashed
Squished
Newborn wrinkles cry.
Young
But old enough to know
To say no.
Fade out of life
Fade into death
The cinematography isn't right
Choppy transitions, patchy light,
Shade and sugar.
Yes, drug her.

I used to be a vase
Wrapped in paper, just in case.

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.

Drown with silence
Evaporate with salt
I'll repeat. I'll repeat:
It's not your fault.

Leaning into black
I'll watch you dance
You'll repeat. You'll repeat:
You missed this chance.

Reach for reasons
Branches too high
Sift with memories
He'll repeat. He'll repeat:
Your life is a lie.

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.

I grade your paper on what I see
Or what the Validictorian gives to me
She tells you to write in pen.
Come on boys, grow up to be men!
The only thing she cares about is if you’re in ASB.
Pleasing the teacher is the key.
You’re up the creek without a paddle,
If you have your own style of hitching up the saddle.
The horse you ride is like a paper,
If you don’t follow format you’re sure to fall.
This riding lesson has taught me nothing,
Except that conformity wins them all.

Pain in a ring
Slip off into the dirt

Ring of hurt
Fall over into gray

Circle around decay

Stumble again

Play it tough
Skin on skin
So soft
It hurts. ***** of a pin
Feel alive again

Start simple.
Go too far
Cause a ripple
******* me
Lose it

Just pass the time
With you

Sublime

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.

Try to be strong
Stare down the road
Think about how long
It takes to take a step,
To hear your song.

How long I've slept
Under this invisibility
Tranquility
Sadder
Shudder
Close then open
This is life is just coping

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

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

Wake up
Fly away
Push down
Stay

Simplicity or them
Loneliness or hatred
warmer than a pen
Or whatever I hold dear

Stand up
Pull away
Stomp down
Okay

Disease or sickness
Blades or dynamite
A Rothko darkness
Is this night

He knew
it was made
with a poetic queue,
with a slight of hand.
He laid
on her fuzzy apartment floor
that sounded like tapping and ticking
of distant metronomes
he had forgotten long ago.
His volume was low
on his ruby red guitar--
Six strings rusting.
He only felt the busing
of expectations not fully known.
If only he were alone.
If only he had seen
that she is something
more than just a traffic cone.

You are a time-trapped thinker  
they would tell me if I wasn't a ghost
or merely a host
for all these animal things
creating fireball rings
around my brain
who gets to make the meaning of sane?
certainly not this razor blade
certainly not all these things I've made
I reach for the paint brush,
but in my fevered rush,
I spilled everything I had left.
Try to fill a void with fire and trigger,
you'll only burn the hole bigger.

Here take my shoes
Run away, you got nothin' to lose
Run away, I got nothin' for you to use
Run away, gave you no reason not to
"Fun to play with you,"
but just for a second
he and she say
and it may
just be a little easier to understand scabs
than tears.
Fears pile up like bullets in your gun
at least they don't run
but here, take my shoes,
you got nothin' to lose.

I thought I saw you yesterday
Through my blurred vision
A piston engine, stopped
And was left to rust
In the front yard
They say we all come from stardust
There mustn't be any left
Pick a card, any card
The one you want isn't in the deck

Tragic toes split down the line
Fine tipped pens spit out the last time
I saw you sail by
Just pass through
Two hundred years of agony
In a single breath of air
Without the exhale
I search my scratches for one that might
remember your palm print
I loved you but didn't

A swell in-throat
Tumbling boat
Bumbling sailor
Not quite awake
Quickly, give him a hard shake.
A swell grows paler
Closer still
Loneliness turns shrill
Awareness bereft
Beating all that is left
Eating all that stands.
Lighthouse growing dark.

The things I love
the things I hate
Here, self-medicate
Take the cake
With soap as frosting
Costing and tossing
Is all I see right now
As my mind is salad, how
Is it you look so pallid?
My mind races
To fill the spaces
Where stars used to be.

Dead rat
Wire rim
Push the lace
At your best pace
A smile
Grim

I take my breath,
my regular heart beat,
And bottle it
out in the space
Of everything he forgot. Ignored.
Selling the difference between black and white
Selling you something that is worth my fight
is an endless song we still sing.

I tried to explain
This wide eyed insomnia
Scare crow nested neatly in the folds
Of my golden diamond mind.
Find out what I didn't have to give you
It's true
I was never much to begin with
But constellation and rumination
On the mutation of her single gene
In her single mind
In one single second
Proves to be an endless circle
How long does it take for a bomb to explode?
This arm and leg and foot
Bare down upon me, screaming,
Because they are used to so much more pain
Today it's dark
Tomorrow, it looks like rain.

Where did you go
Lines I recognize
Not as my own
How did I become this thing?
This white, solemn bone
Only wanting you to sing
Clearly
Through the haze
Through the black
And the white
There would never be darkness
Without the light.

A distorted  lens
makes it hard to find your cast.
Got the bends
from ascending too fast.

I was drowning.
I ran out of air
while watching a flounder frowning.
He looked so sad I had to stare.

Sail away.
Raise the mast
Raise the mask
Praise the flask
All to learn:
Be careful when you go diving.

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."

If you see me
tell me to take your hand,
to stop the fall, to finally land,
before I reach the bottom of a black-bearded abyss.
Don't miss,
oh, and maybe one more kiss
before I see me
pulling everything away.

My eyes couldn't pound
through the seductive sound
the click
tick
stick
of the lock.
You saw me
your fingers tucked
deep in the pockets of your silence.

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.

I have no ear for disaster
I just master
The art of self destruction
fire-building construction
Production of serotonin
A lacking pain, moanin'
A silence because I can't find the words
fly-away blood like birds
In my bath
Miscalculated math
Who said to climb this steeple?
Made out of a pile of people
On my cracked plate
Oh, you came to save me?
Well, it's far too late.

I am still shedding the skin
That knew how to love.
They say it takes seven years
To be born again
No matter how much you burn
And
Peel
The cells that knew
Away
They are there
And you don’t have the power
Time has

I grasp needle and thread
Read somewhere
That's what I'm suppose to do
Clues to how to swallow this
Kiss well:
Sell your soul piece-by-piece
Crease like rayon
Crayon melting in the backseat
Fragility is my greatest strength.

Velvet wrapping paper
Over something he
Or she
Or them
Could
Or would
Or should
Never love.
Two hands and a brush
Cracked lips and ****** teeth.
One stitch at a time.

I evaporate into the candle flame
Blow out each one
In one single exhale
Utter a word
To try and save me
Keep me from shaking
The truth out of him
Date a blade
Because at least they're honest
It's been fourteen hours now
And I haven't stopped shaking
The truth out of me.

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.

Things echo
But never stick
Too loud,
A trick.  

Teflon pan
Scraped the surface
Metal
Fork
Mixes

A sickness
I can hardly stand

Words lost
I take all of this at some cost
Pictures dull
A cognitive lull
A black backing on my brain
Suction, please, irrigate this wound with rain
I'm only trying to approach reality
Full of blisters and malady
Boldly following my repeating word
All my memories have become blurred
Nothing makes sense
Everything moves into past tense.

A sea as fire
Exists upon me
Drink in the life
As it slowly counts down.
It’s you
I plan to see last,
It’s blood
In another silk of this earth
On my forearm
That’s the only place this lives now
And as these bones surface forward
I wasn’t going to say goodbye
But now I know I must.

When I was born
they cut off my tongue,
so I spoke in colors.
Spitting red in my father's face:
an invisible vapor
lingering a decade or two.
I tried washing it out with blue
and black
smelling of tar pit tantrums
it oozed microscopically from my gums.
Generating sums
of recycled metals
gray and solid crushing my body.
I licked in silver whispers
gold drips on my seat.

I keep repeating
a staccato pleading purple
please pay
in love.
Please stay
said with one white cloud above.

Skin and sand
Swords that stab
Babble away at the point:
An inarticulate ***
Of
Confusion and lust
Dissatisfaction and trust
Or distrust
Or apathy
They all feel the same to me.
The floral pattern of your pillow
Is imprinted on my jawline
The last mania
The last game of trivia
The last time I felt something
Skin and sand
Are the only things I demand.

I love
And hate
At the same rate
So it all ends
In a neutral blur,
A human one.
The sky stands stark
In my memory
What color was it
The day I lived
The day I died
Were all my stars out?

Finger on the trigger
A decapitated appetite
ears pricked
I listen for your smell
of freshly sliced apples
like the ones mom used to give us
your gaze is a hungry wolf
and I wonder if I've turned into father.

There were feathers
In the gutter
Next to the cigarettes.
Another slow stutter
in the composition of nature:
Your ring on the left
Deftly alloyed.
Delicate next to the destroyed.
He only loves rhymes
So at certain times
I add one to make him listen.
A shotgun
Wedding, a glimmering glisten
Even as four cells large,
I am a turbulent charge
Across the flock of phonixes
Their feathers falling to the gutter

Sit here a second
Just in time
put him to bed
With a rhyme.
Silence is all thats ever said
So
I think about asking
But think about pain instead.

Somehow
Somewhere
I found the secret
to burning the inflammable.

Someone
Some place
Found my face
Unrecognized

So they identified me
By all the scars I've made.

Pills and rocks
Take them to
Not feel tired anymore
....If only

Diamonds like ice
broken glass
Cut cold

Age gathers bold.
Not so pretty
When it melts;
I long for, I long for
Choosing something else

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?

In a tunnel of lights,
a metamorphosis.
Stuck in a cocoon,
crooked in the silver,
reach, grasp, alas
the lace and white entwined
in piercings thru the darkness.
Green flutters to red.