You're just a washed up superstar
Not even 17

Chains of charm bracelets and promise rings that appear in your hand like poison ivy crawls up a wall
Your tattoo, an artfully rendered serpent in a bikini climbs up your arm
Tar from the cigarettes you inhale like they're oxygen climbs up the walls of your lungs
Can't you see?
Promise rings mean nothing if you give them out like free candy

He's in love with me she says
He's gonna marry me someday she says
Did you see what that mouth do? He says
Do you see that *** swing? he says

I know you.
Living off of broken guitar strings and LSD
Hollows of your cheeks amplifying your voice, your song that everyone no longer listens to

You make mistakes,
In bottles of ***** you drink, 5 they say
5 girls in one night they say
Suspended for 5 days they say
5 cuts up each arm they say
You're in the hospital with a tube shoved down your throat and a dozen girls weeping at your bedside
Spoiler alert. None of them leave you. They actually believe that you have 11 cousins.

You're Apollo 13
A mission that fails a space shuttle that bursts into flames at the slightest
Static
Shock

The  first time I can remember writing a poem was in 3rd grade. We wrote haikus about springtime and when we had 4 we sewed the paper together with pink yarn and gave it to our mothers for valentine's day.  The first poem that I read was about friendship.I didn't like it.The first poem that touched me was about suicide. It talked about pretty elfin faces turned up to the light and how when the blood splattered it looked like a rose a bouquet of flowers between her legs she said no he said yes, more.  The thing was I thought that pulling a trigger on yourself was beautiful. I had this image of a skinny girl in a white dress leaning over a toilet letting all the bad pour out of her pink lips.  thought that carving his name into your stomach fat was meaningful and that scars were a thing to be proud of. I thought that only eating celery and working out until you fainted was cinematic. The reality is that the blood splattered because the bullet cut a dime sized hole in the back of her mouth and came out where her ponytail would have been. The pressure shattered her larynx and lodged pieces of bone, teeth, and cartilage in the surrounding skin. Her tongue was torn to shreds and her metal retainer melted into her gums.  There weren't flowers between her legs, there wasn't even a ******.  She never said no but she never said yes. They were in love and wanted to be together but she didn't want him. She pretended she enjoyed it and cried in the bathroom when he fell asleep.  When you zoom into the picture of the bulimic girl in a white dress you will see that she isn't a teenager she's 40 but she still looks like a child. Starvation prevented her bones from growing. Her lips are chapped and she has sores lining her gums, burst blood vessels in both eyes. Her hair is long but thin and dry and her eyelashes had fallen out and never grown back. She is kneeling over her daughter who offered to pay for rehab's toilet because she ate too much during thanksgiving.  She bruises easily and the purple isn't the color of a night sky it is the color of deoxygenated blood vessels popping under her skin and congealing like fat on a turkey.  Carving your name into your rolls doesn't make him come back to you, it prevents you from ever wearing a bikini. Stop making self harm and mental disorders seem beautiful and romantic, because there is nothing beautiful about having to bury your only child because he forgot to eat and used the razors one too many times.

beauty is the curve of his bottom lip
beauty is the hollow at the base of his throat
beauty is in the mole right above his belly button
beauty is his hipbones peeking out of his jeans
beauty is his abnormally long toes
beauty is the crinkle in the outer corners of his eyes
beauty is his crooked teeth
beauty is his eyelashes, longer than any girls
beauty is the gentle bend of his shoulders when he bends over his guitar

he is the reason to smile on a rainy day
the quickening of my heart when my phone vibrates
he is the doubt and uncertainty that vanish with a single "'love you"
he is the feeling of a fire on a cold night
he is the random smile
the wink
the drunk text at 2 am
the sober text at 2 pm
the call where we fall asleep together
1000 miles apart

I videochatted him last night
I opened my laptop
slipped on a **** little black dress
turned on the webcam
video connected
I didn't say a word but i did as i was told
slithered my hands around my body pretending that they,
they were his hands
I slipped that **** little black dress over my hips and over my shoulders and over my head
I smiled and put ******* into my mouth
hard
I
bent over
arched my back
tossed my hair over my shoulder as i moaned his name
his hand is moving quickly into his pants
his hand, my hand wants to be in his pants
and he is sighing and i am licking my lips
when he is finished and we hang up
I take my ******* and slide them in between my legs pretending that they are his hands

I crave you
your fingertips gliding up my back
your breath hot and wet in my ear, in my mouth, down my neck
i want you to see me without anything on
i want to see you the same way
i want you to pull me closer until the space between us doesn't exist
i want you to pull me so close, hold me so tight
that i would be afraid of my ribs shattering
i want to feel you underneath the sheets, you body and mine
i want to scream
i want your fingernails digging into my back
i want your breath coming faster and harder in my ear
i want to see you, the control i have over you etched in every line on your face, your head tipped back and you sighing my name like its the only word you know


i want to wake up next to you,
the morning after
and feel your chest rise and fall and know that you are dreaming about me
i want to kiss your sleepy lips and hold your body close to mine and make you dream about me

a teardrop of tangy flavor on the tip of my  tongue
a dome of sunset gold dripping down my throat
the sensation of my stomach contracting around an acidic bite

dig your toes into the sand
take a deep breath and hold one two three
all you have to do is sink

the first one
his name was agustus
and he tasted like freshly fallen snow
he used to sing for me
random songs he composed
he'd play on the guitar with only 3 strings
and his hair would fall over his eye
his hair like straw blown soft by that wind that wind of winding mountains
and when he sang to me
of me
even the trees strained to listen
him and his broken down guitar

i wish that you  would call me now
i love hearing the smokey sound of your tired voice
my heart soars with every crinkle of your laughter
i wish you would've call me, once more
before you stopped calling me babe and deleted my number

Anyone can lie, lies lies lies like lemon pies two eyes that i despise
Very lazy slightly hazy my eyes my lies i despise my lemon pies
And last of all i cry i cries my lies that i despise my deep green eyes cry

I feel so ******* sad and so ******* hopeless and everytime he smiles at her my chest hurts and I don't know what I did wrong but I can't rely on anyone anymore and I thought I could this is what i get for caring so **** much **** I can't breath and I'm sitting here in science and she's fluttering her eyes at him and I want to **** her my heart is pounding in my chest and there's an anchor sitting in my stomach and a tidal wave rising in my ears and my eyes are stinging from the thought that he never loved me

All i wanted to do was to call him
have him breath steadily into my ear as my chest imploded
feel his fingers curve around my back
but i didn't because
he was the problem

She walks toward me in the bar on 28th street, and I glance in her eyes and see the expired contacts peer out at me from her listless pupils and cataracts. I see regret fogging the edges of her irises and the loss of what could have been a long and wealthy life to her father. He was terrible, I can see a belt flying through the air and landing on a teenage girl that snuck out one night she tried to leave but he kept her hidden in his broken beer bottles and white lies, the lies keep scratching at her throat shes sick oh shes so ill she needs a doctor, all skin and bones and her mother is crying and her breath is dying and her father is lying to the social worker at the door. she tries to scream but her cracked desert of a throat gives away and her mother hands her a cigarette and she inhales and vomits and her mother is screaming about wasting a good cigarette and a meal too but this girl's eyes are fading and the maggots wriggle under her skin and she’s lying on the floor and rotting, her lungs are back but she’s whispering to me about a boy that took her innocence away at fifteen, and how he called her a ***** and threw her dignity away, now she’s muttering about a baby that wasn’t supposed to be born and a man that hurt her hurt her and killed the baby and how the sister her sister and now she’s out of breath and wheezing about how her sister went to harvard and while she raked the yard her sister graduated and made a beautiful career and now she’s screaming at me with the last ounce of life that her father is dead and all she ever does is sit inside with her mother, smoking and reading last weeks newspapers but now her mother is dead and this is her first time out alone. She tells me this, with only her eyes.

do you know how your accusations chafe at my skin
like sandpaper you corrode me into dust
you leech the life out of me, you *******
and you murmur into my ear pretty lies as you stab me from behind
don’t worry baby
we’ll be alright
but you love the way my tears taste
the way the salt rests on your lying tongue
but to me
the salt burns ravines into my skin
turns my flesh into divine sin
i wish
for one moment
i could make you cry the way you make me love

The blue honda pulls up to the curb. A strange lingering fog is tinged purple. He steps out of the car, and looks around. His phone buzzes in his pocket, but he ignores it in a moment of awe. What meets his bleared city eyes is a sight like no other. Looming in front of him is green woods, seemingly taking shallow breaths in the mist. Then, shadowy swirls form into tentacle-like wraiths. He stood frozen for what seemed like forever. Then a shadow slowly crawled onwards him, slithering on the gravel. It tentatively touches the tip of his shoe and he scrambles back into his car and locks the door, trying to steady himself. After telling himself repeatedly that it was just his imagination. Not real. Not real. Not real. Feeling better, he picks up his phone and calls his wife back. The phone rings, and the normal sound brings him back to the present. He looks towards the woods. He quietly scoffs to himself, what an idiot he was, it was only his imagination. Something catches his eye.He doesn’t see anything. Looking towards his phone something catches his eye again. Upon a second inspection he looks and finds nothing. He looks down on his phone, why can’t his wife pick up already? Something catches his eye a third time and he looks, there is no mistaking  the shadows leaking towards his car. he hangs up desperately and attempts to call again.It rings once and the shadows seem to leak into his car, it rings twice, and the shadows seep into the open window, it rings four times, and she finally picks up.
Her lone voice rings out
Hello?
…
Are you there?
…
Honey, are you ok?
...

when i see you smile at her
why do i think of blood pouring from my veins
why do i imagine,
a ****** note
pinned next to my lifeless hand
and you read words
said by a dying tongue
written with a blue finger
why did you look away, my love
my love
why did you leave me
pinned to a cross, dead from your infidelities
why did you look away, my love
my love
while i pined away for a dream that would never become reality
why did you look away, my love
my love
when i was standing right in front of you
yet, you were too blind to see

My clammy my hands grasp on to my humanity
but bit by bit slips through my hands
What’s left of me
I don't like what’s left of me one bit but I can't help it
I am trying and trying to hold on to once was as it floats in the air like balloons
and the string gets too high much much too high
and I yearn and I grasp and it slides from my fingertips up and up and away and away
and I can't give a ****
I’m a husk of what could be
what once was floating through the stars
I loved you I loved you I really did try but it wasn't enough
not enough time not enough love not enough life
I lost myself and I can't find him
and what's left of me can't care to try

to a pining pine tree
a wallowing wallaby
a spendid spleen
******* on you
*******

i don't feel anything
i don't want to feel anything
if i did feel, then i would feel every bladed smile creep up my wrists and i would feel the hollow of your missing love in my breast and then the  walls would fall and the your lips pressing into mine would mean something and the earth and sun and stars would shatter and the fireworks in the childrens eyes would cease to glow and blood would rain down like water and the lips of politicians would be dripping with lies  and the antagonist would get off scott-free andandandandand
it would hurt

I watch as you hold her hand tight
I stare as you kiss her cheek
Soft as a butterfly
I wonder if you see everything in her
That you claimed to see in me

I fake a smile as you try to make amends
I pretend to laugh as you joke of the news
Of us just being “friends”

I look into your eyes and watch them shine
Just the way they did when you looked in mine.
I watch your genuine smile
I know she loves it, because I did,
No I do too

is I bad that I wanted to cry,
when I realized you don't see
Whatever was in her eyes in mine anymore?

today i asked my mom what happened on 9/11 here is how that conversation went
me: what happened on 9/11
mom: Well, a plane crash-
me: what really happened
mom:(sigh) I was nursing you
mom:i found out, by a phone call. it was grandma karen, she called and asked if your dad was ok
me:Then what
mom: I called him
mom:he said he was hungry so he went to get mcdonalds before his flight
me:wait, he was supposed to be on that flight?
mom: he missed his 1st class boarding and they wouldn't let him on.
me:wow
mom: we were 5 minutes away from losing him. but that idiot wanted mcdonalds(crying) and he missed...his...bleeping flight!!!
Mom: you were barely over a year and your father was nearly killed
me:oh my gosh
mom:
me:
mom: then, i turned on the news in time to see the second tower fall.
me:
mom: it was strangely beautiful, no, thats not the word.... it was

captivating,

like a bad car wreck you can't look away from. and the world stopped, and inside i was praying to god even though i had never prayed before in my life.
me:
mom: thats what happened on 9/11
me:
mom: thats what happened

haiku, seventeen syllable poem
how can you write a good thought
its stupid really,only seventeen syllables

While you drain that bottle of whiskey
And you wonder "Where did I go wrong?"
All your life you’ve been trying to be the best
And the prettiest
And the smartest
And the kindest
And yet no one even bothers to love you like you want to be loved.
So you form ****** valleys in your skin
You turn flesh into flaming sin
You find The One
You exchange saliva and phone numbers
A week flies by
Gone
Now there’s a new dose of drugs at 3 am
And your mother is screaming “where have you been”
You sear trails with your tears across your cheeks
A whole new fusillade of lies and self-hate
Stab at the moon
Dream about being ripped apart.
Then you spend hours and hours screaming
"I don’t need you! I love myself! I love me!"
They rip your perfect complexion to shreds
Never have I met anyone who wants,
So badly,
To hate other people,
If only just half as much as they hate themselves

It doesn’t matter what language you speak because all screams sound the same
It doesn’t matter what your skin color is because all blood runs muddy red
It doesn’t matter if you are afraid because everyone has the same fear
It doesn’t matter what god you worship because even the gods run in the end
It doesn’t matter how big your eyes are because they still cry the same tears
It doesn’t matter if your ears can hear because it’s always rumors and lies
It doesn’t matter what clothes you wear because we are all stripped of humanity
It doesn’t matter if you are smart of stupid because we are all suffering from insanity
It doesn’t matter if you **** now because we all die the same way
1 death is a tragedy
1,000 deaths is a statistic

All you could do was walk away with clenched fists leaving me
On the ground trying to pick up shards of glass,
Ribbons of tears,
And pieces of the moon;
You left me to salvage the pieces of myself.
The truth is, you left me in a maze of my thoughts
Like a rat chasing its tail
And I'm sorry it was never you, you always tasted bitter and burned
I only wanted to melt away the emptiness in your irises,
Break away from the distraught grip of your fear
Did I ever tell you can't just set thing on fire because you like to watch ash float?
You were always so wreckless.
With my bleeding and broken heart in your hands all you could mutter was,
"I made a mess."
A man once told me that anyone good for me would never hurt me
And I suddenly forgot that,
When your eyes turned to icy corridors and your hands, tightened leather
The truth is, you left me there in the dark.
And I haven't emerged.

While you drain that bottle of whiskey
And you wonder "Where did I go wrong?"
All your life you’ve been trying to be the best
And the prettiest
And the smartest
And the kindest
And yet no one even bothers to love you like you want to be loved.
So you form ****** valleys in your skin
You turn flesh into flaming sin
You find The One
Late night calls and good morning texts
A week flies by
Gone
Now there’s drugs at 3 am
And your mother is screaming “where have you been”
You sear trails with your tears across your cheeks
Stab at the moon
Dream about being ripped apart.
Then you spend hours and hours screaming
"I don’t need you! I love myself! I love me!"
They rip your perfect complexion to shreds
Never have I met anyone who wants,
So badly,
To hate other people,
If only just half as much as they hate themselves

I walk into her room, and it speaks to me
She is wishful and hopeful
Says the four leaf lucky clover
Unwillingly so says the paper dolls,
But still very youthful
Too embarrassed for toys
Sleepless and stressed says the fitful bed
Homework, appearance and boys
Brain overload, always filled with dread
All of this says the little journal
Pages and pages filled,
Shoved under the mattress
Afraid and unsure, whispers the teddy bear
Not alone, but only at home,
Reaching out but always withdrawing her hand
The tall girl with the (supposedly) ditzy blonde head

She hands me the apple,
Plump and green,
I bite
Apple smell soaks the air,
**** tangy
The next apple she gives
Is red
A band of yellow
Bite
Crunch crunch
Overripe sweet
Soft and tasting of summer
The last summer
All I remember is a hospital bed
A nurse telling my mother
Critical
Goodbye great grandma
Before we leave I give an apple back
Just ripe, crunchy and sweet
The visit after she hands it back
She says, don’t forget me
And with tears in her eyes
A wrinkly hand closes around mine
I’ll see you later
No
Not ever
She replies
After she died, I tried to keep the last apple of hers
My eight year old brain not believing
I thought she would live forever
Please, mommy
Tell me I’m dreaming
I put it in the freezer
3 months later
Rotten at the core.
With a burst of disgust I throw it away
Nothing left
Nothing gold can stay

They sold her house
The apple tree,
The last apple