when he told me he was sorry to hear that the pain was worse again, i truly believed him. how many ibuprofen can one migraine consume before you implode? and later when he told me i didn’t have anything interesting to say i believed him again. how many words do you use in a day, miss in a day, little ‘hellos’ and ‘thanks yous,’ when your grief has brought you a year of mute mourning. i used to think paris was a pretty place, and there’d be starlight paths leading me to iron lattice towers, but instead the roses floating down a sinewy seine thick with juices from human consumption. how many times can i remember and repeat all the bad things you’ve ever said to me, remember and repeat, and why are they haunting me now? i thought i had finally kicked your face out with my old words, but like a ghastly cockroach you’re always around, observing me, when i can never see you.

it’s one or another,
between the smoke and the ink well.
i could see that you’ve had trouble sleeping.
and you’ll always be this way,
and things will never work out right,
and you’ll be caught in a loop of endless night.
in the end do you think all will be forgiven?
in the end do you think all shall be released?
i haven’t given up days
or nights in your soft embrace.

dawn, lady of the light
reveal my disguises
and let them set aside the fact
that i get addicted so quickly.
i’ve inscribed our names on driftwood
kissed and sent so far.
but the earth is a sphere
bringing everything back to the beginning.
and now we are like tow ghosts
lingering in hallways
instead of finding secrets in each other’s arms.

my mother named me after the tornadoes
that spin with such violence they’re venerated, not feared.
my, what violence has been brought these days
a scattering of cicada wings
and rose tinted smoke
and the blood that marks the spin of the moon,
the one celestial body you can love me under.

"and i’ve got a big fat ******* bone to pick, with you my darling. in case you haven’t heard, i’m sick, and tired of trying."

you should’ve stayed a stranger.

i check my skin in the mirror,
translucent,
i can see the green rivers curling around muscle,
carved caverns bleed when you remove the roots.
how fragile a thing.
how heavy a thing.
the burdens of our mother’s mothers,
their whip sharp tongues like barbed wires lash our backs.
the guilt lives through me,
i’ll pass it along to you, my darling child,
along with the bundles of nerves that reek with screams,
a dirge for the loss of blood.
it wasn’t until i learned how sticky blood was,
like sweat,
like lips,
like hands on hips,
and like my mother’s mothers i danced a whirling carousel.
the dirt is blinding and leaves me in a deadened fog of symbols and letters,
of words,
of words.

there’s an apricot moon
draped in blue robes
suspended in a cloud filled sky.
i don’t want to smell like you,
and i didn’t want to let you touch me.
my impulsive child heart let you in,
and you haven’t found a proper lodging yet though i doubt you ever will.
can’t i scrub myself clean of your touch?
the eau du cologne clogs my pores,
the tree makes my eyes water,
the friction of bodies makes the fog wrap the windows,
the sweat pours down
and i’ve automatically put my arms around you.
as you enter i think about all the other med i’d prefer you to be.

he hugged me too close our faces touched,
alcohol reddened cheeks kissing,
still filling me with the same warmth as if
you let me drink the alcohol from your tongue.
i tried it once, the taste inelegant, whole.
and once i bore it all,
the weight of a man's cannibalistic search for pleasure.
it consumed my soul,
left me to give birth to that which will destroy me in the end when the world is in ruins:
when the green fingers have clawed back their edifices
we'll dare bare feet in the summer heat
filling our bodies with the vibrations
that our ancestors praised in midsummer.
when they chanted to the ghosts of their gods, they could not fathom how quickly you'd become one to me:
   milky white apparitions that taste like smoke dance in the spaces between blinds when the sun finally says goodbye.
   golden like honey, like tanned skin, like syrup, like curls i can't help but twirl my finger around  in your hair

i.
i yelled my name from the mountaintops
and let it echo deep down to the depths
and reverberate back through my past lives.
grotesque and corrupted,
i slide through reincarnation like a flip-book,
letting the pages run together
as i carry the same vices from generation to generation.
if we are doomed to repeat our mistakes,
how many must it take until we finally heal?
if we are doomed to learn nothing from history,
how many stories must we pass down,
mouth-to-mouth,
that show us that the gaping maw of crimes
eventually digests us all?

ii.
i want to live again,
in a cave, dipped in silver, i inhale the smoke of the earth and preach the future.
in the ocean, new colored scales reflecting off sunlight strewn waters.
in a forest, roots running strong through the good earth, fingers reaching up to immortal stars.
in a house, a repeat of yesterday and a repeat of tomorrow, always waking for the same reasons and escaping at night to the same places.

iii.
when the cycle closes,
she’ll come for me.
she’ll sing my sins,
as i cease to be.
take away my breath,
let my skin fade.
put my bones on the scale,
let my soul be weighed.

october never starts this cold,
the slugs are out in droves.
and if the smoke mingles
and our brain chemistry is correct
then why can’t we meet as one?
you’re like ripping off adhesives,
slowly, more painfully, and quickly, you still sting.
you’re like muddy pots and samhain plots,
something once thought of and never again completed.

i’m stuck with a love that can’t compete
and isn’t for want of much,
but it drags its smooth breath over the silver sword
and cuts in deep
when you bring up someone else.

who,
are they to you but pawns?
you forgot to cherish me, your queen
who would release love into your eyelids at night
and take your scars and never once ask about the past.
i know i’ll care better than her, more powerful than her, more straight forward as her, more meaningful as her, more more intense as her…

get yourself up off the ground,
it’s time to stop mourning the life you once thought you’d live.

i’ve memorized the record grooves that impart your voice,
your lungs,
your soul
to me.
a quiet tune of drunkenness and anarchy
that ends with a kiss.
it’s true, i desire you greatly.
i need to feel your aching spine and whiskey lips,
and even though it’s all a fantasy,
i’m in chains again.
for the fourth or the fortieth time, i can’t remember, only that a token of kindness can send me into swirling spider webs and i think you’re the best - above all the rest - like i always do, each paper doll comes down the path and i claim him, i love him, and i see him everywhere, but when the buckles are latched and i throw the key at him,
he doesn’t notice, and fades away.
maybe you’re better, but you’re certainly like all the rest and this charade will play on and on.
and i shall crumble, become the dust and dirt underfoot.
and you’ll ascend, not knowing i exist.

if all things must pass, then why doesn’t your ghost abandon me too?
like a nebula blossoming out to the cosmos, i poured my soul to the milky way and heart to a made up destination, where, if i dare love something i am assured of its inevitable departure. in my hands, the heart feels like a loaded gun, ready to shoot new thorns in my sides.
who cuts deeper, the needle or the thread?
which do you feel more, the needle or its smooth and silky venom?
what burns deeper, the longing for you on humid, sticky nights or the cool emptiness on your side of the bed?

if all things must pass, then why won’t your ghost…pity me and vanish in the white hair of smoke, curling round the windowpane, it hung itself on the fog. i could go on about how vile you were, but its a list that has no end and have already fire to on the effigy of you in my mind, atop that pedestal. but so surely you would fall, one thing leads to another and i need the plates to stop flying and crash, breaking on the floor, and the television to stop playing static. it’s no use to cry over cracked china or black and white distortions if your cheeks are never dry.

liberate yourself, ascend to heaven.
deliver me, let me sink with my demons.

the light looked like flowers that bloom only at night, the shifty ones, that ebb and flow with the alcohol resting on your breath.
you're so tough to get to, you know that? one million effigies burnt,
your name,
my blood,
entwined,
and set aflame.

like a warm day in the middle of winter,
you don’t belong,
and remind us of better things.

i don’t like remembering last autumn.
2. i don’t like remembering last spring.
3. "i wanna make it, i wanna make it wit chu."
4. i loved you, and you as well.
5. i never made a playlist for paris.
6. "the less i know the better"
7. "better late than never; just don’t make me wait forever."
8. that’s the problem with falling in love with musicians, they’re immortalized in songs
9. maybe he was just important for that moment.
10. like a … a… a thing, that bloomed and burst in an instant.
11. supernova?
12. memories are how we travel through time.
13. we are living in the future they imagined in the past, it’s just not the rich and glamorous silver machines, it’s the dusty poverty.
14. "i couldn’t love you any less than now."
15. we want the exact same thing, but for some reason you don’t want me.
16. but sometimes you did, isn’t that strange?
17. did you always have to be drunk to love me?
18. or loving me make you drink?
19. i had a 10 day love affair in paris, how ******* poetic is that.
20. i miss eating chocolate croissants for breakfast.
21. everything is the same, and everything is changed.

arms
a tangle of legs
i’m blind
and i’m following your breathing.
the drumbeats of your heart are keeping rhythm
as we drift along a black expanse lifted up on diamond shores.
and all i can taste is your skin
and all i can want is your more

maybe it was before the salt burned your skin when i was a waitress writin’ out recipes for Death prescriptions.
maybe it was when my hair was long and reached to my knees and in the summer i lived rooted in the good black earth, skin burnt by ultraviolet fingers.
maybe it was when the cancer creeping took hold of my insides, with each dose i took to fix a broken mind, the virus extended through my arteries and veins.
maybe it was wicked, all a fluke. maybe cards lie and candles don’t reignite.
maybe i’ve lost my touch with words and ramble on in the dark, just like the oozing musician...

and the marijuana tasted like the church on stuffy Sundays, mourners locked inside, striking confessions from their ******* with mighty tongues.
a choir, a choir,
a million decaying angels
sing thee to thy rest.
it’s all nonsense words, this fiddle-faddle
when i just want to tell you what i mean but i can’t wrap my teeth around the right words to explain how eloquently exquisite you are, you are
like a diamond, you are, you are.
i’m bleeding words, baby,
sittin’ here, just for you.
how can i tell you the butterflies you give me turn me into a stone each time i look into your eyes and yours meet mine and those snaky tendrils reach down and grab in your skin in all the places i yearn to kiss?
there’s a wall, a force, like the one they pray to, pagan god of love, strike me in the heart with thine arrow, free me of the frozen fear stone grip i so often find myself trapped in.
let the smoke mix with the alcohol and let the tobacco numb my tongue so i may reach the smallest hand through the cracks to brush your arm,
once.
(all i dare.)

maybe he could taste the desperation on my tongue,
the cool way it oozed off like the way the lace slipped off my shoulder.
i believed then i could swallow him whole,
make him a home in my heart.
but he had other plans.
while we noiselessly rocked together in the dark
i was dreaming of blue skies and bluer oceans with no bounds;
and he was counting down the hours till we’d part.
i need you like smoke hits my lungs:
heavy at first,
dripping.
then fully embracing,
enveloping.
then so fleetly flying,
disappearing.
how i hate to watch you both fade naked into the wind.

I see you in my dreams:
a whisper in shadow,
disguised as someone else.
when will the boys come dry without being drenched in your name?
there’s so many
experiences I’ve been living
alone, and I didn’t
think I needed any else,
but now I think,
I was just walking along-side your ghost,
trying to tell myself it was alright.

oh, marionette man,
there’s a hand in your spine, purring in your ear
directions and visions
- love, life, and loss -
loosely slipped from
your lips like a fear.
pulling off of your fingertips,
squeezing your throat to juice out those words on my plate.

oh, marionette man
there isn’t a home for you here.
matchsticks and driftwood,
thin strings and yarn for a heart.
you’ve been flinging your love into space.

later, farmed fetuses spoke worthy of creation,
bucket list spiders,
they cluttered an inky page.
thunder it rolled down the mountainous cliffs
and it struck and it stroked you,
all in your lotus leaf.
storm clouds reached fingers over the ***** field,
seeping in holes bored deep in your cedar legs,
yawning and mewing and shouting and firing:
we now know where love lies alone.

oh, marionette man,
if earthen materials constructed your insides,
then what am i?
stretched over a surface,
veins pumping this burden,
a hollow space in your chest,
i feel it too my dearest.
aching of rivers and
******* in forests,
the movements are a ballet
but we haven’t an audience.
splinters cut deeply,
they stick in my flesh
but i’ll take them, i’ll take them,
for your empty heart space.

we don’t know who we are.
we don’t know what madness is.

but we breathe in the air,
let it soak into lungs,
and then won’t it please drown us:

Whole and then Undone.