For many years I waded through waist-high grass
Balancing this wide, empty pail on my head
waiting patiently throughout
for the sparse clouds - at last!
Sprinkling their swollen dread
through my many arms, stretched out
They gathered and buffooned above me
To irrigate the ancient prairie.

Thousands of unturned acres
drank up my tendency to the land
from the reservoirs residing
within me like open hands.
I remember six annual cycles
of lonesome, diligent drought
when the heat of god's light
dried even my memories out.

This August arrived inconspicuously
as a thicket of stormy pillows
roared deeply into the scene
From just the apex of the peeling cliffs
Signaling that they could see.

And they rolled towards me.
The closer they got,
The smaller we seemed
as the fields gazed together
at what felt like a dream
Then, far too late,
I realized with dismay
That I could not hold so much
Not in this form; not all in one day

I'd have to dig wells into the earth
Just to taste for acidity
And without any support
I'd need to track our own fecundity
Because some grounds would be
Too thick with clay:
The gift would be pointless
If I just let it drain away.

So as the storm roared onto us,
I recited the prayer of healing
And coughed out that blissful laugh
As my body lost all its feeling,
boring into the ground,
spreading a hundred hectares
the widest I could manage
while my pace was hastened:
A young crater for new life.
Your great wasted basin.

i write poems when im lonely
because they remind me
of what an animal i am

i walk into the street at night
in nothing but my ******
to greet my shining friend

i play stories in my head that i remember
of the people and places
that i will never see again

i stand like a tree and gaze into the mirror
relaxing my breath
and holding my own hands

i stay up late worrying for myself:
what will happen to me once
everyone's dead?

i wish i didnt love my family or my cat.
could i ever be happy
and alone in my bed?

the clouds are not
something you can bully into a corner.
even though they appear
to flee from nothing
without cause or meaning,
they are huge coins
bellowed beneath space
cradling something
for earth's ***** organs
squeezing something
so precious and volatile
that even the breath of machines seem
valuable.
as i become lost under the eye of light,
i realize i can no longer distinguish my need
to track your scent
from your desire to be pet.

before we can blink
the earth has already spun into silk.
we hurl along through time and space,
stuck on the end of a stringed cat toy
as she swirls
magnificent clouds around her head
propelled in her rotation
and strung along endlessly
by the very bright beast
that has always been
slowly, slowly
swallowing her.
these thoughts are torrential as a hurricane
and as cruel as a tornado
poking into monstrous existence
treating earth like a sandbox.

Relax,
she calls through the roar.
You're in a classic trap.

That is only the quiet grasp of your mind,
the child of so much shouting,
recalling my story.
Your quiet mind, remembering
all at once
all the words which sounded
unwarranted or excessive.
Your quiet mind, leading you
to accept that it all was,
or could maybe have been,
necessary to say.
This is your acknowledgement of the jurassic times,
when diamonds and gold
still pierced my belly.
You must notice the dust settling
all around you for what seems to be the first
and final time:
just for today, when everything quakes
and rots
in a perfect rhythm.

Got down on the ground to feel around
Daydreamed of Dragon in their cloud
Roared silently before I was no longer allowed
Meditated with darkness to make them feel proud

Forgot my dreams, smoked some ****
Remembered something more important
Used chemistry to cook fresh fruit
Played Sudoku on the toilet

Skipped school just to stay home
Believed I hadnt learned nothin good yet
Moved to the shower as the ghost of the hour
Grabbed my tongue then wiped off the quiet

depends on me for sustenance,
companionship, and reassurance.
she's like every other partner I've ever had

She comes everywhere with me
she walks around the lake with me
and loves to visit the strange mountains.
she leaves when i ignore the truth.

Today I spent hours
watching thick peels of clouds
raking shadows on one another
without crying,
then I told my doctor exactly how I feel.

My body scars so easily
but has never been broken
it's pointless to despair
no matter how old you are.

My nerves are alive, behind my teeth, in my tear ducts
i'm a shivering rabbit ready to bolt
seeing everywhere with my wide ears
for a sign of Danger, dressed in disguise.
her angry love emerges from the humus
whispering like a father:
"Lie down before you hurt yourself."
"Why did you try to lift so much?"
it replays all the stupid, lazy, selfish
**** I've done in the past 6 months
"Why are you still ******* around with that?"

Hold the door open for your friends
then give them some misdirection as they pass.
you must be the first genius in the world to think of it:
avoiding vulnerability by any means necessary.
all attempts to justify my behavior fall short of conviction.
i align my ethics with my actions when it's most convenient.
(and, as I'm reminded, only amidst the most detailed instruction.)
Danger knows I almost believe it.

But we both know I'm a hypocrite
i may never have stopped stealing from animals
without all the recipes other people have written.
the militant voice would've insisted, "It's Impossible!
humans didn't evolve to limit their nutritional pool!
and you're already shuffling half-assed through work and school!
Just think of something else to make you frown,
cut your losses and leave this large-small town.
They are nature's slaves caught unawares."

So who notices? And even then, who cares?

i love your versatility
you pair as charitably as a free agent
i want your bold bits and knobby
ends on my tongue mid-conversation
i like you soft or solidly
jealous green or dark hibernation
I admire your growth's autonomy
with capacity for toleration

i always cook it sloppily
blinded by the destination
i like to go for quantity
when i'm feeling most impatient
i know that it's an oddity
to get off on steamed inflation
i have considered that possibly
it's just about my own temptation

it's not worth the vagrant comedy
to divulge that hot equation
i'll cycle back to ecology
since i don't want medication
i can believe in botany
and your scents of motivation
i can't explain it audibly
just that it's instant gratification

i'm lucky that gastronomy
is so easy with your engagement
i think your critics are a monstrosity
to the spirit of entertainment
i don't think you need a recipe
you're good fuzzy, chunked or shaven
i'm a hungry wanton holly
firmly stalked in imagination

Benched
wooden impressions in my thighs
aching lungs and deep, desperate feet

Drenched
sweaty lake corners peeled my salty skin
flower weeds flew from my hands

Quenched
entitled to this angry, unsatisfied throat
as though thirst won't soothe my soul

nobody likes the full name.
the class is known simply as "Cell."
stephen king is just as lazy with his titles.
that fool fears blood.

i was listening to rain washing out the gutters
when our teacher called on me,
asking me to explain in my own words:
"How is molecular transportation so highly organized?"
i posited that organelles are not organized.
they are only civilized:
self-governed by apoptosis and a blueprint of proximal culture,
their manuals inefficient, but honed for cooperation through trial and error.
"I'm predisposed to disagree," he said with a tangible glee.
knowing we all adore his berating honesty.
his question stuck with me.
perhaps because i was working
for the office of sustainability
becoming regularly incapacitated
by the shame and exhaustion of preaching.
leading an uprising through the power of teaching.
i decided the only organized transportation
is an axial conduit to the electorate's war,
always social and hierarchal
because that's what culture is for.
at 19 i was loaded up with a sticky elixir
to be protected from being called a *****.
i will never forget how I spotted lightly for three days
-stopped for one week-
and then for two straight months, it was a downpour.

we are only tearing apart the bitty ants
and there is still blood on our hands.

i believe blood looks best on our hands.
but we were taught to meticulously detach
and to prepare our matching bargains
beneath the atmosphere's volatile dance.
poison is in the body and the air
ready to be bottled and batched.
even when i find my friends
whole and happy in France,
my key stays clotted in the latch.

Kiss The Officer

Good luck. Duty calls
for which she is paid
in lone righteousness,

I'm afraid. Patrol
clean towns with sidewalks
Not To Be Slept On

while more sweet piglets
snort through the mundane,
saving for Swine Week.

North High wrestler:
baby molester.
All those wasted prayers.

Courage emerges
among the new ash
of my burning brain.

dreamed that Current studio hired me
to design
a walkthrough of a ceiling-high,
openly grinning,  paper mache pig's head:
the stable's entrance to tiny pens
packed with caged (paid)
human children
who passed out tiny buttons
enscribed with varying notes:

Please Help
They Did Not Ask Me
I Don't Want To Die
Can You Find My Mom?
I Can Do Math In My Head
Eat More Monkeys
Please Save Us
I Don't Want To Die


But it was an unpopular exhibit
The Oklahoman would not report it
The Gazette managed a story on page 9
Yet advertised Cane's Chicken on page 5

Rattlesnake Roundup is just a few weeks
away
And I have no clue how I could possibly
convey
The value of wild
life.
The degree of their
strife.

Lead me to the classroom globe
That will help me disapparate
Into the hot air, where
I'll float like a ribosome
Trash has no way to dissipate

Notice tension, finality approaches
Accept your need to **** and breathe and be
Inhale the hot air, where
We are indebted to those crimson coaches
God pushes the sky down on you and me

I must fly out of the tussel & be grateful
But I pay Her in ****** taxes
Inside the hot air, where
I must dry out all my muscles & be helpful
But I'm stuck on this flooded axis

The softest voice dripped on me tonight
having noticed I always seem to be
heavy, alone, sopping wet, and alright
The nearest place to where I could flee
was the putrid crab shack of insight
where I insist nothing has happened to me
The cool tidal depth of twilight
tows me up a mulberry tree
it strings my spine quite upright
The silent correspondent lost somewhere at sea
I'm still waiting, rapt, for her postcard, despite
knowing we'll never again be three

What's your mirror think?
Does it watch you disappear?
Does it watch you blink?

Safe beverages
8 decades to puppeteer
Love your blemishes

Dating makes us sad
Auto-ionize our fear
Acting ironclad

Romance; the great farce
We just wanna climb up here
To indulge the hearts

Earth grips my poor eyes
Her key to the stratosphere
Locked up compromise

Dying for mudpools
Mountaineers might make things clear
Hope ya like blood-stools.

Send me a cartoon
Send a silver chandelier
Send me poems soon

(I think we're close enough)
smellin your breath from behind the latched door

(I wanna lock in your love)
bleedin all over the ******* floor

(Now I've got you in my space)
wishin you wouldn't carry a weapon anymore

(I won't let go of you)
needin a meaty man to shield me from downpour

your heart does not need to be torn; it just grows how it knows.
it's contracting
it's branching
it's intercalating

because it likes to hustle!
it's a very special muscle,
it's a mitochondrial tissue
with a workaholic issue.

Hey, don't let anyone hurt you
the way your first loves did.

strength does not come from malleability
it's noncompliance
it's resistance
it's defiance

you deserve better
You will obey,
but never learn.
You could do better

Hey, don't give anyone power
the way your governments did.

worth does not evolve from filth
it's reconstructed
it's degraded
it's consumed

like the vapor pressure pulling water into clouds,
your heart can absorb all it wants.
like the turgor pressure pulling life through a plant,
you'll be full enough to avoid wilting and desiccation.

Don't confuse sharp stabs of self loathing
With the heart's aching throb of emptiness.
Only one is flexion for glory, bending in hunger
The other is not love. It will snap you in half.

Tired of torturing myself
Let me slice you up instead
I promise I'll apologize a lot
afterward
And tell you I still wanna be your
friend

Jealous, dishonest,
incapable of favors
Good luck w the rest
of your desperate endeavors

I see a sky melt,
awestruck by dawn
and exploding
Beautiful and bright

I hold to myself,
blinded bygone
and watching
Doesnt seem right

Why did you hand me your fragile faux gold?
You know I shake
And I squeeze everything too tightly
Why didnt you just do as you were told?
It's a piece of cake
Tack my leash to your swing nightly

I'm repulsed by every innocent offer of spicy love gum.
I still
Find loneliness in bundles, hung teasingly from
The windowsill

I give and take their stories
With no regard for an artistic shape.
It seems to somehow hold me in place.
I don't want my own memories
They're secretly covered in 2-sided tape.
I will resort to your undiluted gaze.

Vladimir whispers comfort to me:
Holly
Holly
Holly
Holly
you should shed your scalesss
on some cheap trolley railssss
Just go, take your passport!
Hold me 'round your neck for sport.


Smouldered by a motley
Who ****** up my good wing
Denying me proxy
Intaking the most vital thing

The wind is my only real motivation
Inciting a remedy verse
It feels like the strangest locomotive sensation
You find me livid and ready to burst

I notice the finality of some tension approaches
Wait! do you feel the need to breathe?
Are we all indebted to these crimson coaches
While god pushes the sky down on you and me?

I want to wait out their tussles and be grateful
But I pay Her in ****** taxes
I want to dry out my muscles and be helpful
But I'm stuck on a flooded axis

Dreaming of San Juan
Where I tracked predator dung
The search goes on
Where we lost one failing lung

Lead me to the classroom globe
Let me decide when to Disapparate
Give me mother's recipe for a ribosome
I'm sure my trash will eventually dissipate

Erasing
A swing
Defacing
Her ring

Thank you, please, I'm sorry, OK!
This is the **** I've learned to say every day.
You handed me your boyfriend like a present
But wouldn't share with me 1 non-incriminating secret?
You're welcome, sure, it's cool, alrighty,
this is the sensual might of my aphrodite
you interrupt my stories, tell me i'm a mess,
then call me the person who understands you best

If your cracking laugh, loud as a bark
didn't bend me over like a punch to the spleen
defiled again! my own clumsy fault, i suppose
If your approval of my paintings
didn't heat my thighs and send me reeling.
death in my pillow and loss soaking my clothes

I wouldn't have cared if it was just a dumb mistake,
But I smell your poison, heavy in the air
And my throat swallows as much as you want it to take
After years of sharing every horror story
You have not even begun to know me

Or don't you care about shattering this trust?
We are out of supplies needed to rebuild our bridge.
Hovering in anticipation, waiting for you to settle all this dust
But you won't offer a thing that's not inside your fridge.

And I still don't know how to leave you
The myths of queerness are not at all true
Girls might steal as much as they want from me, too
It's all some people know how to do

If you're so OK
with flying away

I should make do
with buzzing off too

i'm practicing
believing that all I do is degenerative

i'm practicing.
my frowns which seem accumulative

i've imagined
a time without bars and smoke shops

I've imagined.
ways to transform myself into a cyclops

every time he touched me
i felt him memorizing me like a wreck
every time she touched me
i felt her heartbeat caught in my own neck

they are problem solvers.
i had cushioning companions
fuller and calmer than me.
perhaps someday i'll tell them this
if i ever learn to handle it:
the open, raw closeness.

In the meantime, i'll remember her
laughing into my legs
immersing us in the soft hair from her head
and his enchanting voice
inflating my lungs;
the simple gift of speech in bed

the moment right before their contact,
a few light-years away from being.
the moment between shine and its reflection,
just a hollow eternity to all the space in between.

company?
I starve for the long moments
that thick time of silence together
feasting on whatever he just said.
community?
I crave gazing at an orb of truth
wholly understanding one another
a vague sense of being like her family.
civility?
honoring the ghosts of our realities
and remaining gravely touched
by the mortal ritual at hand.

I couldn't deserve either of you
just promise me you'll understand
or at least try to
get the ******* my land

we were small children when we grew up

wishing our parents would talk to us about the beloved Constitution,
not at us
wishing our parents would decide to quietly invite themselves
into our ideas, questions, our favorite novels
instead of constantly quoting their own favorite parts of The Bible
instead of complaining so fervently about Islam and poor people

wishing instead of asking
scrambling instead of composing
Do you remember anything?
You were small, and barely talking
But always laughing with me, listening
pointing and nodding

we were orphaned for 3 months as toddler and tiny girl,
while they were mobilizing in Saudi Arabia,
we were stuck with a violent guardian from the family, and I remember
her biting my arm, and pushing her chair
onto mine to crush my fingers when she was mad, and I remember
mom screaming at her over the phone when she found out, and I remember
she loved to kick our dog and sleep in their bed and I remember
deciding to say nothing when I saw this
and how she never saw me watching, the narcissist that she was.

so by age 5 my parents now knew that I was certainly old enough to pay close attention
and when mom and dad were deployed to Egypt for 9 months and 6 months, respectively,
they orchestrated a sequence of 3 live-in sitters trading off every 2 weeks, periodically,
we were stuck in a cyclical round of stuffy, busy au pairs
and I was the host
and I kissed dad's picture because he would call us almost every day
and mom would not
yet it was her I remembered the most
yet it was dad that you actually forgot

When we had them back I realized
I wanted to forget him, too, sometimes.
I hated worrying about them. I remember when I was 7 and our dog died
His heart was so debilitated for months.
Soon after he was able to fling our replacement puppies
in a fit of rage, just once
He retired first, that year, while mom was shipped off to Kuwait
Soon we found out he had no friends, she was his only mate
We felt sorry for him
We ate tv dinners every day and night for 6 months
And although I do have small handfuls of memories
with his hands suddenly on my throat and me on my knees
They always end with him apologizing and sobbing
And me, unscathed but shaken, glowing but glaring

by ages 8 and 10
we were reciting the bill of rights and criticizing welfare
but still could never understand ?
competition or war or cosmetics or long hair

I would always march, I felt like a boy and a girl
and also felt like neither one, I would always twirl
I was taught early on that accomplishments
are more
valuable and profitable of an experience
than forming,
with no meaning, such fleeting relationships

I've ending up simply not comprehending courtship
I might be a light, empty holster that you cannot equip.
I've never sensed the fond feeling of an honest liaison
Except at funerals where I'm free to imagine my own expiration

there are those of us who found kindness by insight
while we were taught to play the offense and be glad to fight
Yet intuitively we knew this aggression has a cost
so we harbored it within our frontal lobes, where we became lost
Some of us have been fighting demons since
our own hearts could breathe and our own eyes could rinse,
And the real reasons we did bad things
were simply too boring, too excruciating

these children fear, then assume, their best friend won't want to play
having discovered that having daydreams may be impending dismay
these are all the people who I haven't ever gotten to greet
they echo my certainties that there are other stories to meet

we were children who always imagined being a squib
keeping faith that wizards and wands were real
they'd take us away from this place to another glib
world of feasts and friends
A house consistently without parents, a house in which we could heal

The first mistake he made
Was comparing me to the moon.
He saw a pattern in my sadness,
A floating echo, a heavy balloon,
People are not echos.
What else could I say?
He would strangle me with flattery
if it would excuse his behavior from saturday.
I will not humor him. I will not do it.
But his persistence may corner me into violence.

No, the moon does wonders
It shines, and then it passes
Hiding behind clouds of wet thunder
It moves me, and the masses

Scraping his guts off the wall, he cried
Drunkenly sighed my name
gave me all the blame
Because I had agreed to pregame
So I should bear all kinds of shame
for enduring his obsessive habit,
even a minute of it,
and for getting tagged into his suicidal ball game.

After all my patience and dedication and stories,
they're finally sold.
So, what now?
Just **** out their souls?
Egos covered in rage and big talk and
lonely, putrid mold.
Now I am just finished.
This house is finished.

Yes, it takes a thousand moments.
Yes, it takes lies and perseverance.
There are hundreds of ways to get what you want.
I might look delicate but I
feel pretty blunt.
Why should I pause for a beast I've condemned?
He does not glow,
he is not moving,
he has only loved in vain.
I would like you
instead.

I love when you come back.
You wax and wane.
You are too big for my pain.
You are the light in the night.
You are always out of sight.

there is so much grace to see
and so many ways to be
Wait With Me Patiently
Bless Me With Your Ability

the most perfect people invited me in their oddities
to their cozy crib for a night of civil anomalies.
they moved like dancers who dabbled in alchemy
and already i've created such a powerful fantasy

that i want to cancel all my summer plans
to touch their brilliance
and draw their soft hands
hoping they don't have terribly high demands
from other mollusks with failed projects
and weak attention spans

the tides within me rise,
higher than love,
roll with unfathomable speed,
crash so forcefully that i
then rise again.
i think i want them both
to love me like an oath.
i think it takes a lot of art
to grip a heart
so stretched apart.

i was introduced to these artistic geniuses
while i climbed the trees that jesus said
are made for monkeys: that's you and me
i've got it on letterhead. i have his blessing.
how slowly did you consider your discipline?
are you sure there's nothing you did not intend?
trust yourself to step aside and to pitch in.
this love is like clutching and grasping at nothing,
weeping and killing to reject my smallness.
my mark on his ***, my words in her ear.
i think i need more stamps to send ahead my gear.

fierce, powerful love erupts
on my left and right
their sudden smiles
baking me like a pastry.
lava leaks from my scalp,
thawing out my frozen eyes.
she laughs when i look at her.
she says i look just like him.
and we all gaze at each other,
knowing different things.
i feel singular
peace in my privacy

when suddenly i realize
i'm climbing an un-manageable height
on a ladder of flies
and a dozen sticks of dynamite.
there's too much to behold
among these clouds
even if they are, at first, cold
treetops cast in pale shrouds
and wet with slippery dew.
they call me to you.

holding lightning and hydration
it tears my name into pieces
and hands back all my devastation.
i could not share myself
even in our circle of small fires
i'm too huge and too small to decide
between any of my desires
i will thank them for calling me there
where it's okay to be a liar.

and if she could just tell me now
what it is her lungs ache for, and how, then
i could decide whether or not to disengage
with practicality.
i could decide whether to save or surrender
my time and energy.

i'm sectioned in itemized pieces, i'm the imperfect circle
with a small vacuum near my middle.
i'm the triangle transforming a line into a sphere
and finally finding my shape somewhere in here.

earth.
i'm the boundary outside the thermosphere,
look at us. just marvel with us.
earth.
i relinquish every ruling in my self-preserving fear
of the godly green guts.
earth.
what if i'm making it darker down here?
my teeth could break the crust.

i feel promiscuous
even when i am fully clothed
when I hear, "did you miss us?"
i feel my heart swell,
feel it split and explode
from a most painful knowledge,
what this foolish heart loves
that is; their marriage.
it is one friendship
i'd be disgusted to see die
it is one wholesome, lively thing
regressing my ineptitudes without reply.

my specialty is a destructive blast
that only hurts for a day
but for you both, i could not.
i'll just let this incense rot.
so grant me time and access
to the parts of your mattress
that you both find time to share
give yourselves a bed-rest
and I'll leave two pairs
of my flowery underwear.

There's a space
     the size of space
between your heart and mine
     but I don't know who put it there
Maybe we're supposed to grow
     antlers and dance
away, prance
     like princes and apologize
Distress was the name
     of your misery mistress
Gumbo is the noise of
     our heart and our faces
All I could tell you is that I'm not gone
     I can't even leave yet
There's a pact for us to finish,
    you agreed to it too
We set our shoulders square,
     angling our elbows to fit into
That box at the bottom
     of the glittering acidic pool

and we jumped
missing our ways of unlocking each other
and we meant it
I never expected
to be anything (besides being myself)
before I met you.

It all turns into you.
The daylight
promising me
magnificent ability
to make anything real of the hour
for I was aware of our talent long
before I met our power.

The moon does a better job than you
I crystallized the cuts on my hands
then I dripped them
on your back
How could you believe
we're supposed to stay
on one track?

Maybe I'm not as natural
as you helped me believe
But I do match myself
consistently
And I fit into people like
a circle in a square
while you are too much like
me to even enjoy the air

Generally
I think we crave
otherness

Sparks, imperial journey to the great gold
     it's day for shining
     dark for crying
     and pining
     deciding
     where to go? in this great blue world
I see lines
     better to remove the dust and
     grab whatever's floating

How would we stay alive for ourselves?
          Tell me what a real person is.
          Ask me what a real human is.
Green, I feel green
     in the face and the toes
     because green grows
     what the heart knows
Safety is gone
     but i feel alright. Just because it might go away doesn't mean I have to hold on harder, or bite down stronger.

Everything slips, because
     everything slips.
     Hang me on a string
     and rid the town of my modern making
They wanted a puppet
     but they gave me the wrong color
     the mismatched wood
     uneven cards and googly eyes
     that see too much.

Maybe the sun could bleach me
     back to a perfect dolly
     on the windowpane
     for your pleasure and my disdain
We could avoid the mess
     of dancing under Vega
     Aquarius is finally here
     and it only talks this way
     in the summertime
But I've learned to listen:
     love sets in after time, and distance is quickest.

I sent a letter admitting that it's partially my fault
     for losing myself in the hanging orb
     but internally I knew that distance is quickest
I sense a change above our hearts
     and it wants
     an audience
Maybe the stars know what to do?
     Down here it's not true
     to say we have any clue

If there only was a way to learn that Sparks in the sky
     are opportunities to try
          and lie less
          to be great and honest
     Learn that distance is quickest

Green: the spaceship of our baby dreams
     and quilt seams
     begging us to replant
     and re-*** and re-hash
     for a brighter future
     a lighter day
Wringing on my knees in the end
     to believe that distance is quickest
     and harmony's not already dead

Finally.
I know that Sparks exist
for me to recharge and rebuild.
They're green and they live in the sky
that we filled
they live in my art and the world's heart
so if safety existed: Sparks would not.
and the distance would look like time.

So tell me why I should be human
when I run so much better as a
shiny
porcelain
battery
backup
mind

Do all people find ways to torture themselves?
We could have colors
and blindness
stacked on our shelves

but we are keen,
enigmatic,
and desperately mean.

lay off the Pause button and I'll Play
the string of
your harp
that nobody else knew how to start
You're ******* welcome,
I'm glad you see I tried,
never did I imagine they'd ignore me when I
cried, or when I
stretched out my hand
for love instead of admiration
comfort instead of more opinions of their conceptualization
of my place in our ***** swarm of civilization

it doesn't mean a thing to be complimented
when you want more than recognition

Nightmares
You are still just
a flash or a scream.
The feeling of losing

my hold
on someone slippery,
for something fleeting

As a young girl, I suspected it:
the carnage of night
Who could have warned me?
How quickly I lost sight
of my role in a cuter world,
holding the brightest light, the guardian
devil, bring me back
to that old familiar cage fight

There are layers of stories within me
peeled back subconsciously where our
atmosphere can contact

It's getting close to a vein
my eyes go skipping over every sound
I'm panicking right now
intensive restructuring
I have lost my way

Vulnerable to pressure
and lonely
Desperate for a push
bologna
I feel so dangerous

I want to love
the warmth of your fire
I bet it feels good
to burn and burn away
Dissipate into ashy air
will you hold me higher
for now? I'm soft I heal quickly I don't disobey
the shear when
it creeps in too far. I get happier
when I find my own stars
I get angrier
when coach scrutinizes my arms

No amount of emotion will bring me closer to life
No color speaks to me
like the bright pigment
from my knuckles
in the corners of my cuticles
over these thighs and ankles

we are only alive briefly
thank god

I reached my arms out as nets in the sea
Said I was prepared to love what was in front of me
     (but I only liked to look at artistry.)
And I should've known that colors wouldn't be enough
The coral in my palms proved that life was always rough
I tried to apologize but they were already stuck in
Weighted like rainbows beneath my soft salty skin

Before I gave up I looked back at the blue
Filled with invertebrates that were nothing like you
And I knew what the plan was, to look again and to try
But by that time the coral were digging into my eye
So you see? It's uncomfortable, I was already hurt
I don't let anything infect my blood with dirt

That's always my excuse, I play it off way prettier
In purgatory they'll ask how I got even dirtier
Because I must look so clean while I feel so mean
Wanting to believe we are all ******* boring

But it can't be true.
Coral is beautiful and alive and every piece is new
But I could never enjoy it  
I'm the coral inside of you

Your fingers are on my throat
   the world is rocking like a boat
an ocean
is unbearable
because it never seems to end
   and all I can do is float

   Your lips are rosebuds that never stop moving
   and somehow I find my own disgust soothing
my fingertips
are numb
whenever I lose myself to the waves
   but you're deaf so I'm unsure what I'm proving

   Your move was the deadly spawn of knight
   I sacrificed my pawn, paralyzed by fright
we will protect
the king
from sicknesses like you, *******
   Checkmate. I never lose a single fight.

sometimes I think I picked you right up
an unexpected hobby
a book not from the library
the scariest soundtrack

sometimes I think you're a deliberate distraction
if you helped
if you stayed confused
if you didn't want that

sometimes we duel like sun and moon
Just let her be, just let me roam.
Just let us dance in our fancy pants.

sometimes I hate you
(I just hate loving you.)
Sometimes I hate you
(I just hate hurting you.)

sometimes for you, it
must seem like something of a bore.
You said it all feels
exactly the last time, just before.

the dark, dark, paralyzed shark
pincushioned a hole in the wall
and said, "remind me. why do we do it all?"
grief is a shiny stairway to ******
showering in syrupy Butalin
i'm so angry at these bad dreams
where did all the good ones go?
i'll never be near the moon, it seems.
i'll always be in my mind, trapped below
that **** who hides
in my teeth and in my skin
lurking trickily where the deepest sin collides
ordering me, ruthlessly: give in

i carry a ghost in my pocket
i can open it up like a deadly locket
revealing it as a helpless demon
ready for the routine depository
of its *****
does it need a piggyback ride
to our castle of ice and pine?
does it want to make its home
in my belly, my nails, my womb?

Someone call an EMT
who will scrape out the rut for me
a few good cleanings,
that's what I need
to finally put away
that black poppy seed
for long enough to try
using my voice at least once
before i get to die.

it will cackle with joy
if my heart suddenly fails.
i will omit all cholesterol
if that's what its punishment entails.
there's such a thin line between inspiration
and replication.
maybe life is meant to be tired
and this shape is all these continents will ever be.

i'm learning to fly
i come and go.
i float and grow.
beating my wings to a rhythm that I breathe in and out-
it sounds exactly like
a quick heartbeat
preying on rabbits and resting in trees
instead of running
becoming dead meat

i'm very good at hiding
i keep it up until I'm as hollow
as lightweight opaque
translucent paper
knowing it can't wait me out forever.
if i could plague it with apprehension
i'd follow him everywhere
and lie about my intentions
until he casually cheats life and leaves me
Here

i imagine there to be a sound of these wooden flutes
fluttering
white flakes by my eardrum
spiriting my shaking fingers
giving me an excuse for the palpitations
rising at the thought of my aggressor
placed inside my flower drawer.

maybe it is my undulating fright
maybe it is cardiovascular might
maybe it is a measurable blight
because i feel stuck in a daydream that steals my hair
and, with a wrenching force, my underwear
using the two to gag me with pressure.

then i wake up
in time, completely alone.
a window is glued under my eyelids
of a time
when I could part my lips on my own

my story starts in North Carolina morning at 5:32
where I was excavated from my mother's womb
2 weeks past due
and immediately taken to an emergency room
because of a minor disfigurement called
ulnar polydactyly
where they laid me down and cut flesh & bone away

value your days and spin on a tire
at the bottom of a tree, twist the rope.
cut away any fray and pickle your desire
it's not a noose, it's not your hope.

i was born differently than peaks explained
i was told medical bills were a blessing obtained
so that my fingers would not continue to grow
so that fortunately, none of us will ever know
where those bitty bits would want to go
where would I go?
if I hadn't been bound
by what I hadn't contained?

how do parents agree to cosmetic surgery on their newborns?

don't they feel sick?

when my mother explained why i had these scars
She didn't ask how they felt on my hands.
and when my father kissed the bumps crunched on cars
He insisted that I had intact, normal, nerve strands.
But I could feel phantom fingers
and devil horns

don't they feel sick?

now I spend every day
chewing all the rest away
Now I count months and men
Men, who will cut their brood out of their only mate
to slice off any disfigurements and hold its jaw in place
then ball those hands in fists so her fingers can rest in peace

please
Listen when I ask for help
don't Give up on my body, just
cut the hearts of those playing God, for
anything Or anyone can happen to a newborn child, or
else, not again, it's
off, not again, not
today, not again.

I'm 6 years old, alone and terribly
glad to be awake
free of the villain that I’d been
free to make
Chunky animated evil clouds and monsters
with human names
mistrusting my family from the
earliest days
imagining my parents were zipped up
in skin resembling mine
their starchy air force uniforms
finding me everytime
Then my baby brother was on time, cooked just right,
born perfectly
When I found out about his circumcision I stopped
feeling sisterly

Why were my sweet, placid parents so surprised by us?
Keeping their secrets and distance from us.
Give us the answers, show us history!
why take me to Sunday School if you
won't sit through all of it with me?

there is nothing more disturbing than weekly church hopping.
there is so much to fear if we do not plan on ever stopping.
when I look for friends
i do so excitedly
looking for their ailments
and finger ******.
wondering who else
is in horror
of their size,
of their capacity.

"Look at these baby spiders in our garden,
Look, momma. They're so tiny.
The pumpkin nearly squished-
There's a centipede!" I'd be whining.
But, oh,
It's gross. I hear "eww" and "oh my god" and
"throw it away, bugs belong outside!"
I can do that. We all belong outside. I can do that.

From Santa Monica to Rapid City
I turned 8 and avoided depression
I plagued every single bookstore with
my ridiculous obsession:
ecology
Tornadoes, forests, food chains and chemistry
already fascinated me

I loved that;
the atmosphere of creation.
Shapes alive
with Movement and
centrifugal Force,
stopping motion, Pressure,
inertia and Speed.

I studied
legs. I watched the
long propelling jumpers, the
tool-like structures, of
insect tarsal claws, and
the spurs like knives.

Then aquatic mammals came to me
Where I first learned about ***:
the whale's hip bone, a mystery.
To the history of earth, it was
Big males, powerful females.
and evolution seemed to be the cause.

Then arboreal anthropods,
Where I first asked about distribution,
toes and fingers,
and counted
on hand
the numbers
and suddenly
deplored extinction.

It was a hot knife in my belly that never went away
I want to ask their god all the questions that besot me
why did they agree (twice!) to cut away that which is not rotting?
If DNA is best selected among genetic diversity, why must we all look and feel the same?
Blanching at any difference, hating on new names.

is it such a disaster
to expect variation from your master?
why are 2 extra phalanges
such ******* calamities?
Why do we observe differences
as an excuse to mutilate newborn babies?
Americans slice ******* off intact baby boys
Americans slice ******* off intact baby boys

A doctor deemed my extensions useless
but left me my brain and heart
which began to terrorize me
from the very simple start

I dreamed of all of us:
scary islands with giant magical
flowering
who was poisonous
to the population of anyone and
anything
who was dangerous
printing off the battle plan which was
escaping
Yes, I dreamed of all of us