We are sitting and I am talking but only in the way that I think will impress you because I think maybe if you see I have an interest in contemporary art you will think that I am intelligent. She said that calling my statement art was an offense to what she does and we just laughed.

Flannery told me that a good man is hard to find and my english teacher told me that Flannery was a genius and my mom told me that my english teacher was amazing and my grandma told me that my mom was the smartest person she knew and my dad told me that I am so lucky to be able to do such great things with such little effort.

That cat slithers around the lamps and books and candles and pictureframes. *******,
cat

rich people go to die
and the young people who live there
have lived there forever
are going to live there forever

thats what the river
behind my house told me
as I waited for the smell of the hello
when the school bus pulled up.

I think that is when I knew I wanted to be rich and never work.

That's also when I gave the kid next to me the finger.
Because he said something stupid.

The demon driver of despair reprimanded me.
But, Barbra Streisand would say I had chutzpah.

The Asian grocery store in Aurora terrorizes the people.
The smell of fish genocide punches me in the face every time I walk in.

Nothing was the same now that home was in another state.
NOw that the lethargic drug dealer sits next to me on the light rail.

Canyon Road is where the sun sets and the stars lift off to light up the sky.

Lay an egg
let it come out of your mouth
drill a hole in the egg
let the sunshine drip out
fill egg with confetti
cook for breakfast

Take the eraser to your skin and rub.

As flesh falls off and blisters and sores appear, keep rubbing.

As the sores become infected and yellow, keep rubbing.

Once you have rubbed through your ribs, cut out the heart and rub it away

The lungs

The spine

The brai

Fly to the sun
rest arms

Fall in love
Fall in love with everyone
let the energy fill your heart
give the love away

do not worry if the love will come back

I am a dot on Seurat’s canvas.

You told me that I wouldn’t be respected if I used Times New Roman, well maybe I don’t write to be respected. Maybe I write in Times New Roman because I like to read in it.

I could write in Wingdings. Would that make you happy? Would that make me stand out?

I don’t write with words I don’t understand and I don’t embellish nature to sounds pretty. Times New Roman isn’t trying to impress anybody and neither am I.

I am writing about what is real and I am writing about how I feel and I don’t need your opinion and I don’t want to hear your spiel.

Did that make me stand out?

This morning we drove to work and argued. You were wearing your Starbucks shirt that you washed last night and I was in my oversized sunglasses and my green pants. The Prius go-karted through the trees and the mud puddles but you sat still and moped while I listened to my favorite music.

The mountains around us jammed out with me. They knew the words coming out of Stevie's mouth before I did, landslide was written about them.

I have decided that you have no desire to stand out or enjoy yourself. That you would rather go through life without ever being embarrassed, too afraid of rejection to put yourself out there, to roll the windows down and listen to your music as loud as you want. Someone might see you, maybe the mountains wouldn't approve?

well, WHO ******* CARES?

I think you think that the world would explode if you didn't go through your day exactly the same as you did yesterday. That if you didn't put lotion on in the morning your legs would spontaneously combust or maybe if you made toast in the toaster instead of on a pan the house would catch on fire.

My mom had me when she was nineteen years old, but I wasn't an accident.

My mom had surgery the day before yesterday and I wasn't there to kiss her before she went in. She called me before and she left me a voicemail when she got out. She said she loved me and she missed me. I miss her too.

My mom hates washing more dishes than she has to, but she refuses to use the dish washer. We eat on paper plates and we have three sets of salad tongs that we got for free from Dion's Pizza. My mom goes to Sam's Club to buy Charmin and generic paper towels, she likes the hot dogs at Target, and she gets her iced non-fat mochas at McDonalds.

My mom is tiny. She weighs a hundred and ten pounds and is 5 feet 3 inches. She has fake *****, and long black hair down to her waist. She makes me feel safe.

My mom works two jobs, on top of taking care of three kids plus me. She makes Mama Mia mac and cheese, and Mama Mia meatloaf and Mama Mia fajitas, basically she makes food and calls it Mama Mia because she made it.

My mom is beautiful.

I think.
I think that its time
to take out my heart
to take the scalpel
and cut the capillaries
bandage the ends
and sew the incision.

I thought.
I thought that I would
not feel so empty
that it would be easy
to take the yesterdays
apart.

I am thinking.
I am thinking about
what happens next
when does the feeling
alone, pass
when does the past become past?

I forgot.
I forgot that when I took my heart out
I gave it to you.

I spent my last eleven dollars on a plastic bottle of ***** sitting on the refrigerator.

It is right next to the ibuprofen and the giant salad bowl.

Last night we drank our plastic bottle of ***** in glasses.

and not in that pathetic delusional fat girl kind of way, and not in the fact that he is corny. No, my boyfriend is like a corn-dog because there is a big layer of nutritionless fried spongey batter that covers his insides. That batter is made up of three level cups of nice. Which is not to be substituted with "honest" or "real". No, nice is the only ingredient that can produce such a meaningless spongey layer to cover up the "love" "sincerity" and "caring" that makes up the center. That golden brown skin enticed me. But, it is what is inside that gives me substance.

and my thoughts are incontinent


                                                                                                                    I cant hold them in

                                                        
                                                                     my head may explode


      verbal diarrhea


                                                                spews from my lips


                                                                                                     all that I say

                      Is watery nonsense


                                                          ideas splattered everywhere


fester and decay

                                                                                            
                                                                                                              staining this space

                                   with ***** disillusion


  the brilliance I once had


                                              is useless from  exhaustion



   tiredness: the cause of


                                                                                                              my skulls distention

Nana thinks the magazine is the devil.

“THE PEOPLE WHO DREW THE BLESSED ****** MOTHER OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST IN A BIKINI ARE GOING TO HELL.”

Whatever you say, Nana.

When we left my Nana made us tacos and tamales. She gathered all the food in the house to send us off and took all the cash she had and stuffed it in my pocket. She purged the cupboard of all the bananas, plums, nectarines, and apricots and placed them in a bag with two bottled waters a coke, a diet coke and sprite.

She told me that she loved me and that she hated to see me go. That, “I had just gotten there” and that she would “miss me so much.”

Before we left she sent me with a card that was “very important”. It was a picture and a coin embossed with my guardian angel that she bought at the church gift shop.

My nana loves me more than anything else in the world.

My nana still calls you my friend.

I had a girlfriend in kindergarten but she had a cleft pallet.

Today I drove the Lexus to my job that pays minimum wage.

I'm not ***** I'm just making macaroni and cheese.

Your fake words carry more carcinogens than my pack of cigarettes and I only smoke on the weekends.

Yesterday I was about to eat a cookie but I said to myself, "diabetes, diabetes, diabetes."

I have decided that I am sad.

Sometimes I want to look like a *****.

and pennies for literature. I hope all your clothes are clean because now you are baroque. Don't fix it. Ornate -- statuesque. Not in your house, not in your pocket book. Money can't buy me art. or was it heart? This is the license you can't get at the DMV.

Tape over the part of the scale that indicates weight
step on the scale
feel heavy with love

Chupacabra is my best friend, and Isaac Newton always drank water when he was thirsty.
Don't ****.
Art.

dactyls and fractyls and crystal visions
can't save you from the swim
water constantly up your nose

pass me the honey
honey
pass me the bacon
pig

25 pounds of bananas and all I want is a quesadilla

Our eco-friendly toothbrushes sit together in the cup on the counter but today I didn’t brush my teeth. The snow is great. Want to know why, because the snow doesn’t give a **** how anybody else feels and it doesn’t ***** its feelings all over twitter. The snow knows that nobody cares.

The snow never says “anyways” or “whatever” or “oh god”  and the snow doesn’t undermine what I have to say. The snow is cold and it *****, but at least it doesn’t question me. It doesn’t ask me if I need space. Nope. It just keeps snowing.

The snow and I are on good terms. It isn’t polite and it doesn’t try to be anything that it is not. It doesn’t cook barley with kale and it definitely doesn’t pretend to like it.

We are talking and I am thinking and you are listening
tiny green peas ripen into crimson heirloom tomatoes
the cerebral cavity starts to fill and compress each fruit
when the inflammation kicks in and the stew starts to
boil and bubble and now the only thing keeping the
head off the floor is the combination of the weight of
the stew and the steam from the heat balancing in such
a way so that the head is still stuck to the body and the
stew starts slipping into the veins the heart the stomach
where stew belongs but the tomatoes were rancid filled
with rotten seeds planted by inconsideration and doubt
this is the part when I start to spew an inferno of atoms
tomatoes peas and ash and as the explosion from my
mouth finishes the line is disconnected and I am here
covered in my magma and my malice and mi miedo

My cigarette tastes like uncertainty and now my plain croissant is seeping my black coffee onto my plate.

Was it too much to ask for something simple? Life isn't as complicated as people make it. Right?

Now I sit here, with coffee spilt on myself and my shirt.

Annoyed.

Or Annoying?

Is it my fault that **** is falling apart? Am I the problem that is ruining something so pure by pouring black liquid all over and complicating something I was so sure about?

Am so sure about.

My croissant was perfect until I spilt **** all over it. Now I have a soggy croissant and a crooked cigarette that still tastes like uncertainty.

The garbage in my room
Smells like embarrassment
It’s the hot Cheetos bag that sits in my desk
It’s the q-tips with earwax
The ideas that float around in my head
And my roommates toenail clippings

The garbage in my room
Clutters the free space
Taking up room that it should not take
The shopping bags and boxes
That held beautiful things
Now empty and cumbersome

The garbage in my room
Takes up my memory
Forgotten blog posts and poems
Fill the hard drive in my brain
Silly thoughts and quips
Only attempt to clear it out

The garbage in my room
Sits in the can
Thinking of ways to grow
Out of proportion
Waiting to spill out onto the floor
And start crawling up the walls

The garbage in my room
Needs to be taken out.

Car doors left ajar in the freezing cold while I sit in the passenger seat and fume
angry, thinking,
jarring

jaundice blackberry
bruises

billireuben ****
HAPPY NEW YEAR

correct confessions from the cards
I refuse to heed

red string me
yellow ribbon
tree? free?

forgiveness
dirt in the wounds
chips all over the floor

my own personal chauffeur
broth beefing

I’ve decided to stop using paper towels to dry my hands. They, and by they I mean my hands, have started to crack, not unlike other parts of my being. Blistered and that pinkish color that my grandma thinks is good for lipstick. The skin starts to peel, but I am not a snake. I can’t shed it all at once. I have to wait; I have to watch, it slowly flake off and reveal the kisses she left on my palms

The air is crisp.
Crisp, that is the word my dad used to describe Gwen's voice after the No Doubt concert. I was eight then.

Crisp, the word I thought of, when I was flicking that brown lighter I thought it would be funny to buy, sitting on the stoop. Striking the wheel, careful not to hit the little red button. The air swept against the sunglasses I paid too much for with the lenses that are mismatched and the sweater my mom bought me two christmases ago that originally I hated.

Falling leaves drift by those little windows to my soul but I am too distracted by the thought of him coming to pick me up to try to attach them back to the tree. Too bad too, because with every leaf detached, comes winter further on my face.

Thats when the crystals fall from my dreams, and cover the once adobe hills in spells of skyscrapers. Those are the guys who form tools out of my can of hairspray and chip at the ozone trying to scrape off the blue, and see what all that paint is covering. Icarus is horrified.

Yesterday I tried recording the snow for the blind but as they felt around the braille melted under their fingertips.

White cheddar cheese ***** are better than snow, so I recorded self eating them and told the blind that is what snow is.

Pluck a dandelion from a field
hold the dandelion up to mouth
open mouth
eat the dandelion

Warning: Do not blow the dandelion away.

When I grew up my mom would cut coupons and scrounge for change in the sofa to buy me a chicken nugget happy meal McDonalds. She would cut coupons and would only buy nectarines if they were on sale. I grew up eating bologna sandwiches with kraft cheese slices and potato chips.

I think your mom had different priorities.

The man at Starbucks, told me that opposites attract and I think that is why were together. He told me a Intuitive Innovative Feeler. Does that mean that you are oblivious and emotionless ***? I don't think so?

Lately I have been whining a lot. Whining about where we live, what we do, what we don't do, how you act, how you don't act, about how your mom wants us to water the brussels sprouts that no one likes and clean the toilets no one uses.

Sometimes I say things to hurt your feelings. Sometimes I mean it. I word them so that they are as hurtful as can be and you never react. Is it bad to want to make you cry? You test my sanity everyday, you break me every day, and here I am still trying to chip away at the facade, the make up you cover up with.

I think living in the mountains has taught me about all the things that I don't want to be. I don't want to be cut off, I don't want to be nice, I don't want to be liberal, I don't want to be conservative, I don't want to see the same people everyday, and I definitely don't want to spend eleven dollars on heirloom tomatoes.