We danced toward
each other's wounds

with gentle step
and touched inside

and now the bleeding
has resumed

and all this blood
is hard to hide.

they were screaming more, more
i was screaming and slamming the doors
i was crucified on a bed post
loneliness is the lover of the broken hearted and those with brittle bones
loneliness takes hold and takes control and teaches you things most will never know
i combined myself into thirty different people one night, they called it an overdose
overdose of understanding
overdose of emotion
overdose of psychosis
i'm a ******* ******.
i keep staring at the sun screaming for an answer, screaming for the reason, there was never one to begin with
what happens happens
what was and what will has no meaning other than all of the gleaming little theories we made up
we try to hide our naked souls with ****** expressions that paint our faces like make up
i woke up with scars all over me one morning thinking the previous night had been torturous, thinking it **** nearly killed me
i learned that the scars were just stretch marks from where love made its way into my body and dispelled hate
love took hold of me and removed all that once was, what we thought would be
when the briars leave my body teach me how to love softly
teach me how to love softly
teach me that i am more than a body
teach me how to love softly

one: the first day my skin met yours god realized jesus was his one and only regret.
two: if i could untangle all of the veins in my chest, if i could make them stop strangling every last molecule of love i have left in my body, you would see the last words you spoke to me fall out of their crippled noose like teardrops.
three: will she ever love you enough to give you her lungs?
four: when she screams "**** me" before she comes i hope you hear me screaming "*******" the night you walked away.
five: i write words and stare at the letters. the arrangement of letters is a puzzling thing to me, the way these same letters that can hold so much hate towards you once held the same amount of love.
six: they say time heals all. well why didn't they ever ******* tell me what happens when i have a broken watch?
seven: i made the stars fall out of the sky like they were the moons teardrops for you on the 31st night of lying in bed alone. you didn't see it because you were catching her tears in your bed instead.
eight: you will still walk the same streets that i do from time to time and i hope you see a footprint that looks like mine and realize it belongs on your throat.
nine: you are nothing but a tragic, rusty, chipped nail. you are the nails that pin me to this cross. your palms once fit into mine but now there's only holes from these stab wounds.
ten: i thought about the time you said you'd never leave and it knocked the air you inhaled into my lungs the last time you kissed me right out. it hit me so hard two ribs broke. it was a tuesday.

do you ever think about
crystallized heartbeats?
and capricorn fists holding
winter solstices within each crease,
palms like mountains
with riverbends and valleys,
cliffdiving into an ocean
of crimson skin?
the lullaby that plays over
and over
in my head is the sound
of your voice
cracking as you said,
"please don't go."
that three-word phrase
sings me to sleep
every single night.

i didn't ask for this,
you know.

i didn't ask for blown-out candles
smoke twirling into tendrils of grey
and ashy piles.
i never asked for your blank stare
when your memory was erased
by people in white coats with long needles.
i didn't ask for your arms
to become my stronghold
and my shelter against the night.

i didn't want this but now i'm addicted.

*(a.m.c.)

She picks up pennies
off the sidewalk and
saves them for a
honeymoon someday.

He waits for her, patiently,
like those lost pennies, for
he knows that to be touched
by her will be worth the wait.

I don't often pray,
but for a love like that
I beseech a God for
whom I've lost all faith.

And
I cannot help but wonder,
how much more
there can be
to endure.
How many more
oceans of silence
must I sail?
How many more
deserts of nothingness
must I drag myself across?
How many more
hopeless forest fires
must burn through me?
I am strong
and
I will stay so,
but still
I wonder
when the horizon
will give way
and I can say
it is over
at last.

i.
i feel you in my bones sometimes,
on those nights when the silence screams almost as loud as your lingering words,
when the portrait of you is stitched onto my aching eyelids,
thrown together in a mass of lazy brushstrokes from a dark palette.

ii.
i light cigarettes,
but i don't smoke them.
i just watch them burn out.
fade.
crumble.
like we did, endless eons ago.

iii.
it's clear to me now that,
like the land and the sky,
you and i were simply never meant to meet,
never destined to touch.

iv.
sometimes,
i can bring myself not to feel so hollow,
if i think of the better days,
when your smile wasn't a façade
and your love for me was a looming oak
in this great big forest of daft, dying weeds.

v.
but it's not worth much, anyway,
because the truth
is that your smile shines
just about as bright as the stars in the big city,
and your love for me
snaps
like a silly little twig.

vi.
in all honesty,
we never were,
we just tried to be.

vii.
you know,
i walk endless roads trying to forget you.

viii.**
it doesn't work.

(a.m.)