in the summer:
she poured peach wine down my body.
she folded her paisley hands into my hair.
I made art for the dead prostitutes and the dead carpenter,
and I made art for her.


in the nightclub:
when the floor was red with liquor and gunshot, did they know?


in my heart:
I’m scared that I’ll betray you when the rifles bring us down;
I'm only hoping my switchblade can protect us now.


a mass shooting in a holy place
in the summer
I heard bodies dancing and laughing
I heard bodies bleeding and dying
I heard bodies
I heard bodies
in the summer


when I taste like judas, will you tell me?
when we exit the tobacco smoke, will you tell me?
I’ll betray you,
I’ll betray you, and I don't want to,
because if I could only breathe in your daisy chain hair,
if I could only breath in your summer eyes,
if I could only breath in you,
I’d be singing of my revival from the hanging corpse life I have been living,
and my aunt lisa’s gonna weep when I tell her about you.

some innocence better not pled
some hearts are better left untouched
when young love's buried in the sand
it all may seem a bit too much.
some people better never met
some words are better left unsaid
and lover's warmth against your skin
is better kept when kept within.

it's better not to see or hear
dissolve rather than disappear
and aspirations locked inside
and fate is better faced with pride.
young lovers beware of the curse
the one replacing universe
one day'll explode and leave black hole
with nothing left safe sound or whole.

it's cold in this motel
all the paisley carpet in the world
won't make the halls warm  

a faux fire is burning in the lobby
the clerk is long numb to it, and to the rest of the world
it appears--no guest has disturbed him for hours

I don't want to go upstairs, to a room
where my only daughter waits, curled in the covers
like chrysalis in cocoon

eyes dried from crying all the tears
eyes can make--still she dry sobs--still she aches
for a mother she believes abandoned her, in a motel,
like this one, a lifetime ago

we will attend the service early today--too late
for a reconciliation between mother and daughter
the tether torn a decade past

I will hold my daughter close;
her eyes will dart around the room,
wondering who the mourners are, how they knew
the mother she did not

until then, I will sit a while longer
by this timid flicker of light, before I don the black suit,
before I knot my tie in the mirror and see the face of the man
who could not forgive a transgression, a human misstep

and robbed a girl of her mother, until today,
when words will spill from strangers' mouths,
the only biography my daughter will ever have of her
and I will wish for short epitaphs, a quick return to the earth
while those words and truths haunt my soul

Despite the Bakelite ****
etched with a range of degrees,
the vintage Wedgewood oven
has only two temperatures:
warm and nuclear ash.
But **** it looks good—a sleek hulk
of white porcelain and polished chrome,
a 1950s Cadillac parked next to the fridge.

When the house is dark
the fluorescent stovetop
glows like a dashboard
illuminating candy wrappers and road maps,
and the kitchen soon stretches to landscape.

I wander in, whiskey in hand, and stand
on a road cutting across a darkened field.

Below cast iron burner grates
pilot lights flicker and burn:
blue seeds poised to blossom
when the Bakelite dials turn.

I reach for the bottle
and the kitchen ignites
into a meadow of larkspur.

Fragrant flowers
mixing bourbon;
I drink it all down,
let the blues drive.

I should have known better than to believe that I had a chance of him ever loving me

The only thing that he ever did was break me

And it was only at the sight of their hands intertwined in the loving embrace that I once dreamed

Of him and me

Now those memories of him smiling is all just heart breaking

And the sound of his voice is all but breathtaking

As these sobs of horror grow stronger in my lungs that grow smaller and smaller

Because of him and me

My heart was tore well before he came to me

Now its just shattered dust of a once beautiful dream

Of him and me

And it seems as if these images of fantasy that grew in my head all just seem so silly to me

Now that there is

And was

No chance of we

I had hoped you were the one to fix

To save

To build

Me into the women I fought so hard to be

That I believed I could reach

Now I know better then to get too high of an expectation of me

And my heart no longer feels as whole as it once did

And this is all because of the fantasy I drew

Of him and me