live for death, die for the try
we **** what gives us life,
to live what's killing us inside

everyone keeps saying "we made it"
and it's actually a little confusing
because it's almost like they thought we couldn't
five teenagers on lockdown have never caused so much panic but I guess we're just
the deadbeat generation
(knock once for failure, twice for rebirth, three times to see your life in twenty years-
who knows, maybe you'll have a life in twenty years)
we pick locks on bad days turn back the clocks on good days
if we try hard enough maybe we'll go back to the glory days I wanna blast music from the busted up speakers
in the back of my car I wanna live like I used to
we're anthems and parades and kids crying out in the middle of the night when the hole in their stomach opens up
or closes
we're caught up in a whirlwind of scientific facts and figures and sometimes I want to scream at the top of my lungs
as if that'll help me escape the noise in my head
punk isn't about living through the fall of something it's about living through the rise of me
I am real I am here I will scream it from the ******* rooftops if I have to
I will tap my fingertips on tables even when I'm told not to
I will tattoo myself a thousand times over, an endless mantra of existence
i exist i exist i exist
this isn't a happy ending, or at least it isn't the one I was promised
but it's something
it's okay
and that's good enough because okay is ******* wonderful
lace my fingers with yours call me a queen tell me you'll never let me go because I will never let you go
we are the kids who will never stop living
even when they tell us that we are impossible we are heartbeats pounding on cracked pavement,
leather and cheap beer, lather me in love lay me down to sleep
with the promise of tomorrow
promise me that tomorrow will still be there when I wake up
you can have a house but not a home
I was a house but not a home until I met you
deadbeat degenerates make a better family than most.

she was there the first time I tried hanging myself
from the ceiling fan in the comfort of my own room,
looking down at the red faced mess that wept on
the floor, daddy's leather belt tied around his neck,
a choking silence, a quiet wheezing, frustrating tears,
anger at another failure, head pounding, head screaming:
"You're not good enough! You're not good enough...!"
over and over again like a scratched record, needle on,
a ghostly hand, tattooed poems from pale shoulder to pale fingers,
reaching out at a limp hand, a gentle squeeze by winter's touch,
a crooked toothed understanding smile, paper eyes into tv static eyes,
rivers cascading down a rocky pimpled face, this was a surrender,
she knew, she'd so long ago surrendered herself, raised a white flag
on her own fortress of solitude, the life cooked out in a gas oven,
I was always a sinner though in no gods I've believed, and hell
I don't fear because hell is manmade, hell is here, hell is smirks,
hell is being mocked, hell is disappointing grades, hell is ripping the hairs
from my head in an attempt to replace pain, hell is grand, I felt it, she felt it,
and there is nothing after death and nothing is better than this nothingness,
seconds away from experiencing the soothing blandness of infinite zero
the belt collapsed on my weight and here I was and here she was, peering,
and though becoming a corpse didn't worry me, the following days did,
she comprehended, but for whatever reason she comforted me,
until dissipating back into her own tiny place on the bookshelf,
to live her lifelessness between the leafs of a book, leaving the broken me
to see another night, another sunrise, hiding the belt in father's dresser.

if you try hard enough you will be able to taste the blood in my lungs
ashtrays bleeding liquor with every breath
don't ******* tell me you've forgotten me don't tell me that i'm worth it don't tell me
exactly what i want to hear
your voice pushes needles into my pincushion conscience,
skinned palms against a chalkboard don't ask me why i never loved you
you're just kidding yourself
i'm not a puzzle you can solve, i'm a ******* human being(i'm worse than that
better start to count your blessings)
don't dedicate your battlecries to me
i won't give you a token of my love i don't give thanks to people who want to skin me alive
if i try hard enough i wonder if i will be able to taste the blood on your gums
have your teeth retracted yet?are you safe?can i sneak out
the back door, maybe, and
hope that you won't sink your vampire smile into the nape of my neck?
don't **** around with me you know exactly who i am
i'm a ******* monster i'm in your nightmares, babe
(as a matter of fact, don't call me babe
it'll only make my skin crawl when i snap your neck)
your skin is a patchwork quilt
let me wear it for a while
let me breathe in when you tell me to, act like a lady
but i'm not a lady, baby i'm a scourge
i'll end you faster than you can blink my poems are dripping red
let me empty them into your throat

the sea had never seemed so great
(and here you would correct me, tell me that vast is better
than great,
spread your arms wide as if to communicate
how right you were)
as it was in that moment and i still remember the way you laughed
and tackled me down to the sand
i felt the brine fill my lungs, salt water dripping from my eyes like
it knew it belonged there
tell me i'm wrong, tell me it's a ******* shame
that we never see each other anymore
your smile is less prominent over telephone wires
i think the laughter has left your voice
please tell me you want to see me again
please tell me you want to hold my hand again
please tell me you miss me please tell me you miss me please tell me you miss me
you drew on the beach that day, finger dragging through hot sand
as you squinted over the horizon
you grabbed my palm in both of yours, laid it flat against your stomach and
asked if i could feel your lifeline yet
(i feel it now
but i can't tell you
let me add that to the list, put a quarter in the jar of
whatnottosaytoaloverafterthey'vestoppedlovingyou
i'm sorry i never let you hold my hand
it's just that i'm scared of the things that follow)

1.

It’s just the sound of breathing all together. Soft. Breathing air and water and blood. Nobody’s worried because nothing has happened. Soft lips gentle and closed eyes pure, untouched, unopened like new shoes. Head alone and empty, waiting to be bruised.

2.

The eyes are open and we’re holding hands. All of us. My quarks against your prose and your ghosts. You’re looking at me like you love me. Not even like you want to **** me. Just like you love me. Like I’m yours. Like I’m somebody’s. We don’t speak. We’re still holding hands with everybody else. On the floor there are broken teeth and ripped out ****** stitches but I’m not looking at them. Neither are you. Neither is anybody else. It’s all soft hands. Hips. Collar bones. Lips.


3.

The heat of your hand against mine. Fusion. You are not a ghost. They are. I am not either. We’re looking down. They’re not. We’re enlightened. They’re not. There is no roof and the teeth and blood aren’t real. They are only reflections of the stars. We do not speak except to each other.

4.

Teeth and stitches and bleeding hands and my blood is in your veins but you’re a closed circuit. I’m getting paler, but I don’t notice, because I am your dialysis, your transfusion. I’ll let you feel for me because I can’t feel my hands. You don’t expect it but you don’t tell me not to. Even if I die you will still hold me upright. My hands bleeding into your hands and open wounds in the wood floor. The glass floor unbroken because the teeth and blood are still just the stars. It’s okay because I know I’m saving you and I know you will save me. Cross stitch my lips so I can’t ruin it. Sew me up like a doll. It’s not your fault.

5.

Condensation into cold hands. Water droplets in their eyes as everyone else comes back again. Turns out I was just ignoring them. My blood in your veins. You’re not holding me up anymore, I’m clinging to your shoulder. Let go. You’re walking away and I’m following you and you don’t ask me to and you don’t wait for me so I step on the teeth beneath my bloodless feet. Even though they are only stars they hurt. Even though I am only a ghost I still run out of breath. Make me your Aphrodite. Yours before anyone else’s. Be mine before your lover’s.

6.

Now it’s all knees and elbows and raw hands on the wooden floor. Your blood my blood everyone else’s blood on my face. You let go of me. My blood in your veins, my cut up hands on the ground. Everyone else has better blood, more heart and less metal, and they all love you. Their blood, their flesh, their threads in your barely broken hands and you’re smiling. I haven’t seen you smile in a long time. I can’t feel my feet or my hands and in my head there is a swirl of stars except now they are only teeth and ripped-out stitches. Cut my face. Leave the stitches in. It’s not my place to speak. Look at me like you love me.

7.

There is blood on the ceiling too and you still think it’s the northern lights. My face is wet with someone else’s blood. Stitches. Teeth. Back and forth rocking on the floor. Cover me in your life. Your blood, my blood, your blood. I have no right to it. Grabbing teeth from the floor with numb hands and chewing them. Swallowing bone. Knock out my teeth and I’ll hold theirs in my mouth instead. I’m licking the blood from the puddles on the floor and dreaming of bullets to find more blood. In rivers, in sheets, drowning me softly. Dreaming of bullets and bullets and metal and blood. There is no more blood in me except in my stomach. Look away. Stab out my eyes. Cut out the stitches and put the metal in my mouth so I can sleep.

8.

I’ll wait among your absent lover’s things, something for you when the rest are gone. My stomach is hot and I’m not hungry. Blood in my lungs and I don’t want to keep breathing it. Dead nerves seizing in my spine. All I smell is blood and I think that’s a sign of brain cancer. Cancerous hands and teeth and bones and eyes. Bullets for the tumors in the grey matter. Metal and blood and skin and nerves and metal. Just one of your absent lover’s things.

9.

I’m too tired. The teeth are stars again. So are the bullets. Metal and bone. Let me eat this galaxy. Watch me.

10.

Teeth and bullets and stars. My empty head and our ****** hands. Teeth and bullets and stars.

she's tired
I saw here cry today
she cried on the phone over nothing

she's exhausted
her skin is pale
her face is gaunt

she's wilting
the makeup dripped down her face
tears pulling the fragments of black goop mascara down her face