Time is where we
aim our hateful fists
and weighted tears
for rain slowed into mists
our fingers are
icicles

Slow down and see
the face beneath your head
and a pair of watching eyes
next to the heart left in your bed
and Cry! - for distance
separate chests rise
and time, slow chime
Two hearts and a beat, repeat

Fairness, none
until, undone
a child stands screaming
to be heard
Tired! - from years of screaming
and not being heard.
found.

Two children, we can laugh
and fall asleep and meet
where distance and time
are forgotten
awful things, rotten
things, forgotten.

Does anyone else
want to sit outside until
the wind steals their soul?

They march instead of walk
through snow and water, sand and rock
and dictate every time they talk.

Impervious, their eyes burn red
pierce you with fire, fill you with dread
they have no souls, are worse than dead.

They are the vision of your perfect fear
infecting those you hold so dear
and don't allow a single tear.

Come January they gather stones
to scare you while you turn to bones
they laugh at your shivers and your moans.

Spring arrives they gouge your eyes
to keep you from seeing flowers rise
forever stuck with gray and black and cries.

Spare you this, the summer heat?
Not; they strap coals to your feet
and smirk at the blind attempting retreat.

Still heartless as arrives the Fall
they decide to test you at your crawl
they cut the legs off one, off all.

They cause you nothing but a year of agony
regrets and loss of sanity
still They go down in infamy.

Were you to go back in time
you'd surely find your own rhyme
and take your chances on your dime!

Now too late to run away
they own you night and day
ah, but a life, thrown away.

Security.
Confidence, competence, common sense,
purity.

I'm caught in my own obscurity.
I'm terrified of finding the truth-
Running distraught through the
questions I've sought after,
tired of playing the sleuth

to find facts that I don't want to know.

The stage is set for the show
and I don't want to go.

I was trying to shoot for the stars and
dream the way I did when I learned that caterpillars
grow up to be butterflies
I wanted to be a butterfly
I wanted to be beautiful, and proud, and I wanted to fly -
I miss that feeling.
Somewhere between there and here there were
tragedies and broken hearts and
things that I later realized ought have
been different -
Somewhere between then and now there might have been a god,
but more importantly there was some force causing the world to
punch me in the face
and Somewhere along the road I decided to keep
my shameful face pressed against the concrete

This is anger - this is shame -
this is hate. This is what I
bottle up and beat myself with under the midnight sun,
with the endless exposure, the loss of composure,
the fear, the constant
fear
of judgment - stare at me but don't look at my eyes
(I'm used to it.)
Look past me.
It will only drive the hurt deeper down, tightening my chains it's
not you, it's me. It's me against myself.

Pound, pound, pound the pavement against my feet -
can I run myself into oblivion? Can I please just close
my eyes and become part of the air around me?

the frustration kills me
I **** my voice yelling at myself
WRITE WRITE WRITE
write yourself into this feeling, if
it's the only way you know how to inhabit the present moment
**** yourself with caffeine and hate
and shame
I'm so tired of shame
I'm so tired from the weight of it
I'm so done with being hated but I
can't stop hating myself

I once dreamed of being a butterfly,
and now I dream of getting by
without hurting myself too badly

By then I'll have drowned
out my heartbeats with footsteps

Is it possible to be engulfed within yourself?

My insides are an ocean.


If I could, I would float away from all this nonsense
dancing to my heart's content on the cloud that flew me out of here
reclaiming my boldness, fueled by the bits of light scattered about,
rays of golden-ness spelling "forget, forget, forget it all"
dancing on my eyelids, sculpted sunrise, salty tears
"please, just feel this moment and be a part of it."

Please, just feed me back my feeling
Please... cry, wholeheartedly.
... What even is this beautiful world without the emotion that keeps it spinning?

Love is golden light on pine trees. Love is a clear river.
Love is your fiercely beating heart. Love is full immersion.
Love is rawness.

Please, tell me how to find that in this vending machine.

Tell me if you see rainbows when you're on the treadmill,
please teach me how to be human when so much of this world is telling me to be a machine.

Tell me how to forgive myself for choosing my brain over my heart?
For sitting still when my bones want to run and jump and dance and swim.
For forgetting how to play!

Forgive me for the woes of the world, for the things that I can't change but still feel the weight of. Forgive me for consuming. Forgive me for hurting. Forgive me for not giving homeless people money. Forgive me for my selfishness, for my biases, for the mistakes I make over and over again.

Forgive me for my humanness...
And most of all, help me reclaim my humanness.
For love is the most human thing I know, and I'm struggling to feel it.

Glass:
cold and smooth,
showing both a blank expression
and a black beyond my face's reflection:
stretches for miles from me to you, the cold
permeates the Glass
into my fingertips, saps
the remnants of you:
the warmth left tingling in my
follicles, fading
from affections, from loving caresses,
from softly wading
into beautiful sun-streaked waters
in our minds, together,
our heads locked forever,
I remember
touching Glass and staring down
the miles from me to you.

I pay attention
Words are in my head
Like roses
Like thorns, from roses

We notice, as humans, without acknowledging
Secret moments
I noticed
You noticed
The silence of
you didn’t sign my card and I noticed
you missing at the congratulations party
and I, moving away
from you
and I, making connections that needn’t be

mentioned - forgotten?
Or stored, perhaps, away with other reasons to feel lonely
Or swallow away loneliness
On a Saturday night in January.

Search terms “shallow”
Shallows shadow sorrows
Foregone by furrowed brows and questioned messages
Shallows bury questions
I tried to bury shallowness with fury

I'm trying to listen

Copy and paste, print, sign, scan, send, print, sign, fax
I suppose your strange routes of communication are only as complex as my ways of receiving them

Our tongues know each other like old friends
And so do our eyes.
And they speak the same language.

Our heads seem to gravitate
to the same pocket of air and thoughts
and sadnesses and madnesses

You see me in every way I
wanted to be seen
but couldn't see myself
Light feels so good after being blind!

That night when the flame consumed me
and you held me and shared my burns
I looked up and the fire danced between our eyes
and you didn't look down
and you listened to my spitting rage
and told me with your eyes
"You are beautiful."

And I wasn't clenching my jaw because I
wanted
to hurt my teeth
even though I thought so, once

And I wasn't letting you anywhere
near close
enough
even though I thought so, once

It doesn't matter how or why
it only matters that it REALLY matters

I'm happy to be a child again
because a child knows how to learn
(feelings and things that hurt)

And I'm happy to be a child again
because a child knows what it wants
(without a reason)
and I want you.

She realizes at some point she’s in dream and wakes up
Clenching her stomach, blurring her eyes
Covering her bruised body with shadow limbs
Silently coughing up through self-inflicted scars
Why is it so cold
Harsh sunlight with shivers in between rays
Green eyes like moonlight through prison bars
Leaden shadow limbs scrape the floor
Chalk writing in another language
Slipping on frozen marble, so cold,
So cold

Mice in her ears running, dead, multiplying
Whispers of her shame
Splatter paint on a nameless grave where
Bugs morph from the stone
Nightmares in the daytime between rays of moonlight,
So cold

How come stuffed animals get old?
You wanted to pretend that your parents weren't "cool" and you'd grown up so much that you didn't have those moments in the middle of the night where silence surrounds you and you're struck by the fact that you're desperately, helplessly alone and afraid- or maybe you did but you wouldn't need something to squeeze for reassurance.
You never asked until someone told you, and then you wanted to be best friends with your mom and the quiet, intellectual boy who sat in the corner and never took notes or made eye contact- you called yourself an artist so that you could be the millionth first girl to paint their hair and cut it short and stop sleeping except in the middle of the day.
You started to fear sunshine, probably because you couldn't see yourself and didn't want anyone else to, either. You avoided mirrors and moments alone, and you forgot what made your fingers so delicate - it wasn't the loose grip on a cigarette - and you forgot what your voice sounded like because you never stopped talking; it became your peaceful silence to dress up as somebody with confidence and talk and laugh without hearing what you say and touch as many bodies as you can - when it's only skin, they're all the same...
People move too much to hold you up, and someone let you drop, more than once... You can keep getting as angry as you want, but it isn't their lack of love that's keeping you from realizing that you've been the one leaning on people and trying to use other people's feet... They're trying to love you, but it's hard because you never stopped long enough in front of a mirror to figure out who the ******* are.
They'll always be there, and you'll be the last person to realize that you need to leave them behind.

The Avoidance Game
is like too much makeup.
Painful and obvious.

Sometimes it hurts so much to look
in the mirror forgetting
faces in moonlight and truth
spoken like silvery spider webs
without fear
a world without fear; imagine.

Imagine looking up and
having a recognizable reflection.
I wish you missed your face like
we do.

I start at my feet
feel the pressure of the ground
and the leaves, and breathe

You don't even know me,
other than a few flowered up, brushed-off words

which is why I'll say it here

You are the modern portrait of a woman I looked up to
You hold the life that I lost two years ago
in your smile without knowing what you carry

You are every kind of beauty that I want to be

Stay classy, stay adventurous, stay happy
you have a special kind of soul, and I only know because I knew one once
she was swept away with the wind,
buried in the sea with my tears as I scattered her ash by ash...

My voice cracks when I see your pictures; it's a good thing you don't know me past the words

Shhhhh
the warrior-angel
shimmering
between closed eyes and tears

The pain moves through you
like clouds
before rain

Why? wonders
like a child
I am a child

Sometimes I spit into the wind just for spite.
but not quite.

Still...
lie still.
the stars are ripping out of your back, I don't want to look
your face is a mold I'm afraid of falling into
my reflection in the mirror, I'm afraid of bouncing back
toss me around
heart beating, heart attack, heart on the ground
head in the full-stream full-blown storm, heat shocks echoing through spaces
I've been lost inside, crawling around in the glass and crackling sound
pop, I've started to inflate, time's slowed now,
I'm so strewn out against the floor, endless down

I wrote a note to myself, you want to see it?
I tore myself to pieces
I spit into the wind
and ducked
out of sight

I spit into the wind just for spite

****. Yes. I'm -
my sorrows away. Wrong -
myself into a black hole of
shame that I want to crawl out
of but can't
or, wishing
for someone to pull me out but
don't actually believe anyone will give me a second glance - please -
but please don't -

caught between
help me
and
don't look at the mess I've made
the mess I am
a mess of a person who's
destined for
lunacy

Cries stuck in my throat
next to things
coated in
shame and years of steel-plated
heavy moments and

tears tears tears
I wanted to cry but couldn't
my face grew heavy with
tears not spilling out
can't lift
let me fall
pick me up
don't touch me

I don't trust you

run
I can't run

I write about pieces of the world I'm not a part of

glass - looking through
glass - broken shards on the ground
at my feet, in my knees
broken skin
bleed
broken heart
bleed my soul bleeds
I wish I could seep out of my skin
and be blood and

not think
sometimes I think these things

The sky is the only thing that can hold me
The ocean is the only thing that can hold me
The trees are the only things that can hold me

light is fleeting

Alas, the static in my ears
never fails to crumble
returning me again to tears
and another attempt to fumble
with my web of tangled thoughts
trying again to learn to untie knots.

Silences and 'there's and 'here's
become a quantity in years
of words unsaid and yet unknown
to older people yet ungrown
because we chose to never face
a past that we cannot erase.

I would do it if I knew how.
I would rip this beast off my back and expose my heart, beating and bigger than my whole body
I would put rocks in my shoes so that the storm can't move me anymore
I would close my eyes and let my flesh be beaten by rain pellets, and shake as if the lightning were my soul,
And the thunder would echo with my cries in the space that stays between us
And I would stand in the storm with my heart exposed and pierce you with my eyes once I remembered how to open them


And I would remember I was strong enough to move.

the sound of
footsteps in the
fall and the
reflection of sunlight
off drops of dew
resonates
more than
my understanding of
happiness

I wish I could see you in the deeper blue
tangled in strings, caught by your favorite song
pure
I'm afraid of lies, now

You should know after all this time that I bear my feelings very easily
that I'm learning how to close myself up bit by bit
for the things that earn it
too late, after I'm hurt
I'd say you've earned it

And I'm sorry
I don't want to lose you
I'm cold from the dry beatings
low blows
numb mornings

pinpricks away from happiness and I can't feel

pinpricks
the needle
he's cold, hard, and tempting

you're cold in ways I don't understand
with panoramic views
(prime real estate)
you're silver and gold, fighting inside your skin
aren't we all?
I'm tired of humans


This place in my head -
it's the needle ready to puncture my heart
it's the bits of an iced-over creek that are still running,
waiting to pool up, freeze, and crack

the leaf that's falling waiting to be trampled

I wish I could fall away so easily

in it seeped from around you all around you the world grew and
you pressed your nose up against the glass to try to see it, and cried
because you couldn't see it like you did
(was it only two days, hours, minutes ago?)
couldn't touch it, couldn't move
trapped in incantations what is ego
forego free go trees grow leaves show green
no
soft imaginings
hard, sharp imagining things
too bright to see, hearing things
how do legs move, teach me,
don't look at me
you pause-
you've been pausing for a long, long time.

Hallelujah sings the golden crow
different from the rest, walks and talks
and sings and sings
and loses wings
and loses wings its wings
have shrunk to fit inside a business suit
a dark black fitted business suit

Cough coughs the golden crow
the blackened business crow
who no longer sings
no longer has wings
no different from the rest
no longer knows the simple things.

Eyelashes can be so crushing,

The way I look at yours and
feel them brush against my cheek
remember tears dripping off of them,
rushing off of them,
in tumults and falling to the floor
where they pooled with mine.

The way they draw me in
framing perfect beautiful soul eyes
and pull my heart strings,
and CUT my heart strings!
when I think of being gone away
with a mirror and a face you just introduced me to...

Uncertainty, unfortunately,
only gets stranger with familiarity
up to a point, where I hope it might
collapse and combine with our tears,
another color in our painting.

Eyelashes don't mean anything
except that I can't imagine
not seeing yours, and I'm scared.

We're a little hiding
in our heads.
All of us.

words are fragmented earth
elements seeping into the wind currents
clustering in empty spaces and
slowly gathering at our feet
dead and brown like the leaves,
but perhaps lacking beauty

words are time as they pass through
cold lips into empty air
empty ears, filled with empty sounds,
void of meaning

words are safety as they blanket themselves
around people trying to hide
empty people, filled with empty fear,
void of meaning

move their mouths, shape their sounds
vowels consonants breaths
empty eyes, black holes, empty souls,
void of meaning

words are the cage of the trapped
they can be controlled but nobody
knows how

Blah!
blah bla blah bla blah blah blah blah.
writing. words. periods. trees. sunshine. thunder. weight. muscles. smiles. grass.
colors. flying colors. paintings. art.
pain put into art. feelings put into
words. communication. the beauty of connection.
The constant of change.
The pain of constant change.
The way the world lights your soul aflame.
The way the world locks you inside yourself with shame.

The million ways to say
I don't know what to say

The relief of a space to ramble to myself. and for however much it does no good it does some good. if only to fill time.
If only to forget time.

Space. the vast places we find with our eyes. I search for more eyes. I want to see something deeper, to call myself deeper, to soul search like there's no waterfalls tomorrow to jump off, close your eyes, give in and take a risk for - like there's no somebody tomorrow to close your eyes and take a risk for -
like there's no somebody you're soul searching for

Feelings. crushed by small nothings. small, insignificant nothings folded up into shapes from 80% recycled paper and re-recycled, the same old same old same old things that we never talked about


Do you like your paintings hung straight or tilted?
I like them overlapping, covering the walls, I make murals out of pieces of art because I want to be a part of something special and I'm tired of words

Craning your neck to expand visuals, turning
your eyes into glittering TV screens and computer monitors,
you stopped feeling the elbows pushing into your back.
Soon enough they stuck and your feet grew into the floor,
like tree roots but less organic...
For a while you could still see the mirror that
reflected the world you left behind you, spinning
as you turned to stone, concrete filled your ears-
impervious to wind and skies and whispers, and you can no longer
hear birdsong-

I suppose you might regret that you weren't smiling when it happened.
You're a statue and unrecognizable because everyone grew around you while you never changed (except the patterns of smoke spiraling around your head, your one reminder of movement once you found yourself alone)

I see you when I feel stuck at this screen, typing meaningless things,
when the people become ugly white noise and I can close my eyes
and see exactly what I expect when I open them.
I feel ugly like your crumbling statue so I fly-
Sometimes I'm afraid to stop sometimes things can't
                                                           ­                                change
fast enough

I'm kind of backwards that way, but
I'll never take the world for granted.

Stone is beautiful, but not the way you wear it.
One day I will sigh in satisfaction and
crumble into other elements
and a tree will grow from my ashes.
Life is endless, they will find my voice like a whisper
suspended in the air, audible when the wind sweeps me up
and someone will be outside exploring the world when I'll strike them
with a chill
REAL smiles are contagious:
Find me in the clouds, I Am An Element.
(****** hippy, put on some shoes!)
(you're covered in plastic)

If you think it's worth the climb, come find me in the treetops.

.
.

i have no things to say
for you to hear

right now
i just want a corner
i just want keys compressing

it's the only music i know how to make
it's the only thing that responds to my touch
the only thing i want to share my feelings with


i'm tired of feelings
i'm tired of my body
i'm tired of myself
i'm tired of reaching out
i don't reach out
i need help
i hate ...

sometimes there is a music i can make
song birthed from death
a lullaby to remind myself of hope

but there are times where there is no light
there is no music
there is no one to share
anything i'd like to share
my soul
is bare
for no
thing
but the

air











the spaces
i strain to
find an
echo












the length of
open my
eyes to things that hurt












the times i'd
like to
shrivel away












.

I don't dream, like I did, so many days ago
of your skin, lips, tongue; I don't
want to; I
have no need.
If I could close my eyes forever
and collapse and fall past my bones
and speak in our language
I would know satisfaction.

It's not my body, it's
my being
craving the long-lost touch of you

I want to forget looking down
Gaze with me
we'll connect
again
Our hearts will rock together
again
(but differently)

I know you are trying to
break through the barrier that is
a body, turned from me,
running.

I won't cry, I'll just laugh
and peel carrots and
paint windows with math and
lace up these running shoes,
and wish I could run away, too,
and wish I could chase you.

You say rock I say row
You connect and I glow
When sky alights night showers
ringing from bell towers
You smile kaleidoscopes on
my soft glimmering hopes
and I flutter on water
drops from high mountain tops
rustle down with the leaves
to your echoing pleas.

You say please take my hand
I say don't try again

But it's heavy on earth in the rain
And you know I'll give in once again
when the sky darkens up and I see
that a spotlight's on me
and the strangeness it brings
and the lightness of wings

And it's hard not to laugh
when the air smiles in star shine
and bells chime like sky rhymes
even sitting on top of a
mountain of clocks
and giggling tripping
and falling down rocks

And it's hard not to laugh
at your persistence
despite my resistance
because we rock and row
and connect and glow
as sky alights night showers
ringing from bell towers

and I would have been sinking in sand
had I not grabbed your hand.

This stagnancy is a hate crime, colored red and purple like the bruise on my hip that grew and grew from crashing into the floor, until it could have been a painting made from squashed grapes and cherries.

It expanded with my fascination and my sickness. I was the hawk watching, the worm writhing, the fly that buzzed waiting for blood to spurt from the
Colors:
were my eyelids and, soon enough, my blanketed warmth, consuming me
whole.

Then the water came rushing, running down my face in torrents to hide my tears, down my spine to shock my shivers loose and away: I stood up in the waterfall and opened my eyes and
Awoke:
in my skin, alive, laughing, dry,
whole.

I still get bruises, but I'm healthy.
I don't cry, I speak:
with the words I am trying to learn.

Freedom.
Salt water - feet, ankles, tongue
Close your eyes.... trust -
the world to smile upon you while you
sleep.
The sky blinks.
Maybe you'll catch it a hundred times,
or maybe none.... follow -
your feet without thinking.
Swallow your thoughts, but not
before swirling them around in your
mouth and having a taste.
Embrace the pain, embrace the
weights that come without words,
hold yourself and remember
your height is relative.
If you feel small, think big. Dream
dreams.
Breathe in, bathe in rivers, freefall.
Free.
Choose your steps.
Don't look over your shoulders too long.
Don't think too long about eyes,
except for admiration.....
.....Gaze.......... . . . . . . . .  .   .   .
.    .      .      .       .   .     . until time doesn't
matter. Time doesn't
matter. Time
doesn't matter.

Time doesn't matter.

Nurture your pains and a tree will grow.
Don't think so much! Feel -
feel - feel -feel -
bark on your favorite tree.
Breathe it in.
Wade into the ocean and savor
the taste of salt.

you, teeth and laughter
blowing soap bubbles to my brain
and popping into dust
silken fingers, your cheekbones
are art, falling rain, blooming rose
I want to catch you
but you fall (like raindrops) through my fingers
eluding me

I would softly touch you if you let me
I would kiss your wrists and collarbone
and eyelids, I would tell you
talking is only necessary when comfortable,
I would tell you all my secrets
I would share my swiftly beating heart
with your strength, and my lonely evenings
with your meditative mornings
I want to muse with you, and
cook until our skin weeps for love,
or our minds take us elsewhere

I imagine I would fall asleep early and
easy with my ear over your heart
I wonder how fast it beats
and what the chances are
that you're thinking of me

This is the dangerous part. The world swings you around and slaps you. The fatigue hits my feet before I feel it in my face

It hurts, the people I've touched along the way. Everyone is so hurt. Everyone is so hurt. The hurt ones came to me for healing, and sapped my strength. Now I'm scared. Now I hide. Now it shows and I'm ugly. Or I feel like I'm ugly, and I'm ugly. Or all of that turned around, painted on the mirror in another language, screamed at you while you slept. Screamed at me while I slept.

I love. I'd like to know how to love. I'd like to think I know how to love. I'd like to continue to learn to love. I'd like to help others learn to love. I'd like to be a part of something that is wholly, beautifully, love....



... this is like kissing? I'd kiss you
I'd love you and let you go when the sounds start
when the music starts
in
sounding
waves
hitting
our
ears
the
sound
of
sleep
reac­hing
our feet, reaching the moon the moon the moon
          the
moon

This is the dangerous part. You've been conceived and nothing will ever be certain, there will be no control, there will be nothing perfect, not even the people you love.

And it will be worth it

Whistling
into vibrations
to create texture
to taste feeling
moving to feel temperature
air circulating coolly to touch extremities
to invoke shivers, to remind of smiles
to remember hands and warmth
hands and intertwining fingers
fingers, delicate and familiar
eyes, smiling and

dangerous
the void left in wake
the space of silence
the moments spent wondering
a lifetime spent wandering in search of
more

moments
the meaning of finding
the nothing to find but more things to explore
the spots marked by stopping to ponder
the pain caused by stopping to ponder
the connections that make shape
in the form of a

path
leading from place to place
person to person
challenge to challenge
wound to wound
stitching together flesh, rhythmically,
perpetually, while walking
hurting builds

strength
in the form of a hard face
longing to be broken
going all this time searching for a way to be broken
waiting for a person to share smiles with again
waiting for a place worthy of stopping
and removing gloves from lonely fingers
and sharing

memories
memories from solitude
from the years of

wandering
call yourself

wanderer
watching so long for a place to

pause
all nonparallel paths must eventually

cross
with kind

eyes, glistening eyes, breathing again
warm breath condensing in air
laughs radiating in air
moving to feel temperature,
to share temperature
moving to taste experience
slowing down to taste a moment
worth finding
with a person worth stopping for.

She's a wrecking ball creating a path of destruction
playing the arts of deception, seduction,
afraid to love, she lashes out against
herself, her family, friends; now she just resents
all those who left her in her madness
and all along, it was only just sadness.

I don't believe there's a soul to love me
but maybe I've fulfilled my own prophecy.

The rock lies forgotten under a
crescent moon, nestled in the
riverbed where dreams and
smiles flow and splash
against the bank

Glanced by toes
and dogs' noses
transitory contact

It has no name
but in its face is a wisdom
one can only find where
time changes nothing.

I think it
might have
maybe
been yesterday,
or the day before,
when it happened

Noticed the room was
different, and the silence was
all of a sudden empty

Realized what a glimmer is
because it
wasn't

Reached and grabbed air
felt my own nails press into my palms
squeezed my eyes  and i think a
tear dropped
swallowed into the hardwood and the silence

I think I stopped caring
I think I finally lost myself
in a memory forever
or a dream
it's so much easier, after all

better to be alone than to feel lonely...

there used to be a mirror in the corner,
and a window
i think i remember

i have scars from the broken glass
i'm white as a ghost
but i don't notice
besides, i'd rather not be
seen
i'd rather hide my red-eyed reflection and
the dust in my hair

maybe i died
but i don't know because that day,
yesterday or the day before,
i stopped feeling

perhaps it was
maybe
actually
a few years ago.

I meant everything I said,
and I still think you're amazing
You intrigue me like a single rose,
appeal to my senses and curiosity
I feel so close to you, and
so unsure of what is going
on in your beautiful mind.
I want to listen to you talk
and watch your hands.
Everything you do is unique;
you create another world
Your fleeting smile is the greatest gift
... and your touch...
Kissing you is perfect and innocent
Safe, like this bed and these
walls and this roof
Hold me; I want to
pretend that you feel the same way
and forget how I hate myself
and hate my body
This tear is for a happy moment
I had
It was with you, and
well, thanks.

I have a secret, too
...do you want to trade?

The sheen, shining silver of metal
warped reflections

The unseen spider creeps
from
        corners
                     unquestioned

                 infecting
            
        thoughts


A foreign liquid fills the test tube, let's drain it
take it in shots to change the world
take in in red eyes and wrinkles and teeth


Nicotine


Smoke down the drain, emotions in the air,
creeping fears with spindly legs
down my neck
swallow the mucus
Entwine into a cobweb
Die internally several times

This is the roundabout way of discovering life
This is my roundabout way of saying I'm stubborn
and hurt, and confused
and completely fine.

hopeless and exquisitely beautiful
the night is both demon and angel
for me, my aching eyes, staring too long
at the moon, thinking too hard my thoughts
swallowing too much the silence
to take it all in

I tire quickly, yet stay awake
alone with the night
the bugs sing to my spirit,
I am wandering out there somewhere,
somewhere I am in the forest,
somehow I am restful,
dying slowly, coming alive
My eyes are hollowed-out moons
My body is a fallen tree covered
in mushrooms and moss
One last sigh will let out my
soul to fly with the birds, and
the angel-song, and the sound
of solitary footsteps in the night,
footsteps on an overgrown path-
less-travelled

So much death and life
I might
tell the moon goodbye and say goodnight

i was going to try to write a poem
but i fail when i try to do anything
i fail when i try to do nothing
i fail

failure is relative
who taught me this warped definition
taught me a fake identity
tried to make me impossibly inhumanly
errorless?

why is it that i cry?
why is it that anybody would
WISH to die?
WHY why why why are there so many
questions ringing in my head,
and all of yours too
(I recognize the agony
just like inside of me)
Why why why
why is it that I cry?

I force my anger into mirrors
and breaking them, almost
as easily as breaking people,
but it doesn't take away
anything.

The thing that infuriates me even more
is pretending
it doesn't
exist.

And I cry.

It's these cold nights
hours spent
alone typing furiously
spewing a painting of
words of the scars on your face
and the millions of
reasons I want to hate
you
splattered on the screen

but you and i know i can't
paint worth a ****
or express myself even through words
even though they are all i know any more
because i'm too busy thinking

see what i mean

The surface of the raindrop in the fading light told me,
as it fell and seeped into the soil,
that perfection is attainable,
but not physical

Through bubbles expanding,
refracting rainbows -

I see how I've glowed in perfect ways

in now, this one sphere's landing
and disappearing
pop
death is beauty beyond sight

as a child I learned to hold onto those things
(wouldn't you like to swing on a star?)
but if you touch a soap bubble you lose it
like the sight of the sunset the first time you're content with the silence

remember fear  
       trying       time            away  
perfect  laugh  another way  
may
-be

hopeful foolish ties
       trying      time  
                                           away
pray
-be
saved


memorable words, counted counted
added up
need to be SHOUTED
shout shout
but we don't
know what we're about.

Close.
Run, and don’t look back. Those were the last words you told yourself before you stopped talking. The last memory you chose to take with you into nowhere.
You think of the stars now. The stars and the sky that you didn’t look at long enough. You wish you could open your eyes now. You wish you didn’t have eyes to open.
You hold yourself so you can love and be loved. You don’t love yourself but you don’t trust anyone else to try. You don’t know what love is, other than a part of an existence you don’t want to forge.
You growl. You hear a growl. You don’t know the difference, or what’s in your head. There is pressure, and with that ceaseless compression comes the freedom to stop caring.
You have no beliefs, not even that another moment will come, and especially not that it should.
You’ve been trying for a while now to find your body, while denying that you never left. You’re well-versed in fighting against yourself. You’ve practiced on both sides, enough to stall out a win for eternity.
You can put off opening your eyes as long as you want, while pretending there is nothing to see…
Open.

Remember that night.
The struggle with the mother... the cries, the ocean, the sand, the moon,
the friend standing by...
How terrible, to remember in thoughts from the perspective of another person, another place,
wishing for the equivalent of that stretch of beach that moment,
only here and in a different form....
a vast space to contain you in your most free, expressive tantrum
(a space to contain my rage)
to handle my feet as I run, my cries, my body as I numb and hurdle myself against walls or sand to induce feeling or feed my rage, or tame my rage...
I have no rage, I have sadness, without aim. And when there's nothing to aim it at words become angels.

Take daydreams. You let yourself float in them. Let yourself tune out.
Or tune in.
I'd choose the topics of my dreams carefully as if they would feel complimented. I'd give thought to the things I'd spend forever with. Physically, you can escape. Mentally, you can't, unless you take outside help.
They slip back in, things like a night spent crying on the beach about things you can't seem to change.
I spilled my soul into the sand, and it could take it. I cried my heart into the air and it faded, it passed.
The gaps are what cleansed me between then and now, and the difference becomes painfully obvious. Painful no matter what way you look at it, because there are gains and losses on either side.

Close your eyes, and you can change anything. Most people would change their circumstances. Maybe that's a mask for the desire to change yourself.