I was lying on the floor thinking, listening to the raindrops outside,

I was living in a memory.

Hairs stand on end at the chill of a lost touch.

Sighs drift into silence in contempt.

The sun is gone for hours more, but I don't miss it.

We hide in moonlight and white noise;

we hide in pure sight.

Thoughts echo and repeat and it's the same scene

running in my head.

"I miss you" is
the simple way
to "say"
it

But I know you would
understand if I told
you that sunlight in
an ancient city
is giving me shivers

Everything about this
place is tiring because all
I have is me
And I'm in this stagnant
particle of thought and
thinking and being
that I have been
avoiding

Oh, I tire, and sleep

But though I am alone
I still know none of that
old shadow named "loneliness"

And I dream through
listlessness and spidery skin
of a night and event that
sits in the center of my
heart, in
sunshine and spirit
And of you...
eyelashes, fingertips, and
things I started to feel
that woke me,
half buried,
from my grave.

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.

There's a glass in her
hand, trembling,
because it's the only thing
she has to hold onto as
she fights an endless reality
nightmare and can't
grip the table or turn
a sharp edge the wrong way
and pierce an inner urge
that tears her skin, stomach
writhing as her body's
reversing dying even though
she dreams of acid trying
to escape the sliding
mass within her throat;
so used to an acid coat
to save her face, her waist,
and even though her world
is shame
she cannot leave or
change her blames or
tolerate the world's flames;
she has to jump on
hot coals and turn to
steam and simultaneously freeze
and break out, sink in, learn to BE
because this pain is her recovery.

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.

You're stronger, maybe, but stubborn
like me
It's not always a good thing.
All I get from you is a
coldness that radiates like I thought
only heat and love could.
I couldn't forget those, either, in
case you were wondering.
I'm not angry, but you have enough anger
for the three of us.
If I touch you, I think you
might sink your teeth into my scalp.
So I'm keeping some distance.
Maybe if you recognized me you'd
stop growling
I though you wouldn't let this
skin hide a familiar heart, but
It's not the first time I've been wrong.

Above my clouds I found
a color wheel, round
and sedentary like my body
used to be before I
claimed it as my home

Similarly, the colors spun and
swirled just like when
I walked for the first time in years:
light airy bees wings,
spiral striped feelings

And at first I fought
the unfamiliar lack of gray
and why was my head above the clouds anyway?
and what were these nameless things?
forgotten feelings?
What gave me away?


Standing straight becomes
easier with practice.

Too many eyes are looking at the painting of
yesterday me and can't even
acknowledge me anymore and so
I learned to hide behind it
and walk around with it hanging over
my face
and it's nice not seeing anyway.

Too many souls are buried under the landfill
where a city once stood
where a tree once grew from
tears of creatures and people
and where children laughed a long
long time ago
forgotten under a
rotten smell

Even love is useless if we all refuse to use it.
does that mean we don't deserve to feel ?
No one wants to think about karma and
a kindness that we lack and the depths
of the twisted psychology of greed
taking over instead of basic need.

Too many lives are wasted,
too many stories copied and pasted
and bodies walking without brains
in a dark and menacing place
that leaves no trace of the
hearts left beating in the rains.

Paradise walking,
tremors in a suitcase waiting,
unattended outside your locked doors.

Preachers talking,
pathways in the nighttime fading,
silence mirrored in your crimson floors.

Creatures gaping,
twilight in the trees and
burns and pleas and seeing
separate pieces
Crying on your
starlit sandy beaches as the
night collapses, dawn surpasses
pillows made of ashes
Sunlight burns your broken
body hiding in the sand
and jagged lashes
pictures fastened
memories fashioned

Soap cleanses broken lenses
Wounds heal and people deal.

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've been wondering where you'll show up

If you surface as a hum in the wind,
faint but reassuring, touching the exposed skin of my face,
your briefness would match ours,
you'd scatter my thoughts,
laughter trickling away from me like the days
that stand between me and the time I touched against slowness
and saw it as something beautiful,
You'd be gone as soon as I saw you
...Just like I'm afraid of

Maybe you'll be a cat, wandering around corners,
wise, mesmerizing eyes
I already feel like there's something you know
and I'm desperately craving it

Perhaps I'll stumble upon you,
in the form of a sprout, reaching into the air from the earth
green and vibrant and alive with a freedom my
chest hasn't felt since your lips left
me breathless

It certainly won't be you as your real human self, though
no tall form will fall out of my dreams and into reality
Much as I've spilt my desires into you (without your knowledge),
built you up into my angel
my fallen-from-the-sky lover
trapped in my never-ending thought bubble,

You won't save me

much as I'm sick of the loneliness

My metaphorical angel,
I'll leave you as a memory
let you gently remind me of soft times
and hope to meet you again one day.

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.

I want you
to be
concrete and metal shards
ripping out
from inside me

rusty with the dried blood
of the last century

one hundred years from now they'll form you into coat-hangers
when they still haven't figured out what to make of heartbreak
they'll hang you out to dry
in the sun that never rises

eternal injustice, like salt
on the wound
the pain is a distraction from the
cancer of actual problems

Actually,
we live in
the first world

which is awfully pretentious

I am, you are...
thinking... that you know where your heart is and how
to stay out of the eye of the storm,
or how to look away from it and
all those things that are so easy to get frustrated about
                                                                ­                                screaming into
pillows falling
                                        faster into
light
dark
close
open


SHOUT: you found the things the world threw away
the light of day
                                             showered in
blood spattered
                                                       ­               men with their faces down
clouds
gray
open -
red -
close


STAND

even blind you know the world never started spinning on its own
you could sit and wait for the river to drown you
or be the first to reach out

it takes one

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

these, these,
                                                                                                                      knock
this stranger's words on my screen
                                                                                                                       knock
reminding me of me
                                                                                                                        knock

In my stomach, a sinking
                                                                                                                                         slow
In my chest heavy. Shoulders
                                                                                                                           solid
want to crunch into each other
                                                                                        want to erase
Helpless sad
                                                                                                                   pain from
leans bone into back
                                                                                            your words
back-bent behind birds and beeches
                                                                                                             I found
Dreaming for seasons, I
                                                                                                              the sun
miss the sun
                                                                                          speak
silent
                                                                                       please
miss the days I numbed myself while it was cloudy
                                                                                                   I'll drown
even with a good chance of clearing up before noon, I
                                                                                                          in your words
don't remember any of them
                                                                                   remembering
The flavor of my thoughts
                                                                                       not
was lost



What do you say to the corpse that is lying in your grave?
                                                                                                                            caustic
You learn to accept that you're still here.
                                                                                                                              golden
You look yourself in the mirror and decide each day that you'll
                                                                                                                  stay      constant
shake love out of your living limbs
                                                                                            sorrow
into the earth
                                                                                      love
with each step.
                                                                                                is like
Step.
                                                                                                                   DANCING
You become grateful for the beat.
                                                                                                                move with me
Beat.
                               &

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.

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

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.

My tree is just too cold
Gas is too expensive so I
can't run to the open road.
Reality hurts
My voice wants to be heard
My eyes are lonely too...
It hurts so much to be excluded
not knowing where to aim my sadness
or whether to call myself "isolated"
or "isolating"
I'm trying to say "help"
but no one understands my language
I am a different species
perhaps
is that why nobody talks to me?
I don't want pity
I ache for a moment
of connection and caring
and not-worrying-just-being
but nobody
wants to
connect.

I'm in the space between
wanting to cry from sadness,
and wanting to cry because
no one would care if I cried,
and wanting to cry because
no one would even look anyway.

Cruel laughter is in my mirror
and in my pool of memories
frozen over.

It's been so long since I've
felt so much at once
and wasted so much time
in so little space
and thought so much about
fire and music
and hid so much in
math and words
and wanted so badly
to have someone to share it all with.

I like the roughness of bark and the feeling of sturdiness.
the texture, unique and familiar like a footprint fading in the sand,
more trustworthy than most things that grow and change
things like people unknowingly trained to lie
like fingernails that dig up flesh,
fingernails that were dead the moment they tried to breathe.

I like the scrape of bark on my bare feet.
After I flinch and almost stumble
My heart pounds; I feel real.
I hold the tree and it holds me.

One day I will put up a swing on that branch,
trust it more than words or feelings.
I'll swing in a sundress and feel the sky.
I'll sing to the tree that doesn't judge
and its leaves will whistle along into the wind.      

One day I'll climb up the trunk with bare feet.
I'll go past my branch and go higher
feel twigs snap and scratch; feel it smooth like velvet
At the top I'll have wings.

I'd like this to be my world, so simple
I like the way I feel alive, in the wind
with the song of the leaves
with sun-tickled skin and a head full of smiles
with bark under my bare feet.

I never told anyone that because they'd laugh.
I'm waiting for somebody who will listen
instead of waiting to talk
I'm waiting for someone to see me like
I can't see myself
and (if I'm honest, if I remember what honesty is)
to hold me back from running away.

Arms are more comforting than bark
but I wouldn't know.
Anyway, a branch won't die.

If you want to find me, I won't see you.
You can yell, but I'm not sure I will recognize
real words.
I've only heard screeches and barks, and lies.
I'll be at the top of a tree not looking down,
standing on a branch with bare feet
waiting to grow leaves or wings,
or for someone to sing and laugh or say my name,
or to help me remember love.

leads to hyper-    
active hyper-                                        
dependant
carbo-
fffffffFFFFIIIIiiiiIIIIIZZzzzzzZ
                             zzzzlleeee     pOP
               aggggaachugggggggaaaNGGGulp.
-nated
people
who fin
d
it hard to face the
sugarless silence

Texas, you ran on me like blood,
miles of road building up for an anticlimax.
Sun on her back, begging for rust,
wringing herself for another hour of daylight.
Green and golden grass through the windshield
speckled with red.

Made me want the coming dust,
made the vibrant greens of the humid East
seem like anthills worth cementing over,

Golden red. Wind whipped through the car windows,
nostalgia in a place I'd never seen.
I wanted to break you. Time was too still,
change was too slow for me. Southwest America had my name
drawn in dead bug splatters and drained coffee cups
somewhere ahead.

Time doesn't translate to these long miles,
it's just you and me and something new, something old.
Me and the windshield and the dead bugs,
and flitting thoughts of North Carolina,
repeated songs, hard silences,
and something chilling about these dead towns.
Some salty Pacific air already on my tongue.

Something nameless to remind me that being young is bittersweet,
and I don't know what I'm running from

I'm trying to be honest
I can't be satisfied by the words
All I have are swirling thoughts,
a comforting memory,
and a path I'd like to travel that became blocked off too soon
because I pushed down a tree in pursuit of something different
something different
something more

The moon speaks to me on these nights,
I want music, movies, the stars
I really want people
but anything that will bring the tears
will work something special
something more

Cracking inside me, I can't tell you
how broken I feel
for lack of words and courage
and for who has ears these days
and I am small,
in an intersection of swirling paths called the universe,
a thick, luscious ribbon of everything beautiful covered in chicken wire and mulch
it smells like earth, tastes like something that can't be digested,
but I swallow it anyway
goes down rough,
but feels something right
something different
something more

lump in my stomach, I know the acid is there working some kind of miracle

three thousand miles and one hundred twenty seven hours ago (approximately), I felt happy

Spinning, spinning something new, I guess. But the pace is set, and you're either in or a failure.

I'm trying to find a path.

The one that leads to sleep and straight into my dreams.
I'm thinking that if find it, quantify it, and twist it enough, they might become reality.
I might be able to run past the nightmares and the conflicts and the insanity.

My path is indestructible and it attracts my feet.
I don't have to think
It's like the ground is moving beneath me,
like a black strip of ground is moving beneath me on repeat.
Everyone is suddenly walking on a path
Everyone is on different pieces of ground,
on their own black path
moving beneath them
so they don't have to think.
If these paths don't touch, they don't make eye contact.
They are all together physically,
but they're in their own worlds...

...Who am I kidding, we're all in our own worlds!
And here I am trying to decide which way to go when
I realize it's already been decided.
I'm moving forward on this stupid black path that never changes.
I find myself looking around at the blank walls, the blank faces,
the plugged in faces! The darting eyes avoiding contact.
There's something wrong here.
It hits me every time, full blown.

There's a reason why I avoid the gym.
I'd rather run outside and let the world
take me in.
I'd rather be able to jump if I wanna, or sing,
or say something to the people around me.
Or escape the people around me!
Find a place where I can truly be.
On my own.
So many people are afraid of being alone.

I want this generation to see, to explore, to fall
and get up
and all the things like making forts and traps and seeing
off the top of a mountain -
from outside your car ...
Guys, there are stars in some places.
I'm telling you, there are things worth seeing out there.
I'm telling you what needs to happen.
You need to get up off your seat, unplug your eyes from the screen,
and go discover for yourself where you end up one day.
**** this path of perfection, **** all the shortcuts
and technology and craziness,
this culture of disconnection is
literally
driving
people
insane!
Start asking yourself questions and you'll realize Wikipedia can't tell you everything.
Peel away from your text and you might notice a blossoming tree.
The world changes.
Daily.
It will change, daily, for the rest of your life.

And I don't know about you, but I'd rather not let it pass me by.

Dreaming of oceans, waves crash into my brain.
White noise, streaming through my body,
out my pores down my chest over my flesh
Cleanse.

I'd dream and stop living, dream to stop giving.
Run to save my wings, run to forgo things.

The minute you poke me I might stop letting you in.
Sometimes singing is more enjoyable in the silence-
.

CRASH

and the room is so small, so
terribly small and uncomfortable until
you remember you haven't stepped
over your front mat, you're stuck
on a door step that's glaring down at you from your feet.

and you're screaming without opening your mouth,
because the only way you know how to express
is to paint your words on your forehead
and jump through stained-glass windows.

and the night doesn't end, sunlight is a dream,
the glare on your screen is from the city lights
swallowing the sky.

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

sigh at the forecast
there's enough grey in my head
to water my plants

it drips out my ears
colorless moments and tears
in writing and rants

you call it water
i call it away and it's
gone like forgiveness

but i think this true
i guess i like rain because
i can't hear my breaths

long, long fingers
I want to touch the screen and meet you where you can't feel me prodding,
can't feel me remembering
or read into my thoughts

I don't even know the implications of my thoughts,
if you are the shape in the clouds,
or you are the shape of my feelings,
or I'm stuck in the clouds and have no ground.
The feelings are there, but I'm thinking too hard
too hard to speak
but it was also that way then, in the night,
easier to touch your fingers than to look you in the eye
easier to talk about the clouds than about the feelings
Somehow I think the comfort of touch bypasses the fear of rejection, given its time


I wonder what you think of time and space

but maybe your ability to not think about everything is what makes you beautiful to me

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.

Tastes of metal. Tastes of rust.
I take wisps of music from the air
to try to fill up the hole.
I am not whole.
I ******* own limits,
my own blossoming self-doubt.
I am afraid of learning to hate.

I want to be the answer to somebody's question.
Is life so short that love will
evade my outstretched fingertips?
Water droplets and flowers on the ground,
and peaches.
Hugs that end too soon. Can
I ask for it to stop? Can I take
a breath?

Do you draw your own lines or
watch them form around you?
Or did you not notice them at all?

I want to be someone's wispy,
wishful thought,
drifting to touch the ground,
back in the air with the wind,
I bet it would taste like
freedom.
Having no choice.
What a paradox.

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.

Hush... tremble.
Would you choose sound or touch?
Along with old colors flying
comes a familiar rush -
a face, a fight, a crutch.
You leaned too far into the
backs of your supporters - is there
no word but which comes from
blind reporters?
You're clutching cold into your fingers -
wait, wait, wait and count to
three - there's always more than
you can think-of-when-the-
situation-starts-to-sink-just-out-of-
reach

Y­our grasp is slipping, questions ripping
away unanswered
Let go, let go, let go the countless
moments-that-you'd-like-to-claim-
are-yours-without-the­-shame
of unopened doors

There's no one to blame.
You've flown off course-
There is no course, there is only
finding the rest of the pieces -
There always will be a mess
and some creases -
however long your reach is -

At the end of it all, the moments
you remember are the ones
spent looking away from your feet.

Breathe in, breathe out, look up, repeat.

When the sky falls, rivers
will carry you away, spinning,
laughing at absurdities. I promise
you, my hand will be ready,
within reach, if only you reach for
it, please -
who is saving who? Darkness
becomes light
savor the sight of it, bathe in
delight and we'll forget the
loss of blue moons-
Two moons-
I saw the ocean in your eyes
when you didn't look away that time,
and the sky rose without
hate and without crime, and my
thoughts floated freely, I longed
only for a simple touch....
Blink, you chose to slip away like
sand in the wind to fall with my sky
and an echoing cry.

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

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

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.

music roared in my ears
the light blinded me
ahead
dust was rising
it clouded the air like smoke
the dust blinded me
the road, and the sun, and the music,
and the dust
it tasted like freedom


and
for a moment in between
all the things
there was a beautiful silence

Love is like pain.
It waxes and wanes
within my aching veins
and pools up in the rains.
The ground, the sky, my heart, the same.
River, mountain, woods remain.

Singing for tomorrow
and the memories that follow
shading sorrows in the shallow
Hollows of my brain.
Uncertainty, expression, life, the same.
Those that choose to stand remain.

remember windows.
Raindrops pounding against them as we cowered on the couch
safe, smiling
remember your smile

windows were your eyes
when you let me see your soul
I gazed for hours and we shared our secrets
remember your laugh

remember the window where you snuck in
we whispered as the night gave way to dawn
we wished it could stay dark forever
remember your embrace

writing at my window
I watch for you for hours
I shiver, aching for your arms...
remember how you used to smile.

I can stare through windows but I miss seeing your soul.

.
.

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












.

By Day

make a point of smelling the air reeeeal good every morning -
almost tastes like the mountains. like apple pie so crisp it
cuts you open,
spills you out in the leaves.
leaves
go play in them. Make your mountains if you need to be dwarfed some
times it's worth accepting lightly
the way the sunshine tips its hat and colors you flat on your back.
These scenes are meant to be stared at by awestruck, nameless people.

By Night**

the cold might surprise you , he's an old friend who
missed you dearly.
in a good, warm, windswept way be prepared to
lose your favorite socks, and part of your
concept of self,
and find laced-up fingers that more than make up for it
don't shut the blinds
always bring a blanket and
openness, writhing and bursting curiosity ready to
trap the last flash of storm before morning-time
will slow and you will become raw
in the moonlight.
Make music out of the air by the fire, there's so much to love.

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.

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.

I am not me, I am the monster inside me
My words are fake, my eyes don't see straight,
I am the criminal and the crime.

Today I was beaten and broken
and someone revealed me beneath it all

I am trying so hard to stand in the ashes,
but there are more on my back,
I'm burning perpetually
in the ashes of my own burnt skin

Standing up here, I'm so close to the sunlight
closer than I've been in a year
I'm so anxious to see it, but I can't jump
and if I look up the ash gets in my eyes

I have to keep trying
I fall

I need to ask for help
I need a hand up
but a monster doesn't help and doesn't ask for help,
and that's what I am.

Fingers.
Of all things, I'm losing my fingers
One by one, skin patches struck by cold and beautiful music,
flaking off into the leaf piles
I want you to understand
If I had knees,
I'd be on them
Bent backwards and sideways
And that of all places,
I'd choose somewhere beautiful
that of all worlds to travel to the end of
And reach
today
where maybe the end  is around the corner, and
maybe everything has some deeper meaning,
And maybe underneath all the disagreements we're all just people looking for a home in each other -
I'd be here.
Fully.
I fought to be here.

Honey.
I want to call you terms of endearment.
Because the world is a child I want to hold and nurse to health.

I love with my chest - those things I bury inside myself, I want to transform into sunshine and spread outward. Cradle inside of me and let me hold you-
I love with my eyes if you'll look I won't look away. I'll try my best to see you wholly.
I love wholly. And I love
Delicately
With my fingers.

And I sing
And sprout wings in the spring
And grow, green
I'll pull you up with me.
Softly, I'll pull you in
With my sun-soaked fingers
To the sky.
Dry and rising
Higher than high-rises

For all the hate and spite and regret and everything that ever struck
the wrong chords and left dissonance reverberating behind it,
wherever the wave crested and crashed,
I will plant a flower.
Dig with my fingers into the earth,
I love you.

Go, go, go, go, go and don't
stop. You're doing things.
It's impossible to stop.

Move, breathe, think, try to slow down.
It's impossible to stop.

The world is waiting for you.
The world is working with you.
Go smell a flower - you aren't slowing down,
you're just doing another thing worth doing.
Everything is going - try to wrap your head around it -
everything just changed, and so did you.

But who am I??
yelled into the sky silence


If I could
I would
take a snapshot of the falling leaves, swept with the gust,
sideways through postcards
above rooftops
settling softly, caught between the fingers of children on a playground
another picture of leaves scattered on the ground ahead of you before you leave home
scattered on the ground beneath you as you thumb through memories,
take the hand of a loved one,
and run singing into the night
the leaves danced with you in the night

The sky is black, gray, blue, and all shades of the thoughts that I've been unsuccessfully forcing away from myself
The clouds are heavy with melancholy
It makes me think of sweat
so badly wants to
drippppp and disappear, repeat
Buildings set in stone
Buildings are stone
brick, red, sandy, dust, chalk,
my skin is drier than it's been in years

If you look carefully you can just make out
the fabric of gold stretched thin and weaving through the air
I always wanted to believe we were all connected


Somewhere there is a desert full of air
and lonesome happily a cactus sings into the air

Every new song sounds differently depending on your perspective
I always wanted to be open to new perspectives
I was told to educate myself, and write every day,
and always always be kind
I see it in reflections when people aren't looking
Water muffles your bad intentions and everyone
looks good upside down, in ripples, with nameless lights
You eyes were alight the night I wanted to find you for the first time
You could tell -
and you ran

The night followed you
I watched you in the moon for months, and I cried into the thunder
The lightning shakes me with empowerment still
always
still always - the air is constantly moving, those pieces of gold
are like strands of hair trying to find lovers


I'll wait through the rain til my bones make contact with gold
I'll wait for shocks, I need to wake up and not feel alone
You haven't answered me yet