.


   I love you,                          I hate you
I scribbled in the       places where my
   tissue paper heart   should   be   full
      jigsaw puzzles made whole again
        poor broken hearts made new
          taped it to my battered chest
             regretted using black pen
               hindsight knows us best
           {==I let you back in again==>
                     picking  up  pieces
                        drying my eyes
                          a new  thesis
                            I won't cry
                               alright?
                                 good
                                  bye
                      ­               .

oh, they dream
they dream by day
look at them
stood atop a field of daisies
always reaching so far,
like their hands could
break off at any moment
arms stretching to catch the wind
it's the only thing they'll trust
eyelashes fluttering,
ribs expanding, breathe, they keep breathing
they're drifting
don't stop them
don't tell them to come home
don't box them
don't let them know you feel alone
don't love them
aren't they beautiful?
aren't they broken?
please don't scare them
a drifter scared,
is a drifter lost
and yet again,
we've lost them

today
I am red
so red, and blue
angry and lonely and missing you
mad at myself and my thoughts and this hell
I want to crawl out
so violent, so loud
how do I calm down
fuzzy purple, soft hues
trickling water and morning dew
I miss you, I still miss you!
my mind is a burst of orange and yellow
crazy, untamed, deep, shallow
dilated eyes and gasping mouths
hush hushed in dark browns
I get like this
different shades
I hurt like this
broken spades
don't let me fade
don't let me fade
grey, grey, grey, grey, grey, grey, grey, grey

tending to my beautiful garden, growing, glowing, roots showing and hope blooming, tender petals my heart is grooming into something far from
dark and ruined
the others, cracked and crumbling, dry and deserted from thunder rumbling
all I want is to love, to keep loving
knowing love is fearing loss
knowing loss is fearing love
hearing loss is fearing hearing possible
endings nearing
tearing up then gearing up
for demolition I'm only wishing
for undying beautiful things
my mind dutifully sings
and screams and pleads for what my heart needs
good deeds won't protect selfish love,
nor intellect keep my garden intact,
in fact
it may only harden
my heart and pen
pardon my art,
I just intend
to cowardly restart
what must end..
to my garden, I try to tend...

a home, above all else,
is familiar.
it does not have to be comfortable,
nor does it have to be full.
a home is probably a favorite place to be,
or maybe it houses some of the cruelest memories.

I like homes where I can drive quick and still avoid each upcoming pothole--
ones where old neighbors and new couples hunker down for their respectful chapters of life.
I like homes where I can walk around each obstacle in the kitchen with my eyes shut tight and only bang my shins a little bit.

a home is a sense, an intuition.
it is a place where you can dance while no one is watching.
you can fling your tears and regret at the walls and let them absorb your true feelings,
hushing you with their pillows and soft sounds and views.

a home is a home anywhere you choose it to be,
but above all else,
a home is familiar,
and that is a home to me.

shivering in the snow
brittle, glittering diamonds
both so fragile and perfect..
both so deadly.
wearing each to sleep
a blanket of clear, white slumber
hushing the sounds from above,
resting in peace.

by pencil lead, I carved you
      cliffs rounded into craters
silky shadows and smooth skin
         so fine, so fine
I immortalized you,
           a thing to have-- to hold
but even paper grows old
              over time, over time

the thing about photographs..
is that they last a lifetime, mostly
if you never drop them in mud puddles
or tear their fraying edges
or forget the last names of so and so

pictures capture memories
that, otherwise, we may have misplaced
usually..
but what happens when that lovely backdrop
turns into an argument
when its subjects cannot define
if it was here or there?

snapshots freeze us in time, everlasting
except that we still grow..
or we manage to die
our youthful skin becomes crinkly
and our eyes give away more than just our years

I dunno,
still-life was never really my thing to begin with..

he shuddered the first time we touched
and the second, and the third
hitched breaths and a racing heart
careening right into mine

faces so close, sharing air
in, out...... in, out.....
his demons are my enemies
his dreams are a part of me

everything else in the world
is upside down and burning

now the only person I will ever burn for
is *you

the stark contrast of her short hair against her delicate face utterly baffled me, if only for a moment.
I had known her as nothing less than balanced and complete
smooth edges melting into curves and grooves so fine,
a telescope couldn't tell where she started or ended.
years ago we'd held hands as the earth shook under our dusty feet,
locking ourselves in place to watch hopelessly as life as we knew it... crumbled.
without understanding why, I hadn't been afraid
perhaps her uninhabited laughter was my antidote to all things broken.
now, looking out over the marina,
remembering how she giggled as the fish danced sonnets through the currents,
splashing her tanned legs in pure merriment as we watched their undersea show,
I felt like I had made it all up.
maybe her eyes never sparkled as she scolded jillian tarver for her promiscuity
maybe her cheeks didn't warm when I delighted over her paintings in the sunroom.
it was a different dimension, back then, one I had tried to forget -- not because she was an unfavorable memory -- no, because in order to make something of myself, I had to let her go.
that hair...
I always told her how her soft curls drifting across her freckled shoulders would drive men mad, would drive me mad.
she would scoff and pretend to bat at me and tell me she was nothing special; she attempted for all she was worth to convince me she wasn't worthy of my every last affection.
I promised her she was wrong.
not only did I break that promise, but I broke what was left of my ability to care... for anything, for anyone, for myself.
she....
she had three lovely kids and a house on the hilltop with my best friend, and wouldn't you know that she chopped all her hair off and died it black.
I turned from her gaze and resolved to look out at the marina, at my marina, at my spectacle of dead fish dancing for my eyes only.
next time the ground cared to rumble, maybe I should hitch a ride.

enraptured was he,
enamored and taken aback,
eyes glossing and fingers trembling,
effortlessly pouring his soul to top her glass.
she was wild and equally fragile,
strong in her vivacious convictions-
stubborn and quiet and barely content,
sharing a love of fiction and faith and fire.
they danced and watched the skies,
tangled together in hopes and dreams,
tossed to the world by the winds of their cities,
trying desperately to get a grasp on growing up and getting out.
her favorite memory of him:
he had headed into the fields to gaze into space
half shivering, half dead,
holding out a rose to her-- his favorite scent.
night fell and so did they,
nodding off with heads in the weeds,
nurturing each others' wounds and bruises,
nearing dusk with new determination and confidence.

he stared hard at the sky
and saw the whitest of stars...
a simple glimpse inside his mind
was all I needed to fall in love.
for the stars weren't stars at all,
just white bubbles in a sea of hope
stretching out to the sheer depths of imagination.
he boasted of the morning birds and
their sweet, sweet songs...
a creature I had come to hate,
he made me long to hear.
we've heard all our lives
how attraction is necessary in love
but I told him I loved him
before I ever saw his face.
and I do, oh, how I do.
those bright blue eyes bring feeling
back into my empty, empty soul.
he makes me unafraid
to love again, and to grow
to be the fullest essence of myself
without pause or second thought.
all these years...
I've been scared to be truly vulnerable
I have called myself nothing
unworthy
ugly
not good enough
you know what he calls me?

do you ever look at a person so long, their face changes?
studying them so intensely until who they were is no longer who they are--
they have morphed into a stranger with a life story unknown.
the same concept goes for written word..
repeating a word over and over again until it looks foreign.
foreign.... foreign... foreign.. foreign..foreign..foreign.foreign.foreignforeignforeignforeignfor­eign...
foreign...foreign...foreign.... see?
the scariest part is that we are able to convince ourselves of the change almost wholeheartedly.. what does that say about validity?
there may be three truths in the universe..
one kind that is objective,
and one kind that is subjective.
perhaps when the two marry together,
we have a third universal maxim.
but how can we ever know for sure?

I was eight years old,    again

travelling down winding driveways chipped here and there with gravel and dirt

to my right, the opposite of what you'd see in daylight

a sand volleyball court, its dilapidated net blowing pathetically in the wind..

is now a gaping rectangle in the ground, keeper of ghouls and darkness so vast it makes my hair stand on end

backwards geometric shapes draw themselves into my nightmares, like two planes have been crossed and flipped -- a mirror giving life to an evil that is not seen by the conscious mind

I wish I could say that I recognize the tells in my dreams, but that isn't me

recurring scenes dance vividly against my eyelids and I wonder if they're trying to tell me something

or our brains cycle through the fluff until it is time to pull out the deepest parts of ourselves,

the  old  haunts, the  me  at  eight  years  old

a dream is a product of our being- a nightmare, the quotient of all that tears us apart

isn't that what life is? the sum of all parts?

what a wretched feeling,
being lost in my own skin
I find ways to stretch wrong
and all the kinks move to new places
places that weren't to be discovered

drowsy eyes fighting against light
my spine straining against might
I'm going to snap myself in two

if a cat has two realities:
poison or death
can he be blamed
for acting the pessimist?

like candy,
we wanna taste the sweetness
without the consequence
there's a nagging sugar rush
trying to explain something
to me in this frenzied manner
like if I don't grasp it fast enough
I just may
..........crash.........
tic tacs clacking down the path to somewhere
and I've only just dipped into my candy stash
tomorrow's agenda promises Hershey kisses and snickering calories
because everything so good
is essentially somewhat bad

She gave me toast and a side of eggs
One Coke, I said, but she gave me two for just in case
I smiled at her but we both knew I didn't mean it

I look to all the wrong idols for proof that I was made for greater things than this
I feel distressed when the sun doesn't set beautifully enough for my liking
As if the only anchor stopping me from flying away is expected to entertain me to the fullest when I ask

A boy shows me the ocean;
He says baby,
Come watch the water with me
And I light up like a torch and dream of the day when I can wake up to such an incredible view
Just like the one he's prepared for me
With sea foam and shells and hidden secrets in the footprints left by strangers and left by us

I was about to jump, I was about to take that plunge

My vision narrows and I crash back into my body and stare out a glass window
Past the ***** road and cold shoulders
To the plains beyond where the grass is brown and muddy and the trees look sunken and sad
And I remember that I am just a girl chasing pretty sunsets in the great Midwest of America
A tear drop streaks down my face into my Coke and I whisper,
I have to be made for greater things than this
I have to be

I had what I thought was a brilliant idea for a poem, once, a short while ago
it crafted itself slowly up my spine and into the quietest parts of my brain where I try to spend most of my time
as I went to align wispy thought with centered, cemented object
an unavoidable task popped up that demanded my attention and distracted me from starting my piece
and just like that,
my brilliant, invisible moment in time was released back into the atmosphere
it is probably hanging around air plane wings and dreaming of things far more important than cloud stuff
I have noticed a measurable pattern akin to this idea that if we do not act on our conscious thought, it can, in a moments' notice, be whisked away from us
while we are and while we breathe and exist, that voice in our minds can come and go as it pleases
we should try our hardest to grasp what we can, maybe
or maybe we should be thankful for the pieces we are allowed to fit together into a thing called life
I don't know, I don't know
it disappeared into thin air

the buzz is a violent truth serum
that enslaves you as its quilled pen

it requires certain demands of you  
things you cringe at upon waking

because suddenly

you've unraveled a beautiful scroll
and marked it with broken charcoal

and kissed it with a wine-stained mouth--
your stamp of drunken approval

to make sure that the one
who should never receive it

is exactly the one
who gets bit on the lips

by your alcoholic kiss
your inebriated, late night diss

by loose definition:
to build a muscle,
you must first tear it apart
and let it heal over
and over and over
and over and
over
again before it grows into
its utmost potential.
my heart is a muscle
and let me tell you,
it keeps tearing over
and over and over and
over
and over
again
and so one day it should overtake
my entire person
and spray the whole world
with scar tissue and my greatest,
biggest love.
right?

the busiest sidewalks breed the deepest secrets
yet everyone pretends that they've forgotten how to speak
if we took a moment to watch how
the truth tumbles out from crumpled coffee cups and crinkled napkins
we may learn a thing or two
about our hollow brethren

Do you want to know why I stayed?
I threatened so many times to disappear before you glimpsed
the worst parts of me, through whispers and fists and biting
my lips to stop the eruptions of volatile girl from stabbing
you with my skeletons.
In the misty, early hours when neither of us were sleeping
because you were scared I'd go and I was scared I wouldn't,
I showed you the nooks and crannies of my character, the
crevices and caverns of my interchanging moods.
I did my very best to upset and cause unrest and I flung
every miserable curse in the direction I thought you'd be going.
I screamed my violence and mistakes against the front door
and told you I had proven you right.
I was unlovable.
I was a dysfunctional bundle of bones and you were
better off without me.
And I turned over to sob myself to sleep and considered
how I would also be better off without myself and as I
went to hit my pillows-
As I heaved in a shuddering breath of regret and guilt
and my lungs expanded to places I had never felt before,
You reached out and caught me and inserted yourself as
a root in my flailing, upended life.
You stroked my hair and cradled my shivering body and
quieted my sobs and told me there was no way in hell
that you'd leave this beautiful mess.
You said that I punish myself for being anything other than
what I think I should be. You said that I wreck the things
I love the most so that they won't one day see me as
a monster, and you're right. I prove how horrible I am
before you can. I sabotage so that I can say
I know. I'll let you go.
But you absolutely refuse to go,
So here I stay.

Momma always taught me to pull up my sleeves
Before sitting down to our evening meals
So that I'd protect my arms
From the messes I carved
While letting my salted wounds heal

I am a master at the art of ashes
human cremation takes artistic commitment
once the smell of singed eyebrows
burns your nose you can never be the same again
you know, my skin grew flame retardant and at first I wished grossly to return it and buy a new shell
but I've made the executive decision to aerate my diaphragm and pump this fire out of my pores and into your palms
singing with a slow burn
branding your sweet fingerprints into my skull
see, something outside of myself must contain me or I'll spill, gritty and fine
end over end into the depths of the alleyways and cobblestones
but, to be quite frank, I'm drowsy
so I'd rather you climb to the top of the world and release me, softly letting me blanket everything I've ever come to love
instead of confining me in that ugly porcelain jar that I spent my entire life peering at
while it hovered, haunting me, above my birthing ground
sitting precariously on that wooden mantle
above my fireplace
above my home.

when you speak out of turn, the ground shakes
I sealed your lips with dried blood but you were always one to fight through the pain
holding your red face between my cracked palms, I glimpse confinement
a place I have been to... a hell I will not lock myself in again
yet the humanity in your eyes braces itself against your chest and you push and you push until I split in two
half of me igniting with a desire to save you and the other desperately begging me to save myself
I am standing on solid air and I am falling upward
defined and confined
trapped in a box of infinity
with no one to turn to but the reflection of me:
you

quantum physicians may not be able to write out an equation
showing proof of our bond,
but the ties that bind reach across the galaxies and beyond
and biology professors at the ivy league schools may not
be able to explain why my heart thrums faster when I think
about you, but my pulse is yours and I guarantee I can feel
you in every measurable thing that I do
it's funny... multiple dimensions couldn't even keep us apart,
and my body has been frayed and fuzzy since I left you--
from the start
of this journey toward self-realization and humanization
but the one thing that no one can deny is that time exists  
a watch is not a thing to keep time;
a watch is proof of the seconds before and now and after
and it certainly isn't ours to keep
but we could borrow some and place our fate in the
hands of that fragile wristband and call it an
insurmountable thing
I would venture to say
that we could call it love,
we can call it you and me
and science cannot create nor destroy us

Too many of us sling tasks over our shoulders that are better left to those who request they be completed

Days turn into weeks of selfless help and pretty soon we stop doing for us-- instead doing for everyone else

Then eventually we shake our hollow frames and the dust flies off and settles and we take a good long look in the mirror and say it's our turn

There is something to be said about helping one another but there is a quiet strength in admitting that we need help, too.

dear so and so,

strong intro
hook line and sink her
cheap wines don't hide the taste of sin, oh
but you made yourself a thinker  
four paragraphs in the outline
covering her head to her toes
pouring thoughts into her hair line
writing romance in her elbows
conclusions, confusion
you kissed her and tasted him
contusions, retribution,
her surface you've barely skimmed



love,

her eyes told me everything she didn't want me to know.
like the first time I whispered, "I love you", I knew she loved me too.
because even though her mouth told me to hush and her fingers got tangled while unbuttoning my sweater,
her eyes burst with this firey, glossed hue and her skin grew flushed and soft and I knew right then that staring into her eyes was the sweetest gift she would ever be capable of giving me.

I sat alone in front of a crumbling grey building until its debris whispered the okay for me to go home

when you jog under street lamps and your breath is white and misty from the chill, you realize just how many footsteps have fallen before you and you wonder just how much of this same air was here last year


how can I ever live on my own when I am so afraid of the dark?


if I had a penny for every vivacious hot dog stand I came across......... I'd have enough to buy a few hot dogs.

the air doesn't smell *****. the ground doesn't look littered and ashen. this place is alive. the streets are filled with the souls of the people. they just take the shape of battered shopping carts and greasy cardboard boxes and taxi smoke when you're not looking hard enough. they're exceptional at disguise.

I see a lot of churches but I only see sin happening at the altar.  

you cannot think for yourself when the roar of the city is your cerebral cortex

in all my musing I dreamt of cobblestones and patisseries. I thought the history was in the legend-- in the campfire stories and the romance novels. but it isn't. it's here. it's New York.

children are different here. self awareness ranks high when the thieves hide in plain sight.

cracks in the pavement make me wonder what mysteries lay in the tunnels that no one speaks about

spoke to approximately 30 koreans in china town about the price of tea in america

haute couture is for sure never going to be folklore

I felt inferior walking down fifth ave so I bought a pair of knock-off sunglasses and painted musicals with my feet while eating candied insects with strangers

undiscovered broke talent meets every corner in every city

pick a card
any card
except that one
he knew I knew he'd get my $20
I let him have it
it was counterfeit

brooklyn is a two-faced liar and I'm jim carrey with a b-bl-b-blllll-bllluuured pen,
carving my insides into the trees so the little girls remember their manners when they're older

new york is forever awake and I am eternally ready to go to sleep  

taxi drivers are succubi

if air can be an electrical conductor,
just imagine what our mouths can create
a brief explosion of light and sound designing
a force field too strong to hold back
I am an electron; you are my ion
we emit energy so sizzling and sharp
that the hair stands up on the back of our necks
our tongues, like spark plugs
our bodies the batteries that never quite quit
alight in ashes, we are struck
together like stones and our
brightness breaks through
the haze of the dim world
we're igniting a riot
we are a spark
fuel our flame
blow us away into the atmosphere

you're a piece of trash
a misshapen forgotten thing that I kick under my bed
rotten carcasses hold more genuine character than you
and I'd rather inhale them than catch the stench of your pretentious flesh
you're a selfish troll with daggers for eyes and knives for a tongue
attending masquerade ***** with a guise so clever, everyone we know thinks you're actually a human being
they think, for some funny reason, that you're my mother

I'm six years old
trying on witch hats and scar faces
you grab my arms and shake me
you tell me the candy people will assume they're painted bruises for October 31

I'm not scared of monsters
and I'm not scared of you
I'm scared of who I'll become

this Halloween I'm dressing up
I'm a person with a chain metal suit shielding my most precious insides
and pretending to be something I've never, ever been:
Brave.

I didn't think I could get out alive
for years I sat chained in this dungeon and hoped and prayed
to a thing supposedly bigger and greater than me
have you ever cried so hard that you panic and think you won't
be able to breathe again?
every day I have flash backs
clear as crystal and deep as a wound
I see you coming at me with rage and hatred in your eyes
my god
when I asked you if you felt sorry
you said NO!!!!??????!!!
the resentment I feel is larger than the hurt
I don't know how to cope and I don't know how to be

I was walking through town the other day and had this
alarming sense that I wasn't supposed to
I feel guilty when I want time to myself
I keep expecting you to yell at me
to threaten me
to turn that evil, lifeless grin on me before wrecking my life  
it's like
each time I rearrange my pieces into a jigsaw puzzle that spells "alright"
you come sauntering in and cut up all the jagged edges and I
can never completely fill myself again
my head is nothing but anger and confusion and dread and
sadness and mess up
I'm so messed up
you're gonna walk in tomorrow and I'm gonna have to hug you
and don't you know it kills me each time?
there will be nothing left
I don't know how to be
flatline

When the sun sets and the moon rises,
We see a perfect relationship.
Not in the sense of the two joining
Together in a beautiful unit,
But in the sense that one cannot survive
Without the others' presence.

It is a circle, a pattern, a never-ending cycle that defies time and all of the odds. The sun recognizes its counterpart and kisses it in greeting every morn' and evening.

my throat is being crushed*
I subconsciously know this is a dream
but I cannot shake myself loose
funny how we are supposed to be
in control of our destinies
while we are sleeping
I am my own hero
when my mind is elevated out of my
shell-shocked body
I am choking and heaving but
nothing enters my lungs
I am soon going to quit feeling
it is a weird darkness
that I have been entombed in
no strangers or murderers or
demonic beings are trying to
steal my breath from my ribcage
it is just me
I   just   need   to   tell    myself
      to                     inhale  




...

..

.


I am awake
I **** air through my teeth--

The cold is nipping at my heels again
For two days I have been deluded into
Thinking that Autumn
May actually feel like Autumn

Rows of the skeletons I have shut up in my
Cabinets are now standing bare and silent
Along the horizon; they taunt, they mock
The few leaves they have managed to
Hold on to sway in the chill and
Shudder when I walk past

Three deer creep up to the patio
I watch them behind my safe place
My window is my protective cover
From all that is outside and out of my
Control
Frost sneaks up the wood paneling and
The faint laughter from the school children
Fades into a maniacal howl

Soon the snow will cover the tracks of
The poltergeists who visit me at night
In white robes blanketing their voices,
They surround me and pierce my dreams
Visions of violent assault and grief and
Helplessness
of Seasonal Affective Disorder

Winter steals my Indian summers and
Whips me with brutal cold and sleet
Warm afternoons turn into car accidents
And black ice and broken people
Soon the snow will present itself  
And the sunlight will fade from my eyes
So let me sleep until spring.