Darling my darling
i sometimes think of writing a letter to
you everyday
even though you are never far away
i sometimes still dream of him
but no matter,
this heart is yours.
remember when we first met?
a chilly winter night,
visiting the Petco cats
and playing nintendo
while your record player spinned.
Seems surreal now.
like that time
you laid yourself as a
blanket over me
and we watched outer space
on dewy grass
with hands clasped.
you spilled your secrets to me,
whispered them into my hair,
where they nestled and found warm dark
comfort there.
your lips
oh your lips
how not even the gods could forget
such two perfect
bows that tremble,
opening gently over mine.
somehow you breathed life into me
and that was the end to my
sad
ghost story.
so
darling
my darling
thank you
for unlocking something inside
of me
something that never stops
singing.

breathless bodies
churning into a wave,
your eyes not quite like meadows
but rolling
rolling ,,
fuzzy green horizon,
the sun smiling with a thoughtless
prayer.
battery acid dripping from your hair.
i like when your body
makes my body blue
a carpet of rust,
textured,
contrasting the forest floor.
maybe i would be a bee keeper,
folding all the boys
up into honey combs.
a hive of
uncertainty.
lonely hearts still beating
a bruised remorse.

Born from fire and coal
You break bones with fists of stone
Your eyes are rubies
in a face of smoke
You visit
****** white daisies
and wither them to husks,
petals scattered among ash.
I was a flower once.
Delicate and small
White as innocence should be,
I stood tall.
Your fires came,
slowly at first,
the flames so warm-
I wanted to burn.
You became a forest fire in my vision,
blurring everything else.
Your flaming fingers
plucking my petals
one by one.
I was no different.
No one will be,
Because fire destroys,
And salvation was
lost
on
you.

oil leaks
purple and blue
curving through the cobblestone streets
a loquacious city
punk kids with bruised knuckles
and art made out of broken glass
we walk with an elegant gait
parading the scuffs on our boots
and our cigarette filled lungs
collecting pennies as
the sun dips down
a candy red apple
sweeter when
the day
is
done

He loves
She takes
He folds her heart
into neat patterns
careful all the days
She fiddles with the fabric
so it stays in disarray
He smooths it gently,
always.

it's sunday
and the dog lies on the rug
the fire spits
and the leather chair
is devoid of human warmth.
the scene is picturesque
a cabin fit for the woods
the books are dusty,
pages worn,
it could have been lived in-
but this place is just a skeleton.

the night was quiet.
cold but sweet
rippled pools in a forest of pine.
i lounged on the couch
as you threaded round' and round' the trees
pinpricks of lights dripping from your arms.
as you carried christmas in your palms
and i watched
silently,
your grace  unfolded
like   a tear stained love letter
"desperate hearts belong together"
and it's true i could never find another angle like you
to perch at the top of my tree
and your eggnog lips move   gently
over my mouth
eyelashes
brushing window panes
like fragile falling
snowflakes

17
she's 17
stuck in a disney dream
waiting for a chance
to soar above skyscrapers
and discover
the identity of infinity
but she's closed in this door,
a purgatory of grown up feelings
and little kid sensitivity,
to trust too easily
oh 17
she's 17
but she just wants to be somebody.

daughters slitting their wrists
in the bathroom sinks
the call goes straight to voicemail
a scratchy dial tone
of weeping.
hedges trimmed and the house
smelling of fresh paint
the boy in the closet
drips his head
feet hanging inches from the ground.
as long as the neighbors
don't miss their tea time
there's no harm in
a bump in the night.

she clutches her body
a frayed rag
and she remembers his
ragweed teeth
the bobbles in his ears-
skin stretching like fabric on a loom.
there are no tears anymore
    just a quiet knowing
like the sad eyes of a cow
off to the slaughter house
and carcasses hang in strips
   a ****** mouth
torn open in a grin
and the hard glinting metal of a knife flaying open skin.
her skin,
her legs like wishbones,
cracking apart,
thrusted in obtuse angles
   a conveyor belt life of sludge
and consumption

Flowing skirts that brush my ankles.
Dancing while the golden rings jingle.
Gypsy summer.
Gypsy night.

Smell the smoke while it licks at your skin,
Drink me in.
Passion ensues in this little caravan.
I crave your scarred hands,
Exploring my waist.
The fragments of my neck,
Chase the wine with sweet shots of my lips.



Opening my wounds to you,
Let the blood trickle down until it baths us in it's dying life.
Stuck together, emblazoned with this new sacrifice.
Tonight,
Is our night.
And on, we shall fight.

Soft glowing
Lights
Hang from emptied corridors
And the night melts into

An


Outer space
Dripping pinpoints of light

i am church
poetry is church
sin is church
art is church
blood is church
lust is church
little girls selling lemonade is church
sundays are church
mondays, tuesdays, wednesdays, thursdays, fridays
saturdays too.
church isn't a place
it isn't anything
but everything
and god sees all

pretend my
naked body
is a flower
you wouldn't
crush

the craters of the moon
carve out a fiercely
illuminated face
cheekbones of
rouge and twinkling eyes
beckoning between
the rose bushes
and the purple ivy
climbing up the rooftops
to reach over gothic spirals
an undoing of night.
the red burn of craze
quickens the twitching
of a pestilent ache
within the knuckles
to crack and spill out the silence of
the world
within them

I wish I could float on by through life,
Letting the fingerprints fade.

A balloon slipped loose
from a child's fragile grasp.

No one will cry
when I'm
simply a speck;
popped
into oblivion

purple arms still roaming
the cracking streets
unscented
vomiting
the next heartbreak
into your porcelain sink
rinsing the probability
of understanding humanity
down the sewage system
filtering
commercialized affection

your father got drunk at your graduation
and i wanted to keep holding your hand.
you in your blue robes,
a white star in the sea,
your heart so palpable
like an artist's dreams.
your step-father pretended he cared,
but muttered under his breath during the procession
and i wanted to keep holding your hand.
i wished my fingers would grow like vines around your
palm
so you'd know i'd be there all along.
the ground may feel broken and your successes
made into background noise,
but you're my white owl
who carries all that is unseen
in your forest-touched eyes
and i believe that our hands,
as long as they're stuck together,
will give you the wings
to leave the rubble behind.

it is a dangerous thing to do
to still in silence
alone with nothing but thoughts
and feelings
belonging only
to me.
how risky it is
to cut the world away
snap the string connecting everything
to draw the curtain down
left with my shadow
a
poisonous
companion
giving life
to sorrow
an unwise
circumstance
to be with me and me
and just me--
and suicide,
she purrs
along the window's rim
peeping in
at me and me and
lonesome me

interwoven sunlight
through back streets
over grown ivy curling on stone
growing in grey concrete
someone's footsteps linger
where the millions have frayed;
icy hearts melting
with warm summer rays
a woman with skin mottled and pink
curls in a corner of the busy city scene
said she lost her existence to the devil's drug
and now she's just a shell of what she once was.
decomposing back into earth, into the gravel
the pavement slick with oil, copper filled taste.
and i lounge upon a quilted meadow
laying waste

i feel like a bad person
when your eyes turn
into reflections of the sea
and i know that it's because of me.

The night scrapes
with blue feathery
tendrils
coursing like
water and streams of rain.

Your mouth opens
like a fountain
and i throw
in a copper coin;
a wish for our future
to maybe
someday
exist
in the particles of
clouds and anchors
of ships.

gray and blue and black
make up the angles and cheekbones
of you.
you're a painting with a film of dust
and i'm an attic that welcomes rust
broken windows, ripped screens
nests that house the emptiness of centuries,
and dolls that no longer have the mechanics to blink.
i guess you could form the conclusion
that i am a heap of broken things
floating inside a dead room
and you are a picture in a frame
that lives in shadows
etched in the silver starlight
of regrettable shame.

Your soft touch curls around my bones,
my blood thrumming in time
to the pitches of your voice.
Like gentle fluttering wings,
my eyelashes caress thy cheek,
creating a vibe of harmony.
The candle light casts our
shadows against the wall,
the silhouettes shuddering
with the framework of an embrace-
Shattering the outside world
Together we'll hang in this moment,
Our fingers remaining
entwined-
Tearing them apart would be
dubbed a crime.

chipped china cups stained
with cherry red prints from your lip stick.
the way you swing your body languidly
through the wispy smoke
hanging in the air like a reunion of ghost;
always enchanted me so.
here the graves lie of all the lovers whose
hearts were severed by your gentle fingers
cutting out the sacred testimonies wedged
brightly in every heart.
they stained the earth,
for they had something
to give
but although your eyes open
with surprising brilliance,
how can anything you see
hold meaning?

Kisses in the kitchen
Burning like an oven
Passion pre-heated
appliances beeping
Hold me tightly
until the kettle
steams
and then we may sit,
and enjoy a cup of tea.

street lights laughing
street lights passing
hooking the contents of a baked
beans can
with our fingers
grubby
Scavengers
like vultures
heads bald, pink, and splotched
winter months we clamber
inside pockets
and rest on shoulder shelves
it's when the sun dips down
we yawn through exhaustion
put away old vices
and sleep
just sleep
like weary vagabonds
jumping the night trains
for a span of
uninterrupted shadows

what is it like to
sit
on laundromat tiles
with fish eyes blank
slack jaw
words coming out
"you're too young"
my porcelain skin
isn't china doll thin;
i've felt things inside that rupture
stitching
that morph into a blazing
hot sun because i feel
it's burn in every molecule
thrown under microscopes and watching
the chemical reaction of knowing
you're in love and being in love and always wanting love
with the one person who gives you love
as amebas you can't
measure the age
"oh yes it's love, no
doubt about that"
scientifically proven.
but when you add a
slight skeleton
skin with cuts and scars
from off balanced racing on concrete
with feet that feel every
material of every terrain
and wide eyes that smile
because
life can truly be beautiful.
when you add all that-
love somehow becomes less potent
as if the inner
bonds of feeling
are taken less
seriously.
tell me this;
my lips curve around his name
and my voice box softens
and slows,
dragging out letters
like they hold a story in each one
and to me they always will
should that change with age, should it lessen?
my heart pumps in the same rhythm that
it will 20 years from now.
love has no age
it exists in timeless capacities
and does not know numbers,
it will not see them
it sees two hands
holding one another
gently like
sacred white doves
alighting on aspen
branches
with roots that bury in deep-
but bark as tender
as newborn babies

there's nothing
that i cannot feel-
mostly it's this hollowness
a computer program circuit.
the world makes us all the same,
into malfunctioning robots.
the cogs in my heart
cease to turn
and it's ragged
jagged
numbness

heavy lines intersecting
beneath the prisms of light
that flicker under
iris veins
the sound of rain,
god am i stuck on the sound of rain
slow long drizzle
dragging a limp body across the ground
snaking beneath apple orchards
man's first sin was my last breath
dilating pupils finger nails
itching the skin,
an addiction i was born into
he spilled the last
words of loss
coming to crack along the ground
plastic communities tiny boxes
and fissures in the family
chipped tooth, your grin
is beautiful

the sunset is all
candy heart valentines
"hug me"
"i love you"
"be mine?"
saccharine promises
sticky and dissolving
on tiny pink cat tongues
running in a field of daisies
skipping slowly
hair flinging side to side
but nobody's there to catch your embrace
hallmark card ***** and february *******
parties in the bathroom
forget your empty bed
forget forget
you keep the door locked-
cold thoughts.

smoking a cigarette
orange
yellow light beckons me
from a treetop in winter
and the pines fill my nostrils
with an African presence
the sunburn
molten and bubbling.
finding something
smoldering
in this gray
landscape,
was like when the blue heart of
haley's comet ripped down
and stole your
presence
from the sky

i just wanted to  pick your bones
white daisies in a field
and weave them together
a halo to float over my head
so wherever i'd go a part of you hung in the air
a soft constant breeze.

and maybe you'll let me.
maybe you'll string your veins like lights to light my journey
when the cobbled streets are black
and your back in rink-a-**** town
and i'm off getting my wings.

you like to breath air into my dreams,
lifting my balloons, and even though  you'll be here in this gray
town you never
made me feel sorry.

sorry that i've got to leave.
and maybe you'll give me your hands too,

so when it's colder than a winter month, i can wrap my fingers in them
and i'll be warm on the inside
too

******  analyzing
inside airports
buzzing machines and people's throats
quite the same sound
if your ear really captures it.
destitute and frail
the ******* ******
with too much
abandon
churning out empty husks of men,
a glory between legs
everything else
feels irrelevant.
squeeze
the insanity from my lungs,
a surgical reconfiguration
i'm constantly re-inventing myself
and this time
i'm stuck
on you.

Temporary things never last.



Tis' why they are temporary.



Your love was temporary.





Like sugared gum. So sweet for the first few minutes.







Slowly turning into a depleted lump, burdening your tongue.

















But you spit me out.
I was determined to live with the tasteless blob, hoping it would morph back into something beautiful.













I guess I see why I was pulled from the inside.
I settled, yet I was still yesterday's trash.









My bubble burst.









Now it's only me left with the sticky mess.

he was the kind of boy you'd
break all the rules for,
but you didn't know he'd break you.

dog eared books stacked on dusty window sills with warm laughing light spilling through beveled glass a grandmother's plate of gooey cookies staining teeth and lips with sugar kisses and wrinkled feet from barefoot running in the streets sing me to sleep paint a picture of outer space make sure my star collides with yours so we become a blazoning life form of galactic fire

rain is a veil
that shrouds me
from the world.
the world that hurts and scorns
and says what you are
but not what you wish.
that you want to be
a warm smile
in the yellowed pages of a dusty book,
or the streaks of sunlight that pierces through
a room of gloom,
painting stripes on the whitewashed walls.
yet the rain cannot drown out the sounds
echoing all around
"outsider outsider"
lonely and scabbed over

My body has become a wasteland
My skin crawls with decay
You open my flesh
Analyzing the fossils,
the fingerprints of past lies.
Can this cage hold my soul,
I'm separate from it all
The sewage water running
through my pores,
Recreating over recycled trash.
Lock my limp form
in the county dump
so I can rot
Alone
with no one's
razor sharp
touch
to hurt and scorn.
Just matter decomposing
with the worms.

smoke curls
like a mother's soft hand
forming gently against
infant bodies

i'm no good with talking-
that's something that comes out of
my mouth like gnats.
awkward, rather unpleasant.
writing, yes.
i can write a bit.
essays, no
speeches, no
stories, no.
but poetry,
i write that for you.
my poems speak my heart
because it has no voice box.
i think i've always known i'd find you,
always known that these poems floating
inside me
were for you.
i've always known i'd love you.

this is how i say thank you
this is how i let you know
that the pancakes you make taste like gold
and your eyes say that they love me
over and over.

boys come through my life
like pennies facing backwards

you are so much more
so much more
so much
more.
gosh
i have these feelings,
THESE FEELINGS
i've never felt
you put them there,
like you lay blankets over me when i'm sleeping,
how you rub your thumb
along my cheek
sweet, darling, sweet.

you build me up higher than
mountain tops
gosh
i have these feelings
and here's your poem. they're all for you.
because all this love
-that's what i'm feeling-
it's for you too.

we wanted to buy a house
with an oceanfront view
so we could lounge
on our wrap around
porch
and listen to the seagulls.
that was before
fragile hope was
cast away
and dashed against rocks,
sinking beneath waves.

we layed in the room
with the peeling wallpaper;
the sweetly painted flowers
now crinkled and drooping;
you swallowed your heart and
i asked you where it went.
you said you didn't know
what i meant.
but when i curled my toes around yours,
they were stone cold;
and i could see that your eyes-
once a habitat of wild floras and faunas-
had turned to granite.
i nestled my body tightly against
this unfamiliar tombstone
that held the sculpted angles of
your shoulder blades
and the empty lost echo of
your heart beating.

she had long hair
that fell like ragweeds
across skin of soil
measuring deep.
the water came and eroded her lips away
and the seaweed got stuck in her throat
so she looks on with wide owl eyes
silent as falling snow.

i've decided to floss more
take long walks in the crisp air
do laundry
and stop wearing mismatched
socks.
i think i'll walk away
from my old heart
that liked to hold razors
when i cried
or walk under the moonlight
in bare feet letting the cold
color me blue.

the old heart that felt so many things,
too many things.

i've decided to organize my paint supplies in drawers,
and use a ruler when i draw.
through the motions,
i think,
i'll stop,
hurting.

i am ice
your eyes
flickering
between globes of
unchartered
light
thaw
my
inner
blizzard.
but you do not know.
and i hope one day
you do.

She's there

In the back of the room

In a too-big, quirky sweater.

You'll see her,
with her hair falling like rain.
The clouds accumulating on her face

And like the sea,
she wants to reach far,

but always returns
to
the
shore.

Jake
I loved you
you were my first;
for everything.
I loved you blindly;
obsessively
and it wasn't healthy
like how a moth is drawn to light
their fated demise
i came too close
so i perished into ash

William
you were
the "good guy'
charming with that smile
and doleful eyes
you had everyone bowing at your feet;
everyone but me
i wanted to give you a shot;
really i did
but that was a time when i was
so far lost
like in the midst of a forest
the gas in my car
depleted
i know i hurt you
i knew i couldn't feel all along;
but you were just another
boy
who wanted a place to rest his *****.

Joey
I held a flame for you through the
days of chopped hair
and child-like physique
you only paid attention
when i had grown
into what i was meant to be
i had fun with you-
a summer fling
but when the leaves began to change;
just like them
my feelings blew away

Bradley
what's the point
you were a pompous ***
and I was an equation
you couldn't compute

But Alex
yes Alex
you are the gentle hands that carry
me through the moments
through the seasons
through the changes
your sweet demeanor and faith
never wavering
every morning i hear your songs
and i've forgotten about all the ones
who didn't make it.

I was walking down an old dirt path.
Quite forgotten and out of the way,
I thought to myself, "I want to fall in love today."
Being naive, I didn't know what that would mean.

I pushed the feathery leaves from my face and ventured upon an acidic lake.
Poisson bubbled up from the surface and the atmosphere went as hot as a furnace.
I felt the heat tearing at my skin, and I thought the blisters would be my end.

Until, suddenly, an icy cold hand pulled me away from that horrific land.
Eyes, as freezing as the fingertips, searched my pale expression, never wavering.
I felt them surround me, but strangely didn't seem to mind.

"Thank you for saving me," I managed a quivering smile.
The purple-blue lips parted in reply,
"Nothing comes without a cost. Pretty birds that sing, are locked away in iron cages because their songs are so tempting. I ask that you remove your heart and place it in my hold for safekeeping."

Nodding my thanks, I sunk my fingers through my chest to pull my offering of love from my body.
His hands shot out too fast and snatched the most vulnerable belonging I own from my grasp.
Startled, I tried to stuff feelings of loss and sorrow down into the soles of my feet.

"Wont you stay?" I dared ask, but before I could hope for a reply, a frozen wind came and left only emptiness in its wake.