you were my first midnight kiss
drunk and laughing
spilling like bubbly over and over into your arms
your lips a white froth of sweets
this was the fairy tale hour,
so to speak
but i'm no cinderella
running away
with glass in my heart that aches.
no i was done with fragility;
i'm yours, rust and bolts and ticks and all
you were my first midnight kiss,
and although it did not awaken me from a century of slumber
or turn my fins into human legs
i could feel a different magic
tingling upon the cupid's bow of my lips

the curve of coffee
mug handles
forms familiarity
with the figures
of my grasping fingers
hoping to clutch at something warm
like the soup of your heart-
the dish of the day
i know you give it to me over
and over
but i never tire
of the taste

we all wanna be thin
diet of nicotine
and cigarette smoke;
let me see those bones.
delicate fragile curves
like a swan's neck
vulnerable
and carved out of
stone
statuesque
and perfection
a greek chiseled chest
with a collar bone
deep
as the trenches
at the bottom
of the sea
because skinny arms
skinny legs
can't hold veins
long enough to live

im a bag of meat scraps.
you know, that **** they throw to the pigs,
so it becomes a sick scene of hog eating hog
animistic cannibalism
i'm the girl with cobwebs in her hair
and the bruises on her ankles that she claims
she got from "falling down the stairs"
the kindergartner whose valentine box is empty
and starts to expect a life without love.
all the things that go wrong in the world, all the mutations, and outcasts,
i become them all.
i am a breathing mistake
and i am what the artists paint.
i and you and we
are beautiful

you
are turpentine
when the world gets too thick
your eyes are oil paint
that watch me
smile
watch me cry
watch me laugh
and die
you are the sacrifices
made for me
you are what i chose
to make me happy
you've made a home
inside my lungs
and i drink in your scent
every square inch
you don't like breakfast very much
but you make me eggs over easy
and you like the way i rub together my
feet when i'm asleep;
you said that way you'll always know
it's me.
you don't like yourself very much
and that's why i wrote this poem
because i know these things-
your a garden of different seeds
i'll love the way you grow forever
and i know you'd never stop
loving me

in darkness your shadow is thrown across
the graffiti walls, and beneath
the house foundation rats linger,
husks with needles in their arms.
the children see with their daisy white eyes
the bottom of mother's shoes as she's pitted
down stairwells-
and the popstars sing "it's all right, it's all right."

her legs hung seductively
out of a window frame
pouring smoke
and they drank it all in
took what she had to give
her painted lips
her white wrists
and the marrow
that slept inside.
empty girl
empty sighs
abandoned ware house
turned
****** scene
because their
desire,
each time
was like a knife sunk through her

i could be beautiful if you tore
apart my limbs
reached inside tender skin
dusted off the ashes
cluttered on the surface of
my heart.
because maybe then you'd see
all the love that was there,
and that could make
anyone
beautiful.

the universe splayed its
organs across
the horizon line
specks of morning light
and saturn's rings revolving about
your head,a halo of biblical importance
pretty when i'm high
just like she was when
her flowers blossomed for the first time
and he read the scripture backwards
so he could make love at breakfast
without a sullen jesus
staring down from the rafters

she ran her hands along the body of a tree
feeling the texture of the earth's soul
breathing
in soft echoes,
i held the light that spilled from their eyes
trying to store it away in jars,
or pockets
but it was too evasive to hold.
and she whispered
away into footsteps
kidnapped by twilight.

hey i think we've met before
two young sets of eyes
staring quizzically from
across the tabletop
of a chinese restaurant
with paper lanterns
and oriental
tea being
****** through
chattering teeth.
i met you at a bowling alley;
you told me you couldn't bowl.
it was pretty cute
when the ball landed in the gutter
time after time-
why would you bowl?
you said
why wouldn't i.
perfect sense.
ink stains my fingers,
i watch the splotches
as i comb my hands through
your hair;
so we've met before
and we keep meeting again
and again
inside dark closets
warmed by hanging clothes
and static cling
me to you
you to me
that's how it should always be.

Who was I?
Who have I become?
I feel this whisper of an itch I've tried to forget.
Stuffing it down like ***** laundry in baskets.
There's not enough coins for this pile of socks, not enough cleaner
for these speckles of stains.
Stains that won't wash away.
Can't wash away.
Some damage is permanent.
And when it's committed to your heart, there's only so much healing
it can do, the beating will always be off.
Just slightly, but enough to notice.
To remind your soul of the December months when the tree's
spindly fingers grasped at your neck and the snow seemed to bury
you into the ground.
Like a corpse in a grave.
Don't remember that now.
You're warmer now.
It's less mechanical to laugh and smile now.
Although haunted houses stay haunted, even if they're freshly painted.
I will stay a cavern of broken dreams, even if I'm freshly created.
Appearances are illusions and I am a fun house.
Aren't we all just distortions in an array of jumbled mirrors?
Hiding our true identities from the world.
When we can peer into the ghost story and truly understand,
That's when our lives can really begin.
That's when I'll know; who I am.

there was a girl
with a chipped tooth
and holes in her stockings.
she hides behind a veil of hair.
stupid boys will
touch her
and she can only stare
at the ceiling
cracks.

The excuses on your lips
make me wish
your tongue was a dull dead thing.

The teeth chatter
like insect wings
scraping my ears
burning my cheeks.

Empty like my stomach,
my mind whirls
why do we care
so much
about the ones
stuck too deep
in this world that's
******?

As if through some
amazing feat
we could change the way
they breathe.

No,
go home,
be lost to sleep
because your efforts
are sad
and unfailingly weak.

through half lidded eyes
i gaze into the smokey expanse;
musk wafting through
sliding between fingertips
a lost lover's hand
falling slowly to rest
at the side of a body
grey with the light
shuttered out.

some art is meaningful
some art is "just because"
so for your viewing pleasure;
shut up.

i
am hands
a leaf that spans
the winter
hemisphere.
you
holding my body
cradled
like a fetus
you nurture
rag doll bones.
burning
vision no longer necessary.
i've known
your
face
without waking.

you didn't wish to see me today
and i wilt in shadows.
for you, my sun,
did not embrace me with your rays.

fog grows heavy
on winter's breath
we loved in the bushels
of new fallen leaves
and our whispers were snippets
of warm summer breezes.
we're no longer dead,
never while we're together
feeding life into
our hearts
once so vacant-
your brother hung himself
off the boat next to your house
and i downed my throat with sleeping pills
and made pretty red patterns
across my arms.
that was before we met,
when December was a wasteland
of death endeavors
some triumphs..
some well,
disaster.
but we gave this month a new name,
a new identity
that trembles with the "i love you's"
and the "remember when's"
our cheeks hollow from
warm slubby kisses

I fall in love with words; i die by the blade of words
their sharp enunciation's slicing through layers
of extraneous flesh.

There is no greater death than that done by
the seductive curvature of letters
or the eloquence of speech.
Words create the materials, the inspiration to love
to share your histories and overlap your stories.
It is with words that we can truly see.

thanks for calling me a ****.
i feel empowered
by my feminism.
i hope the girls
you bring to bed
can
really appreciate
your way with words
because nothing
makes the
******* drop
quicker

I looked upon this boy
a stranger that I'll never know,
and i had an emotion so strong,
it flashed like a star against my vision;
white hot and blinding
my veins searing
every inch
filled with a new passion
I wanted him to see me
to look on me with more than
just eyes
more than the simple sight
of a friendly passerby on the street-
but to really look at me
study every angle of my face,
the curve of my lips
as they unfold like falling petals.
I wanted to be the inspiration of a painting
he'll create one day,
edges all soft and blurred
colors calm and fleeting
like the single moment we had,
knowing everything
and nothing

icelandic glaciers
forming fingertips, a cold caress
felt in the heat of summer.
diseased plants
spitting oxygen through decaying lungs an atmosphere of ash
flesh boiling over.
an unopened letter and your sightless eyes
a hanging
shadow

Warm lazy light drips like honey along the brim of Summer's end,
Children scurry up to bed,
and the fairies hide away, once again.
My skin is still peppered in freckles,
and my feet still smelling of baked clay,
the Earth embedding it's footprint at the close of the day.

spider legs
enter under
thin skin

webs of desire
capture the *****
secrets hidden
in crevices
of bare
nakedness

tying knots
in nooses,
stringing our necks
like christmas tree
lights
glowing yellow
on glittering snow.

clockwork
hearts
strike midnight
and the haze
disperses

what is here
is the nuts and
bolts
spewed from
iron lungs
tiring of forgiveness
and valentine
card love

it's like we are a family
of pressed flowers
slid between glass casings
or dried butterfly wings
pinned on a cork board.
something to be studied
observed
fragility that disperses
between finger and thumb
sorrowfully turning into dust that
coats the surfaces of tables or
writing desks.
i'll always love the colors
always love their hues
shaping me-
they made me the golden shadows
of things, like during sunsets.
but i feel blue
at the bottom
and it's because they are sad
and i know so much
about flowers
that are truly people
and nothing more//

my body is water molded
paper
peeling back in curls
revealing bleach white bones
a skeletal structure
hollow
as wind
whistles through

i was lying on the street
with cracked ribs and cold feet
never thought i'd had it in me.
heights, never really my thing
but not as terrified as people think
it was a peculiar notion
to see if i could fly
like so many birds before me
but here
with this stinging sensation
coursing through every inch of my frame
i realized
quite quickly
that my wings had
been broken.

she was a wash of milky moonlight
with purple iris veins
her fingernails glimmered like
the insides of shells as she laid
a delicate palm on the sleeping boy's
brow.
"i am your winter, i am your heartbreak"
she whispered into his dreams
and a shadow passed over his slumbering frame,
and it was nothing but night and rain
inside his subconscious.
she left with the scars of past regrets
and frosted jars filled with all the tragedies of
first love
the springs that turned rotten and foul
into a sticky heat  when flower buds die before they bloom.
with slow blinking eyes
the boy awoke
with his chest opened wide.
he clutched at his dilapidated heart
and wished for the icy caress of sleep
to pull him back under.

there are no words
for long strangled hair
cascading down a naked spine
all pale and freckled.
only soft murmurs spoken between two hearts
and imploring eyes that delve down to the core
of our bare vulnerable insides.
bodies move like the wings of birds
coming together
coming apart
a story written in honey
to be burned onto tongues
dissipating in the pure
ecstasy of moments
snuggled in between shoulders
resting side by side
and that long contented sigh
when it's over
that stretches a blanket
over the room
holding me
and you

before
my body
was a dump.
a place for him to fill with
trash
to relieve himself
of hormonal
frustration.

i
felt
worthless.
i never wanted
it again.
never wanted
hands
upon my
skin.

but
then
you found me.
curled around
dumpsters.

you picked
me up
softly.
and unfurled
my petals,
and i thought
you were the sun.

because
for once
i wanted my
body
to
open
up
and
be filled
instead
with
love.

sober days erupt into
nights of dragging screeches
***** tongues crave a paranoia filled daze
and the stars slice open our palms-
they're so close
heads become melting matter.
the universe cannot stitch our
gaping wounds.
we are
cold dead creatures
driven by the need to
be somewhere else.

july, she lied to me
because summer in my hair
is ending.
the smell of frost
pours from the iced over window panes

and it's darker
and forests are naked

distraught in their skinny wardrobe
vulnerable and staring.

doe eyes meet me through a snow covered sheet
and summer its okay
that you're gone.

a wound sliced
into your thigh
is an emergency exit
for emotion to trickle
through
because you're filled like
a hot air balloon.
dunk your head back
and take a swig
of the cough syrup
for extra bliss
and then you should feel
okay
about living

CD's and guitar strings
Kisses in the rain and apologetic coffee stains
Scribblings of heartfelt declarations
and dreamy records spinning in time
to the drumming of our fingers.
Your face illuminated in the street lights,
your words like silver fish scales
skimming through the water,
making ripples in my heart.

you cruel humans
all of you are
with your chapped lips
stinging words
crooked teeth
poisonous giggles
worming their way into
pure innocent hearts.
how dare you
point out anything that you
believe to be wrong.
it's not wrong-
the girl in your class with the unruly hair
go ahead snicker and taunt,
the boy who always smiles,
even if he is the **** of the joke,
and you think these people are the monsters,
disliked and far from normal-
   but beauty rests in their souls
and it only intensifies with every jab you make,
and your skin begins to rot and your flesh falls away
and your organs are infected with black holes
where your humanity used to be.

the house is quiet
bodies without hearts
but we can imagine the beating
and you're here

and it's still quiet
but a different kind

the night takes a turn
and it's no longer your friend-
holding your hair
with your head
in the toilet,
or taking you to see a movie-
the way colors can light up in the dark.
it's stars become hazy
and the hands that cradled you once
so gently,
become talons.
the night will eat you up little girl
and spit you out
into a painting abstract.
you'll be a crude cave drawing on a wall
dried blood so dark and brown
the night will have you either way
and the moon will look on
in melancholy

wait for me

ive gone away

to some unknown place

purple night dims dark
for me

have i lost my humanity?

"here, take this pill," you say
"it'll make you better"

but pills get lodged in my
throat
tonsils swollen

i choke i choke
on
purple nights

wait for me
thats all i ask

so we can go together
down unlit paths

the ache of a violin
thrums in your stomach
a soft sad whisper
and a gray smudged tear
ink calligraphy on a cheek;
a wreck of beauty
so wonderfully ruined.
a glorious ship sunk
and decaying in dust
under leagues
of ocean
reminding us
that the prideful
can be broken.

I rolled up
George Washington's green face
And ****** the world into my nostrils
Feeling the decay
Of lost cities
Run on sentences
Rotting inside
Scarred throats
A bus into the grimy city-
Tires screeching on the road paved in bones

silence leaks like light into a camera
filtering obscure blobs
that take shape
take meaning
take life.
we still the hollow breaths
that tunnel through our black lungs
wanting to hold a white hot
star in our palms
and **** the vibrancy down
inside of us.
its true that emptiness
rests like lions in cages
between our esophagus and stomach-
but its how you choose
to come into your being-
it is what defines
the map and constellations
of our souls.

you ride on rolling waves
always at sea
voyaging across cultures
weaving colorful words into a pattern
beneath my eyelids
i don't think anyone
understands a soul
   flickering
back and forth
between worlds.
when your hands can reach before your poems
and i can feel
  it all
contentment would flow
between us

Cream colored
roses hang
daintily from hips
a ballet of
pure innocence

sip my lips,
drink me in
until nothing quite makes sense.
let my lungs fill your lungs
with an intoxicating fume.
smoke rings,
ripped jeans,
natty-bo's,
midnight shower endeavors,
the timidness of bare skin.

all the necessary ingredients
in concocting young love.
make me the subject of your songs
and we'll gaze at the stars
on those bright chilly nights.

a perfect pattern that fits together
like the quilt of life.

you got high once;
when i was out of town.
i forgive you love.

i know you're sorry,
it's a struggle
of course.
i forgive you love.

dry your eyes
and remember i don't have it in me
to leave your side
i forgive you love.

mistakes are a part of life
you're the sweetest boy
that holds me when i cry
i forgive you love.

a norwegian summer
frothy bangs falling over soulless eyes
windows empty of rolling country scenes
and the smoke stacks billow over
my heart in a blue smudge.
if i could love again, maybe it would be you
but my insides are a midnight sky
absent of stars, a total lunar eclipse.
i remember his tongue
delivering ****** lashings
to my psyche
and the curtains hang with a depressed posture
transporting me back to his heavy room
he liked to chase the light out,
and open my body apart
my head reeks of bathtubs, swollen wrists,
throbbing words of hate.
i'll wrap these things up,
shoving them down into my shoes
when i'm with you.
but you're holding hands with
a skeleton
and i don't think
these bones will
cease their aching.

pixilating membranes
mucus dripping from mushroom caps
mapped out your skin
because your flesh
was like a scab
i tore off.

Sickly sticky sweet dribble
trickles from your lips.

A dog foaming at the mouth.
You want what you want
So why shouldn't you get it?
Even if it means the claws are coming out.

Disgusting fiends
***** bottom feeders.

Go back to the shadows whence you came,
And pray no more on the weak's shame.

the woman laid her stomach
over the child's soft downy head
as a shield
as armor
to protect such soft innocence
from the grainy world that creeps in
with it's gnarled fingers.
the same world that took
the warm fragile beating
of her heart
and sloooooooowed
it
to
a
dull whisper