I have an image in my head

As unlikely as that may be

Of a Spike in love with Jelly

Splitting it at the seams



But the Jelly doesn’t mind

As the Spike rusts and chips

There’s always room to be made

And loves the Spike to  bits



I see that image

Even in my dreams

It looks like me and you

And it makes me want to scream

The faucets in Lisbeth's bathroom leak.
She soaks up the saltwater;
Hard cotton on shea butter skin.

A lens, everyone, no one, Lisbeth
Shines fluorescence on her starving sorrow;
Examines the gnawing.
She wonders how long she can survive on her own flesh.
Does not ask for food, but for advice.
How do the rest of us do it?
Subsist on ****** thumbs and bitten tongues?

Lisbeth, we start within.
There is a black hole growing in my gut,
Born of the desperation and repression I have harbored
Since the day I broke into this world, ****** and ravenous.
The devouring is slow,
But, one day, it will swallow me whole.

They will bury me in the weeds of an abandonded corn field.
And my hunger will slowly eat the world too.
Because I was starved.
Because I was not loved.
Lisbeth, you are hungry.
Let me feed you.
I will love you.

It was me, not you.
It wasn't the right time.
I was still getting over my last poem.

We can still be friends,
but when I say friends,
know what I mean is friendly.
Know that I won't save your seat at my table.
They are all taken by my books
my clothes
my love for another.

But when I say friends,
also know that, years later,
when the pain that first brought you to me
is as distant and hazy
as the smoke from my first bridge burned,
I'll smile when I see you;
Note how the core of you is unchanged.
Even with your new look,
your melody rings the same.

The clouds are reaching for the earth
Longing for embrace
Making the air sweet and dense;
A blanket as we lay

Tomorrow, we will wake to fog
Walk in love
Till the sun brings the mourning
And burns it all away

I'm trying this thing
Where I soothe my constrictor instincts,
Don't cling so tight.
But I learned life in extremes.
Only consume in excess
Or not at all.
How do I temper this,
Portion out my love,
When I'm so
*******
Hungry?

The white expanse is
Stifling in its liminality
Limitless in its containment

There is no here or where
Before or after
Just now
Just this endlessly eternal instant

Chester the jester,
My favorite guard!
Stuck in his twenties, but
Twice over the hill,
Recalls peace-time war stories,
While taking his pills.
Tells me all his tall tales  
Up ‘till wife number one
And the other loves that failed.

This is how abuse looks:
Elderly, jovial
Shirt tucked and boots shined,
Rare catches of
Old scratches on new glasses,
Liver spots and laughing lines.

Glassy eyes blinking away  
Dust from antique memories;
Sepia-toned ponderings,
Less like days of summer
More depression-era dust bowl;
The ever-hope for May.

Chester the Jester,
Old of bone
Young of heart,
Keeps the laughter going
To smooth your broken parts.

Grandmother used to tell me tales
Of same-feathered birds seeking each other,
But the crows I know
Prefer the company of sparrows
Blackbirds and Magpies tend to bond
Into yin-yang twins of neutrality
And sharp-toothed Hawks
Run with soothing Owls,
Both aware of Sheep and Wolves.

I have a tendency toward impulsive sincerity,
followed by an embarrassment I can't quite shake.
Nakedness does not become me;
Shame follows this vulnerability.
An abused dog
hunching and cowering
to hide my insecurity,
odd curves, and pitted angles.

I have lived eons in twenty minutes,
felt the creaking
of my bones growing,
growing,
growing weary,
crumbling to gritty dust
only to be born again.
To live, die, serve
behind this counter.

I learned love like
half truths and white lies;
A shifting labyrinth of deadends and pitfalls.
What I mean is,
in my anxiety-ridden daydreams,
you remind me of the King, babe.
I mean,
I'm sorry for what I can't control.

I learned love like
chasing a rabbit through a nonsense forest
where only questions exist.
What I mean is,
in my best case nightmares,
You live in a timeless place of teatime madness.
I mean,
I'm sorry for what I don't understand.

I learned love like
conditional, contractual rules unveiled by a
crazed chocolateer as honest faults are revealed.
What I mean is,
in my fantasized ever-afters,
you get everything you ever wanted, and I lose.
I mean,
I'm sorry for what I can never be.

I learned love like a riddle
so, I never learned love at all.
What I mean is,
I'm sorry, but I don't know why.

The thunderous thrumming of sorries

words and worries
racing to and from my most
vital of organs just like we used to
run, as fledgling beasts,
  season after season
from our temporary houses
to the ghosts of rotting homes;
Back when we were alive

bright and breathing,
daring the world, so full
of thorns and hard corners,
to make us heel and obey
  "Go on and try!"
not realizing
even the most ferocious of wildlings
can grow brittle

whittled and world-weary.
Taming is a slow poisoning.
The arsenic of fear and loss
  Like acid in my throat
clogging my arteries and pores
with a feral tenacity we
once owned, making me weak

greasy and gray.

**** Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad!
1969
******, dark night.
Fire and brimstone.
We will burn our own houses down
If it will stop you from taking them.
Pride will begin it’s mending next year.

RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS
1981
12,000 dead by 1985.
Genocide by indifference.
Reagan and Anita will never face justice.
We will never get our brothers back.
No vaccine or cure for decades to come.

‘EQUAL DIGNITY’
2015
Look how far we’ve come…
“You can marry who you want!”
Uncle *** still can’t give blood
To save his dying husband after Pulse -
But at least they can share the hospital bills.

Somehow, I never learned to compromise with gravity.
I’ve been told I move like a drunken camel
or a newborn giraffe on ice skates.
I say it’s just bad genetics.

I’m from a family of shaking hands,
bullet hole egos,
and wobbly knees,
all of us clumsy with our hearts and each other.

It’s no wonder I trip over my own apologies,
stumble at a pretty smile,
falter at opportunity...
This is apples and trees all over again,
and nobody likes bruised fruit.

I am all bruises.
I fall
-over anything,
-into everything,
-for everyone.

There’s a secret to moving gently
that my ancestors forgot to share.
So, this Irish heart runs
on Romanian magic and beats
to the irregular tune of
mis-matched feet
skipping over sidewalk cracks.

Really, I don’t mind the bruises,
The doors turned windows,
the sound of shattering glass.
I just wish I could stop before I smashed
Grandma’s dusty Chinaware and antique mirrors.

My love is an abused dog
cowering in my chest.
I guard it like a mother wronged,
pacing with unrest.

The caring hand that feeds
blocks the fist from my sight.
I know the saying I should heed,
but I can’t help this bite.

This uniform is grey
on grey on grey,
like the building too.
All walls but the fourth
are glass from the waist up,
so that any who pass this 9 by 6
can play as witness to a living painting:
Modern “Woman”
Monotony – Shipped by [REDACTED]
#D3D3D3, #808080, #262626

Relief comes in seeing
the other painting here
known only from this side of the frame.
Just beyond the asphalt
there is endless green and blue,
and once a day
the setting sun lights this side
in all the colors of my love’s bouquet.

Perfectionist I am,
but able am I not
A look inside my mind
and all you'll find is rot

True worry it may bring
to witness all this waste;
to look behind the mess
and see my living space

But worry not, dear sweet
for rain is coming soon
to wash away my past
and all the sadness too

The Spring is rolling in
along with all its age
I'll be okay again
and then I'll clean this place

There is a world in which my mind
Had never fallen blue
And of that world I often find
myself retreating to

In darkest hours this I know:
My life is what I seek
In pools of hope, my shadows grow
And light is at its peak

I long for the day when
the forest rooted in my gut
blooms once more;
when it can make something young
and beautiful
of all these dead leaves
Tell me,
when was your last Spring?
My birthday tells me it comes once a year
but nothing has been reborn
in at least ten
It's all rot
and rot may give life,
but only to maggots and
fear and
the shadow horrors that
lurk in abandoned parking lots
No hope grows here

I'm feeling a little broken recently
My mind is a little too foggy
Like my heart is a little too gray
Like, maybe, this isn't quite right

I'm feeling like I already knew this
That denial is a hell of a thing
It's easy to pretend in the summer
It's easy to forget how bad it can be

There is something to be said about
the false comfort found in warm weather

The sun knows the perfect way to
make the storm clouds seem a little softer
How to make moonlit nights a little less lonely
How to make the future shine a little brighter

But the comfort of summer is fading now
and everything is a daunting shade of grey

I have never been fond of winter
and she has never been kind to me

Here we stand on the cliffs edge
The precipice of destruction, my hand in yours
and yours in his and his wrapped around his bleeding heart
If you fall, I fall
This is where we learn strength and our true will to live
Not some "we can survive this" *******
"We can make it if we just hold on"
No, I want to live
Not passively coast by until the wound is too infected to fight back
I want to fight back
We will turn our backs on the eve of our eternity,
look the monsters in their face and say *******
Swallow their hatred and let it mutate and boil in our guts,
pulling forth a cry so raw and primordial
our ancestors will wake to lend their spirit
Whisper in our ears secrets of war times
long forgotten by everything except the earth
Hope and peace and treaties do not make for a winning team
unless the cause is for everything to stay same
No one listens to a "soft please" or notices a downcast frown
**** them with kindness was a term created to keep us silent
and passive
and our arrows aimed at our own hearts
Bullies have existed since the beginning of time
and three night rebellions will never win our safety back
but neither will silence
And I've seen a lot more come of riots
than from mumbled prayers to gods who might not exist
and wouldn't care anyway
There's a time for revolution - for fighting back
You have to pick your battles in this world, so I'm picking them all
and I say the time is now
If we fall, we fall,
but we will fall with our knuckles bloodied
and band-aids on our hearts
And if we fall, I'm taking some of them with me

The harder you try to pull away,
the tighter I squeeze,
and I swear I don't mean to come off too strong,
but a history of abandonment
and fizzling potential
has left me with constrictor instincts

There is a softness to this stagnation
A familiarity
It's true what they say
about finding comfort in this
It is surprisingly easy to sink in still water
The great lake of potential swallows me up
and some days I can barely keep my nose above water
The rest I spend holding my breath

I once said if I could choose how I would die,
I would choose to drown
Sometimes the threat of the great darkness
looms for so long you forget to fear it
Sometimes you grow accustomed
to the taste of your own waterlogged heart
and the shore lies too far ahead for you to see the lighthouse

And sometimes that bright unknown is what you fear most

This eternal longing for the soft embrace of Rest grows ever-stronger while my will shrinks by every passing infinite moment
I am suspended in place, held aloft by pure stubbornness and not-entirely-honest hope for a better life come next Spring
And to think of what I might miss if I let myself sleep...
Well, that pain nearly overbears the dull ache of existing at all

So here I will remain forever, one foot caught in a trap I set for myself out of fear on my darkest hour and the other foot just barely toeing the border of a daunting place I hope to never set my eyes upon

They say you can't win if you don't play and,
yeah, maybe quitters never win but they never lose either
They simply exist
I simply exist
No playing into societal rules about what makes me acceptable
Don't you want to be pretty? they ask
Don't you want love?
Don't you want to people to like you?
No.
******* and your approval
I like me and like that I quit

One moment you're on your way home, driving a car you just bought two weeks ago and the next you're gasping for air, tearing at a safety feature that now seems to have been created to keep you trapped
The dead hands of despair and terror and loss grip your heart and rip it from its home in your chest
You're out of the car and screaming and a man is asking if you're okay while you're wondering the same about the woman in the other car
He's holding your dog and looking at you rightfully wary
Swears spill from your mouth faster than the blood and you didn't even know you were bleeding and everything is panic and pain and hopelessness because **** there goes everything you've been working for for the last six months
All of your dreams were wrapped up in that car and now that car is wrapped around itself
You wrap up around yourself and the rest of the night is a blur
You let everyone take care if it for you, immediately falling back into a pit of old habits you have been clawing your way out of
The car is in your garage now and your college acceptance letter sits in a box, both collecting dust and pity and your avoidance

The leaves turn green to red
 to brown to dust and my end looms on the horizon
If there is beauty in the changing of the seasons
then there is beauty in death
and I see no beauty in death
Even with the knowledge
that rebirth will come there is no reprieve
The fear settles in like the first snow,
enveloping me in frost and stagnation
My life will turn to pain to numbness
to nothing
as the leaves begin to fall
and my end is in sight

So this is how it ends?
All of the fizzle and bang and loose threads?
Saltwater wounds, tightrope casualty, red burning throats
This is not laryngitis 
This is my heart shredding it's home, trying to escape
And maybe it learned it from you
Saw the escapist make her out of a trap called loyalty,
decided it wanted to give it try,
realized too late that you can take yourself out of a home
but the pain always follows

I don't want it like this
When I'm going sixty and you're dragging your feet
I'm in for the ride, brake line cut
and there's only shadows and dreams in the passenger seat
Next time let me know before you tuck and roll

I have 17 empty notebooks
This morning it was 16, but I bought another on my way home from work because it was leather bound and on sale
It cost an hour and a half of work
...
So, I have 17 empty notebooks
One is missing a page 
I needed to write down an appointment but I didn't want to ruin the whole book
Another has three pages that are actually written on
It was meant to be a bullet journal but the box marked "bullet journal review" was never checked off
Notebooks three, four, and twelve are actually binders which are usually in a different category but what is a binder if not an evolved journal?
Or maybe they're all subspecies of paper
Its all paper
Paper that speaks, whispering to me in my soft moments when there is nothing to do except worry about all that unfilled space
"We were trees once. We were alive. We were cut down and reshaped to fulfill a larger purpose and this is what becomes of us?"
My guilt turns to anxiety turns to pen clicking and that makes it worse, reminding all 18 of us that I am perfectly capable and yet wholly unwilling
It's not like I haven't tried
All of those notebooks were bought with a specific use in mind
Well, they were all bought and then later justified by thinking of a use that I knew would never come to fruition
Bullet journal, grimoire, dream journal, poetry journal, school journals
...
So, I have nearly 17 mostly empty notebooks in a drawer
They used to sit on my shelf but it didn't seem right placing those empty vessels amongst a universe of universes and filled pages
Like parking my totaled '97 Toyota Corolla next to a Porsche
So they're in a drawer with a few torn shirts I keep meaning to turn into patches, a barely used oil pastel set, and a dusty Bass for Dummies book
So maybe this is a lesson 
Maybe I'm making oceans out of puddles
Maybe this is a metaphor for my life and all of its wasted time and blank pages; blank from the months I spent lying on a couch, wrapped up in the cold snow blanket of fear and regret
I regret so much and the more I regret the more anxious I become the more unlikely I am to get up and pick my story back up the more pages pass by as barren as the day is short
Or Maybe
Maybe I should just stop buying new notebooks

i dont live anymore
i mean, god, i don't know
i'm alive as far as science is concerned
and don't even get me started on what the gods think
what's living to an immortal anyway?
so, i'm technically alive,
but on anxious 3 ams my symptoms point to husk
and i spend a lot of time on webMD when i can't sleep
rest is for the righteous and living
and there is a sickness in me i fear to name

Wild ride girl
Windows down, hands up
fingers splayed
trying to catch the sun rays

Soft Summer girl

tells me to buckle in
that we're going for a spin

Flower petal girl
all wilderness and
thistle bush 
tugging my shirt sleeves

Morning dew girl

knows we're headed for a cliff
but **** if i'm not ready to fall

I don’t mind the distance
until it’s three in the morning
and all I have are empty sheets

I don’t mind the distance
until I’m coming home from work
and you’re going to sleep

(I don’t know how to do this)

I miss you with every passing thought
I miss you with every wonder I’ve ever had
I miss you with every second that’s lost
I miss you with all the dreams in my head

I don’t mind the distance
until you’ve been sick for two weeks
and my comfort is a long empty street

I don’t mind the distance
until you’re baring your traumas
and these shoulders can’t reach

(but I know I wanna try)

I love you more than the space between us
I love you more than the night sky has empty space
I love you more than the sun longs to warm the earth
I love you more than I hate the miles between our hearts

In my midnight daydreams there is no distance,
because my heart is with yours
and it beats to the tune of fate and happy endings
My soul has known yours for an eternity
and what is a couple hundred miles
compared to our truth of infinities

I keep writing 
writing and writing
on scrap notebook paper,
in the margins of my favorite books,
on old receipts for new notebooks
my hand is not yet worthy of
writing in circles
around and around
around the issue
around myself
big wide circles
turning everything i do
into a cyclone of denial
and hand cramps

I don't know what I'm doing anymore
I don't know where I'm going
or how to get there
Most days, I feel like a parked car at a green light
Other days, I don't feel like anything at all
Is this what life is?
How do people stand it?
Why didn't anyone warn me?
Where is the revolution for living?
Maybe nobody cares
More likely, they're just too tired to live
Everything is so hard
I'm tired too

Man comes through my line and strikes up a conversation
Man is 20
30
40
years old 
and shows an interest
"Hey there, darling
little girl
condescending verb"
I swallow against the pit in my stomach
Smile and engage
I am not my own person here
I am an image
An extension of the corporation
Man insults my religion
or hair
or whatever else he decides isn't to his tastes
Then a smile and shrug
"You're too pretty
sweet
female
to decide who you are"
And I smile or laugh,
dig my nails into my skin
hoping to stall whatever is crawling beneath it
I am not myself
I don't have the right to be angry
and I can't afford another complaint from a wounded ego
So I thank him
What else can you do
when both fight and flight will land you homeless and burning
Man smiles
and I imagine what it'd look like ******-ed
It strengthens my waning self control for now
Man asks when I'm free
and I try not to remember the crimes
of other men who took an interest in me
I apologize and tell him I'm seeing someone
Sometimes it's even true
"Must be a lucky guy
owner
chain holder"
Sure
I don't correct him
I know what men like this think of girls who like girls
and they tend to respect what they perceive
as another male's claim
Eventually, it ends
but he still lingers
in the back of my mind,
when it's close to midnight 
and I'm walking through a dark, empty parking lot,
keys clasped in my fist
I am not wearing a name tag
Nobody owns me out here
I am me again
and I dare a ******* to take an interest

The sky weeps
and the sun hides away
because they can never compare to you
7 wonders of the world my ***
You are the only wondering thought
I keep wandering back to
How can anything so beautiful exist
without shattering every law
of biology
...
and chemistry
we have ever known
How do you exist
if perfection doesn't?
The ancient builders of history
could learn a thing or two from you
about sloping angles 
and lasting structure
The divine beings that are
reached the pinnacle of their deathless lives
when you were born
Every achievement man has ever known
can never compare to the miracle of you

Baby, I can't keep doing this
I am on my knees so often
my feet have started to atrophy
and I have taken your maybes
and somedays,
threaded them into
the worlds most pathetic rosary
In place of a cross 
there is only the highway between us
"Holy Abbey, forgive me of this love
but don't let this be our hour of death
Say you love me too
and I will kiss every inch of asphalt
between my heart and yours
until my mouth is bruised and ******,
but still begging you to stay
Amen"

Coals burn out in the city of ruin -
all rebar skeleton and ash
and running on fumes

No fire tonight
No spark to coax a flame
The wind set it all ablaze,
but left as soon as it came

Empty gas cans 
and soggy matchsticks
litter an abandoned camp

All that's left to do
is to hit the road
Off to find a new home
and hope it explodes

Being away from you feels like needle pricked heart
Feels like every passing grain of sand
drives a canyon between us
For every moment we're apart
another ray of sunshine is drip-dripping from me
Like the faulty faucet in my bathroom,
baby, I just need a caring hand
A hug and a band-aid and a promise for tomorrow
But, until then,
sunshine rains in my gut 
and my sink still leaks

They say you'll spend the new year
the same way you spend it's eve,
but I pray that's not true
because a year without you
might be the end of me

Let this be it
Let this be my time of success
I have spent too many winters
wrapping myself in regret
and disappointment
Let this be the turning point

If you could,
be gentle with my heart
Lumpy scar tissue and
shot gun shells mar the surface
but I promise it has potential
Let this be a time of healing

I beg of you - 
knees buried in a sinkhole
and head bowed 
to gods I don't even believe in -
grant me rebirth
Let this be the beginning

Riding on the back of mass despair,
you have the chance for greatness
and I see you in technicolor

somehow, i never learned to run
i was once told i move like a drunk newborn camel
and, admittedly, that is not entirely inaccurate

im from a family of shaking hands
bullet hole egos
and wobbly knees
all of us clumsy with our hearts and each other

its no wonder i trip over my own apologies
stumble at a pretty smile
falter at opportunity
this is apples and trees all over again
and nobody likes bruised fruit

i am all bruises
i am fall over anything
fall for everything
fall into everyone

there is a secret to moving gently that no one wants to share
and maybe i dont want it anyway
i am the bull and the world is my china shop

i am not afraid of falling
i am not afraid of bruises

i am a crash course in wrecking *****

i swear my lips taste like yours and they've never even met
how strange it is to miss something you've never had

i've imagined your touch so many times
i swear
i can feel the feather soft tingle of your hand in mine
and maybe it's not all fabrication and make-believe

i swear we've met before

in a parallel universe, the timing was right from the start
and i'm remembering dew drops in your hair
four months from now
and your smile
three years and a thousand "i love you's" ago

i swear some version of me knows some version of you
and
if distance kills us here
at least i'll know it was never a factor there

i swear i remember you

i wear this weariness like a hand-me-down jacket
(too broad for these shoulders
frayed at the heart stitched on my sleeve
a mess of patchwork band-aids and safety pins) -
not well

still, it's cold and
these loose threads are more comfortable than anything new
through rain and even more rain
i march on, no longer hoping for shine
the water from every glass half spilled beats down on my shoulders,
soaks through all my layers,
drowns me from the inside-out
but we have faced worse than water-logged lungs
and a driftwood heart

darker clouds gather a hundred lives past the horizon

some storms come to pass,
some storms seem to last forever
sometimes the thunder clap is your own heart,
beating, pumping, urging you forward

through the storm
i weather the weight of a thousand whispered disappointments
(dreams
hopes
realities),
shrouded in my family's shadows
disguised as a hand-me-down jacket

i feel a strangeness in the air this winter
what do you call progress while standing still?
or growing inside the box?
is this what normal is meant to feel like?
cloudy skies
eyes
mind
i've lived a thousand eons in snow
and i fear the eve of my spring is farther still

so i am not a peach
or a peach pit
there's no cyanide laced sweetness in these veins

so this was a choice
or lack thereof?
nothing grows without effort
and i have a belly full of seeds to prove it

swallow your tongue
swallow your guilt
rinse it down with moonlight
and then swallow your hope

blame the lack of blooms on bad genes

so this is the truth
or it almost is
i am the wilted sapling of my own neglect

Follow my softness all the way to the cliff's edge
Let me show you there is no fear in falling
Please show me there is no fear in falling
We stand at the precipice of everything,
galaxies and dandelion wisps as far as the eye can see
Take my hand, love
Take my hand
Let us jump into the void with certainty;
With the knowledge that there is no end
Let us not wish for one
Let these feet never touch solid ground again

In the air, the soft buzzing of my desire
My bed, yours
My peace, yours
My heart, yours
There is little I can do but surrender to you

He says, "Today's generation is going to ruin the world"
He says, "Today's music is trash"
He says, "Today's media is brainwashing the children"

And I can't help but wonder
how utterly exhausting it must be to hate that much
With all that darkness clouding your vision,
did you notice how bright the sky was today?

When was the last time you played in the rain?
When was the last time you walked through the woods?
When was the last time you told someone you loved them?
When was the last time you felt happiness? 

He tells me I know nothing about growing up
about hard work
about life

And that may be true
I don't know much,
but I know there is a fine line
between growing up
and giving up