Blacked out again,
unsurprisingly,
swallowing the room.

Spinning in a lucid dream,
blessed to consume.

Breaking into.

Ash shadows
drill bit chest
I am not your savior
I am a suitcase bomb
I only devour
breathing fire

and I will apologize to no one
for doing what I said I would.

I was right to run away and lock the door on you after I passed out in the kitchen and I wish I woulda known then.

Broken bird who listens like chimes.
The way you surrendered your neck
twice
first a lover
then a sacrifice.

People will tell you what they are,
you just never said battleground.

Learn to love the fall,
to disappear like a radical ghost
shaking chains as a forgotten name.

Make your nests in piles of broken mirror glass,
court heartbreak like a 19th century candlelit lover.

Smile at the No,
bring it into your chest,
breathe it in warm.

Collapse the roof,
blow out the window,
cradle your shattered legs and kiss them like sleeping children
when they try to drag your broken body from the burning building.

And get your blood all over everything.

I open pre-approved credit cards like love letters.
Growling under bedsheets.
A twitching right eye inside of blue screens.

I think my bones are going deaf.

My insides are lava
My outsides are lava
I am fractured and glowing
I am killing natives
I am slowly swallowing.

Quiet
not calm
boiling.

I was born in soft chaos
with the mystery womanhood clean on my lips.

I am
just like every other girl

and even if you can’t understand it
you can’t take it away from us.

You are right to be afraid.

Gravity pulls water onto the floor
to trace my skin like a lover.

The steamed mirror can be anyone
if you’re not a biased audience
and I paste faces on bodies for spare minutes.

My hands are loaded guns
you have to get comfortable with
on parade day.

This is not a love story
it is a witch hunt
and Gravity has been the only thing that has ever caught me.

For the days when you're moving so slow
and the universe is moving so fast.

I say
"I forgive you"
But knowing you want me when I don't want you
is the sweetest land-mine
I have ever buried.

M4W - Seeking young **** 17 year old to objectify and kick out of high school prom - must have womanly figure but only be a teenager - fingertip length dresses are OK - must be a child but still able to make me envision having *** with you - will be on the balcony ogling my daughter's friends and high-fiving other dads with my ****.

Talk to me like
Minimum wage.
Three kids in different grades
happy to get sneakers on Christmas.
Two to a bed until puberty
hoping bus fare doesn’t go up.

Talk to me like
I’m sorry I can’t hear you
I’m scared that I’m pregnant and what my boyfriend will do
because I don’t want to marry him
but if you’re pregnant you keep it and you marry him.

Talk to me like
Can I help you?
I’ll trade you for some tuition money.

Talk to me like
Let me go check in the back
My brother’s in jail again
because he broke into our house to steal money
and he’s high again and it’s his fault
but it’s Dad’s fault for leaving.

Talk to me like
I’m sorry
I apologize
What can I do
Here’s a discount
Like she cheated
Like he’s dead
Like I’m you
in my shoes.

I spent drunken walks
saying I love you into a made bed
into a moving train
a locked gate
like the mortared bricks could hear me.

The Christmas lights shone on wet face droplets
happy tears of nothing.

And if you were never coming back
I would never cry out loud
and it was the first time a love would never feel crippled.

The TV told me it was over,
so our troops were coming home to read books and meet their babies.
The TV said,
"The guns are gone, the kids are safe,
the girls and women, they're safe, too
and no one's bleeding alone anymore."

I pulled up to your house and you said I love you
and we took a train to the mountains.

On top of every curve I heard you drawing plans on the window
of all the things we'd do
and where should we go?

And whenever we got there, we danced.

There's a certain mix of alcohol on the breath that reminds me of a hug.
So, drunk *** doesn't bother me
as much as it's a preference.

My father drank himself into hospital beds
floating on his shattered tibia
believing it would carry him home.

But all good memories are ***** christmas lights.

Now, everything is more or less the same
except I sleep with you invisible.
I can't feel your heat
or smell the whiskey
but if my eyelids are tight I can feel you next to me
miles away.

And there you are walking around
with no blood in you
desperately running into everyone
and never sticking.

All my friends asked if I'd gotten busy
and I high-fived, yes indeed.

We met him on a party bus on the way home.
He talked to my friend the entire way, but she had a boyfriend.

The night before I had brought home a ******
who cried
about cheating on his girlfriend and that his **** wouldn't work.

They were bodies,
eyes to watch watch me
and I just wanted.

He ****** with his shirt on.
He cuddled me with one arm until he thought I was asleep
which is the exact physical embodiment of how it feels when your boyfriend stops looking at you.

"You don't really want my number"
"Wha-what?"
"You don't. It's okay. I don't want yours either."

So simple.
Reassuring.
Nuanced, intricate, sly,
perfect.

It would've been perfect.

Blush in a shade of bruise
leaving trails on collars and bones.

"Siren, siren
Body language me.
Concave me in wrong angles.
Sift through my sand and prospector me."

Every man wants to be saved by an angel
but heaven's just a mirror of hell.

When I was 18 I learned a lesson in jewelry:
A pocketwatch that taught about loss
that was never mine to lose.

I borrowed the euros I paid for it.

Most loss is something felt by ranchers
and bankers
and stock brokers.
Because they own the things they have.

You are not mine and so I cannot lose you.

That's free sadness
and free happiness, too.

Your distance felt like how it looks when cops break up a riot
with pepper spray.

I kept saying I've been here before.

I went through all the old poems I wrote
and I realized I was afraid to write some about you.
Because you know the rule:
Whatever you write becomes truth.

I kept texting my friends about the light pole sticking out of my chest
and they all said things like
"I think you're just making a bigger deal out of the light pole sticking out of your chest than you need to be."

The moment I felt you leaving I beartrapped you
so no wonder you're bleeding
I started seeing visions of the amount of time I would spend crying in my bed
divided by trying to remember everything you said
and what tone you said it in and what time of the day it was and what I said before that and what tone I said it in and what time of day it was and what it was in response to and why did I say that But in the middle of my trench warfare...


I heard a lightbulb on the top of my head
that sounded like me, but smarter, and she said

"You gotta give love to get love and you gotta do it for free."


So this is how it feels to stop drowning.

To save time
we made our phones into computers
and send notes into space to tell people we care

even though time never asked to be saved
and probably doesn't give a **** anyway.

When the aliens came to take our humanity
they made us choose which part.

I chose sleep
and felt like I had won
until every night you left me for it.

When you lie there gone to a place I could never go
I guess it felt like I couldn't do anything
but wait for you to come back.

I like to watch Letterman.
Not that **** Leno *******.
And so what if I have a gin and tonic?
I'm 67 for Christsakes.
So what if I have a cigarette?
It's my ******* house.
So what if I fell asleep in my chair?
So what?

One, two
Ben is coming for you.
Three, four
run for the door.
Five, six
This is what happens when you call someone who is mentally unstable a ****** and a freak enough times and nobody does anything about it.

I get off how I get off.
Who cares?

Obviously my wife, since she was so ASHAMED
at finding me suffocated by by own belt on the bedpost with my **** in my hand
that way.

If  had a nickel for every kid in this neighborhood who got shot on accident

I'd have a pile of dead kids.

It does not make my death less tragic
although it does add me to a pile of bodies
whose faces are all starting to look the same.

I'm the worst at flying.
Sure am good at screaming, though.

I know, I know.
"She doesn't sound crazy."
but believe me
the crazy person
when I say

we never do.

I know you are an explosion of chemicals,
heart races,
marvels,
sweat, spit, teeth, lips.

You are momentary

but so am I.

I tried to stop you
like a baby deer tries to stop a freight train
so

I am grinning blood and guts at 70 miles per hour.

But it happened so fast

I still think I'm all here.

I granted you the ability to know me better
so I could look into you like you were a mirror

We always want people to tell us the truth
unless it's about us.

I declared from a soap box in my room under covers
that I would start holding people accountable for their actions

but the mumbled clause was only if they'll still love me afterwards.

"Get some new friends"
And I didn't listen.

So now I'm stuck inside of this old love
burning alive
because I didn't jump.

Pure love
and hate
as weapons.

Reminiscing of the wife that drowned in the oven.

Experimentation on ourselves is our only identity.

So she cut herself open and pinned back the folds
to go over the formaldehyde
with her eyes closed
and made herself a body without organs.

And when she choked

she dreamt of being on a plane.

Are you a master?
Are you a mess?
Are you a lover?
Are you a test?
Are you a past?
Are you impressed?

Did you get your wish?

I felt nothing when you kissed me.

Only your paper lips
moist with words you said to get me here.

But it's just the words I want
and all the rest feels like chalkboard dust on my hands.

I remember what this excitement was
like the memory of grabbing a sparkler that just went out.

Some days we are passive,
but nighttime must be filled with kinetic terror.

Given or gotten,
like a rash.

It is how we sleep
or don't.

We are learning to make fire.

It's always the moment just before the gunshot.

Why do I remember it as summer all the time, then?

They gaze at me and see a chainsaw ****** just before it happened.
You think I'm not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you'll burn.

It looked as perfect as a watch,
but twice as lively.
Just as little
with little hands.

The way it smiled was gorgeous
and made me understand why my mother called me that.

Something to fight for
Something to live for
Something to die for.

It had begun to take on a slow
aching, mile-long, groan --
one with a backup battery.

A kind of hysteria set inside of her and gave her venom.

She would destroy him
and everything in him
one way or another.

I am window shopping missing you
clenching my teeth for something I can't afford
that could live without me anyway.

I'm sorry everything I did was just sweet way to make you leave,
surfing on waves made of maybe I'll kiss you again
getting high off disappointment without knowing that's really how all those movies end.
And all you wanted was my heart on a plate
and baby, maybe I said no,
but I'm still bleedin' from the hole.

And I backtrack all the slanders for the moments you got me to believe in you.

I may have made up a lot of dumb excuses
but they were exclusively to your benefit.

and I remembered the line in your shoulder
and the wine I had out of a water bottle last night
and how everyone around me was on acid
and how I was 22 and if I got cancer this early
at least I didn't know about it yet.

and I wasn't scared
and I wasn't scared
and I practiced what it felt like so I could remind myself later.

I'd like the skin of my teeth to bleed from straining, thank you.

My jaw lies broken open from the punches
and if I'd have been tied to a chair,
it would have been more fun.

All your dreams were screaming kids in a car wreck on fire.
So, **** the ******* gun already.

I'm a flying high dive broken vertebrae disaster
go ahead and try to take my marrow out.

I made my bed I'll lie in it.
I made my bed I'll die in it.

I paused the movie to hear the couple fighting outside.
She said "You haven't talked to me at all tonight!"
and he said "What?"

But I know what they really meant to say was "I get stupid when I see you and I don't know what to do about it."
Then she slapped him and ran back inside crying.
It was an awkward moment for me in someone else's life.

It made me think about the video on how penguins mate forever.
And about how we're not penguins and how monogamy makes promises like traps
And how the only thing we have in common with penguins
is that we give each other rocks
and that means I love you until the sun explodes.

And how?

How come penguins can get it more right than us?
They can't even fly.

And when I watched this kid clutch his face as he wondered what he did wrong,
I can't help but ******* hate
all the happy penguins for him.

You stupid penguins,
you all look like you're going to a fancy party all the time
you stupid penguins
you run like your pants are down
you stupid penguins
you're gonna have someone to sit on the couch with forever
and you can't even fly!

What happens when you realize your penguin lover is immature
and he overeats the fish
and he's always late to things?

What happens when you realize your she-penguin has really bad penguin depression and you don't know how to deal with it?

What happens when you realize you both met too early and now you're different penguins?

I'll tell you what happens.
They stay together.
You know why?
Because he gave her a ROCK.
That's why.
Because, to penguins
rocks mean more than mortgages
and wanting to go to Hawaii
and step children
and sprinklers
and school districts.
They can keep a marriage alive with some instincts
and a ******* egg to sit on.
PENGUINS
Stay together longer than 50% of any couple you've ever met

And they can't even fly!

But maybe a bird
that knows how to fall in love better than us
doesn't need to know how to do that.

You had me at
"Lock the door."

By the hand shy of my chest
By the bated teeth-bared breath
By the mirror looks brushing teeth
By the casual fingers on my thighs at rest
By the grip
By the spit
By the yes of the fingertips
But mostly to me

By the straining of the neck muscles when it looks like I might leave.

I climbed up your arms and had a fight in your collar bones
because I wanted to taste what you thought of me.

So, when I wake you up don't be mad
because I wanna feel your breath on me,
your smile against my face,
contagious
and in that moment I feel I'm growing again
instead of dying.
And can you please, please
be at least half of what I think you are
instead of me being me
and wrong.

Don't be mad when I put the crown on you,
I wanna see if it fits
and if it sits right, or at all
I'm fine.

Pretty as revenge.
So pretty their knuckles are always bleedin' cuz they knock you out
and you speak defeat ten times every time you open your mouth.

The girls in short skirts, man
they're sharks
and if you could swim farther, you should

But that perfume makes you feel funny and helpless and drunk
cuz *******
where did they ever get that stuff?

The kinda bite that feels like a kiss, thinkin'
there's something you missed
Where did you get those eyes, thighs, hair like the sunrise
and baby, make me a fool again.

And then it's the morning.

And you're a fool again.

Love
*****

If you wanna leave me
then you must be smart.

You must know
I pick fights with my lips when I kiss
That there's barbed wire at the end of my tongue
That I get into your spine when you sleep
and stay in your lungs after you breathe me in.

If you wanna leave me,
it's because you're a little scared to **** me
because you're afraid I won't like it
And what will happen if I actually do.

Like,
maybe I shouldn't kiss this girl
because I'll either break her
or catch something.

You must know my eyes will close up your throat.
So, baby,
let me make you bedridden

Or you can go.

"Well, you know what happens at the end of the story."

But since you're going one way or the other
it might as well be in a gun fight.

She liked to feel like she was drowning in him
the hard way.
Because it made her love her lungs.

"My love, I don't want to hurt you"
sounds like a promise
the A-Bomb made to Nagasaki.

*"My love, I don't want to hurt you

but I will."

It is not enough to exist.
It is only enough when your existence leaves a kind of crater in a person.

Then you know that you are real.

How does it feel?
How does it feel?
How does it feel
knowing none of these old poems are for you?