With regards to Thomas Sayers Ellis*

Look at the
    Lucent lava lamps,
Dark craters
    Hiring hands.
We walked,
    Mimicking magma.
Hot, why is
    This heat?
Forget Vulcan
    And his illusion
Of kaleidoscopes,
    A rip tide
On the shore
    Of our conscious minds.
We held fire,
    Pretending to swim
Underground,
    But only out
Of pure respect.
    Some had boots
Made with
    The clippings
Of funky tripwire,
    Others wore suits
With goggles
    Clamped to their faces,
Gripping like
    Bay Area earthquakes.
One-by-one,
    Jang-strangs were
Attached to us and
    Hurled into the Pit
With rhythmic rituals,
    Waves of S and P
Flailed away
    Like flags.
One nation
    Under a new.
No one looked away
    From the fiery daze.
No one wept.

I slide myself between her tenderness.
She trembled from the embrace.
Her shivers soon tamed.
The pain of a pinch,
She's feeling it inside.
Unimaginable pleasures,
refrained from the release.
Nails tearing at my flesh,
her fingers grip, digging deep.
Sensations of pleasure eclipse reality.
Ravenous passions,
we consume; selfishly.
Tension building,
unbearable pressure;
relentlessly .
Her emotions
Eruptions; uncontrollably,
repetitively.
I'm giving her,
the best of me.

This was a fishing village
when people were speaking
the king's English, dead
like the fishing industry
Now the tourists have accents

Truth be told
this was a fishing village
long before that
But we don't speak about
what those folks spoke
Something Algonquian
or another dead language

When the tide is out
I walk the shore and look for remnants
Pottery and stone tools, and such
I find a lot of plastic
and bottles, plenty of those
We've been a drinking people
for a long **** time

Once, I found a child's shoe,
sodden and filled with sand
It had a blue lace,
still tied, and a smiley face
as the tide was going out
Kind of sad, really.

r  ~ 8/28/14

A small girl sees a doll
Her name is Lucy
It's holding up 3 fingers
Her mother buys it
The girl goes home
She plays with this new doll
She names her Mindy
The girl is called to dinner
She falls asleep soon after
Carried off to bed
The doll is forgotten on the step
The girl hears a noise in the night
"Lucy I'm on the first step"
In a glassy voice
They a thump and a drag
"Lucy I'm on the second step"
Thump, drag
"Lucy I'm on the third step"
Thump, drag
"Lucy I'm on the fourth step"
Thump, drag
"Lucy I'm on the fifth step."
Thump, drag
On until step eighteen
"Lucy I'm at the landing"
Thump, drag, thump, drag
Foot steps towards the door
Thump, drag, thump drag
A soft knock on the door
"Lucy I'm here"
The door creaks open
The footsteps approach
The girl is paralyzed with fear
The comforter at the end of the bed pulls
The doll appears
She crawls across the bed
"Hello Lucy"
She holds up four fingers in a wave
The dolls holds a knife
"Goodnight Lucy"

Dear Talia,

I don't want to be a tortured artist.
I don't want to be depressed and I don't want to be anxious.
Competitive sadness and disorders treated like accessories disgust me.

The world glamorizes mental illness, and I don't understand why. There is nothing romantic about being mentally ill just like how there's nothing glamorous about a broken wrist or a torn medial collateral ligament. There's nothing romantic about constantly being afraid that the world will fold in itself and **** you with it. There's nothing romantic about feeling like you could break down and cry at any moment.

This is the first piece I've written while being medicated.

I want it to be Christmas already.

The world dreams itself a halo, but can only attain horns. The halo is an illusion and the horns are an idea.

I'm due to take another Lorazepam. Would I look cool to the kids who idolize dysfunction and misinterpret pain as style, if I were to take one of these, with water and a distant glance, in front of them? Geez, to have their approval would to have everything and nothing at all.

I'm not sure why I've written as much about this as I have.

You.

It is 2:48 am and all I can think about, in this moment, is you.

I can't wait to spend Christmas with you. I can't wait to wear bad Christmas sweaters, and be the couple everyone hates, as we sing Christmas carols and spread holiday cheer.

I wrote this poem a few minutes ago. Sometime around 2:30 am. I'm not sure. I'm exhausted:

I sat on the edge of my bed, and on the edge of my life,
medicated to the point of pointlessness. Soft.
It was the nineteenth, not the twentieth,
and I wished I saw the fireworks with her fifteen days earlier.

My gasps tore the shingles off of the house.
And they hung suspended above the hole in the roof.
And God stared down into my room, as the shingles swirled skyward.
"I see you," I said, "but I don't believe in you."

I left home and ran until I was a dream that had passed itself.


I hope that was okay.

I love you.


Yours,

Joshua Haines

Dearest Reader,


My name is Margot Dylan, and I'm a pariah.

On the 16th of April, I told my mother that I was gay. She threw the clay mug that I made for her before she found out I was gay, against the floral, peeling wallpaper mess of a wall, in our kitchen. The decaffeinated peppermint green tea left a wonderful aroma that almost cleansed the room of the stench of 'lesbian'.

I met Dylan Dunham a few days after that, and, a few days later, she was the first girl that I ever loved.

Dylan wore a red flannel jacket, and was a butch and sometimes a *****-but I loved her even at her tomboy cruelest.

Dylan smoked a cigarette that smelled like lonerism, and she looked at me like she didn't care. My heart skipped a beat, as cliche as it sounds, whenever she would remove the cigarette from her mouth, exhale, and look at me as smoke traveled up her face. I looked at her and knew that she was everything that I wasn't, and everything that I wanted.

Dylan was Dianne, before and after school. Dylan was Dianne, who wore floral dresses and lipstick and who ditched her butch clothing in her locker before leaving. Dylan was Dianne, who was straight and who thought Tyler Wesson, from church, was cute. Dylan was Dianne, who had a short hair cut because of track and field, because she explained that she ran a faster time with less hair. Dylan was Dianne, who didn't associate with me before or after school because her parents knew that I was gay.

During school hours, the only thing Dylan did keep from Dianne was the lipstick. I was envious of the cigarette because of it's burgundy stains. We would stand in a stall, as she looked across from me, after each drag. She frequently offered her cigarettes, but I refused because I only let love **** me. If she ever brought alcohol, sometimes she'd kiss me. I told her that I loved her and she said, "I know."

The only thing that Dylan kept from me was my heart, before she started to smoke cigarettes in the bathroom with Annie Way.


I wish you the best moments so they can overcome the worst,

Margot Dylan

Punk lips in perpetual paralysis,
and they're too afraid to let them kiss.
Too afraid to try to let it last
because of the blurs in their past.

I think the kids are in trouble.
Hanging out with temporary people;
making the wrong times never stop.
Smoking dreams with glass lovers
to indie sonnets and neon power pop.

The world knows they can pretend,
and it's their hearts they can't defend
from the illusion of what they could be,
and the loneliness of what they'll never see.

They skate the pavement until the sun sits,
and drink ***** from water bottles until their hurt slurs.
It's the preparation of tomorrow and what it may not bring
that makes every moment before, everything.

They're scared because it's real,
and I'm scared because they're scared.