She dropped out today.

Out of school, village housing, and our lives

and Mickey Mouse sat
on the edge of his bed,
a controller in his gloved hands.

They are swollen under there,
a gangrenous trap of envy and greed
and she saw those hands with the gloves off,
and as they slid down her face
I heard funeral bells from across campus
because she's gone now and there are too any girls like her
girls the school refused to help
because god forbid they help
if the **** rate on campus might go up
and Don't call it is what it is, Christine
There's nothing to be done, Kara
Just take it easy, he was just playing around
and we don't know what intentions she had with him anyway

Well it's good for them.
They don't have to deal with it anymore.

She dropped out today.

Out of school, village housing,
   the side of the world, the cracks of the law,
           the sound of clapping hands, grinning faces,
                  the coffee house music hour, the soaked sheets at the edges of  time
                                                       and out of our lives

sometimes tears taste like onion
cutting through the skin on your face
reminding you that you're still in mourning
and eyeliner gets in your mouth
half a year on

That morning, sound was a spear of melted glass
pouring down over the mountainside.

The treetops don't hiss anymore with crying katydids,
the bird songs even are beginning to dwindle- as they
cast their voices across the sky, pulling away.

And as the world grows quiet, the visions get loud
black trees cut blue and yellow skies
ice on the corners of your car window
a reminder of what's coming
in litotes

I haven't written anything in over a year.

My chest has risen and fallen with the track of the sun, like a neanderthal burial covered in flowers.

I have wept for myself, I have wept for my friends, I have wept for my grandfather now in my lungs and in the soil,

but still I haven't written anything in over a year.

I went to the zoo one last time with my confidant, rode up the long elevator so steep I would fall off with a sneeze.

I have felt the last rays of sun before winter, I have felt ice on my eyelashes, I have felt the length of winter, stretching out into eternity, stretching out way beyond what I can touch,

but still I could not bring myself to carry a pen.

I have heard a phone call I've dreaded my whole life, the stony silence of a room full of bad news when the ice cream clutched in my bird bone hands hit the ground.

I have met the ground and the hard concrete, I have met death sitting on top of a cherry tree, I have met a woman calling herself my Nana but half of her is dead,

And I guess I wasn't brave enough to grab a pen.

And I wasn't brave enough to see my grandfather in the casket.

I never saw the wreath of flowers, I never saw his wedding photo propped up in the corner of his little bed, I never saw his chest move and move no more, with the track of the sun, like a neanderthal burial, covered in flowers

but I did see the room full of people when I gave a eulogy
and I heard the lie I told that this wasn't an unfinished story, and I feel death and grim upon me like ancient flower pollen fossilized in awful crystals on my bones.

And maybe that is why I have been too scared
to write
for over a year.

it is no secret
i am the women in the grocery store with a skirt too short that mommies warn you about
i am hot venom and warm beer and blood from your forehead
i am angry
and i have earned this wrath
i am angry
and i will use it to move mountains
i am angry
and every man who has ever ground their boots into my broken ankles, any man who dares speak my name with anything other than reverence or good humor, and man who tried to stand before me
had best watch their ******* backs
i am a bull with you in the corner of the pen
and i will rip out your ******* guts
and you will feel me for all i am all at once and be no more
i will show you who i am
and i will build bridges out of you

when i see the foods
folded into little smiles
i remember how my okaasan packed my lunch every day for three months
and how we never talk anymore
and that bittersweet soba
makes me sad

in no way
am i attracted to your arrogant swagger
that i walk with
to get to class
and we have no common interests
hell, i HATE linguistics
and the beautiful nuances of every word
every tongue
that sounds like a kiss to my ears
we are the best friends who ever lived
and we totally do not want
to hold each other shaking in the back seat of a car
as passions set our blood a blaze
nope
no way
****
*** we have like
significant others
and
****
we're in deep

there ain't nothing left
but candles burned to stubs
and busted headphones
torn up books
and ones never opened
i am here

beneath

the
       covers
trying to take my mind off of dying
off of loneliness
off of everything

he smiles at things
that make him sad
chicken soup
mommy's smile
and the quick flint knife
of snakes at his back

there is nothing so sweet
or sour
as the Bb range
high C
for those of us who can reach it
my god
heaven

drawing **** for money
and expecting to get paid
wish i was a drug dealer *** **** nobody ***** with them
you give a man a gram of coke and you can bet your *** that you're getting paid
spend three hours on a tattoo and you don't get ****
like don't rip me off *****
i used the last of my supply on this
and i gotta get more
we're both poor here
but you said you had ten bucks
don't ******* short me
you got it tattooed on your ***
and i know you liked it
where's my ******* paycheck
i just want enough to buy dinner tonight
but ****
being an artist is less respected than being a *******
we **** for your pleasure
and only one gets tipped
what the ****
i gotta eat too
gotta pay off my debts
don't ******* stiff me

my darling
looks at my unshaved legs
and looks at his
and sees little difference
because
he knows we are both human beings
and doesn't find my natural functions
a novelty
or a turn off

i put pepper in your tea and you,
in good humor,
tossed the salt shaker at me
we laughed
but twenty minutes later
you left
all of you left
quite abruptly
and i was caught with my miserable yo yo man
going back and forth between hating you
for hating me
and wondering if i had done something
when clearly i hadn't
this string is pulling too fast at my head

i was doing
so much better
and now
i am falling off of my desk
to play in the sunrise with
a ******* knife
spraying pepper spray in the knicks
somebody help me
i'm not even sorry
i'm an addict
can't ******* stop
i was stupid to think that i could
so now my insides are flying out like of my pores
and it feels so good
to hurt so much

orb-castle
of a thousand purple mountains
waiting mellowly
to be cracked open
by the orc siege of eager witches
rock collectors
little kids

my mother insists
she was never a witch
but she gave me a bag of amethyst,
sunstones,
citrine

a sliver of streetlight
passes through the slotted blinds
cats
on my bed
pawing at my eyes
bidding my awake

There is a girl who goes here
who looks just like you
i'm so sorry i didn't come to watch you go
are you now back to watch me through school?
oh hecate, have mercy upon me
and shield me from this bewitchment!
or at least lend her kindness
like she had in this last life
i was too weak to go!
and you too kind to deserve me!
oh please, forgive me
i'm begging you
forgive me
forgive me
forgive me

how much longer
until i am just the indentations
of a body
in my bed?

here i am to argue
that you can put your arms around a memory
and kiss them till you fall asleep
you can put your arms around a memory
but you'll just be ******* a ghost
and when you're finished
you'll be much colder than you were before

10:20 AM**
utensil song
repeats a sleepy dirge
like i repeat another day
of walking in a circle

i knew you would forget my name
if i didn't write it for you every day
for you to see.
so i found the bridge your car whizzes under
every day to work
and sprayed it in blue
with toadstools and fireworks
pretty girls and tampons
was it enough to wipe the yellow from your mind?

i knew you would forget my name
if i didn't write it down every day
for you to see.
so i shimmied up the sky and hung a banner
of azure eyes and white, white teeth
and waited.
but next week i saw it
floating down the river
with two empty cans of chewing tobacco
and a lemonade carton.

i knew you would forget my name
if i didn't write it
big enough
so i held my breath
with my head on the tracks
and waited for the rumbling to stop

by chance i relived that scene
in the cosmic cloister where i'm still waiting
saw that my head was smeared for a mile
trying to spell out
Hello!
but the trail was an unripe cantaloupe

i turned away
and wept

little slug
lived his life
thinking he was a snail
until a man came along
ripped off his shell
and covered him in salt

what is luck?
i have a dotted line that i've been trying to fill in for my whole life
diagnosed at nine with a carrying-too-much disease
but i can afford the pills and therapy
from someone else's wallet
but
for how long?
tell me, doctor,
when i'm off my parents' Healthcare Plan,
will you still want to talk to me?
we've built such a great relationship
in the past lord knows how many years of
punching mirrors
kissing porcelain bowls
would you please keep giving me ****** lotion
to smooth out the holes in my brain?
what about the other kids who are dying out in the same crispy sun that doesn't set?
tell me, do you feel the same compassion
for these daughters of dopamine   deficiency?
would you hold the hands of thirty year olds
who still fear the monsters under their beds?
you *******

do no harm

and turn a blind eye

and i know it's not your fault
but **** it, Look Me In The Eyes
and tell me
what do you plan to do?

i built a house on flower petals
the voices grew high around me
winter, spring, fire, fall,
the plants withered in the summer heat

the vines grew high around me
i tried to find a pattern but
the plants withered in the summer heat
my home was just funeral pie and soot

i tried to find a pattern but
there was too much to see
my home was just funeral pie and soot
my vision burned all i could be

there was too much to see
but my tears can feed my daughter's field
my vision burned down all i could be
but the future will not be forsaken

he remembers when spring meant
that the ground would get wet and soft
and flowers would burst from the crematory ashes
of winter

looking up again
the light has lifted from the sidewalk
and shines only on the tops of the apartments

never sharp enough
to take the skin off a tomato

Let the bears run down past the murky streams!
And does stare into the sky
while the garnet moon reflects a starry green
off of lazy eyes!
I am far from home
and the countryside sweeps in grand arms around me
a usurping host,
bereft of noise or soul
but chanting an older story
more accustomed to the ears of wolves
than to mine,
trembling woman.
     The most human I feel here is standing in the cemetery
knee deep in the souls of those taken by the green.
Inescapable heath!
Will I join those locked in your peat?
And feed more than what man can dare dream of?
My god,
You wish to see me drowned in your rivers
dashed on your rocks
Oh, beat of the city, I long for you!
More than any lover's embrace.
For you, the gun
the noose
the pill bottle
very human deaths
all await me.
But here
I am tempted by the unfamiliar
and I fear that I shall die in this alien pull.
     What difference am I to a groundhog
being eaten by a coyote
beside the rive bank?
To this land, no no different.
And the only mark I can leave on this land
is perhaps the scraping marks of my feet
as I plod
back
to my dorm.

we
don't want any of your ******* sorrows
we don't want pretty frowns and lip biting sympathy
don't want a ******* protest song
no no no we don't want a hand on our back
we want one wrapped around this sledgehammer
to help us knock the walls down
and not to look at us in the pharmacies
and the grocery stores
and the waiting rooms
and the therapist chairs
whispering
a lazy generation
*******
you know what my earliest memory was?
two planes slamming into silver sticks of butter on a warm sunny day
and getting pulled out of kindergarten to watch
as pretty red and black confetti jumped out of the smoke
a lazy generation
on too many meds
where were we
when you shoved coke up your nose
in a ******* disco tech
that was gonna burn down before  1993
you were our parents
the nirvana generation
feeling so good about themselves
and shoving their music down our throats so long that we can't remember how to sing for ourselves
you had teen pregnancy and world wars
this is ours
my war is waged between my hands
one that has a wire hanger whipping my back
and the other that doesn't feel guilty
but would rather not have my roommates see and report me
that's all i got going for me is a good education
sure; people love me that's great
pick up a ******* hammer
and help me knock these walls down

I've not written since the words stopped flowing
in between the pills and the chemicals
there wasn't any blood left in my to spill on this keyboard
i have neglected friends
and built up your sorrows
clogged my arteries with the narrow disdain of stagnation

what life is this?
where i write for classes only
and draw for clicks on a website
what are can live there?
none, none, none
none save my dreary blue eyes
drinking in the rocky sodas
of dying youth
i have not been well
not been unwell
i've just been
and to the same ends
Jesus, i haven't eaten in two days
and my arms ache from playing the scissor violin
i repent for nothing!
save leaving you alone, my dear friends
what kindness did i pay you
by leaving?

i need you like i need the paint that runs through my veins
and keeps my cheeks colored
to spew onto canvases

yes
i am participating in no shave novemeber
and if i wanted to braid the rainbows that curl under my arms
you cannot stop me
not with shame
not with punishment
because i am gorgeous
and because i am strong
and if i choose to shave myself
i will
but i won't

watching replays
over and over and over again
for what?
gah, i don't need this stress.
the team is going down.
i'm a hockey girl.
but **** it
* NO
THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A TOUCH DOWN *
Jesus, I don't need this