Girl waits anxiously,
Foot bouncing
Hands tapping
Mind in overdrive.

The woman in charge
Has her hair shaved on both sides
And tattoos covering her torso.
She takes two smoke breaks
And decides she might as well get paid.

Science? On your body? Whatever. Get in.

The girl holds out her foot
Pink and white and black
Ready and willing
To be punctured
Like the god's coloring book.
She talks to drown out the nerves.

Her friend follows
Awkwardly? Quietly?
Holds out fingers
To be used in case of emergency.
The first gets a vise grip on them
She starts singing pop-culture
From decades past to distract.
It just seems out-of-place.

The woman pays no attention.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Refills her ink
As an artist must have supplies.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
She loves these needles
That penetrate and alter.
Allow the body to be a canvas
Both practical and beautiful.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The girl's hand sweats
Death grips do that, I hear.
She has to wipe it off more than once.
Her friend is being little help.
She cringes!
Needle got close to bone
To nerves.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

She finishes
Puts away her needles
And her ink
Cleans her canvas
Though this was not her favorite artwork.
She sends them out.

She hobbles
Foot newly changed.
Human symbols now visible,
She is no longer just earth.
Her friend follows.

She now has the mark of humanity
Of science
Of society
Forever on her skin.
She now belongs to the world.

Everyone is stupid!
No one understands.
My brain works much faster
And their's are all bland.

No one ever gets me!
They don't understand.
No one ever lets me
Let my words be grand.

Everyone is stupid
And they don't understand.
My thought so far surpass them
That they look like grains of sand.

The wine isn't as good as I remember.
It's sour, and the sweet aftertaste isn't there.
It does the job though.
Two gulps and I'm chilled out
Ready to take on all the socialization that life's going to force on me.
Instead of uncomfortable and anxious
I will be a calm observer.
The scent of my breath will make her upset
But it's what I need to face the rest of the night.
The world is more beautiful
The leaves on the oak become beautiful green Styrofoam
The smell of the bushes enchants my senses.
Because of the wine, everything is better.

I wanted to write something
About how people are never as important as they think they are
And how the actions of others don't really affect me.
But I waited for inspiration to strike, and it just wouldn't come.
Not that there's not evidence.
So I'll just write this note.
No poetry, no prose.
I'm not sorry if I offended you.
I'm not sorry if you think I dislike you.
I'm not sorry if you think I have a vendetta against you.
Honestly, it's all in your head.
You don't matter that much.

Flip. Fold. Straighten.
Flip. Fold. Straighten.
Flip. Fold. Straighten.

The same
Ugly embroidered cotton shirts.
The same colors
Fabrics
Stiff stain-proof pants.

Eight hours
Of flipping
Folding
Straightening.

This is my life now.

Dissatisfaction boils up in my gut.
Soon it will turn to anger
Which will turn to rage...
I wonder who I'll take it out on.

Surely it will be the wrong one.

But it's the fault of many
Not just one!
Though honestly it is just the fault of one
This one
Me.

I feel TRAPPED
By myself.
A hostage in a cave of my own making.
The only way to escape
Is to make a hostile exit!
But if I shoot the guard,
I will be dead too.
So really there's no point.

Maybe they'll let me out for exercise sometime.
This is prison, isn't it?

There's something beautiful
In eating meat.
Devouring what was once a living being.
Turning that animal into calories for you to burn.
My teeth pierce the skin,
Tear the muscle from the bone.
A performance of delicious savagery
While staring into my lovers eyes.
Primal.

Impatient breath
Hands erasing, smoothing all ridges.
Skin to skin becomes just...skin.

You cover me and discover me
Your fire singes any thought I may have had
And all that is left is you
And me
And your hands on me.

As my desperation grows your movements slow
Until desire is all there is.

This is more than you and me.
This is us as one.

I love you now, my sweet honeybee
When your collector is full of pollen.
I'll love you then, my lovely hummingbird
When your bright, buzzing wings have fallen.

I loved you then, my dear brown buck
When your antlers were still sprouting.
I'll love you forever, my protector, my pet
Unflawed, unending, undoubting.

I haven't been writing much lately.

My vault is being emptied into you
Instead of into poems,
I think.

Maybe I'm running low
And need to go to the bank to get some change.

Maybe I need to
Diversify my portfolio, so to speak.

Maybe
I need to go to the casino
And take a gamble to see if I can refill it.
But I've never been good at any game but slots
So you'd have to come help me.
We can count cards all night
And stuff my safe with the anticipation
And risk of getting caught.

Maybe I just need an accountant.
Maybe I need a loan.
Maybe I need you to be my loan-shark.

The scanner is my weapon
I wield it with authority
And power.
BAM!
$7.95
POW!
$20.65
ZAP!
Your entire soul!

They give me what I demand
And leave with
The tail end of the bargain.

I haven't written in days.
I need to get my rhythm back
My meter, my stanzas, my rhymes
If I so choose to use them.

I don't want to sound like someone else
But I don't remember my voice.
I'm like Ariel in the Little Mermaid
Giving up my voice on a whim.
She didn't mind the choice
But I am neither mermaid nor songstress.

You're distracted me to the point of...
I don't know, exactly.
But I can't won't don't recall my words.

I need to feel again
Because it's been a week without a soul.

The feminist in me rages
But the female in me is melting.
I know you can tell
Especially since it's all over your fingers.
Never stop talking.
Never stop touching.

I.
Want.
You.

You probably have a name like Amber or Ashley.
You probably drive a car made in the 2000s
And like to play popular hip-hop songs on your top forty radio
You know, in that stereo he probably bought you for your birthday.
You work at a temporary job for eight bucks an hour
And during your lunch break you make plans for that night.

You are the basic suburban female
And you exist to be the bar that the rest of us judge ourselves on.
Or at least, I do.
You are prettier than most
Have more money than most
Have more friends than most
And you are the person
Who allows me to think that I can one day be at your level,
Even though it's far from true.

Maybe I should take up smoking.
If I smoked
I could have a reason to go outside
And escape
And sit in the warmth.
I would satisfy my oral fixation
I would satisfy my black-lung fixation.

One sober night
And I can't remember how to interact with others
And I don't think anything's as funny as it was
And I don't think anyone's as interesting as they were.

The world loses its sparkle
And everything is made of dust, not diamonds.
I sit silently
Waiting for anything of importance to happen
But it never does.

Why would I ever stop drinking?

Excess molars fill my swollen mouth
My jaw cannot take it
Saliva seps out of my guns
Hoping for some
Soothing salvation...
My teeth grow as I type
Expandingexploding
Until my tongue and gums are absorbed
And turn to fire to match
All that I'd left is
Far roo many
Massive molars

I'm going on a diet
Of three poems a day.
My water will be ink
Black, blue and gray.

I'll get nourishment from stanzas
Calories from rhyme.
No more food shall I eat
Not at anytime.

I'm going on a diet.
I'll lose a thousand pounds.
But it's unfortunate that enchiladas
Are now out of bounds.

Last night it was dark out
Blackness dotted by bright streetlights, put there to protect my innocence.
I heard the birds chirping their morning-song that is usually heard at my grandparent's house, early in the morning.
But it was three-thirty a..m., and not at all sunny.
It confused me.
When I was returning home, I once again heard the birds.
It was seven-thirty at night, and not at all sunny.
It confused me.
I always believed these were morning birds, singing their morning-song to my grandparents.
I guess they're constants.

You wouldn't believe
The thrill that goes through me
When you say I'm pretty.
The tingles you summon when you touch me
Are electric enough to power the country.
By the time you walk me home
The wetness you inspire has taken control of my legs
Or lost control, I guess.
I will take whatever you feel you can give me
And what you've given so far, gives you a halo.

When I was nine-ish I planned to give my mother a book of poems for her birthday.
Mother's Day?
Christmas?
Something.
I would write fifty-three poems for her
I was in a Jack Prelutsky phase.
My sister preferred Shel Silverstein.
I don't remember any of them
Or even if I made it
But I remember planning.
At night I wrote on the slats of my sister's bunk bed
She always got top bunk.
I wrote my plan
And ideas for these poems
And styles and layouts and covers.

I don't know if I went through with it
But if I did
I hope that she kept it
So I can remember who I was.

They say this pill will help me sleep.
My soul it will let me keep.
Yet I toss and turn for hours on end
Trying my energy to spend.
I lay here in this soft warm bed
And try to empty out my head.
I thought these pills would help me sleep
Instead they only make me weep.

My mind  feels like gravy
Slow-moving and liquid
With chunks of solid thought.
My body has melted
What was once a solid bar
Is now a pool of liquid.
My eyes sting
As if they are infested with jalapeño seeds.

I am a smörgåsbord.

I don't have *** dreams.
I don't get ******* in my sleep,
Much less in daylight.
but I do get a sort of
Nocturnal comfort.
I have love dreams.
Dreams where beautiful men
Men with dark eyes
Bedroom eyes
Love me
Ache for me
Chase after me
As a gentleman does.
Last night I had one.
He loved me
He wanted me
He thought I was
The epitome of feminine perfection
And beauty.

I think I get these beautiful dreams
Instead of wet dreams
Because I don't know what an ****** is
But I do know
Exactly
What love is.

Sweat creates a sheath on my forehead
Created from internal struggle, not outward heat.
It seems my insides are causing me the most pain lately.

I can feel the destruction
Practically hear my woman-ness being torn down.
Feel walls and tubes and eggs, all dying.
A tornado laying waste to what makes me me.

Pain that radiates throughout-
It hits my legs after it moves, draining them of power
Feet, too.
Then upwards, to my biceps
And finally my mind.

Pain different than any other
Unique and terrible
A thin to both study and abhor.

Make it go away.

Twenty minutes, lost.
I though I had been under my steadily flowing deity for hours. I thought I had had a spiritual experience lasting longer than Genesis.
But it was only twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes
Of standing naked under falling water, feeling soap suds and scratchy cleansers and sharp tangles
Cleaning my skin and my soul of my physical reminder of my connection to the river
To the world
Thinking only flesh and water, flesh and water.
It was the mantra in my head.
We are all just flesh and water.
I was ripping through the harsh curls of my hair thinking flesh and water
Flesh and water.
I caressed my goddess, my god, my spirit, nature’s spirit
When I caressed the showerhead.
I saw it clean me of the plankton of the natural water and replace it with synthetic chemicals
To keep me sanitary and acceptable.
Twenty minutes.
It felt like that was how long it took for the blade to run across my skin, my wet-and-dry-sand skin. Twenty minutes running up from the product of the hills to the home of my womanhood.
I noticed how the man-made razor matched a section of veins on my wrist.
Twenty minutes.
In twenty minutes that were actually twenty lifetimes I became Pocahontas, daughter of Earth and sister of water.
I felt my connection to what sustains me and it changed me.
How did twenty minutes seem so long
Under the florescent lights?

Racing through backroads
You watch as stars appear as if from nowhere.
Freshly born, newly created
Made only for you and him to know.

You don't know where you're going
But you'll go anywhere with him
So you aren't worried.
Anywhere he goes immediately becomes a good place.

He drives far too fast through unknown townships
If you can ever call them that.
But it's still dark enough there that you just
Stare out the window; you put your arm out to feel the night.

You stop in a dirt road
Abandoned, for all intensive purposes.
Lay on the hood and watch the stars
As if it's a PG-13 romantic comedy.

He gives you the stars
And you have nothing to give in return
So you just try to take in the universe.
You just want to reach out and touch it.

And as you leave you watch the stars disappear
Fading back into the city lights.
You wonder if the universe holds a funeral for a dying star
You wonder if this has all been orchestrated by the cosmos.

Floating, adrift.
Like a speck in a kid's book
A dandelion seed in the air
Minus the grace.
A purgatorial lack of gravity
Empty.

I guess you were my earth
And now I'm lost in space.
But it's time I made my world,
And stop abusing yours.

This is contentment.
Or maybe it's that point of just being.
One or the other.
The air is too cold. I feel it bringing up ridges on my skin.
There's an ache in my side and an itch in my ******
But this is just how I am.
The world is fuzzy and sleepy and hollow and overwhelming
And that is just how it is.
If I was removed from the situation little would change.
The air would still be too cold, though no one would feel it.
The ache would be in someone else's side.
The itch would be in someone else's ******.
The world would just be.

Pop-reggae in my brain
Fan buzzing in my ear
Music down the hall...
Which should I focus on?

My lungs forgets the proper rhythm for survival.
Instead I breathe in your fingers
And breathe out your tongue.
My heart forgets how to pump my blood
(Was that bumBUM, or beBEEbum?)
So you pump me instead.

My mind forgets how to think
And all that exists is you and me
And the rhythm we create.

Sometimes I can't tell if I'm writing poetry
Or just journaling.
Is it the spacing that allows me to call it a poem?
Because I have no stanzas.
I have no "Dear diary" either.
So which is it?
I hope it's poetry. I hope it's art.
When it just falls out of my head like this
No otherworldly narrator
No rhyme
No beauty
I doubt it
And through my doubting, I make it doubt itself.

If anyone should have high self-esteem, it is you, dear words.

I've taken to piercing my body, when I'm at my worst.
What, you've never felt like losing a little flesh?
It's a little bit of loss
A tiny death.
le petit mort
The death of skin cells is the sweetest.
Just ask the vultures-
Why else would they feast on it so?

They are not war badges or battle scars.
They are circles attaching myself to my soul
A minute weight and reminder
To forget, to remember, to be.
To be as a vulture
To relish in what is found
Not beg for what is not needed.

They are not true predators, vultures.
They rarely ****
Rarely cause harm to the universe.
They are performing a service to you, sir.
Would you prefer to eat your dead yourself?

They never come for me.
They do not care for my skin
They do not care for my tiny death.

Pierce is the perfect word, for the action.
Pierce, meaning stab cleanly.
Pierce, meaning penetrate.
Pierce, meaning sharply, shrilly, briskly.
That's what it feels like.
All-encompassing, for a few sweet seconds.
That's probably the true reason.

Flesh is overrated.
Overabundant.
Perhaps the vultures will come
And take a little from me.
Someday.

A marvel of human engineering!
A cyborg of delicate mechanical balance
She swoops down
And conquers the world.
Her world-
Her section of the Earth, created for her.

Nothing left out of place
Nothing amiss.

She is the world's first crossbred perfectionist.

It's amazing what you don't remember.
I don't remember
What his ***** tasted like.
I have an impression in my mind
That his groin smelled bad.
I remember how it started.
I remember that it would never have happened
If it weren't dark
And I hadn't been so lonely
And my self esteem hadn't been so low
And I hadn't already given up.
If he had been facing me
When he tried
It wouldn't have happened.
I'd I had seen his greasy face
It wouldn't have happened.
I don't regret it.
I never cared about him
But it was just another
Part of the past.
What's the point of regrets?

I think he knows.
But there's so much
Of those months
[or was it weeks?]
That I have no memory of.
Most of what I recall
Involves a stained skirt
A little truck
And him parading around like a proud ****
With his naked ******* in the light.

It's not entirely positive.

"Hehehe, I'm a poet
And I didn't even know it!"
Haha, I'm a poet
And I'm gonna ******* you with a can of bugspray.

melt me down
condense me to my base elements
make me what i am inside

melt me down
burn that layer of filth outside
and let my core breathe

melt me down
see me, me, me
see my insides and yearn for them

melt me down,
against my will.
against my better judgement.

if you want to see, see.

I'm pretending this grape soda is a beer.
Instead of grapes
I taste hops.
Instead of sugar
I taste bitterness.
And when I take a swig
It erases some tension
Til sip by sip
I will become a puddle of relaxation.
Or maybe nonexistence.
It goes well with the tear tracks on my face
And the sad song on my iPod.

I don't understand people
Who don't value
INDEPENDENCE
As the highest good.
It is what I crave
It is what I work for
Constantly.

It's unfortunate that the man I will spend my life with
Doesn't seem to care for it at all.

Recreated
In the image of who I want to be.
Reborn
From a newly discovered stage of development.

I am renewed and reevaluated.
Now vibrant and breathless
Open and waiting
For you, always for you.

For me, too.
But in a different way.
Finally, facing my id.
Finally, flying.

I am free in the darkness.
Free from your eyes,
Binding and infuriating.
Free from myself.

I am safe in the darkness,
For unknown danger is no danger at all.
Blindfold me to comfort me.
Whip me to awaken me.

I am strong in the darkness.
Convicted with conviction,
And only in the present tense.

I am blind to everything in the darkness,
And I don't want to see or believe.
I am empty in the darkness,
And I don't want to be filled.

A  book left in my view
A possible display of affection?
Or just a coincidence.
I've written down
My secret love affair
How my soul intertwines with that author's.
How he may be dead, but he makes me feel alive.
Maybe she noticed?
Maybe it's for me?

More likely, I am once again
Pretending the world is made for me.

You are the glowing coal in the bonfire-
The one that stays hot and bright
Never to burn out or turn to ash
But to thaw frozen fingers indefinitely.

We are entwined and entangled
Bright eyes locked, greedy for each other.
Bodies held together like a Chinese finger trap.
You smile. I unravel.
Your lips put me back together.

You are the earth, the grass, the sun.
Revitalizing and calming, fantastic and real.
I breathe you in and I begin again.
With senses in overdrive and nerves in flames,
I take you in and we are one again.

Broken down from the inside out
She tells me about him.
Emotionally cruel
Manipulative
Verbally abusive
She doesn't say in so many words
But the message gets across.

He has made her need him.
Rely on him for her validation
For her existence.
Now he is all she has.

A grown woman breaks down at work
In front of strangers, employees.
He is hurting her
On the inside.

She told me a lot more, too.
But what can I do?

Why would she tell me?

A cliche group of young adults
Sit around a badly-furnished living room.
One by one they go around the room
And express their (completely valid)
Insecurities
Over the future.
Four people
All paying tens of thousands of dollars
For a piece of paper
That may or may not even be useful.
Journalism. English. Farming...
All hoping to join
Various dying industries.
All being fully aware
That the jobs they want
Likely won't exist in five years.

All not knowing what to do.
Follow your dream
(Which is likely dying)
Or switch majors.
Turn the last two years
And the last forty thousand thousand dollars
Into a waste.

I could shun my English degree
Repress my hopes
(Which are now, at the most, three-quarters hearted)
Of becoming an editor
And becoming someone to help the world
Become more focused on literature.

I could be a nurse
Do as my mother did.
It's hard
Much harder than sitting and reading
For hours on end
But I could do it.
I could help people
And always be guaranteed a job...
I could not be useless.

Dreams or realities?

Sounds seem louder.
Skin feels drier.
People seem less important.

This is not ***.
This is the beginning
Of my final transformation
Into a zombie bat.

Chocolate custard
Forgotten high school friendships
They talk. I'm silent.

I never fit in
But they accepted my words
All groups need an ***.

We are different.
I, observer. They, observed.
One relationship.

But it is the past.
I barely remember it.
They consider it real.

Steakburgers and fries.
We pretend to remember
Friendships long-empty.

He said to me
One needs to know where they're going in life
To know where their writing's ending will come from.
I have a vague idea of where I will go in life
(Whether or not that's where I want to go...
Is an uncomfortable question.)
But my poems always end
Unfulfilled
Unsatisfying
Abruptly.

Is that some sort of sign?

I've been looking through my box.
You know.
The one I use to keep my memories
So that one day, when I'm old, I can show my children.
"This is what your mother's life was.
This is who she was, once."

But see, the problem is it's filled with you.
We were so happy once.
We were so in love.
I see these pictures of us
At proms, *****, inside your car
And I see that.

There is no way these people could not have been happy together.

But things change.

I don't have any pictures of you
From after the middle of senior year.
From when we started growing
Separately.
From when we started falling out of love.
Or at least, I did.

But I have your notes
Your photos
Your movie tickets and circus stubs.

I have your photos
And we were just so happy.
We were so together.

I'm not going back to you
I don't regret what I've done
But it's just hard to understand
And hard to see that smile
Even if it is frozen in time.

Bright red lips
Forming a perfect circle.
A fairytale hole
On a pale pale face.
Her eyes are rimmed
Black
With midnight mascara.
Hair a frustrated mess
Of dark curls
On top of her head.
The lace of her cami
Is flush to her *******
And minimal green cotton
Lays low on her hips.

She is Betty
She is Veronica
She is Snow and Cindy and Belle.

Everything becomes her
And through her archetypal appearance
She becomes everything.