A yellow exhaustion eats the skinny stomach comfort
of wondering how the night will dissolve
and how paranoid the longing mind will be while falling asleep

The click click dancing in the head-
a colorful dripping noise and dangerous creaking around me,
keeping me awake and wondering if the doors are locked

What eggshell floorboards will I walk along tomorrow?
What will I break or preserve?
What will the daytime smell like?  
When it’s dark (and all I can know in the moment)
everything that existed under sunlight seems so far away
I can’t recall how it affects the senses-
like leaving Colorado, trying to will the taste of snow air back to the tongue
but it’s as gone as summer, as Stacy to Georgia

And lying in bed, still as the elderly in church,
wondering which one of our mouths eat the most lies
and which ones spit the most out

I dedicate one sharp inhale to winter

And shut my eyes (the ones I watch you with) to the cold

Writing to grow flowers out of my dead thoughts
usually late late dark late at night
the gem hours: red with the tunnel vision of 2am
to fear in avoiding paranoia winter dreaming
and waking up to the world streaming light into the window,
but it’s colder then it looks out there-
deceptive weather keeping things interesting

Weather and this life are strange
like how it would snow in the more southern neighborhoods
by Kristin’s house on Jackson St.
(near where the old german man sold chocolate)
and stay dry by my house

Stay dry by Anthony’s pizza where I went to dinner
when my grades were good
and after the Christmas pageant
when I walked off the wrong side of the stage-
it’s always been a horror- to give my body and attention
to a room full of people with high expectations

I guess that’s why it’s necessary
to continue to try to prove fathers wrong
who stick themselves into bad situations and recording studios
and stay away forever

Now: dead grass the only nature around
and Strattera to numb the high decibel level of the mess-
a loud scream, a reminder of tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow
red tomorrow of having to follow through

I write to find a way out of the quick sand- a reason to get out of bed.

this is not a poem about schmaltzy loneliness

but about what it means to have a mother-
to have come from some place as strange and remarkable
as another human being
and to separate from that person, from their body
and become alone-
confined to a single mind and skin skeleton machine

how it's strange to grow up
and in some home- your first house
where all your little bones turn into bigger bones
and to move away from that place
and to forever attempt to recall the details of it
-the patterns on the rugs,
the scratches on the floorboards,
the way it all smelled

(i'm right now trying to remember
2454 South Washington st-
with the red brick chimney-
down the street from Saint Joseph’s Hospital-
where the nativity scene glowed green and red every winter
as a reminder that God was a lifetime of confusion away)

how it's strange to grow-
how the mind and skin stretch
and suddenly we're older,
and still holding on to the feeling
that somewhere
happiness hides in this lifetime
in some mountain town
or occupation or hobby
or other person
like a favorite scarf from childhood that’s been buried in the closet
she will one day appear and feel familiar
and we will grow old together
on a porch
drinking tea and wearing sweaters
happiness and me

it's about the forever loneliness of being a person
universal and filled with homesickness for what exists past life on earth
...
inevitable, i guess

this achy cold nighttime
brings about a sweet and terrifying loneliness
that rises with the moon
and the creaks in the walls remind me-
no one else is home

the problem with being an introvert
who suffers from anxiety
is that you're never sure what's worse-
being uncomfortably surrounded
or paranoid and alone

and to the holy faces that surround me always (the artists)

To these rooms-
always in double-standard disarray
and bearing witness to my beginning of life crisis
with borders of brilliant rectangular windows, never left open,
captured closed by the boy with the stolen necklaces
(it’s a shame, but I’ve never known how to ask for light on my face or for help)

To the memory of Ginsberg until 4 in the morning,
poetry and Moloch eating our five warm and open minds

To the nail hole badges our walls wear in honor of creation, the abandonment and the constant new order of
art and art and clean art and bad art
and genius; my words are their brain children

To the conversely barren walls (they make me nauseous),
the daily scrubbings of the kitchen counters,
fears manifested in ***** bathrooms
and the oppressive blue and ‘Turbulent Indigo’
of the speakers in my bedroom
where I lay my head in contemplation of the boy I share a bed with,
watching him- reading the freckles on his back into novels,
thick with tear stains, I put my eyes right up to the pages
because who doesn’t love the smell of an old book?
(and so everything is grey and illegible now)

To the all-over ceramics:
ashtrays pregnant with vice and the relief of night,
that Jordan molded with her own two hands
and the endless owls in all our cupboards
that Caleb made before he crawled back,
tail between his legs,
to the porches and whiskey of South Georgia

This is for all I have come to know in the mad house:
that our love is as inconsistent as the arrangements of blankets in the living room,
that we should all be leery of the color blue
and computers and computers and, for that matter,
technology as a whole-
especially when we are together

I have come to know what it is to live in a commune of pitiful couches leaking ***** of sad cotton,  
of concoctions of vegetables (never pure enough)
and dishes in the kitchen sink and white carpets thick with cat hair,
which is why we sing those words, absentmindedly,
when we fold clothes or put on our pajamas.
(The air in this house is stuffy with all that we don’t know how phrase just right)

And yet, the sun licks the morning off of Dallas
and all that carved a hole in my middle yesterday becomes irrelevant and untrue
as I toast the day in honor of these people and this shelter-
the glory of a canvass, a picture frame, a blanket from Colorado,  and screws in dry wall

So, I write
because of the homemade pillows, because of marijuana, because all life is an attachment and I am glad to be attached to all of you
I write out of gratefulness, out of understanding
I write because I’m with you
(with all of you)
in Rockland.

la vida es una desilusion,
a cigarette burn on the tongue
raw taste buds so dull you can’t even feel your husband in your mouth
or the aftertaste of ancient oil paint (20 years ago)
that you keep in the gaps where your wisdom teeth used to be
a midnight snack of remembering,
a band-aid for the **** that nicotine abandonment made in you-
carved all the way down to your ***,
angry as a beast, as a midlife crisis,
still hung-over from the past ten years staring out these prison red windows

life is an illusion, a recollection of a painting
life is a city street that these wired eyes can make no sense of at all