be strong be weak be what you'd like. nonetheless you will still be human and you will still be unsteady, visible, tangible.
when the goings get hard and the wind seems to be tearing through brittle bones
say to the face of the sky that "I am not afraid! I am not afraid!".
the sun might dim a little and the birds will fall from the sky until nothing exists besides a sighing moon.
some say that when you grow older you grow wiser but maybe it's better to be curious and oblivious, always questioning, always wondering.
say to the others that "The world has been tough but I've been tougher" when they ask you why you are bitter, why you are sad.
expensive things will get you far if you have the money to spend but a velvet lampshade covers the same amount of light as a heavy heart, keep that in mind.
being bruised and battered makes you look used and abused and it seems like being tarnished was never a good look.
and people fall and stand and fall and stand again, but staying down was never a bad thing when it came to war and peace, sport and game.
a bruise is a flowering of contained pain, internal bleeding, concentrated blemish that spreads amongst dim-witted people.
visit me when i'm old and grey and wrinkled and tired and yelling at the top of my lungs "I'mnotafraidI'mnotafraidI'mnotafraid!" slurring and shivering.
the most exquisite thing about a  a person is their inane idea that they were prepared for the moment when the shades draw and the moon smiles sadly at their watery eyes.
the lull of the ocean will be enough to push you into sleep.

A flit of fingers
Across delicate curves
Gentle folds
Webbing surfaces

There
*Then gone

We pressed so close
That our hearts touched

To whoever touches me next,
   I'm not delicate anymore. I don't have gold running through my veins or silver in my hair. I'm not made up of flames and the sun anymore. I can't be your star.
   I'm by no means perfect. I never was and I never will be. The bruises that littered my skin as a child went deeper than skin. They were the first taste of my veins breaking open.
   When I say that I don't mind, know that I probably do. And I only do because I wish I was confident you weren't disappointed. Remember that when you touch me.
   Know that I care more about you than I care about my whole being. I want to please you more because then the attention will be diverted from me.
   I care if you say something critical. I may blow off a casual "it should look like this" but deep down I care.
   I am a lightening bug amidst a sea of stars. Keep in mind that nobody likes insects. I don't expect you to like me. I'm a bug that glows not a burning core of undiscovered atoms.
   If you kiss me in the middle of my back you will feel where my heart beats through my skin. If you kiss me on my lips you can feel where my heart beats through my breath.
   Lastly.
Love me. Please. I'm not expecting you to and by no means am I worthy of it.
   But love me.

How could you possibly know what I'm feeling?
You are a train wreck with two legs and lungs that can breath.
I am a fallen tree whose branches are still reaching towards the sky.
Theoretically we should both meet our demise.
Yet here we are.

To be a poet there needs to be a tragedy
A trauma hidden in the endless folds of your cowering mother's skirts,
A great happening in the form of your father's alcoholism and abusive tendencies.

Or that's what they say.

I have no trauma. No grief-stricken past with needle-sharp memories that ***** my eyes like tears when I go to bed every night.

Who's to say that in order to feel this deep sense of nothing that there needs to be a huge something that came before it? What if there's a happy childhood and a beautifully achieved mother married to a gruff but grateful father and two dogs with lolling tongues and a house with the perfect screened in porch that the poet spent hours with her dad on, reading the rites of childhood competency disguised as "Goodnight Moon" and "I'll Love You Forever"?

I have no trauma, no stomach twisting horror that made me realize my ****** was best torn out of me or that being a mother is pain inside of its own pain? I am a poet but am I real poet if I don't talk about the night I almost threw up the memories of my smiling father into my transparent hands, just because I felt too sad to deserve them? Am I real poet if I can't write about tearing the thought of my dog lazing in the sun on the perfect edge of an afternoon out of my head just because something so pure was never meant for something like me, something so unpure.

To be a poet there needs to be a tragedy
A trauma tangled in the Great Awakening of teen angst and the realization of all that is not your mother's soft voice waking you up every sunrise
A great happening in the form of losing all sense of self and filling the Void with the copper taste of pennies and nights that border on mornings.

I almost took a blade to my skin again
Can't quite remember when exactly
I was too hyped up on over the counter medicine
My memory kind of fogged after the first one
I think I did it a few nights ago
But I can't be sure
I apologize though
I know I disappoint you
I am so very sorry

"It is just a stupid and suicidal world, Tumblr is."
No
     It
        Isn't
"All it does is provoke those negative feelings."
No
     It
        Doesn't
"What does it do for you? Obviously nothing good."*
Oh
    *But
         It
            Does
                  And
                 ­        You
                       Have
                    No
               *Idea
         How
   Much
It
     Has
          Saved
                *Me

Every song
Every lyric
Every word
Reminds me of you
And of our time
Lying together beneath the stars
Under the hovering clouds
In front of the low hanging sun
Listening to the same music
I am hearing now
And I find myself willingly
Turning it on
Turing it up
Then turning it off
You see
I miss laughing at the feeling
It gave us
And the chills
It saved us
You see
I'm two steps from hell my dear
And this music
Isn't making it any better

When I saw you, laying in the dead grass, my eyes glued themselves to the yellow of your hoodie, to the flower patches that adorned the back of your denim jacket, to the long strands of deep brown hair that escaped and tangled around your hidden face.

I hardly remembered that your eyes were more blue than grey, and that your nose was the prettiest part of your face.

Your voice hadn't touched my ears in a year and a half and I'm not sure what I was expecting when I looked down at your dozing face, and saw the same boy that I kissed nearly two years ago in that dim basement.

When you looked up at me from your nest in the grass, I forgot that I hated you for the better part of last year, I forgot that you pried my fingers from your heart and flung me away from you, I forgot that I had learned to unlove you.

What's funny about love is that it sticks in the ridges of your fingerprints and sews itself into your eyelashes, seeps from your pores like sweat.

It makes a home in the recesses of your lungs and the minute it's reminded that it tangled with someone else's love, it uncoils and reaches through your throat, out into the open air and towards that boy that broke it so long ago.

When we said goodbye, I said goodbye with friendliness, with a smile, a wave, a turn of the shoulder.

You said goodbye with nostalgia embedded in it, with a smile, an openness that made me flinch, with a hug that made my arms want more and more and more.

You are a familiar stranger to me, someone that my heart knows but my mind has forgotten.

When I hugged you, there was an uncomfortable adoration between us that has never escaped from our mouths to begin with.

Yeah
I totally understand
When you delete all of
My social networking sites
Yeah
I completely sympathize
When you go all overprotective
Parent on my ***
Yeah
It's a shame
When I defy your rule so
I can fit into the nest of popular
Yeah
I utterly hate it
When nothing goes your way
And your children misbehave
Yeah
I despise it too
When people lie
Kind of like I am doing right
At
This
Moment
Yeah
I know I am faking understanding
But I won't for long

It's strange how
A 30 year smoking habit can be broken in a few months
But an 8 month habit of loving someone
Takes forever to unlearn

I have figured out that when I am sad
I am so filled with words that I can hardly contain that sadness

But when I am happy,
There's nothing left to say

And I don't know if that's numbness
Or emptiness that makes me mute

Things are falling apart fast
My friends have become sparse
Am I really a falling tree?
My family keeps telling me that I am
Worthless
My mother says she's disappointed in everything
I've done
Doesn't she know that all I've gone through life doing
Is trying to impress?

They treat me like I am a rolling boulder
Scattering like scared sheep
Whenever I say a word
They say they're done with my ****
But I can't tell what I've done
To wrong them

I'm tempted to claim death of my emotions
For the sake of a heartless cause

There's a fire in his eyes that was never in yours
His mouth sets in a grim line when he concentrates
A straight and narrow path that traverses the curves of his face
However, your lips were molded into a perpetual smile
One that simply wound about various edges and holes

And I'm thinking that it's time I differ to the straight and narrow for once
Maybe it will be more friendly

My chest hurts




And then it feels nothing.

I've figured out that there's a lot less to write about when you're happy
Than there is to be said when you're sad.

When I get nervous
My laughter comes
In short bursts of
Wasted air and discomfort
When I get nervous
My eyes don't
Stay still on yours
Or his
Or hers
When I get nervous
The sky decides
It's better suited in my
Lungs and my ribcage
When I get nervous
My hands itch at
The surface of the moon
And the surface of my
Face and hands
When I get nervous
The anxiety held between
My fingers breaks
Into three thousand
Small pieces of frightened
Nights
When I get nervous
It's because I'm
Terrified that I'll end up
Like you

*I'm afraid that
The stars above won't coo
My name when I'm crying
Out your touch

She was strangely optimistic in the sense that she saw the good to the very bad
It was a peculiar kind of good
The kind where you almost die
But you didn't
Or something terrible happens
But thank God you weren't involved
Or even if you were involved
At least you learned something from it
This twisted sense of optimism
Was almost enticing
Like smoke on a red stained lip
Or spilt wine on a pale-fleshed breast
It was waking
A douse of cold water
And a shout hello
Because it was startlingly true
Shockingly harsh
But it was life
And so was she

here's to forgetting
and here's to not

here's to remembering
and here's to choosing not to

you're like my alcohol
you make me drunk when i need to be sober the most
and right now as i'm talking to you on the phone
i'm getting drunk off of absolut and soda
its like flying and its like your stomach is in your throat
i love it

I opened a book
And it contained you
A big picture with such intricate lines
Curves and dips and angles that wove through each other

I read through the paragraphs that described
Your hair and blue-grey eyes and crooked smile
The ones that held the secrets of your laugh and
The softness of your skin

And I read through a page or two that told me how you
Smoke and drink and sometimes had a little too much fun
And I loved you all the same because we are all a little flawed

And I hope that you someday open my little book
Skim through its pages and read about how I
Was sad and sorry and a little under the weather
For the better portion of my high school years...

And I hope that you love me even more....

i saw you today
for the first time in weeks
and you've cut your hair
short on the sides, long on the top
and while your hair was beautiful
i still wanted you just the same with it short

how ****** must my heart be if it jumped into my throat just to see you again
we never met eyes but i could see you staring straight into my soul like you did the first night i began falling
and being stuck on the way down means you never stop falling
even when who you're falling for doesn't care whether you're alive or dead

Time is not

In love

With you

I think of everything I will never be
And I grow infinitely more uncomfortable in my skin.

Whisper nice things in my ears
Make me laugh like
I used to
Because I
Can't take
This pain for
Much longer
It's gripping me
Like a vise
And I can't find
The handle
That loosens it

She can't let them know
The pain she has been through
So she puts on a show
'Bout the places she's been too
With a Halls cough drop
Fresh in her mouth
And a connection with a cop
Somewhere in the south
Living the ways
Of the street savvy hipster
And the scent that always stays
A cold Vics smell, always bitter

I always saw you as a pair of bright blue eyes and
A keeper of beautiful words
    
     *You saw me as nothing but a bleeding heart with a rough touch

I'm shaky
I can't sit still and my leg seems to be falling asleep all the time
Is it normal to be a nervous wreck after a day of not talking to the one you
Want to talk to most?
I can't concentrate
This poem was hard for me to write
I'm having problems breathing
This can't be because I love you



*Can it?

i woke up with puffy lips
i think were kissing in my dream last night
or maybe it's just my imagination
but yesterday you stood
closer
than you have before
don't think i'm going to
bring you back in to my chest
what's going to change anything
now compared to
before?
i'm not going to make exceptions
for people i used to love
so sorry

What is a dog without a tail or a boat without a sail?
What's a marsh without the mire and smoke without the fire?

What's a hand without a grip and a heart without a trip?

What am I without you and what are you without me?

i hope that she loves you

i hope that she savors each taste of your wisdom and brilliant mind

i hope that she sees what a wonderful person you are, how kind, how caring, how gentle

i hope that she cherishes the long nights spent talking on the phone with static in the background

i hope that she doesn't mind that you get sad sometimes because we all do and you won't mind when she does

i hope that you can play the piano for her and make her wonder what other beautiful things you can do

i hope that she can hold you when you aren't doing so well late at night

i hope that things turn out right and not like they did with you and i

i hope that you become her best friend instead of already being so

i hope that you see her everyday as a beautiful soul with eyes the depth of the ocean

i hope that heaven sees you as a being that needs another chance because being in love skipped by you

i hope that she's pretty with skin that glows and a smile that makes the night awaken

i hope that she doesn't throw away everything that you two have and leave it lying

but god

i just hope that she loves you with every bit that she can...

The pale lips are smashed together in a fake smile, the teeth not wanting to show in the little pod of the mouth, hiding like scared peas. It’s frightening.
The eyes crinkled just right so that it looks so plastered on that you can tell it is fake, the folds overlapping again and again in an unnatural way. I blink.
The cheeks covered in makeup, splashed on in spots, smoothed over in others, splatter painted to look realistic. It doesn't work.
The fingers resting oh so stiff on the stomach raised a bit so that they are hovering above the skin, like he doesn't want to touch the dead fabric. I wouldn't.
The suit, so neatly pressed that not a wrinkle shows, except for on the collar where nobody notices. But I do.
The silk lining of the box he is resting in is shiny and overly polished, like a cherry wood dining room table with an overload of Pledge. It hurts my eyes.
The bouquet of flowers is a bundle of Death’s heavy perfume disguised as a bunch of roses and daisies. The smell is disgusting.
The picture frames surrounding the box are shined like pairs of leather shoes, embedded with gems and memories that are long past. It makes me sad.
The stuffed animals in the corner gaze deadly at the group, mold and dust sapping the life out of their beady eyes. They make me shiver.
The chair I sit on is hard and stiff, the cushion starched to the breaking point, the crackly material hardly comfortable. I squirm.
The vent above me blows a gale of cold air and underlying currents, which whips up my hair in a flurry of brown. I pat my head.
The people around me clutch tissues in bony hands, the wadded up paper soaked through with tears and makeup. It looks gross.
So as I observe every detail of this morbid place, I close my eyes and breath deep. Mistake. The air is ripe with anger and sadness, misery and frustration. Musky lady perfume, sharp man perfume. My hands clench, unclench, furl, unfurl. My throat closes up then swallows that lump of matter lodged in my my esophagus. What is death? What is Heaven? What is God and Jesus and church? What is all of that if it ends up like this? Like a cancerous tumor, like a lump of mutated cells, like a painful death? It is forgiveness and freedom and newness.
With that I open my eyes again and cry.

I speak of you like god and that
is what sadness is like

Love is the constant notion that
your heart carries in its rhythm but
never breaths a word about to
anyone but your soul

If wishing you were here was as
easy as wishing you weren't then I'd
be wishing you out of your little
reserved room in my past as quickly
as I wished you in

To end it all, I'd say you were the
toughest thing I've had to choke
down into the depths of my war-torn
stomach but did that stop me from
swallowing all of your sadness
along with you?

*Certainly not.

The snow dips and curves
Gentle as a woman's hips
Crisp edges
Sharp as the blade girl's cut with
Looks like whipped cream
Tastes like clean and polar
Fresh from a rocky hillside
Dusty, *****, unclean
How much a look can deceive
Colorado is a heaven on earth
And the mountains will never cease
To blow my insides apart
Bit by bit
Those gaping mouths of
Shaved rock and
Blackened pits
Massive boulders lie scattered
Like blood drops from an arm
Yet still, the beauty haunts my waking visions
As well as my
Deepest nightmares

As I am driving through this nameless countryside there are a hundred red lights blinking on the hillsides as far as the eye can see.
And I think to myself, "Oh, the resemblance to life those fleeting lights hold. They are there and gone so quick."
And as I sit in this car listening to blurred together songs I feel so small, so insignificant.
And I realize how I wish to be the dark lights that don't blink at all.
I think I already am.
The ridges on my skin are only as high as a Catholic, my feelings as deep as a hurricanes stormy seas and my expression as blank as a white sheet of paper.
It states something, a blank paper, I think.
It shows that no thoughts are better because you can insert whatever you would like me to imagine right there in my expressionless eyes.
But with you I believe I felt something, a glimmer of love maybe?
But you didn't see even a sparkle.
Who is going to love you now?
Who is going to hold you and pick up broken pieces?
Not me.
I can guarantee that.

The woods succumb to the deep freeze of mid-winter
Statuesque trees encased in ice
Deer fur quavering on the fence tops
Skimmed from the underbellies of jumping bucks and leaping yearlings
The scuttle of autumn leaves a transparent sort of sound
Nonexistent
Water bodies stilled in a perpetual ripple outward from a droplet
A disturbance for the entire season
Constant movement is ceased with the icy breath of frost
Silence ensues

I remember when I was young
I would blow eyelashes off the tips of my small fingers
And wish for a pony or a unicorn
Literally
I was a cliche kid
Into all the Barbies and sparkles and soccer
And now I'm still a cliche kid
With hipster glasses and an ego to match (none)
Now, when I wish upon those dying stars
I hope for something more
Like money
Or happiness
Or freedom
Something to spare me time to have fun
Because I'm too wound up nowadays
From the stress of school (ugh)
And the problems of my family
And those eyelashes blown from my roughening skin
Is spent on much more meaningful things
Than fantasy story creatures
Sorry to disappoint.

you saying my name again
even through chapped lips
would be enough
to set me on fire with some burning desire
to throw myself to you

the wolves

         i can't remember what your voice
         is like
         but the wind through the trees
         might be a good
         representation
         and the eyes that would laugh
         at me
         with me
         can't be the same now
         as they were then
         the sky isn't as blue
         and it gets its color from you
        
         *my air

There are forgotten words hanging over my chest
Dangling like freshly shattered glass spread across a navy quilted glass
Glittering in the sunny heavens as they fall and spray painful reminders
Of the past into the still air
Heavy hanging fruits of our labours so long ago
A sigh
A touch
A vague impression of your body pressed into mine from those days we spent
Sometimes the words fall
Impaling my heart and my eyes fill
Unbidden
With happy tears, or liquid anger clouding memories of golden laughter

Watch out for those
They hurt the worst

not all love is good love
yet
it's love, nonetheless

You know, I seem to have forgotten the look of your eyes
When they laugh
Or are happy
I can see now that you didn't laugh much in the last few weeks
You know what was coming
And I guess deep down so did I
Things didn't go like I thought they would
I remember whispering
forever
Under my breath
A halfway there
Promise
But now we are hardly considered friends
How did things become this way
Why did they have to end this way
I didn't think I'd done anything wrong
Things just didn't.....work out
And I feel as if you hate me
I look at your blog everyday
Did you know that?
There was one that hurt me
It was graffitied on the wall of a concrete building
And I make you
sick
According to those words
And you hope I bleed
I guess I already am

Seeing somebody's face while you talk is like magic
You can watch their expressions and
You can watch their eyes light up when they talk about something they love
Like the medal they earned for cross country
Or the pins they have for knowing how to make music
It's something different all together when you make eye contact with them
And they can't help but smile because you duck your head and blush
They make you feel like the world is revolving around you
Because all they do is look at you
And you're nervous and your heart misses so many beats
It's a shock you aren't dead
It's because they think of you as more than theirs.
They're yours too.