A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
I wanted to say,
lock yourself in a room,
scream until you have
a poem and no voice.
Open your veins and bleed
until you know that your bones
are pure words and sorrow.
Act as if you slit your own throat
and all you can bleed
are your own regrets
and all of the darkness
you boxed up for inspiration.
Write your mom a letter,
tell her you're leaving
and you won't be back for awhile
Because being a writer is traveling
through all seven layers of Hell
and denying anything is wrong.
Forget loving yourself
when all you have is a pen and paper
fused to your wrist
and Jesus is tapping at your skull
saying turn back now.
Warn the neighbors that if they smell burning
It's just your soul
clawing at the front door trying to get in.
Learn how to be alone.
Learn how to lose everything you have
in order to feel release,
learn how to only feel deceased
from now on.
A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
All I said was
don't

My bones are weary. It isn't a pleasant state to find oneself in. You wouldn't say so.
Little bones in the neck start to grind together, muscles pulling crisscross and backwards down the planes of your back.
At any moment the fear may present itself; that these bones will squish meat and blood so tightly that they must burst through skin and you are certain, of more than just your own sleep deprivation, that it will **** you.
You’ll see stars, feel the heaviness in the muscles of your arms as they slowly deaden, for how impossible their dream of reaching up and cupping starlight. If only you could embrace it.
Fill your glass up with sparkling dust and drink ‘till you are infused with it. Like more than you were your first summer night - warm, dark - spotted with fireflies, whose wonder stared and blinked back into you as a thousand suns.
Drink until the heat builds and spirals into every nerve, every particle of marrow, until it is lifted from pressure, lifted from being, lifted to a state of not but pure release.
Then remember that you are a story. That stories do not behave, do not twinkle in as timing permits, nor align as a physical presence.
I am glacier inside, I feel the snowbanks drifting through my mind. The little icicles behind my eyes and the floes bobbing sluggish though my heart. I don't know how to thaw.

I ******* all of my friends,
I drink all of their wine,
You think I’m an angel but you’ll find out in time
And the rivers run high and the rivers run deep
You want me to bail you out, with promises I choose not to keep
I’m just a fool for self preservation,
Taking self-prescribed drugs for a vacation
From this hole in my mind, now I’ve ****** you off too
Oh well, I’m a demon, now pass the **** *****

Many moons,
have passed over my headpiece,
as you leave me behind,
in moondust & ashes each night,

You collect on the bookshelves,
I keep here,
collecting on hearts with your light,
dusting my world with your beauty,
diminutives in bits of the white,

This is not the end of the journey,
 this a mere tiny part of the flight,
and I've not seen any more shiny,
or any star nearly as bright,

Though I am unable to see you now,
or touch your skin ever again,
or truly hear you with my ear,
I still miss you so my friend,

I know I cannot be near you now,
I cannot be where you are,
as you are but a twinkling light,
a brilliant & distant, star-

If it was not but for the moon dust,
my heart wouldn't,
be able to see you anymore either.

Ma Cherie © 2017

My feelings are a big mess
                They are scrambled together and I can't undo them
They will go up

                          and they will go down

They will change like the weather:

Feel love one minute and hate the next
             Sad and then happy
lust and disgust.

Changing and changing
I try to explain but I just end up hurting you
                   which hurts me
                                                             ­      I try to fix them
to get them in order
                and I come to a conclusion



                                                   ­                  maybe I'm just not the one for you.

I left home to search for an endless road
and I will go wherever it may take me.

Through visible and invisible,
I'll rain new rivers out of many seas,
and sleep deep dreams under the willow trees.

Through sunless mornings and many nightfalls,
I'll wander true places that host lair to thousands of tales,
and all this I'll do while erasing my trail.

Because once I take these many roads of life,
I can't come back home
to be the same that I was when I left.

maybe turn your back
on the glaring light of day
these things could wreck
your mind and make it fray

bile and venom line your lips
a wall you throw up with your tongue
spit it out, make a rip
in the world that stung

laying in the leaves
on the forest floor
outside of a
suburban neighborhood

i am partially high
and closing my eyes
to avoid the brightness
of the sunlight

for what does the
sun mean
if the leaves still fall,
and what purpose
do my feelings serve
if you do not
feel the same
anymore

i thought that maybe
drugs
alcohol
tears
blood
would finally
pack up the last
few pieces
i had left of you
and sweep them
away
like the leaves
i am cradled by
as the oncoming
breeze
of fall
descends upon
the trees

but the high
makes me feel
lower,
and the buzz
just rattles
the crude stitches
i had hand-sewn
onto my heart

i am drowning
in what is left
of you,
even though it is
only a puddle

i am only
awake
enough to feel
the pain

i drunkenly mutter
i loosely scream
i silently cry

no matter
what state
i am in,
whether i am
solid
liquid
wasted
trashed

there is
still
enough of you
left in me
to make
summer
freeze over
and my
heart
stop
with the sudden
change
in temperature