i'll split my ribcage
to show you how i work
if you promise not to laugh
or look repulsed.
i'm so used to cutting you open and
stretching your very heartstrings
to relieve a little tension
without you even asking
that i can create that incision blindfolded,
but when i need sutures
for a lone rose coloured ****,
i ask and you're gone.
i'm prepared to rip my ribcage apart
but you have to get a grip
of the knotted pulpous mess my organs have become
over decades of neglect
when they erupt from my chest
and sprawl at your feet.

tonight a girl stands on a bridge.
the midsummer breeze dances around her curves.
it begs her to come play.
her heart beats steady.
her gaze is motionless.
the changing air steals a whisper.
"we are moving into the house of Aquarius"
under the bridge a man sleeps.
in a few weeks he'll turn fifty-eight,
but he doesn't know that.
he hasn't had a birthday celebration in years.
he hasn't had anything to celebrate in years.
the bridge is home now.
above  him,
a girl is rediscovering herself.
a girl is rediscovering her fear of heights.
she looks 25 light years above her, at Vega.
in a way, she thinks, she is like this star.
she is about midway through her life expectancy,
but her light died a quarter century ago.
the man sleeps soundly.
a smile is spread across his face.
he is dreaming of his dinner,
a footlong sub.
extra olives, just the way he likes it.
it was his first meal in several days
but tonight, his stomach is full.
he has come to like the grease on his face.
it shows he has survived many challenges.
the hardships have only made him wiser.
the girl, she minored in astrology.
she was fifth in her graduating class.
debt lurked deep in her mind.
it polluted her every thought with
reminders that she was not in control.
now, she tries to justify her current position.
on the bridge.
looking out at Lyra, partially hidden by clouds
"nothing I do will matter."
she reconsiders.
she recalls an anecdote she overheard
on the subway, or somewhere:
"when you're dead, you're dead for a looooong time"
she smiles. kids say the darnedest things.
tonight she curses her 'lucky stars'.
nothing the girl does will matter.
tonight she will become a woman.
tonight she will give  herself to the wind.
the man will find her in the morning.
the man will chuckle to himself.
"they always make it down here,
one way or another"

so many poems tell you that you have to fill
the first few lines with a lot of ******* imagery
to fill the stanzas before you hit one or two lines
that actually mean something: and by that heroic
couplet, or whatever the english teachers say these days,
the whole ******* poem is redeemed.
I don't think I should have to write sixteen stanzas
for the sake of the last line, but here I am
so I might as well elaborate a bit on the rooftops
and the moonlight on her hair and the fact
that I cannot love her as I wish I could and
I never dreamed of Paris like other women always expected me to
the smell of baking bread and the Eucharist
hurts my knees and heals my soul, thank God
for God, but it seems unfortunate that we as people can't just
ignore the existence of our Creator. Something calls us back
something hurts us in desperate moments when we've
written sixteen hundred stanzas and none of them meant anything
and we're afraid to show our faces to a priest or our mother
when I drifted away from certain shores I thought
I wanted to inhabit forever, the cross I clung to
led me through sunny and tumultuous waves
I always did like being on the water. I always did
like salt and water and earth and wine and I am
a child of the Church- my Church that tells me
there's nothing wrong with being tender
nothing wrong with having a soft heart-
you see, our God's heart bled out
and He never concealed His tears.

I like to think I'm mysterious dark leave you delirious like a dream but I'm just a ****** up girl, not a French girl, just a girl with wide eyes on SSRIs who wishes she could do pills again so that she could fly and people tell me I look like a model- a model of what? Of what not to do in life? Of ******* yourself? Of how to
crumble like a $5 forever 21 highlighter in the sun and
play with guns and
have too much fun until
the crash hits and the cigarette's lit and the mania wears off and it's just me myself and I all alone at home thinking of the next girl or guy,
        I'm not a French girl- I'm a throw a wrench in it girl, I smell like stress sweat and unpaid rent and guerlain perfume that I can't afford and all I want is to drown because I'm so ******* bored with FEELING! LIKE! ****! take another hit in the self esteem, an indica dream and cry in the shower where they can't hear you scream, no brother no father just a deadbeat daughter with eyeliner that slaughters and way too many people who've been beating up on her

even though i don't understand,
i've watched him love you hard.

i've felt Olympus shake and i've
created supernovas on his behalf,
steadied my arrows and called out to my galaxies-
but, consistently, he quells me quiet and it's always then that i see it-
the warrior he is demands he doesn't give up on a battle
and Ares has been chasing Aphrodite too long to set a better example and i
hate to say it
but it's alarmingly beautiful.

father may have made a star,
but that lionheart made you a sun.


i have long preached that perfection takes time,
that my mother has a love so pure and perfect set aside for her,
but her heart caught on you.

war is love and love is war -
she has weathered battles in your name and each time i try to end the fight,
lay the final blow
she quiets my furies
with a hand on my chest and music in my ears.

Apollo has been chasing dawn too long to teach the lesson of patience,
but you were her dawn and mornings aren't the same, anymore.

she sings songs of you at daybreak
and i hum songs of war.
she pretends she isn't missing her star.
i try not to miss the sun.

warm weathers with a warmer heart:
i stretched out my arms
and embraced her with all i am.
this girl threw an ocean of words,
of images, of emotions, and even of silence at me
over a mango shake, kimchi fishcake,
and a pair of hot matcha lattes.
she challenged me to a doodle dare
when i told her i don't draw humanity,
as much as i wanted to draw her right there on the spot.
let's draw those people on that side of the cafe
ah, a people-watching activity!
just our kind of hobby that immerses us within society
while being in our own little world!
i noticed she draws people first
then the background according to the proportions of the persons;
yes, a people-watcher observing another people-watcher
unlike me who starts off with the walls and furniture of the space.
she drew the ovals for body proportions;
her pencil marks done gently, focused and magnified,
much like how she holds herself up.
thus we were satisfied with unfinished sketches
and incomplete acapella song covers;
and it definitely was a finished day–
complete with her presence,
photographs taken with cameras and our memory's eyes,
inside jokes about boys and talks about life outside.
the sun is getting lower
as the hour hand is getting higher.

Time continues but we paused.
So I'm up for another round with you, Lou.

how by chewing wildflowers
til your tongue turns numb because
you're enamoured by the way it sounds
when you slur your words.
your gums turn black and
when you smile all i see is
pips and petals stuck between your teeth.
oh you're so pretty.
you're a real loose cannon, tendrils
tethered to every orifice and
every breath smells a little more
like the grim reaper is sleeping
in your mouth. i can see he's
making quick work of your gums.
but it works.
better that than he move into your chest
or burrow any further
in your head.