It's 12:12 a.m
don't know where I am and the light isn't coming up soon
but it is morning, not night,
I guess
I have a feeling I won't be getting much sleep
but that's okay
that's alright
I'll work it out with made up dreams of you
what I hope you are and will become
(changing everyday. everything's changing everyday. can't do it. won't do it. they all look at me. good morning. good night. good morning. good night. goodmorninggoodnightgoodmorning)

she loves me she loves me not she loves me she loves me not forever, and ever
amen

you are still in the corner of vision
and you haunt my doorway
and i can see you in my lipstick and my computer and the reflection in every other girl’s face
i’ll swing around and my eyes will glow and your name will spring from my lips
only to not be you
it’s not fair,
but that’s just how it is
how it has to be
it’s not your fault that your shadow creeps around mine
or that i see you whenever i buy a stick of eyeliner
it’s not your fault that you were a hurricane and i was a house made of wood
your name hangs around still
and your eyes follow me through doors
i am ashamed of my infatuation
but i am relieved that you never knew
now i can keep you as a friend
no scars
clean
and
easy
break
i broke up
when i bit my tongue before speaking then kicked myself when i let my words spill
i broke up with the image i had built for you
the imaginary reality of you
you are a history book devoid of reality and only of pretty lies
but god lies have never been more beautiful

1.
we come across a building that’s as big as it is empty
and toss pebbles with our feet because that’s easier than speaking
and i swear we’ve had this hush before

2.
you’ve never been one for a hush
that lasts longer than the last time i made eye contact
so when i ask you what to do
as the empty building looms over us,
you only say “i don’t know where to go.”

3.
we settle for sitting on the steps
of the deserted building
and counting  how many people rush by
with their hoods pulled up
and pull our own hoods up in response
because that’s what strangers do

4.
you tell me again that you don’t know where to go
and i just kick up dust and revel in it
because this is our breakup ritual
i could not tell you where to go

only dead boys hold insects like they're something
special
only a dead boy would let a mantis in his heart and
preying was always a better descriptor
because hymns burned in my throat and
i scratched a cross into my palm but i was never lucky enough to scar
but
oh, dead boy
bug lover
enduring a thousand lashes to save the soul of a beetle  -
i'll help you peel off all your scabs to make sure they scar
thick tissue skin memory sometimes you think scars are the closest you'll get
to a wedding ring
you're a suicide king i think a kingdom of hearts was never the safest place for you i
don't think you understand the way your subjects' hearts are strung because
entomology entomos everything you love is cut to bits
and on the fourteenth of february you told me
the only purpose of a flower
was to hold
a spider
inside
and i guess that was why you painted all your walls with roses i
hope your garden  smells as sweet
covered in your misfortunes
only a dead boy would let
a praying mantis so close
to his neck
oh, you freak. disgusting.
i ate the last one that let me this close.
you told me {if i die
leave my body
in the forest
by
an anthill}
maybe you don't realize we were doomed from the start or maybe you're just naïve but
honey you're a dead boy and
corpses don't fall in love.
[you're so genuine it hurts and i think
i could teach you how to be a fake -
nobody likes an honest man
i could teach you how to hate the world but you said

{the only one
i hate here
is me}]

freakish child.
all you see in every rorschach is mantes and
decapitations and
wedding rings you are an aberration,
suicide king entomologist your throne room
was full of termites.
with hallowed cheeks and hollowed churches,
i will assure that you scar
dead boy, if you die
i will put maggots
in your chest

Morning newspaper
Greets you with a smile
“Thank you paperboy”
Swallowing tablets
At the sunny ball
Watching the faces
Shape shift into rabbits
Morphing
Into who knows what
Feel like Alice
Explosions of color
And grandeur
Overwhelming voices
Lead the game
“I am God” shouted
They laugh eternally
Though it’s only
Temporally
And clouds devour
The yellow sun
Raindrop suicide
With their mile high jump
Tambourine and guitar
And the dancing
So much dancing
That summer is lost
Among the headbands
And shirtless kids
A blur
A blur
But what a swell time!

he only wants you in the way that means
he can wrap himself around you like a cocoon to help you
change you'll be
a butterfly
something different from what you are which is
flawed so flawed i don't want to touch you don't want
to talk to you just
write poems about the way your hands fist in the pockets of your jacket
i hope you'll go with him because
no matter how many poems i write about the way you
hurt and hate and hope in helpless hollows i know
it'll still burn
like a rope you tried to catch when you fell but
it just caught the skin of your palms
[please don't ever open my notebook you
look at it sometimes when i'm writing i
don't ever want you to see the way
i romanticize
your pain it's not
beautiful or poetic it's just sad
i wish you were happy but i just keep
writing poems about
your misery
and when you surface when you emerge from your cocoon i will
write odes dedicated to the selfishness
that would keep you hurting so i could
feel something when i look at you]
he only wants you in the way that
stitches want an open wound and
i know you want to be mended but no,
no,
nobody can fix you but you and they,
they will try but just
stitch embroidery
into your back
you are the seamstress and the shredded quilt:
you can stitch yourself together you just need to find the thread
and love is no substitute
for a sharp needle.
don't unclench your fists for
any lover who promises to
fix you
don't shotgun old wounds like thick smoke
if they promise anything more
than to hold them
in their
lungs
until the pain eases
just a little.
he will cocoon you
and let you out confused
and hurt
and hating yourself because you didn't change
you are
not
a butterfly
you will not wake up beautiful:
just learn to be full because the end of the word
is all that matters
and the last words of a relationship
are the most honest.

when you stitch yourself together
i will wear the rope that caught your palms like
a silk collar
pour your perfume like lighter fluid
and burn my notebook
and hope that no one writes ballads
to your clenching fists
again

i see a
cloud full of sky, bending in the waters of a large large lake with crystal black shores
a blue grass field all scattered with daisies that pull up the soil and lie dead on their sides
a multicolored ceiling soaring overhead, yellow glass and pink glass and colors unimagined glass all filed into points and swaying overhead while below the water shows the blue blue sky

i see a
twisted strand of heartbeats strung out across the world as a million dead people dance across it still
below them lies the glass and the daisies fall through air
while crystal clear waters crumble rock into black sand
and through and through this pounding is the blinking of an eye
shutter fast and closing on the world of nightmare sky

i fell into oblivion,
from the shores of Beyond Death
its waters were vermillion
a thousand colors under black
i fell into oblivion
and held the seawaves in my arms
but even as the fog came in,
and my mind was slipping away
there was a catch- an infernal life vest
and my lungs still struggled for air.

i fell into oblivion, my sketchbook held me up
my pencil my oars,
the spine my rest
grey and white drawings held me in their hands
oblivion, they said, it's not as it seems
it's not what you want
stay here with me
don't let go of the pencil, it's keeping you sane
each stroke that you touch pencil to page
you're drawing your heartbeats
in monochrome grey

i fell into oblivion, and washed on the shores
of black sand and grey sand-
Life at its Worst
but i managed to crawl a little farther up the shore
the sand turned to white, the clouds swept away
but still back behind me
oblivion tugged on its rope
and collapsing, i gasped
my heart tugged out of my throat

i saw my own heart lying red on the sand
soon followed my lungs
still taking in air
and i died on the beach, my bones scattered bout
but still i resisted,  
dying wasn't for me yet
so i picked up my pencil
sand stuck to the tip
it made little furrows in the shining bright sand

and when i couldn't hold my pencil at all
that's when i really died-
my soul was no more
but i didn't swim back into the black sea
i drifted away on a cloud made for me
left behind my body, my organs, my bones
around them the words, carved into the sand
-the world is my sketchbook-
-i shall not be destroyed-