my greatest hope
is that, in time,
I will be able to look
Within
for resolution
instead of finding
the tired echo of

                          I do not know

but when
or if
this day will come

                         I do not know
                         I do not know

I do not claim to know much
Though I'm told each day is a lesson
Yet every hour seems
To layer question upon question
I find it sadly strange
That by a truce I'm worn thin
My heart finds itself confused
With nothing left to win
That night I walked away
One thing I should have said-
You were nothing more
Than a warm body in my bed
Maybe then I wouldn’t
Have to watch your hands entwine
With the silk palms of another
While I stare emptily at mine.

How I wish that my eyes shone
Like a garden of delight
Free of time I've spent alone
And every stagnant night

There are times when I am she
Though such perfection tends to fade
Know that I cannot always be
This woman I have made

it's blue, now* someone murmured
our hands woven carelessly together
as light slipped through the blinds
was it your hand?
I am unsure
the window is framed by fire-
fire, so true and pure
just like us
a pile of bodies clutching at one another
the pleasures of skin against skin
a touch is a touch
and *** does not matter, not when
lips are so painfully soft
this union
not working towards darkness, instead,
digging in our heels against dawn
we held off the best we could
*it's blue, now

Imagine loving a sober alcoholic Gemini biker with a chipped tooth.


After you are together for eight months, let that sober alcoholic Gemini biker with a chipped tooth take you out in to the ocean, when the waves are cresting at six feet and you are terrified.  You almost drowned when you were a child.  He tells you to come out further.  Turns his back on the wave, just like your father said never to do. He looks you in the eye and says I will never let anything happen to you, I am not him, you can trust me, I will not hurt you.  
So you dive under the wave and he has you in his arms and the sun is expanding through the water droplets on your eyelashes.  It’s cold but not too cold and it feels clean.  You believe him, and believe that nothing is truer than this moment right now with the salt drying our lips and tangling our hair, nothing is braver than trusting someone despite the past.  This is one of the greatest days of your life and you never want to leave the coast or his tattooed heart because this is what is real.  

Imagine that you two part several weeks later.
Imagine that he begs for forgiveness.
Imagine that you go back.

Because you remember the beach and that day.  And every day in its consistency when you are together, and how your anxiety subsides, just for a little while.  Things do change, for a week, maybe, but then the past arrives reading The Book of Power and she is hungry.  Wrapped up in memories, she plants a green kiss on his cheek and he leaves you in the water to drown.  You are treading water trying to seem like you are swimming but you are failing, failing miserably, and when he finally drags you to shore he doesn’t pump your lungs with oxygen, he watches you choke as everything comes up.  He tells you that he loves the past and he is waiting for her to come home and always has been.  
So now, you do not even have the past.  He took it from you and everything you thought was real.  You cannot tell the difference now and ask and ask Could he have loved the present, just for a small while? Does he look at your chair in his house with his dog and think of her? When he looks at the ocean, does he taste you?
You are the past, too, just not the right one.  

Imagine this but do not live it.

My words jump ship
A careless mutiny
Do they not realize their weight?
My words fly, from lips to sky
Little birds of stone
They gather in the depths of
The ocean
Brought to shore by a jealous storm
Years later
You forget, I am a fickle girl
Flush with promises to stay
But
My words are not walls
Instead they are the smoke
Veiling my escape

The greater of two evils is what I seek
Never the moderate, the wise, the weak
I prefer one with a double-edged core
Whose morals wage an unending war

My satisfaction is a sadistic thing
Wanting the one who with holds their being
Give me love and affection and trust
I’ve given up more, just for lust

Though I know of what I should
I'm drawn to the fugitive could
Perhaps it is those of a clipped feather
Who flock to their destruction together

A barbaric thing, winter’s price
The crude symphony of blood and ice
Through cataract windshields
Behold barren fields
In the grip of evening’s womb
Listen for the hangman’s loom
Forever weaving, weaving
But do not speak of leaving
Towards a melancholy freedom
Liberty to and liberty from
Run towards the sea,
Away from land’s fee—
And know that winter follows
Felt deep in the hollows
Of lung and bone
And in the silent moan
Between each leafless tree
Only winter alone is free

Predictable, like an afternoon breeze
Gently touching the hazy sky
This heaviness in my heart grows
I need more, some insatiable thirst
For a drink not yet known
No matter the happiness I have
Nor the possessions I hold
I am not satisfied, and I know
Deep down in my broken soul
That I will die without tasting
Serenity

We lived in an abattoir
On the edge of our abandoned world
Come darkness we would draw
Into cages made of pearl

We swam in blood of beasts
And of each other we ate
Each night, a divine feast
Your heart upon my plate

Though we lived in death
Our appetite would claw
For the other's fervid breath
Within the abattoir

It's all very arbitrary
Desiring what doesn't reciprocate
Trying to hold diamond smoke
Even though fate
Shook her ruthless head
Chasing madly after a mirage
The only oasis thirsted for
An ambrosial image
That leaves us wanting more
                                                  more
                                                          more

The blood in your throat
Milk for the moribund
You choke on need's euphemism
                  want
Because that is all you have left inside
Solipsism's slave,
Getting down to get up to get down

Eliminating madness
Would be to lose my essence
A barbed wire snake sitting pretty
In my belly, his presence
Is what puts that shine in my bright
wet eyes, the look that makes you
want to run and stay and fight
It is the molten gold you feel
In the hollows of my hips, or
Why I go weeks without a meal
and sleep four nights out of seven
Madness-the tinge of darkness
Within the heart of heaven

Bound in chains by cyclic affairs
Patterns of the past - my chrysalis
Has ceased, complete paralysis
From language's malicious pair-
      what if?
The edge of a cliff,
Or solidly on land
I'm unable to distinguish on which I stand
One step will disclose all
*But what if I fall?

In this house
Where the walls exhale softly
And the bed does my sleeping
Like the door does my leaving
Where the rain is my beating heart
And the roof does my weeping
I am little more than a fixture-
Collecting dust, a glass figurine
In this house

I watched what you did to me
In the hotel’s bathroom mirror
I didn’t want to run even though
I had nowhere left to go
As you delivered a fist
my naked stomach received your fist
I was trapped between the sink
And your hands
one two   three      four              five
Like the amount of rings you wore
I dropped, my face found the counter's edge
On the way down
Your grip found my neck
I couldn't make a sound
White turned grey turned black
The hotel floor was so cold
I woke up
To gift shop flowers.

On the ride home
I placed each over a bruise

I used to drive my nails into
Your skin, some type of ******
Crucifixion
They say pain before pleasure
But I know that aches
Are often felt months later
When paradise has become
Past tense
Like the scars on your back
Fading

A burglar would be kinder
They would take what they wanted
And run
Instead of leaving you with half-broken
Reminders
Of what you believe
Is still there
A burglar would not hesitate
Nor would they trace the outline of your face
With rough thumbs
Thinking that if they wait
Maybe,
Maybe,
Something better will come along

A girl in *******
Agony and rapture found
Through latex and blood

You remind me
(twice daily)
of your existence
As you ride low on your
motorcycle
               Problem Child
Wild in our street
Exhaust clouded lungs
choking me (up)
Memories collect
in my wrecked collar bones
Little pools of oil,
where you used to park those
dead lips


                                Silence


has never been so deafening
I loved thy neighbor
but faith is no substitute
for fuel
I am broken down
My rusted engine heart
refuses to turn over
But yours, yours
seems to be running
fine

Today is the anniversary of nothing
The birthday of almost
And could-have been
On this fence post,
Balloon heads hang in shame
Their white faces
Grimly fixed upon the ground

Full of wasted breath

It seemed like a good idea at the time
Clear liquid with a scorpion, asleep
At the bottom of the bottle
But oh how those feelings creep
Up, blurred and spun
As people turn to ghosts
And shadows start to run
Towards the music, loud, so loud
And I lose faith in my feet
Swept up in the crowd
Mouths and bodies meet
And sweat drips down, down
My neck and I’m dizzy and twisting
By the records, by the fire
And inside I’m not missing
That loss of desire
For once, a mental break
The one-night vacation
I needed to take

I buried a suitcase in the sand,
It's contents to remain unknown.
Although I wish to understand
These are best if left alone:

The interactions of two
Within a circle of three,
The meaning of You
Of I and of Me.

The silence that’s found
At the sun’s first breath,
A man that has drowned
Yet experienced no death.

The alignment of power
On painted lips,
The deadliest flower-
A rose with a whip.

The interstice between
Ribs and their cages,
Guardians without wings
And the gentlest rages.

Where land touches sea-
A transient mirror,
It seemed fitting for me
To bury it here.

I’ve overslept
I’ve smoked too much
My house is unkept
And my body's wrecked
My heart's a mess
And my head is worse
The doctor said
I over think
So I sought a cure
In the form of drink
That didn’t help, so
I turned to men
They let me down
All of them
My daily pills
For various ills
Don’t work so well
I’m starting to believe
That life is hell

baby, little boy
with bones of steel and ice
hate coiled in your stomach
like
barbed wire
i see you so clearly, on the edge
of that rooftop in Spain  
wind pushing your hair back,
arms spread, unafraid
The descent-
how beautiful you are, falling
i wish i could have been by your side
and held your hand
as we dove into the concrete
like
angels in reverse

I washed your sheets on Mondays, a private liturgy
Their veracious nature spoke; my eyes sought not to see
I scrubbed those stains with child's hands
Until linen stripped and fell to strands
Those twisted ropes that once bound us
Turned silent traitors, servants of  lust
Denial is my cross to bear
And of the irony, I am aware
Yet do not dismiss my right to ache
My faith in you is your mistake
But know when thread unwinds to bone
You will lie prisoner on those sheets
Alone

When dark arrives, tears follow
Heaving sobs to a baby’s sigh
It comes so suddenly—
An iron punch to the gut
Until I am doubled over, writhing
And when it finally passes
Delirium ensues
And every object surrounding
Turns a violent violet
So I curl into a ball and shake
Begging for morning
To keep me from mourning
The little girl that wasn’t

I have reached the point where
the imprint of my body stains the couch
Refrigerator and shower find common ground
in their abandon
The last time I opened my door was
three days ago, maybe four
Dust swims in one shaft of light
That ******* crack that sneaks
through every shaded window
I would ask for help
but the only person that could
won't

The sea—
a place where turquoise silk can cut like a thousand daggers,
where souls are lost and subconscious is sought,
where granite is broken and dissolved,
where one gazes into the Nietzsche’s abyss,
where the dawn spills and day
sinks.


Bodies are kissed by foam and lifted by the wave’s crescendo,
caresses from an emerald lover, salty
diamonds reflect light off of lashes,
eyes like lighthouses spanning across the cerulean plain of forever, searching,  
Searching
for deliverance,
for solutions,
for forgiveness,
for escape,
for what is lost,
for something, anything, to find.  

The long interstice between solidity.  
A beautiful monster, a terrible magnificence, a mercurial cure.  
A paradox of temperamental consistency

—the sea.

she despises december through march
the arch of endless grey
when her body fades to snow, and
the dreaded holidays
come in perpetual flow
unshed rivers, ****** behind
those tired eyes
her velvet voice is rarely heard
truly,
weeks go by without a word
all year she fears
that day of months
afraid this time
she
     will
            dis
                 a
                       ppe

                                  a



            
                                                        r

Crawling on all fours, traffic drags its bleeding body forward.  
Men with collars of lipstick tap tap tap their fingers against steering wheels.  
Time slows, cars inch, passing hands find cigarettes, cigarettes find fire.  
Tap ash tap finds tap pavement.  
This is the unobserved hiatus of daily routines, the dreaded stretch of heaven that separates from and to.  
During such moments of inertia
thoughts drift through open windows
forming a cloud for bargains, regrets, wishes, doubts, prayers, and curses to perform cotillion upon.  
Faster, faster, so quickly now, oh, change partners, switch lanes, spin, oh baby spin, fasterfasterfaster, until differentiation is impossible, until drivers become one with this steel river, until minds make their essential switch that makes home a bearable punishment.  

Someone has broken down.  
Do Not Stop.
They are shunned from the sweeping mob of machinery.  Necks swivel in uniform towards this abomination, how dare they, how DARE they outshine our misery.  Perspiration works its way down backs and pools into leather cracks.  

Will it ever end?
Do we want it to?  

Finally,
regrettably,
the final exit, the last few feet of purgatory.  
We descend into the next inferno where we leap through fiery hoops of interrogation—
yes no it was fine yes okay.  
We are exhausted.  
If only we would have stopped.  
If only we would have hit the brakes and remained in our haven of anxiety and lust and confusion and endless searching.  
Our love affair with traffic can only last so long.
    So we make solemn promises to ourselves to appreciate tomorrow’s,
    to run our fingers along the satin thighs of the freeway,
    to plant a rubber kiss upon the ground.  

How tap long tap until tap five?

As you twirl me around
I lose all direction
Abandoned drinks melt
Into lights, into faces
All there is—sound
And a guiding hand
Wrapped around my waist
No measurable space
Between us
Of nights like these I know little
And dancing, even less
Yet the divine song of doing wrong
Is one I never grow tired of

Sometimes, it seems like
You are my only companion
Feeding my hungry ears
you need me
Until I find solace in an empty stomach
and alone
Will count each bone
one-two-three-four-five
Searching the 200 and sixth
Because there is no one else
To share
Our midnight prayer.

But you also make me hate
The laughing face of an empty plate
and the stares of strangers
What do they see?
Surely not what I do
What do they know? Of desperation
and loathing
To preach to me the danger
Of smoking
(7 calories wasted)
nothing you hiss
So I make home
In oversized clothes
Room enough for you
and I
To co-exist

once again, I am seasick
over the railing (but never into the wind)
twisting and heaving
all because you were leaving, away away
back to the land and light of day
which i have none of, only one of
forever is lonely
like the line that separates the ocean and sky
here I am
seasick, once again

We are the wretched broke down souls
Running through the boulevards
Though the warning bells do toll
We are hunted by our cards
Unfairly dealt, but the game is done
It is never us who won
We know who we are
Our eyes of shattered glass
The asylum is never far
And neither is our past
But still we sprint until collapse
Little pieces, found and captured.
Our minds have veered off the map-
Us of the mutual psychotic rapture

They said this year, Saturn
will leave my house
In retrograde
Trailing jade silk amongst
the black trees
But still, it snows
and still, I ride
On this ghost train
to the coldest hell
Couldn’t you have left a star
to gaze upon?
While my lips drip ice
and my eyes stay
open
To see the mess you
made
For me to clean in
darkness

the window of your house
is like a television screen
for those nighttime walkers
they gather around
faces pressed against the glass
trying to catch the scent
of us
when our show ends
i will be like them
so hungry for you

There are no breaks
From my mistakes
So I seek to canonize
Every well-spun lie
Like children they are to me
Lovely things that wish to flee
The tunnel of my mouth

Torn from the wallet of the eye- a tear
Shunned for coming as it come
The cathartic shame of soulful slum
A derelict ship of the fleet of composure
A captive buys casket, but what of enclosure?

We fall to the silence of fear
Pile it high and bury it low
Yet still these mice of woes do flow
Over marble pages of black and white
Confirming the captain slipped away in the night

I do not count sheep
So little I care for sleep, instead—
Two windows of red
Pressed against glass
As those white cars pass, strange
The limit of domain and range
Die in my mind
But what of the mice,
When the cat plays nice? No bite
To provoke the nightly fight
Against my dreams
Though when I try to wake
For appearances sake, I think
Of what is brave and real, but
I do not wish to feel
Such things

my body is a trash can
a dumping ground for mistakes
every day is a morning after
every day breeds saccharine aches

bruised lips and handlebar hips
a naked exposé of wrong
from tarpit lungs, through purple teeth
eerie hisses of my afflicted song

the poison flower blossoms only once
infernal fragrance of forgive-me-nots
no tide rinses the sins of night
at 1400 weeks this vessel rots

The words try to jump from my lips
I grit my teeth, bite the soft inside of my mouth
and whisper into my drink
I’ll be ****** if I say it first
You looked at me and said
that shouldn’t have happened to you
I know I know I know
I have exhausted all thought on the matter
The past won’t come knocking, as long as you are here
All I want to do is wrap myself in your prison arms
and forget
I’ll be ****** if I say it first
So I sing it when you’re gone
In the echoes of my house the neighbors hear
Those stupid ******* words

O nightshade! My enemy!
Tempted by chronic ennui
The day's control has dissipated
And the slender body created
Comes in waves of illusion

A cavity of emptiness bites
The mind lies and fights
Diagnosed, and very often
Do not let the form soften
The rules of hunger

I am autumn, some days winter

Never am I summer.

I am cashmere against pale throats

The deep grey of the pacific.

I am the dusty rose of dawn

The bitter wind of day

The sweet silence of night; yet most

I am the eerie moments between dark and light.

Some days I wish to be the warmth of august

Instead of diamond rays of ice.

But what beauty is in glowing suns

Compared to velvet vespers.

Running wild, I knocked on the door

The hallway defiled, red dripped to the floor

Two bodies piled, one left with more

Lackluster child, forgotten - a bore

Well-mannered and mild, now just a *****

my palm tree heart holds your initials
and i sway, sway to your calls
an outsider's aperçu is such a pretty lie
behind the rosy haze of waterfalls