It's a sweltering night, a sweltering morning really, and my body is tattooed with spider bite kisses and bruises.  I smell of park grass and chlorine and someone else's sweat, my lips are chapped, swollen, my eyes encircled in crimson undertones.  The people on the street stare- I am blonde, a dead give away, slighter and taller than the locals.  Men are confused, women are scornful, police are helpless.  My legs cramp with the dawn as I walk back to the apartment in my hospital-gown green tunic, sobbing openly, hair tangled with twigs and dirt.  It's still dark enough for that, but too quiet.  A milkman stops his work to look up at me and whisper ciao in the most kind and gentle voice I have ever heard, especially here, and I want to throw myself into his arms and sleep and scar his white uniform with the black stains of my tears, though I restrain myself and nod, shuffling forward, shoulders slumped, no eye contact, his gaze a hand stroking my back like the father I never had but always wished for, and I cannot help but cry harder, though I try harder to restrict each sob until I sound as though I'm gasping for air, but I would rather seem asthmatic than week, rather be strange than pitiful.  It is always better to be unknowable, much more simple than openly vulnerable in my experience, though my experiences are drunken from the bottom dredges of a half empty glass, so truly I do not know if this is true, and and every day I understand Hamlet's letter to Ophelia just a bit more, because every day I doubt truth to be a liar just a bit more.

Still, there are some things I know, enough to be called intelligente by a man named Simone, whose eyes shone with solare during the day, but at night became dark and hungry.  I know now why my friend chose to fly off a building in Spain without his wings.  There is a disconnection abroad, no sense of security or protection, demons are awakened and restless, dreams colder, and more cruel; the heat drains one's essence, melting the glue that keeps us who are broken together.  I know that expectations are sad reflections of desires, shadows of my own inadequacies.  I know that I am afraid, that heaven and hell are not places but permanent conditions, that my head is the prison guard of my heart.  Blame and guilt come easily.  There are no distractions, just meaningless directions, and I seem to have forgotten those I brought from home. Here, I am concerned with physical threats, trauma that can be shaken off with a block's worth of strides, yet I cannot seem to lose my naked shadow between the buildings.  I thought I hid it well behind frozen gazes, but the mirrors say, no, no, they know you are all wrong, you foolish girl, you poor little lie, they see through you, they sense your fear and feast upon it, you ignorant child, you are as small as the motes of dust drifting through the beam of a forgotten projector, the film torn and tangled, the screen stuck on one frame

I should have stopped when the milkman spoke. He knows that it is not mirrors who lie, it is us.

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

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?

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

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

There's a blood moon in those eyes
by your heart shaped tattoo
and if an eclipse was for wishing,
I think I'd wish for you
I'll walk through your desert
to your river of sorrow
fill my cup with your tears
and drink through tomorrow
No stranger to poison,
no stranger to sin
I'll let you get up
and fall down again
Just please know, my darling,
those thoughts are untrue
this may be your darkness
but I'll walk next to you

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.

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.

“Was it the backless back of a black dress that did it?”

                                          They’ll ask, loudly
                                          even though the wolves that roam these streets
                                          are merely feigning sleep
                                          and are starving

“Yes!”

                                          They will agree
                                          as drool slips from the hinge of a wolfish grin
                                          from the forked tongue
                                          of an angel

“What else could she expect?”

                                         Of course
                                         they must abide by the code of the pack(of course)
                                         which is of course
                                         the root of disrespect

“How obscene! How uncouth!”

                                         (how to measure human flesh)
                                         as if they could  hold up her “no(s)” to his “yes”
                                         which is bigger and louder
                                         and stronger

“Yes! … Yes! … Yes!”

                                         As if to them
                                         to the wolves, to the men, to the uncondemned
                                         what happened, really
                                         was for the best.

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

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

I once met a captain, three yards from the sea
In a tavern where only true sailors should be
This captain questioned if I was a We
"No," I replied, "I am both lonely and free."
He, too, could relate to a life in this way
His comfort came from the boat's gentle sway
And time held nothing but day after day
Yet my smile, he said, kept his ship at bay.
The captain, filled with both warmth and fear
Watched our faces in the tavern's mirror
Sadly, and tenderly, he declared it was clear
I was the shipwreck into which he would steer.

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

They say
It all will be okay-you're beautiful
As if those words can draw the line
Between bravery and slavery
And clear my back of scars
Left by the lash of sacrifice.
Every choice I have made
Has been a step away
From love, from freedom, from home.
For in this maze of concrete and steel
I must be alone, and always composed -
There is always someone watching
So I keep a steel rod in my spine
And walk towards the end of the city
Pretending I cannot feel passer-bys stare
Sizing me up
Feigning deafness to the murmurs of my pronounced bones and sharp features
All I am is a hanger for clothes
A display, a game, a gamble
They want it to pay off
So they tell me it will all be okay
Because I am beautiful

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

To you, I owe each sleepless night

Which I pay by every turn and toss

Until morning drags her violet light

To collect my dues, each hour’s loss

This is not something that I resent

I have found delirium to be a pleasure

As the only things dreams can present

Are fleeting moments, a frantic measure

I know we spent at least three days

As slaves to desire, instead of rest

With crimson eyes, a rosy craze

And even passion had confessed-

That she grew exhausted, and so she left

Yet still our bodies found each other

Knowing her absence was no theft

For the true criminal was another

A crueler kind-his name is Time

And it seemed as though a second spent

Brought upon the cathedral’s chime

If only to remind us of our rent

Late again, and again it’s due

But he had taken our every cent

I will never regret giving me for you

For sleepless nights is all it meant

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

Of all things unknown,
easily a non-denumerable infinity, very little will drive a person to the precipice of madness like the insignificance of a statistic - say one in seven billion,
a statistic that unhinges the mind, dragging out primitive insanity, catalyzed by spurned desire,
an insanity that is raw-
raw and sick and hungry-
feeding upon itself like an epidemic, an acid that reduces one's existence to a longing for a hypnopompic eternity, some twisted fascination that becomes an elegy for the ******, one where the past with holds the future, laughing at the heart's bipolar fluctuation between absolute paralysis and pure agony, a grey stillness to a light switch flipped off and on and off and on and off and on and off and on and aren't you tired yet? Are you not chilled by truth's cold whisper, shaken awake by logic's steel grip?  
It is a rare prison we build for ourselves-
trapped between what we know and what we wish,
these non-existent walls of unrequited everything,
where melancholia acts as our shackles and we sit in complete silence,
content in our discontent,
because we know,
we know that escape is intangible
when you are both jailer and
captive.

Tonight, I am afraid.
I am afraid because I had a piece of toast 13 hours ago, and there's nothing left in the fridge except some horrible strawberry liqueur, which I am drinking despite the fact that it feels like acid in my empty stomach. Me, I'm 5 feet 11 inches, 112 pounds, blue-eyed with longish blonde hair. I'm hungry, but it appears that New York doesn't feed outsiders. So I'm listening to Leonard Cohen on Leonard Street because that's the only thing I can think of that makes sense right now. Smoking in bed, my small luxury. I had a neighbor who leaves me toast and coffee in the morning, except I haven't seen him in a while and I'm too proud to knock on the door and ask for food. It's strange, leaving a perfectly ordinary life for this desperation, this skinny **** that I thought was important but now just makes it hard to climb the stairs. I'll make it, though, right? It's almost September and that's when I'm supposed to make money. Money. I just wanted to go to Italy again, feel the life I should never have left again. So okay I’ll be their clothes hanger, their one-man show, walk a pretty walk for them, and then go somewhere else. Except right now I'm considering the hospital, that sweet IV that will keep me nourished. I can't afford a taxi though, and I don't know what is I’d tell them- “Hi I'm 20 years old, broke, starving, alone, and afraid to sleep because I don't know if I'll see another day”- I think they would send me to the psych ward instead. I don't know, I am supposed to be a hybrid of girlish innocence and feminine mystique, but all I really want is someone to put me to bed and watch me sleep so I know I'll be safe.   It's 3:26 am. I have no one to call. It's just Leonard Cohen and I on Leonard Street, singing through dry lips and fading into the white of the sheets. If I called for help, I doubt they'd find me in the bed. I'm here, though, I'm here.

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

My beloved,
        The night is orange with the oppression of city against cloud.  I sit outside, staring blankly at the exposed brick of another building as mosquitos prey upon my distraction.  My heart cries out for you as I do - we ache together in the solitude of our nights.  I do not know of the future, for all I feel is the cold knife of your absence.  All I own is hope, hope in the anguish I hold, the longing that serves as proof of the intensity of our love.  Though I know we will be together soon, I hold our nightly funeral, guarding our ashes and awaiting our ressurection.  This death that is worse than death consumes me, yet day forces my face to change into one of complicity.  If those who surround me could only feel how much I yearn for you, they would leave me silently by our tomb. However, I stand alone, a woman with her eyes upon the horizon, searching always for her sailor.  I touch the Atlantic with the knowledge that it is the only obstacle that stands between us, and embrace it as a friend rather than a rival to be conquered.  Soon, this sea will deliver me into your arms, and soon I will no longer serve as sentinel to our funeral pyre.  Your hand will touch my shoulder, awakening me from this reverie, a long-forgotten dream of the past.

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?

The teenagers of the bayou look down to their pocket God, summoning validation through divine vibrations;
heads bowed they pray for the prey, for the sensations of meaning, refreshed each second,
filed and cast aside,
except on thursdays, or maybe fridays ‒
for these are the sacred days reserved for nostalgia, for last weekend’s cigarette taste,
for those cheap-gin glances, lacerated by and filtered through the teeth of crocodile tears,
for the lovesick night sweats and the mouth of another, for the break from chronic ennui,
all captured in thirty-three unearthly flashes;
The teenagers of the bayou look up from their pocket God and stretch their aching fingers upwards,
exhausted, habituated, unquestioning
of the heaviness of such emptiness
within
their starving hearts

Like a ruse in a rose
And a bruise beneath clothes
                                                       (Of which I keep hidden)
You, too, are forbidden
For you perpetuate me
Towards wonder, sadly
It flees when you’re gone
Like the most glorious dawn
That can only be known
By birds who have flown
Too close to the sun

I am somewhere, maybe everywhere, but mostly nowhere.
Home is fictional; I am drifting in this city of strangers. Another night without rest, a candle burning, a boy crying, blood on the kitchen floor. I tried to buy cigarettes but my account decided it was empty. From the window on the fourth floor across the street, it might seem that I live a lavish life. I stay in Tribeca- I  even have an elevator. When I go out, I dress well. Beautiful people surround me and usually drinks are free. Sometimes they buy me breakfast or coffee or give me a place to stay. My weekends are often spent in East Hampton, in a three house lot that serves as a sanctuary. I go to nice places for dinner. I am not the one paying. I buy this with my silence, a silver tongue that keeps quiet when food and water are scarce. It's okay, it has to be, that's what I tell everyone who asks for help. How can I ease their wounds when mine are gaping, when I feel sick and weak and lost? I pay them with compassion-I give them kindness. I am exhausted.
I don't remember the last time I had money in my pocket or an answer I can stand behind.
This is what I wanted.
I kiss the man next door goodnight. I listen when he is sad. I carry the guilt of the woman I stay with in exchange for a corner to sleep in. My eyes are heavy with concealed bruises. My heart is heavy with the pain of others. My body is light with the heaviness of hunger.
This is what I wanted.
Will someone tell me what to do? Can I dream about a studio with a bookshelf full of my favorite authors and a man beside me each night? Am I weak if I walk away? Do I go back to school after a summer of travel and pretend that I am the same? Can I look love in the eyes and promise purity?
I am somewhere, maybe everywhere, mostly nowhere.
I am suffering quietly. I am proud.
I am absolutely terrified. I am alive.
This is what I wanted.

I left with very little, expecting a week or perhaps two in the city, quick cash and then home to the sand of my beaches and the touch of my bed. It has been exactly two weeks and I am starting to say that I live here. There's an exhilaration attached to the detachment of a one-way ticket, I am a thousand people a day while being none, I can walk away from conversations without feeling guilty, there is not one person who cares enough about me to bother with my affairs-it is absolute freedom. Yet there is a loneliness that hangs on the hinge of liberation...a traveler has the world in their heart.  We cannot stop ourselves from stuffing our experiences inside, gluttons of the road with the horizon in our eyes. Sometimes, though, we lose sight of what we wanted all along and then begin to search for what we desire, which becomes blurred and tangled by time zones and climates and languages...our stomachs are always empty and our chests are always aching for the unknown.  It can break a person. I was on the bus back from East Hampton when an older man asked me why I was crying:
"I don't know",  I said, "I suppose I just realized that this city takes everything from you, and you must prove yourself to earn it back".
He told me what they all do:if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere
I turned back towards the window before asking, "when you came here, did you have nothing, too?"
The man nodded and smiled. Maybe he was lying, but he gave me 50 dollars and paid my cab fare. I hugged him goodbye and he wished me luck. I don't know how he knew I was completely broke with no way to get back to my apartment, but I cannot imagine the forty-block walk with three bags. There is a kindness in a fellow traveler, one more seasoned than we are, who will always understand what it is to be poor and hungry and tired. But we chose this life, I chose this life, when I stepped on the plane with no way back. I realized this as I was locked atop a rooftop in SoHo, watching the pink and blue of sunrise with champagne on my lips. It is okay to admit your inadequacies, to ask for help, as long as you appreciate the sheer genius of the universe. That, after all, is why this life calls to us.

this happiness possesses the fragility of
freshly painted walls, so easily marred
by an accidental shoulder brush, exposing
the dingy grey beneath, once white, like the balloons
we hung outside the house when we moved in,
but they fell, at the leisure of the wasted breath
I filled them with, though now, now it is just the stone
floors and I, and a silence that is not quite a silence,
more so the whispers of a church,
or the sound that a cloud makes as it drifts away,
there and then gone, without warning,
a glass figurine propped against a doorstop-
one hard push and it will crumble into glacial shards,
crystalline dust that I will piece back together, even though
the scars will always be visible, and that is fine,  wonderful even,
because it is so beautifully human, and
because perfection is a plateau, and
I would rather climb a ladder of rotten wood
because each rung unbroken is a step up, and
because I love the way my heart jumps anxiously
against my rib cage whenever I stop to look down.

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

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 *****

I see the darkness of the world
in my reflection
a devil in each iris, fire in each pupil
and every intention
I have had in my possession
has been cruel
has been kind
has been fuel
to burn and bind
and every breath of mine
gives to take
takes to live
lives to ache
for twenty years i have hung upon the stake
asking heaven why my creation
is
Perhaps it is His infatuation
with watching unbuilt castles slide
off cliffs into the sea,
swallowed by the tide
of what I'll never be

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

In the honeyed season we cry for the missed lips,
Those slow strolls along the coast of nostalgic seas.
For the ones taken and for the ones lost
Those who vanished through doors without keys.

In the hopes of what we will find in the morning
We are dismayed opening our eyes to grey.
The months gained and the days lost;
We our dreams of sunlight fade away.

In the hearts of the victim and hunter
Both bury pain and anger beneath sorrow.
Though one is running and one is chasing
Both hunger for the honeyed lips of tomorrow.

I don’t really know why I’m writing this, except somewhere, to someone, to no one, I owe an explanation.  I also deserve a small rant.  The past two months have stripped me of everything I believed to be true, and all my perceptions have become a gallery of laughing spectators. This whole big thing we call life is absolutely insane and has severely twisted ways of tripping us up and holding us carefully at the same time.  All I can say is that I got a second chance at it, and the blows keep coming harder and harder but all I can do is roll with them, because giving up is not an option any more, and there is beauty underneath all of the suffering, and an exuberance that emerges in survival.  Every day, we are fighting, fighting, fighting to survive.  I’m not the right person to say if it’s worth it or not, or to give advice how to swallow the pills we’re given, or how to show humility, or give forgiveness, or find a little corner of happiness to hold onto when we slip.  But I know there is a reason why I am here, why you are here, and why time runs in circles, and why things happen the way they do.  We are both slaves to destiny and masters of choice.  We have an innate bilateral symmetry that manages to be both.  Someone told me there are no do-overs, but there are don’t-do-agains.  I may not care for this person, or perhaps I love them wholly.  I think it could be both.  When these scraps of wisdom float by, grab them and put them in your core, no matter who says it. It could be an ex, a professor, your mom, a stranger-it doesn’t matter.  They are giving you a gift. Try it all, and if it doesn’t work, move on.  Hurt people and get hurt.  Go out of your way once, and if it doesn’t prove to be in your best interest, walk away.  Do what you want, but don’t destroy yourself getting there.  Just keep walking in the direction you feel is best.  Everything is difficult, and it will always be difficult.  That is why this life is so ******* magnificent.  Each day we can celebrate that we made it.  There is nothing more pure, or more raw, than moving forward and understanding that no matter how hard things are, and how ****** everything looks, if you just keep moving, and don’t look back in order to bring the past with you, it’s not horrible at all.  Each rough patch is just a foothold to climb on to.  We all have to be up to get down, and down to get up.  No matter what choices you’ve made, or the guilt you carry, know that tomorrow you can wake up and check that baggage at the door, and simply walk away with a list of things you can’t do over and things you won’t do again.

She turns her head from it;
I turn my back to it;
It faces them in their deflection, they who are ruled by planetary alignment, they who spill rogue waves from calm mouths, just as the lace crashes and pools around bare legs and lips -
Any enigma free from transcription lies within the chasm, who sleeps buried deeply between two bodies, too deeply, it has been said, though perhaps for the best, as the truths who precede intent rest there as well.
We, the sea, urge in ad hominem, convinced of indelibility, consistent in breakage and dispersment of that which is built from and upon determined chaos.
Her, I, the sea.
Our madness.
I turn towards it; she turns to face it;
The sea has drawn it's long breath
We reach for the exhale with open palms, never closed, for the retreat is inevitable.

People speak to me about the "light at the end of the tunnel."
Some seek to reassure me, others confess their blindness.
I try to believe that the light moves as day and night do-
At times there is only darkness, yet we are assured that the sun will rise each morning.
Centuries have proven such.  Our lives are too small to perceive each blindness as passing.
Still, we put faith in time, in seasons, in dawn, in dusk.  We are the same.
Cyclical beings in a cyclical world with cyclical thoughts.
Know that your darkness is but a night without stars.
And that the sun must rise, a pale light that builds into a separate and most welcome blindness.

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

Here I stand again in this broken town
Where my face turns up and I turn down
Here in the streets of home I'm bound
Tracing our names carved into the ground
You I see under each streetlamp's fire
You I made a crown from copper wire
Each gust of air whispers into my ear
Your name; I write it with every tear
I wanted to be your strength, your queen
Yet for all those mistakes I made unseen
You paid in full, though I tried to give
Myself for you-my life so you would live
I wanted to remove your pain and sorrow
For I felt it too, and it stripped each tomorrow
Of the hope felt in our endless coast
Where once life was what we made most
Little I cherish what has happened to me
I've endured such you should never see
It matters not, and naught that I care
Except for making these days you bear
Less difficult, and much I will find
To do for you, to make clocks unwind
I will spin you those lost ribbons of gold
The little worlds that went untold
I know them all, my memory's treasure
Though my sadness comes from pleasure
I will always remember what was true
All our moments and our failures, too
And the night when my lips faded to blue
I realized, there was no me before you.

my ghost, my ghost
my darling ghost
tonight, like most
leaves only sorrow in the sepulchral depths
of these quiet sheets
my heart, my heart
my foolish heart
will stop, then start
no matter how much I despise the sound
of those steady beats
my one, my one
my only one
like winter's sun
slides deeper behind the clouds above
-i must release
my hope, my hope
my endless hope
cannot fade, though forced away
for your peace
my ache, my ache
my lovely ache
i cling to with a child's fearful grip
unable to let go
my ghost of hope, my aching heart
my only one
you have shown me who i must become
and for you it will be so.

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

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

You don't know what it is to break
You think that I am made of stone
My home is what you chose to take
Reducing me to skin and bone
My poor child, rich in tears
I am the monster behind your pain
You do not count your golden years
As black and white fortifies your cane
You know nothing of what is true
Nothing of hunger, or rattling breath
Of sidewalk beds and bruises blue
The trembling that induces death
You do not weigh 110 pounds
You have never known fragility
You cannot hear those awful sounds
The silent anguish of instability
Have you ever been forced into the dark?
By hands larger than your waist
It's just a stroll into the park...
Until its blood and torn lace
This is why I must come back
To the home you took away
So doctors can silence each attack
Though who would listen, I cannot say
Ice or stone, whatever I may be
I am broken - there is no me

Even in the darkness, the white teeth of the hill continue to smile
Ivy crawls up a pale house, wrapping around the words repeated with purpose, captured, then abandoned
Men who died a thousand different deaths flit between the lights of a cerulean pool,
Their lovers and wives and mistresses arrange themselves on iron deck chairs, one leg bent, lips curled up at some sweet secret-
How lovely they are behind cat-eyed glasses, calling out for their darlings with a velveteen song.

It is good to live here, in the eternal summer of one's heart, where moments are dispersed pre-wrapped in the golden threads of a beloved memory.
I dangle my legs in the water and try not to fear having little left to want, for every breath of wind is a delight, and every fruit tastes of innocence, and the sun shines for he and I alone.
We sit side by side in a warm silence, and the white teeth of the hill above us continue to smile.

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

In the town's square I sit as a fool
A  steel mask upon my head with ears of a rabbit
Robbing my sight of whom approaches this stool
Their weapon- a stone, as is the lottery's habit

I hear not the assailants, though their strikes hit true
Eyes closed, eyes open, the view is the same
In the weakness of pain, I cry out for you
The very one who enabled this display of shame

The blows come harder, the silence grows loud
Through blood I beg for mercy, no more can I bear
Until phantom hands release me of this shroud
Dazed as I gaze upon a deserted square


No stones, no blood, no mob I see
There is not a soul but me

Your fingers formed the words I sought,
Yet it seemed as though the tongue forgot
A coward's shield, of silver and glass
Protecting long after battle's pass
How may glory relinquish pain-
If victory's honor should wax and wane?

Like winter's sun, your affection is fleeting
And stretched by time, hearts slow their beating
This tale told - more often by some
The ones who call for love to come,
But just as threshold meets its cross
Their cries fall silent, for feared loss

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

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.

I was never the bad one.  Not until now.  Yet here I am with ice coated fire in my eyes, the gaze that I have seen so many times in the men who have hurt me, a monster of their creation.  It feels like the good in me has receded into the castle I was forced to build around my heart and is starving out the battalions of intent.  I need to cleanse myself of this abomination, a mental labyrinth meant to keep myself from success, my own worse enemy - me.  

There was a girl I liked once, when she was living in Italy.  Her hair was white-gold in the sun and her blue-yellow eyes were always open, though often exhaustion fought to close them.  Even when she cried she was beautiful, because she did not hide her sadness, or her anger, and the blue and yellow became cerulean pools to swim in. Her happiness made strangers smile, she stood upright despite her height of 5"11, and she woke up every morning with the knowledge that everything was exactly how it was supposed to be.  This girl, this donna, had that chemical spark in her stare, fed by the history of several centuries, and always, always, her intentions were true.  She spoke to strangers, slaughtering their language but they did not mind because she was trying, forever trying to bring joy into her heart.  That kind of determination becomes a cloak of silver lace that brings others closer to you, all seeking the refuge of contentment, until everyone is wearing the same spider web of felicè and little iridescent strings form a community of pulsing satisfaction.

I wish I was still her, and sometimes I am, but mostly I believe she is waiting on the rosy marble steps of the duomo while I battle my invisible monsters.  I do not think I will see her I again until I knock down that castle, surrendering my slender body and my past and those tremors in the night.  I hope she is still there, her cheeks matching the cathedral's glow underneath the pink clouds of dawn, to embrace me when I fall to my knees, begging her to share the cloak we wove together.

1) It puts the peanut butter on its *****
2) Finna meat sum *******
3) Classical conditioner
4) Pavlov ain't russian in the bathroom
5) He would never steak his reputation upon his looks
6) He met his husband on meatgrindr
7) His creepy uncle
8) Pavlov rools dogs drool
9) He was tired of being confused with Sylvia Plath
10) He needed all the leverage he could get on Skinner

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