The grain of salt I mistook you for
Still tasted bitter on my pallet

Forget that when
We buckled
We never broke
Just bent

Like the tense end of a ruler
Like childhood daring
Teasing the ends to touch
Before the snap
Sent you home for being disobedient

You sent me home
So many times
I got the path back memorized
The same way Ice skaters know
When to move

There is a special kind of cursive
Etched in the dusty back roads
Of my misbehavior

Spells out
Perfect
sometimes

Spells out
Forgive me

Spells out
Last ditch effort to make you like me

I barely know where I am going

Barely know where I've been

Just got this itch to move

I guess

Someone.
One person is all I ask.
Maybe they'll find the time to read this.
Even though it's sad;
One persons greatest fear,
Never quite finding it's way to the surface,
Even though it's always just below it.

Heaven finds a way to taunt me now and then,
Even though I medicate my thoughts away,
Light always fades, and darkness
Plunges through.

My story is one of fear, of despair,
Even. But maybe, I'll find a way out of this

Insanity.

Sex.
Everyone expects me to believe that it doesn't hurt,
Even though they see how tentative I am,

They plainly see how scared I am.
History goes on for...
Ever. And ever and ever and ever.

Why can't anyone let me be in peace?
Hello, I'm looking for a way out.
Instead of helping me,
They just shut me down and out.
Everyone seems to think they know me.

Luckily for them, they don't.
Inside, I hide my true thoughts away, but that turned me into a
Ghost. A former shell of myself, wandering around aimlessly.
Help me? When will it stop? Because the white light at the end of the
T**unnel, was just a freight train coming my way.

So I went to the campus today, for the first time in a long time. I smoked cigarettes outside of the the lecture hall with some kids from the eastern block whose names I could barely pronounce. They were talking about McCarthyism in a language I couldn't understand - snippets in English - an American history exam. I cut class again, for a reason I can't quite trace, just lost sight of it all I guess. Or maybe I was wishing it could have been a little easier. They never gave us a course in what it means to try, you know? It just seems as if the only thing that stops us from doing the things we love is a fear of failing at them. Thinking about this on the walk home made my head sick and my heart sad, and so sleeping through the rest of the daylight seemed like a good way to get by.

I met up with the friend, later in the evening, he was at the local venue. He had his hands in his hoodie and his Adidas were swinging over the side of the stage, head bobbing, and rhyming in time to the beat of an electric bass drum. I asked him to buy me a beer and he slid his last two dollars over the counter like he always does when he notices my lower lip quivering. I didn't ask him about the doctor's and he didn't ask me about my black eye. I told him to tell me the story again, the one about the cool kids he met in the East Village and he did, he told me about the whole encounter in the snow, with the lights, and how badly he was shivering. I smiled that type of smile, the one that ends up with your lips curved the wrong way and wished I would have went with him.

The waitress that hates me gave me a ride home again so her uncle could close the place down. I offered her one of those Ukrainian kids' cigarettes that I swiped but she said no thanks, and I was glad I had more. She knew this wasn't going to be the last time she did me a favor, the way my track record was but I like to think she doesn't mind too much. I invited her inside but she said she had to run, maybe next time. She told me to try and hurry up and finish school so I could give her the world, and then she giggled and winked at me before she sped off. Back to bed, I had a long day of bullshitting myself ahead of me when I awoke.

Chronic disinterest
Native contempt
Velvet endeavors
Tempting regret
Instant retelling
Elephant’s hide
Plagiarized doctrine
Burning inside
Mystified longing
Questions abound
Domicile ******
Running aground
Substance ingestion
Alternate mind
Daily addiction
Hade’s defined

The drugs need me only
slightly less than
i, them.

What happens when we die?
I’ll leave that unanswered.
Our inner self moves on
to another shell, like a hermit crab.
But where does our shell go?
Does it cover up another hermit crab
without a shell?
No.
We end up in the ground.
Decomposing,
our skin grows cold
And eventually grows mold.
Yet some people feel the need
to decorate the hole that holds
the rotting corpse
they were once
very much a part of.
A tower.
A house.
A life-size replica.
A cross the size of the one
that once held Christ.
And for what purpose?
You can polish a carcass
but it’s still a dead body.

push me!
listen just

show me where it hurts
or do I have to
start
like
always?

words that gnaw our bones
aren't enough anymore and
names and slang and angst
aren't enough

show me
what it's like
when you're
naked
with a
fist

we can't dance the dance when
we haven't even gotten up
yet