now my mother at fifty sighs
at the dinner table
says
when we were children this
is what we call old
and i thought it nostalgia
speaking
before the sight of my father
lenseless in the low light
of that diner
like a fist to the chest
greying man growing heavy eyelids
folding up into something like grandpa's

               he says
               he is not afraid of dying because
               when the time comes his flesh will
               fall apart
               and in this gilded chrome future of ours
               the spirit stays pumping cooling fluid through rubber veins
               and this brain of his
               will keep spinning away

when did he stop growing up and start growing old?

ignore the faceless children pretending they never made the same mistakes
while you hover over the edge--
trembling from the weight of guilt like gravity pulling you down

some days the weight of the world
sends us tumbling from our apartment windows
too fast for regrets to catch us
but the concrete will cradle you and
rock your fluttering heart to sleep

i am a salesman
my pockets full of sand i call
gold dust
standing at the street corner
your pipe dreams done up in
glitter, chrome, and steel

i am a wishing well
as empty as my promises
bone dry
throw your pennies down
copper against cobblestones
mocking the hint of a sound

empty yourselves into me
i'm exactly what you wanted me to be

i want to split this skin
and hold my skull in my hands
a graveyard souvenir from
someone i no longer am

i'm stalling in these slowly sinking weeks,
seeking question-mark validations from the backs turned to me.
these are abandoned bridges i wish i had burned;
boards that break before i try to walk on them.
i hear them creak in your wake when you walk past.
maybe i could find my hammer and nails and try again,
but you've made sandpaper out of my heart and
my throat's scratched raw.
don't ask girls who hate paper cuts to build you rome.
she'd rather build you gallows to hang herself from.

there are aches in the joints of my automaton heart
and i cut circuits just to forget about you.
she stared me dead in the eye and i tasted acid rain.
hate smells like rotten petrichor.
i forget my midnights in hopes of sleeping through the sun,
but we're haunted by our daylight ghosts.
i must smile and say hello
before these puppet string frowns pull further down
in dread and dreariness.

you lost me in the white noise
of your voice
deafening down my throat and
when i choked
on your sandpaper soliloquy
all you heard was
static

you're the chord progression i can't complete
and the melody of me and you i thought i knew
an ill fit daydream, obsolete

i'm in a house of one way mirrors
people looking in only see themselves
but all i see is you
     staring
       staring
         staring
                                             at me

Text sent 2:48 am:
   i tried to find ur old messages

Text sent 2:49 am:
   it's been years

Text sent 2:51 am:
   do u rmbr me

Text sent 2:54 am:
   us?

Text sent 2:59 am:
   i think the phone forgot

Text sent 3:00 am:
   when i looked back it was all long gone




Delete all messages?
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**Messages deleted

thinking circles in your head
your thoughts are running out of breath

cat's cradles to rest your weary head tonight
careful of nightmare claws, melt shadows into
licorice for bitter tongues
     you're getting there,
close your eyes and
jump if you're burning bridges when you get to them
empty shadows and abandoned masterpieces
you are dagger-sharp in fragile places and
blurred at the edges
     miserable melodies condense you into sand.
whisper rusted penny whistle secrets to
the wind, they do not care for spilled trust
all your dreams are diamond dust
the ocean breeze will
blow them towards satellites to
blink like newborn stars

kept my mouth shut
     velcro
                     stitches
          craft glue
apologies past my teeth
bursting at the seams 'til
   the pressure eased
sorrow evaporating to
   regret condensing into
      guilt

ashes on my tongue
from fires i don't remember
swallowing in the first place
but it still tastes like
     i'm sorry
        i'm sorry
           *i'm sorry

she poured out her soul for the love you promised you'd fill her with but then you broke her heart and now she's empty

12 a.m.
     the rain stutters against my window-- erratic, wild. the curtains are drawn, the lights extinguished, but to my eardrums, it's as if a symphony of heartbeats are thrumming in counterpoint to my own. the noise swells in my head, an unrelenting crescendo, ffff, the windows shivering. then is fades to white noise, a lullaby to lull me to restless sleep, haunted by a thousand heartbeats overwhelming the staccato in my chest.
7 a.m.
     the sun is in a coffin of clouds. a cityscape bathed in the heavy blue of night swims before my eyes. we must still be locked in a moment before sunrise, before even last night's twilight. still, the rain drums around me. head cottony with sleep, it climbs up and up, inch by inch, drowning me in streets trapped in endless night.
4 p.m.
     people say rain leaves the world clean and new. In the limbo between raindrops and clear skies, this city is grey. it's as if the clouds that papered the sky have fallen and blanketed building and sidewalks instead. colors are muted until my city is a palette of mud and smoke and watered down dust. i am a tissue-paper doll in this diorama of concrete and glass and steel. the rain has washed me away as well.

my head is suffocating
but these lungs keep
     breathing
          breathing
               breathing

there's a rot festering in your chest
when we kissed the infection spread

i give up i give up i give up i give- get up get up
no one helps the poor ***** left to rot on the ground
why would they spare a glance for you

there once was a girl who broke promises like tea glasses. It wasn't hard, really. just a little too much heat, too much pressure. maybe she just didn't pay attention, until there were tea glasses shattered all over the floor.
     but one day the girl worried that someone would see all that broken glass and start to wonder, so she grabbed fistfuls of the mess and she swallowed it all down down down where no one could ever see. and the jagged shards tore at her insides, shredded her gut into ****** ribbons, bedazzled her stomach lining like stars.
     the girl smiled and bled and broke more promises and swallowed and swallowed and swallowed. until one day those pretty tea glass promises ripped her open and everyone could see her mistakes spill out of her as she bled out on the floor.

i’m so disgusting— grease-stained, paint-stained, dust and decay. the label said dry-clean only but you put me on a rinse-and-dry cycle and called it a day. i’m all cleaned up but nothing fits the same. is this what they call salvation? scrub the sins from our sooty souls, leave them in the sun to shrink, shrivel like snails burned by salt. take it back, give it back, give me back; i’m spotless but it feels so wrong.
     how do i repay you? credit? cash? my intestines looped like garlands in my arms, my heart like a pulsing jewel in my palm? i can’t afford an arm and a leg so that would have to do. your service has left me in shrunken skin; when i burst at the seams it’ll be my guts that splatter on the floor. look, it’s not like paying you back would be hard (it still hurts still hurts).
     you tried to fix me but now i’m worse than worthless. no one wants someone they can’t show the world. it’s your fault, your fault (i’m still to blame). you made me this way, i begged for it in the first place. this wasn’t supposed to be a ******* diy. read the label next time, *******.

gods don't spare whispers
for wretches like me
you never gave hint
of your divinity

drowning apathy,
   see me cry-
   bleed me dry-
i want to kiss the sun.

choking melancholy,
   ate my heart-
   break my heart-
it still can’t feel a thing.

these ebbing tidal waves
          i ache
               i suffocate.

duct taped seams,
i’m coming apart.
was i this way before?
faded dreams
ache most in the dark.
it’s too easy to let go.

did something die inside?
     cut lifeline-
     butterflies-
or is it just asleep?

these flowing tidal waves
          i shake
               i just can’t take this.

it’s easy? no.
it’s far too hard to let go.

here's the broken hourglass
sand slipping through fingers
into open air

here's the crooked clock
ticking counterpoint to heartbeats
thumping off-tempo

here's the stopwatch, button jammed
digits melting into each other
a count-up to the end

out of sync
out of time
out of control

*countdowns only last 'til you explode

he writes the kind of music that
     thrums
the way your blood just can't.
you're never more alive than
the roar of your soul
chasing after that drumbeat
     (the piper only had to change his tune)
he could unmake you
reduce you to bass and thrashing vocals
'til you're bursting with sound
so larger than life
you'd bleed and burn to feel it again

if the clouds were waves above my head
then let me breathe in
and drown amongst the stars

it’s harder to let go the second time
when it’s been eight years and
the baby fat is gone from her cheeks
frumpy uniform now bold skirt and boots

but her eyes are still the same
and her gait still pulls you into her orbit
you’re a comet that’s circling back after all these years

she commands the air you breathe in
you’d empty your lungs for her again and again
there’s a puppet string tied to your heart
tugging you along after her

she hasn’t changed a bit.

but this time you’re just a dusty toy
tossed aside for fresher faces
and all you’re left with is
blurred memories
a longing in your chest
for the time when you knew her best

stars die like matches
so why do you seem to live forever

there's an ocean under my skin.
if i plug my ears i can hear
the crashing waves
in counterpoint to the beat beat beating
of my heart,
if i close my eyes
will i drown?
will i be pulled under by the tides of my mind?
will my lungs fill with tears like seawater?
sinking isn't hard when it's the only thing i've ever done.

i reached for you, a safety line
you turned around, left me behind

i don't remember how we used to be
its bled from memories to daydreams.
all thats left of me and you
is the dust of a single year.
i've always been your shadow but
birds fly too high to see whats beneath
     (whats a shade without its maker?)
are there strangers in your smile
or was i just too blind to see before?
recollection is a fickle thing,
you must have been a fantasy.
flesh and blood looks so different before the eyes.
give up the ghost
you're not the one i left behind,
we're lovers turned strangers by the tide of time.

write gospel in radio waves
find salvation in city smog
coax angels out of brick and dust
asphalt streets and concrete husks