We melt like aborted McDonald's ice,
on top of a blistering, gum-stamped lot,
under the sour heat of the Sun.

I'm boy wonder and you're, 'Boy, how is he alone?'

Olive-skinned cardigan, pearl pores.
Hair like ink and a jaw-line sharp enough to cut an umbilical cord.

Vintage Nikes come to a point,
the swoosh as red as the cherry at the end of your cigarette.

I watch you smoke and choke,
before calling phantoms over.
It begins like October:
The leaves fall, like your friends steps,
the bronze sweeps the air,
like the curls of their smiles,
the air is silent,
like your words as they condense and drop into the mouth of a tanned canyon.

What could they ever do to conquer you,
my dear, fantastic frenzy?

modest mouse tastes like you
and i wonder how you could
have left such a stain running
down my throat
down my right forearm
maybe i should just get the
color tattooed into my skin the
way it wants to be but would
it bleed into the marks
from her
and him
and him
did i bruise them the same way
do they walk through life with
my name etched into their
elbows or trailing down the
length of their spines or have
they covered it up with sweaters
and bandaids
what did i leave with you
besides the last remaining shreds
of my tattered sanity
is there any residue of my laugh
lingering on the curve of your
bottom lip or do you smell my
shampoo on your pillows
have you found my name
on you have you found my
name on you have you
found my name on you

Old men fascinated by teen *****
and the hues harnessed by high school hips,
I ask you to look at something corrupted:
yourself, this town, this world.

The town's lumber supplier has died
and daughters fight over dollars.

Greasy haired women, wearing denim,
smoking menthols and bruised with cheap make-up,
stand on fractured sidewalks.

I walk, wearing a Native American-ized fleece,
the Chippewa crush their cigarettes
and blink like lizards at me
because I wear bastardization,
but wash it.

Half the town smokes,
and if you ask the pastor,
the whole town smokes
because everyone's going to hell.


All the girls read John Green
and flip the pages because it's a cheaper escape than a bus ticket.

Plato said that everything changes
and nothing stands still;
these people will suffer,
their bodies will break down,
and they will die --
but what never changes is their hope
in eventual death.

What cannot change is my hope
in something more.

The sky looks like cigarette ashes in a puddle of milk,
and I, almost 22, am unsatisfied that I have not won a Pulitzer.

And I, on the borderline of delusion and confidence, am unsatisfied I am not crazy or cocky enough to submit to The New Yorker.

I hear the voices of the pastors,
telling me that God heals all.

They say 'He' is the only absolute.

The people raise their hands towards the water-stained ceiling,
as if He'll push his arms through the copper-colored scabs and save them.

Grabbing their wrists and cooing,
I am the remedy to the anxiety of death.

I am six foot one and French, Irish, Cherokee,
some sort of Anglo-Saxon,
and a lost **** in a drowning garden.

I think about all those who had to ****,
in order to make my cheekbones,
eyebrows, lips, and ****.

I think about how I'm good at *** and bad when it comes to forgiving too easily.

I wonder how I can sweat on another body,
but only feel naked when I have to be myself.

I watch the elderly chant words:
******, ******, ****, and Half-Breed.
I study if their dry lips reflect the hate in their eyes.

Not all are like this,
but I am surrounded by tables of them,
as I pretend to be Christian,
just to get ahead.

I don't speak,
just sit like an unfilled bubble,
waiting to be marked out by graphite.
I feel like a *******,
I wish I had a Pulitzer.

The sky looks like a stretched grape,
covered in kisses of ******.
And I, white American conformist,
am unsatisfied
that I have succumbed to the American Dream.

I wish I had a Pulitzer,
I wish I had my mom and dad.

Before you get lost in the unfinished maps of her veins
the ones like yours, but not stitched up too many times to count on the ticks of a clock,
make sure that she trusts you enough to tell the truth.
Make sure that she loves you enough to know how you lie.
Remember that every single time you open your mouth, she's wishing
you're saying I love you.
Remember that on Fridays she doesn't want to cook.
And she sure doesn't want you to cook anything that was slaughtered.
Remember that she prefers cheap whiskey over champagne.
And when you're opening your ribcage to show her how fast your heart beats
when she grabs your wrists, make sure the butterflies are set free.
Make sure they find the window.
Make sure they find a home.
Remember that every living creature is just that, living.
Remember that they have a heartbeat.
And when you stop breathing when you see her with her hair down,
when you're thinking about starting a religion about girls with flowers for eyes,
tell her she's beautiful.
Tell her she's so full of the future.
Get her a telescope so you can show her the moon when it's bigger than both your thumbs.
Take her skiing while it's Summer in Australia even though you curse the snow as if it
were born out of wedlock.
Let her know she's not the first but she's definitely the only, and you're so scared of dying.
You never know what you have until it's locked firmly in your grasp as if to not let it run away.
You might lose a lot of blood but you'll never lose your way home.
I don't want to hear the dial tone.
I want to hear your voice, I want to hear you scream.  Tell me to leave.
Tell me that I am the only road that leads you to a purpose.
That in a world of blindness I am so technicolour.
Even though I can't promise you that, I can give you my words, thrusted from my lungs
like wildfire.
Searching for the way out.
Talk to me about religion, please please convince me that there is something out there other than
rotting in the ground for all of eternity.
Bible scripture doesn't whisper of your lips like my pillows do.
I never really thought about pillow talk until they started speaking me to sleep.
I find myself found by the curvature of your spine, of the shadows that take up residence on your shoulders like they have lived there all along.
I want to kiss away every bit of pain that has ever stopped you from smiling at strangers
and let you know that I'm coming home and I will always find your hands.
Let your ribs shake when your heart has had enough.
Let them shake.
Let the rain come through your window while you're sitting there in your makeshift darkroom.
You are the only thing I know about consistency.
And before I get lost in the unfinished maps of your veins,
I will be making sure they lead to me.