When I say I find my relief in pine
You must know that I understand
Its betrayal in every form

Every stab of the needle
The sharpness of the smell
Pinching every sense of my being
To remind me i'm alive

he started the night
wiping beer sweat
down the wooden
paneled insulation
swallowing his hair
out of fear
that the girl he loves
has a body that's here
but a mind that's
been buried under
tin cans full of desire
we used to admire
him when he chose
to swing from the tree
limbs into oblivion
snorting the fall leaves
in through his skin
his helping hand
was glued to the
door that jealousy
continued to open
and close as fast
as she could scream
for privacy and yet
he was forgiven
in the morning
he laid on leather
shame and she found
herself above the grave
floating through
apparitions of
blonde hair as
white as a hospital curse
she never saw him burst
but maybe that wasn't him
it must have been
insecurity personified
into a little boy
with a lit candle stick
and a girl who never
learned that she is
allowed to jump
without the shame of
plaid skirts that handicap
the brain until its grey
but its fine

all is forgiven
i heard that violence goes away
but never does sin

i am mad at you
and the boys you keep in your back pocket
tied to expired nostalgia and jet black ink

we all have tried to run away at some point
and i'm so sorry that you need someone to fold you up
just so you can try to fly away

i am mad at you
and the way you might only see yourself
in every set of christmas lights

beer basements and fake friends
naps in strangers beds
none of that match the love and concern of four friends

so go ahead and load your gun with spontaneity
but i will always sense the planned
and timed rhythm between every shot

Confetti settles in the crease of the carpet.
I wake up with pints of honey buzzing
in the center of my chest. My eyelashes cast shadows
like tick marks on my cheeks. No chaos.
The backs of my legs are tender
from crawling through the window to the roof.

We watched a paper mache moon from the roof
the night before. Small towns are boring liked threads from the carpet
but the people have hearts that are tender
like living peaches, always buzzing.
Just one picture of us, five sorry teens with internal chaos
dancing through string lights and breathing shadows.

Harris has a fascination with those shadows.
Her membership would be awarded with a dive from the roof.
She always loves the smell of checklist chaos,
or formulating plans while lying on the carpet
of her room. Her emotions are pulled taut and buzzing,
resonating fear when she forgets how to be tender.

Julia’s wire existence couldn’t try to be tender
She is a fat slap of clarity across your dispositions. Shadows
can’t cast new shapes across her buzzing
body. Her ******* pointing toward the roof
and her feet sinking between carpet
folds. like every time she is around it’s chaos.


Britt’s eyes reflect blue waves free from chaos
and each word skips across his tongue gentle and tender.
His clothes, Goodwill and kind-of-used-carpet
and camera casts light to evade shadows.
Short prayers dare scrape the roof
of his mind. Send heritage and denial buzzing.

Nelson is 7 years of swallowed gum and buzzing
alarm clocks, warning the world of chaos.
He climbs up rusted ladders to the roof
to shout of love and it’s lack of tender
tendencies. He is a fall breeze where leaves force shadows
across the laundry line, too weak to leave a hole in the carpet.

I glide through my days alluding tender
my mind scoffs at the chaos of my daytime shadow
but under the roof, i'm just a chalk outline pushed into carpet.

There was once a time
Before we were used
As a womb
Before we were one
With the moon
Where we were born
As bodies
At a magnetic zero
Our crotches smooth
At rest with no circulation; indication
Of what could happen next

We were born without predetermined regrets

Bodies as life without currency
Running through warm earth trees
Following lights into our
Tangible youth memorials
Eye to eye in the urgent wet dark

My friends are not made of glass!

I reiterate- - we are not made of glass

Midnight forced itself on us
And our chests grew
And blew up balloons
We were told to lock our knees
Handicapped by skirts
Told to stop climbing trees anymore

Becoming a woman meant putting dreams in the hand of pale knuckles and male grip

The boys were infallible; desirable
The boys were never accused of
Being made of glass

Becoming a woman meant shifting our frequencies to different notes
Bleeding and sleeping in separate rooms
Porcelain dolls with stillness for crowns
Others falling to unfix-able pieces on the ground

Slowly in the dark
We all shifted apart
To discover something new
Between our legs
But not necessarily our hearts

I reiterate- - **we are not made of glass

hangover guides me home again.
old news spews through
the screens all around me.
lies are subjective
and time is a flat circle.

we are somewhere near the eye of the storm.

high ground is the sure plan to suffer so
save yourself by submitting to flood.
mirrors reveal your fastest escape plan.
clouds are coming no matter how hard
you blow back, so all you can hope for is snow.

we are somewhere near the eye of the storm.

I'm sorry that I steal your sad songs

I'm sorry I ride on your highs
And coast past your tears with a forgetful mind

I'm sorry that we can't talk about anything real anymore without smoke and *****

I'm sorry that your grandfather died and I talked about my love life instead

I'm sorry that I'm a liar

I'm sorry but I am not close to being. The Real Deal

I'm sorry that you had to buy me another flour baby for school after mine busted

I'm sorry that I am always the passenger

I'm sorry that you had to cut off your bracelets for soccer

I'm sorry that he's gay

I'm sorry that I cursed the city for you

I'm sorry that I can't keep my mouth closed about anything

But I'm trying to learn the value of secrets

I'm sorry

the ghosts are there but only if you think about them
it's funny how much the non believers don't see
nothing is worse than dying
except for wandering these streets alone
i found a cold fox
hidden in some paradox
most people called it the 'April Snow'
it's funny how suicide in theory
sounds like walking off of
the edge of a burning map
but it's really all of the friends you have lost
shutting down your organs
slowly
one at a time
so when you lose everyone
there seems to be no other choice

but there is you and we are us
and this the only reason
i choose to stay a while

Please stop telling me that God is a boy
like testosterone is the invisible particle
unlocking sacred doors

Please stop telling me that a womb
is just a silly tomb meant to house
potential life when you stop treating
yourself like you are sacred

Please stop passing around the
silent secret that kissing girls is
supposed to be written off as weird honey
like we don't already live for the sweet and offbeat

Please stop silently tracing
my sides, measuring my size
placing limits on what i can
attempt to wear and inflicting fear
at the sight of a stomach roll

Please stop using the unspoken rule book
we all know that thing needs to be burned
or returned to a foreclosed library
because limiting our love based on
expectations and one night stands
leads to a lonely existence where
we forget to see through the smog

Please stop ignoring the sky
It's limitless  and colored like the inside of our heads

Please put your judgments to bed so I can attempt to escape from my bedridden aftermath
I've been stapled to pillows for days

Foreign ghost around the counter
Forcing foreign blood from his mouth
As we bash the bearded boy with leather tethered together
Today holds perfect weather

My knees bleed a different blood every time I fall
Remembering that each turn takes an inch away from how tall
I appear to our God
Penance is an afterthought when I'm shedding skin on strangers beds

Slashes in my palms
I imagine them saying
I Love You
The way he never did

Slashes on palms
I press them to my face and watch the luminescent red devour me
As I drown in platelets and plasma

He never wanted anything like this

Body is sorry
Body came from Other Body
Body absorbed symbols
Body combined symbols to describe
What it might be like to be Body
Body saw pictures of its inside
And held an old brain
Body's pain is created there
In Nucleus hell center
A space to water the certifiably insane
Vortex of tubes that will rot into mush
Body released  pheromones once
Body couldn't help but blush

Now Body lays in the dark
Body purrs as memory whirs
About times that Body bruised
And lost its ability to talk about Body
To represent Body
All the times that Body walked on without itself

Smoke floats between
the damp sheets of linen
in my mouth.

The vacuum of my nose
***** it out.

I perch on a faded lawn chair
browned from the 2000’s sun.
It’s February and 34 degrees.

I spent all week getting lost
in my phone for hours on end.  

Some people sip green,
barely dancing,
the neighbors’ presence.

I tell lies so lightly
to my new friend.
She is 21 and well read.
Someone put a hole in her head.

We think we move in circles
but it’s more like jagged lines.
Her dramatic lines pair
with my new found mind.

We speak of the fear of speaking.
We porch hop, chatter box
to couches and beds where
ghosts hang over heads.
Sunlight causes it to end.

The morning windows open
and the roof is wet.
I sip coffee and delay regret.

Bookcases are falling
Stars are coughing
Dogs are sleeping

We are not together

The planets open my windows with a distant whistle
The dirt under my nails match my eyes
And my hair knots as a cry for help

Nostalgia is out of reach
Always intercepted the monster under my childhood bed

Flowers match flowers match flowers

A thief cries through the radio
One electric bulb lights my mind but
I am fading fast

I scale the roof because I hear Santa hides all unanswered letters under the shingles
and I know the taste of my words drive off the reindeer

Six months ago
I was lace-less and cross eyed
thinking to myself

Someday Yarn and Lights will cease to wake me
and Oxygen will become thick enough to drown

***** porch smoke smell and anything Julia


The American flag is a reminder and cigars are meant for the mouth

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom [lady] I swear by all flowers
We promised to get tattoos
We promised to move to New York

You sleep in, eat in, read in
Rooms with what feel like soldiers of learning
Bordering liberation
Kept quiet with papers
You look around and see
Dark circles and streaming hot cups of
Whatever today brings will make a good expensive grade
We’ll learn words right before we need to dispose of them
College is weird

You talk to the girl next to you in lecture
Just to take a break from looking at your phone
And for a second she looks exactly like
Your best friend’s dead mother
But her name’s Victoria
And she is a marketing major
And sorority girl
And she swears she saw you
At Steve’s party the week before
Dancing with a boy
That went to her high school
She doesn’t know that he kissed you in a hallway
And he sat in the fire escape all night after
College is weird

You can’t wait to lose syntax
And semantics on a ***** frat floor
Anxiety runs high but
Everyone silently knows
We are safe under Christmas lights
You black out three nights in one week
Spending the other four
Trying to remember
The names of the boys you kissed
For letting you drink
Straight out of the bottle
How kind
College is weird

You fall in love with the idea of a boy
And the maps of his brain
And you smile nervously
At each other under a tent
Both wearing dueling plaid
He drunk calls you on a Saturday night
And he plays your guitar
You both complain about TVs
He says that they’re like windows
That can never be opened to let in a cool breeze
And you can’t seem to disagree
He sleeps on your couch
And you both make breakfast
Smiling like your conversation at 3 am
Was the best *** anyone has ever had
And then he leaves and never texts you back
College is weird

On his 20th birthday
You bother him right before midnight
So the time under your digital words
Allude to a productive day
That was actually spent
Cultivating metaphors for how close
You came to kissing him
But you press send
A “happy birthday I still exist” message
And it’s left with a pity “thanks”
And you hear too many of your fake friends talk
Down about “catching feelings”
And “being clingy”
Because God only knows what would happen
If everyone pursued a feeling of joy
Or thought twice about
Confessing that only a boy’s words could make them happy
No we are only here in this Temporary Bookland
For good **** and a diploma
Fellowship and Emotion are not a general requirement
And now I can only explain
Nothing more
Nothing less

College is weird

Maybe black is nostalgic for the womb
Maybe white is when a soul can't bear its colors anymore
Maybe red is blood's mask
And yellow is gold's half sibling

Maybe we all are painted unwillingly by some huge spirit yes that must be it

to live
to live flesh
to live flesh and forget
to live flesh and forget about it

but sometimes we realize
the weight of this machine
is the silent way we perceive
this slowing of molasses gravity
pushing down on our organs

life is just the attempt at resistance
and death is some certain stillness

confetti settled in the crease of the carpet

Our Young Bodies
we need to decide
what to do with their electricity

Translucent Lover
I'm not ready
to admit defeat
to my own judging policies

Mother of Ours
holed up in the house
no way out

Muscular Machines
moving through time
all around me

Sultry Promises
between crumbling bed sheets

Our Memories
crushed to powder
with the soles of my shoes

Lost Legacies
in the space between
your ears

Slung with your tongue

Vibrations of Tides
crashing against the cheers

Little Boy Burning
let the attic fill
with smoke

Lungs
expand with every single
Hallelujah


Wide Open Souls


the rest gather dust
in train stations

Elisabeth lives as more than dust
She lies in Rachel's ribs
through sharpie ink
and in the sky when it turns salmon pink
behind crosses and hills
nothing has ended
she is still strung through trees
and her soul is fused to yours clean
numb will consume us
and ill brush the knots from your hair when there is nothing else to say
death is one way to find out who will stay
and who will go cry themselves to sleep because they cant see beyond themselves

guitar strings vibrate in bars
and we search for signs of where you are

Infidelity can exist as a distorted fairy tale

A love
Different from that of
Numb happiness

If we seek senses of the aftermath
Maybe we can peak through
Bullet holes in the front door
Of a twisted mansion
Where she washes her hair
To be free of old companions
While she still pays the bills
Sponsoring memories of ghosts
A boy singing Greek hymns
Into her old Tupperware
Diamond encrusted distortions
Can't heal past decisions
And good shrinks are really only
What you choose to give them

Divorce

It is powerful enough to make my uncle cry
at the sight of navy ships

God is a drag queen baby
so colorful
rainbows are his black and white photographs

God swallows glitter by the ton
and who the **** thinks
he's still reading your late night texts
he's moved on
the world spins on his heel's axis

God wears gold chains
and face paint

some all knowing clown
mocking the rules we sorted out
when he bothers to look down

I feel like I am dying faster than my friends
And that everything I touch turns stale on both ends

my son
the size of barely a peach
you left me for somewhere else
feet first, head last

i wish you could cast your shadows
onto daughter daylight
and blister so hard
that you're walking on balloons
maybe try to lick
the unreachable parts of your arm
or move your fingers
to wake yourself into body again

but instead
like a cartoon
i imagine you burrowed from my lap
feet first
tunneling toward eternal
leaving me bleeding and
deleting memory of being
more than one body

When the sun fades out of the sky daily
There is a moment we are completely dark
Then the stars alight
And the planes take flight
Dear You
Find me a source of self control
And while you are busy
Sailing boats in your mind
I’ll douse myself in sunscreen and Pabst
American weeks will never end
My friends will never bend
I love every one of them
They know my love is an in-between game
But I am looking for truth all the same
In this search for truth I am losing my youth
And I am ultimately a hypocrite
But that doesn’t mean I can’t numb my lips
For my next fake kiss
Please someone grant my wish
And when you look back
Please Forget Me Not

we give each other flowers because they are the opposite of flesh

Sometimes I get up and walk, hoping that I will be lucky enough for some stranger in the street to grab my shoulders and shake me awake. But the city does not give me the validation that I am there. The machinery is too big. We all trek sidewalks while colors conduct buses and horseless carriages. Where else do I exist other than in a flash of eye contact with a stranger? It’s quickly forgotten in a space called later and it can take as long as a minute.

Gears in gadgets briefly remember the certain touch of their match’s square angles and the time between their touching is named “experience before comprehension”. This is the foreplay before language’s conception.

They were failed gymnasts
while we fired endless bottle rockets
then he grew a beard to hide behind
he traced my spine
while i was make up free
frozen in a snowy car
we came back to a floral house and made love
but i was never in love
he was just a lesson in who i want to be
and who i want to be with
he did slit his wrists once
but he doesn't need me

He'll take shrooms and cut grass all while saying the rosary

you should have been there
it was all numb ceiling fan talk
while i was tasting all my senses
everything was new

maybe it's no coincidence that autumn gives me new hope
like i am given the chance to ease into frostbite while laughing
like colors caress me while i avoid hibernation
like wood burned memories celebrate anniversaries unforgivably
October is a month to celebrate the death of all things passed
and July is just avoiding my identity

I've been sweating for hours on end
waiting for your return so we can
sing like someone would listen

today i realized that i can't keep redecorating my self taught cage

Poison under plywood
Vanilla steam kisses
Fake photo's of the stars
A mother's sleeping eyes
Some sad man's guitar
Church hymn sunrise

and the rest has been our demise

losing love and feeling numb
she is strung through the trees
and i am at the bottom of a bottle

he will hold your hands
and i will brush your hair
when there is nothing good to say

we will weep with you
every night you need to
until numb is the new norm

august and everything after
will never be the same
because she died
and the leaves are racing to catch up

book bindings unwind
down all four  of our spines
and dormitory air is only good for nosebleeds

if i could sleep around a fire
with my best friends
every night i would

because even if we cant see the stars
we each have faith that they are still there

lay down your drink and gun
i know you speak from liquor tongues
as you string the stars across your yard
i chew on the glass shards
from the last bottle you blew your song through

it's not fair
you have tied everyone you love
to the stake that you plan on driving through your own heart

grave robbers placed
undead fingertips
into their pockets
and the daisy's never hesitate to bloom
glass eyes arise from expectation
and we rarely discover
the braille found everywhere
the sky cries for it's simple routine
and the echoes of marching shoes continue

tonight i'll place my heart in a mug
and miss you from across the Atlantic

your veins are no longer the copper wire
that matches your hair
they are something else
filling your hourglass heart with ****** sand
you were barely electricity before
some say they can hear the wind blow
straight through your body
you are not here now
it's just a place where you used to stand
but i would call you the opposite of a ghost
it's more solid and less present
it's a corpse that keeps on living
i have to hide from you when
you are standing right there
and i'm sorry that this will never be
your ideal world

I can’t help but think that the essence of my being is stuck in some landlocked memory on the roof of your house begging you to stay, because jumping holds winds of change and we are doing alright here. We rally to taste the cotton fuzz of our pink memories and we hear the thunder of what could have been. You will stop holding knives and the lake water will taste just like cinnamon. The trees hum yellow in the silent buzz of stars. The backseat of cars haul bodies full of frostbite and sharpie ink blood. Sure we could yell into the abyss but it’s just as good as throwing our secrets towards airplanes. Sometimes I think art is like a dream book. Visualize and find the thread of what’s screaming inside our heads. Either we weave it into something new or let it fray.

Crack the window
Find me in the left lung of the house's chest
I close my eyes
and let the sound of white wind trace
the shells of my ears with it's smallest finger

Ghosts sleep in the morning
Electricity finds its rhythm in my veins and
I start up again
Angels wake with bed head in their best denim
I pierce the bed skin to find feathers
                                            
wear metal
wear silk
wear flesh

I paint time lines in a circle
post them on the ceiling
and sleep with one eye open

I dream of feeling-
shut inside
believing perverse or the reverse

Old friends, I apologize
Your specters have settled
In the wrinkles of my hands

I'm in an empty room with 5 letters
I'll make things better
I'll send them to your souls in good weather

H: The West calls. You should go. Your hair is growing fast. Everyone knows about your whispers and I cannot stand your love being for creation's play. I'm sorry you never got your way but the Rockies will calm your seas if you let them.

T: Thanks for trying to be someone else for me. I hope you don't regret our rolls around the floor. Or nights on benches. Or the time tears fell onto my lips from melancholy bliss. I'm sorry I could never be caught in your light. I hope you learned to fall asleep easy, and make sure to tell the next girl that your heart is as tender as a peach.

Y: I'm sorry that I couldn't trust a mind that shines in headlights. I know that if you swim backwards you drown and I do want to say, in the past two years I have been caught in a constant backstroke. I replay my lost memory of you in a corner and myself in a stupor. I'm sorry that I tried to make an enemy of your differences.

C: Sorry I wrote our fairy tale without your permission. That's all I really have to say.

J: You met me in isolated pieces. You put me together to reveal a little girl in a costume of what she wants to be. Your disinterest became a lead blanket. Your retracted friendship left me with empty palms up, and no one has tried to fill them since our lost October. Light the candles, Say a prayer

the buzz of what we never were is alluring
i'm the saint but you're the sinner for me
i cut your hair
made you impaired
i wanted you for my own
you're strength was gone
i did you wrong
i cried all night
could you tell?
hair black and rough
coal holding diamonds strong
how could i do you wrong
this is that last time i sing this song

this is a sober honest poem
about how I can't imagine
a life without your shakes
and your verbal pictures of
earthquakes

this is a poem about
how lust is love
without friendship
and we are love
without
lust

this is a poem about
my dreams and it screams
my brain awake sometimes
about how our greatest
feat is not dying at the hand of drink

this is a poem about
the tubes of light on
rooftops in July
and sparkler breath
when we near riverbeds

this is a poem about
our need for sacred
sound and ground
and strings buzzing until
we change them with
hand combinations

this is a poem about
learning about poems
this is a lunatic
screaming about politics
through shattered glass
dead goldfish under corduroy

this is the list of names
our brains would be labeled
in the shrinks offices
anxiety ******* in your ear
all check marks
and watercolors

this is melting new shoes
on the edge of a fire pit
and screaming ****
into blades of grass
it's all asinine laughter

Today it seems as though your ghost let itself in
I know it’s been wandering through my field for months
and I avoided the windows but today
your ghost burst through the door
into my room
and looked me straight in the eye
in a very afterlife way
to say
I’m still here

and I still feel every inch of what we were

It’s my birthday and I blew out the candles
but now they look more like pretty cigarettes yes
tobacco tainted and blood stained, you were nineteen
and my innocence lost has finally dawned on me
yes you let yourself into my house
reminding me that we lost our innocence
while we listened to melting pipes drip onto ***** coated floors
you let a map stain your walls
and white has never been a color of innocence
it’s the color of the absence of it
if anything black is the color of innocence
your only sight before you are forced from your mother’s lap, trust me this love relapse is only Regret’s quiet laugh.

Now I only see your grin, and taste the blunt forced gin that will quiet the wind outside the windows of the past

I hate my wandering lips and all of the people they have kissed
I hate all the times my mouth has calmed the nerves of someone else
To heal their wounds while simultaneously hurting myself
I hate the lack of love and the soul ******* power one unfamiliar kiss has on me
I hate the next morning and the empty dull ache in my head
And the smell of my breath like some wilting flowers
Growing hot and moldy in the sun
I hate kissing without love
I thought I would grow numb but instead
I am the only one with feelings left
My emotions will rush me to my death

i am brain speaking through the features we both know

hello

blood chugs along like a train through the veins of my brain
giving me permission to change my motion, feel emotion
like warmth from the sun
hitting the bumps of my skin
hiding the horizon behind microscopic flesh mountains

close your eyes
see sunrise at any time
this is my religion

if clock is the only fact your body knows, say hello

picture a train pulling into the station past the snow
feel it's echos shake the loosest joints of your body
like radio bass attempting to wave the ***** of your face

stay licking your wounds and

imagine
the theory of God
as some printing press
producing repetitive lines from an expired advice column

imagine
hugs are confirming
that we're both just body

imagine
me as before and after
LiquidinOrgan and SomedaySoil

imagine
being complex enough
to have one word
to express the undefinable mess inside your chest

imagine
uttering one word
just to feel this poem

Hauling books and concrete looks
Weeks end and we do our best to ingest fire
We learn and learn to unlearn again
I am a number so far from one
And this cycle will never be done

The lucky ones end up with more space than they can fill
And the rest hide vices under numb tongues
This that and maybe a haircut
Everyone is blinded by the blue lights
We filter through screens in an endless night

Business men avoid cracks in the sidewalk
The homeless grip brand name coffee cups
The spineless try so hard to sit up
One day we wake up before the buzz
And see that it’s all so ****** up

I bury letters like dead bodies

Beneath the trees I could never climb
About how endless jokes can mask the most depressed
The insecure are best dressed
And schizophrenic genes in youth suppress

My very own shadow whispers eventual death

I bury letters like dead bodies

One day when the glass bottles are dry
In the yellowest sun
I'll dig up my old letters for fun
With words pointing at victims like a loaded gun

Young paper and ink left there for one

I bury letters like dead bodies

My modern wolf don't growl don't scowl don't anything i can't be alone and you're alone we're all alone in glass cases traveling to far away places in our minds unlocking words road length size there is a reason for the soul in your eyes and your potential breathing into lungs that remain unsung just sing my favorite song ****** i want my favorite melody to fall from your lips is that too much to ask for am i an *** for trying to love you wrong or right that one night was a lie and we both know it but i wanted to believe it like all of the fairy tales that took place in my woods  were as fictional as when you stood in front of me and cried because darling we're all going to die you aren't exempt you aren't a saint you aren't a sin i couldn't win you over but i could try little liar

Passion is pure and we're both alive bleeding some fantastic blood

Let's shatter the glass cases
And do something tangible
While we are still restless
Let's conjure up love instead of lust
Let's run in fields
Let's feel the dark
Let's hold hands with someone that makes us dizzy

This is an open invitation
To use our minds less like muscles
And more like souls
To craft something out of nothing

Memories

kissing just for practice
we’d pour wine on the grass
we’d pour beer on the grass
nodding off love’s advance
imagining bridges
laughing through stitches
blonde hair in the distance
ski monster now wanderer
my friend and my friends' pets
we’re boy and dogs and women
my friends all lost their heads
when they lost their pets
and lost earrings in between
the cracks of the mattress
some lost things will
fade into blackness
the kind in my womb
the kind you found in the woods
when you lost sight of your hands
for the first time
then found the light
in the spine
of a boy with kind diamonds
between his teeth
it was all me
my retinas chose to see
the light when brightness was not what i needed
i need him to fade back into the blackness of my beer bottle please
i need him to see the importance of knees
of how his knees folded under his form
but return me to the floor once more
where carpet holds friction of first dance
and what more could religion be
than praising the light of men
yes ill return to the darkness then
seal me behind ***** and let me be
but roll me through the grass
stained with wine beer and tea

Looking down is dirt
and up is salvation

but what is this layer
where we dabbble in poison
along with the rainfall

I look to my left
to experience the
epitome of feminine
and to the right
a boy whose shoes
are tied tighter than
the knot locking up his chest
suppressing emotion's stress

but what about the one
whose mother loves Mary's  
reflection in the sun
while his birds fly above
and summon a song
we chose not to title

They would rather see him
become an animal
than paint on lipstick
and love another man
shifting identity ***** up their plan

If we picture the universe
and all its ringing layers
spread wide with eternal ashes
we do not understand

and then we see a stump
raw bleeding facts about the death of a tree
I know that their layers are the same
circling melodies forever played

Maybe everything is stuck on
the ring of a circle expanding with time
but love is not linear
we label these layers with our crass syntax
with love, place, race, and sexuality
when really our DNA
is just tiny a rotation

tops spinning until the lights turn off

maybe i will spend the rest of my life
trying to marry your shadow
while the real you is one step ahead
holding someone else's hand

If I die, and our words never solidified into anything but dust
At least I would have loved them
Each and every one

mother dearest
complicated friend
i hear your sister's whispers
through your closed mouth criticisms
i hear the mirror has broken your heart
for 50 years in it's clear metallic honesty
but honestly who cares what you see
if you could create a someone else
to be another yourself
clothed in something new everyday
you'll dream of the ironing board
and this home as an ever changing cloak
endless newness in property
mother pardon me but
i hear you welded your tear ducts shut
after that college ****
drank a full fifth of *****
and ruined your future of
crunching numbers in a pencil skirt
that must have hurt
i hear you hate old Polaroids
with hidden smiles from the past
because old memories don't last like
shiny new wood floors
and staying indoors
it means that
the onlookers eyes cant criticize
so send your girl into the world
to live as you would have pleased
mother i hear that spontaneity
did you wrong and is that true
please answer after frugal thinking
i hear that you learned to cultivate
stubborn symbols in the womb
because the world is always trying to hurt you
mother why is the world trying to hurt you
when you only hide and
trace sketches of a world where
you had tried to hurt it back
i'm sorry that you cant relax
and i wish i could provide that
continue to look after careful creatures making clones
all while staring down pictures of your own

i genuinely apologize that we both couldn't be the best version of you