take me to a swimming pool that has not been peed in
with no grass or dead wasps floating around my bare skin
one newly installed that hasn't corroded yet

take me to fresh snow that has never been walked in
let me feel the crunch beneath my feet as i step into fresh turf and smile
knowing that they are all my footprints
knowing that i am the only one who has ever touched this ****** powder

take me to a coffin that has never been opened
a faceless, nameless beauty
one that nobody else knows about

and i will treasure it
like it is my own
because i am an old nobody, too

sick in the mornings one thousand times more at night
cells tightening at
the God sized electric pain
coming quick through me like
those five forced breaths
I took them out one two three and on
when you looked out for you, & left me
left my
lungs forced open to contract the corners of
sharp colossal wide open night
left me alone in the middle of the road
when it was coldest in the end of december,

the two yellow dividing lines following you out into the dark
stabs of iced oxygen pricking deep where my fingers could
not pry

like that
this pain comes all of it at once
bright black vision of in-utterable clarity
each wave counted out by the swell
the judgement wrath of Chaos
black and silent breaking unbearable down onto my head
but somehow, becomes even more, even higher and still darker
breaking through the very form of the vast!

the rest is more than I can speak
what it was
drifted from the glimmer
pale and in form unlike the forms we’d seen before or conceived
approached where I lay bleeding into the ground,
barely more than a pile of wasted light against little shadows

“go on,
it will get darker yet
do not falter now.
go back to the earth
burn out until you are nothing left
but the bones of your bones,
and can no longer weep.
know beyond the horror and the wonder and the nothing
what you are
only whispered beloved

know it through to the end, where the dark softly turns into something else
further still, to an autumn of final ending, there
throw off your clothes, go as you came
go out into the water
drift from there, away and lost now always
look up blessed through the last evening
do not stop until you are truly gone.”

This sadness, this numb
It is not poetic.
I cannot write about galaxy ridden veins
or fire seared eyes

This sadness, this emptiness
It is not beautiful
There will be no heroic sweeping away of broken princesses by
princes with cigarette clenched teeth
or ***** laced lips

This sadness, this gut-wrenching pain
Will not be daises in Marlboro boxes
It can't be unraveled threads sewed back
by an infinite but dysfunctional love

No, no.

This sadness isn't any of that.

This sadness, it's raw
It hurts to look at but it's torture to bear
People look away from this type of sadness
Because it sure as hell ain't pretty.
But what it is is real
This is the sadness that, once moved past, is never forgotten

It's worn like armor in battle
Like a coat of arms

This sadness makes you a **soldier

Faltering declarations of love
Floating like incense on our fingers
Like slime on moribund monuments
Like filth lingering on the dead
Like wasps on an infected wound
Like babies of bats
Kissing your gangrenous feet
Like hollowness of two hearts
Enclosed in a horrid infinity
Like lungs filled with black water
Like bones intertwined with each other
In a discomfort so immense
Like a cat choking on her mother's milk
Like a scar that heals and still exists
On our bodies like a curse
Like an air balloon that bursts in our chests
But doesn't **** us
And still the pain of our dying love
Is greater than all the ghastly metaphors
And we know we can't save it
So we have to let go of the dead fishes
We have to let go of the dead wishes

I create poetry
by the car crashed juxtaposition
of thought and language.

I create poetry via metaphor,
metonymy, a slight wit.

I create poetry by the
beating and bastardization
of word until the line
breaks just right.
It never truly does.

You create poetry
in your every movement.

You create poetry in the
interaction and absolution
you carry within every waking
moment.

You create poetry only
by opening your beautiful
eyes each morning as
the sun rises eagerly
to see you.

You create poetry.

This, my pale
imitation.

Leaning how to breathe
while still three thousand leagues under
the sea is a skill
I've learned is useful when you
need the air to say "I'm fine."

awkwardly,
you are now a secret subject I can't talk about,
because if anyone ever knew
- you are what inspires me -
they'd question my sanity