How do you
silence
your
demons?

"I'm always right" was what I always told her
The first time we went to a party, full of drunk adolescents
playing with the idea of adulthood,
I said nothing would go wrong,
I was always right.
We ran through the trees when the sirens sounded.
I gushed to her about a boy who was handsome and perfect and such a gentlemen,
She frowned and sighed
"He's no good for you, he'll hurt you" she said.
I waved her off, irritated that she couldn't see it.
She held me six months later as I bawled on her floor,
Showing off bruise that were scattered on my skin
like butterflies and told her about the other girls.
I giggled while balancing a joint between my fingers, unable to focus on her face
"It'll only be this once," I insisted, "It won't become an addiction."
By junior year I was still smoking.
She fretted over me during my dizzying spirals of depression,
I told her
"It's just a bad day, I'm just in a phase."
As I sat in her bathtub as she carefully bandaged my arms,
I whispered "You're always right."
I watched as my best friend began to cry for the first time in ten years.

beware when you fall in love
with an artist
be it a painter, a singer, or poet

for the artist will
paint you
with strokes and hues
in shapes of every kind

sing about you
with heartbreak lyrics
and feelings which rhyme

write about you
with the simplest words
and a secret message she wants to say

beware of the artist,
and her love
one wrong move
and you're an artwork in her display

I just want to lose myself
In a dance
With a bottle
In my hands
And a boy
On my hips.

But really
fighting for peace
is like
******* for virginity

Sometimes,
it will be like this
a stranger’s eyes
will meet your gaze
and your world tips sideways
as you lurch
in the dark galaxy of their stare
and in that tumbling dive
the unwinding of every sacred vow
and every promised virtue
as you give yourself willingly
to the brooding ocean of their eyes.

Whether there will be ecstasies
is of no consequence.
The undoing is its own reward.
You long for the licking leaves
of flame about your feet
and bless the unknown fire
for consuming all the ****** dullness
of your prosaic life.