jesus and judas kissed in the garden
moments before the world caved in.
the gospel of judas says that
the betrayer was the most loved of all disciples,
that jesus took him aside and
taught him touched him laughed.
there are two sides to canon, history, myth:
someone somewhere at sometime
wanted a better story,
where the betrayer was held close
and favored, forgiven—
but the gospels all end the same.
the son is strung up for someone else's sins
as judas wastes alone in the garden.
intention is a matter of interpretation
but what is silver worth, really?

metaphor disintegrates
and you come to me in my dreams.
to love you after all of this
is apocryphal— tempting yet untrustworthy.
you're not judas,
i'm just a mortal man,
and there is no gnosis, no hidden knowledge,
only apocalyptic revelations now.
the world is irrevocable, just born.
i miss you in the same way
jesus met judas' eyes on the cross.
somewhere in a field of blood
or a forgotten library buried under the earth,
there is a better story.
over time only becoming more unknowable,
hopeful fragments turning to dust
in trembling hands.

not florescent but covered by a translucent screen,
my tense and aching frame washed in a  
dull desaturating blue glow.
streetlights speed past neurotic eyes,
like worries of friends i haven't spoken to,
and every awful thing i've ever
said to my mother.
i think of you, of course,
the way i catch my reflection
in the bus window:
a glimpse—terrified and fascinated.
i wring my hands,
a nervous habit when they're
feeling empty.
everything i want is
always at my door,
and everything i fear
is never far behind.
why won't anyone let me hold them
from halfway across the room?
stay sitting across the aisle,
as mysterious to me
as any other tired stranger.
i see you clearly
but can never tell what you're thinking.

callused hands over buzzing metal string,
fingers practiced, deft and adept.
i slept there and woke in a memory—
temporary and beautiful and gone.
a song someone played for me once,
over and done, the lone melody of a heartbroken nostalgia.

the past wraps its arms around me—
history speaks— history lies— history repeats.
keep it inhuman, abstract and formless.
best not to give the past a face
or a place to hide in your heart.
they're the parts you'll miss:
kisses, laughter, drowning in a borrowed sweater.
better to leave it all as loosely connected events,
portents of later misfortune, not a room i can't leave,
a grief grappling with the transience of intimacy.
history can't hurt me— the past is dead—
but that song still gets stuck in my head

I REACH OUT TO THE GREAT UNKOWN
with the natural hesitance of a child
nursed on plastic american protestantism,
always prosperity gospel or pariah,
answers just hidden behind a preacher's palm;
in retrospect i wonder what questions those
republican suburbanites crippled in their hatred
came to submit at the foot of the cross.
saccharine and soulless every sunday,
the rot reliably festering under the church stage,
brimstone traded for the wasteland of undecaying concrete.
i was baptized by a stranger in stagnant water,
now swaddled in the arms of a man who is not my Father.
i'm always the cold one. bad circulation when i'm turning away.
that abattoir left a pulsating wound at the
center of my chest— starved weeping
sickly and red.
every sunday, the worst thing i could do was be honest.
i worship with my hands,
i falter for words;
i never got to know the Lord in my youth
because He never called me back.
i find fragments of Him in lovers' eyes—
fingertips glancing over flesh as if
forbidden fruit, sweet real and warmed by sunlight.
i think God was always this;
physicality, connection,
the simple intimacy of making someone else laugh.
the only time i ever felt devout
was when i was walking to get an arizona tea
at the gas station next to the church with my friends.
stumbling over asphalt still sincere in my vulnerability.

if i play with your hair,
i just didn't know what
to do with my hands.
i'll write a poem and
try not to feel pathetic,
i'll keep hoping or
come to terms with
you not really caring
where this'll go.
storybook ending,
beat the odds,
or straight into a
brick wall. i don't know.
i'll kiss you goodnight
and wonder who
you dream about
when you close your eyes.
we all have ghosts
we want to love us.
naked skeletons in the closet
that our memories dress in skin.
seasons change,
flowers wilt,
lovers leave.
i feel so stupid
wishing that you wanted me.

you point out jupiter
in the sky, and i try not to
think about how cold i am.
my ears ring, it's just
angels singing,
i get drunk and act a fool.
i hope you don't know
that you've got me trapped
in your orbit. i hope
i never let you know.
maybe there's life,
but maybe it's just ice
all the way down.
i am simply one of
your many satellites,
caught in a storm's eye
and just trying to keep
my head on straight.
i think if i stood up
i would fall through the floor,
nothing but empty air
and the loyal orbit
of an inhospitable moon.
either way, the sun
is rather far but i know
you'd rather feel
its warmth than anything
anyone would find on europa.

is it too much to ask
for someone to look for me
when i run and hide?
but what i think of as love
would probably be
better phrased as hunting.
so, please, pursue,
rifle in hand,
pull me from my burrow;
at least i'd know you want me.
pretty as a picture -
strung up, throat slit -
anything's better than hiding,
better than a fear
best described as paralyzing.

all my life i told myself
that i would be free by now -
but the farther i went,
the less i knew.
maybe lost is worse than
suffocating,
or maybe i just
want my mom.
i thought i'd be more
complete by now -
but i don't feel ready for anything,
i just feel scared.

the scientists called it The Bomb,
capitalizing it like God.
is there anything more
surreal or divine than to
crush the world under your fist?
is there anything more human
than to ascend, abuse, destroy?
do you think they realized
what they'd done?

animal breaks Creation,
adam usurps Creator,
radioactive, reeling, resplendent -
i hope for a nuclear future;
not desolation, no horsemen,
but clean air, man-made Providence.
there's something beautiful about
evolving, becoming more than animal,
living past hope or good sense.
i am become god,
bringer of life;
i want to live to see the atom split,
not for death,
but for light.

drinking alone, smoking,
playing dead, overthinking,
a psyche made of bad habits
and a stomach that's always sinking.
this is the summer of silhouette,
laying in the shade, apathetic slumber,
the figure of a man in the background,
counting my ribs and fearing the number.
i go transparent in the sunset -
the sickness is tangible, apparent,
just as i knew, feared -
it's buried in my chest, inherent.
i can't get better when
it's just paper mache and cigarettes;
i pray and pray and pray
but no one's heard me yet.

full moon, nervous edge, sweat beads,
my lungs are bruised and beaten,
and my heart is made of bone.
why, pomegranates bleed,
sigh and remain uneaten,
calcify or rot alone.

i saw persephone cry
and all the angels alight,
stark and sad in burning flame.
a soft weeping right nearby,
holy fires of the night,
and i swear i heard my name.

possession requires a host,
but i couldn't catch my breath
stumbling through the graveyard.
i don't believe in ghosts,
but the awesome fear of death
caught me lonely and off guard.

i will try to describe it:
in the face of this feeling,
your guts are on the table,
your insides exposed, moonlit,
mine were cold and revealing,
dead, skeletal, and mangled.

i get so lost in tomorrow
i keep forgetting
this is exactly what i wanted.
i become myself and become myself
til i blister -
it hurts but it's me.
i shed my skin, bite my tail,
and never learn.
i dig my nails under my face and
chase something i'll never earn.

sunsets ripple across southern skies
like skipping stones across a pond.
i'm thinking about how we all die.
what will nothing feel like?
what did it feel like before?
i catch myself guessing -
the void and cold conjurings of a
scared temporary consciousness.
loneliness beckons and repulses me
in equal measures, existential inquiries
painting me into nihilistic corners.
is this just some brief gift?
i hem and haw and waste the light,
i become the universe i fear,
endlessly eating my thoughts,
embodying entropy as i gasp for air.

I-20's sparkling something special as
summer glares through my windshield.
my white knuckled grip is off season
but it's wrapped around my only stability:
the jerky steering wheel of a car that
needs its tires aligned.
the air smells like ripening southern summer and humidity drips like fruit juice down my brow. the sun pours into green eyes, sets them pale against the sclera.
i can't see what's directly in front of me,
but what's new.
windows down, eighty miles an hour
out of atlanta. i'm alone but even i'm pretending these tears are sweat.
i don't know where i'm going, i never have.
i just drive forward on the hot asphalt
and hope my tires will melt
and the clouds will part
and someone will make sense of it all.
summer was always her favorite season
but i guess that's just another reason
to want it over.

i've been waking up to desaturation all my life.
i don't know why but i've been
rolling over in the same grey-skinned body,
opening shoddy eyes, heart heavy
as a hangover. i climb into your chevy with
it in my hands. i know this is the fifth time i've lit
a cigarette since i quit, but my lungs needed the ash.
did you know, in a car crash, just one person
not wearing a seatbelt would worsen the casualties?
so if you see the casual ease with which i bare my chest,
know that the carnage of my reckless form,
hail in a storm of steel and violence, at least felt sorry.
the starry dark of a backroad, an explosion of light,
a bright metal supernova and colors even my eyes can't doubt;
we'll all find out exactly how heavy my guilt
is when the body sorrow built ascends through the windshield.

man seeking woman. man seeking what never was. man seeking a face he recognized in the crowd.

i was him. you were reaching out and i flinched. you offered, you vivisected yourself to prove devotion and bled—you didn't understand why i was bandaging and not climbing into your open heart. the crowd dispersed from the pews and i learned to love in bloodletting. we were bleeding for three years, taking our turns to patch and open wounds.

anemic on idolatry, we bled on the altar we built. sacrificial lambs unto ourselves—at some point the ritual is more important than the outcome. you always tell me you're dying for my sins but i always seem to end up on the cross.

man seeking the belief. man seeking the almost. man seeking the stability of a wound that never heals. man seeking what could've been, man seeking to reach out and grab hold and find warmth in skin instead of sacrifice.

i don't believe in soulmates,
but i think we came close.
skin to skin, i read your palm,
but how was i supposed to know?

what do you do when your red string
gets caught in the door?
i never could untangle it,
and i didn't know how to be loved by you anymore.

i ask constellations how you're doing
and dodge your calls.
in the summer, you'll trace my palms
and we'll defy stars as trivial.

there's always something about good things i want to ruin.
there's no version where orpheus doesn't turn around.
it's not so much precognizance but
digging up the same old burial ground.

it's not so much what you read
in between freckles and lines, but the sense
of connection, a familiarity of skin on skin
and a practiced willingness to drop the pretense.

breathe in incense smoke—
swirling carcinogen,
but not my favorite.
not by far, not when
bruised lungs run in the family.
smolder, smoke, ash, original sin,
a debt i am going to make you watch
me pay. i'm always playing the victim.
i read seduction, i breathe in incense,
to maintain an innocence
i never had. it just feels so religious to self-flagellate.
i speak in tongues and don't make sense,
i try to trace myself through the guilt,
and envy jesus.
at least he had
the nails as reference.
how many times you've done this before
is about the only difference
between being a martyr and deserving it.

i see myself -
unshaven and distraught, at peace with who i am and despaired by a world i saw coming but couldn't prepare for.
i see myself -
sitting in the old house, civil war ghosts whispering through the cracks in the dry red clay. sherman burned this town once and now i get to watch the sun do it again.
i see myself -
the hedges are overgrown and i never stopped smoking cigarettes. the shadows on the walls are mapped out, a mimicry of life in an empty heirloom.
i see myself -
head in my hands thinking about history. The Last Gilded Age. The Second Gilded Age. what good are comparisons if no one's left to draw them? how does the past make room in a world already strangled by its present?
i choke back -
the same addiction that made geraldine shoot herself. it occurs to me that i am probably the last person alive to remember geraldine ever existed. i think that's what drew me to history - i've always had the past living inside me. there's a whole family tree intertwined with my ribcage, like kudzu over tarred lungs.
i fill my -
flask with weedkiller. i inherit an open wound. i try to find my place in a history that no one will ever read.

i am trying to come to terms
with gravity
as i fall toward the floor
with the awareness of the your
face framed in the hall door.
that's an exaggeration—
there's a certain inaccuracy
in conversations about bodies,
personal and celestial, revolutions one around the other,
that is unavoidable due to limitations
of the form. so i like to be precise
where it can fit in between the
cumbersome dances we do.
i'm not falling toward the floor
but i might as well be. i can't tell you that.
what's wrong you ask again
but something i read about planets
is that they're much farther apart than the human mind
can even conceptualize. that most of space is empty
and cold as we dare to spin through it.
i'm thinking of the audacity of revolutions
and you just wanna know why i'm so sad.
i think about bodies. sinew and joints and the red
****** meatstuff that fills in the places in between.
a heart pumping blood and a mouth that refuses to admit it.
about the physicality, the weight of it sinking
into beds that aren't mine, bodies that aren't mine.
you're not standing in the doorway anymore, no one
stands in doorways forever. especially not
for someone who refuses ownership
of the space taken up by their own body. constellations
are outlines of disparate points someone tried to find a
story in. i'm not much better.
i think of heavenly bodies, i think of stars
but they don't tell me anything
i wasn't trying to deal with already.

i think what i'm trying to say is that
i wanna know what hand you write with.
that's what i'm interested in,
right, left, maybe even ambidextrous—
show me your birthmarks, and the
little scar you got when you were a kid.
there's a story in your body, on your skin,
and i want to listen to you tell it,
running my fingertips across your freckles
as if i were blind.

anything is possible. i don't mean this in a good way.

will you look at me while i'm talking?
not like that.
i know you are.
i want you to see me. i want you to keep up.

i could go completely ******* crazy.
i could never speak to any of my friends ever again.
i could join a fundamentalist christian cult.
i could drop out of college.
i could look into the mirror and see my own eyes reflected back to me, or gouge them out to be free of the burden. i could do anything, but it's all a matter of actualization.

you have to know what you're looking for
before you go out to find it.
the story the eyes try to sell you is always leaving something out.
you want this to be easy. you want the mirror to have a purpose.
don't we all?
you want to know what you want, but we are all stumbling blindly through this desert.
alone despite being inches from one another.
i'll try not to get too cocky,
because the only difference between you and me
is concept, language;
life is a whole other beast to cage.

don't get too hung up on definitions.
definitions are for law. this is poetry.
this is me building a mirror just to break it.
it's funny, how that always turns out.
realized desires are boring.
we get what we want
and we break it.
every mirror shatters in the end
and we all die a solipsist,
wanting and narcissistic.

at what point
in human evolution
did we earn
a benevolent god?

did the phytoplankton
get a god?
the apes?
who is the deer praying to
when it finds out
in the end, heaven and headlight coalesce—
libation hits the tar and we know
it’s all we’ll ever leave behind.

maybe
the definition of humanity begins
at the simple hope
of all this work
being worth something.

let's say atlas' body is full of birds
and when he is crushed to death
they will escape
free and resplendent
let's say i am atlas and
you are the face in the mirror
let's say atlas is screaming and
crying and begging
but you are silent and
your face is unmoving
atlas' mother gets that
worried look on her face
and the part of atlas that
still loves himself
is trying to get him to
just put it all down for a second
let's say atlas is smoking
a cigarette
let's say atlas' rib cage
is cracking under the pressure
and it's worth pointing out
that no one will notice
atlas is gone
until the world starts falling down
around his body

what does it say about me
that i think hunger
is what angels sound like?
lineless and with great aching.
and what does it say about me
that i feel like i could
just pull my pelvis bone
from my hip
and watch it
crumble in my hands?
i couldn't sleep so i
traced my bones,
i couldn't sleep so i
felt my gums,
(my skins got a great story that
no onell ever read
fitting, i guess -
i've yet to be anything but
wasted potential.)
but,
despite everything,
there is something comforting
about the lie of a body.
something human in me yet.
what do i want the answer to be
when i feel my chest
and wonder where
my ribs came from?
it was an early lesson that
one must give up ribs
to be worthy of love.

DO NOT BE AFRAID
there is something so
evangelical about fear.
i was raised to be afraid -
it was implicit from my first sunday school and
my first crush and
my first real haircut.
there is a certain desperation bred in youth groups
in local church attics,
in big auditoriums
with looming, radiant stage lights.
perpetual guilt -
perpetual repentance -
perpetual fear.
                                                                ­                                  SACRAMENT
did i think that
baptism would make me feel more loved?
well, that’s between me
and the Good Lord Himself.
but i will tell you
the water was cold and
my father cried.
i received a necklace from
my grandmother and  i
haven’t seen it in years.
fear doesn’t drown in cold water.
it crystallizes, it burns.
                                                                ­                                    EUCHARIST
if my mouth tastes like blood,
let’s blame transubstantiation.
if my skin doesn’t fit right,
let’s blame God’s want for the process of creation.
if my heart wears it self thin at the thought of judgement - Death - finality,
let’s blame my Protestant upbringing.
how avoidant am i -
blaming Martin Luther himself
for a menagerie of ****** Georgia churches.
                                                                             THE BODY AND BLOOD
christ, you people want
to take everything from me.
i can’t go to another easter service
as your daughter.
i never could.
you never seem to realize what
exactly you want from me.
don’t look at me like that -
like this is a resurrection.
i was never crucified. i never died.
it’s no comet, either, though,
i can tell by your face.
this isn’t easter, it’s
a funeral service.
i’m sorry i can’t come
back to life for you.
but what you think is living and
what i think is living are two very different things.
do you know what it feels like when
your own mother thinks you’re
going to hell?
                                                                ­                           CONSECRATION
i’m sorry i can’t cry
holy water anymore.
but there are good things in becoming.
i remind myself that there is progress- growth -
in transformation.
but i never really liked wine,
anyways.
                                                                ­                                               AMEN

i've always written poetry
with the passion of a preacher to sermon.
i experience for literature feelings
which i imagine others to offer religion.

i've never been spiritual.
full stop.
my cynicism denies me wonders -
tired tale, sure, true as any other,

but poetry evokes the holy ghost
a being more skillful, more elegant,
setting my mind's eye alight with
saintly delusions of grandeur

it curls from my pen, bleeding fire into my notebook
if there is Elysium, it is in
the private Eden created between
my mind and my notebook.

if there is peace, it is in libraries,
eyes poring over words pouring over
life, utterly human life, told in a
way that is raw and violent and righteous,
connecting one's private introspections to words.

if religion has a purpose,
a redeeming quality, it is
community, connection, consistency.
God Is Always and Always Has Been and Always Will Be.

the great human collective,
the experience of poetry, of life,
the art of internal monologue,
it persists. it persists.

no, i am not spiritual -
it does a disservice to us.
it unjustly ignores the
holy human hand in our history

time is a chronicle of the messy
affairs of human choice and experience .
it seems unfair to me,
to pin all the blame on a

convenient
divine
deux ex machina
slash
scapegoat.

don't give the big guy all the credit!
the exhausted masses had a hand too!
take some responsibility for
humanity's divine man-made persistence!

so, yes, i experience poetry
with the rapturous fascination
as sinner to saint -
yet there is no sin in poetry.

by nature it is a
narcissist's and hedonist's pass time.
so there is only wonder
and childlike curiosity,
and the slightest sliver of hope to move forward,
which, really,
what else is religion good for anyways?

sometimes i'm afraid people don't like me.
it's my whole problem actually,
that i so desperately want to be liked by people.
i take myself and i scream at it,
i throw plates and vases at myself,
i tell myself to go hide under the bed and stay there,
and all im left with is the rest of me.
i try to pick those bits up,
sew them together
recycle and refurbish, blow the dust off a little,
and i create something that is totally inhuman.
a creature that moves on inorganic beats,
that stumbles and falls right down the
slippery ***** of uncanny valley,
that talks too much,
smiles too much,
apologizes too much.
it's not fake,
it's me,
just, not any of the parts i like.
it's more palatable, i guess,
but it never goes any deeper.
that's really all i try to be.
palatable.
a real people pleaser.
i take all the jagged edges of my person,
and iron them out until it's more
appealing than the next
hottest number one billboard single,
but the critics hark it all the same,
because generic niceties only
really get you so far.
so you either have to push a little,
give the universe a little shove,
remind it you still exist,
or let yourself get folded up
as you cave and cave
and cave again,
never asserting,
always acceding,
because of that
deep-seeded hatred you
harbor, towards the one person
you could never forgive for as long
as tried, towards your oldest friend:
yourself,
the pathetic ******* that looks back at you from every mirror, from every picture, every poem.
so you cant be them,
because no matter how much you try to make amends, befriend
yourself
you always end up
disappointed.
so you burn the bridges
you tried to build
and create a monster,
an amalgamation of every
polite smile and fake laugh
you've seen, gathered,
like youre playing
customer service
your entire life,
and you scare off everyone anyways,
because there's not a script,
there's no rehearsal,
nobody's running their lines,
they're living their lives,
and you parrot back all the
lessons you've learned from the
acting school of social osmosis
and it comes out wrong and ill-timed,
and while they don't hate you
you just don't vibe,
and you repeat this process
for the rest of your life.
and why do you do this?
no really,
why do you do this?
i wish i could be softer,
not ironed around the edges,
all cauterized and raw,
but more blurry,
a gentler sort of person,
fuzzy and less uptight.
it's a me i think i could be,
if i just were able to take a walk with
me,
let him explain himself,
learn to value him
more than i value
people's perceptions of who i am.
he'd tell me to relax, stop being such a
control freak.
but at this point i would uncomfortable
and i'd say
well, you're such a hypocrite
oh look at mister high and mighty,
calling me a freak
listen, i may be miserable
but at least i'm not you.
my pride gets in the way,
(everyone always says i'm stubborn)
and i cant accept
that one pill i won't swallow:
"be less afraid."

"you're kind of a a *****", he says, kicking a rock with his shoe.

"big talk coming from you," i respond, my shoe scuffling in the dirt, "at least i don't wear stupid t-shirts."

it's all i got. i don't have much in my arsenal toward this kid, no matter how much i want to hate him. he walks a little bit ahead of me on the path. he talks a little bit too loud. the messy brown curls falling down his back need to be brushed.
"you should brush your hair more," i tell him, and he laughs, but it quickly falls into an overly-exaggerated annoyed groan.

"you're gonna hate hearing this," he laughs again, quieter this time, "but you sound exactly like my mom. our mom."

"you should be nicer to her, too," i say.

"you should be nicer to her, actually," he says, rolling his eyes, "because i can already tell you're not much better."

i laugh at that. i wasn't expecting him to be so sassy.

he turns to look at me. my face, a young, chubby face, awkward with buck teeth and pale skin.

"why do i laugh less?" he asks, "in the future, i mean." he's stopped walking, to look fully at me, awaiting an answer, expectant.

"i don't know," i genuinely don't, "you just get sadder. not like, sadder in a bad way, because you know you're not as sad as you used to be, and you know that you're doing great and it's all there and you should just be happy but you can see all the way you have left to go, but you already walked the whole way here, and you're... tired. you're just a lot more tired."

"oh," he says, before frowning and turning back around, "alright."

we emerge from the forest and walk toward the gas station.

the young girl buys a can of arizona tea and walks back to church, where his youth group is.

the young girl pays for his gas and goes back to his car.

i never bought the whole dark academia thing.
sure, ****** and drugs and *** are torrid and dark when you're from a rich family,
when you've never woken up to the news of your childhood best friend being shot to death,
when you haven't seen your family and friends fall into the seductive cesspool of opioid addiction,
when half of your class was pregnant by the time senior year rolled around.
the academic upper class thinks what working class kids go through is sexier when the backdrop of the overdose is chandeliers and silk,
instead of a small town parking lot at 3am.
my aesthetic reality of academia is scholarships, it's leather jackets and nicotine addictions
it's having the only fifteen-year-old car in the campus parking lot and hoping to find a plug before the first week of classes.
it's not sleeping between work and class and partying. it's being the only one whose dad isn't buddies with the guy giving me an internship.
it's lonely. it's the crippling loneliness of not understanding upper class social cues,
it's reading crime and punishment in the slivers of time between work and work and class and more work
and emphasizing with raskalnikov so much it makes your teeth ache.
it's coughing up blood.
it's having health insurance for the first time in college and still not using it.
it's drowning, it's fighting, it's violent and heroic and painful and
never knowing
if you'll actually
make it.

i've kept every
sticky note,
letter,
mindless, simple gift
ever given to me by a friend.
every memory,
from valentine's day cards to ticket stubs.
i'm a hoarder, but of a very specific breed:
a scrapbook's worth of paper with no home and no purpose.
more akin to an archivist for no one.
i started crying yesterday
because i couldn't find my
memory box,
the shoebox i've stuffed all of my
sentimental nothing into.
i still can't find it.
i'm afraid someone threw it away.
(the box is full of letters and notes from my friends, starting from 8th grade. i go off to college in a week.)
but if that someone saw it as trash, they were probably right.
i have old letters from people i haven't talked to in years, that hate me now,
all crammed in this little shoebox
because i could never bring myself to throw them away.
my own personal museum of all the relationships i've let die of starvation,
hung taxidermic and pointless
within the walls of my heart and
cluttering the floors of my room.
exhibit a:
when i broke up with my first girlfriend,
i opened my memory box and burned the letters she'd given me.
but,
i went through them first
so i could keep the ones i couldn't bear to get rid of.
i'm a hoarder. i latch onto every crumb of affection i've ever been given and never throw it away.
wouldn't you?
exhibit b:
i was an angry child
i am an angry adult
i have spent my life roaming the desert of a lonely god,
and finding people willing to love me is a long and empty walk from one
oasis to another,
with nothing to show for it
but a shrine made up of
immortal-dead remnants of
every person i've ever known.
i have been alone before
and i never know if i'll be alone again.
experience hath granted me the wisdom
to hold onto, dig my claws into what is not guaranteed.
so yes, i am a hoarder,
and, exhibit c:
one day i will die alone
surrounded by garbage and words that some person out in the world doesn't even remember writing,
and i won't be able to bring it with me
into the black abyss of wherever else
and they will clean out my house
after i am dead
and throw it all away.
but for now
i'll keep looking for my memory box,
because it's gotta be around here somewhere.
i really do hope
it's around here somewhere.

you have a tattoo on your left arm
that i have never seen before.
and now i know that i will never
get to ask about it.
two teenagers found dead
shot to death in a car.
you followed me on instagram
a few years ago.
and i, knowing we haven’t
talked in years, thought i should reach out.
nothing would be different if i had,
but
i’m still thinking about it.
we probably would’ve talked for
a day, maybe two,
small talk, i would've learned how you’ve
changed.
but i never said hello
because you were so different,
and i didn't know what to say
and i thought i would always
be able to ask.
when we were kids
we used to sit outside in your garage and play dolls.
we prank-called my brother’s friends on his old phone.
your birthday party is still the only time i’ve ever been to six flags.
you told me that when the sun is out and it starts raining
they say it's the devil beating his wife.
and now i’m grieving in a way that’s more
nostalgic than sad,
because 18 is far too young to die
and i just wish i would’ve asked you how you’ve been.

It’s not an art museum,
it’s a Waffle House,
and you’re looking sleepy
as you sip your tea.
It’s three a.m. and
I know we still have a few more miles until my house,
but I’m home and you know it.
I’m ripping up a napkin with my
hands as we talk about the concert.
I know I enjoyed it more than you,
and I know I cried on the way home
because I thought you didn’t love me,
but you still came to the concert
even though you didn’t really like the artist,
and now we’re at a Waffle House at three a.m.,
and the garish yellow decor reflects on your skin,
and we’re sweaty and tired,
and I love you in the rare, inexpressible way
that feels most potent
after concerts at Waffle Houses at three a.m.

I am afraid of everyone I know.
I did not evolve with any of you.
It’s a party but I’m
a deer in the headlights,
and I'm trying to have fun,
but I am scared of everyone there.
I got very drunk,
and told a friend that
I didn't trust anybody.
Why did I tell him?
Everyone’s out to get me.
Hm, no, that’s not how it feels;
everyone could be out to get me one day,
and every word out of my mouth
is another knife in their arsenal, or my stomach,
because I am a revolting mass of skin and sinew
and everything is something to hold against me.
I think one day I will be
the ****** that will not leave the house.
It’s like the original “Little Mermaid”,
every step on dry land-
every step out of my home-
is another step of agony,
and one day, when I have had enough
of this miserable existence,
I will turn on the stove
and dissolve into the sea.

i ate a four-leaf clover and
consumed its luck, which died in me.
i lied in the quick, quiet field,
killing the grass,
looking to set myself free.
i drank and i drank
from every river, every creek,
my thirst unsatisfied until it had every sea.
my touch burned down forests,
my glance slaughtered meadows,
when climbing and looking for everything, anything,
i killed every tree.

in my quest for satisfaction,
i murdered the sky,
and yet nowhere have i found the fulfillment
i believe key.
thus, starved for complacency,
i continue my fruitless killing spree.

in ninth grade i came to school
everyday
with cigarette smoke
embedded in my clothes
i wanted so badly for
someone, anyone
to ask why i smelled like
a cancer ward.

i would write poetry
about how much i hated myself
thinking it would mean
anything to anybody
all the sharp parts of
my body condensed
into shot glasses
overflowing and draining at the same time
the chipped parts leaking *****
onto my bedroom floor
that i'm afraid
my mom will smell

when i was a preteen
i promised myself,
a pact only i can legitimize,
that if i wasn't happy by 18
i would **** myself.
i am a breath away from that
moment
within arm's reach of the
edge of something--
whether it's a
swimming pool's side
or a cliff's face
is up to me i guess.

here's the thing no one
told me about life:
nobody notices your pain
no matter how much you want
them to,
and if they do
they do it wrong.
you won't be able to find
the words in the
moment they ask.
you'll freeze up
and your only language will be
cigarettes
blood stains
and a faint smell of *****.
it will seem romantic at the time
but it is really, really not.

all it does is hurt and hurt
and hurt and hurt.
you will be scared when
she notices the blood
on your thighs/hands/heart
and the black in your
lungs/soul
and you will cry. it will hurt.

but hey,
so does everything else.

and if there's
anything i've learned
by now, at the
precipice of 18,
it's that
cigarette smoke,
the blood and *****,
the black;
it all comes out in the wash.

question: why didn't you turn your work in?
                 answer: being alive and having to function as a human being day after day is an exhausting and unsustainable exercise that i don't know if i can continue forever.
                 answer: i get so depressed that i can't move, can't do anything but wallow in my own revolting, pathetic self-pity.
                 answer: there are messages on my phone, friends trying to reach me, wanting to know how i am. the thought of replying to or looking at them fills me with dread.
                 answer: i've been thinking about entropy and the eventual, inevitable end of the universe. one day, on a scale that none of us can even comprehend, everything will be nothing and time will be meaningless. human civilization, all of our monuments and cities and societies, will be gone, with no one and nothing left to remember them. every act of cruelty and of kindness, any anger or joy or sadness ever experienced will mean nothing when us and all of our everything will be returned to the dust from whence we came. it's more than me contemplating my own morality, it's me trying to come to terms with the futility of the human experience. sometimes i get so overwhelmed with this sort of inconsolable nihilism i can't sleep.
                answer: i'm scared and i'm tired.
                answer: sometimes
                answer: i wish
                answer: i was
                answer: anywhere
                answer: but
                answer: here.
answer, spoken: i don't know. can i give it to you tommorow?

This is the world we live in
This is the world we end in
We'll end with it,
And it with us,
The absolute of nothingness.

This is the only comfort
I can offer you.
The finality of it all.
And, you know, these days,
Comforts are few.

When the world is burning,
and retribution is coming.
Those four men and all their horses
Barely held behind the gate.
Soon, there will be no wants to fulfill
Or desires to sate. Just nothing and ruin and what is left of our undoing.

The end is coming, but
That's alright. The fires
Persist beyond our door.
These are the only comforts
I can offer you:
Knowledge of the eventual end
And arms you can rest in
Til we both undo.

So, can we sleep while the world ends?
The distant sounds of grief
Have not yet reached our window.
Just hold me close, and I will, you
Though the world's set alight
I'll rest easy in your arms tonight.
In bed, embraced.
As the fires rage.

This is how the world ends:
Not with a bang,
But with a kiss goodnight,
With a soft "I love you,"
And a pause;
An eventual, whispered "I love you too."

And when the end comes,
Garishly and unkind
We'll sleep through it,
Peacefully and sublime.

my chest is an aviary,
hundreds of caged birds
flutter and shudder and whistle
soft songs and incomprehensible words.

my ribs as bars,
and my heart as feed,
and the birds all hum,
and we all have needs,

including birds, including me,
digging my hands, into my chest,
they peck at me, my insides,
to rip me open, we try our bests--

i scream and writhe and cry and whine--
i tear and pull and carve and break--
they sing and sing and sing and sing--
half-gored, i give in, stop, shake--

an albatross in my chest cavity,
the canaries' screaming pitch remains,
the robins and bluejays and wrens and larks,
all choir my unending pain.

i want to be free of them,
and them, of me,
but my ribs are bars, and my heart is feed,
and in my chest they will always be.

Alienate my body and mind,
commodify my core;
Is my existence
a means to a profit?
The 21st century's commercial *****.

My labor is not mine,
my art is not mine;
Everything I create
liscensed and taken,
another addition to a capitalist's shrine.

I understand the poached animal:
Ripped apart,
skin and teeth hung for all to see,
and then, admired for its beauty.

the train running by the baseball field,
looking around in wonder at the great sound—
(does it count as **** if he was barely a man at sixteen?)

my first birthday, giggling senselessly
covered in blue cookie monster cake—
(does he remember it as vividly and as vaguely as i do?)

my brother smiling and wrestling with me,
us both the perfect picture of idyllic youth—
(would any of them believe me if i told them how my cousin lured me into the bathroom, the perfect picture of youth still innocent—)

in the cul-de-sac, learning how to ride my bike, pink and sparkly with purple tassels hanging from the handlebars—
(does it torment him?)

falling asleep in the backseat, surrounded by my family, amber streetlight lulling me into a peaceful child’s slumber—
(does he get off to it?)

holding my breath as my brothers, laughing, dunked me underwater—
(he has a son now, will he ruin him like he ruined me?)

lungs screaming as i’m held underwater by my older brothers—
(does he realize how he’s ruined me?)

my child-like amazement at the world—
(molested by an almost-man, a boy who still has me utterly powerless in his grasp)

(does he get off to it?)
(does it ruin him?)—
(i can’t breathe)

i am held down in her grasp and i can’t breathe, knowing that my special moment saved for someone i love has been stolen from me by the almost-man, i can’t breathe because i know i’ll never have it back—
(i can’t breathe—)

my mother scolding my brothers and them releasing me, my tender face breaking the surface of the water and gasping down the air that had been stolen from me.
(and yet i am ever-choking on a phantom pain from six-years-old)

The sunset's light bathes me like the christening I never received as a baby,
when my flesh was still new and still soft and still;
when the first pulses of pain had not yet rang through my tender heart;
when the first rays of sun had not yet wrinkled my mother's skin;
when the thrumming, buzzing world around me had not yet made my small hands shaky.

I feel the light wash over me but I am blinded by the glare,
my impromptu baptism ending as the sun Himself realizes I am far too gone for any semblance of redemption.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty, I know; perhaps if my parents then saw me ******,
saw me now, every dispicable thing about me now,
they would've pushed me under the water as a child, said a prayer and held me there.

I turn the shower setting to the highest it can be,
presenting myself skin bared to the Devil or God, whoever listens best;
hoping that my flesh will fall off and with it all that I've done and do,
leaving me red and hurt but reborn, a fresh heart pumping in my chest.

Prayers unaswered, I crawl from the shower nothing but aching.
The weight of life a still a noose looped and drawn tight around my neck,
skin on fire but sapped of all my fight;
red and hurt but never anew, still nothing but the same, ever-repeating shell of a wreck.

My resolve gave way under the burden of her touch.
The walls meant to protect me from heartbreak twice over
must've come from Jericho, the way they cracked and crumbled
around me, sending me tumbling unprepared into feeling once more.

Rubble remains however;
the fear innate within me makes itself known,
doubts following my heart wherever it dare go.
I can't help but think: when the walls of Jericho fell,
how many died from suffocation alone?

My asphyxiated heart beats with this anxiety, telling me
I am to suffer the common human millstone.
I am doomed to love too much yet never enough.
The tragic truth of my heart, burdened to be so easily let go.

i have to drown
a necessary reprieve, a last chance to truly breathe--
escaping that living crown
so fitfully placed upon my head

i've always preferred the dull gray
the drab of concrete always more appealing than gold
i sole my shoes with it, wrap it around my neck
looking at my sadness reflected by this watery mirror

history repeats itself
the mirrored melancholy of her and i
two corpses having a tea party
at the bottom of river ouse

fate's meddling red noose has found me again
wrapped, warped me into your life
and i am far too light for my neck to snap
by my oh my do i choke and writhe

and i laugh with a mouth full of blood and bile
as i gasp for comic relief that will never come
i believed it might be different
lured in by the crimson rope's beating drum

the joke's on me
gallows humor of a certain sort
the punchline hits me in the gut
and i ***** on fate's high court

to be loved more than one can comprehend
to be loved but feel so empty
to be loved but feel so lonely
to be loved
to be loved

the joke's on me

my head feels funny so i thought i'd write
a sonnet in an attempt to get sleep
tired eyes meet heavy thoughts meet long nights
lonely hours breed thoughts of hearts sworn to keep

why do these thoughts always come back to you?
oh, all the things i would give to forget
me swearing to you my love and time too
when do promises become cursed debt?

maybe i am not the best with my words
i have a disposition to sadness
does that mean you can cut my heart in thirds?
tearing me apart in your cruel madness?

though still confused, i'm glad you ****** off
though i'm without sleep, i am moving on
we were volatile, a **** molotov
now i can move peacefully into dawn

though lacking you, it is still a new day
i would not have it any other way

i followed you through hell
but you would not acknowledge me
you would not speak to me
you would not look at me

i followed you through flame
through devils and demons
all in the name of being saved
but you would not look at me

we were at the doors
and i, the fool
i, the fool, had thought we'd make it
and you had not looked at me

for the first time, you turned your head
foolish eyes met foolish eyes
i vanished at the doors of hopeful sun;
you had looked at me

just to check

He is who i think of after any ****** encounter
He is the ***** feeling under my skin

it is Him that i think of
it is Him that holds my innocence hostage
i ache knowing He stole my special moment
He took from me what was supposed to go to someone i love

He is the bitter taste on my tongue after i call someone "baby"
He is the terrifying ****** thoughts i have
He is the fear i feel when i'm in a room alone with a man

He is the fear.