Rhythm of life
Nails tapping on table tops
Beating of our hearts
spin the world right off its axis.
Momma shot a man in Reno
Just to watch him die.
Atlas shrugged
And we all tripped as we walked
The pace of our mile,
off by 3.6 seconds.

Trust in our stated axioms
Disillusioned Americans in Paris
Judged by the color of our skins
and the shoes on our feet
No one stops to see how blue it is up there today.
Hurrying through the rain
Our cities never sleep.
Going down South
It’s slower down here.
Sunday’s best and
“God Loves You” stickers when you get your oil changed.

Night train whistle blows
Factory steam pipes squeal
Mississippi riverboats tug and chug
Dictionary.com definitions let us down.
Greatest disasters in history
are when thing we take perfectly for granted
stop working.
Mad cow, mad hatter, mad world
Bad boys, bad wine, bad date
Ellipses, dot dot dots, dramatic pause, passing of time passing of time passing of….
……..
………….
…………………….
Time.

Tw—
Twi—
Twitch.                       (tick tick tick)

I believe in the abnormal
And the impossible
And I refuse to believe that fictional characters aren’t real
Animals completely understand me
When I talk to them.

Baby missiles fire
From all parts of the globe
End of the world party
Let’s go down in glorious drunkenness
As the beating of our hearts
Spins the world right off its axis.

Storage for things I need but not right now.
Can I put my love there?

It's something I will not put away forever.
I'm proud of the mistakes I've made and the glory of love I've lived and died with.
But there's a time to carry my love with me--right next to me--
And a time to store it in the overhead cabin.

I'm a function of 21st Century pragmatism:
Where you don't have to put love away,
you can travel with it.
As your carry-on.

And as I make this decision
to stow my love away
Three feet above my head
I know one day
someday
My love will be sitting right next to me
as we take to the skies.

Inhale. Hold. Submerge.
This is all the grandest illusion
that’s one disappointment away from shattering.
Take a deep breath
feel the pain in your chest.

Every night
I drown in a wine glass
Dive off the ledge with such fever and ferocity,
The splash of a cannonball--
No high marks from the judges.

When you look at me,
I know now it’s irreverent.
We are a lie.
In the deep end, where I can’t touch anymore.

Time to wash away this sin
Hurt doesn't go,
It just lingers
Like our ghosts, lurking behind closed doors.
I can’t be rid of you
Because I don’t want to be.
Go on,
Haunt me until the end.

But I know
You cannot swim
so for now,
I'll sink further and further
into wine so dark
I disappear.

Your love is like Guinness.
Black.
Hard to see through.
Heavy.
and tasty.

And if I have too much
really
really
Bad for me.

This is one American that drops beats, not bombs
This is one American that admits when she’s wrong.
But an ocean doesn’t divide us
Only you divide us
With your words for labels that say what’s you, not me
Your stereotypes are gunna be the death of me
You’re killing me with these close-minded philosophies
And Who the hell ever said you were the referee of me?

We gotta spend less time sneering and swearing
We gotta spend less time jeering and tearing

You should never have to defend when you love
You should never have to defend why you love
You should never have to defend who you love

We are all created equal;
That’s the condition of the receiver
And we are all the receivers
But some keep spewing that hate; those hate-believers

But we don’t accept their judgment upon us
We gotta rise up out of adversity placed on us

Some out there will go to their graves justifying
Committing acts based on fear is nothing but mortifying
And I’m gunna be truthful; I’m not even lying
When your preach your *******, the human race is dying.

You see United this house stands strong
Every new hand we hold pushes us along
Every brick makes us higher
Acceptance makes us flyer

Gotta keep hate out of your heart
And maybe then we’ll get to start
To come together
To love one another
And to be free like it is intended
Maybe then the human race will be mended
Maybe then this bad movie will get a better sequel
Maybe then we’ll realize We are all created equal.

I want to stop it all
To go into a free-for-all
To rip those signs apart
To take that hate from that heart
All I can do is spread the word on love
And hope to God that will be enough
All I can do is be me and let you be you
All I can do is all I can do
But together we can appreciate
That all together we can officiate
Love that knows no bounds
That type of harmony with unreal sounds.

We may measure success by what’s published
We may measure it by what’s re-said
By how much money we make
By the course that we take
But one thing I know that will bring us deliverance
All that matters is that one voice that says
You make a ******* difference.

When I walk down Shop Street
I shake my ***.
(Yeah, I do.)

I swagger
With the confidence
That yes
I am a foreigner
In your country
And yeah I say,
You’re alright.
But I
Am a newly awakened goddess.

And it took being heartbroken
And being drunk five nights  out of seven
And feeling like the water is going over my head
To say WAIT.
I am more than this.

And when you look at me
It won’t be because my *** is shaking
(although, that certainly helps)
It will be because
I EXUDE GREATNESS.
And you will want to know me.

I’ll be nodding my head from side to side
And shaking my hips like it is my God-given right
(it is)
And Instead of telling you how awesome you are
I’ll be telling myself.
Because that is the one person
whose been neglected from this equation
from the start.

When I ask
DO YOU THINK OF ME?
I’ll be asking myself.

And I’ll be replying  a wholehearted “YES”
As I shake my ***
Walking down Shop Street.

We’ve accepted that we’re already dead.

Like the soldier
Like the victim
No, the veteran of love
(and subsequent heartbreak)
We’ve accepted we’re already dead
So we can keep on living.

I was broken.
No longer working
No longer dreaming
No longer wanting
Pushing away
The hands that tried to help me
The encounters that didn’t last broke me.
I was embattled.
In the trenches of my own existence.

Those we met
Under picture-perfect circumstances
When we thought utopia could be real
woefully disproved this theory.
Rude awakening to what agony feels like

And sleeping all day so we could self-medicate
all night.
Self-medicating with ***** and cigarettes
Not because we needed to but
For respite
For the moment
For a friend in the bottle
Or the lighter.

Life is war
Survival is the only option
Death, inevitable and imminent

We are the ones in the ring
We have lived here
We will die here.

There are those who are weak
Succumbing to the needles
The tap tap tap on veins
Or worse
Ordinariness
Boring as the 8x11’s
found in printers
All around the world.

I will not be ordinary.
Surrender is not an option.
Because I am a gladiator
I have adapted.
I’m still in the ring
But I will defend myself now.
They are the lions;
The king of their race
But I
I am a gladiator in a Gap V-Neck Tee shirt.
I will die with love in my heart,
Belief in my soul
My ashes will spell out the word Hope.

Nothing will break me ever again.

We loved them because
they loved to create.
A tailor and a builder.
made art from nothing.
Left a legacy.
Constructed beauty
from seemingly nothing.

Oh boys,
Our tailors and our builders,
Without you, we’d be sleeping just fine.

He blew her mind
Made her consult
With her old dear friend
Jack
(Daniels)
At hours unmentionable to civilized people.
Who indeed made her feel better
but also made her feel
Worse in the end.

He could talk real pretty things around my head
And I was hooked like a fish
It’s been 4 years and I’m still not free.
I’ve never met anyone so broken
And yet so comfortable with his millions of pieces.
He taught me to take the lenses off
And embrace this life, this love, this way.
Everything that happened before
Is over.
Tomorrow is just what we’re calling 12 hours from now
And oh, won’t those 12 hours until then
Be ******* glorious.

He molded her
Into a volcano.
The kind you see in middle school art class
That the kiln hardens
and it becomes supposedly unbreakable
Until one day, you find it has been chipped all along
[You did that to her, you know.
Broke a piece off her without even knowing it.]

Now that we’re older
they suddenly saw us
When before we were just the backing cast.
Made things that belong in the deep
Accessible to us without fishing lines
Now that’s just a cruel game to play.

It’s funny that it was
a tailor and a builder
who gave us the courage
to not need
to be built or tailored
anymore.

Oh baby –
We were doomed from day one.

Though we weren’t in the Jazz age,
and we weren’t in the modern age,
We were in the age of us.

Wings on my eyelashes,
A silky robe around my shoulders,
You wore a vest and a tee shirt—
Indulged in cowboy bohemia;
God, it was ****.

Oh baby, we thought we were unstoppable
We drank too much
Met new people by liquid courage
And found fearlessness suited us well.
We harnessed the trade winds
and went where we wanted.

Interest and innovation embedded in curiosity;
In art and newness and literature and truth.
Calling ******* like we saw it
We were entitled and young and free
No restraints
And hey, maybe that was the problem.

The problem with freeness
Is running and running and running
Until you forget what you’re running towards
And instead find
You’re actually running from.

Oh baby-
We were doomed from day one
We just didn’t know it yet.
I’m just too tired to run anymore.

I could have been like Zelda.
Tired from the facade,
Strong and petrified at the same time,
Finding distractions in every part of life
That made me forget we weren’t as free as we thought we were.

God, Baby—
Didn’t you know we were doomed
From the very first day we met?
I suppose I should thank you:
Thanks for breaking my heart;
You saved me from breaking my own.

I could have been like Zelda.

Sad girl rock
Fills the room with hopeless longing.
Rootless dreams take off out of the open 2nd floor window.
Cold Coffee.
Ain’t nothing
To a Cold, Cold heart.

This isn’t how the story ends.
Cryogenic stasis.
A general lack of brain damage.
Neurological bliss.
Goosebumps when it’s 90 degrees.

If a tree falls in the woods….
Questions.

Paralysis in analysis.
I understood more before the literary critique.
Lost.
We’re all lost.
Thematic speeches
and character monologues.
Overbearing landscape descriptions.
It’s all so oppressive.

Characters who walk around and around.
Past street signs. Past Monuments. Past that same newsstand again.
Circles in grids. So squares, then.
The time of Ulysses is near
So we can all be thoroughly confused together.

Instead of pulling backwards,
I’m going to look this way.
----->
MOVE FORWARD.
Shift out of reverse.

What’s was
Is what has already happened
Cemented in its place in history
Indisputable fact
Not so indisputable to *******
who want to talk about existentialism
But those moments are gone
Those opportunities, lost
That’s air you already breathed,
In and out of your lungs like THAT.

You’d get arrested
For driving on the left hand side of the road
Because that’s the wrong way
Unless you’re Britain,
Who still needs to prove their righteousness
In totally weird ways.
The rest of us are more humble.

When you put on our uniform
Make sure you kick the ball in the right goal
Otherwise the PG comedy reality comes to fruition.

I can do nothing about yesterday;
Tomorrow scares the **** out of me.
But today,
I can do.
I can make it through.
I can go that way.

Absence.
Lack thereof.
Without.
Lost.
Forgotten.

Absence.
An empty bed.
Lonely hearts club.
A party of one.
Quiet house.
Not even a stir.
Miles cracking as he spins and spins
Rain drop drops down the windows,
down walls
down me.

Absence.
Not good enough to be remembered.
Boring, lackluster, too easily surpassed.
A hole in the heart,
Weakness is showing emotion.
Blank face.
Death in Life.
EXILE.

Absence.
Tardiness.
A minute too late.
Detention.
No, absence.
Not here at all
was never really here
was never ever here.

Absence.
Seeing what is wanted
Not what is had.
What is had
is absence.
A lack thereof.
Nothing really at all.

What do you do
when you realize
your life as you know it
is a cardboard cutout,
a dollhouse scene,
Of what your life should be.
Of what it once was.

The people in my life are characters
A backdrop in the place of reality.
Scenery behind my doorstep.
Photographic fire in the fireplace.
Tiny kitchen cutlery that isn’t sharp.
Staged people in my living room
at literally, a lifeless party.
A fantastic picturesque magazine spread in Southern Living.

And I am a part of this falseness.
I am a creator of this un-reality.
I am a willing participant in this stagnant stage of my life.

This life, this love, this truth
Is a figment
Is a dream
Is a scene of a scene.

I remember when green was green
And blue was blue
And I breathed in newness in every breathe.
Reality bowed down in servitude
And I took every step into a setting sun
The world around me, my partner in crime
As I took it by storm.

The tragedy here
Is knowing that life and love and truth barren
Is knowing it naked
As it really is.
As it really was.

And knowing that you’ve settled for the cardboard cutout
is recognizing you’ve given up.
You’ve settled for second best.
You’re taking the doll house route to life.
You’d rather watch the movie than live it out.
It’s cowardice at its best.

Cool kid euphoria with our pastel colored pants and our Raybans on is what we all are in the basement of the 50’s house.
Our phones blowing up while we sip whiskey and wine.
Trying to get the attention of the cars on the main road
By handstanding and flashing and cheersing our beers
And we receive our victorious honks.

Guitar clock radio with numbers around the fretboard and Sir Paul smiling and crooked, acid-trippin’ guitarist/violinist/celloist looking product of orange and gold look down upon as our patron saints.
Swingin’ low, Sweet Chariot words stares up at me from the 70’s floral carpet.
Ralph Stanley and Eric Clapton singing solos and duets in my head keep me company as the boys play and figure out key changes.

Painted screen hiding the Etta James microphone stands forgotten in the corner—
As I take in the teals and roses and golds.
Give me a heart shaped box where I can store my love
I fly so high in the world above
I’ll come back down eventually.

Lava lamped water stain engulfs the ceiling. As fingers go up frets
And they go down frets
And they go up frets
And they go down frets.
As you don’t enunciate when you sing.
We all mourn  our fallen brethren, the base of the telecaster with no strings and no head and it weeps silently from its place on the water pipes, hearing his cousins WAAAIIIIILLLLLL.

As Cool kid euphoria is created with our pastel colored pants and our Raybans on in the basement of the 50’s house.

We work all day so we can drink all night
Getting high off the drug that is each other
Chain-smoking Pall Malls like it’s our job
Listening to oldies as we shoot the eight ball in the corner pocket.
Garden tools and Lawn Mower parts as a sweet, creepy décor in the dank basement
As we breathe in mold and dust and cigarette smoke.

We are gloriously young.
So *******.
We still think we can change the world.
Not through politics or through fear or by means of war
But by doing just enough to get by and loving everybody for who they are, even the parts or religions or particular ways of life we don’t like,
Because people aren’t what they do or what they believe
They’re who they are.
We still think we can change the world
And Maybe one day, we will

But for now
We’ll just be here,
In the basement of the 50’s house with our pastel colored pants and our Raybans on.

I think all I have ever created
is compensation
For being such a fool.
I had him;
ensnared him with my womanly ways.
I never realized he was always mine
And turned away
thinking I was doing the right thing.

I sought someone else;
I found him.  
I was horrified when I discovered
It was the love I always wanted—
And the love that undid me.

What I wanted was fleeting,
was overwhelming
in-the-moment
out-of-body experience.

Now all I want
is the metaphorical dog and house and white picket fence.
But it’s not those material items I crave;
It’s the permanence that accompanies
that dedication and level of love.

I don’t want it to only last a moment
and disappear
like sand sifting through the hourglass;
I don’t want to feel out of my body
Any more.

I just want someone I love who wants me too.

This is the curse of unrequited love.
This is the gift of Eve to womankind.
I was tempted, and I have no more
what I could have had for eternity.

I have firmly believed that life is music
And love is the song.
Now knowing both intimately
I wouldn’t say that I was wrong.

I used to love his genre his style his swag.
Now I think it just sounds ridiculous.
I want something else now for me
I want something so delicious.

My boy HDT told me to go
with the beat of a different drum
And I think I have now
Those odd beats I’ll get me some.

It’s funny how our tastes change.
It’s funny how we used to be.
What used to move those mountains
Now doesn’t do a ******* thing for me.

I can never pretend that I don’t still love you
Honey bun you know I do
But I can admit that I don’t want you
Took me this long but now it’s true.

You’re only just a warm body
Someone I used to love and you're here
But it’s not the same, oh my darling
You ain’t ever gunna get another tear.

I think our timelines are twisted
I think our timing is just wrong
I still think love is the music
But Thank God you’re no longer my song.

Don’t you
Don’t you dare
Don’t you dare give up on me.
I am helpless. I am flawed. I am undeserving.
But I am here.
I am one of us.

Don’t you
Don’t you dare
Don’t you dare push me aside.
I can be a ghost. I can be a fly on the wall.
But I am steadfast.
I am a sphinx who cannot be moved.

Don’t you
Don’t you dare
Don’t you dare ignore me.
I am faceless. I am unwanted. I am forgettable.
But I have presence. I have substance.
I exist.

Don’t you
Don’t you dare
Don’t you dare betray me.
I am shameful. I’ve made mistakes.
But I deserve trust.
I don’t want to turn to resignation.

Don’t you
Don’t you dare
Don’t you dare forget about me.
I am invisible. I fade to black.
But I am a person.
And I want to be remembered.

Don’t you
Don’t you dare
Don’t you dare ever stop loving me.
I am incapable. I have walls. I am scared.
But I don’t want to be empty.

She sings and I break.
Flood of unwanted memories.
Waves crashing down.
Here it is—the song—those notes—
Hand clenching the armrest.
Fingers white; knuckles clenched; rings bulging off my fingers,
Squeezing, gripping, relying on that armrest to be rooted in the Earth
so that I am not taken away.

He hums and I squirm.
So nonchalant. Casual. Like it’s nothing.
Like it’s just a song.

It’s NOT just a song.

Allowing him
A total stranger
Into your world
Only to have him judge it

He wasn’t right in it anyways
A dinosaur in a dollhouse.

All you’re left with
Is sheets twisted around
The end of the bed
A quiet house
Faint smell of cologne on your pillows
The kind that smells cheap and tacky
And an emptiness inside
That you’ve felt before
But now it’s inescapable.

The vibration of the anticipation
of seeing you tonight.
I think I might
put on skirt
not to flirt but to impress
[Oh God]
I must love you,
I’m wearing a dress.
On the sand we’re shoeless
and it’s now I must confess
everything.

I met you three days ago and I love you.

We chase ***** and
Blickah Blickah dance
everything here is all just chance
we walk for miles on the beach
and if we keep going we can reach the pier
the ultimate destination, but
we keep getting caught
in our own procrastination.

We climb on a trampoline
of a de-rigged sailboat
and hope
that we find contentment.
Turns out
we probably could have prevented
all the ******* introductions
and started the production
of us from the start instead
of the part
we’re supposed to play.

A meteor shower,
[How so romantic comedy]
but we’ve created a melody
that’s in harmony with our souls.
We give each other biographies as we
stare to sea
as barriers fade away.
There is just so much to say
but not enough time to say it
don’t deny it
just try to find it
the words to tell me I’m right
or did this night
mean nothing to you?

Can you hear that?
A heart pumping, no thumping,
thump, thump, thumping for you
but you can’t see through
the lines and the walls
you just don’t have the *****.

[I’m too good for you.]

I came to you because I thought you would save me.
You laughed over the John Hughes quote
That now is a seminal classic
But I’m not sure because I don’t believe in it
Because I’ve never known it
or maybe it’s just you I don’t believe in.

I didn't have enough energy to actually make an effort to laugh
and pretend I was having a good time.
I would rather sink into you, slowly, like I would ((in a shipwreck or)) in oversized couch cushions.
and be usurped by ((cold water that wakes you up)) musty fabric
when it swallows us whole
and we sink to the bottom.
I'd only feel
your long arms around me and nothing else

I’d rather strip for you
Not to be naked but to take my layers off.
[You bore me, You shaped me, You taught me]

And then I’d try to not love you so that I could fall into you once more.
let the  overwhelming overwhelm me (again)
until I forget the ongoing drama of the heart and the heart (a purposely neverending story)
[There are no words with which to describe thee:
My darling my love I need you beside me.]

we quote our favorite title page to our favorite epilogue.
An absurd story about love and blowing things up
Because really, (like hospitals and prisons)
it’s the same thing.

what does this night mean in the greater consequence of our lives?
Nothing.
I’m okay with that.
I’m just saying that.
[?]

Opportunity and random occurrence are just a farce
That we use to pretend fate doesn’t exist;
(it doesn’t, does it?)
Everything that matters seems too big to be real.
but I lived long before this, and I will exist ever after
one day I will achieve greatness
you will be forced to know me then
Since you won’t nor never will now.

Oh yeah.
That saxophone yeah.
That saxophone yeah that
Makes you in that mood
Yeah
Snap
Snap
Snaps
(Oh yeah)
So many snaps
Clap
Clap
Hips moving
Spinning around.
Reminiscent of tacky decades music
whatever
Secretly, you know you’re also dancing.

Been thinking about things
Life, him, them, that one time…
Time to stop with the dot dot dots.
I have the life among lives.

I’ve got Wonder like that time
You were a little kid
Looking up at the sky
With the fierce belief
That one day you
Could own it too
I’ve got this feeling
That I awake every day
With a renewal
And a knowledge that I will in fact
Someday change the world.
I’ve got Adventure without fear
Going beyond the “Danger” sign
Because life in front of the sign
Is never as fun
As the life beyond it.

If this is how 80’s music makes me feel
Come on, guys,
(Key change)
Let’s bring back the ******* 80’s.

For years, we let suffering gnaw away at our hearts
until we got really good at hiding it.
And instead
indulged in silent suffering
at going to pubs and clubs
and getting drunk
making out with random strangers
and being the life of the party
all the while
taking the label of a martyr
but claiming no glory.
We were instead
so completely devoid and empty inside
that our friends would see us as strangers
if they ever knew
how we really felt.

Saturday morning yoga class for moms.
We go anyways.
Tremors in our wavelength, shaky hands, unsteady heartbeats.
Off the Richter,
Ashes to rain, rainy ashes, acid burns through our umbrellas, ellas, ellas, ellas.
Writing stories about the time we danced on the bar
Another drink tonight
Just one more drag; then I quit.
Then, I need another.
Things you promise I know you can’t keep
Bejeweled picture frames and tiny figurines
Heeby jeeby vibes from the hippie couple that freaks every one out
Guitar chords, strumming of my heart
We breathe smog and fog
Shortened breaths for shortened lives
Strange noises emerge from the next room
We emulate our favorite heroes past.
She changes her name to something androgynous
Because that’s how she feels.
And doesn’t want to get a pixie cut.
She won’t shut up from the next cubicle over.
She craves the attention, the validation from her stories
That she is one of us.
Swing the scissors around again, throw them to me.
Nothing makes sense.
I ordered another beer
Even though I didn’t want another.
Indulgence. Liquid indulgence.
Hailing the Porcelain God later.
Routine.
Soft smile
Swiveled me to the ground
Things are never the way you want them to be
So move away
Go home
Keep moving
If you stand still, you’ll start to feel something
Hum hum hum
Everything is Numb numb numb
Here is where the heartache is--
“If you loved me you would…”
No I wouldn’t.
You don’t know me at all.

Everyone I’ve ever idolized dies tragically.

He said that Blues Run the Game and died still feeling that fire all over his body.
He sings about losing control again even though it’s he who was.
He taught his son about responsibility and fell to the wildebeest.

I used to think the monk who set himself on fire
was insane
but now I think
he was a product of sound rationale.

Ears are falling off in this starry night.
And I see nothing weird
If he told me to keep the object carefully
I would.
Madness is Genius.
And I’d rather be absolutely ridiculous
than nauseatingly normal.

No one tells you that the very best parts of love
are also its very worst.
Love torments the soul
Tragedy becomes a way of life
And suffering, a daily occurrence.
Such is the way of the mad artist.
Who after he paints Starry Night
Cuts off his ear.

I’m starting to think
I’ll live longer
If I stop being an artist.

Those eyes.
Those angry, angry eyes.
Those angry eyes are the last thing I see before I sleep.
Inspiring the thought that is there for only just a moment,
and then slips into my subconscious,
Low beneath the surface where it will stay buried and withdrawn
and it is this:

You will always be this way
and I will always have to live with it.
It’s that thing I hate about you and love about you at the same time.
You’re full of passion, you’re zoned in a moment, you let your knobs turn to 11.
Emphatic, impassioned, ****** energy
floats in the spaces between atoms in the world around you.

But when you turn to anger…
I see a madman, with fire in his belly and hate in his heart.
The same man who storms into the flames
and barn burning antics consume his mind.
The switch is on and it won’t turn off,
it is single-handedly the most petrifying disposition you have.
and I know you will always be this way
and I will have to live with it.
and every night as I go to bed,
I hope to God I don’t see
Those angry, angry eyes.

He led me down
To the confines of hell
And there I saw
I was no different than the rest
River Styx
Called me in
To swim its black waters
And I felt seaweed grab at my legs.
The sirens came
And they pull me down to the depths
I would breathe water in
Suffocating on the sea
Awaiting my turn to die
Waiting for eternity.

I saw the voices of a thousand fiendish angels
Take form in the air around me
As wars and battles and fights raged
And the clash of civilizations was among us once more.
Heroes and villains alike re-appeared and shouted noiselessly,
making the entire universe sound like the chaotic mess
that it once was and still is and will probably always be.

I followed Dante as he followed Virgil and we followed nobody down and down further into the depths.

Winged chariots came
And whisked me away
through the halls of fire
I crossed the bridge
Crumbling and tumbling down
To the caverns of stone
Rocks smashing
I’m falling and falling
Never to land.
The acrid smell of flesh burning
Fills my nostrils
the fires singe the hair off my body
and I burn in oblivion.
What deed hath I done
to earn the demons of Lady Macbeth?
Out, **** spot
Get me out
GET ME OUT
I will never breathe free air again.
The villainy you taught me, I executed
and now I am here with them and you.
I am a wanted, haunted man,
As my telltale heart beats louder and louder
Until I see the face of insanity
And realize it’s my own.

Love got drunk one day
And slipped away as quickly as it came.
Leaving impressions and marks and a ******* memory
Why did it have to do that?

He told me
Perhaps the brightest insight
To human history
Since Copernicus Said
Hey maybe
We’re not so important
That the world
(literally)
Revolves around us
But perhaps it is us
Who revolve around the world
(as it should be.)
What my Copernicus said was
Individualism
Is the single most sign
Of continual human progress.
That without it
We just become droids
Or peons
Or mindless beings
Without sentience
Without intelligence
Without the single most important vocabulary word
“Why?”

You can see why he intrigued me.

Ever-going quest to
Make love stay.
Slipping out of my suitcase
Man it was cramped in there
I looked up
And saw my name written in the sky.
*******.
Always finding new ways
To tell the world
What we are
And what we could be
If I cashed in my chips
And went all-in
For just one hand.

Tears came
Hanging ten on the edge of eyes
Refusing to fall
Uncertain of their plight
So they do what people do
When they are scared
And they freeze.

It crushed me to know
I’ve cashed in my chips
One too many times
He thought I’m incredible
When really
I’m un-credible.

Love didn’t stay.
It took the next flight to Vegas
To gamble some other poor soul’s life
Leaving me
To look up a nameless sky.

As the booming music
from the crowded
student center
attempts to
beat my heart
right out of my chest
I retreat
into my own quietness.

Writing poetry
on a neon yellow
Post-It note
as the college kids
around me
talk about
that awesome house party
last night.

I think about how
I cannot have
the love that I want
but I know someday
I'll have
the love that wants me.

And now
the booming music
does indeed
make my heart race
as my quest for love
pauses
to rave out
to electronica music.

I pump a metaphorical fist
not to party
but to proclaim
that I
am a hopeless dreamer.
Deal with it.

Maybe dub step isn't so bad.

The Irish word for poet
is "File".
This always fascinates me
Because it reminds me of a youthful horse
(The filly)
Pushing the boundaries
And stumbling on awkward legs
Being
not the most majestic
But the one who discovers
Joy and passion
and vibrancy
in every action of life.

When just putting
one foot in front of the other(s)
is a deed as majestic
As galloping
Like a knight with surmounting pride
Or a night with no end,
It's indeed a gift
of youth and innocence.

Like the old mare,
We may bear wrinkles.
Like the war horse,
We have our battle scars.

But we are the “File”.
And we have something to say.

and we will forever be
infinite
in our hoof beats
and our heart beats.

Ella Fitz’s rendition of Dream a Little Dream for the umpteenth time.
Louie comes in tune with that righteous horn.
I drink more as I sing along, off key.

There could be an entire SECTION of books written about us.
How we fell into that great whirlwind.
How we learned to hate the world when we didn’t have each other.
How we re-kindled, for that brief, brief time.
How I thought maybe we could love again.

We had hours that turned to days that turned to months.
We were the perfect piece of short fiction
An art form so gloriously undervalued,
(by both the audience and the creators)
Until we found ourselves in the Middle
(the worst feeling in the world.
Because like purgatory or super glue:
you're stuck.)

We said goodbye.
And I found I had residual emptiness.
I became residual emptiness.

I loved again, but it wasn’t anything
Like the masterpiece we had.
I knew because
Every day with him felt real.
Every day with you
Was a dream.
Something rooted in intangibility
Something I was astonished to find
happening to me.

It happened again-
We found ourselves in the same place
At the same time.
And after just a few weeks,
You gave me the greatest gift:
The indignity of silence.
And you gave me it
For the most ignoble reason—
You’re afraid.

Honey bun,
We’re all afraid.

It made me think
That maybe  the story of you and I
can only have a happy ending
in a place where it’s not so scary.

So me, Louie and Ella all ask you,
That
In your dreams
Whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me.

[Because that's the only place you'll find me now.]

We’ll try to answer
The unanswerable paradox
Of tragedy and pain
And attempt to explain suffering.
Why ****** wasn’t born with an incurable disease
And why Anne Frank
Couldn’t have just held off
For three more weeks
Until Liberation.

These questions make
the world become poetry.
And we who ask them
become the world.

Inevitable losses contrived from the actuality
Saying goodbye to the ones that we love
Letting them go
Before we’re destroyed
By the inevitable suffering.

I am a grenade.
I am bound to explode.
Fatalities by the dozens.
Even more wounded.
PTSD for years after
I will leave an emptiness
In the lives of those I love
And those who love me.

Life will end midsentence
Before I have a chance to explain
Or say goodbye
Or say I’m sorry
To those who never got the chance.
Because I knew I was a grenade
And I loved them too much
To even be
One of my fatalities.

[Boom]

Hey remember that night when we chased the burglars in the front and back yard
and you almost kissed me?
God, I wanted you to.

I submitted a Post Secret of two young French lovers kissing in the rain
and I wrote “This will never be me” over the woman.
******* Parisians.

Once upon a time,
I bought flowers for myself just because I wanted to.
It was the most empowering thing I could have done.
But for the two weeks they sat on my window sill,
I was constantly reminded no one bought them for me.

Long ago, in a land far, far away,
I used to believe in miracles.

This one time, We sat at the Spanish Arch,
the one the Conquistadors built,
comprised of ancient old stone that caught the tears of the heartbroken,
heard the tales of the old salty men coming home from the bar,
and saw the transformation of an old Irish city into a new, artsy town.
We looked up, saw a shooting star, and wished on it I would be with him forever.

I was 19 once, and he sat on the beach with his flicky blonde hair
and a Corona and his oversized tee shirt hanging off his body
and we sat on that beach for hours, in the eye of the storm, soaking it all in.
It was the first time I realized I could love.

We were 22 and he was in love with somebody else and I loved his soul,
but I wasn’t in love with him and we found out we’re in the same boat.
We will always love each other but we can never be together
because we cannot give each other what we need.
He’s the only man who has never let me down.

As a child, I thought I could fly.
Not physically fly, but Peter and Wendy inspired me,
and I knew I could fly as a dreamer, and soar through the skies
like the hawk or the raven or the finch or the ******* pterodactyl if I wanted to.
And I wanted to. And I did.

I wrote a story once about a girl who ran several miles at two am when she couldn’t sleep
and the personal demons kept haunting her and taunting her
and the whiskey wouldn’t shut them up.

Every once in a while, I clean the house naked.
Sometimes, I kinda wish the UPS guy would catch me.

Every day, my life is filled with sullen, sunken, exposed regret.
I wish I did what I didn’t do.

When I die
my grave will be
surrounded by cherry red wine stains.
That grass,
once green,
will be red, red red.
Have the weight of Cabernet
The dark mystery of Merlot.
I’ll say goodbye
and that wine will drip drop
Through soil
Under rocks
To six feet under
where I will taste it once again.

Sleeping.
No. Not sleeping.
Hands in the dark.
Arm/Arm.
Next to each other, on top of each other.
Legs. Legs.
Foot. Tracing your leg.
A hand in the dark.
Fingers take my fingers.
Touches my face.
Kissing.
Suddenly.
You’re there.
So am I.
Should we be doing--?
--Kiss.
Never mind.

You’re supposed to be on a plane right now.
You’re not.
You’re on this bed.
Where I am too.
You kiss me again. Hard.
Hello, tongue.
Wait. What?
Doesn’t matter?
Okay.
Keep kissing.
Yes.

I know what this is.
I’m everything she’s not.

You call me beautiful.
No, I’m not.
My, you’re insistent.
I really don’t think I am.
You stare at me:
I’m the only woman in the world.
No one’s ever done that before.
Hands are going places.
I don’t want ***.
Well, I do.

I want *** with love. You love someone else. And I love you.
I am not an Equal Opportunity Provider.
Is that okay?
God, you’re so sweet.

You kiss me again.
I kiss you back.
Stroke my hair.
Scratchy beard,
Rubs my chin.
God you feel good.
Ugh.
My willpower is diminishing.

Stop.
Let’s talk.
Not about…her.
I mean.
About whatever, really.

Your back porch in Atlanta.
Play them blues.
Drink your Manhattans.
You and your gin.
Sounds beautiful.

You want me to know I’m beautiful.
No I’m not.
Why do I think that?
I’m just not.
It seems we’re at an impasse.
I don’t know I’m beautiful.
You don’t know you’re quite a catch.

You’re fanfacking tastic.
How do you not know it?
[It’s a cruel game;
that the universe made you love someone
who just can’t see that.
That the Gods would laugh
at our human folly
seems unfair.
That they gave us love
and then gave us no directions on how to use it.
That this man
is tripping over his own two feet
trekking mountains
traversing deserts
stealing the stars right out of the sky
Trying to re-win the love of his life.
She doesn’t even bat an eye.
She doesn’t know
that he is the rarest form of species.
And she
is a ******* poacher.]

Now I’m falling in love with your soul.
The very depths of you.
The secret rooms.
The inner dialogue.
You just get me like no one else does.

Sleeping.
No.
Getting there.
Pull me in tight.
Body on body.
Safest place in the world
is right here.
My head on your chest.
Arm/Arm.
Hand/Hand.
Tonight you’re mine.
Tomorrow
you were just a dream.

It may sound harsh
But it’s true.
I can’t divorce the word
“Disappointing”
Anytime I hear your name.

When my phone t9’s what I really want to say
into your name
It’s like a slap in the face
And I can still feel the sting
hours later.

When I run into you
On the streets
I wish It would be
like how I imagine it:
Where the empowered heroine
(that’s me)
Gives a look so piercing
It makes him shiver
And wallow in rebuke and despair.

Instead
I freeze up
Deer in headlights
Shocked and bewildered and delighted and horrified
All at the same time.

After all the **** you put me through
You can still do that to me.
It’s like magnetism or The Force
Or magical forces unexplained
And I stumble awkwardly
To get away.

My life is not a movie
And I am no heroine.
But at least
my name
Isn’t synonymous
with disappointment.

Do you know what it’s like
for me
looking at
a half empty
bottle of wine?

It is
Like it is
for a chain smoker
who sees
Cigarette butts on the ground
That are only half smoked.

It’s like when
The alcoholic
Sees the perfect tumbler
with just the right amount of ice
and with the pristine glass craftsmanship
that makes that
Satisfying “clink”ing sound
Whenever it hits the side table or counter.

I SUFFER
When I see such a sight.
And I wouldn’t call it
Addiction
As much as I call it
Jealousy.

For me, it’s torture
Realizing
That people buy the bottle
To get drunk
Or to have fun
Rather than
To forget
Like I do.

Man in the long black coat
as ominous as the Dylan song.

Eyes with wild abandon
Hurricanes happenin’ in them eyes.
Flicking a half-smoked cigarette
into a ***** puddle.

Sizzle of extinguishment
the sound of his life.

The dark cobblestone streets quiet, for once.
His cowboy boots keeping him surprisingly warm,
despite the November cold.

He stands at the crossroads.
If the devil came to make a deal,
he wasn’t sure he could say no.

“Lead me not to temptation.”
too late.

Stories of stuff, not people filled his head.
He found people broke more than stuff.
Warranties.
A whole department there to pay you back.

He lit up again.
Surrender to addiction
Just let it take you.

The nicotine rushed to his head and he exhaled,
feeling a little bit better
than 30 seconds ago.

He thought of the girl at the bar.
God, she could have passed as her twin.
Thinking of her was like
being hit by a battering ram
over and over again.
Crushed chest,
Crushed soul.

Again, he flicked the half-smoked cigarette away.

The cold November night,
The only one joining him tonight.

She’s not coming.
She never was.

The first thing that disappeared
was your lips.
Not your voice;
That I still hear loud and clear.
I can’t seem to remember what your lips look like.
But I remember how they taste.

Next it was your nose;
it melted right off your face.
Sliding down your cheek and now
your mouthless lower half,
It fell to the ground below.

The image of your eyes is burned into my mind.
I fell into them the moment we first met,
sunk into the blue flecked with grey
submerged in a stormy sea.
I have yet to come up for air.

Your rosy cheeks have faded
over the years.
Now they just look like everyone else’s.

I hope this means that to me
You’re not as distinct as you used to be.
But I sometimes wonder if it’s far worse;
if it’s that everyone else
is now more like you.

As I watch
as he
sits in the corner
drinking grain alcohol
that tastes like regret and pain and general unpleasantry

and he weeps
those tears of solid resignation and misery
the scene unfolds before me
of his early days
of being young like me
but having so much passion and commitment to a bigger idea
that he committed
human atrocity
for something bigger
than himself.

As I watch
I cry my own tears
for this man’s lack of youth
because he had no time to squander
and instead
was forced
to live a life
of the worst kind of sacrifice.

And I cry some more
because I
am a self-aggrandizing
*******
if I think my petulant, schoolgirl drama
is ****
compared to this.

Sometimes, I’ll open with the King’s Gambit
Because I’m feeling bold
Or saucy
Or generally suicidal
Since I know you’ll just countergambit.

I’ll move my pawn and you’ll move yours.
I’ll take your rook
With a sly move you never saw coming
Only to wave goodbye
To that brave knight of mine
Who gave his life
For my ongoing crusade
To capture you.

Move after move
Feeling victory in a capture
And dejection at a loss
Until we’ve suddenly found
We’ve been playing this game
For years.

I’ll give a little bit
And let you take something
That belongs to me.
And you’ll rejoice and be glad
For the whole world to see.

But darling?
Don’t you know
The number one rule of this game?
You always have to be
One move ahead.

Checkmate, *******.

Buttresses flew
too close to the sun.
Icarus repeated.

Monuments based on Ideas.
Prophecies based on Conviction.
Trust in a stated Axiom.


Only last for
as long as
someone believes in them.

As a previous lover of fairytales,
Disney movies
And all things for ages 5-12
I’m horrified to see myself
As a cold, callous woman.
How did I become
This?

Anytime I used to see a field
I took my shoes off
And ran barefoot.
And I soaked the earth into my skin
Until I was something more
Than just a resident—
I was part of this world.

The biggest thing I used to worry about
Was trying to find the next adventure
Which sometimes was right in my backyard.
Now all my wondering
Has to do with why
My electric bill is so high.

I comfort it
With the fact that I am just like Wendy.
I knew my time to grow up
Because Neverland was never the place for me
To stay forever.

But when my time comes
to bear children
I will spoil them rotten
With newfangled fairytales
And maybe I’ll catch them
Flying off into the night
With a lost boy who I’ve known
For quite a long time.

I will teach them to believe in the impossible
with all of their hearts.
Because even though it may in fact
Be impossible
All children
Should see the sky
Before they grow old
and have to live on the ground.
But when they do
I want them to look up
every once in a while
and Smile.

They came again last night.
The demons.
They morph into everything
We’ve ever been afraid of
And everything
We still are.
The ones that haunt and scream and wail
Until we listen to them.
And hear
Our faults
And remember
Our fears
Until everything gets cold and numb.
And no matter how many people are around,
We still know
We’re hopelessly alone.

Ghastly beings, those demons.
They haunt the halls of our subconscious;
They guard the doors
With the keys still in the locks
Covered with cobwebs
Because we dare not venture
Those again.
And every once in a while
Those demons come back
At one or two or three a.m.
To remind us
Those doors
Are still there.

When he was away
I sent him picture messages
Of me holding signs
Proclaiming
He was the only one for me.
That our love was endless.
That one day, we’d have the house, the dog, the stocked wine fridge.
And I doubted it was true
Even as I wrote them.
But it was the fantasy to believe in
That he and I,
Two world-class **** ups
In our own rights
Could finally
Not
**** this one up.

What once was joy and laughter
And holding hands on public streets
And feeling validated from when he would call me ****
Quickly became
Lying on bedroom floors
Sobbing to the carpet
Heaving for breath
Wondering how it ever came to this.

I love to hate him.
The scars you see
Are ones he gave me
As I experienced the worst of
Neglect and
Abandonment.

We allowed ourselves disillusion
When reality became too tough
When hands that were holding
Felt like squeezing
When air we were breathing
Was suffocating
When love we were feeling
Became suffering.

I thought about all those signs today
Those signs I put in the “his” box
That he collected when I wasn’t there
Because I didn’t want to see him
And I wonder what he did with them.
If he threw them away
Like he did with us
Or if he has them still
And wants to be reminded
That he still ***** everything up.

From the moment that the last moment has passed and is gone
To the moment that has not yet come to pass
There is a long haul,
A varied in-between
A somber hiatus of all things living and dead.
Where my mind wanders into an eternal state of flux
And where everything that could never be
Is.

And as we swim beneath the sea and then above the stars
And watch galaxies give birth to new stars and light and life
And friendly sea creatures wink at us as they pass us by
We stretch out our arms and let freedom take us.

And it’s there we’ll kiss so long
That we never come up for air.
And make love in the blankets of the Milky Way
Bearing our souls for every spec of dust to witness.

And then I blink
And my feet are back firmly on the ground.
While you stand just yards away from me.
We’ll give each other half smiles, half waves
And pass each other by,
Just like that moment is supposed to pass by.

But I know
Somewhere
In an eternal state of flux
We were the good, and the good is the free
And we were free to love each other the way we aren’t allowed here.

Hold on when you get love.
Let go when you give it.

Here I am.
In all of my unveiled natural.
I am not a china doll
I am not a superstar
I am a ******* glorious headfuck.
And I make the lights brighter
And worlds bigger
And sounds louder.

I’m that high note
That few people can reach
I am that glory
They brag about from the battlefield
I am home
I am the adventure.
I’ve been higher than the highest mountain.
Brighter than the largest supernova
More graceful than the ******’ swan
Here I am.

I scare you
You want me
You hate me
You want to be me
You envy my entire existence
How I can so
Seemingly be
So ******* confident
Within my own skin
And know without a doubt
My purpose
On this earth
You all take that way
I take the way
You wish you would have gone.

Here I am.
Ignore me.
Love me.
Envy me.
Hate me.
I ain’t going nowhere.

I reach up
touch my face
I just feel two pockets of dimples
and warm skin.
I gave some of that little fire to you one day and together,
we blew up everything we knew.

It was one of those inconsequential disasters.
Because it was never supposed to happen
But
It did.

I can still feel the burns.

We can’t undo that Nagasaki.

All I want is the one who knows me.
All I want is my little fire returned to me.