O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

I am self-conscious about my body
There is something about strangers on the street
Looking me down, chasing me down, asking for my number before asking for my name
That I have never liked a little bit
Not even at all

It makes me more self-conscious than I already am
I don't have a perfect body
I pick at the skin on my thumbs and they're permanently scarred and that makes holding hands as difficult as finding my heart under the trees I planted in my liver to shield it from the sun of my lover because I couldn't bear the thought that I wasn't as beautiful as him

I have a small chest
I heard once
That the first thing men notice about a woman is her eyes, and the first thing women notice about men is that they are a bunch of liars
So these strangers must notice that
And it gives me anxiety to wonder why they would still have an interest

There is nothing striking, beautiful, or breath-taking about me
Until I speak (I think)
My personality makes up for everything else
At least, I try to make it so
But you don't know me

So why are you chasing a short, ordinary, nobody across the street
What am I to you?
What do you see in me?

in a room full of peacocks
i am now an ostrich
and i don't know if any of you know how it feels to be a splash of grey in a room full of brilliant blues and greens
it's like being a lonely, pitiful cloud against a blue sky with leafy trim
maybe i have my head in the sand because i don't want to be shallow
but you'd be right if you guessed it's because i actually don't want to be seen when my face looks like this
which is such a cowardly thing to do
(i really shouldn't care)
i read Journey to the Center of the Earth in middle school,
and the only thing i remember is that it was the volcanoes that erupted (like the hives that erupted across my face this past week) that led them to find it-
the heart of life and natural beauty; more breathtaking than the flawless plumage of the peacocks

"I'm just not into you"
Pour water on their hearts
Stamp the embers with my shoe
I don't carry matches, a flint, or gasoline
But the sparks fly, anyway

You call me darling, but:
Darling,  
do not call me by that name,
I could not bear it if I tried.
That word is a pyre, and I—
I do not know how to burn
well enough.

Until I can swallow your absence whole
and live,
I will not lay a hand on you:
You who call me out of my trembling cloak
Of skin and muscle and bones,
Into the lissome folds of that tender night
To meet you.

Until I can meet your gaze without encountering some
small death,
I will not try to hold you:
weightless one,
Who I could never quite grasp anyway.

Until I can kiss your lips and remember
Where you end and I begin
I will not get lost in you:
Constellation of nerves and veins and sinews,
Strewn across the stars.


I have tried to love,
weightlessly,
But my heart is still heavy, my dear.

And I have tried to love you,
desperately,
Without the heaviness of desire
or the desperation of need,
But I have lost all substance on the pyre
Of self-denial, for indemnity.

Today I saw a larger bird eat a smaller one.
It's screaming sang through the air like
someone tearing the strings off a harp
with a table saw.
The taller darker bird stabbing away
at the torso with it's dagger-mouth,
I recalled an old gospel song my ex-girlfriend
used to sing; "His Eye is On the Sparrow".
Gospel, meaning "good news".
I could laugh till I'm blue in the face.

Did the effort ever hurt you?
Your fight for me;
it's like a second winter.
You only **** me with soft things.
You only **** me when you laugh and smile.
I hope all the flowers
that find your hands
may die. I hope to be
where the angels are.
God is dead,
and take me with you.
Like second winter.
Like being dead already.
Like the beginning of the end.
You only **** me
with soft things.

O
          Out of a bed of love
When that immortal hospital made one more moove to soothe
          The curless counted body,
               And ruin and his causes
Over the barbed and shooting sea assumed an army
          And swept into our wounds and houses,
I climb to greet the war in which I have no heart but only
          That one dark I owe my light,
Call for confessor and wiser mirror but there is none
          To glow after the god stoning night
And I am struck as lonely as a holy marker by the sun.

                              No
          Praise that the spring time is all
Gabriel and radiant shrubbery as the morning grows joyful
               Out of the woebegone pyre
And the multitude's sultry tear turns cool on the weeping wall,
          My arising prodgidal
Sun the father his quiver full of the infants of pure fire,
          But blessed be hail and upheaval
That uncalm still it is sure alone to stand and sing
          Alone in the husk of man's home
And the mother and toppling house of the holy spring,
          If only for a last time.