You're always running away from something, aren't you?
I mean, all of humanity is constantly trying to fix,
To solve, to make right. We search in these nearby places
For the answers, and don't tend to realize that yes, the
Answers are out there, but they're on top of that mountain
Or over that hill and all the while your heart's saying,
Why don't you look there but your head says No
No no it has to be this why on earth do you listen to it?
And you run and you hide away in that laboratory of yours
And mix together this amount of comfort with that amount
Of painkiller and think that somehow it has to be complex,
It can't be simple. I'm here to say that yes, yes it can. It really
Can be just that simple. It doesn't have to be long and
Drawn-out and rewritten and careful. It can be something
Short and sweet and spontaneous like a first kiss or a
Mountain flower, something alive and growing and changing,
And not concrete; not once, not now, not ever.

How old were you
when it turned out
that we only grow to die
and how long did it take
for that to terrify you,
and how long did it take
for growing at all to
make you sick,
how long did you live
before you were ready to die?
Some people never live at all
before they’re swept away and
some people try so hard to escape
and keep on failing.
Living is so awful, so
mind-numbingly painful and yet
- and yet and yet and yet -
somehow its so beautiful too.
Somehow we live only to die
and somehow we survive that short,
confused, horrified, hiccuping existence,
and make it worth it. How does
love work that it takes something
so tortured and impossible
and turns it into something
almost beautiful?
how does that work at all

I once said I wasn't afraid of you,
of oceans or the deep black dark.
And I guess these things are true:
I'm afraid that they'll leave a mark.

Will the surging waters drown me,
will the heady darkness take its toll?
And worse, will you surround me?
How can i dig myself out of that hole?

For if you set my heart on fire,
will it fill my lungs with smoke?
I know that it's what i desire
But i just don't wanna choke.

If you give to me your heart,
will it leave room for my own?
Will they be able to beat apart,
would i be able to live alone?

I'm not afraid of falling in love,
I'm afraid of the aftermath.
What will it take to be empty of
you, once we've split our path?

and every time I looked
a stranger in the eyes
and saw the flickering
of what could be cannot
compare to the strange
wonder of no longer being
alone...what I have now
is a chair in a hospital room
and folded blankets
left on couches, the
greatest gifts I ever could
have received.
it is enough, now, that I
have loved you and have
been loved. it is enough
to allow for the rest of
my life, and enough to
convince me to live -
to give up that fear,
that argument, that
passionless sorrow. All
those books I read
that spoke of a love
that triumphed over
all fear, I thought I knew
what those words meant.
I have not scraped even the
beginnings of the atoms
that compose that
great love. What would it
take, to become some
one who truly believed?
It would take heart
ache, and it would take
fear, and it would take
holding your hand
through all of this, and
here I am, and finally,
I believe.

this cinnamon realization
rolls around in my chest:
honeyed sunlight
apple-crisp mornings
laughter and fear in the name of fun
quiet anarchy
gardens, beaches, friends -
I am happy, or close enough.
what more could I ask for?
what more could I dream for?
to be home, to be with you: but
here is becoming home, October
has replaced July with orange glory;
clouds and mountains and salt water
all the same, absent sunsets,
huge-moon nights, hot sunrises,
stars and soul mates and folk music.
O that I could dance
forever in the evenings of October,
skeleton ghost and graveyard
pumpkin spice and falling leaves,
the endings that give us new life
all are here, *****-heavy
fear-free, future hallows blissfully
unknown, pasts blissfully
undreamed-of.

I feel so detached some days.
I am not who I was. I am not
the girl who walked those high school halls,
red lipstick smudges and sidelong rejections
of boys who didn't know the mess they were after -
I am her and I am not her; at the heart
of things, the real truth of it, yes
we are the same, but I now
would not say those things she said
or do those things she did, or think
even as she thought.

Detached from the past I am now wholly
freed from the fetter of past selves, free
of their guilts, their regrets, their desires;
I am floating, minuscule distances above the dust,
I don't belong in that skin anymore, I can't help
but feel itchy in it, wanting to claw my way
out of my own skin. I don't know
what it was that tied me to her before
and is now gone, I can't see
the ribbons of gravity that held me
to the surface of this luminous planet:
reforging those bonds is a task invisible
and out of reach, something I won't know I'm doing
won't know I've done until it's over -

and on it goes, the floating and the molting,
and I can't quite see the places
where my new feathers are coming in,
but oh God how they itch.

drinking tea and drawing sweaters well past midnight
I am content to sit here and just be sitting here
I'll solve my problems in the morning;
it's way too hard
to try and talk to people after sundown.
so many people shut themselves off
after dark and after darkness
so many people never bother
to open themselves up.

my life is a book that I love too much
to let it end.
I wonder if people who are going to die
know that they are going to die
if they can feel the inevitability
of their own oblivion
in the seconds before it begins.
and were you out at the coffee shop
buying scones as her heartbeat
             slowed   and     stuttered            and                          stopped


my tea's getting cold.

when I get sad,
I told my therapist,
it's like static.
it drowns out
my thoughts. it numbs
my skin.
it makes the ocean seem
like a beautiful place
to spend eternity, it
makes blood want to rush
like music and my heart
wants to swell full
of chords and fervor
but it can't. that static
drowns it all out.
when I am happy there is
humming, there are symphonies,
in golden light
I dance with friends
and lovers,
but the static isn't switched off.
it's still there like an old TV
in the back corner
of a forgotten basement room
and when I get sad
I leave the sunlight leave
the party and go
and sit and I stare
at the static on that TV
and it fills my head
and my eyes and
my whole body up with
fear and longing and
a great big static-y void.
then
I wake one morning
in my own bed full
of static memories
still fuzzy
around the edges
but alive.
one day I will go
to that place far
beyond any sound
and the vibrations my heart beat out
will join the background
hum of the universe
disrupting radios
the energy that once was me
will be a single note
a little song,
a silent melody,
forever, and I will be
free from static.

loving you
is like falling asleep at night
sometimes it is easy
and sometimes
impossible
and
sometimes
I wait
breathless
for the morning.

My grandmother likes her poems neat
She likes them pink and cozy, without heat
She likes them simple and likes them rhyming,
Cute and kept in time-ing.

My mother, she just likes poetry
Doesn't write it, doesn't recite it
Reads it, sure
But not much else.


but me, my poems are all over the place

up




or down

maybe left                                                             ­                        maybe right

i make em whatever the **** i want
so long as they mean somethin real
somethin true, somethin beautiful
not short or sweet necessarily                maybe if i want to

maybe.

not my fault i was born when i was
not my fault i was raised like i was
the world around me is what i make it
here's what i think, go ahead- take it
i can't help it that i'm young
can't help it if i'm dumb
i look at you and try to understand anyways
but you say it's a matter of time, a matter of days,
say i can't be this or that cause of my age
well **** that, tell it to my rage
tell it to the tears the course down my face;
tell it to my people, the whole human race;
tell it to the butterfly who was born yesterday,
say they can't be beautiful cause they'll waste their life away
you can't look me in the eyes and tell me my life
is a waste of space, just meaningless strife
towards goals i'll never achieve
for people that you don't believe
can change the world
hey, watch me do it anyway.

Meditation broken even
In the tide of autumn leaves
Wanting just to be alone
Homeless, empty thoughts seethe
But the silence gathered round me
And the fabric of my dreams
Surges in and takes me over
I have lost all my control
And it's not a good or bad thing
(Though it's not what I would hope)
Oceanic hills and valleys
Stretch the confines of my soul
In this dusky numbered twilight
Fumbles daytime turning night
In these streets there walks a shadow
Of a being without form,
Listless, heavy, and deceiving
Are the stormless clouds that swirl
All around me in this heaving
Chilling tide of falling light.
Where I go and what I dream of
Who I'll be, by what I swear
All is tumbling, crashing downward
Future lost and present bare
To the sea I wander ever
Hoping it will swallow me,
To the sky look on and upward
Maybe one day it will free
Release from us this silent desert
Already I am walking floating
Drifting high above the earth
There is somewhere I am knowing,
There is some place I am going.

here i am now: here
i am, some kind
of almost-happy,
some kind of
no-longer-sad.
perhaps it will
come back, but
i don't care anymore.
i have beaten out
sadness before. i
have outlived
disbelief, doubt,
anger, fear: i can
fight them back
all over again,
now that i know
i'm not alone.
here i am now:
here is some kind
of restless joy,
here some kind
of peace.

at 1 am between the last curling step of the escalator
and the corner of the wall
a girl sat sipping tea
feeling perfectly at peace
you could see it in her face
in her knees on the frozen concrete
in her fingers gripping red and swollen
even as the wind wound itself around her body
slipping through the cracks in her stained uniform
you knew that she felt at once
alone and at one with the world

One of the eeriest things in my life right now
is that she died almost three years ago
but her Facebook account is still running.
I get little notifications on her birthday
and those weird "you haven't talked to this person in a while!
Reconnect!" blurbs every so often, still.
I could send her endless messages
but no one would get them. She's just gone
and somewhere there's a tiny part of a server
with all her messages, photos, likes and dislikes
on it, and no one will ever check it again.
She left a tiny cybernetic scar on the skin of the internet,
and what happens to all that stored data is as uncertain
and as unknowable as where she is now, if either
still exist at all. And she's not the only one - there
are so many little things left unattended
in the absence of the dead, minuscule holes
torn in the fabrics of our lives because no one
will ever fill them completely again.
No one will ever laugh like they did
or run their hands through their hair
in the exact same way. And if they do,
there is more missing - the same smile,
but different eyes. The same name,
but a different feeling. Nothing will ever
be the same again. Each moment the whole universe
is made and unmade again, infinite combinations
of personality and circumstance, and you never think
about what you're really going to miss until it's gone,
and then it's all you can think about.
Somewhere in the vastness of this empty planet,
a light on a server is blinking, the graveyard
of abandoned Facebook pages: some intern's hand is reaching
to pull the plug.

I don't want a dream. I do not desire that
which is fleeting, though perfect - which will be gone
once sunrise comes. But when will I arrive at
the place where I will find joy in every dawn?
I don't want a dream. I want something that's real.
I want to want to wake up in the morning.
I don't want to get lost in some far-off ideal
world that won't be there to react to my going.
I need to live in reality, not dreams -
though there are plenty of reasons for sleeping,
though the real world isn't always as it seems,
there are things for which I would go on living.

I don't want to dream any longer, please, I
need to wake up now, please don't just let me die.

you hover weightless toes brushing the grass
the Earth stretching toward you and you
stretching to touch the Sun above your
spine elongates your vertebrae loosen and one
by one relax your body is warm heavy
thick like honey and you are cosmically
beautiful:  your moles & freckles are
constellations your scars are pathways
runes telling you you are alive you have
survived your hair is oceans and forests
your wrinkles and folds are full of wisdom
your bones cry life  your arms
lengthen to enfold the Sun and all
around you is warm sky floating you
holding you up and you are
the most alive lovely part of it

you breathe your troubles out into
clouds and your anxiety out into
stardust and they bring rain
and light to people on the other side
of this luminous planet in this
glowing galaxy in which you are
a point of light a glorious speck
shining among the stars you
are brilliant and faceted
complex and tumescent
with so much to give

you let go of the fiery Sun
and fall back in the
grass and the Earth is
holding you and
your weight is
returning the
embrace.

honey, no one is an actor.
we're just people stepping into others' lives
the stage lights help
they burn out your fear and give your sweat a source.

honey, no one deserves it.
you're not born with it, you grow into it,
you don't guide it
you let it guide you. you do what is natural and what is true.

honey, i may not show it
but my skin is a silken cage
full to bursting with butterflies with razor-blade wings.
i just don't let it get to me.

honey, don't you get it?
theater, and the arts as a whole, it's life
it's blood and sweat and breath
don't say it's not your "thing" and don't say you've never done this before
you do it every day
every step you take forward is action and reaction
every word you speak has festered in your mind,
memorized for centuries and just waiting to be free.

and all that matters is
if at the end of the day your heart's not in it
wholly and completely, doesn't matter how well you acted,
you've failed.
and if your heart is in it, all of it,
wholly and completely and unbiased and unashamed,
doesn't matter if you skipped a page and a half
(the audience hasn't got the script memorized)
they'll see your passion and they'll know
you've won.

Deep beneath the ground, there she sings
The girl, the one with ivy leaves in her hair
Sings a song to the birds to the trees
To the great wide and wonderful everything she sings

She's been dead a long, long time
The girl, the one who sings to everything
Winter came and carpeted her grave in snow,
Huddled on the frozen ground her headstone lay

Into her dark hair she weaves the ivy leaves
The girl, the one whose grave is covered in snow
In her soul she plants their all-consuming seeds,
To come and cover the winter over in green

In a castle far away, there she sang
The girl, the one who sows the ivy seeds
Sang a song to the birds to the trees
To the great wide and wonderful everything she sang

She would have lived a long, long time
The girl, the one who sang to everything
Before her grave was dug she knew the world
All covered over in the green of ivy leaves

If only she hadn't fallen in love with the boy
The girl, the one who saw the green of ivy leaves
He took her heart away with him, away to the war,
Left her to face the winter alone and heartless.

She wouldn't have caught the chills then,
The girl, the one who gave her heart to the boy
Wouldn't have frozen in the castle made of stone
If she hadn't loved him enough to stay alone.

They found her in the morning, all the colour fled
The girl, the one who loved him and froze
From her cheeks and heartbeat from her hands
And her eyes wide, frozen open

He shed a thousand tears for her, you know
The boy, the one who lost his love to the cold
Cried until there was nothing left inside him but his fear
He squared his shoulders, ready to face his fate

He lived his whole life true to her, you know
The boy, the one who cried a thousand tears
Lived until it was all used up, then walked down that road
And joined her deep beneath the earth,
Where they now sing to the great wide and wonderful everything,
Planting ivy seeds in hope of spring.

It is a good thing that your life is long,
And your heart beats deep.
Fires blaze red for you, laughs, a song:
And the wine still runs sweet.

All will be ashes soon enough,
The smiles will fade, and the laughter
Run out. What once was tough
With youth will wrinkle and wither.

The in-between, the years that pass
As your glory and passion flicker,
Before your bones rest beneath the grass,
Make your smile softer, your hide thicker.

Don't discount the days not written down in song,
For it is a good thing your life is still long.

I wish I could say all the things I think about you
But I can't. There's a social faux pas and besides
How do you put heartache into words
While staring into someone's eyes?
It's easy to say that I love you
From a hundred and two miles away,
But I don't know what I'd do
If I was right there, right now with you
Sitting in your car, screaming along
With bad renditions of 80's love songs
It's all very well to call you on the phone
And tell you that I miss you
That my heart is breaking for you
While alone in my room with the door locked
But if I had to tell it to the world,
I don't know that I could,
I don't think that I would.
I wish I could tell you all the things I think about you
But the problem is I'm not so sure that I mean them.

there was a time when I was not
what I am now.
to say that your death warmed me
is an understatement. to say that
the fire which turned you to ash
lit my soul
is a clean metaphor
for the gruesome truth:
I am no phoenix

but people say I look like you.
people who loved you better
who knew you better
say I am becoming like you.
I don't want to be you.

I loved you
like a planet loves her moon,
and now you are more distant
and more close to me
than ever before:
you are both
here and not here,
and if you can hear me
I'm sorry, but

your life is gone already,
and I don't want to carry
its weighty remembrance.
I am not the result
of your ashes.
it has been two years:
I will not stay rooted
in the past, no matter
how much it changed me.

Met someone today
who doesn't believe in
freedom of speech.
His argument was
that people abuse it
that we say horrible things
and we shouldn't.
He asked me if
someone said that
everyone should die
would I support their right
to say that?
And I said yes.
I would rather
hear what they
thought than have them
kept silent or censored.
He asked me if
****** had the
right to say that
all Jews should die.
I said yes. Not because
I believe in what he's saying,
but because I believe that
I have the right to argue
that point.
He said that we shouldn't
have freedom of speech because
some people could talk for hours
about ridiculous things.
I didn't even want to argue with that.
Of course people say ridiculous things
they're people, they have that right.

Knowing is better than not knowing,
every time.
I would rather have the chance
to say no than simply be told
what to do and not do.

i told you that i dreamed about you
and that's more truth than
i've ever told anyone,
but still i held back.

i said i was a queen
and you were my knight
and together we brought our world
into a new age of light

which i wish could be our truth.
i'd love to rule the world with you.

but where i was a queen,
you were my only conquest,
my bloodied hands, rough
from fire and from fight
mapped out your skin
traced the lines of your collarbones,
danced over your veins

my lips played connect-the-dots
with your freckles
my words healed your scars
together we devoured one another:
and i woke up guilty.

because that's not where we belong.
we should be in the story
i told you: a queen
and her champion,
beating back the armies of night.

i'm on the verge of the future now,
really truly on the edge. i'm riding out
this high while it lasts, hoping
that i won't wake up anxious,
burdened with all the stuff i've got
to take care of. these short days now
will soon be over: that's what matters,
that the end's in sight. can't wait
to be gone, can't wait to be
moving on. all my life i'll spend

leaving now: jumping one city, one life
to the next, trading friends, families,
swapping beds and patterns and
smiles whenever my bones start
to itch. all the time i'm waiting now,
it's just a matter of days, of hours,
of minutes. everything big will soon
be something much smaller: a rock,
a thought, the time left, the distance
between me and you. it's all almost over
and i'm not scared anymore. i can't wait.

I could not find you in my lonely empire
Of winter’s empty skies, covered in clouds
Nor in summer that singed the sky with fire
Not lost in the depths, not wrapped in death’s shrouds
Where is it you went? Oh where did you flee?
I think you may have taken my heart too.
Why did you run so far away from me?
You left me alone; all I knew was you.
Hoping you'll see me without you, friend,
Realize what you did to all my genius,
In absence I'll come to a horrid end,
How could you let these days come between us?

*In the night your voice whispers love anew
And there is nothing, nothing I can do.

i had a dream once
in which you died
you drowned in the sea,
became one with the tide

i sat on a dock
at the end of the day
staring at the horizon,
my life leaking away

you came to me then
from deep in the blue
you cried and i promised
i won’t forget you

so now i wander the waves
and i wander the kai
praying that i’ll find
where your spirit abides

but if that doesn’t happen,
if i don’t survive
i pray that i drown,
become one with the tide.

wandering
city streets alone
as a child
gets old
as soon as
your popsicle melts
and you drip
on your favorite shirt
and you lose your steps

bare feet rough
on sun-baked
pavement
glittering
with broken glass
and i don't feel it
and i don't bleed
and i want
to go home.

there are
places in this world
sinking
and abandoned
by humankind
full of life
and raw
with the beauty of
rebirth; i want
to wander
through those
great cracked halls
seeping out
daises and ivy
with you,
and breathe
the air thick
with grass
and dirt, thick
with springtime
buds of life,
and breathe
the air, swollen
with dew, back
into your lungs.

Some days it feels like I’ll never get my life
sorted out.
I want to be a writer,
but I hardly ever write
anymore.
And I want to be a scientist,
but where do I start?
There is so much I want to do
so much I want to see
and I have to start deciding
now?

Everyone wants me to be
successful, or happy,
but neither of these things mean
anything at all to me anymore.
Neither of them are important.
I often feel like
I have a
destiny
like I’m meant for something
great and important and huge
like I’ll rattle the stars someday
but
how do I do that?

I don’t want
to have to run away
with a mad man
in a blue box
to make my simple life
matter.
And some days
I don’t want to matter
at all -
I don’t want anyone
to trust me or rely on me
I don’t want to be
responsible
for anyone or anything.

I have spent
so much of my life
so horribly alone -
watching others’ lives go past,
sitting on the sidelines
as they orchestrate and control
their little worlds.
Did they not ever feel
that miserable soul-ache,
did the fear
that none of it mattered
never press down on them
and threaten
to take it all away?

Did they never
look up at the stars
and scream at nothing
and have no one listen
and have no one care?

I have lived alone
and I have lived together
with others
and we all feel alone sometimes,
some of us more than most.
Happiness for me
is no longer an option
and I don’t care at all
about any standards of success
but if I can make you
feel less alone,
even for one second,
then I have done all I can,
I have rattled the stars
to their very cores,
my life has mattered
so very much.
I have been incredibly,
insanely, unbelievably
important.

can you tell
when I'm not here
when my head
is worlds away

can you say
where I go
when I don't
want to stay

do you know me
who I am
where I'm going
where I've been

do I know you
who you are
all your goodness
all your sin

I'd like to think
we were tied
together our souls
like binary suns

I'd like to think
we were lovers
stitched together
at the runs

I dream about
a lot of things
of other worlds
and living free

I dream about
a lot of things
I dream of you
do you dream of me

I grew up alone.
There were people around, sure,
but not the kind to talk to.
Not the kind to spill anything
that was really in my heart to.

I grew up alone,
in a world of stories.
My friends were all heroes
and never talked back to me.
In some ways, they existed
more than I did.

My childhood was an eternity:
the endless nights,
the endless loneliness;
so separate from my brothers,
so different from everyone I knew.
I wasn’t sad. Just alone.

I grew up alone
and I’ll never forget that feeling
of being a stranger
in a strange world
with nothing but books
to keep the darkness at bay.

i wake up every morning
more ready than the last
to fall asleep that night
and be that much closer
to the end.

my heartbeat's growing now,
stretching itself out
to fill the long hours
that lie between me
and leaving.

i have no time, for
all the time i am working,
preparing myself,
but in the empty spaces
in the minutes where
i am catching my breath

there is still an eternity: it lies
between me and my fate,
between the dreams of a child
and the reality of age,
between separation
and alignment.

let's drift in those eternities,
let's build monuments to whatever
in our minds, let's exist
in the moments we are resting
and imagine the future
as it's happening,

we are tomorrow and
we are today. we cannot
give up now. we cannot
give up hope. we are tomorrow,
and tomorrow's crashing down.

she invaded the space behind my lungs
and slowly, by degrees, pushed me out
of my own life. she took over
my heartbeats, my hair, my voice.
I wanted you and now she does.
I laughed in the sun and now she does.

people ask us if we're sisters
and I can't say yes
and I can't say no.
we are linked, two peas in a pod
she built from dust and desire,
but she is not me. I am not her.

my hands and my eyes are not hers.
my thoughts are not hers.
but I am hers, I belong to her,
without her asking or my giving
she pulls me under and I don't
even beg for mercy: I want to be drowned
in her stupid tidal wave.
perhaps then we will find
the line between us: that I am dying
and she is living; that she is standing
on my heart, pushing the blood
into my throat.

say I love you while you can,
and while you mean it,
and in as many ways
as you know how: there is
altogether too much time
when your heart is not beating
in tune with hers,
you may as well admit it when it is

and do not be
ashamed, my friend,
if she proclaims
your eyes are starlight
your lips are moonbeams
and she does not look like any sun
you've ever seen

perhaps just turn away,
let roses rise in your cheeks
and whisper a soft thanks
because you know her heart
beat so loud for you
it poured out through her mouth

and wait for the moment
when you can say the same,
or if you cannot: do not
lie and say she is
your world and stars and sun
when she is none.

empty on the insides
like a dish scrubbed clean
full up of nothing
even memories
feel too much like dreams
like all those things
that we did
and we said we would do
are just echoes
you're not anyone,
you're just a reminder
of someone i once knew
i don't know where i'm going
i don't know where i'll land
i get a feeling it's different
from everything i got planned
i'm not afraid of the future
but i'm still shaking somehow
weighing nothing means
i could just float out the window
i'm just a shell of a person
just a shell of a girl
not anyone or anywhere
or anything right now
i exist in this space
and this space exists in me
and the words that i want to say
won't make it past my teeth
i am empty and i'm no one
and i used to be so full
at least there is no darkness
at least now there is no cold
i'm not ready for the future
but i'm no longer afraid
i'm not thinking about anything
but i think that that's okay
for now

it’s not so hard, right?
you ask the poet to put her thoughts
her feelings, the images in her head
down on paper.
it should be easy! she does this
every day. this is her job.
this is her life, her life’s blood.

so why won’t the words come?
why does my heart feel stopped
in my chest, why won’t my fingers
move in rhythm with my mind?
and i want to scream,
i want to, i want to tear things apart,
but the world is fragile enough
already and the only way i can
hurt without hurting
is with words
and i don’t
have
any.