when empty, boneless fingers claw
in haste at my shy-away face
and the waves of pain lap silently at my
ears,
when my sordid mind believes
in part that all is lost...

i remember,
i am what i am and
i am what i am.

when the cage of ribs achieves not
a flight, however stalled
and aching teeth gnaw with fever upon
remnants of joy.
when the seeing eyes depart so intentionally
out from their sockets,
and blindness ensues in its grateful yet laborious
way...

when i slink as a stranger around the chains that
hold me down, a prisoner,
i rejoice,
and the scent of victory floods as quickly away
as it came to be.

i rejoice,

when talons of grief grip hard at the hands
i used to pray
when the walls become more
than the grooves and dips which my fingers
have created
when the hurt settles in the permanent
crater of my face..
when the pain is undervourable,

alas,
when the euphoria surrenders its hands
at my feet,
glowing like two capable hearths,
i rejoice a final time,
await the cycle as it rests,
and kiss each knuckle
abrasion, bruise
and find my place among the sinews
of purest joy.

i remember,
i am what i am,

i am what i am.

im young i said, you turned your head
and snatched it up anyways.

i have met again my match
this dangerous optimism
acoupled with a cockeyed rage
which tears about in my blood
like some hell-bent rabid beast.
and i hope and say my prayers that
shes just an exit wound.

lay your greedy hands on me
sew your wings upon my back
your voice of ecstasy disguised as reason
this is euphoria
a high where ledges don't exist.

look at me
the fiend
the pessimist run askew
this newfound joy might break me

and alas, i realize, i am not predator
but prey
and this hunt is mine alone.

time again i lay here
near death and suffer-spent
a ginger beer in hand and half a heart
to hold.
as happiness, the *****, laughs in my face,
and the silver cheeks of grief are pressed
against my own, waiting for the fall
for me to fold in my own
existence.

for this joy does leave
the rage does stay
and there is little left to
say.

once i read in a book of the time
a girl was hurt
not in the way where one can say
here have a bandaid,
or stop the bleeding
or numb the Pain.
he held her to the ground
as the rocks dug into her back
tugged on her hair in the way which
men do when they use
someone.
and as he held her, pushed her towards the
dirt
she did absolutely nothing.
i believe, her heart stopped.
it stopped because it couldn't keep
a steady rhythm,
as he did.
pushing and grabbing,
owning and groaning.
i imagine her,
staring at the sky and thinking
this is how i come undone.
this is the time, the moment,
the very seconds in which the
corpse becomes a corpse,
the face becomes a moment frozen in
between what could happen and what
never did.
and as i sit here
devouring the Pain
suckling on the hurt and fear
i feel it too.
that it's tearing me apart
"all i want is to *******"
and all i want is to die.

but i can't do it
because what a life i would take
what a soul i would un-soul
and do i even believe in me?
as i sit in this perfection of Pain.
this metamorphosis of suffering
i feel it too.
i feel it so deep in my bones
that it makes me sick.
but alas, i know
ill up and face another day
another day to destroy it.
destroy her.
destroy him.
destroy myself and the sky with me.

i know ill up and face another day.

come to meet me, friend
in this sunken place.
the time is now.
like the spider on his thread
hanging from an erroneous web
creeping his way
to freedom.
he knew these things
because he knew everything
he knew the empty bottles of ginger beer
to stave away the sickness that comes
from simply being
******* alive.
he knew the smell of ***** and
the sight of bruises.
he knew the sound of sobs
and the audible chorus of a heart.
he knew the pain so well
he could trace the cracks in its palms
with his eyes closed and
no hands at all.
the pain which has so dutifully begun
the hibernation
and deliberation inside
the wrong body.
and now i know
just as he knew
that death is simply a door
and i have found the key.

i have rules for these things
as these memories over take me
as the sun creeps up, talons ablaze
and my sleep breaks and my heart along with it
again and again and again
and i open, laboriously,
an eye to meet him.
what a gift it is to
wake in the face of fear.

i have rules for these things 
and memories to forget.
but grief will always be there
swinging its blind head
towards the terror-stricken faces.

its what happens in that second
larger than hell or heaven
than the laws of motion
like the spiders in this basement
simply crawling backwards
not really knowing.
not really growing or spinning
like me. like me just sitting here
amongst the webs 
a decimated, unexonerated
corpse.

its funny how they all crowd around
the most intimate of pieces
like that blue pair of *******
stained with blood but they
like I
know not whose.
nights turn to day and day to
dusk
and i am still in his basement.

i have rules for these things.
these ******* and that bra 
those ***** sheets and tumultuous dreams.
is that what they are?
in one i am chained at the ankles
in another intertwined with him,
as if I wanted it, you can practically
hear my cries.
you decide from what.

I have rules for these things.
and this stays shut.

i am just a puppet
strutting ceaselessly about in
this mortal flesh.
hanging by a thread.
there's peace in the sadness.
but my time is running out.

see something
say something
that's the plastic sign
the bumper sticker
the hurried whisper
the fingers, wishing and taking
my time is running out.

incubate the sadness
pacify the pain
live another day
live another life away from
him.
I've sinned an ocean and
my time is running out.

I sit and write these words
they come fast, abetting me
my hands shake from what
rage?
dissolution?
and I think,
aloud

have I become the cavity I feared?

she takes my arm and sips the blood i bled
shuts my eyes and says,
i cannot bear for you
to see what lies ahead.
this hurt siphons down
like the tears on my chin
and i cannot seem to reckon
with each and every sin.
and what's to stop this time
marching on in fury, enraged
like it cannot seem to fit enough
of the pain in every day.

sorrow is like a smog
sometimes it is thick
sometimes less apparent
but day in and day out
i am breathing it in.