my eyes sink
my mouth is laden with tender flesh
my teeth are tired,
they aren't so geometric anymore.
i can feel the usually damp
pathways
that spark and tinder
but dry, and slow like
desert sand.
what tundra am i unaware of
that suffers under the sun
how could i not feel
myself wandering
into the infinite rise
and fall...
the dangerous
beautiful
desert of my madness.

my days aren't good days
or bad days
they are just
days.

and they never stop
crawling forward
with me
trapped inside
them.

his body serves a vessel for a great voyage
to a new world.  and he is programmed to believe,
wholeheartedly,
fervently, this new world lies in
wait just for him, composed to hold him and
his aliveness like a bright,
pleasant fruit holds its acidity.
but the stomach churns upon arrival,
for the newness of this world proves all too ripe
for mans
infinite
rot.

there is loneliness in
having a mother
trying to grow up
for you
like the blue part of a flame
an unbearable heat
that only melts parts of
your self away
so you cannot tell the difference
between this melting child of your mother
and your own childhood
burned to the
wick

over the jilted crest of my love
the wave and day break alike
to wash away the sleepy cries
and corner curses, which once my tongue
grabbed
and tasted as you poured,
an aching stream of prayer exits
me every time.

in haste, i am solemn,
in the dark i am desolate
for love.

there is nothing i can say.
i am no longer a child, or a young adult,
i have no mass of anger, nor am i looking for a way out.
i have realized, along with my newfound silence,
that every single person is in pain.
their pain is specific to them, though.
i have listened to people talk endlessly,
hearing themselves, yet they never really say anything.
their words attempt to reach anyone, yet they evaporate
right off the tongue.
their eyes flick around, compelling yet merely like wallpaper,
to hide what rots and has cracked beneath.
their souls are infrared but empty, they have nothing to give
because they cannot receive.
i have listened to complete, stubborn silence from
many people.
and without words, without language, they communicate in
the most raw, animalistic way.
they cry, they shake, they scream.
they bruise themselves and wish silently for an end
and these people without words,
say everything.
i have realised, many times over.
this condition.
many things can make us tired,
but our own beating hearts are sure to be
a final point of fatigue.
it is incompatible, incomprehensible our place in the universe
overwhelming how little we know, how little we are capable of knowing.
we can feel we are bright but only in comparison,
and as a reality our blood is *****, our skin is pocked, our legs tire, our eyes glaze thick with age, and we do not die with our hair.
everything we consider of importance is material, decomposing.
we conduct our own destruction and applaud ourselves for our fatigue.
we scream, we cry, we shake,
we talk and talk and our teeth rot and our minds collapse inwards.
perhaps our suffering lies not inside of ourselves and our exhaustion,
but in all that we can see we are not.

i am like a gray cloud
not pretty in this sky.
i disappoint and displeasure
all the passerby.
this depression
is not a "this" thing
it just
is.

its me.

dont mind me in my predicament, steer clear
just waiting for the evident fear here
of the confinement
to a prison for
one.

mama said ill regret it in a year or so
but to her i say at least thats a year of my
life to know
that i wont have to wake up
wanting to shed this skin.

my thoughts are filthy, shallow, obsessed,
theres not a day goes by where im not lessened
by the urge to destroy
and snip and cut and bleed.

and so i lay and wallow, grieved,
upon my throne of mutiny
suckling a fantasy of
FTM.

holding on to hope that it will
end.

where is my matchbox
to set this oil spill
alight
who knew
only i
that consciousness
could destruct
its natural habitat
so very
very
quickly.

have you ever cried so hard
so fully
that you are afraid to look at yourself
because





you might actually
show through.

upon these keys
i press
with my eyes
their lashes
and all my
tears.

for the rest of my
extremities
have nothing
left to say
only how
tired they
are of talking...


and so i
type.

sometimes i get sad about
knowing i am going to
eventually
die
and, to keep on
i think, yes
eventually
perhaps even this afternoon
but at least i have
the sunrise

more vulnerable than
most.
the child's gaze
says
to the man
beyond it
perched with
boiling need
not-to-be-wasted
desire.
more vulnerable than
most.

she sits in the flora
large, golden eyes search for suffice,
brown fur bristles in the light
her mind is one in prey and life.

- a deer, in her woods

the death of a tree
is the saddest thing
to find the long light
in the dark of dawn
is hard work for the leaves
they do not know their fate
and continue their rustling temperament
nestled in sore branches

he sees you
your godless
sinful body
sinks into your skin like a seed
into soil
brings his lips to what
he has secretly craved
he expects sweet
he is quick as a
flea
seeking “his”
instead
his tastes discover
that inconsistency
that ugliness
that disgusting
beautiful
proud
taste of
“mine”.

dreaming big
dreaming fast
i take my terrors
at full mast.
my breath is light
my blood comes thick
my hand in sight
to catch my death
palms outstretched
to carry souls
forgotten people
forgotten goals
i bring the sun
into my skin
so i may die with
little sin
so i may die in
peaceful plight
i breathe the sun
in all its light.

man looks for ways
to disembowel fear
perhaps, to bring a knife-tip
right to the gut
ensure our terror and
sorrows
spill with all the blood.
unto the floor we put our knees
passionately bruised
and let our lips
hardened by elements
languish in red
and freedom,
like a well.

sleepy-eyed, walking through the
field of landmines and bombs.
right foot left foot no protection.
pain up to my brain and down to my feet.
not a single thought behind these eyes except destruction.
cold clang of hospital metal, warm drip of intravenous.
why am i shaking?
am i terrified?
unfamiliar with this feeling,
the strangeness of an ownership
that has never been mine.
i am afraid of this part.
afraid it might fester, rot in the corner,
away somewhere unable to be seen
but forever existing.
i am left hoping
and praying to simply concave, implode,
fall apart one last time, for the last time.
i need this,
with every ounce of my being
i need this.

i must destroy this monster outside
so i can destroy the one in me.

he lives in a house
that takes up the small corner
of the cul-de-sac
there are no windows
only a single frame
above the back porch
yet no one
ever dare to sneak a look
for fear they will
see the reason why there
aren't any
windows.

his wife
tossed her heart out
the top left
window
saying she'd rather
have it pump its
end
on the pavement below
than have something touched
by him
inside of her when she too
died.
after this, he promptly
took her
lungs
his were full of ashes
and he always felt,
he breathed better
with her.

his baby
his smiling, hauntingly joyful
infant boy
stopped too
only eight years
ago
when he wedged himself
between
the metal bed-cage
and went to sleep.
if you looked,
you could probably have seen
him
suffocating
through the bedroom
window.
as purple as
the day he was born.

this man tore out
the last window in his home.
he wanted nothing more
than to shut out the
night
and the day's harsh rise of
gold.
it hurts his eyes to see a welcoming world
just as much
as the dark.

no moment feels as finite as this one
yet as infinite in the way
a mother can be with her unborn child
the cycle repeats
*** love
lust
this moment of aloneness
carved out in the universe
do i deserve a place like the womb or my
own home
which holds no such
warmth
caregiving
food for my soul and a soft liquid
universe just for me

how one man would
enjoy crawling back inside his mother
devoid of all ****** meaning
only the feelings of safety
that comes with the infinite cycle
mother wont you love
me
hold me in your liquid softness
which i can feel secure
in
like i was never born

what one woman feels
in the repetition of this cycle
she too, remembers the womb
yet there is no comfort in
her ability to create
it
for she's not certain
if it won't really be infinite
and should she hold herself responsible
if the cycle
breaks
before her liquid soft
does break too


one child is only lonely
because now he is cast
to a much colder place to which
his heart guides him with an equal amount of
primal curiosity and learned fear
how he must miss the feeling
to not even have to
breathe
like he was never born

there lives a dragon in my kitchen
cracks are like veins along the
yellow walls from his nightly
fleeting race to nowhere.
my eyes find themselves
black whilst my mind treads
eager
crawling
down the yellow wall
to meet my king.
what bright color stains my eyes
but fluttering dragon registers in his
bitter, cradled ego.
my husbands solar flare
is kin to the fire from his jaws
which tears and burns around my throat
and sears away my aching self-compassion.
what beast awaits the cry
trapped between my fingers...


i hope he doesn't swallow it too.

somebody lit my mind on fire
i can smell it through the trees
they have set ablaze
my conscious
reduced my being
to matchsticks.


at least my heart
has yet to touch the flames.

theyre running, and pretty fast too
they might trip i think
they seem pretty desperate to get to me
i might run too
do i?
lately i have become interested
in letting fate
decide for me
cuz im tired.
whose to say
i get mauled
and shot
or do i keep on walking.

strangers sit and stare, back and spine
curved on the wicker seats.
two generations of a girl slumped across,
the butts of cigarettes
singe and crawl upon their careless toes
which twitch with the dying light

women let sweet honey from their lips
into these hollow ears of mine and
once more my dis-regret
blossoms through my *******
the sky is heavy
and kind with heat, some sort of spark to
set alight a new delusion
hidden well inside this evening

mother is now etched in ash
against the white wallpaper
the quiver of legs that weren't her own
still rest their due weight in my hands
and across my own
the nights i stripped and wept
myself without ease into the dark
hold no difference to my
mornings meant to wear my tears
as welcome as spiders knit
into my lashes.

pale and blotchy skin arrests my form
becoming my mother seldom took so much
that i remember
blood red inside and stiff to touch
someone has already stuffed me
and put me on display?
even so, their fervent project need not resume
until the last of my ribs
crumple under my

weightlessness.

I slide my pant legs down down down
and kick them off my feet
I pull my shirt over my head
now it seems obsolete.
I take the clasps of my blue bra
and toss it on the floor.
last to come off is underwear
won't need these anymore.

now I see what I can touch,
and this is when I cut.

A child named Michel
plays in the middle of the street
He cuts my childhood in two
Lined by identical brown cottages.
Michel is now unlucky,
Sitting in a body bag
In a basement
Blood still pumping from his
Surgical defibrillator
Now Michel will live forever
Perhaps until the flying cars and until pigs make
Their vertical descent to both heaven and hell.
Now the house is a quiet house,
I only realize how loud Michel was,
Once he stopped altogether.
His parents sleep heavy,
Like their lives are over,
They are dead, dead, dead inside.
And so I smell the death
Which perfumes their shared residence,
In my guilty conscience,
I am glad that Michel is where he belongs.
Dead.
Michels parents preferred a way of life,
Where you just know that Michel had to know
his chance at death were plenty.
Michels parents took him up to the attic,
Where Michels father would **** him,
And mom would take pictures
Watching quietly.
I know this because our windows are parallel,
Because I saw Michel
Pale face across the middle of the floor,
Pleading, why won’t they **** me?

white bear sneaks beyond the ice
and all the blue
to find his prey in wild wind
beyond the ice, beyond all the blue
all bear, white bear, can do
is seek
but how he is mistaken in
his strength
white bear is only
prey to
wild men

depression is like
a house on fire

and my life is the house
and the depression is the fire

all my time is put into taming the
fire, and
sometimes i catch on fire

sometimes i just sit and watch it
as it dismantles my
home

and sends sparks up into
the air.

there was a fire between you
a passion, some kind of lust
and you called it a miracle.
a split ashtray and broken seatbelts and
a flat tire and a screaming baby
you called it a miracle.
dead romance, techno music,
afro picks and spilled beer.
you called it a miracle.
boxes lined with insulation,
IV drip and nurses pressed for life.
you called it a miracle.
happiness, hopelessness,
hurried love, first homes, small toes.
miracle.
then and there and back again,
hospital bed, open head, runny eggs and
silence
is it still a miracle?
im just me,
and theres no cure for that.
and you *******
you twisted sick-suckled *******
crash with the street kids
ruffle up the birdies
who grow seedlings out
their ribcage
only they need to be dead
for that kind of beauty.
and shes shithoused drunk by 3pm
forgot the toothpaste but
not the alprazolam
whats better than a swig out
the ol’ medicine cabinet
and half a cigarette?
thought she might’ve stomped it out
had she not had that metaphor
sharp as glass in her left hand.
men with mottled skin and
charred faces mar and del mar
locks up them up with only
a nose through the bars
i meant to stay hid beneath
that misconception
hear that monster coming?
with his rusted bayonette,
alcohol on his breath?
whats it to you
but the game of life?
of life
which player am i?
the wound or the knife?
and i spent my days treading
barefoot on the beaten earth
radiator burning holes through
the socks she gave me one Christmas eve
which player am i now?
or am i a pawn, relinquished in black
in the lack of light accompanied by foolery
of favoritism?
the heat never did them any good.
so i like to think of it
like a terrorist sympathizer
the constantish reminder of
nothing good
between those blue walls
lives still a desecrated ghost
with a shut off brain
and no reason to
let go.
and all the things which once were simple
***** themselves in the draining effort
of simply being.
there should be places to hide
instead of wide open skies
shall i surrender now
afloat on this hill,
or wait until i am surrendered?
i do it for this agony
a nightly presence
a friend if it weren’t for her
gnashing and talons and rust metal teeth
leaves and grass screaming
in the wind
another part of me
they cannot see
and do not want to.
why is pain so welcome?
why is infliction so
delicious?
the slow fade of a hesitant smile
to eyes which cry and a face that
contorts in the sweltering sun of rage -
is it sinful, shameful greed of hurt or is Godless,
as they say?
somewhere there is something
left to say
you go to shake my hand
and realize i dont have any
cut off and bled
like they do to the cows
and the pigs who are ******* smart
enough to know
because stone cold
said so
so you hug me instead.
its easier to cut butter
with that small fancy knife.
what more do i need,
when i’ve got me,
a body to break and a mind to feed
so when i feel that harsh note
of morality gone and an ego in tow
that nihilism crawling its way back up my throat
all i can think of is God
the Leviathan
to better my chance of living
but not really
just dying,

alive.

human beings
create
their entire existence
in mandatory
suffering.

today i sit in the sun, letting myself be warmed by its reaching arms.
i imagine they are the arms of a mother, wanting to hold me, love me, watch me cry and wanting me anyway.

but this is not my sun.
this is my mother.

she strikes me, and i feel the most hurt i have ever known. before this, there was no pain. before this, there was no grief. no unimaginable sorrow.

she puts me in a cage,
watching my shoulders shake
my lips move

please love me
please love me
please love me

she shuts the door
and i come to an end
over and over again
dying on repeat
all because i know
in my heart
there is no love
there is tolerance
and lack thereof
which hurts the most.

i reach through the bars
grasping for my sun
as it grows too dark to see
i scream and shout
mother, please love me

stop confronting me with impossible pain.

it doesn't matter whether you were just born
drowning in a millennials work
or being fed through a tube.
you're already on your way out,
and there is no denying that.

my mama sets her lips on my cheek
but not long enough for me to feel
loved
quick, she says
we must go
this place isn't right for us.
my mama stares  at me in the
doorway
calm, she says,
that boy wasn't right for you.
my mama drives down 1-95
speeding past and cursing out
quiet, she says
that man wasn't good for us.

put your underwear on
light a candle at 4 am because today
i do it backwards.

last night there was no walking
she sat with heavy, swinging *******, expectant

she disregarded all the ***** on the floor
her smoke mixed with the salt from my tears and the reaction
was instantaneous
what she wanted mattered to me
last night

she knows my skin must shed all this chaos
feel smooth and and young and free
and so she sets the pattern, the swing
of things

three times around we go
i tap her below her spine as i smoke
with her red lip prints on the ends
i don't mind

ive vaporized now
a freak tangled in my bed alone
she can be a shadow to squint at when dilated
i cant make out the naked moon or
my naked mother
or the beach littered with my smokes.

a beautiful woman to be
rejected by
left with her moans still
suspended in the air
above the
bed.

here i am
again
awake
alive
no.
is it happening all over again?
my muscles ache as if someone has torn
the fibers,  tied nails to them and replaced me
as a mistreated machine.
there is a blaze in my brain
and no amount of water can
quench its flames
I burn until whats left of me
smokes  out of my ears and allows
me no
oxygen and
i am afraid of truth.
i cannot walk
for my legs have been sewn together
like a deformed doll
i am an ugly misshapen
machine
i run on fear and guilt
and i am afraid of truth.
i cannot write
i cannot get it out
i am inhuman
i am a machine
i feel as though
im dying but
im very well alive
and that is what i fear

the aliveness brings us together
or does it bring us lies
does it bring us its very end
right at the beginning?
should we be afraid?
because i am
i am weak in the knees
help me
i cannot get it out
of me
i scrape and scratch
and will it out
but still, it stays
inside

welcome to me
i am a machine
well-oiled no
but running so

i am crazy
i am beaten
i lie
i cheat
i scream and  cry
i cannot seem to
get by in
this life

is it enough
for me?
for you?
for anyone?

God help me now
help me see
as I lay dying at your feet
my teeth ache
I have been up
praying all night
oh how badly I wish you could see

what you've put me through.

seven years of anguish
seven years of pain
oh lord, my god
I am wandering now and
wondering
am I so deserving?

of what you've put me through?

I can feel her hands
searching for a meal
to fill her belly full
and my very being
is served like a spit
to this woman, who claims
she is an angel.
I think i might be deserving

of what you've put me through?

all I see, a little girl
who's wondering all the same
her knees are sore from many things
she has kneeled to this woman
and now she is kneeling to you
"Oh Lord, my God, I beg of you
help me now and ill pray to prove
I don't deserve this.
I am her treat, her gift, her love
but I pray to my god above  
to prove I don't deserve this.
oh god my lord I will commence
my prayer and ill leave my pence
to prove I don't deserve this."

and now I sit
across from you
I've died from this abuse
I wonder hard, could I have saved
that little girl
from all of that
misuse?

There were red berry trees, with their marmalade skies
I saw gossamer green with my color-blind eyes.
And the roads which spiraled this way and that
Spun a yellow brick road for that silver-haired cat.
But despite all the blue and the green and the red
There's a high tiding chance that I wished I was dead.
Dr. Seuss in his study, dreaming down to his toes,
Was the black and the white that I read into prose.
And that poetry book that was cracking and old,
Held the brick-heavy grief stuck way in its fold.
And the tears which fell like clear droplets of rain,
From my cheeks only soared further into the pain.
"I don't want to hurt you, you're the one I adore...
But hurt you I must, can't you see that I'm bored?"
And down by the river near the colony bees,
Happened a thing that struck even the Queen.
In between mud fights and bruises from stones,
Came the black-taloned secrets and their bellyful moans.
And even among the bristled red berry trees,
and the yellow brick road and the colony bees,
and all the roads which curved this way and that,
and the cellophane green and the silver-haired cat,
There was Death with his smile atoned in faux-white
and medicators to push their manipulated plight.
And even besides the mud fights and blue skin,
There was always a bathroom for us to "play" in.
Slowly I realized, with a chagrin so great,
That this victim of circumstance had a five-letter name.
Thus the only thing waiting for nameless to do,
was to fast disappear in the green and the blue.
Those wilted berry trees, with the glassy grey skies
and the fake plastic green with the shy-away eyes,
and the roads which all spiraled out of control,
and the broken brick road for the cat on the stroll,
all these things might suffice with the brain in your head
but not on the days that you wished you were dead.

thirteen claw-marks from that cat on the shaky marble floor

who knows, as it etches itself into a rich mans immaculate masculinity

wiping away my helplessness before it too makes its mark.

i wish they would put their shoes together

left toe touches right toe

thats the only way it can be,

just right in the invisible space in the carbon dioxide collection.

twenty-seven pennies

bitter smelling in the jar which has just reached its peak in age and dust

they are the majority within their glass prison

dignified despite their rust

meaningless in their respite,

soon to be obsolete, as he points out constantly.

oh, how the world changes.

and i have only been conscious for a tiny tick on the clock.

now, this old man, with his inflexible spectacles

lacks the view in his birds eye and peripheral

but probably considers my shadow a bad omen.

he shivers in the wake of such an evil.

my teeth click against each other, electrified with the being of that evil.

the setting is white,

or rather, a version of it, decrepit with the plaque of a pattern all too familiar.

this is my dream room.

where i find myself often

and where often i am a stranger

my letters of wonder which i design on the walls, on the solar filled floor to ceiling glass

backwards of course, in hopes that someone might read them,

have turned tired and cold,

no longer illustrate their longing

nor their greed for adrenaline

nor their want for the world.

black and chicken scratch

stationed among the randomized pauses and the seemingly infinite crack in the wallpaper

might it widen its mouth for me

as it did so slowly

so lustfully

for her?

how possible is the other side,

when the world that you breathe in suffocates you only long enough until you remind yourself in silence

to breathe again.

imprisonment feels kinder when you can see out,

even though they can see in.

shuttered away, i build upon my layers until my mind can multiply itself

sneak out its smoky tendrils and climb along the terrace,

and wail

and scream

and scream until you could hear it down the street

until each person ceased their hearts

in between beats they meet the sound of a consciousness so distinctively torn they can’t help but reconcile with their own.

but i will never reach them that way

as i did not reach her

as i did not reach you.

i wear the glass, a translucent suit of sea green and nursery blue

each time they touch me, allow their fingers to feel my life

to feel my death

to feel the imperfect atoms which make up my aloneness, the invisible filth-

they are pricked and sliced open

the way grass does on bare skin only to be noticed hours later

in me, they see themselves

and the hatred only

grows.