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.

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 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.

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.

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.

human beings
create
their entire existence
in mandatory
suffering.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

i did absolutely nothing.

back up against the dirt,

should i die today, among the weeds

maybe death won't hurt.


and should the flowers

watch me as they grow,

and the birds with their serenade,

at night's delicious close.


and not the silence gathers round

to take upon my plight,

so quiet, gentle hands

which take my thoughts in flight.


so gather round and watch me fall

sinking chagrin in my chest

between the line of life,

across the line of death.


i lay among the trees which reach

their arms up so desperately high,

oh how i wish i could reach with them,

and now i realize why.


the grass does not appear afraid,

the leaves shake not from fear,

but alas, my triumph's had enough,

my eyes shut tight as he draws near.


i did absolutely nothing,

and here i am to live,

purple shadows under my eyes

and all i've got, i give.


i did absolutely nothing,

and those flowers wonder why,

all i can say is that i'm here to reach

like the trees that touch the sky.

sometimes when i think of
living with depression
i think of my aunt
who is living with a dog
that jumps on the bed
and children who never stop barking
its kind of the same
depression is a bit like a fly
that's been in my house for as long as i
can remember
buzzing and humming and
right out of my reach
and when i try to swat it,
i end up hitting everything other
than the **** fly.
i spilled things, i broke things, i smashed things
and destroyed things and i tore
apart my house but i didn't
ever manage to get it
but never did it occur to me
that eventually
flies die.

there's music running up the walls
and glass beneath my feet
I write bad poems into the darkness
and hope my words may meet,
someone who hears me loud and clear
whom upon meeting I shall kneel,
to discover that there's been a wound
from which I cannot heal.
this painful madness creates a cage
the swallow settles into rest
begging with a heavy beak
for a bullet in her breast.
I was once a baby, awaiting death
so they put me in a box
and little did they know about
the ticking of the clocks.
the passing time of being stuck
silent begging to escape
get these tubes and needles out
so that I may be *****.
so I may be drugged and hurt and starved
of any love or joy
so I may drink the gift of life
that we all so enjoy.
from her cage, the swallow has now flown
free to soar at last
catch the wind inside her wings
but still prisoner to her past.
and I was put inside that box
with artificial life
the will from a father, let me live
and a mother with a knife.
she used to cut me slow and deep
and never let me rest
from all the other pain I've felt
and this sorrow in my chest.
this laughter echoes from my lips
but my eyes are red from crying
and no one knows that I smile
because I know I'm dying.
I'm dying from a lack of space
and air to ******* breathe
I'm dying from my own devices
and other's sunken teeth.
I'm dying from my mother's rage
my father's hopeful grin
and now I may take comfort
in all my countless sins.
3 years ago I swallowed pills
enough to try to die and then
I settled on the bathroom floor
and waited for my end.
but life betrayed me, as it does
my body fought for air
as I choked on my own *****
and shook until I met the stare,
of a brother who was pale as snow
and my mother with her knife
she said, this is what you get you see
as he began to cry.
I pulled through as the doctor said
you haven't got a clue
how lucky you are to be alive
from all that you've been through.
I remember the kind nurse
who held me as I cried
I remember my mother
invisible then, still wielding her knife.
It seems that I simply won't die
until I'm truly meant to,
and with that, I'm sentenced to my life
and I must see it through.
there's music running up the walls,
and glass beneath my feet,
and I write whatever I want
so that my words may meet,
someone who's kind and listens well
despite all of my flaws
and when I meet them I shall rise,
and take life by its jaws.

last night i woke up on the floor. or at least
i think i did, and even that was maybe a year ago because
time isn't real, and anyone who thinks so or lives by the minutes will die before any sane person tells them to ignore the ticks. they don't even realize time doesn't make noise. the slow inevitable marching? that's silence.

i remember when i was about eight or nine, a very young girl in a very blue school, my hands practically glued to the wood in front of my face every day for morning prayer. and hell, i swear, religion is delusion and time isn't real. anyone who prays to anything other than what they can see is only making excuses.

i remember being this young girl and fearing and forgetting and remembering all over the pain i was in. later i learned that this pain was called **** and this **** would be the next seven years of my life before i recognized it in the dictionary.

i did not stray from this pain, i did not stray from the abnormality of Christianity as a way of ****,  i did not stray from the fact that a woman wanted my body as much as i wanted a friend, or a new pair of shoes.
i did not stray from the fact that a woman could ****.

even though i knew Adam and Eve loved each other, i hadn't ever heard of Eve and Eve and Eve and a little girl like me, and so on.
i knew what *** was before this, but of course considered it holy and equally unholy, something my small and shaking hands didn't get to feel.

was i wrong to assume that? maybe.  i think i remember loving it, or maybe only because love goes with *** and *** is beautiful and it happened to make me. was i a victim? of ****? of love? i cannot think much more of this at a time, it makes me feel as though i am crazy.

i have definitely lost control. i have made dents in the walls, smashed and shattered objects around the house, not even my house. i have screamed, yes, and cried till i can't hear myself cry and i have shook and shook until i'm surprised i don't fall apart or bite my tongue off. but how much control did i ever have to lose?

i do not write as much as i used to, perhaps i am too concerned over aesthetic. i am tortured, but what language is that words are words,  however abstract or ugly. i do relish the occasional purgatory.
releasing sin is necessary, even those you never committed.
we all need a little guilt in our lives.

you press your lips into mine
like whistling grass.
they taste like blood.
there is a white t-shirt on the floor
if only I could reach it.
to be myself again.
I promise myself to stay silent.
like I always do, trust me, it works.
and it's over before you know it.
my hands, so much smaller than yours
are pressed still behind my back
and little do you know
the plan they are hatching.
I pretend i am stronger than most,
maybe enough that I could **** you.
I know, in my heart, that it could never be.
your grief is so much that it's a wearable
coat, large enough to fit both of us.
I'm better now, stronger with each of your thrusts,
I am not the girl under the sheets
or the one in the bikini or the seven-year-old
huddled on the bathroom floor.
I am fresh-faced and venomous,
one bite and all this **** will cease
with the beating of my heart,
and the deafening orchestra of my
mind.

his eye was on the sparrow
heavyset and rolling
in a great golden socket,
bulging in a way which told the
world
he was God.

with every touch,
so enlightened
so unoptional
so curse-d with understanding
yet the bird shrinks away,
for her wings and feathers find
no flight in
purism.

shelved somewhere with survival
was the epitome of Death
He takes shelter in the songbirds respite
and leaves nothing for her
winters, proving more onerous
with each shift of night.

and by the light of a meat-eating sun,
He takes his hand and lays it upon the earth,
with such an exclamation:
Mine! This word which in express means
nothing less than what the human soul can
manage.
Mine.

she is furious, alas, and lost so,
in agony she sings
she dwells in darkness,
and darkness is where she
belongs.

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.

i told him with my silent lips
and sleeping face,
do not come near this
sing song beast inside of me,
and i said to it
hush, stay in your cage
you hideous thing.

i shouldn't let him see you.

and they have that saying
little do you know
little did he know
how tall and big and wonderfully
horrible
it is.

i remember
riding down the red petal street
as fast as my legs would allow
squeezing the handlebars,
squeezing out the rage,
as the beast sat nestled right next to
that beating thing.

i remember playing hard,
cocking a loaded gun,
waiting for the shame to come
dancing in for the ages,
far from dead now,
but he's got some exit wounds.

what nights i had,
lying under the crooked ceiling fan,
salty with sweat and tears,
yet laughing anyways.
i tried to tell him about the
beast,
but he only understood with his
hands.
he only understood with his
hands.



forgetting of me entirely.

my confessions come in cups
filled to the brim

my quiet rage is not so quiet
anymore

my grief runs through my torn up veins
so i can see it pour

out into a muddy street
where passerby will shake from fear

of this feeling, all consuming

god help me now to climb this
hill  

with weathered, cut up feet
so i can summit my own

destiny

stultify, my mind
this routine is never kind
the same drill of terror, obsolete
to black and blue, I'm beat.
this pious voice inside my head
wants nothing more than me dead
and yet I quarrel with my sorrow
and hold it to my breast.
clutch tight to your volition dear,
you're too smart to give him power here.
God doesn't know what he's created
monsters, demons, angels,
me.
what pious voice echoes in my thoughts
that all but consumes me.
what sorrow lies upon my breast
that all but consumes me.

stultify, my mind
this routine is never kind
the same drill of terror, obsolete
to black and blue, I'm beat.
this pious voice inside my head
wants nothing more than me dead
and yet I quarrel with my sorrow
and hold it to my breast.
clutch tight to your volition dear,
you're too smart to give him power here.
God doesn't know what he's created
monsters, demons, angels,
me.
God doesn't know what he's created.

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.

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

he tells me
my father
never let any man take
advantage of  you
i tell him
that is not  your place to
even say
my mothers thoughts waft up from
an empty wine bottle
she shouts
all i WANT is an
unbroken child
i shout back
i am
ALIVE
that is all you get!
glass shatters near my head
what must i have done to
be this bad
sobs bubble
from beneath my curled fists
my eyes are red
from all this
darkness
isnt there someone out there to
******* help me?
but i am alone
and there is no one
and
i wouldnt
deserve it
anyway
if i had known
it would be this dark
i never would have opened my
eyes

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?

diaphonized love
an arm to reach
out through the ivory black
needed that.
most days are spent between
the rift.
a losing battle, and a waiting game
this want.
skeletons serve as a muse
on nights and days like this.
where darkness refracts
and shadows hang like
fractals 'long the walls.
tonight I ride the high
tonight its to the bone
there is no winner here
only losers
lost minds
and found demons.

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.

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.

you've kept me up most nights
nights, bleed into day and day's end back again.
you've kept me,
surrendering into the nothingness of sleep
wrists and ankles bound to dreams
like you did to me.
she taught me to nod a yes instead of screaming no
instead of- help me, help me please.
i try so hard to remember anything, but you see
with a mind like mine the body is the brain.
i scream out only to realize
my lips have not even parted.
and that song, it sounds like the color of her house
forgotten love from lust only the love is a child and
she's crying out and nodding yes.
when i am broken and
there is nothing left of me to
touch
to hurt
to choke in your fists
maybe then they'll all realize
im just a little girl,
with a thousand ways to
die.

i used to focus on all the things that hurt
knowing that's what most people do
i felt more justified
i used to jump out into a sea among
all the children who had more than enough to eat
and a bed big enough for their egos
to rest alongside them
they seemed to fear those kids who
lived on food stamps and played on
imperfect lawns
but somehow hated those kids who had bigger beds
bigger houses
bigger egos
they told me i was lucky to have two homes
even if my mom didn't love my dad anymore
even if no one is there?
they told me i was lucky to be that skinny
cuz they would die to look that way
and aren't i hungry?
they told me i should be thankful
that my daddy's rich and at least i don't
look black,
how awful it must be not to be able to
wear your skin like a trophy
they said who cares if you were scared
you're lucky you have someone who wanted
You.
who couldn't keep their
hands of you.
Are you even listening?
Don't you know how lucky you are?

I let people down.
I let them down so far that
there is not enough light for
them to see that I didn't mean it,
they cannot see the look in my eyes
that says that I would do anything
to change it,
they cant even find a ladder
to climb their way out of the deep
misery I put them in.
At least, that's what they tell me.
That I descend them so far into
darkness that there is no getting out.
And so, that is what I tell myself.

her gleaming eyes atrate in
black
reflect in them the lies I've
told
untouched blood no longer
flows in lack
blessed be her hands which
hold
the supple flesh of a corpse,
my own
with greatness she consumes me
whole
I am left with nothing but
a throne
which crumbles like dust 'round
my soul
her gleaming eyes atrate in
sorrow
with rigor and a story
tamed
from a locked door and no
tomorrow
I am now broken, with heart
un - chained

her mouth is like a
crimson slit
her face as pale
as death
her arms as thin
as morning sun
her hands dance
on her *******
she carries slow
her dying words
and ****** them at
my feet
before she lays
eternally down
she speaks them on
repeat
i am your mother
i am your wife
the sister you never had
i am your mind
i am your lies
im that which makes you glad
i am the lust that comes from ***
i am your deepest fears
i am your guilt you hold so
deep
i am your biggest tears
and so i set these at your toes
in hopes you run with them
never forget who i am
until your very end.

and though
i may be sleeping
now
with this hunger -
an eternity

my soul will be
dreaming
of that future
where i may lift myself
from the ground

make no mistake
i am still alive

i am the
albatross
powerful and
sound

just above,
among the rain-clouds
feather-light and
free.

arise, you waking monster,
and meet my swollen eyes.
from which my tears do fall,
from which I see your lies.
your rage is food to all the ones,
who wallow, watch, and wish.
you feed them every time you hurt
me and with every hurried kiss.
to Lust, you toss your rage like sweets,
a plumped belly you gave her.  
to Fear, you place it gently, down
around her your heart wavers.
and last and worst, to your king Grief,
you hesitate to feed.
for his appetite is all-consuming
and to him you rarely heed.
and by the time you finish
with all your empty friends
you've nothing left to give me
but a heart that beats in pen.
so i write your words into a poem
so that i may forget them,
and over time that ink does fade,
and your words, if i let them.
and now i write with open hands
and my heart is free to throw
these memories into a blue night
and these sorrows into prose.

Sometimes I wonder, no,
often I wonder,
imagine,
search all around me,
for the cause of mans belief
that he is superior to the
air he breathes,
the butterflies he captures.
Man thinks he owns the wind
that hurls itself through the trees,
he owns the stars in all of their vastness,
the midnight murk that surrounds the soulful moon.
He owns the whole galaxy,
which he clamps in his fists
like the fish that he has caught
in the stream that is his,
watching it wriggle and gasp for air.
Watching death itself.
That is the pride and joy man carries,
his golden trophy.
Man cannot wrap his arms around
the Milky Way and make it his.
Man cannot control the slowing
beat of his heart,
thickening of his blood,
the fading of his thoughts,
the incompetence,
the suffering that comes with age.
Man cannot evade Death.
Man cannot evade Life.
And of all,
Man's deepest flaw,
he cannot evade himself.

goodbye, world, and those who know.
I may not make it through,
this deep-set storm inside my mind
my death is overdue.
in my fervent dreams, I apologize
for the darkness that rests,
among the corners of my mind
or this cross seared on my breast.
for all the scars that litter my arms
and all that wait their turn,
I will never forget what they did
or the love I had to earn.