I searched for these words up in the attic
with narrow ribbons of enlightenment streaming
through all-too-small windows
igniting the drifting dust specks on fire,
and on the streets in the gutters
that were gloom-spattered with murky water lunging
towards the grated storm guards
as if they were salvation.
I scrounged through soaked and disintegrating cardboard boxes
bearing the letters L O S T A R T S
and old, musty and molded trunks
that had broken locks and missing keys.
I dug them out of  soft-cloth linens, carefully selected them
from heaping mounds of scrap
-like sifting through a junk yard-
to find those precious bits of silver,
sweet iridescent bubbles
encasing so delicately words like
"language" and "cellar."
I gathered these knic-knacks and baubles
and I alighted them with utmost care
through winding black back streets in my little burlap bag
to my borrowed safe-haven room. And without
turning on the lights,
the door was shut and stopped and I was perched
with great secrecy,
cross-legged upon my bird's nest of a bed,
daintily extracting each little orb
and examining them and all their wonder.
Tri-dimensional little things, that, no matter how you turned them,
seemed always to be a bi-dimensional halo of pale, golden light.
They shone, each minute embryo, like an old-time city lamp,
before such evil things as electricity came
and robbed them of a candle's beauty.
And its core, as is true with humans, is its most glorious aspect.
There is a transparent ocean in there,
with roiling waves that spin the currents
and coax every particle to circulate.
And caught in the eye of that undersea tornado are flecks of glitter,
so tiny that you would not be aware of them at all
were it not for the magnificent glimmer that they sparked,
magnifying and throwing back the fainter glow
of that ethereal encircling band.
Pixies that danced at the autumn festival.

I found these words for you,
broken and perfect and shining,
and collected them on a shelf where I could view them
before I handed them over to you.
I collected them with you in mind.
Can’t you tell?
I found words like “lustrous” and “lust”
because they reminded me of you.
I arranged them sporadically,
and smiled to see “alabaster princess”
sitting unintentionally before my eyes.
And how you are my Alabaster Princess.
But oh dearest-mine, be wary of how you find these words.
Use them sparingly, and do not tarnish them.
Keep them like nuns keep themselves: ******.
If you must write them,
then write them in pretty hand-made inks,
and decorate each letter with dips and swirls, each letter a flourish.
And if you must utter them,
say them quietly, and in simple complementary sentences.
You can be Kennedy for a day,
or speak softly and let them be their own big stick.
Keep them uncommon, like you are uncommon,
and know when the repetition of weaker words can make them herculean.
Guard these words with all your strength:
with that sword hanging deftly on your wall,
with that letter-opener on your kitchen table,
with that pocket knife in your favorite pair of jeans.
Those words will save us one day,
once the world has reverted back to an aristocracy.
With that noble face of yours and this clever brain of mine, love,
we’ll con them into making us their master,
gold and land or no.
even if the sole things we own are our names.
And we’ll teach them again how to speak,
with all the sweetheart mightiness of poetry that speech was intended to have.
And we will learn to bow with all the eloquence of B.C. bible writing.
Machiavelli never saw rulers like us.

We’ll cry like the Devil on a Sunday morning
for the alteration in our names from D’evil,
and whomever first declared “they’re there yonder to get their ***!” shall know my wrath
(although that may have been me).
Parlez vous Français?
Non.
These words that I pillaged
from the mouths of great stone grave monuments,
I hope that you will remember them well.
I hope that you will pour over them
and gaze at them in all of the bedazzled stupor that I did.
And once upon a time,
when children loved to read
and sought the same type of affection that I have at last found in you,
when even the Greek gods were playing with pens and devising an alphabet,
I sat there on rocky shore, seasoning with saltwater,
drawing with my toe under the waterline,
your face.
Pretty as a picture,
and worth a thousand words.

Your face is asymetrical in a way that makes me love nature.
Your voice is light and charming.
Full of care, sensitivity, and fun.
It tells me not to tell you again.

When you smile, I know you're tired of hearing.
Maybe you're not as happy as you could be,
But you're content enough where you are.
The sympathy in your eyes says that you remember.

Keep it to yourself. I know, I know, I know.
Don't remind me. Don't keep hurting yourself.
Move on. Please. It'll never be you.
Yes: when you sip your tea, I hear you think.

I bite my tongue.
I'll be quiet. I'll keep it light and unimportant.
I don't need to tell you how badly I care for you.
It would only be selfishness, and you feel guilty enough.

So instead of writing loveletters,
I devise the most boringly cliche poems.
And when I find your photo, the fantasies fill my head.
And at the end, I stare up at you from the water.
And I can't breathe.

Because the sun is coming up, and I still haven’t slept,
They call me crazy. But I’m not, I promise you
-Not in a destructive way. I hope that’s alright.
And I can’t see the technicolor clouds from my window,
But maybe that’s for the best. I’d only be identifying
Images of you floating by in the shape shifting aurora.
False dawn passes, its greyish-blue hue
And fresh scent of rain giving me a second,
Third, fourth (and so on) wind, almost as much as the caffeine.
And I waited all night to talk to you,
But you never came. You said you would, though
It was silly of me to think that you would show;
That’s me: silly. But you like me that way.
And with my words failing on a pendulum locket,
Copping like they’re coping with the treasonist panic,
Backstabbing, hair-grabbing, pinching; biting; mother-spiting.
Falling through with mad devices, a lost prolific parody of
Gasping fools, so desperately grasping to the notion of an ending
That they insist is only the beginning to something greater.
I put a sign up in my window: Prozac and papal blessing- 2 bucks a pop.

Salt--

It was a taste on our tongues,
Mingled with sand and hermit *****.
We weren't quite worth our weight in it.

It's a grit between out teeth tonight,
As we were chewing our lips.
A tinge of metallic warmth being gently seasoned.

Salt--

Rolling over in the mud of the coast,
Our clothes clung to us, too heavy.
We'll never get it out.

Salt--

We don't drink the water,
But we choke it down and wish it were air.
Just a few more mouthfuls and we'll be turned into

Salt.

I was wheeling, weren’t you left reeling? We, we--
Weren’t you falling like a star from that stately name,
Before you didn’t feel the same, and touched by
All the teeth of beasts you couldn’t tame? Then there were–
O, what silken shards of likened dreams were in your past
And it never lasted
More than a week or two. But you,
Then, you were a sentry. At the turn of the century, the
Wooden horses burned and the cardboard-box gates fell.
Since then we never felt so well
As the day before that centennial. Anon, Aeon!
Spare us only years.
I adorned you with a crown of forget-me-nots.
You, you presented me with a fistful of dirt:
Told me to grow my own **** flowers.

I am you pauper, bring me a daisy,
and kiss these lackadaisical twilights
goodbye. Slip me a drink, I feel hazy.
Can you begrudge me these drunken bar fights?
Roses and ribbons that serve your hair well
feed me sugar-coated dispositions.
While we peasants hear no wedding bell
we are subject to sadder traditions.
Adorn me with this crown of all your laws,
and I shall forever live under you.
Build me a castle from all of your flaws,
to live and die beneath that rubble, too.
If only these clouds did not float so high
they could drown me, and I not say goodbye.

I lie to you.
I lie to you with every smile,
and I lie to you with ever note of laughter.
I lie to you with every promise that I'm fine.
Because I am most definitely not fine.
Not happy, not functioning, not sane.
My forehead needs a hole bored into it
     to relieve the pressure.
My veins need some air bubbles injected
     to give my heart a break.
My stomach needs a bombardment of chemicals
     to still the churning torrent.
My nose and mouth need to be smothered
     to block out the putrid air.
The engine of my car would be better suited
wrapped around a telephone pole.
Showers seem so incomplete
without a wired toaster to cling to.
Cleaning products don't convince me
unless they have both bleach and ammonia.

You lie to me.
You lie to me with every hug,
and you lie to me with every word of comfort.
You lie to me with every admission of love.

Aren't we ever the cleverest couple of liars.
Whatever your reasons,
and no matter mine,
neither of us is willing to let go of the lies.
So as long as you love me, and as long as I'm fine,
how about we just play house?

This too-big sky that does daily darken
and indulge less romantic hearts than mine,
caresses sad, ragged man to harken;
he lay there on the coastline, breathing brine.
So far away, he did fail to mention
that the sea had made his fondest wish true.
So close, it was plain his main intention
was to season as he sat down to rue.
Fail me now, somberly habitual
crest-fallen snow, gingerly coloring
his fingers and face. Finding ritual.
He has lost the ring and is souring.
When the last of the mighty waves have crashed,
there he lay, waiting forever -as asked.

I'm killing myself today
merely by not having the courage
to follow through with it.
Every day I wake up,
thinking that doing so will be
the worst decision I will make that day.
I used to preach
that when things were at their worst,
"Just fall asleep.
Things will be better in the morning.
sleep; calm down.
Don't think any more tonight."
But it doesn't work anymore.
I can't possibly sleep enough.
I can't possibly think seldom enough.
I can't die enough
to make it through the day.
With the same sad song on repeat,
I find it's still not tortured enough.
And I'm at a loss.
If there were a musical score
for a suicide
what would it sound like?
All the agony,
the sorrow and the hopelessness,
the regrets and the anger,
the blame, the broken dreams,
the bitter self-loathing.
What would it all sound like?
Could it ever be compiled,
written out, performed and shared?
How would it end?
Would it ever end?
Maybe it would play on
and on and on
a whole life long.
At least, as long as anyone could
bear to listen.
Because surely, a piece properly embodying
the torrential, tumultuous emotions
that lead a person to **** themselves
would drive anyone else to similar action.
But I think, with all our means of self-expression,
nothing could ever explain well enough.
It seems so funny
and so wrong
that after all this time,
and with all the level of genius that has already
come and left this world,
there exists no song,
no poem, no painting,
that fully encapsulates
how a person feels when they want nothing
but to die.
When the mental pain is so overwhelming
that the physical pain to end it becomes
inconsequential.
I certainly do not have the words.
Those that might have must have died with them
fallen silent on their chilling lips.
Or maybe there are no words,
no notes, no picture true enough.
Maybe there is only a wordless wail....
Or a whimper, or a choked sob.
Or maybe there is only the dull thud of a vacant head hitting the floor.

Think me mad.

I pour milk upon the counter
     and dip my fingers over it.
I dab delicate perfume into a velvet pillow
     and lay my head down not to sleep,
     but for the experience.
I look to my left
     and smile at the air beside me.

Think me mad.

I speak gently to the walls
     and pause to hear the reply.
I buy kick-knacks in twos
     and keep the second in a special drawer.
I detail poems of pristine love and longing
     and leave them to be found in the house
     of which I am the only resident.

Think me mad.

I pour the milk to watch it spread
     and edge and cascade
     in the color and way of your skin.
I dab perfume into velvet to remember
     how it was to lay with you.
I smile at the air because, to me,
     you are always there
     and that is worth smiling about.

Do you think me mad?

I converse with walls as I imagine
     that you stand between they and I.
I buy trinkets in twos to always have
     a gift ready that was chosen
     with you in mind.
I leave love poems around the house
     on the chance that we might both, one day,
     call it home.

Surely I am mad.

If I could hear the conversations
that you speak only to yourself,
I would invest the rest of my life
in search of just the right words
to respond:
To assuage your Fears;
To build bulwarks around your Confidences;
To wholly express to you
that I marvel at your Voice,
that mentally I worship your Face,
and how luxuriously I burgeon
at even your lightest glancing Touch.
Because for you, my dear,
it may be enough to simply hear
"I love you."
But to me, my dearest,
even if I fervently chanted
until my lungs gave out,
"I love you"
could never say enough.