I'm stuck gnawing on this umbilical cord
Attached to Appalachia
Coiling around my neck

I came into this world, adrenaline coursing
Held eye contact with the Doctor
Stared my father in the face

A boy fell in love with me because I always won staring contests
He cried blue ridges,
Pressed a chess piece in my palm
I can feel that night(knight)

Things change -- the mountains don't.
I nod in perpetual agreement, eyes dry.

I'm sewn into this earth
Eroding and growing
Stagnant and moving

Even the dirt here is sterile
Dry
No matter how much you sin,
This building is tainted with the white-hot holy of
Institution

I don't wash my hair for 7 days

If I hold my breath long enough
I can imagine my plastic bed is a
Brown couch
It smells sour

In this grungy living room sit
12 disciples in a circle
Their ***** fingernails clink
And their hazy breath makes me
Dizzy with delight

Some nights I can't quite float above these
crisp white sheets

I tell my friends I've been writing more and
They believe me
     Why wouldn't they?

Winter is coming

The rain reminds me I am still alive
It laps at my feet

Shallow.

"We come from the Earth and to the Earth we must return..."
In this phrase I found solace and comfort
Until my stilettos sunk into the ground and I remembered

I am only made from Adam's rib

So I cursed the Earth
and ground my heels into the dirt

Man returns to the Earth and I
I am made from a rib...

Suspended in the cavity around the
heart of man
Flittering like a restless bird who
cannot find her perch

Frowning as I fly into the sky which I
do not know and and where I
do not belong

While man builds airplanes to chase after
me
While man hunts the pheasant for
sport

I want to die and return to the Earth
I want broccoli to grow where I lay
and be left uneaten to
flower

I will no longer be the bony protector
of the heart of a man
and maybe in casting away my birthright

I may return to the Earth, once again.

When she speaks smoke wheezes between her rocky lips
And her voice is crummy gravel pavement
Her gut balances on her hips
Protruding into a bulbous cap puckering into a navel
Filled to capacity with some slimy IT
Created by ***** and a moment's attraction
She croons to her abdomen
Pebbles falling from her mouth
Bouncing off her skin and hitting IT's ears
As a mushy echo
Years of rolled burning paper cause her to droop
She drags like a curtain
Smells like a motel room
And loves IT
Because she can
Because she will
Because she must
As wolves howl to the moon she must
And when she cries out in the wee hours
And someone places a wooden spoon between her teeth
Her crusty screams will be IT's awakening

I'm more poetic when I'm alone
My love poetry is purple
I'm better at prose that I feel
Guilty about

I'm more awake when I'm on my own
I have time to think and to feel
About myself
And know her

I'm more hungry when I'm alone
Hungry for experiences
And homemade bread
And to see my corners get softer

I'm more when I'm on my own
Happy
Sad
Everything

I need to cry
But try as I might I have only shed one tear
So instead all the tears I need to cry
Are swishin' around inside of me and it makes me
Sick
I need to throw up
And I would rather be writing love poetry
But I'm better at writing poetry that I feel guilty about

I have a hard time breathing
When I climb stairs, when I run, when the air is too dry, too wet, too breezy.
When the pollen falls or the weeds grow tall or when you kiss me and tell me I'm pretty.

I have a harder time sleeping
My heart gets to beating and the creaks, they turn into monsters
And my reflection grows fangs and branches hit the panes of the window just about my bed.
My head
fills up with worries, and screams made up stories
I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying

But at night next to you
The fear that once grew
Never existed, and still I can't sleep.
One hand on your shoulder, I think "I could hold her"
Why would I sleep? Why would I sleep? Why would I sleep?

I go home to my own bed, the worries fill my head
I lay there and wish I could breathe.

Could you love me,
Weak fingernails and all?
With that deep passionate love
That love that I've never felt
Not even for you.

Could you love me,
Scabby knees and all?
With a changing kind of love
That is the only kind of love
I've ever known

Could you love me,
Blistered tongue and all?
With a painful kind of love
That I know too well
When I'm not myself

And would you love me
When my fingernails break?

Do not leave me here alone and dead
Do not hack me to pieces and put me in a box
Do not cast me in wax and admire my humanity
Do not cover me in rose petals and bless my corpse
Do not kiss my blue lips tenderly and affectionately
Do not roll me into a river
Do not burn me in my grave
Put me in a flower *** and let me grow with broccoli

I'm happy for you
I'm happy for me
I feel at peace
What a relief.
         I was starting to dislike myself.

I need to write
I need to write about
how you carried me when the thorns were slicing my bare feet open
when we hung our heads over the side of a bridge and wondered what it would be like to fall into the sky
your theories that trees were souls
how you would stop and just listen to the world
how you would speak your mind, and it was poetry
How this all ended so fast
And I miss it

Carrying the small coffins silently
They walk among the white monuments
Small boys stuffed into awkward suits
Snot smeared on the insides of their pockets
Little girls kicking dust into their white socks
They walk on and on
Through the bone maze
there is no cross for a boy and his songbird
the world is cluttered with remnants
marble memories not unlike
the marbles the boys have hidden in their trousers for later

The are a million things I want to write about
But I never know the right words
That is the pain of a thinker

I imagine myself a blind artist
Painting what I imagine the world to look like
But I can only paint what I know
Because I see the colors on the page
And it's familiar
Is this a curse?
To have my eyes open,
And a brush in my hand?

A book full of dog-eared pages
Bent and browned
Oily from skimming fingers
Dusty and musky
Words to be inhaled
Images projected behind your eyelids
When you close the book
And sigh
And close your eyes

My position is distant
My path discursive
My equality punctured
Set back, tortured
My corpse is painted
My rainbow is tainted
My bones are contracting
My skin is cracking

A knowledge abductions
Formed with childish seduction
Leaving me
Foam on the Dead Sea
Holding back
The tears of the seldom heard
Holding back
The worst kind of words

I'm heliotropic
Turning, turning, turning
My soporific voice
Is dying, dying, dying
Like a suicide survivor
Submerging ever higher
Schizophrenic priestess
Nepotistic phantom
     I'm sand

Something special twice
A lucky roll in my favor
With hope's eternal dice
Something special twice

Pitter patter of tiny feet
Running up and down the street
Sounds of laughter, sounds of screams
Will come haunt me in my dreams
The children meet in stocking feet
Their night clothes blow across concrete
They join hands and sing a song
In all our hearts we sing along
They drop hands and turn around
And scatter back throughout the town
In their homes they go to sleep
And pray The Lord their soul to keep

Angels swirl across the skies
Echoing their sweet goodbyes

Out of mind, out of sight
Reaching out for my light
Reaching out with your hand
All you touch turns to sand
And as you fall, as you weep
The sand it something you still keep
All the fragments of your dreams,
Have evolved to separate things
Intertwined in your sight,
Are all the problems you still fight

If you want to reach my hand,
First you have to drop the sand

Never, ever, nevermind
Something that I left behind
One thing for a rainy day
One word that I meant to say
The word that would change my mind
The thought that I fight to find

The thing, one thing, something there
The thing I would like to wear
Like my flesh it hangs on me
It and I were meant to be
But it hardly can be found
It's just an echo of the sound

Forgive me father for I have sinned
The bruises he left are more than skin deep
He bruised my lips
He bruised my breast
He ****** the blood to the surface
Of my neck
But he bruised my soul
I reek with sin
Father will you heal me then?
5 hail Mary's and God forgives
I won't forgive myself
I won't forget our sin

You're the boy who changed his name for me
I'm glad to see you changed it back
It's been a long time
My hair is growing back
From when I chopped off
All the parts I dyed black