You've got brown eyes
Oh,
You've got grey eyes
Oh,
You've got blue eyes

and I'll watch you go

I don't make eye contact or say hello with the cute, talented boy in my class.
He's weird, but I know I could take it. But.
It's because I'm tired of being cut on the way up to the way down.

I hope that I can see him again when someone with more courage stands in these shoes,
that knows what to say and how not to use--
--to use and use these spots of mine
that shed with touch and the setting sun.

Spaces where the taxidermied remnants of partners lie bare
from the times I lacked the effort, or time, or was too scared

to ask them not to go, or ask them their name, or, "I'm sorry, forgive me?"

I let a hand go
I pull away from a kiss.

I don't know what's wrong with me
or who I do or do not miss.

little creature
little creature
little creature

You talk the talk, all sunken-eyed from a not-so-scant dilaudid habit
but you are a dilettante and can't straight walk the walk
compared to she and I, the comparable brunettes.

You go to the bathroom and snort drugs off your lap b/c    u     r     v   sick.

When your girlfriend goes to rehab, don't call me to *******.

You want to **** me because you like the idea of being loved
and you are two-years-too-late out of touch with being a scene queen,
draghino druggies into bathtubs and baking with Lil B.

You're slipping
and I know that, for sure,
because you tried to kiss *me

and sitting in the corner of a blessedly quiet McDonalds that is so old they haven't changed their booths to be uncomfortable to sit in, yet and wearing a black dress suited for vamps,
tarnished serpentine earrings whispering in my ears

not yet not yet not yet

speaking also to the stolen ring in my bag
that I am not yet a bougie eccentric

made to burn money and carry cigarette wands
and travel to tangier and have a little exotic pet

until I become more educated, eloquent, work on
my elocution until I am someone, who's someone

that deserves and has the gall to take, and possess
the world's most most beautiful blue wolf fur coat

pink sunsets crack through the blinds
along with dawns and afternoons and (maybe) better times?
hidden under covers of cloth and sheets and curtains of hair
I have burrowed too far to begin again (maybe)
I curl in my shell and I have fed on the whites that existed in my shell for so long
that I have drunk every last drop I came here with
I wonder if I have enough energy
to break out of the shell

soft hands run over couches, chairs
cracked voices offer a name--alcoholic
desperate and streaked with age

awkward without the wetness
that allows us to forget

instant gratification has met a wall
in hand is an absence of excuses and a wrinkled receipt

$you trash.00
$owe them.00
$owe me.00
-------------------
$a better time.00

whoever said sobriety is clarity
denied
twelve steps down the church basement
and the suddenness of a fog

I see he and his beauty in bottle on a shelf
Pour me a glass, I could use some myself
So make the light in your face stay forever,
neither furrows or sorrows, would it be better?

Father,
I must remind you that I am your daughter.

I have been hewn from
your own flesh and bone,
and though you may forget,
I am you.

Father,
I must remind you that I am not my mother

When you look at me,you see my other half;
I walk and talk and laugh like her.
You see my mother,
in my gender and my face.

I am more her than you.
We both have the darkness
that can summon thunders
and grant us empathy, unbounded.

Father,**
I must remind you that I am not your son.

When you look at me, you do not see
the same keenness of mind and
quiet grit both you men possess.
I am sorry I am not better.

I speak to him, instead of you
in times I need a masculine support,
and when I face moral quandries.
I learned not to ask you.

Father,
I must remind you that I am not you.

I cannot know yet the weight
the burdens you have carried
to bring me thus far,
but I know I've made them heavy.

I am unsteady and in disarray,
because I was raised in a storm and
you would not look at me, in the eye,
and so I grew up all alone.

Father,
I must remind you that I am your daughter.

I have your lonely hazel eyes
that observe better than others,
and see the quieting comfort
in a bitter brown drink.

I know you are a good man,
so I have not sought your approval
in the arms of inviting boys.
I sought it in myself instead.

But, Father,
I must remind you, I am me, alone.**

From you, I have learned
self-reliance and utility.
From your mistakes, I know
happiness is hard to keep.

When we are both older,
you may reach for my hand,
I will give you my money, but,
my hand may not be there.
          because I am your daughter, and I act alone,
                                                          ­                                       like you.

A beggar bleats on the curb of the street,
raving and berating the government that has done wrong,
for their crime of losing sight, hanging God.

For once his bride,
who he held as a trinket in
the narrow crook of his arm,
had been swept away by the tide of law
and pulled out to sea
after treading so long while
bobbing and weaving
to avoid his left and right hooks.

comely youth beckons to me, curling,
as I trace a finger up soft thigh undersides,
slowly and easily.

you entertain me.

let's get coffee.

I'll listen to you, you can show me everything
in the nooks and crannies of your pink little brain

I will take it from you, and
then love you empathically

but,
maybe,
maybe not,
for I have fled.

He isn't going to come, isn't he?

He's drunk, with his friends.
Nonplussed about a girl who said she cared.
Said she was sad and who asked him to come.

He told me
He told me he was depressed. He asked to come in the first place.

He said he would.

I told him.
I told him I couldn't say yes or no to him seeing me, but I'd say yes if he came.
If he knocked on my door.

I don't need a knight, but I require someone with a heart. I thought that wasn't too much.

I told him later I was scared he wouldn't come.
It's been two hours. I don't think he's coming.

I'm so stupid.
I'm so stupid.
I'm so stupid.
I'm so stupid.

I thought he was coming.

Thick, pink pads of fingers scratch at her back.
Affectionate touches? She doesn't like it like that.
A grimace, then smile that she thinks looks real,
It doesn't crinkle her eyes, he knows how she feels.

Kicking the cat off, to the shower she moves
she doesn't shave her legs anymore for you
or buy the best brand of food for their cat
because it's their cat, she doesn't like that

Soft, annoyed sighs and loud mewling cries
he pours it a dish of her inferior food buy.

The cat knows the difference,
and scratches a little more deep,
asking for sustenance that tastes a little better
than dried, cobbled scraps cut from bad meat.

She wants to want him, she wants to want back,
He stays because he wants her, and knows she wants that.

I didn't realize there was a gun in my mouth until I heard the safety click.

I hate the sound of my teeth

on metal
on metal
on metal

and the way my tongue eagerly traces the muzzle, the safety, until I look up,
my lips wrapped around a barrel, while I beg like I've never begged for any other,

and I buckle

to my knees

teeth crunching against the metal in the process
                                          and I feel my joints rusting and breaking,
because my nerves have been trained like steel and I  have been waiting,
waiting in a way
                     that makes me ashamed,
                                                  just for you to pull the trigger.

                                                       ­              Please.

                                                        ­          ******* it

                                                            ­        *********.

Every want of ours is a need,
an everyman's need is unnecessary,
it is already fulfilled with a snap.
slip, slap, snap, just easy like that.

You are the funniest person I know. I am too.
We are the weirdest creatures,
so when we do normal things with normal people,
why, it's hilarious.
An ironic mockery of the everyman everyday.

Instead of being angry or rising against the system,
we play it like a fiddle,
and laugh at everyone and thing while we sit
smoking fat cigars and counting our money
before we dump it into our art and clothes
or set it on fire.

It's just so funny,
because we aren't like that
and we know it.
The world is our plaything and we just
laugh and
laugh and
laugh and laugh.
everything is just so manicially funny...

they stare at me and I stare back
they stare at me and I stare back
they stare at me and I stare back
they stare at me and I stare back
they stare at me and I stare back

and then I hold it longer than they think I should and they get embarrassed.
Don't stare at me if you don't want to get it back. I'll hold it longer than you.

Composed of the opposition,
I am too afraid of the meanings
within the reasoning and
extremities of polar ends.

Ex.
steadfast vs. capricious
sincere vs. contrived
sadism vs. masochism
expansive vs. nonexistent

(circle one)

Frankly, between my want to know every
     cloud-breaking peak and sunless crevice of my animal, me,
        on this circular search for a emotional enlightenment,
    
      I am exhausted, from the in-between.

Babylon is gone.

Commonalities are gone;
speech was lost with every story.

I have time, I am young
I abuse it too much.

You don't have time and
I abuse what you have left.

and

you are beside me,
but I am alone.

We built Babylon, together.
In a quest for something
just, like-heaven.

You look at heaven and
I look at you,
the haven I once saw and

I can't understand,
(confusion of tongues)
and we've lost mutual language.

I crumble,
Babylon falls.

I squeeze the white flesh on the underside on my arms,
gently, I account for bruises, counting each one by one.

like spilled ink congealing,
under my thin skin, purple,
yellowing, blue, and green,
= the colors in nature found

I stretch like a cat, testing my arms for reach,
and I wince, tears brimming in my eyes, hard

something has been pinched, broken, or ripped
inside, some muscle is not connected to another

some tick, hair-thin mark
graces my red colored rib

ripped muscle lies against,
some useless dying muscle

I want to go home
I want to go to sleep
I want to go home

to sleep, to heal, to die,
wherever home may be

A little bit of death will occur in two days,
between enough hours to tell me that after
three nights (maybe even four)
I found a clasped hand and the grace of a man
who knew me not
merely a week ago

and one who will survive, a little death while longer,
beyond a great veil
of a sea, a prairie, and a prayer.

I wish I could live that panicked fever dream of being an artist in the fifties or sixties,

where I am writing, in Greenwich Village, in a barely-furnished apartment at three in the morning,
the aching howls of human animals and screaming sirens attending to laws and emergencies floating through an open window.

A black cat creeps in from the fire escape and jumps up to the desk, lazily, where I am sitting
with a bottle of something cheap next to an overflowing ashtray, and I am

biting down a cigarette, while clicking-clacking on a typewriter.
"Ding!" shrilling puncturing the air whenever I come to the end of a thought,
and thats when I pluck the cigarette out of my mouth, ash it, go to the next line,
and then fervently begin again.

Oh Yorick, you little crunchy skull, tell me, baby,
answer all the questions in "Blowing in the Wind"
on pacifism and what-is/how-to-be a man, please

and then play the piano while I lie on the lid of it
and let's sing the blues about being and nonbeing
and get drunk on scotch, as old as little young me

and the places, faces, and names we've forgotten
all while my rusty-stringed guitar gently weeps,

and geese run in droves over my grave, shivering
up and down my spine as my ears just burn alive

with the sword of death on a frazzled dried string
hangs over our heads to remind us we are young

we must not waste a second of life with "frivolity"

we are young, dead, all roguish,
we are real, but not broken--yet!

In filling the voids of others,
I feel like I'm filling my own.

(I wish I had said)

Waiting on Haight, ******* the gold beading of a thrifted 80s shirt inside my purse,
I listen for the 71.

He tells me, from under a nose cherry-red and with a cantaloupe and a spoon resting in his lap,
of how when he was 25, he holed up with an 18 year-old girl.

One night she leaves for an ex-boyfriend's, saying she felt compelled to him, like there was a magnet between them. And he said he went to the closet, he smelled her sweater and knew what he wanted.

He got some cardboard and fashioned a fake magnet, the classic horseshoe shaped and silver-tipped kind, out of cardboard. He turned it into a necklace and waited for a day with some red roses for her to get back.

She came back and said she couldn't remember the last time someone got her flowers. And then she called her mother, and her mother asked him sternly if he was planning to marry her.
He was bewildered a little, but he said yes (this was the sixties).
And he finished the call to her mother and she was standing with her hands on her hips, "Well?"
"Well what?"
"Aren't you going to ask me to marry you?"
(I laughed at this point)
"Oh..."
                                                  ­                                        . . .
"Will you marry me?"
"Yes!"

I asked what happened and he said they were together for three years. But it was a blissful three years.

He asked me if it was a good idea for a movie.
I said yes. But I probably wouldn't see that movie. I left that second part out.

stop
making
liking
me
unnecessarily
problematic.

please.

Effaced, with myself removed from yesterday
I can think without unyielding pressures
******* my heels.

"It's always hardest the first time, the first day"
someone said. Maybe it's true?

I think repetition is getting to me,
so I must give liege to liberty.

throw fireworks at little brothers,
laugh, until they start crying, then hide

make mom cry, a lot. worry her, a lot.
make everyone who loves you cry, at least twice

run your ******* up a flagpole, steal a flag
smoke cigarettes at school

through bad ***** and insincerity
get drunk, then kiss everybody

borrow people's things
make them regret lending to you

throw up in such a way it'll ruin a party
throw up in someone's bed
leave it for them later

buy cheap drugs, steal cheap clothes,
exploit the good nature of others

spit at someone's feet

start useless arguments,
especially with bigots, especially when drunk,
especially when you need to impress people

get kicked out of something holy and sacred,
in the process, shame your grandparents

flip the bird, yell impolite things and trivia
at friends, strangers, anyone

set a plastic trashcan on fire,
leave it somewhere important
forget about it

pierce your face, more than once
pierce somewhere not on your face
show people you shouldn't

say trite thoughts, dress them up with $10 words
look pedantic, unsmiling, and snooty

put everything off, procrastinate
until it ***** you up, wonder what happened

finally,
stay awake at night, remembering all this,
then pity yourself, you ******* *******

new order
dancing alone
blacklights blazing

using my mother
as an excuse
for getting drunk

while thirsty for love
and holding an umbrella
while all around it's raining

Interpersonal relations strewn across the nation,
across my the country of my bedroom floor.
My sticky palms give me shaky qualms
as I feel too exposed and shudder

Cluttered and muddy, my mumbling mind speaks
in fragile fragments secured by black brackets.
Memories linger, held fast to my fingers
to help me remember what I want to forget

Why, or what, can you do that I can't?
Speaking slowly in a voice with a slant
I'll tear up and down what "it's" "supposed" to be,
if you'll pay for my presence with an bi-weekly fee.

While dragging a green lighter through a damp parks,
I've learned an empty beer can is universal and a cigarette is the shortest measure of time for a conversation.

You get lost on trains that you pay too much for,
you feel cramped on planes you pay too little for,
and burnt barley smell like cat food.

Bridges in the rain
are more beautiful than the destination you're on them for.

I subside on the constants
in waves and meters.

three am or pm:
one in the same.

apathy begets
apathy
in a circular swirl.

I remain insaitable
in my thirst for fluidity;
I foam at my breaks.

I remain solid;
jaw jutting against liquidity.

despite my pacifism,
I still cannot dissolve.

He's drunk on cheap power and knowledge,
stolen from his father's wooden drawer.
Now he's taken too much, too soon.
He doesn't know where to put his hands,
slurring, his words, spilling as he stumbles.

With the *****, it comes up and out.
A force greater than he is prepared for.
His overeagerness was embarrassing, he and it are ignored.
Florid-faced and flushed, his shame and he retreat to suffer,
snuffed out, sniffling in the stuffy, stifling silence.
His nose, once up in the air, is now in the corner.

Now you know, baby,
learn to hold your liquor and your tongue.

I have not earned the clichés.

I cannot, but do, make generalizations, judgement

I have no debts to pay, those who I hold and hold
me in ill will are hardly warranted to do so, really

I blankly stare, blink,
and then I move fast.

I am not sad,
I can assure,

I am just not here.

It is utterly inexplicable and incredibly difficult
to properly pin down a scrap of an idea of anything, or even feeling
for you, for me,
                 or for both you and me.

I don't mind now,
but I'll mind if you do.
But, I'm okay, alone.

+++++

But still, I know something and
I don't know much about this something or not,
but I know these few things:

first,
I've felt compelled to you longer than I'd care to say
second,
I think I would prefer for you to stay, or at least that I would*

      *if you ask, or even give an inclination you want me to,
    because I don't know if you do,
  and that is what worries me.

A GOOD WAY TO GET A WOMAN'S ATTENTION IS TO SCREAM AT HER THAT OH MY GOD SHE'S VERY PRETTY OVER THE INTERNET AND OH MY GOD CAN CALIFORNIA EMANCIPATE FROM THE UNION YET WE'D HAVE A SELF-SUSTAINING ECONOMY I THINK ON A MILDY UNRELATED NOTE MAYBE I AM SERIOUS MAYBE NOT

I forget that my brain does not do __ when it should do __ and I slip under the coat of choking mustard gas that ***** the moisture from my lungs and eyes. A mustard seed of effort, small and yellow, cracked with no seeming dreaming thing of an eye has fallen like Hansel's crumbs from my hand and is buried with all my ambitions and dead dogs in the cold ground.

I hope it grows a kingdom of heaven, but prayers are wasted when they come from the wonton--and wayward kin of sinners who lead false farces and bring gluttony to dinner. I waste and want and cannot speak the language of those around me while we all whine and dine and **** and cackle

oh god
trite *******
*******
******* ******* ******* *******

I am not tired, I am bored, I am bored of lying and trying. Trying is the worst, and there is little reward for the cost of my dismemberment of ego.

Where is a pre-made empire for me when I need it? I should be handed down something, I cannot earn it on my own. I am a ruler, not a conquerer. I am a spectator, not an athlete. My narcissism cannot take the trying effort of building something of my own with feeble rewards and now I will die alone. Maybe. Maybe it's all hyperbolic.

I'm gonna say it. *******, I'll say it.
"**** it, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth?"

one of those mornings
where I want to lay on the floor with my legs in the air
where I want to smoke cigarettes as skinny as arms
where I want to wear dark sunglasses that spell out

C-O-O-L C-A-T

and these shades would allow me to be callous
and my apathy and I could make snide remarks

about you,
you little ******

Boy, I hope you can smell my contempt over there.
You deserve it. But I don't really care anymore.

I don't dislike many people, but if I could do it,

I would tell you that I look upon your character
with the same adoration that I would hold for a
parasite-infested rotting mountain of rat feces.

Which is to say not a lot.
Which is to say I dislike you.

It's just one of those mornings,
where I want to stop knowing you, and wish you wouldn't know me.
where I want to do something, but you see, I can't feel a thing, for you.

I have nothing for you, really,
I am fresh out of ***** to give.

I don't regret anything since I learned a great deal.

I wouldn't say I was heartbroken, just exasperated
by your contrived and un-authentic *******-ery.

I am better than you. I put on my darkest shades,
I laugh when I remember that this sunny morning.

Someone said that having secrets was like holding an invisible box close to your chest. Nobody can get close and they can't see why.

It's in the ******* way.

I overturned my box, papers all tumbling out--you could've picked up any one and asked a question.

You said nothing, upturning like a fish. Belly-up boy.

I picked softly at your lip, finding a tattoo on the inside of your lip.
It says "*****" but it might as well have said "YOU'RE STUPID" to me.

I tried to pull any information I could about it out of you.
I got nothing, like *** from a stone.

I want to smush my face in a big fat delicious frosted cake,
and blow out candle after candle and watch ice cream melt

as I dig through the moist sugary cake-bread with my fists,
and I eat everything I want in this delicious, nice restaurant

I want to pout at anyone else who makes grumpy faces,
I am the **** queen so it's my gosh **** party, dang it

I want to drink until I almost throw up and then do drugs
and grab ******* and scream with laughter and true fun!

I want to flash strangers and get birthday kisses and hugs
I want to smear lipstick all over my face, I want GLITTER

I want to roll in checks from relatives in far-off places
with the clothes and money and drugs that I will buy

I want to cry big crocodile tears over wrapping paper
and wear a pretty crown and take pictures, please yes

I want to smile so hard my cheeks hurt, ouch, and get away
with being a little ******* because I'll say sorry tomorrow

I want firecrackers and free things and fun fun fun fun fun fun fun
because it's my birthday, and I get to do whatever the **** I want!

Well.
Now wait, what, I feel dumb

not really, though. But still,

it's just all strange, this whole...
people vs people vs people
interlocked competition between bags of bones

(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))
           (((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))
                      (((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))(((( ))))

crosses fingers so I won't **** up

TOO BAD,
I probably will

Girl
while you
were sitting
shattered
I was
depressed as hell
drinking to death
over being a mirror
for you
for you for your
ego


while I remembered why
I didn't go to therapy
with a case of misanthropy

and a bucket of wine

because of your name on it

remember next time I tuck your hair back
remember next time you tell me

that you want to **** some other girl

I am a wee banana slug with a broken shoulder
crawling with my train of sparkling slime over

the caracasses of horses I've beaten to death,

twice, for each, at least.

I
beat them to
death

beat it. beat that horse.
and I will bless it with my sparkly goo

you-blunt-smoking-instaweed-post-on-facebook-****-smoker
you-blon­de-at-the-cvs-pharmacy-that-had-a-high-school-abortion-and-was-os­tricized
you-proud-and-sober-born-again-praise-the-lord-believer
­
that posts
pixilated baby photos
peach-flavored blunt wrappers
a bad picture of a lonely flower

who are you

you are looking more aged every year
I don't know who is sadder.

I am sorry I speak poorly of you

I do not know what happened to me
I do not know what happened to you

I'm sorry I'm so mean.

I think I tried to sell my soul to Satan for the inability to feel painful emotions when I was younger.
If there is a God I hope Satan didn't listen to the wishes of a little girl.

The two could be related, but that's easy game.

tell me the color of your *******

tell me the length of your ****

tell me the way your **** tastes
and if your legs shake around  my head

tell me if you're circumcised or not

tell me if you like pain

tell me if you're wet

tell me if you're *******

you're *******
you're *******

and I've got my tongue licking like a dagger up your walls, finger scraping
and I've got my legs wrapped around you while I'm rubbing your *****

cosmo never told you how I like the face you make when you say my name

and I'll tell you if
I'll put my tongue where you want
so long as you say my name

sometimes i am
the dumb moth
that puts itself
in the little lamp

that everyone says to
no no you can get out
the window is there

go go go go go go go

be free

but i just go
      where where
and beat grey soft wings
against the glass

until
i say

**** it

and try
and try

to **** or fight or or or or
or throw myself
        onto the blazing light

wish I could say

wish you were here
wish you were near
wish you could stay

wish I could say

wish I wouldn't go
wish I didn't know
wish for no pain

wish I could say**

wish I'd see you again
wish it wasn't so
wish you'd come by
wish you didn't say no

I may not be all contented
but at least I can be alone

not roasted with my skin crackling by boredom
in the presence of a long-winded nerd who's cringing over enthusiasm brings out
the mildly grey abuse of power in me.

I curl up in the dark, alone.
But I will find contentment sometime within me.

8 AM

light

8 PM

dark

repeat
onononononono