plastic casing of grubby cash
avoiding the truth of my priviledge and circumstance
thirteen bruises and grabbing some ***
and here I am drunk, doing a dance

walk around
turn around

pop the lid off a beer with a fork
and remember, so sweet, and so cold,
how young you were fourteen hours ago

trudge in the mud of sculpted strip mall gardens
hedge around a wedge of forgotten iceburg lettuce

and let me know between the waves of coffee and Lexipro
what it must've meant
to turn twenty-two, a month ago

I did not hesitate when I boarded the train,
caught between the salt and German time;
with fingernails yellowed with cigarette grime,
to come to Paris for it's tepid, sweet rain.
Nor I did tremble with with fear and strain,
flexing my pride in Prague with the prime
that only is granted to the young, at nighttime.
I left nothing back by or in home, but I feign--
for crookedly placed by the cold Danube,
I felt a finger of hurt despite my endeavors;
for as water pooled in those iron shoes,
I felt everything that I didn't wish to remember.

I balance a beer off of the white mound of belly that holds my food baby
I have named him Alberto, and he is tacos

and I am hearing, and but not really listening
it doesn't matter, we're having fun, it's alright

as the chatter of girls and boys, joking,
and full of charm and giggling, poking fingers
I look at their beautiful faces, grinning

smile stretched ear to ear, tan and freckled, lightly pink
on my striped bed with good food, good beer, crumbs in the sheets

ready to kiss faces, to break in my bed,
to blush scarlet, thanks to them, me too
and I am an amiable animal, for now

cradle your head in your hands
as every barbed whisper in your head
echoes until it's thunder wreaks havoc

you are a jarring lance against the wall
while the buzzing breath of the world rolls

you are not here
you were never here

you can only pray,
only only only
wish you weren't

but you cannot just will yourself to die
with the fierce passivity that comes with nirvana

because you know that
while you can still convince yourself
there's something better in the future
barely
but barely is something still

even though presently

you are on a slab and you were Romeo
who believed he died alone, on the top

you are on a table dissected
metaphorically flayed and made raw

by the seeming death of passion, a lack of someone in your bed tonight,
and the slipped hand that pulled off your skin and made the feelings of the feelings that wound.

delight:

a secret in your pocket
of liking something you can't help to like

I wish I could sing, play the acoustic guitar.
But I do not have the patience to practice daily.

I wish I could make really great art.
But I do not wish to try, only to fail.

I wish I could understand what they're saying.
But I cannot connect their lips and the sounds.

I wish I could keep them close to me.
But I do not have the stamina to care.

I wish I had a reason to be unhappy, maybe.
But I don't even know if I'm unhappy or not.

"We both smell *****,
the way we're supposed too,
your adopted fragrance makes me sick."

"Your dewy skin is actually sweat,
from working too hard to keep me wet."

"If currency was lint and candy wrappers,
we'd be rich,
as our pockets are never empty."

"To put it simply,
If the sky had started black,
all of the sparks coming off from us
would've made the sky what it is tonight."

"A hummingbird the size of my knuckle
died in my hands today."

"Call my new phone,
it's the tin can and the string next the the wall over in
Mexico."

a light subsides on a waxed wick,
all blackhearted and brightly white-tipped

snuffed out under a bronze bell,
the wisps of smoke that remain,

blooms

under the duress of deprivation,
and escapes when released from the bell,

with a heavier scent and beauty
than that of the fairest rose.

conceited and overconfident of knowledge, but, poorly informed and immature*

embodying the definition, I lie in bed, quiet, thinking,
face down, shirtless, in a pair of cheap purple *******,
breathing in a smell--cotton sheets, sweat, and coconut

I am not nothing, not miserable, but not happy
I am not frightened or bewildered by anything

I am an elder amongst the young
I'm a youngster still, to everyone.

all trash talk,
                not new news.

I just sort of quietly revel in the experiences
unravelling above me in a floating memory

adding up my mistakes,
until all pressed into me

+ that doing the right thing hurts, sometimes,
+ people are going to do things that you can't

and still that's okay, but don't get discouraged
if you work hard and get nothing out, that just
means something, that if you like it, fight for it

I don't know.

I also learned this year not to trust the bad liars,
that sometimes people are bland, but even still,
it doesn't mean death, and it's really going fine.

I learned this is as smart as I'm going to get,
so maybe I should try a little harder with it.

turning on my back, I flick an imaginary cigarette,
I put on a little blush + a long-sleeved black shirt
then I did what I was supposed to, maybe for me.

"Is it a boy?"

the cab driver hands me the receipt,
"You're too young and pretty to be so sad".

I agree that I'm too young to be this miserable.
I burst into tears as I scrawl a signature on the piece of paper.

But this boy I cry over. He hides behind a white doorway while my head is in my hands,
and I am crying, I am drunk, but I am not drunk enough to be excused from calling him a coward.

He doesn't understand,
my coping mechanism--catalyst--and the curtain that pulls the facade down is the *****.

Not that un-understandable, in my opinion, really.

And he thinks it'll be better for me to talk about it sober tomorrow
And I thought it would be better for it to not have happened.

And I think he's not going to get much better,
         and it's too bad because he think I'll turn back into my desensitized self,
    which is better
                          for him

but there is light that cannot be turned out now
without burning out, blazing, in this way
and all he needed to do was to hold me tonight,
and everything could've been better, would've been best

woulda-coulda-didn't

and now my bed is made, I'll alone rest.

Come on pilgrim,
vamos east
to Jerusalem and Mecca,
ferried from Algeciras to Tangier.

King James told me some stories,
he'd give me a ride, and

we can pull what we want
on abortion and abolition,
strung on a thorny rope
out of H. Christ's tight little *******.

Black Francis, Picasso, and S. Dali;
chicos guapos, you are good to me.

I fight Pablo, a different one,
through Robert Jordan (ingles)
Pablo, eres un cobarde, go and
get gored by your bullheaded stupidity.

General,
I'll wander the labryinth,
slicing up eyeballs (oh ** ** **)
unable to leave the room.
(they're only cow eyeballs, don't worry)

You Spaniards!
Yo hablo un poquito,
but those men
speak to my heart.

I get scared that I don't do much, and I get scared when strangers yell at or touch me. I get scared of whizzing cars that go so fast that they'd turn me into pulp and broken bones under the weight of their axels because I'm afraid of broken bones and of falling. I'm scared of being a coward and of sullying or destroying my integrity.

I'm afraid of people--especially boys--and how and why they make me feel because it seems I either care too much or not enough, and I get scared of both. I get scared and mean when they say nice things to me since I'm not very nice to myself. I get the jitters when they talk to me and I get scared because I feel and act dumb.

I'm scared of being stupid and I'm scared of being overestimated. I'm scared of apathy, and I'm frightened by the willful ignorance that exists everywhere.

Most of all, I'm afraid of causing others unnecessary suffering.

I want to be better, I sincerely do. It is just all very frightening sometimes.

stunningly bored and powerfully dumb

I bide I bide I bide my time for success
I lazily rove eyes over ****** photographs
and crappier stills from my memory

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

vivid photographs may line my walls
but day-to-day it does not feel vivid, not at all

plants do not require papers that state from where they came

they are caught and pulled by the bite of birds,
        seduced by the between-legs of bees,
            seized on the legs of the wind and animals by thistles and burrs

and the blessed are pollinated by the hummingbird

I do not know where I came from (really?) (really.)

or where nature and nurture intertwine within me, precarious balance from discipline and my genes

I twist bunches of grass between my fingers, feeling the good in a strain

racked on top of white bones, pushing sheets of freckled skin
out, spreading cancerous aluminums under my arms because
an artificial flower smells better during *** than human sweat,

what a pity, we are unable to reveal with the bursts of Walt Whitman (!) in
our own organic mechanism's ability to produce salt. The ultimate flavor.

I grin. Inhaling deeply while alone and unwashed, Whitman would've been into it.
Maybe I can find someone into it too. Someone who'll read me Henry Miller.

But instead I'll wear expensive perfume. I grin, again. Sardonically.

And I've been told I have a beautiful smile.
I should,
that smile cost blood and five grand for something cosmetic and quirky,
train-tracks over teeth, I now stain yellow with obsolete cigarettes.

I wait in the tropical heat, languishing while I bake, a freckle factory
and tan--adrift--awash with memories recalled by the smell of green
and the fearful hum of bees.

Why did I start smoking again?

I look at the red hummingbird feeder, and wish I could trade
          
             standing still as a hummingbird, I lie and say I cannot wait.

Unfinished business lies here and there and everywhere
All it needs is a wet napkin/better communication/glue
We broke your pupil,
the black has leaked into your iris,
turning the blue to black into
one is now purple and bruised and
a small fissure of the black is escaping into the whites.
I'm be sure to staunch the bleeding with
some insulation or sawdust or my finger

Our quiet dispositions made for a double-edged sword, as we sat on blood-stained sheets, littered with stems and shredded tobacco bits.

Listening to "Blowing It" by Dinosaur Jr. I realized I, too, didn't know a thing to say to you. We seemed similar, in a way to a certain extent.

He had a stick and poke on his thigh that said "NO"
and we ******. Casually.

======================================================­==================
"I think you're cute and I like that you're tall."
"I think you're cute too and it's nice that you like that."
==========================================================­==============

We smoked spliffs and talked about how it was nice to be dating multiple people.

And what it's like to have a sugar mama,
And that crack is an underrated drug,
And that I should meet more people who like The Velvet Underground,
And how we both like beer, IPAs,
And how I smelled nice,
And how I shouldn't have chosen "Women" of Bukowski's to read first,
And that he should read "Slaughterhouse-Five", and I was willing to give him my copy

(The blood on my sheets wasn't mine, he had skinned knees.)

It was odd, but also nice, to meet someone with a similar disposition to me,
but there was nothing incendiary to hang on to, more just a slow warmth.

It's okay. I brush my hair. I can listen. I hear the cars that have replaced the crickets and frogs.

I light. I **** in smoke. Hold. Exhale.

I always plan how I'm going to kiss someone I'm seeing, and it never works out like I think it will.
I mull over plots and tricks and pick up lines. I smile, giggle, and have conversations with imaginary figures by myself--on a bus, in my kitchen, in the shower. I noticed one day my Dad does that too.

But planning for the kiss. Versus the actual situation of the kiss.
I haven't gotten to use the move that I want to, where I try and give someone a palm reading in a cute and enchanting manner and then I seem to fumble. I "forget" what to say, I bite my lip and look shyly at them, telling them it's hard to concentrate and "I seem to have forgotten what comes next because it is very overwhelming being in such close proximity to someone so. . . cute". Then I'd giggle and blush.

I swear it would work, but in the situation where I had planned to use it, well. . .

We were sitting on my old apartment's couch, making dumb jokes about this berry juice I was drinking because the ****** tension was practically palpable. He took the juice bottle from me.

"Beet juice." he remarked casually, examining the ingredient list.
"That must be why it's red," I said, "The natural dyes in beets."

Then I looked at him and he looked at me. Then Jesus-*******-Christ, that set off a chain of events.
But beet juice. Really? Really?

But.

What happens in my head versus real life.

It's both nice and exciting, but it's always disappointing when I have to throw out a box of memories another person and I never shared. Gritty and distorted, I had imagined us (so many us's) laughing with warm and tanned skin, freckled shoulders and a night where we both look at the stars sitting somewhere cold, and nervous. Accidentally bumping hands in a manner reminiscent of most starts of young, summer love.

I can't remember the last time I looked at the stars with someone.

I can only remember one clear night in July.

But, I can't remember the last time I got a warm, unexpected kiss from someone who made my belly flip once-over, twice and my cheeks blush. Who made me look sideways, shyly.

I know it might come again, one day. But I have to be patient, and that is not easy. I don't want to finish, because this is unfinished with a pointed effort of not concluding with poignancy.
I don't want a flourish at the end because I haven't ended this thought yet.

glasses with flowers curled on the sides
a hot LA summer, VCRs stacked high
brings me, according to you
to the sweltering shelter of memories lost

tuck a woman on her side and give away her liberty
she bit you, she's long bitten me
she sobs as you drive, have you ever heard a more terrible sound?
a mother lost, broken over the knee by her mind

call me

see how angry I am
left to roll, sticking talcum in between bumps of fat
while age makes me reckless and strong

try and tell me how I am
if you're gone.

She stayed up past dawn to make **** sure that the sun rose again.
He stayed up till the next day to make sure it would go down again.

Midnight is the high noon for the impulsive, they want this night right now.
When they both rise from the east,
they might regret it
they might not
They'll be exhausted, will they be exhilarated?
They've seen something others might rarely do, if ever, and for some never.
They'll see how our stars are someone else's sun on their someday or Sunday.
They've seen the horizon become the furious fiery frontier of a madman's dream.

silk slip, kimono
washed the worries, permanent press
standing naked, very unimpressed

can you? will you?
swill me?
why?

who's heart breaks
in the ache
between the "hi" and "why"?

when I recoiled from your kiss
I only knew why
it's because my bed and I we were amiss

why I last told the other goodbye

can I

just
    watch

                        quietly
while you

                                                   glow?

I say, I say in a tortured tone.
For while a pitter and patter of idle time streams between your feet you forget,
ever so cruelly, that the starch of the sun that saturates your being waits for no man
no man
and that here you clasp some life in your being and it moves like a coward in a silence, escape.


So soak. Soak up every spot of sun with your hips, swiveling to face the new and the truth that lies wavering between the touchable and intangible.

For now, you soak up the sun, but more importantly...taste the night.
Taste the crispness in a colder and indifferent world that reminds you with a bleak search for darkness that by God, you have explored truly nothing of this world and that all you can see is the stars.

You have yet to explore this world and yet all you can see from whence you came when you yawn at the night is the tiny lights of the worlds unknown.

By God,
what are you still doing standing still?
Taste the night.

my lungs hurt from the ashed bowl
this **** is purple, what a novelty
too bad it's as dry and not crystal-y

shakeshakeshakeshakeshakeshake

I wish I didn't have a ugly glass pipe
but it'd seem silly to invest in a ****

I don't like your dog, he smells.
You're twenty-one.
You can't take care of your dog.
What if they eat something bad?

You were stupid to get a dog.

I  barely have the munchies
let's make something cheesy.

I can't even get high anymore.

It's boring.

I don't like that it doesn't do anything in means I have to cut back or something
or I have to get into it more, which costs money that I don't have, on things that
I don't really need.

Smoking should not be a hobby, it's barely an interest.
It's just like a background noise, like your noisy dog.

But I need to remember, in all of this,
that if I'm bored, I'm just being boring

a boy said he liked me last night and that he's liked me more than any other girl
and this morning he said we need to take some time apart

what the ****

happened
between

POINT A
and
POINT B

?
------------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-------------------

I think it might have something to do with the fact that apparently
when he cuddles up to me when I sleep
I alternate between saying:

"No"
             "Stop it"
and
                        "I don't want this."

(Jesus,
psyche could you be more
  revealing/embarrassing?)
He said he feels like he violates my sleeping self with his nearby presence.
-------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­--------------------------------------

Someone is arguing pointlessly with me about
whether
their ex is a sociopath
and then whether sociopaths feel remorse
and the whole point of sociopaths is that they don't feel remorse so
(and apparently that's a politically incorrect term anyway)

I don't get why that conversation matters to her. I feel like we've had it before.
She just wants to be contentious.
----------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­---------------------------
-------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­------------------------------------------
----------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­---------------------------------------------------------

And I just want to take a very expensive taxi to work.
And fill my Odwalla up with peach-flavored *****.
And drink the day away.

Because I don't
understand

"people"

right now, let alone my own wants.

All the boys and girls I had ever kissed were screaming together in a chorus, lipless, with open mouths, sharp little red teeth, gnashing.

In my head
In my head

And then I went to the green woods
For solitude and silence, and shame

And there, under the green boughs
I pulled the curtains of membranes
under their tongues, and my own,

over their heads, with thread
I needled, sewing up mouths

then I kisssd their faces like their mother, "goodnight"

and then they were mute,
and only could whimper

and then I left, feeling, yes

"I don't know just where I'm going"

Arms encircled around porcelain, clean,
wavering strength, and eyes closing feebly

"when I'm rushing on my run, and I feel just like jesus son"

There are many more people than I want to see.
I pull up against the wall and, for balance, I lean

"and I guess that I just don't know, and I guess that I just don't know."

whiskey, for the Father
marijuana, for the Son
prescriptions, just for me

"I have made the big decision, I'm gonna try and nullify my life"

Still though, Lou Reed isn't dead, just clean
and so, this night, just won't bode well for me

"it shoots up the dropper's neck, when I'm closing in on death"

It is hard to remain dignified when in a wasted state, vomiting.

"You can't help me now guys, all you sweet girls with all your sweet talk"

It is hard to remain dignified when someone attacks my integrity.

"And you can all go take a walk"

It is hard to remain dignified when I am acting so senselessly.

"Oh, and I guess that I just don't know,
oh, and I guess that I just don't know "

I try to sleep through,
while foreign fingers swirl softly on my sides, to feel my *******.

"And that blood is in my head,
then thank God that I'm as good as dead"

I try to sleep through,
while a small ring lies atop of a postcard, with an Indian head.

"then thank your God that I'm not aware,
and thank God that I just don't care"

I guess, I just don't know.

"and I guess I just don't know
and I guess I just don't know."*

after the echo, I need to leave.
so I go, again, and press repeat.

Velvet pants that force hands up
bitten necks allow repairing enzymes supreme;
hard hips felt under broken nails
while twisting ******* never felt so serene.

I need to stop thinking
                     about the way you tasted when
                     I kissed you

gripping your hair
gripping your ***

tracing an outline in your pants

while I quietly moaned

up against a wall

                this ***** is making me

thirsty

and there is something
insatiable

biting it's lips

in the

dark
        dark
dark

corners
of my bed

I am curled around your back, you breathe out of your mouth
I slip an arm over the north of your shoulders,
my fingers trailing to the south
I can tell how you feel by the way your lips pucker
You’re just my friend, I am the sucker

If you don't want me,
don't taunt me
don't flaunt it
I don't want it.

last week's episode:
I look into the mirror, pink staining my hands and face
a pale shade of red inflicted by the incorrigible monster
(makes the pink tints of the world incredibly exhausting)

this week:
racked with fits, I plead

"
how many times
will I cry before I decide

you're too mean

to be all mine.

"

*******. *******. *******. *******. *******. *******. *******.
*******. *******. *******. *******. *******. *******. *******.

next week:**
I blow a smoke ring into another young man's face
before I incinerate his two closest relationships with women (sister and girlfriend)
by wrapping my legs around him, corrupting his senses and integrity

"You should've said 'no, I have a girlfriend'.
Instead you said nothing, which shows she isn't anything"

I click out of garish pop-up, eyes burnt from the white, and lick my lips.

Cheese. Grease. Onions. Oregano.

as I don't do the dishes and the beer bottles mount an army around my room,
holding their necks in an offended reaction to my distasteful behavior.

I sit here and try my darndest not to spend money because it seems
possession are the only thing that can fill my holes fully while I lie here empty

wishing I had something living in this room

and thinking about how I should take a poll
of how many boys I've been with that wear
old spice.

I am successful, on paper. But.

If attachment is suffering, then why does being desensitized feel so brittle and empty (?) .

Don't answer that question. I don't know how much of it is a lie.

I taste
illness
and
smell
of
sick.
I am deprived,
just end me quick

I knock my head against my head
in the grey hole with my head in a wall

and then I remember steve roggenbuck telling me to market the moon
and that walt whitman existed and he smelled his armpits and rejoiced
and then I have to say I am a poet, I am not bound

to be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poetto be a poet

"MAN WALT WHITMAN WOULD APPRECIATE THIS"

to
that
head against head

dings turn into a cacophony of squabbling in
letters, messages, calls, and texts, piling high,
unanswered and housing banal pleasantries.

Friends, family, acquaintances, oh my!
Tugging at my ears, begging for words,

always always always always always
asking asking asking asking asking

"how?" "how?" "how?" "how?"
"how?" "how?" "how?" "how?"

always always always always always
asking asking asking asking asking

enough.

I push a finger to my lips, hushing them, reverently
then I steeple my fingers with the grace and dignity,
deserving of my hands, the church. "Quiet, please."

Solitude is bliss, and isn't. Incessant whispers rising,
chirps turn to caws, claws to screams from murders,
for attention. Clucking at the hour, every single one,

ATTENTION. ATTENTION. NOW.

I will return, again, when my energy is regained
and I can sleep, and I can even dream of things!

then I will have food, be rested, get my strength,
a little flush in my cheeks, red marrow in bones,
and then prepare for a flood of fronted devotion

cat-eye flick
and that tongue's quick

but not as quick as
the quick death that comes

from burning at both ends (ha)

I lie awake on two trazodones, a cup of neighborly sugar, and NyQuil,
remembering moaning your name with my fingers in your sweaty curls

and how I am only allowed a single Vonnegut novel on my birthday
and how I can't ever see your furrowed brow without consequence.

I wonder if you have realized
it's close to a year since I've knelt down for you

and that I am nothing you'd admire now.

With dogeared pages and vanilla smell
old, good books are all fine and well.

But, I can say, I'd much rather mind
kissing my way
                     down a drowsy man's spine.

the two most frightening questions:

(a) what if I'm wrong?
(b) what if I can't right that wrong?

writing for an audience pushes me more than a nothing
art for art's sake?

ask Hume who remains the longest

I made you a crown of dried chicken feet,
it goes with your snake eyes,
like how dice stare back, irisless.

I bet fifty clams on Steady As She Goes,
I dug them up in Maine for chowder.
Well, my Friday dinner just walked away.

I put your hand in the waffle iron and closed it shut.
That's for trying to make a better pancake, good suggestion,
pretentious Belgian *******.
Next time I'll just stub my cigarette out your sweet Sunday brunch,
you'll eat the ashes out of the little cubes that are so fluffy and crisp.

Cleaning up a broken pillow after a pillowfight,
that's rough stuff.
**** feathers, it's a cotton from now on.
Let's practice making out.
Gross, I don't like girls, I was kidding. Get the ******* me.

They snuck syrup and chemicals into all your drinks,
but don't worry, I removed it.
You spit it out and say GROSS WHAT IS THIS THIS HAS GONE BAD
fine. keep ******* down on those chemicals cancer kid.

"Hey, are you awake? Do you want to talk about it?"

No.

If anything, "it" would be a negative space,
really, the absence of something, maybe (?)

I exhale, smoke, look at the fire, slump down,
sinking into my aching, strained shoulders.

(wait please, silently, after I hit pause, until I come back to San Francisco, at least until after Yosemite)

I'll be able to articulate in 24 hours,
anything and everything I want(ed)

in the language only John Muir
and dappling sunlight through
the green can truly understand.

I stack my wishes next to the dishes,
the ***** ones that need to get done.
I leave the tangible next to my tangerines
and the apathetic with my apples.

When I was little girl,
I prayed and prayed that I would never have feelings,
so I'd never be hurt

When I was less of a little girl,
I stopped praying because I stopped "God"

When I was yesterday, and a couple of days before that,
I thought how much I wish I could have feelings

I know nothing is a feeling, but I'd like to have a little less of it, if you'd please?
My plate is rather full of exciting things
that seem droll now,
just because a little girl was afraid of getting her heart ripped up

What...gross cowardice...tsk...tsk...

It would make my mother cry
to know I chose the way I'd die.

I cannot put my finger on my dissatisfaction

I cannot slake my thirst
I cannot sate my hunger
I cannot itch this scratch
I cannot imbibe it better
I cannot forget it, worse

deaf--dumb--blind--limp--sad--stupid

I feel I am seeing in the second dimension
when I know the fourth is called for, now!

I cannot expunge this record, these memories, or the lack thereof
I cannot remember the effort, or, where things stopped or started

I cannot describe this inexplicability,
I cannot remember the introductions

criss-cross logical thinking
twanging words, tungsten,
copper, and sheets of steel

sautered, bolted, shorted
circuits crackle and spark
blue like the ocean water
burning the water in skin

and I find nothing on an endless loop around the
Möbius strip, no, nothing, neither starts nor ends
I'm stuck in some Escher stairwell, so frustrating
I feel like an imbecile that knows not of a named
thing that stands before me, if it were a snake, it
would bite me, what, (                    ) it is so close?

boy, this stings,
this ***** to be

struck by something, and
                             I don't know
                                                             what

I cannot find relief from catharsis
no, that hasn't ever worked at all.

dizzying, myopic thing that keeps me awake
show yourself, show me how, or what, wants
this thing thing thing this thing of something.

I cannot find my (          ), no,
I cannot find anything at all.

Over the muttering, a sputtering candle is down to the quick
Flashing and flickering, the wick goes out

Rumbling skies threaten with scowling fingers of unappeased gods
Grey hairs curling in rage at eviction from Olympus
The sky then screams in a tumultuous rage:
A sacrifice is dire and desperately needed.

A maiden-green tree implores to above,
silently surrendering still arches
as she kneels in the earth, longer than any man has lived.
Cleaved by a fissure of light from something dark and then
a tremdous clap, thundering and thrashing
the towering tree, goes down, face flat.
A mother to decay she will become.

The rain drums into the humming hills, running down the mountainside.
It ruthlessly rushes tearing away grainy earth,
bouncing and bubbling in crevices galore,
turning all green and lush in an awakening as old as age.
The hills inhale blue and green.
Buds will flower, petals will die
but an end to all is not nigh

Angles of pulled, wrinkled eyelids with blood pooling underneath from long nights of looking at computer screens, searching for the next thing thing thing thing done (chimes)

that is he,
and I am me.

Authentically contrived. Do I dare say that? Weeks upon minutes of pulling clothes, tucked tags, and waiting, oh the waiting, and I don't know what to say.
I can't believe you like me. I can believe it fully. You bought me. You bought my story.

And it's the truth but I can't say the unspeakable real truth because it's a hollow
crisp lying dead and bloodless in a locker in the basement below the deepest rungs of my head
and I am cloaked in schemes and drama and white lies because I want to tell you of a better me

Because the truth *****.
And I miss him
And I miss him
And I miss them all in different ways, whether it be months, a night, a meal, or a glance shared,
I listened to what I wanted to and now I have learned.

You with your small hands.
You with your lisped words.
You with your pierced lips.
You with your soft, smooth thighs.
You with your stick and poke tattoos.
You with your faded green hair.
You with your German words

And you, with your dark eyebrows that look like a storm. You were made for brooding and I saw.

I miss you. But I don't want to have to ask for anything unless you wish to give.

flicking past overdone poems
on burnt topic of broken hearts,
these tear-sodden sonnets,
make me a little grateful
my heart is underwhelmed.

They say every seven to ten years you replace all your cells
you shed your skin like a snake, in the night, making dust

these dust motes swirl, a swirling in mourning of stirring,
light filters through glasses on a table, in another's home.

I think of you often, and now, presently, I lie wondering
if you are okay. If you will be okay, if you love me still.

I wonder how badly I broke your heart, and if I will feel it
echoing, if and when you cry out, for me, from little sleep.

I wonder if you will remember my name as good, as clean,
and whole in your mind, untarnished by devoted cynicism

I wonder when we meet for coffee, if you will ask me back,
I wonder what I will say. We said we would meet, will we?

Should we? Would it help us with anything? Will it hurt?
I'm afraid if you hear one word from me, you will unravel

like a spool of film, with you going over and over and over
every memory and analyzing what happened where, when.

I can't tell you where I stopped loving you. I remember one
night, and many of them, each all unforgettable secrets, that

I will tell to my own daughters, maybe, if I am so lucky, of
when we saw the shooting California stars. They were ours.

But, I will not tell them about the night we spent together,
you watched as I cried clutching--scarring--skin with nails,

you didn't know what to do. And then we ran out of things,
and I didn't know if I liked you, or even if I liked me, really.

But, I still hear you, sometimes, with a ripped and raw voice,
that screamed, like an animal, that you only wanted me! No!

I didn't know what I wanted, but, I knew I couldn't stay,
that is how I felt, after so long, with the city impending,

pressingly. I felt forced to stay. I left because I couldn't.
I left you, alone, because I didn't know if I wanted you.

I wanted what I have now. I wanted art. I wanted the city.
I wanted new boys, girls, drinking, laughing, and kissing.

I wanted to know the taste of others that weren't you, and
what it felt like to truly be unsafe, alone, and dependent

on nothing but my own wits, gumption, and self esteem,
I have it. It is rough, but it is more worth it to me to know.

I remember all the weekends in bed, sweetly spent tucked
in the crook of your shoulder, the smell of your neck, us all

talking and laughing, enamored with each other and feeling
of love and euphoria. We'd tell each other our futures, and

we said we'd meet in Paris in ten years, laughing bitterly at
what we all know; that our relationship will come to an end.

That's the thing about first loves, that you are sure of an end.
You were a better man to me than others, that I know surely.

I did not need the roughness of a cruel person to know it then,
and having felt the cruelness of others, I know the real sounds.

But I do not think I can return to you, and be the same woman
that you once wanted, needed, and saw. I am just not the same.

Something in me grows, feverishly, and maybe we will meet,
but I am moving fervently, and too quickly for your nostalgia.

You would be chasing a whiff from a stale perfume bottle,
and a wisp of a will that is just barely out of longing reach.

So my question is, still, will we ever meet again, and if so,
where and when will we each be, and will you want a we?