(you tell me that happiness exists
and I beg you to allow me
a few moments, to dissolve
those smiles plastered on that
family portrait you hang so proudly)

Exhibit A:
a medecine cabinet full of pills,
and a woman whose throat is a bit too loose,
whose head is a bit too woozy,
from trying to erase those 10 odd years,
when her uncle knew the insides,
her legs better than he knew his wife’s,

Have you seen
the man who prays too hard,
for redemption at some backwoods’ altar,
begging God and all those who witness
for forgiveness of sins he has yet to commit ?
He has forgotten how to sleep,
pacing and chasing far too many a dream over a hill.

Find next,
in a girl whose body feels like space,
forever bending over her knees,
to pull that monumental trigger
lying at the back of her empty throat.
that boom-boom, flash of violent thrashing
and a quiet flushing of the toilet
She never could quite remove what felt so heavy

Turn your eyes up the stairs,
to a nervous women who runs
a scalding bath, hoping that
maybe if her skins burns hot enough,
then she’ll be washed of all that
hellish responsiblity, submerging
the animal circus in her that’ll
paint her tombstone peasant anti-ghost


allow me a moment to clarify:
not all that lies at the surface
speaks to the distance
a soul can travel through time,
allow me a moment to make
an exhibition of struggle
and remind you that
nothing is ever quite what it seems

I kissed a boy out of sheer timidness.
He tasted like salt and bad decisions.
I held her hand tightly when she said
she was going to terminate the pregnancy.
I’ve got 25 years beneath my belt
and I still have yet to tell you how I feel,
every time your eyes grace my field of vision,
rather, I mean, everytime your name
graces my ears, I gulp deep breaths of
I hope he hasn’t forgotten me

But that is what you said,
It was goodbye, if my memory
doesn’t fail me,
oh yet, it fails me
for I’ve swallowed everything
this earth has to offer
and I still cannot erase your new wave voice
and I’m no sponge,
but you, I’ve soaked to the bone.
There is no fancy wine to erase,
there is no jazz band,
to take me back a few years,
rewind and forget,
the way you made me feel
like I had been some sort of mute
audience, clinging to the end of
a long-dead television show.
Indeed, I felt you more of a
leading man, than some shiny fool
with bright teeth in some 1960’s commerical.

I refuse to utter the 2 syllables
that call you forth, a spell.
I’ve forgotten how to swallow
and you’ve forgotten how to spell.
We are lost in paradise and
I am not sure I wish to leave.

I repeat, it takes 3 years
It really does, but I haven’t the patience
nor the mind to wait.
I swim in shallow depths,
but you’re no savoir and I’m sure
you’d let me drown

This face is too pretty
to be spent be scraped off
of some cement ground
in the middle of a dog-day summer
when I’ve still got a skeleton of calcium
and a chest full of oxytocin
to spread amongst another
like rancid butter
on old bread.

They say  *I love you
Where are you beautiful? *
I am lost in the cosmos,
calling your name,
to a dead audience of
long deceased stars.

I will come back for seconds,
Feed on these remainders,
for my mind is among the heavens
and my heart is beating inside of
another

when Today comes
with long legs and red lipstick
smack her on the ***
and buy her a drink.
let one thing
lead to another
and forget Yesterday
because no matter what-
she can never exist.
quit bankrupting life's currency  
by squandering ticks on the clock
trying to figure how many
tomorrows remain
(i promise,
there's just the right amount).
rather, have your way with Today-
take her back to your place
ravage her body in search of asylum.
let your animal free
as you how at the moon
and let the bedsprings screech with strain,
as they sing the day's song.
when she finishes her cigarette
tell her to leave the money
on the nightstand
where Yesterday left hers.

No, I let them come & go,
consistently riding that
endless wave of ephemerality.
Parade on in,
Provoke! Provoke!
I’ve got hours upon hours
to spend, delicately tracing
the hopes & hard-ons of young men.

By midnight, the cathartic compostion
is unravelling or rotting
& I’ve got my hand
down his pants,
hoping to call forth that
Saint-Lazarus sleeping at my core


Oh yes but how I do like you so,
said I, drowning in clouds
& flying through the bottoms of
sticky plastic cups
It wasn’t the truth
but God knows, I wasn’t lying

I would love to love you
I get utterly intoxicated
when you let me swallow your smile,
whilst you’re sleeping in my eyes.

It’s just that,
I only know to project my dreams
and lie awake,
melting beneath the cowardly heat.
Oh it lives on, the stiffling tension
of a fool with a thousand feelings
and a limited vocabulary.

Beware,
I must admit
there isn’t much beauty to be found
as I left my courage far behind,
in spring,
in a bedroom,
inside some other vacuole of desperation
and he fed it to the birds.

These days,
my declarations are dosed,
I keep my tongue on a leash
and my chest begets a cage.
I crawl inside my mind
and close many a door.

"I knew this girl once,
she had long hair, so long it whispered tiny kisses along her hips and waist
she had the oddest bluest eyes i'd ever seen, the color of the sky right before it gets completely dark
her thick, long eyelashes framed those eyes, and freckles formed constellations across her cheeks
i could almost draw the big dipper and Orion's belt on her milky white face.
She didn't know i existed but i admired her from afar. I could tell she was educated- She always had some form of poetry in her hand. But of all the things i could have noticed about her i noticed her bookmarks. She would lose them all the time, i would see her chasing after the scraps of paper as they flew through the wind down the street. She'd stick anything in between those pages, wrappers of all sorts, leaves, pennies, shoelaces, once i even saw a page ripped from a different book. It became my favorite game to guess what the next bookmark would be.  After awhile she stopped chasing the various bookmarks across the city and she cut all that long hair off, then awhile after that she started using unoriginal, uninspired plain old bookmarks.Then even awhile that she stopped bringing books altogether, until one day she didn't show up. Nobody knew that beautiful, mysterious, bookmark making girl was locked up inside her own mind. Nobody knew she hated her long hair and her freckles and even those baby blues. Nobody knew that she couldn't stand to live in her skin anymore so much that she swallowed a couple pills one night to ease away the pain. Even worse was she didn't know i watched her for so long and thought she was the most interesting human being i'd ever encountered. That girl committed suicide because she hated herself learn from her mistake, my mistake, everyone who ever noticed her bookmarks mistake, and don't do this, don't off yourself with a .45 before you've even had a chance to live" he's desperate now  
"please please you don't have to do this" he sputters

I answer simply " I never was much of a bookmark girl, i always dog-eared my pages"

*bang

you are beautiful,
but in the way that scares me-
like the end of a cigarette.
beautiful ashes that disperse in the wind
but warm to the touch
and causes scars when pressed against skin.
it's eerie to think
that the smoke surrounding you
and getting between your clothes and tangled mess of hair and face
is slowly rotting you on the inside,
eventually killing you.

(do you see what you're doing to me, scarlet?)

you are stunning,
like the moon on a stormy night.
you stand out amongst the dark clouds and lightning strikes
but do nothing to stop the thunderous booms
and heavy rain pelting down upon me.
you simply watch; serene and illuminated,
you watch
me
suffer.

but you are dark
not the mysterious darkness of a newly discovered cave
or dingy attic begging to be explored,
but a darkness that has become familiar to me
the gloominess of a soul
the dimming of a heart-
you've put out every light of hope and belief
I've ever known
and you've ignited the fire that holds no luminescence,
only the ability to burn and smoke
the fire of pain; your fire.

and it is (you are) corroding me.