Symmetry is lost.
Uneven scars on my hands.
A long sliver divides
one of my wrists in two.
A thick, wizened scrape
completes the line of a pointer finger.
This is how I know
Right from Left.

And my direction
comes from my mistakes.
My orientation
from a mixture
of hate and fate.
My scars ruin my symmetry,
and teach me to distinguish
Right from Left.

The ground has grown weary
Of bearing my tattered corpse
And I've been dragged along this cold pavement
So long
I forget how it is to feel the relief in my joints
when I get up
Because I've been down for so long
I'm afraid of even raising my head
to see if there's a glimmer
of hope
or ray
of sunshine for me
Because if there is
this flat paper heart
just might find it in itself
to try and move these broken limbs
and hold on to something steady
So I can raise my self up
but my kneecaps have been skinned to the bone
From the pressure of crawling
for way to ******* long
And these hands
are on the verge of snapping and falling off
So don't give me
any
false
hope

short-handed love letters
written in the daydreams of a deliberate narcoleptic.

i send you the paper plane promises of summer
(sealed tightly in sweaty palmed envelopes)

you're not one to read poetry
yet i always manage to find feather light stanzas draped across your shoulders
held down by nothing more
than freckled thumbtacks

years fall away
like too heavy eyelashes onto cheeks

waiting to be brushed away
by the callused fingers of patient lovers

our slow and natural tendencies
our lips mimic the rate of gravity

you use a box cutter to lengthen the creases in my palm

but borrowed time
and fickle fate
will never heal heartbreak

I wish that I
could fall in love
with a female,
for she would make
a far better muse than
the gruff sailors and musicians
and drunks and men
in general that I am
inclined to crave.

to write about
a painted pout or
skin that brushes against
your own like nylon,
sunlight shining through
the window onto a Cupid's bow
and dancing down to
a delicate clavicle, or
black eyelashes that bat
and blink remorse
into your cavernous heart,
to muse over such aesthetic
delights, would be
ecstasy for my poetess heart.

I linger, staring, at beautiful
women, androgynous women,
delicate, feline women,
stringing words
together in my head
over long legs and
hair that flutters like silk,
and they think I'm crazy
or in love with them.
well, maybe I am crazy,
but I crawl into bed each night
with my snarling, gleaming,
mahogany gentleman,
and I love him madly,
my rugged muse.

The urge to create, to write
to paint to compose
is only a disillusioned
form of madness.

But great art can come
of madness, and
sorrow can birth
extraordinary genius,
so embrace your
defects and fault lines,
for normality
is a fate
worse than death.

Christmas
makes you realize
how lonely
and pointless
you are.

Everyone's at Jared's,
laughing with the overly made up
thirty-ish
forty-five year old
behind the counter.

Making jokes about
how
the bride-to-be
"lets him get away
with certain things,
but he knows who's boss."

While the groom-to-be stands beside her demurely
as she flexes that nice glinting rock.

"So when's the wedding?"


Or seeing people
going to Micheal's
for some string and
beads, and wood-carved letters,
to make a homemade
necklace
for her,
because commercialism
ruins love.

Real love comes from the heart
and necklaces made out of heartfelt twine
glistening with green and red beads
that enclose her name
in wood-carved letters
that have probably been chewed on
by a progressive four year old.



I think it's the whole idea
of togetherness.

This feeling of closeness brought on by the cold.

The need to be warm and vitalized,
while realizing
that you are rubbing your own shoulders.

you are shuddering against your own pillow.

you are curled up inside your own covers.

you simply are

and there is no one else around
to affirm
with love
and ***
and ingenuity
that
you are.

I will rip
you
the **** out of me,
go through my chest
right to the back of my rib cage,
rip that ******* string out
like God yanking the lights out on the world,
I'll ******* make you dark
and hateful,
I swear
I'll just rip all that love
just to get to the naked
emaciated soul.
Rip whatever shreds
that thing's clinging too
with bony, skin-loose
fingers.

Make it all wretched,
ripping the string of you
out of me,
like the ****-string
of a shrimp,
for the world to see
I'll rip you out of me.

It's not going to be pretty
or romantic
or tragic,
it's going to be the ugliest ******* thing you've ever seen.

I only smoke
when you're around
or when I'm around you,
I don't know which is which
just that a consumption is going on
within me.

You reach down into your pocket book
and pull out a few killing sticks
hopefully,
I'll die of consumption.

That little creature
inside me,
the pink satyr,
jumps
in between my ribs,
whenever you go rummaging
in that golden shimmer of stripper's purse,
and **** out the Marlboros
with a wet-lipped,
wide-arcing
smile.


The creature,
the real me,
plays with his
satyr ****
all day
and bites his nails
and soft cuticles
until the blood runs
and pools in
little
red
pearls.

I am love-starved,

and the satyr is afraid
when he jumps
because that means you're around.

When I'm around you,
or you're around me
something smells,
possibly the iron
of the ******
left-over finger flakes.

The satyr picks up
the soggy,
spit out nails
and shingles
my heart with them.

The satyr shingles my heart
with the fear that you will leave
and that I will have no one
to consume
or be consumed by.


You are my ******
nails and cuticles.

What a ******* emo
you
make me.

I am uncomfortable,
even,
with the notion
that you have an effect
on me.

That's why I dismiss it,
with that whole
"What a ******* emo" title.

And that whole
"What a ******* emo."
last line.