I wouldn’t call myself a princess
I know that because
I cut my foot when my glass slippers shattered
I blead all over the shards then tied wire around them
So those stained glass pieces would let you see the world
Through rose colored glasses
Because I woke up one morning to you cutting off my long golden hair
You said it was because every time you tossed in your sleep
You’d get tangled and tug it and you didn’t want to ever hurt me
Never realizing that hair was the only way I could reach you
Because I lost my voice and my legs loving you
My throat raw from yelling and legs too seasick to walk away
But you said you liked it better that way
It was easier for you to kiss a mouth that didn’t move
And touch a body that always stayed
So, no, I’m not a princess
But we are kind of in a fairy tale
Our story was a lie whispered to children at night
It was a dragon guarding nothing
It was the result of spells and potions
It was a silent mirror
It was just some made up mythical fairy’s tale

Perhaps I have stumbled upon the root of insecurity
Of why we judge ourselves so shapely
And shame ourselves into uncertainty
I think that every day we walk around
Comparing ourselves to other people’s performances
We are not granted back stage passes to their behind the scenes
We only see their highlight reel
The cut and pasted snapshots of themselves
That they have chosen to present to the outside world
All of the bloopers and uncut scenes we are only capable of seeing
In ourselves -are in other people, invisible.
It’s not fair.
To compare a perfectly edited version of a person
To another whose flaws are all too visible.
This is why we feel inadequate.

The anvil sky—
The sky that presses its weight down
Heavy against the earth
Compacting the old snow of winter
Dense and thick and complete
So tight the snow warms against itself
It melts.
Only for the anvil’s cold metal to
Freeze the snow to ice.
Locking in the roots of spring
Behind dirt cast bars under
Ice clear windows.
Far up in the anvil sky
There are tiny lights like nails
Hotter than the icy metal
Burning through and warming up—
Small spots like holes in snow
Where daises will surely grow.

The Places I’ve been
I’ve been in rain, I’ve stood
In puddles and I have watched
As the pools of water climb up my pant leg
I’ve traveled to different continents
I’ve hiked up the mountains that separate them
And I thought I had seen most of everything
The dips of this world and its highest peaks
And after all of this seeing
After all of these places of being
The place I remember seeing the best
Was a place I wouldn’t have guessed
Some rink-**** of a church out west
And even now I cannot tell you what
Art looks like inside the Louvre
But every detail of those nuns I can tell you know
The sound of their forks hitting metal plates
The sound of those same forks when
They were pulled between teeth
Their black coats fraying against the ground
Their protruding knees as they bend down
When they were praying the tiny mumbles
From a distance sounded like sweet-nothings
And I thought that this was their version
Of making love to the Lord.

Every now and then I miss you terribly
What a cruel way my heart remembers
To tell my brain I love you.
And what a crueler way my mouth
Never told you.

She shot me dead on
With a pistol that
Would have looked better on a cowboy
It was too heavy for her holster
Her body weight shifted from side to side
As she walked towards me
And when she stopped just short of my body
She had to prop her hand up on her hip
It was a hot desert day and
She let her sweat drip down from
The corners of her eyes to the dip of her collar bone
And she let her mouth smile
Bigger than had seen it smile in years
She didn’t bother to wipe off
Her black gun-powered fingers
Before she touched the spot just below my neck
Where I could feel her push the bullet further in
She was a good shot
And looking up at the beads of sweat around her neck
I remembered telling her once
How she wore her tears better than Elizabeth Taylor
Wore diamond necklaces
She shot me dead on just below my neck
And I remembered telling her once
How I didn’t care for diamonds
I much preferred rubies.

I remember her red dress,
Of how when night came its thin straps slipped over her thinner shoulders
Falling slowly into a wrinkled circle on my floor.
I remember her seeing me seeing her put it on
She stood in front of our ice curtained window the next morning
And even though that dress was too short for autumn she would wear it anyway.
I think it was because she knew it drove me crazy.
I remember she would hide it underneath her long winter sweater
Like she was keeping safe a secret that was only just for me.
When she put on that sweater the light from the dawn
Would sneak out through the tiny holes in the fabric
It would look like sun-ray freckles kissing her skin
Her pale and previously unmarked body.
She pulled it over her head ever so slowly.
The leisurely motion in some way made me image a 9 year old boy
Who I imagine for the first time that winter hesitated
To pull but his snow boots over thickly crocheted Christmas socks.  
His feet look like her head in some way.
Both are somewhat unwilling to slide into warmer weather clothes
Both hiding a secret heating joy.

One question is almost always answered dishonestly. And most times with the dishonest answer, “I’m just tired.” But we aren’t. Not in the way we want it to sound to the person asking us if we’re okay, and we even lie with that a little to ourselves because it could be true- we are tired- but not from lack of sleep, rather and more truly from lack of belonging. A lack of enthusiasm for people, a lack of togetherness, a lack of luster for the world that we find ourselves in. We are stuck in a paradox of our own making, sometimes we feel so empty and disconnected from the world that when we feel that way we lie- furthering our own disconnect. Perhaps, if by some great grunt of force we were able to lift the weight of fear that is is our perceived weakness off of our backs maybe our voices would be less strained and more apt to answer honestly about the disconnect we feel rather than perpetuate its existence in a lie. We are the hands that feed our own loneliness and we bite ourselves time and time again because we can’t admit there is a problem. We can't be seen as weak. We condition ourselves to believe loneliness is a disease and it can be spread with a single sneeze that could lead to the death of our strong egos. So we use lies like tissues and cover up the fact that we feel alone forever fearful that someone else will catch it and reflect to us our own emptiness. Why condemn weakness and the feeling of emptiness to the fate of a negative connotation? Cry in public. See how many strangers comfort you. See how human this feeling is. Embrace it. Answer that person honestly. Hug someone who is sick from loneliness and catch their illness and let that be a bond that in itself cures the disease.

There once was a girl who now no longer exists
In a city that no longer exist, with a name
That no one in existence can pronounce
And that only inexistence can imagine.
She lay in a bed that also no longer exists
Playing a game, that only existed in nonexistence,
With a boy whose existence is, again, no longer real.
The one rule of this game that has long been lost in existence
If it ever really existed at all, the one rule of this bed game was and is,
The bed is the only thing that exists at all.
The boy and the girl who both no longer exist they,
Drew a line around the bed, rendering it their only plane of existence
Neither a toe nor a finger could touch the floor as they were sure
That that was too close to earth to not nonexistence
And touching this floor, this divider between existing and not,
Was not the point in their coexistence in their nonexistence
You see this game was not for those who exist
Because they did not exist. Not in this house,
On this street, in this city, all of which are no longer in existence.
But they exist to one another in their bed of inexistence
But to no one that now exists at all.
Centuries of existence will be worth this kind of inexistence.

Brother, in my dreams you have always just died.
I’ve never dreamt you are still talking to me
nor are you many years gone
your absence is always known, fresh and painful
It feels like a skinned knee
Stinging red and raw and with every movement
It reopens and spills out more and more pain.

Sometimes I am at your funeral
I’m talking through tears about the things you loved
Listing off:
Longboarding
Reading books
Long conversations
A good beer
And I stop at me.
How much you loved me, how much we were alike
And our one difference-the size of our hearts.
Mine, a tiny fragile thing with room enough
Only to house you and
You, who had a heart so big
God couldn’t let it live.

He couldn't keep it beating without making your blood thinner
So that it could more easily pass through your
Giant beating *****
Thin blood that kept you alive just long enough
For you to feel every bit of pain and every moment of sadness
That having such a big heart always brings
Every sad thing I feel in my dreams.

Brother, I'll say to your corpse
Remember the time you were drunk
So drunk that when I told you we were out of ice
You started sobbing
You sobbed on the ground and you screamed so loud,
And you said, “but where will the penguins live?”
I laughed at you, I picked you up off the floor
And told you I love you more than you love everything
Even penguins.
And told you no one will ever love you more
Than I do now.

Until we have to leave
Let’s set fire to the royal garden
Breathe in heavy all the smoke
And then call it intense
Make our bed in grassy fields
And on sandy beaches
So we have room to roll around
Put up our middle fingers to the law
And kiss each other in the streets
Once the government outlaws touching
I’ll call you poison
And you’ll call me morphine
Like they’re our ******* names
Remind the world that when Satan made hell
He took notes from when we said our goodbyes.

Because in my dreams we dance
Light as feathers
Across tight ropes
And balance beams
Catching one another as we fell
Into arms stronger than nets
And heavier than the elephants
I stood atop
and I,
With my red jeweled dress
Swaying short around my thighs,
I could see
You looking up at me
And you
Smiling, knowing,
Feeling-
The water
Wet
As you dived into that
Bucket down below.
Splashing out across my sheets
When I awoke.

When I was a child
We had an army in our backyard
They suited up in flower-print dresses
Their bodies billowed out in the wind
With new gush of air
And their shoulders were pinched by close pins
Holding them in a steady line formation.
My brother and I thought highly of our soldiers.
They guarded our house when they were outside
And inside they warmed our mother’s body
We returned the favor in different types of weather
When it was raining we could take them inside
And lay them flat and resting on out parent’s bed
And in sunshine we would let them bath in light
After a hard night’s watch.
We would sit on the porch and watch our troops
Hand in hand as children, whose world could
Afford to be guarded by clotheslines.
And we would know that the value of this memory
Would be vindicated by its longevity in our memories.

Brother, in my dreams you have always just died.
I’ve never dreamt you are still talking to me
nor are you many years gone
your absence is always known, fresh, and painful
it feels like a skinned knee
stinging red and raw and with every movement
It reopens and spills out more and more pain.

Sometimes I am at your funeral
I’m talking through tears about the things you loved
listing off:
longboarding
reading books
long conversations
a good beer
and I stop at me.
How much you loved me, how much we were alike
and our one difference-the size of our hearts.
Mine, a tiny fragile thing with room enough
only to house you and
you, who had a heart so big
your body couldn’t let it live.

It couldn't keep breathing without making your blood thinner
so that it could more easily pass through that
giant beating ***** of yours
such thin blood that kept you alive just long enough
for you to feel every bit of pain and every moment of sadness
that having such a big heart always brings
every sad thing I feel in my dreams.

Brother, I'll say to your corpse
remember that time you were drunk
so drunk that when I told you we were out of ice
you started sobbing
you sobbed on the ground and you screamed so loud,
and you said, “but where will the penguins live?”
I laughed at you, I picked you up off the floor
and I told you, “They can live with us and I’ll pay their part of the rent.”
Then I whisper to you, softly enough
So that the congregation won’t hear
I love you more than you loved everything
Even penguins.

I see you walking, seriously, quickly,
You catch my eye or maybe I catch yours
And we know.
That somewhere in the smile we share there is a solution
To the problems we’ve made in our own heads
About what is right, what is proper
How we should conduct ourselves in our love
So that it does not offend the people around us.
We find our solution in ignorance.
The total forgoing of social acceptance
And the ignoring of mandated protocol
When we see each other it’s like we’re hold hands in public.
Like we’re kissing with open mouths our hearts visible
To other people it looks like we are too exposed in our glances.
Like we are heart transplant patients on etherized hospital beds
We are eerily fragile and beautiful at the same time
But only to us who have stronger stomachs
Than the general public who gag at the sight of blood.
We embrace it with a smile
And overlook pale faces who can’t see the
Public displays of affection we can flaunt
By simply looking at one another.

I see you now like a wishing well
A fountain of forgotten promises
A graveyard of lost pennies
A ripple like a grapevine echoing the sounds of lost times
So much so that what I wish
What I wish
That when I chucked a quarter at your heart
The one you Guarded with windchimes made of rib bones that sung sweet rhymes
That maybe I’d hit a high note
And you’d think highly of me
And  breathe in all that was good of me
That brought about that musical loud sound that even you couldn’t deny
Sang sweet
But even after all this time I still feel like
I’m playing musical chairs with your exit signs
The red neon lights that echoed a rhythm that sounded like a lullaby
That tune that I could have sworn sounded like a love song
You sang to me
And that you meant it.

This one is for my mother
My only gift that maybe and probably
On some levels just a re-gift
Of the gift she has already given me
Over the years and through the many
Pages in the many books she has read to me
The books that she pulled from her red-wooden shelves
And sat on her lap on top of peach printed skirts
And underneath her pale pink colored nails
Words that grew legs in my mother’s mouth
And were so well fed that they grew hands too
Hands, that stretched out so far they reached my ears
And tapped on my ear drums moors code
Tales of other sleepy children who just
Wanted to stay up, “please just one more chapter longer”
“Please, I’m not even really tired”
Tales that when looking back I hate to think
I never realized  
How these tales reminded me of her
From every little detail minute as the
Punctuations that penetrated the spaces
between my mother’s long winded breath
One story I remember in particular.
The crescent moon that cradled the cat.
The cat that escaped from her farm in search of more milk
Than the farmer was feeding it
That cat who ran to the sky thinking the Milky Way—was just that.
Only to realize the love of the famer
Tasted better than how stars
Felt on patted and pawed feet
So the moon held the cat and slowly dipped its semi- circle
Cavernous cradle down to the earth again
Into the hands of the farmer
My farmer, my mother earth
With one undone overall strap hanging below her shoulder
That in my childhood I would tip-top to thumb the edges of
That metal that spooned the silver button hook.
The shiny metal like a bookmark
That I hope will never find its page
In a book I hope my mother will read forever.

I dreamt that I wrote to you last night. I woke up with paper cuts in between my fingers, lemon juice that stained my bed a ****-yellow color, ink embedded underneath my fingernails,  and every time I reached down to scratch my ***** I left a shameful line of old black ink. I think I’d have mailed it to her if I knew that when she read it she would scream with a horrid realization. A realization of finally understanding the monster she use to sleep next to, before the **** sheets before the ink stained boxers. I’d have mailed it to her if it wasn't just in my dreams. I imagine that the lines in my letter were laced with layers of lucid logic that stringed together feelings that con-caved in on themselves. That ate themselves whole;  but instead of making them disappear entirely they grew twice their size and spilled over the pages and underneath my nails. The diction I imagine I would have chosen to write with would be read with a southern twang.  Slow and drawn out. She would have to read it with extra syllables that her tiny lungs could not possibly hold. It would make her choke, for the first time, on words that weren't her own. My words would finally fulfill the dreams of my hands; constantly wanting to ring around her neck like I was seven again on the playground and her name was Rosie. I wouldn't have rhymed in my subconscious, to me that always seems fake and I can’t really rhyme without having my voice break. I might, however; use from time to time red bold words laying in the middle of long paragraphs in hopes she would remember her red dress. Of how, before bed, it grazed over her slopping neck and slid off onto my floor. In my dream it’s still on my floor. I hope in my letter that I wrote out a picture of her seeing me seeing her put it on in front of our window the next morning and even though that dress was too short for autumn and she would wear it anyway. Because she knew it drove me crazy and because she wanted to remember me even after she walked out my front door. Mornings like that I begged her stay even if we had just fought over how much she snores, even if I had called her a **** one too many times the drunken night before. My letter, I think, would tell her that I wish she didn't have to bundle up and leave that she could instead cut up my bed sheets and make herself a new warmer dress. One that would have matched my pillow too perfectly for her to not lay her head on it and call it a hat. For her to pretend that my bed was the world outside the door. My letter would go like that. It would make her scream at first then make her remember that monsters can love too and knowing that; she would punch her new mattress and tear up her new pillows ones that I have never touched. She would scream, "*******!" preceding my name every time she landed a blow. She would say that so many times that she could never look at her new bed again without thinking of me, and of ****. When I dreamt last night I dreamt I wrote you a letter, but dreams don’t have hands that can hold pens. So I instead sent you my bed sheets, my boxers, I signed them with lemon juice and old black ink. Wear them, sleep with them, read them for what they are worth or toss them out because monsters with words like mine give you nightmares.

Our love was a train wreck
A shot in the chest
A broken neck from
An automobile wreck
And I
I have never felt love so strong than
When I used to stand next to you
I have never felt anything close to it sense
Our love was a nuclear bomb
It destroyed every bit of me
Dismantling my atoms
Scattering them across endless fields
Protons electrons broken bones and cut off finger tips
All of my being missing
From just us kissing
Our love was a fountain in a box
Trapped and suffocated water brimming the edge of us
Spilling out onto everything around us
And there was no mop to be found to clean us up
So we, our parts would just lay there
In pools and puddles of love
Little drops of water and atoms so tiny
It’s a wonder how our love filled us whole.

I know the good and the bad of it
Where the pendulum has swung
And where it intends to swing next

My body is filled with the knowledge of it

Poisoned marrow mixed in my bones
With a fresh prescription of penicillin
An invoice sitting on the coffee table waiting to be paid

My hand hovering over an overflowing astray
Holding a half smoked and forgotten about cigarette
A dust pan prompted against the stool it’s on

My growling liver eating the contents of my wallet
Leaving a receipt from the ABC store clinging to the condensation
Moistening the bottle of left out ***

This feeling of post apogee
The silent deafening moment
Of situational actualization

The view from the tipping point that lingers just long enough
To still see every vantage point, the good and the bad of it all.

And what of the eighth day? When did God sense the ethereal rush of completing a project was wearing off? Does God get bored? Does he, like everyone else, grow tired of the mundane and of the usual?  God projecting his own image onto his creations was not enough anymore. Too lonely was God and too curious he was to be left unattended with the power to elude the impossible. Too lonely he was, too much he wanted to be around others like himself, too much time he had spent with his own thoughts reverberating off the walls of his own making, shouting back ideas already known to him. Too curious he was to see what would happen if he could experience the company and love of others like himself, and too insightful he was to know all of these things existed in his mind but not as a firsthand account. Too self-aware he was to not understand that a genuine account of such feelings was what he wanted. He felt all the feelings we feel; curiosity, loneliness, boredom, company, and love. He understood them so completely and totally in the world he created that he grew tired. And then the only feelings God could now sense were those of loneliness and of guilt; strong undying feeling of regret of knowing things that only he has ever felt. With these thoughts encircling his heavy mind he also realized that if he were to create another like him, he could not control it. His identity would have to be shared with another complete equal. Could he have this? Too wise he was to not account for the repercussions of his artistic actions; God was still. For God like all of us God wishes to be special, to be unique, and to have control; control, the original ***** of God. God realized this at the dusk of the seventh day; he realized that now after looking at the last of all his great creations the problems with the ones before. In no measurable time he had created many planets, worlds, kingdoms, and creators, none holding his attention long enough to not create the next.  So these, he muttered in his kingdom of unshared silence, these had to be different. Not God enough to oppose him but human enough to feel him.

You could take apart thunder with your teeth
The lighting in your mouth
Could light up any stretch of sky
The boom in your voice
Could make a thousand ripples
In any glass of water I hold in my hand
No matter where on earth I stand.

I want to know all of you.
The tiny blemishes that would be imperfections
If they marked up any other body but yours.
I want to know the stories behind your scars.
All the ones you've collected over the years
And display on your body
Like old books on a library shelf  
I need to thumb my fingers over those puckered patches
Of skin because all your books are written in braille
And I want my fingers to know those words
In ways your voice couldn't describe.
These welts of words make up the story of who you are.
I hope you will let me open you up
And I hope that after I read all of you
You will still know
That I will always kiss you as sweetly as I did before
I knew all your wounds.
Please know that I will not think you are any less pure
To me as you were before I understood.
Purity isn’t real anyway.
It’s a prison of a concept that’s made with
Bars of guilt and of shame
Keeping you trapped behind your past.
But you are not that to me.
You are my future
And even if I add to your seeming imperfections
And give you a few more scars
Be happy that when I re-read the braille books on your body
I will read about me too and how I want
Nothing more than to add to you.

It’s their clothes
That’s the worst thing of theirs to get rid of
Each removable of a garment from their closet
A different  scent  hits you in a wave
That you have to push back just one more hanger more
But then after the scent passes
You remember Easter
Christmas
Thanksgiving
When they wore that blouse
Or button down shirt
When you go through their drawer
The one you couldn’t a few months ago
Because then it was still too private then
That watch that was probably a few links too small
You remember the sides of skin around it that were
Lightly suffocated highlighted the veins that flew through them
They seemed  so alive then
It’s their clothes
When you pack them into boxes when you
Donate them to charity because the sight of them on anyone you know
Would send you into a spiral of remembrance
That you’d rather not slip into
Those truly were the slippery slopes
Ones that tiptoed on a double take
Ones that made you think if only for a devastating moment after
The initial realization of those clothes on someone else
That they were no longer going to wear them.
Yes, their clothes are the hardest part
Not wanting to slip into everyone
Garment they owned when you were forced to pack them up
Jealous of that cloth that touched them last
Them after you did for the last time
Yes, their clothes are the hardest part.

For a few years in college
I lived across from this church
And every Sunday morning
When I was alive enough to wake up
From the first of the church’s bells
I would begrudgingly wrap myself
In my comforter force my feet to
Flop on the frigid floor and walk
To my front door
I pushed through the half-on-it’s-hinges-screen
Sat on my porch lit up a smoke-and watched
The parade of cars unloading
Women in too tall heels
Pushing them higher above hell
Men in their dress shoes shined
Into mirrors for the heavens
And like a much more bitter
but surely a just as hungover Noah
I watched them as I counted off all the couples
And I wondered how they must feel
Just for that 40 to 60 second stroll
From their car doors to the bow of the chapel
And the worst part of me
The part that belongs hidden from
Social niceties and common social civilities
Thought they must be so smug
Them thinking along this walk that
They are the saved ones
That the ones like me have certainly missed the boat
But always after thinking that the part of me
Aware of my own spitefulness the peacekeeper
Of my temperamental nature
Adds how nice it must be to be a simple animal
Filing into a sanctuary of hope
Where they believe they will be kept dry
In a world where sinners like me are soaking wet
Then again the worse part of me finds humor in that
All of these thoughts usually pass through in enough time
For all the patrons to pile in and the last bell sound
And my worst part, the part that finds humor in grit
Made me laugh out a puff of fresh smoke
And think but how is my cigarette still lit

I’ll rewrite my words
Hundreds,
Thousands of times.
Erasing periods
Commas and uncommon verbs
So my style will mimic yours.
I’ll speak my words
Hundreds,
Thousands of times
In a voice in my head that mimics yours
Hoping they will sound like yours
Hoping they, like yours, will
Will sit at the foot of my bed at night
And seep into my clothes the next morning
Like yours, eddy inside my ears
Hundreds,
Thousands of times.

If we could escape this heat
I think we would.
With a choice of geography I could see us somewhere cold,
Somewhere where our hands couldn't touch
Anything but the inside of gloves
Where our hearts wouldn't break with our fevers
Because only our memories would know what it was
Like to always be so hot.
We would never sweat next to each other
We wouldn't dare to.
We would know that each bead that dripped down our brow
Would harden into a marble, and we would never
Throw those stones at one another.
Besides, we never be so close to one another anyway
Not with our layers of fabric hugging our bodies so tight
That we would eventually forget what was underneath
And only recognize the form of each other by the patterns on our jackets
We wouldn't see each other as anything other than
A pile of laundry.
The site of piled clothing would not remind of us nakedness
But of how it felt to lay as children
Underneath a freshly dried pile of garments.
How we would feel the warmth as good at first but were then
Deceived by a burning hot brass button
That puckered the skin on the back of our
Necks, of our legs.
We could remember heat as heartbreak in our
Memories and it would be too far erased to ever recreate.
We could live for the cold, the sharp air
That would still the boiling liquids in our veins
That  once made our hearts beat too vulnerable to not be hurt.
Our core would adapt to the cold
And it would harden our hot feeling and small morsels
Of memories together like a bag of peas in a freezer.
We can’t be so hot.
Not you and me, not together.
Not with mouths so dry from each others
Our bodies would have to make water for us.
Not with heads so full of steaming blood that feelings melted and
Swished together in a liquid until they were no longer distinguishable
As real things and were often  so misunderstood
We added more liquid dilutions
Until they filled our bodies too full
They spilled out of eyes and burnt our faces.
We should move somewhere cold
Where everything is too solid to connect anything
And too still to break our hearts.

We were told we were born sick
Though we never felt ill
We met in Sunday school
And over the coughs of other children
That hacked out either verses or mucus
It was never clear which
I asked you for a paint brush
And you stepped over the damp tissues
Thrown defeated on the ground
Like offerings at a precession
And you’d painted next to me.

We were told we’d always be sick
But we never looked ill
When I accidently bumped your elbow reaching for
More paper
Our blushing cheeks the color of alter wine
Bore healthy smiles and warm glows
And after countless more Sundays
When the men in funny neck ties
Came around to give us crackers
In the shapes of pills we couldn’t swallow
We decided to hide them in the sleeves of our robes
And we watched as all the other children
Grew sicker while we grew stronger
Even though they drank blood
And we’d sneak off to drink wine.

We became the heretics of hallelujahs
AWOL archangels
And we were never bed ridden from illness
In fact we yearned for the outside
Disregarding the warnings of germs
That ran rampant there
Figuring that was why they made the
Church’s steeple look like a needle
We wanted freedom nonetheless.

They told us that we would catch the flu
By holding hands
And when we were caught contaminated
They told us to wash our bodies off in the water
And you looked at me and I looked at you
And we agreed that we should-
But not this water, not here
So we grabbed hands again
And you with your free left and I with my free right
Pushed through the double doors
And as the light poured in the chapel
It scorched the priests but for us it baptized us whole
And now we tell ourselves swimming in the sea
That became our holy healing water
We’d only ever be as sick as others let us be.

To my father time,
my keeper of clocks whose minute hand
never clicks too fast for my growing mind,
whose hand was always held out to help me over curbs
and over mountains
Leading me to the path he’d knew I needed to walk down the most.
To the gray hair I loved to brush through as a child, with paintbrush fingers
and as an adult discreetly smell with each long, over due hug.
To the man I loved first and the one I give thanks for
every last thanksgiving.
The one whose eyes held the same color as mine
and when I looked into them saw I us both
picking flowers down the street
but father time
your eyes were always slightly different than mine
they had a touch of yellow that I could never,  in my own eyes find
but how I wanted that same hue of gold.
To be touched by your Midas eyes I thought I could uncover the world
but I can’t. You are too far away and I miss you
and I can no longer feel the warmth of those yellow specks
only the black of your pupils that are
deeper than the ocean and I am a fish without gills forever trying
to swim toward the orange light the sun yields each morning
only to be stuck in mud  
forever waiting  for your glowing second hand to touch me again each hour
and remind me to look for gold in blackness
and that I have the same eyes as yours, that can turn minute hands into
years of arms and mud into gold.

A thin black eye lash on my sweater
One of the dark cloaked guardians
That stand so close together in line
and puff out their thickened chests
To guard my fragile blue eyes.
Their bodies drawn in tight like curtains.
But it seems the weakest
Link has fallen off its post
Not as mighty, or as fit as the other
Bristles that still remain.
Why is this the one I am to wish on?
The feeble pray of the huffing wind.
The unfit shepherd who let my
Sheepish eyes be eaten by wolfs
I pick it up between my thumb and finger
Place it in my palm and
I would tell it, but in a whisper
My wish
And I would latch it on tight
And as I blew it away with
Pursed lips and eyes closed shut
And I think that perhaps a lighter
Lash will carry my wish further to you
Than the stronger ones I have plucked out
And wished on Before.
That it will not be weighed down
By its own girth as my wish is already heavy
Enough to hold
And then perhaps my wish on a lash
Will find its way to your lap
And it will sit there in my place
And tell you in the things that my voice
Cannot scream from here that
No one has ever wanted anything more than
I want you.

What of the nights?
What of the time God spent in-between days of creating?
What of the eighth day?
When did God sense that the ethereal rush of completing a project
was wearing off? Does God get bored?
Does he, like everyone else, grow tired of the mundane and of the usual?
God, forever only projecting his image onto his creations was no longer exciting enough.
Too lonely was God and too curious he was to be left unattended-
with the power to elude the impossible.
Too lonely he was, too much he wanted to be around others like himself
too much time had he spent with his own thoughts
reverberating off the walls of his own making,
shouting back feelings already known to him.

Too curious he was to not see what would happen
if he could experience the company and love of others like himself
and too insightful he was to know all of these things existed in his mind
but not as a firsthand account.
Too self-aware he was to not understand that a genuine account of such feelings
was what he wanted.
He felt all the feelings we feel
Curiosity
Loneliness
Boredom
Companionship
and love.
He understood them so completely and totally in the world he created
that he grew tired
and then the only feelings God could sense were those of loneliness and of guilt;
a strong undying feeling of regret for feeling things that only he has ever felt.
With these thoughts encircling his heavy mind he also realized
that if he were to create another like him, he could not control it.
His identity would have to be shared with another complete equal.

Could he have this?
Too wise he was to not account for the repercussions of his artistic actions;
God was still.
For God like all of us, wishes to be special,
to be unique, and to have control; control, the original ***** of God.
God realized this after the night of the billionth fifth day;
he realized that now after looking at the last of all his great creations
the problems with the ones before
because after all this was not God’s first week
and in no measurable time he had created many
planets, worlds, kingdoms, and beings
none holding his attention long enough to not create the next.
So these, he muttered in his kingdom of unshared silence
these had to be different.
Not God enough to oppose him but human enough to feel him.

Come to me early in the morning
After all the world's bombs have been dropped in the ocean
When fish and whales scream silent to men
And their bodies wash ashore broken
Come to me as a jellyfish afterwards
Lying on a beach like a fractured glass heart
Solid enough to be buried in the sand
But shattered enough to never swim again.

Often I feel all I really am is a pile of embers
Pieces of burn paper collected
And swept into a pile
Awaiting the shovel
Awaiting the trashcan
But I was once a flame
I held the afterglow of something powerful
Something that only man has ever touched
A promethean myth of promise so
Potent its future begs to be clutched
And as much
As I could love to be that flame again
My role as the after math is just as important
The pile of rumble that before a bomb was a building
Can be seen as material for something new
And the lot of something as raw as me
Can stand for hope, rebuilding for remaking
Things only exist from piles of ember and of rumble
And from me I can build an army
My fortune has not yet been set
My goals have certainly not yet been met
But I show promise
Now please tell me how will you make me?

My sculpture artist.
My mad scientist.
The constant reader of anatomy books
Perched on paper scattered desks
Close dissection of the human
You want me to become
And I want it too.
I am tired of being a moist lump of clay
Slumping over from unmolded parts of my frame
The structure that holds promise of life
If all parts are carved in just right
Mirroring the blue vein lines
Between red masses of muscles
Printed on yellow and finger smudged paper
From your constant flipping between
The full human form and
That small pumping muscle you
Have carved into me time and time again
Only to smear with one finger tip
The dainty clay aorta
Inside my already perfect chest
I am tired of not burning hot with the
Fires of your kiln.
To be burnt so severely
That what was supposed to be skin would
Crack, break, and fall into a complete shell
Around my base.
Leaving a small pumping heart
That would finally define me as human
To an artist who plays with science.

I think the thing is we inspire danger
Within one another
We’ve realized the falsity of fear
And found instead it was always a choice
And now we’ve chosen to forgo it
To embrace danger as easily
As we embrace one another
This is a beautiful thing to find in another person
So that when the skies fall
And the armies invade our city
When the streets run so rampant with violence
That the government outlaws touching
We won’t be afraid to stand in the streets
To hold each other in chaos
To kiss each other where we need it.

Still after 22 years I’m not used to the spin
I still sway with the torpid orbit of this earth
I still feel more like ripples in the ocean
Billowing out helplessly by forceful winds
Than like the fish that swim solid beneath its gale
My legs still ache to move backwards as
The ground below me charges itself
Further and further forward, still, into
It’s circular rhythm, perpetual and exhausting
What I’ve always seemed to think was
Its true underlying intentions
To drown me.
To never stop ringing around itself
To never lull in its constant wind-blown vim
Created by its imposing movements
To never let me parity my body above sea-level
Never letting me know of or be thrown off balance, me without
Any knowledge of or way to grasp a steady pole.
This swirling pool of motion with each tick and tock right,
It engulfs me with waves of pressure, its crests crashing
Heavy on my attempts to stand beneath it.
It renders me dizzy without senses.
The blood-thirsty rocking of this earth
Whips hair feverously across my eyes
Blinding me to the ground I would grasp to steady my body
If not for the winds ebbing across the planes I struggle to stand atop
Winds, rubbing my hands red and raw and unable to feel
Slashing my fingers with invisible knifes
I would catch my breath, find strength to stand, if only these winds
Would slow with the stall of the earth’s movement, if its swirl
So constant, did not weigh so heavy and hot around me
Burning with tropical heat, thickening the air, heavy as water
And me, wishing for gills.

home is where the heart is
but what if you don't have a home?
what if circumstances out of your control
have forced you to pack up
your belongings in knapsacks
book-bags
and suitcases
where could you kept your heart?
would you nestle it in-between socks that double
as bubble wrap
or in an old mason jar
cleaned of its old bacon grease and
sealed shut from air
i knew a girl once
who was without a home and instead of packing it away
she carried it on her sleeve
and under bridges and squeezed between cloth and a park benches
it got too ***** for her to recognize
and people would nudge up against it in soup lines
and in the winter time it would smell like outdoors and  freezing pines
i would ask her
why not keep in in your backpack
surely it would be much safer there
and she told me
she would never
separate her heart from her body like that
and if she did find a home
she wouldn't keep her heart there either
because houses are temporary and her body would be as permanent
as God would allow it to be

If I could change anything about you
That would be a mistake
Maybe the mistake I would make
Would to be changing you so you never met me
Only so I could met you again
But that would be selfish
And frankly quite weird
Because I don’t think I could shake your hand
And let you tell me your name
Without finishing it with your middle and last
Or without asking if you needed anything at the store
Like those pretzels you like so much.

I think if you would let me
I’d treat you like the night sky
I’d bundle up all of your wonderful traits and perfect flaws
And I’d create a constellation for them
I’d look at it with my telescope endlessly
And I know you don’t see yourself
The way I see you
And you still sometimes argue with me when I call you wonderful
But know that all of the things that you can’t stand about yourself
Are the very things I never want to go a day without
But if that didn’t work
Just know that if you let me I’d build you an observatory
Made of one hundreds mirrors
Each facing your direction
Just so you could see yourself up close in a million ways
I’d make you sit in front of them  for hours
Just so I could prove it to you-
That all of the other constellations
Every single one in the night sky
Will never have stars that shine
As bright as you do.

I am now a diamond
Who misses her mountainous mine
Back when she was coal
Back when she was coated in soot
Back when she loved a miner
Who only loved her potential
Who ushered into caves yellow birds to find her
Who used a light fashioned on a hat just to see her
Who pick axed away at her bed
Until he held her in his hands
As softly as would a flower
Who died to make her
Her ash underneath his fingertips
Her worth a blinding sparkle in his eye
She thought he would use her for heat
That she could power his body
And warm his soul
So she let him set fire to her
She let him press into her so tight
She mistook it for closeness
And the stress
The heat
The fire of it all
It make her crack her dark amber
Striped her of her soot coat
Leaving her naked and clear
A diamond
Now a spectacle of her mistrust
On display for the world to see
Placed on the finger of another woman
That the miner actually loved.

You look your best mid-swig
The way your neck bends
And water or beer or sweet tea
Flows down your throat
And I know your thirsts are quenched-
When you look surprised your eyes
Open real wide and your eye brows
Tip-toe to barely kiss the bottom of your hair line-
Unless you're wearing a hat
That you like best backwards
And these are the little things that I hope only I notice
So that if you were ever to go missing only I-
Could describe you accurately
I'll describe all of these little things
To the lead detective
And I'd tell him about
How the bridge of your nose crinkles
When you **** in your cheeks
And blow out air.

My muse for writing is hatred
I hate this and I hate that
I hate you.
My right hand seems perpetually pressed
Against paper
And the pressure from my left
Comes from a clenched fist
My fingers wrapped around
Some crumpled scribble of a thought
Most times my body feels like the vertical pole
Balancing opposing weight systems
Constantly pushing for power only to lose it
Again every single time.
And I hate that I rhyme
Because I am too off set to stand straight
On my own two feet
I am meek and I must teeter between
Who I am and what I write
When what I am in a ball of hate
Writing about how I wish it was love
And how nice cool metal would feel on my left hand
Compared to the hot blood
That seeps under my finger nails
From constantly clenching back cascades
Of callous conscious thoughts of hate.
That I hate I wished was love.

I tried to describe you to someone
The other day
At a loss for affectionate nouns that
Would string together adjactives
Of how much I miss you.

Words sat deep in my lungs
And puffed out squeaky and small
Smoke-tainted coughs
Laced with conversations we had
When I first put that smoke there.

Words pilled up at the base of my gut
Twisting my insides the way you said
Yours did when you thought of planets.
Words that if formulated in my mouth
Would tell you I would ****
Just to be a moon circling in your orbit
Picking up rocks of you
You thought had fallen off forever
And were meteored through the universe.

Words that you once spoke to me
At night on a bench
Carried in my moon-hard
Lungs as smoke
That when I speak of you
Heat me thaw.

Once you’ve been in the ocean
A lake is far too small
If a lake ever had ledges
Off them you would surely fall
You’ve swam in much too big of a place
To move to another without so much space
A pond will never be your true home
Not for you not once you’re full grown
Your arms will be too big your legs too giant
Your body in a puddle will never be complaint
So as you develop from a child to something bigger
Remember that you’re an ocean not a river
Your brain is too big so your body had to fit it
And living in a river would would surely **** your big sprit
Stay in the place that fits like a size too big shoe
Where there’s plenty of space for you to grow up to be you

The Baker boy down the street is a peculiar thing. His book bag is a familiar sight around town, its red and aged with dirt, it’s anchored to his back by brown straps that are torn and excrete small little tuffs of white stuffing. Like the kind you’d find inside a teddy bear. The large front pocket is scribbled with poorly drawn cartoonish characters. Doodles one could assume to be depictions of imaginary friends and by the boy’s sheepish and largely odd demeanor one could also assume these imaginary friends were probably spawned by the lack of real ones. The boy’s book bag is more familiar than the boy. If only because his face solely exists in a light tan hoodie too close in color to the completion of his skin to readily differentiate between the two. Either way, the Baker boy usually always has his head down, this allows for a small ***** in his posture that pushes his book bag up to the very top of his back, making it very prominent, making it something like a substitute for a head. People started recognizing his book bag as the boy himself. In their minds they could see it as clearly as they could the faces of their own children, spouses, close friends. They gave his book bag the same recognition and remembrance of aesthetic value as one would give to the details of a face. They notice quickly and with the same concentration a new rip in his straps as they would a pimple on someone’s chin. He never spoke. Not to anyone. Not a word. The kind of recognition given to a person’s voice with whom you are familiar is a sign of their presence in your world, a kind of confirmation of their existence other than their physical self. The Baker boy used a sound instead, lacking a voice. The specific sound the Baker boy used to validate his existence in our town sounded like the soft scratching of an itch, a repetitive petting of his book bag strap that marked conscious thoughts from underneath a silent exterior. He did this when he was nervous, or if he felt he was being prompted to speak. A repetitive thumbing of his book bag straps.

I tried to describe you to someone
The other day
At a loss for affectionate nouns that
Would string together adjactives
Of how much I miss you.

Words sat deep in my lungs
And puffed out squeaky and small
Smoke-tainted coughs
Laced with conversations we had
When I first put that smoke there.

Words pilled up at the base of my gut
Twisting my insides the way you said
Yours did when you thought of planets.
Words that if formulated in my mouth
Would tell you I would ****
Just to be a moon circling in your orbit
Picking up rocks of you
You thought had fallen off forever
And were meteored through the universe.

Words that you once spoke to me
At night on a bench
Carried in my moon-hard
Lungs as smoke
That when I speak of you
Heat me thaw.

If I could have three wishes
The first would be for bigger arms
The second would be for bigger arms
And the third for a bigger chest
I would use my newly acquired body parts
For nothing else other than to help you sleep
I would reach out and grab you from
Any of the corners of this earth
That keep you awake
I would hold you close to
My bigger chest so you had room
To move around on it like a pillow
And with my arms I would wrap around you completely
Making myself the world’s first human blanket
And I would tell you just as sweetly as I could
That it would have been pointless to simply wish for
A pillow, a blanket, a whole bed
Just for you to rest your head
Because within my own body I also have
A radio
One that can play you the various beatings of my heart
A set of lungs
Full of air that will blow on you more gently than any fan
And I have a memory that knows you better
Than the memory foam between sheets and mattress
I wouldn’t wish you a bed to rest your head
I’d wish to be your bed, to know I am the thing that rests your head.

Loving me is hell
The brim ****** coal melting the
The rubber base of my shoes
Leaving my soles bare
And red and raw
Pulsating with heat pumping
Blood into my skin in attempts to
Make it live again
But my body is faulty
And it does not know the flakes around my toes
Are already gone
And any aid to save them is as useless
As rubber trying to fight fire
Loving me is hell
Because when I burn my feet I cannot stand any longer
And I will need you to carry my rotisserie rotten
Soles to where ever it is you wish me to go
And at first your arms are strong to hold my weight
But like everything else
Like the iron on statues like
The wood that built a house
They will weaken
And I will only be a burden of a beast
Whose soles not unlike my own heart
Makes you wonder if they are still completely in tacked
And you will consider throwing my body back
Into that fiery hell
Because loving me is just that.

I love you now as only few things are to be loved
Within the secret of an untouched desire
Or in the dark esoteric of a thought
So I am further gone than you might have expected
Down your chords of tragic intonation
For it is unknown to me yet, your guile,
Behind your harmonious guise
The worm in my heart has always
Been the apple of your eye.

As of late I have felt less like a person
And more like the aftermath of a shattered glass
My hearts contents that were once safely contained
Now spread out across the kitchen floor
And into tiny dust ridden cracks that brooms cant reach
My pieces that were once whole and one now longer recognize
The many parts of itself that use to be neighbors
But now have moved across continents
The circular bottom of my glass
Bounced and shattered making a jagged crystal crown
Perfectly shaped for house mice
The mouse king wears it like I use to wear
My heart.
As a symbol of power of knowing that
If all else fails I have this heart, this crown
So when people look at it they will know without a doubt
That I am good and I am deserving.
But now with that piece of my body separate
From my other organs I am not so sure
Now that it lays too far away from my soul
My brain my body
I am not sure that it means anything.
I am broken and the holy hope I have of reconstruction
Is that dust pan in the closet
And as it collects my dangerous shards of organs
I’ll pick up the bigger pieces with my hands
And hope that my blood is thick enough to act as glue
If only a temporary fix.