The sloppy rain slips and slides down the fogged-up windows,
and this lets me know that I am not as small as I think I am.
In a city of three million plus, I feel like the soul of a nation,
even though I'm just a twenty-one year-old piece of plastic, drinking a hipster beer.

The waitress has frizzy hair and oily skin.
She's holding in late-night infomercials and missed ballet recitals, behind her words.
She looks at my luggage and asks where I came from or where I'm going,
and I tell her that the fun thing is that I have no idea where I'm going --
and that I still haven't decided where I've came from.

This city allows new-found anonymity, and I want that to be my cause.
With each passing glance, I know they don't see me, and, to me, that's the slumber-kissed throat-slit I've always dreamt of...

...the streets play music that I only hear -- and I know that's not fair, but I don't care.

And the homeless represent the bowels of the city.
And the businessmen are the ghost-filled engine.
And the middle class is the defense-mechanism I always wanted for Christmas.
And I am the empty delusion, desperately seeking a new pollution.

Some nights,
we found ourselves huddled together
in the dark
with the sheets sticking to our
glistening
hot
skin
knowing that someday
one of us would have to live
without the other.

Some nights,
we fell asleep
with our fingers intertwined,
our heartbeats synced,
content at the thought
that we'll probably die in our sleep
with the other
restful
unaware
beside us.

Balance is what keeps madness on the porch.

To move through genealogies
consider what it takes
The blood of those before
you filled with all of their mistakes
And what you've given into will uncover how you came
A sort of inquisition to eradicate your name
I called myself "the others" if I staggered or destroyed
Made everything inside of me
so purposely devoid
If not by my own doing
then by those whom I had known
To whom I was connected, thought, believed I could call home
Today's a separation
I have never known before
Or one that I'd forgotten
since I leveled with the floor
There's nothing on the bottom but I cannot seem to look
Much further than the dirt of earth, the silver that I took
The people are in pieces
and my head tries to compare
So often I can only find
the source of our despair
I go to bed in cycles
I can barely seem to keep
Awake so long I wait for dreams
to make me fall asleep
If anyone can see me or engage my busy head
I'll breathe before I speak again, let life be what is said

My mother held me,
and asked what was wrong with my world.
Her rubbery hands in my hair.
"I feel like a plastic narrative," I said,
"and there's nothing I can do about it."

O, ethereal Earth -
tortured town towering oneself.

Under Grace, thy swift death -
and upon mercy, a light, jest.

To be your Savior -
your only favorite -
is what's best.

Today I will go binge eating the alphabet
And coughing up peacock feathers
from my fox like habits
Of being sneaky
       And writing in the dark
  Or in my dreams

I'm thinking about that boy
                       Lost at Sea
His eyes glazed over like a dead fish
                      Death is a form of knowledge

She was a storm
        He never knew he was in her eye(s)
But Tempest is, as Tempest does

He was lured by Siren song

Coral reefs,
                  Hands, with nails too long
I swear bees lived in them
              Jellyfish like flowers
              Pollen from their electrical Zaps!
And they burrowed deep

Messages in a bottle were collected
        by the Hermit crab, not some mermaid
His library ancient like the ones in the desert
                                                          ­  Or the CIA

ii.
I'm thinking about that boy
                       Lost at Sea

He was swallowed by a Plastic Whale
(He did try to escape Media & Capitalism &...)
A(t)las he was in the wrong Hemisphere
    More like Pinocchio
Just really good at telling lies

Nets from old volleyball games
                   from the Future
dance like river sprites
            far from home

Volcanoes are failing
                             At making new land
Wolves become whales
Pyramids sink and are like cheap motels of Atlantis
We're all just gambling on one Apocalypse or another

iii.
I'm thinking...bubble..bubble
            He's drowning
Or maybe he forgot how to breathe

Suddenly hooks catch his ankles
        Harpoons & Atomic bombs melt
     the plastic right of the bones                            of the whale
Like a WWII fighter jet and target practice

Blood limps in currents
Jaws plays in his peripheral of his hippocampus
The Great White passes him by
Because he's not seen as important, we're not talking about ego here

He takes off the anchors from his shoe laces,
He was just trying to stay grounded
But now he was just a Bad Pun
with his Lungs the punchline

His airhead carries him to the surface
He's just a boy

He can breathe
This lost boy at Sea
He makes a raft from his memories
      And ties them together with ropes of trauma
The kind of things you don't forget

Like your name,
         your parents
that time you were a piece of wood split in two and later when the splinters finally settle       you're thrown into the fire
The kinds of things you don't forget

He floats towards mirages
Typical, it's not paradise
Ships and planes
           A Sunkyard
As if we built a factory in the sea
            And it got sick  
Coughing up decades of gears and
pieces of a time machine
             Oil and blood being same thing
             Of course
And Seagulls melting into toxins
         Like the new, like mini dinosaurs
A cycle of Fossil Food

iv.
Amelia,
          The reason this boy was lost
                                      at sea
Looking for a woman real mythology
But it should've been Lockhart
Because unrequited is easy to come by

The compass was made from his blind love
It was obvious, this misdirection
A Bermuda Triangle kind of affection

So...he explores the ruins
   Of Japan
Tsunami and temples
Cute girls and dimples
Fish food only made the news for so long

Sometimes when you put a seashell to your ear
you can hear Shōnagon
             or the screams of little girls in Sailor uniforms
Their own uniforms like an arranged marriage

               Tectonic plates roll the Earth
                                into Sushi  
Last week California
                   took a swim
She was feeling a little Hot

v.
I'm thinking about that boy
                       Lost at Sea
And he's trying to walk on the waves
                       Like a Savior
He can't even save himself from his own ego
      It's like the Mariana trench
If she didn't have all that depth

She was just Another girl. His lust was vast, that compass might as well                                        
                    ­                                                                 ­ have been in his pants

Soon he can't tell

The sky from Sea
Or himself and Humanity
He looks down and can't see his toes
                then his knees

He's been lost at sea too long...
Fog like *******
Sea ****
He's been lost at sea too long..

So he becomes a Seahorse
Tries to be a Father
              without any Sand dollars or a Safe Harbor

My mother was beautiful,
              She was an Iceberg
You hurt her with all your global warming

She moves on Slowly
     Settles for a Lighthouse
Who only looks at her so often

The Moon reincarnates me
Because I am the tide.
           Rising, falling
   Constant
Just the Historian.

I can tell you about the girl.

Her freckles were beige constellations,
and her voice was husky and rasped
like birds before the churning of a storm.

She was weird and laughed at everything I said -
which made her even weirder,
because I'm only funny in certain photos
and in certain clothes.

Her left arm was covered in scars and burns.
"As you can tell, I'm right handed," she said.
Arthritis surrounded her wrists and other joints,
and all I could think about were my
grandmother's arthritis crippled hands,
and if the girl would thank the arthritis, one day,
for no longer allowing her to self-harm.

One of her feet were bigger than the other
and, when she walked, she would lose balance.
"I'm not sure if the world is too fast
or if I'm too slow. Then again," she winked,
"it's probably because of my feet."
I liked her because she treated me like a person,
but didn't take me as seriously
as I took myself.

I struggled with self-respect
and she struggled with a drug addiction.
Her arm was needle park
and sometimes she missed ******
more than she missed me.

She wasn't the type of girl to shake
without her drugs -
she'd, instead, talk about them
like they were old friends.
She understood them
more than she understood herself.

After a few months of ***
and, "I'll be sad when you leave,"s,
I called her my girlfriend
and she smiled.
Flecks of speckled angles, bright,
I saw her, first, she accepted
my night.

Five days later,
she overdosed on morphine.
I picked her up.

Her eyes were glazed over.
I said, "I love you,
but this is *******."
She cried and said,
"Forgive me."

I lain in bed, next to her -
next to the avoidance of death.
She asked how I was
and I said, "Everything I write is ****,
but I'm glad I can write ****** poetry
about how we'll be okay."

She asked, "We will be okay, right?"

I hope.