Where do you worship when you've
been exuded
from the fire escapes of every building
that you've ever been blessed inside,
when all the holy skin
you've been revering night after night

comes to a shuddering end
like a life line slipping
out of chafed fingers? Sirens wail
wantonly during the peak of the moon's
reign, and
is it an ambulance or
a body that will salvage you in

your most vulnerable
hour, after
you finish playing the part of the secret anti-hero
and have nothing left to give
but platonic ecstasy? Cheap
lighters
are littered behind your departure

like footprints, but
the useless
manifestos you preach behind every moan
won't ever be forsaken
in your trail of dust and suggestions
of abeyant arson,

because you're just living how
you were born to endure: like a star, burning,
burning, and far away.

What is a name but a mask of an
      empty mind, for bodies are just callous
shapes of the odd DNA
      handed to us from destroyed
generations. It would be nice if I
      could look you straight in the eye and speak
with incomparable
      honesty, but I'm reminded of the blinding glare
illuminating like blue lightning behind my eyes
      of past bridges burned down with that tactic.

Listening to staggering silence
      prompts me to unravel the one pinnacle
thread to my existence. I'll tell you my weakest
      point before you even get the darts
out. Indecision is my only theme,
      and you found it out. You found
it out. I'm grinding my bones with an iron pestle,
      and sifting through the dust as a last resort that
there really isn't anything more
      to my meager existence. I don't want anyone to know
that I'm nothing more than my empty words,
      but every time I part my stale lips,
the truth comes out and I'm busted.

A girl once investigated her tousled
      subconscious, for starry-eyed symbolism in
dreams was a better navigator of
      real life than battery-powered bleakness of
her daily alarm. When little boys pretend to be
      sailors they forget to be lost under foreign stars
as well, kneeling on wooden decks and blistered
      knees just to plead with the unrelenting new
moon to tranquilize its harshness, just a little bit,
      to peal a layer of its sinister skin and
shed some light on the
      twisting abyss ahead. Among all the apologies
sowed deeply in my ribcage
      there is a haunting song reverberating
in my bones that is
      faithless to what my chapped lips preach.

existing minimally can be such fun, for
oblivion wraps its fine fingers
delicately around my neck
in flirtation, and I see red and think
its love and war.
I like myself better when I exist
on precipices, hanging onto something
untouchable and trying to be
a little less star-crossed at another
tragedy, for I'm a poet
and not a hero.

Pour a tragedy into
my hand and allow the
novelty to drench my fingers
and seep my skin. I'm
jealous of my age yesterday
and the person
who I might be tomorrow.
What a baffling existence we lead every
morning after the awe of
the sunrise
has dissipated.

When
the world outside my
window looks like a charcoal smudge
on the back of my fist, I think
of the uncoiling stillness bleeding
in and out of me with each breath. I'm wholeheartedly
in love with
thoughtless first times, but
I'd rather burn a bad first
draft and recklessly risk scorching
my fingers
instead.

I burn my tongue on coffee every
morning and shiver myself to sleep.
But one thing I learned today
is that a colorless existence is normal
for most people
until you have the courage
to spill a little blood
and believe that red is
the most beautiful color.

Heroes are
parched
for a good
story, searching for
the ending in a bleeding
sunset, while the
damsel in distress
is a prayer
the hero
will never pray.

We are the ruins of
our ancestors, and
because of that
it is sometimes hard
to feel
alive.

We cannot be taught to bury
time, but within us are
thousands upon thousands of stories
piled high like ruined castles
where we might find some magic
power
that comes close enough
to touching the sun without
an aftertaste of ash.

She ran freely in the wind, hair in disarray
Faster than the alpha wolves every night and day
Who nipped at her heels, though she never backed down
At the prospect of conjuring herself a new crown.
Her craft wasn't thieving, deceiving or conceiving
Pandora was a girl consumed by achieving
The next great adventure, taken like a pill
Her soul yearned for a magic touch to fulfill
Her wildest dreams; curiosity, sated
Pale hands; a gilded box; finally, elated
That all the things she never knew were beneath one lid
How DARE the world deprive her and declare they forbid
Efficacious Pandora to chain her passion
Spinelessly docile just wasn't her fashion
So she carefully crept in the dark of night
And beheld in the box a new strange light
An army of miseries glowing vivid and real
(But she had never lived with behavior ideal)
Now Hate, Selfisness, and Jealously shone like jewels
But at least I made the history books now, Pandora thought,
because I
                 broke
                       ­     the
                                    rules.