my feet had barely greeted california
when my face matched the new summer,
cheeks blooming uneven,
eyes green as moss
and every face i glared upon
avoided looking too long.

walking through my least favorite airport
chin high, silent and ugly and wet,
i grieved for myself, i pitied my future, and mourned my past.
something lodged in my throat screamed with more assurance
and clarity and confidence than i have ever known
"this is not where i belong!"

i cried for my feet no longer squishing silica on white beaches
old skin disappearing in tiny fish
or kissing rainforest mulch, under-dressed in flipflops
taunting flora and fauna and fate

i cried for my skin, abused and bronzed
exfoliated in world heritage parks, the first shower in days
and oiled from water crossings in a run-down four wheel drive
a beard of blemishes i didn't bother to hide.

i cried for my ears, robbed of every accent,
of the crashing waves and roar of waterfalls,
or the same six songs played in every club in cairns
and the pterodactyl screech of flying foxes.

i cried for my hair, for my hands, for my nose.
i cried for my mouth and my tongue and my legs.

mostly, i cried for the death of laughter that started in the
pit of my stomach and rose up like carbonation
to my chest and my lungs and my neck and burst
like floodwaters in dorrigo
the elation and exhilaration and euphoria of being alive
that spilled out of me in screams and shrieks
and bubbled and flushed and insisted
so fiercely so strongly so urgently
that to relent was not even a choice but a right

and then half a year later
i sat dully in a fluorescent corridor at my transfer terminal
feeling my heart retreat, defeated
dreading the long months ahead
promising nothing but drudgery and boredom
letting the tears drip onto my boarding pass
black ink lamenting, too
and not a single person approached
or spoke to me
until i asked to wash away the moment
with a diminutive bottle of ***
a mile from the surface.

i only find my solace in half rhymes and soft narcotics
and twice-sung dueled harmonics
keep my tongue between my teeth
and keep my dagger in its sheath
and i guess i should have known
not to let my dark be shown
cause he only wants the light
well i suppose it's only right
nothing grows in darkness
nothing grows in darkness

i can only keep myself contained
in tired metaphors and shame
i just wanted him to know
i could love even his shadow
show my hand and call my bluff
let the edges keep their rough
tell me every single story
spitting off each promontory
nothing grows in darkness
nothing grows in darkness


i'm told that every great disaster
is building up my character
i'm told that every great destruction
paves the way for new construction
but i was never one for artifice
i'm a bare ***** tree as stark as this
i thought you were my home but you were termites
leave me alone and go search for your spotlights
nothing grows in darkness
nothing grows in darkness

when i wake up without my glasses sometimes
i think i'm still in a tent on the side of a highway in queensland
and the sun coming up starts a stopwatch
t-minus 20 minutes until the air heats up like an oven
merrily roasting the blonde figures
on either side of a slightly deflated air mattress.
if i keep my blurry vision fixed i can hear whip birds
and cackling kookaburras and
a vague buzzing i forget as soon as i shift my attention.
i want to push my too-tanned face through the moth-dotted
10-second-tent ***** and gasp wholly unsatisfying gulps
of petrol station breezes.

but when i wake up with my contacts cementing my eyelids shut
i think i'm hungover in a grimy hostel in brisbane
with a different blond figure gripping my hip
and 29 other filthy travelers snoring uproariously in the same room
and every one of them asleep with stories still pressed to their lips
willing to trade for the thrill of it.
and i know i won't be able to find my keycard in the tangled sheets
and anyway, my bunk in my own room doesn't have a ladder
and there's always a german girl sleeping below
with her underwear hanging from the bars i use to clamber up
so i sigh and pass that problem down to future-me
fall back asleep

and when i wake up i have miscalculated
and somehow i'm twelve thousand miles away already
as abrupt as this

but sometimes for a few myopic seconds, my chest feels light.

january in jersey is painted with globs of oils
all icicles and sharp edges and unmixed colors --
the view from my window when i lean out
to breathe smoke through my oscillating fan
is starker than greek statues (we know now to be garishly painted)
and every fractal dropping on my sloping roof
provokes me to paranoid thoughts of the matrix
and how close to death these dissolving shapes
spun me, sledding in my car, into a ditch off the highway

next week i bid goodbye to the atlantic and chase
watercolor scenery and exhaustively organized color pallets
and every breath that manifests in front of me
reminds me to leave.

i can't fathom the depths of the ocean
and i don't know if that's a cliche or a pun or both
but being with him made me want to watch glaciers calve
and count droplets in waterfalls
and wonder at the wonderful
but things on pedestals do what things on pedestals do
now i could throw myself off the side of a cliff on principle alone
and laugh at the bottom

Late at night I mimic the moon
and begin my satellite circuit
from the pantry to the fridge
peering between limp celery stalks
and old jars of cocktail sauce
the same way you **** me
when you're bored and just looking
for a quick fix between
your next game of league of legends.

if every ghost of words i tore in half haunted half as bright as a single dot on your light bright
i'd be giving time square a run for its overpriced roasted nuts and candy bars that fell off the back of a truck
and if every time i dipped into my brain for a distraction and came out with nets full of your name
repetitive as the chord progressions in my favorite songs about being angsty and trapped in jersey
i could scatter it like chum on placid waters and wait for the grandfather of all predators to learn a few lessons from you
sometimes i think you're searching for the moon and i was just an imploding star burning dim
and i can't help but dredge my esophagus with poisons from boys who don't look like you since
i'd sooner explore the ends of sanity and edges of our folding universes than admit that you don't think this was real
i am pulsing with need for acceleration with a big stretch of stalactites beckoning like *****-willows
but all i can do is Stop.

maybe we could take a trip to one of those musical roads
that are cut to hum a tune

let our ears buzz away the dark thoughts threatening
slithering, come-hithering

slide inside my wisdom teeth set on edge
til my voice is honeybees and my throat a hive

now my whole body is a single note i can't sing
and my spine is b flat since

silence used to be my blinders but now it's garroting gas
and you keep telling me

that existence leans towards chaos as inevitably
as the force of crystallization

and the neat order we enjoyed is diffusing
and the bees are disappearing
so let's just be friends.

he keeps telling me i don't love him
that i think i do but i don't
that i couldn't or i'd do so and so
that i shouldn't anyway
that i wouldn't have left out
any aspect of my life i found unpleasant
he won't say it but he thinks me a liar
but i won't say either because he says
i make this up and put words in his mouth
so he asks me to explain what it's like
when my nerves bundle up so tight
and strangle my throat
and wrench my intestines
and why i hadn't fully explained
for four years

the best i can reply is that
this cold sweat and shakes
the revolving-door thoughts
merry-go-round panic
the bilious *****
the short quick breaths
and trembling lips
have become a routine
like washing my face
or brushing my teeth
so frequent that to mention it
seems below mundane

but i'd try anything for him so
without thinking too hard i'm writing about
how sometimes the roaring in my ears
fills my whole body like screams
of a person in agony i am helpless to rescue
and in my nightmares i watch someone else
plunge to the ground with wails like grappling hooks
and no music or lengths will drown
the siren call of the razor promising
relief at the expense of my dignity
a little quiet stolen from my future

i can't justify the selfishness of fear or
the cowardice of losing the best thing i've had
to the worst thing that has me
and though it was never my intention
maybe i misrepresented my strength
so i'll stare at the beer stain on my ceiling
when you shook up the bottle your third night here
and hope that when i dream
maybe this time
i'll be the one falling.

walking along the trash and ice filled streets of the upper west side every head is turning to look at him with his hand in my pocket like it's a crime for a portrait to be framed with driftwood like fat thighs and wobbling jaws.

sometimes i convince myself that i am projecting my attraction to his spider legs in skinny jeans and lilting accent whispering rainforests and crocodile beaches onto every girl we encounter but then--

we're in the bronx strolling through the frozen zoo a girl chattering on her phone goes dumb momentarily in the middle of a story as her eyes rake his Tam-Lin nose and James Potter hair and i can tell he's trying not to laugh when he glances sideways at me smirking and squeezed a love handle.

it's fashion week and models are strolling through central park with mannequin joints rattling in the cold and painted lips smiling and lashes batting and some boys with frosted tips watch his back jeans pockets with canary-caught satisfaction.

in east harlem at a dive with pitchers of **** as centerpieces, a swedish barmaid asks him for his number and serves me a skunked shandy.

the lady cop forgot to write my ticket after she checked his ID "so australia, huh?" as she sidles up to the dangling license plate and shattered headlights

in line for a coffee in my hometown two giggling teenagers have a carrying conversation "they fit together though, in a weird way like bert and ernie"

i love you, but walking with you is like wearing a sign reading "great personality, i guess" though you couldn't read it because the message is distended, stretched over x-acto scarred rolls and flopping flesh, gibbous ******* and bulging armpits

every eyebrow quirk and coy smile reminds me how absurd it is that you draw me close and tell me i smell like fire and my face is like a doll's and my hips serve practical purposes and my eyes are big as a sailor soldier and you lift me when we dance to tv themes and whine like a puppy when i forget to kiss you on my way out the door resonating inexplicable affection

walking alone through airport terminals not a single glance is wasted on me as i kiss you through baggage check so i take the final opportunity for invisibility with makeup smearing gusto and mourn how much braver i am when i am with you.

i came out of despairing with the help of two words
that kissed my eyelids and sighed smiles in my hair:
                                                                             at least
i can curl my toes in soft mud one moment and thousand count cotton the next
at least this is a world where hyacinths smell like forgiveness each spring
at least i have the luxury of dreaming
at least i can sit in sanctuary with my thoughts far from my safety
at least there are kids like aphasia spouting precisely what you know but can't think
at least strawberries taste like blooming on my tongue
at least there's a whole day devoted to mischief and my boy was born heir to april
at least  i can find solace in the belly fur of a sleeping cat
at least there's patience in sadness

the line between madness and genius is a pattern noticed a hair's breadth
too far from the crossing lines vibrating in our eyes
like cats raised vertically can't see horizons
i wasn't born to see this.

the contempt i coddle for my indulgence is missing from your cat eyes
but my what big teeth you have grandmother
better to taste generations with your elf-nose and cat smirk
that shoot starlight into mad minds.

sometimes i think i met lancelot in the wrong order
and that you're the proof that chaos makes art
and random patterns are madness made genius by attention
so forgive me for my suspicions.

how does the nervous insomniac love without reservation or doubt
chasing the sun through the tropic of aries
swilling words around in your mouth and in your teeth to soften ones
that i was born to believe.

i should never have trusted anyone with the shade
when every dandelion demands the sun
but if i held you under my chin like a buttercup
would you be reflected in my neck?
you're already apparent there in bruising hydrangeas
and in gasping baby's breath that thrive below promontories
and the marigolds in my irises
that burst into bloom
to trade a little life for a little death.

you hadn't spoken to me in four days
so i mixed enough screwdrivers and desperation
to mistake his strawberry blond hair for your black
and i can't remember saying yes or no
but i woke up covered in blood and bruises.
i patiently waited 23 years for love
and let solely your lips on mine
preserved for three in anticipation
only to give up in a grimy bathroom
to a boy with no last name
and a girl awaiting him upstairs.
life is not always a storybook.
later that night a girl sobbed on my bare chest
and told me never to trust anyone
that people will invariably let me down
that she wished someone had warned her
when she was like me
she said my wide-eyed naivete
was a bulls-eye
and i must not charge into battle
without armor and sword.
maybe this was a lesson i was supposed to learn
when you slurred it angrily last year
but my words are my white flag
and i've never been much of a fighter
so i'll start my breakneck pace towards heartache
with the exhilaration of foresight
and blinders for those with shields
until you cut me down.

"what's that? you can't get out of your bed?
too weak to be alive, too lazy to be dead?
well! take your zoloft effectively
just inhibit reuptake selectively
and soon you'll have the energy
to end your life impulsively
or be rid of feelings entirely
a chipper, cheery half-zombie"

"your panicking fits interfere with your day?
i'll lay out a feast, a benzo-buffet
ativan, klonopin, xanax oh my!
not just for those who are too scared to fly!
pop two and kiss all of your worries goodbye
and your memory, too, if you come to rely
on hours spent watching your life pass by
just try and object through that stubborn tongue-tie"

"your circadian rhythm is not quite right
you're asleep with the sun and awake in the night
so take one of these twice before closing your eyes
and wait for the dreams that will doubtless arise
too vivid and real to know truth from lies
and the nightmares will be an unpleasant  surprise
but stopping abruptly is duly unwise
so just find your stars in trazodone skies"

one time it was two am and i was outside a bar
when the air was just crisping from its summer bake
and naked trees matched shivering girls in micro-dresses
you asked if i lived in the city
i was a pumpkin-beer-drunken, kohl-smeared mess
so i grinned sloppily and fumbling, lit a cigarette
while i replied "for now"
how ******* mysterious am i?
i am patronizing this well-meaning boy in a polo shirt
but thank god for liquor cause luckily
he laughed and snorted smoke out his nostrils
"heading somewhere?"
i took another drag and exhaled
maybe for emphasis?
am i that ******* contrived?
"i'm thinking australia?"
there that felt sincere
did it look sincere?
and he asks why of course he asks why and now
i can laugh and say
"it's very far away"
because jesus christ i need to pretend i have depth i guess
i'm a mirage begging for substance
he taps his cigarette and grins at the ground
"running away from problems?" he asks, suddenly mischievous
i try to match his smile but i have to think fast because
i don't have the kind of problems that make you run away
my family is loving, big, rooted
my friends are devoted, they better me
i could stay in comfort if i had the patience but
my feet just want new pavement
and my eyes are snow-blind by now
so i demure, i think.
if that eyebrow quirk and downcast gaze
is what demurring is
captain morgan chucks my chin and i am
all smiles again
i stick the cigarette in my lips and spread my
arms wide
"i prefer to think of it as running towards different problems."
i smile the way i know shows off my dimples
because i can't help but be a facade
i guess he's charmed because he texted me a few times
for the next few weeks
until my silence
exhausted his interest
he failed the test marx talks about
no not that one
groucho
i don't want anyone who would want me
since i'd rather be a story
sooner a paper-thin memory
than an illusion revealed.

each time i see a dead man's face
i think i'd maybe known him
flirted with him in a bar perhaps
beneath a blue neon moon
forgot him as easily as i lied
about the last digit
of my cell phone number

and now he's smiling at me
from the blueing screen
and i think he might have been
one of those guys
who grew into his looks
and disgust myself when i wonder
what they could have thought of me.

call me candied kitsch
syrup blooming spoonfuls
decadent for a  moment
overwhelming in two
nauseating in three
at arms-length i am half
your wingspan away from you

it's always been my way to start
somewhere in the middle and
spread from there in layers
to seep and sweep and tumble and rush
to gurgle and howl and crash
towards a boy in dim lighting
who probably wanted to talk to my friend

he's a sentimental boy
who keeps fur in a jar from his childhood dog
sagely mumbles something about cloning
when i **** my head to the side and point.
he has lost most things
to the wind and rain
guards his memories
and the scrap of paper i scribbled on
and dropped in his car
before i left with his lips on my tongue
and the sound of his "i hate you" drumming
on a 12-hour train ride back to sydney.
and i've always heard about boys with mischievous smiles
but i never expected a lost boy to find me
with his jack-o-lantern eyes
one laughing
one bored
surveying everyone with eyelids still imprinted
with the image of paradise
the comparison drawn whether he wants it or not
do i fall too short of the beauty he's seen?

i extract poetry from your facebook chats
and tenderness from your skype calls
this: the compromise of a romantic heart
in the face of modern ephemera
since i cannot scale your balcony
like i memorize your wall
(o sweet o lovely wall
thanks courteous wall)
nor can i woo you or ****** you
without google as my cyrano
i worry for the endurance
of a love without tree-carved initials
and sigh over perceived corruption
caused by emoticons over emotion
though i’m sure if mr wilde could text
or byron could bbm
they’d not forego their lovers’ notice
for the sake of pure romance
they’d embrace any fleeting mention
with disregard for rose colored glasses
not moon over the glare of history’s glance
they’d kiss them with x’s
and serenade them with youtube
and covet any moment not spent
with them on their mind
so my conflict is resolved
and my star-crossed thoughts soothed
when they caution most ominously
that anything on the internet
can never truly disappear.

the only boy i ever loved
is awake while i am sleeping
the tinman boy lives upside-down
but in my tongue i keep him

while screens have saved us tenfold times
i still sit and mull your visit
those days spent tangled in your hair
i won’t admit i miss it.

you drove stick-shift but held my hand
jumped guardrails and pythons and nerves
painted me with waterfall clay
and careened around my curves

your tongue is strings on violins
and i am no virtuoso
each rusted joint creaks heartless songs
while my will swings to and fro

you’re tension like a tinder box
or a match-head ripe for striking
i can’t speak freely of your hands
but found them to my liking

i hope i am not novelty
or distraction wrapped in ennui
i, for one, am enthralled by you
and how you can’t sing on-key

raggedy thoughts bite (just like you)
of distance and futures and you
sentences always end with you
except when you want them to

the only boy i ever loved
is spiteful and tragic and sweet
the tinman boy lives far away
at least until next we meet

when i begin to free-wheel
and shudder with contempt
i take comfort in the thought
that we are mostly born to fail.

honey-slow days are steeped in loss,
marinated in missed opportunities
sweetly whistling tunes that pipe
"all is well because all will be, regardless."

my life might have no payoff
to the meandering silk i weave
and death could prove a hostel,
relief from what i was born to carry.

effort always looks to me
like a lack of priorities
while i jealously guard potential
and covet their delusions.

i'm a coward gently born
to soft beds and microchips
and indulgence of my worst self
when i am too afraid to move.

i am worried i am a narcissist
for wanting to keep breathing
soon picnics and parties become noble acts
proof of love through self-flagellation.

i've heard that poets see farther
but i don't even know metric units
so how can i tell anyone how far ahead
the beginning begins and the end ends?

She infects everyone around her with a longing for poetry like she was Ebola. The need climbs into you and pours itself out your eyes and ears and mouth and nose and streams out of every orifice until all you can see is seeping Neruda stanzas and oozing cummings fragments. It is agony in which you have no choice but to luxuriate. You could writhe around on beds of darling buds of May and tear out fistfuls of a host, of golden daffodils and still you are saturated with a yearning for its persistence.

She has that effect on everyone.

You are not her Moon or Stars or World.

You are not her captain, her Lesbia, her Red, Red Rose.

She may be your muse, but she owes you nothing.

these thoughts are skittering katy-didn'ts
seizing and disjointed like twitchy smother-ees
sometimes i look at death despairingly
as a vacation i can't afford.

i only write poems to practice my prose
so i have fifteen minutes to write this down
and i can't hear anything with the bells in my ears
clinking together like our silver tongues.

march never seems real year after year
even when i explored your tan lines
while the upside-down sun scorched my hair
and we measured the various states of abandon.

i'm never as morose around other people
as i wish i could be, sincerely.
they are a mirror to remind me, cruelly,
that i am a sentient meatbag.

my grandma likes to tell me that i have compelled her
to replace her carpets 3 times.

once, on easter,
when i gleefully peeled brightly dyed eggs
and
upon discovering the contents,
disappointed by their deception
that something so beautiful could be so mundane
and uninspired on the inside
with a scent that reviled,
naturally,
one after another,
i ground them into the rug
until yolks and whites mingled
satisfactorily
with fibers from the seventies
and became something far more interesting.

the second episode
met me with shears.
how was i to know
that carpet does not grow back?

i like to think i pulled her
out of the eighties
when i fell down the
metal-plated stairs,
split my head open
and seeped blood in pools
deep into the sea foam green.

a new carpet erased the evidence
but
a score of years has passed
and my forehead
is still proudly marked
a reminder of the day
i fell and
shattered on the inside.

these days i fill my lungs with smoke
to insulate my brain
and consider the londoners
who i haven't seen in far too long.
michael with his spitting essex accent
and juliet who michael says 'sounz welfee'
telling me to put a kettle on and then
complaining when
i leave the tea bag in the mug.
"i like it strong to the last drop" i insist
and they call me a 'daft ****'
and michael says that if all yanks made tea
like i do
then it's no wonder we were willing
to throw it in the harbor.
we all take our tea in different shades.
and they can tell just glancing at the cup
that i've over-poured the milk.
they seem to always consider hue
those londoners
who know their nuances.
                                               afterall
they were raised beneath shades of grey.

perhaps i see more delicately,
too.

rickety rackety hickory sticks 10
bundled for the burning 6
finicky syncope, verse that predicts 10
a pleasure twice returning. 7


clickety clackety silver-wrought tongues 10

kittens and cats in cahoots 7

its four-thirty-a-m and i've thought up some thoughts,
with the inspiring aid of too many shots.
and on what should my facebooking-eye soon alight,
but the dismal reminder that tonight is tonight?

oh, it seems it's your birthday, even while you snore,
and rigidly, it's your birthday, even though i'm poor,
and it remains your birthday (though i wish it wer'n't),
as there's no worse day for a birthday than current.

your birthday falls on a least halcyon of days,
a day like all days and undeserving of praise.
the only thing that july ever did well
was birthing my darling (from the depths of hell).

[and making me a versified cheater/
by ******* around with my lyrical meter]

alack, alas, i'm poor as ****
so i'll hand you these stanzas and that is it,
borne of the gods and holy writ,
my gift to you: my sparkling wit.

[essentially, i just promised an empty box/
but whatevs. you can **** all my figurative---]

[Fanfare, obviously]

This poem should begin with the call of a bugle,
as is fitting for an ode of Braveheart Macdougal.
Children of Parklands, take heed and be wary,
as I relate now, in verse, a tale cautionary.

Benigna Murdie was a most virtuous lass,
blesséd with promise and a penchant for sass.
To peer pressure she was admirably immune,
and ne'er did she bow to the temptation of goon.

Nary a drop of ***** has e'er passed her lips,
save for politeness and church-mandated sips.
Yet even the mightiest fall-- what a pity!
(harder than I did that night in the city).

So I hope you all glean a moral from this,
and your interpretation does not go too amiss.
But all is self-evident, to quote Descartes,
so allow me to recount this tale from the start.

She hails from a country renown for their piety,
for their pacifist ways and universal sobriety.
The Scottish are known throughout the land
for their temperance of character and lightness of hand.

And our poor Bennigles was no rule-exception,
she subscribed quite wholly to this perception.
A more reserved and reclusive girl you've not seen,
virtually a saint at only nineteen.

Passed out on the couch, liquor was never the root,
only strain from the studying and academic pursuit.
A paradigm of virtue, a pillar of purity,
no “that's-what-she-said's” to compromise maturity.

But that all changed one day touched by fate,
when Rachel realized that hedonism's great.
She took to the streets to revel in her glee,
and legit nothing bad happened cause this isn't tv.

Alas, now I'm drunk and the screen is a-shaking,
perhaps of wine I should halt my partaking.
I cannot continue with this facetious ode,
as we all well know that this is a total load.

But I'll miss you, my Brit, and our shitshow nights,
our Australian exploits and your culinary delights.
Sorry I couldn't finish to detail your demise,
but perhaps I'll conclude after an Australia-reprise.

one night or midafternoon you fell asleep
and snored lightly in my ear.
i stroked your hair (it was longer then)
and thought of my love-lorn words
hijacked by this impermanent sleeper.

i started to laugh and you got lost in my chest
but you said it'd be "a good way to go."
and i heard the sincerity, cheap as silence,
like the first time you drunkenly called me darling
and it was steel wool exfoliating my atriums.

i would rather write about the frivolity
of a cigarette in a hot tub with strangers
and the absurdity of dripping sinuses
or a manifesto for the exasperatingly mediocre
but my words are full of you.

i sat free-wheeling by a lilac bush
and shook the wind with a sigh
and pricked my brain with a thorny thought
as a starry-eyed peace tumbled by.