Checking in. Did you hear me?
Did you see?
I told you.

Looking up. Did you ask?
Remove your mask?
No adieu.


I had a feeling the violet would bloom,
A couple months late,
Under the wrong light,
Too much of a fight.

*Take flight.

Maybe I was thinking of a little arson,
Maybe I wanted to burn that house,
And the memories it holds,
Packed away in their heads.

Maybe I thought grim thoughts,
Maybe it was my only mind,
But then you showed up,
And put my conscious to rest.

Maybe I still hate,
Maybe I still need closure,
Like the frays on a woven rope,
Untied endings still haunt.

I know my path will cross,
But When it comes,
I know I’m safe,
I know I’m with you,
Like a wall of steel,
You protect me.

-July 9th 2013

There's an echo that can be heard,
When the sun's blue sky is rising,
It most definitely sounds like a bird,
But what else you can hear is surprising.
Ears.

I hear a hum from a girl of long past,
Her perky lips saying there's flowers,
The air around her is sweet, her heart fast,
She admires the plants, they look like towers.
Child.

I hear a lover's tears as she hears her life end,
I can hear her texts back and fourth through the web,
She reads "No more, none of this, you aren't my girlfriend,"
So sad. Too bad. That's life. The flow and ebb.
Bliss.

I can hear a stomach growl and another missed a meal,
She never eats. When she does, it's reversed.
This secret of hers is dark and scattered, she may never heal,
I hear her fake the sounds of eating, I hear fake her thirst.
Hide.

I hear another poem written,
About someone who cuts,
She thinks it will help her fit in,
But she's only losing trust.
Red.

I hear a father sobbing upstairs,
His daughter has run away.
He knew she was having affairs,
He knew it would come to this day.
Behind.

I hear regrets being made,
I hear the lies they whisper,
I hear both of them say
Our love will never wither.
Liars.

I hear

I can't catch my breath.
Every other minute it just gets deeper, faster.
This is anxiety. This is hell.
The protruding image of destroying myself is circulating
And impeding my actions on Earth.
I can't focus.
I can't breathe.
I can't sleep.
I stood in the cold for twenty minutes just to try.

This isn't fair. I'm sorry.
I'm not okay.
I know it isn't fair.

You say those words,
And I listen,
I wonder so many,
    If they are for me,
    If they are recent,
    If they are true.

And for some reason,
Contrary to my vows,
     *I trust you.

“She brought me a bear,
It told me life was special,
You brought me a note,
It told me I was special.”

There’s no place for you anymore,
No room to hide,
No remnants or reminders,

The hole you dug through my heart,
Has found something,
Far greater than before,

Catatonic when you left me,
Dead when I saw,
Destroyed for a time uncounted,

White rose of black, red, and blue,
Canvas of colors,
Paint me a new portrait of love.

-June 9th 2013

<deleted>

It feels like a hot iron,
Sitting
on the back of your hand.
Burning
away all the flesh.
Exposing
tendons and bones.

Blood. Burn.

Wine from two jugs tastes as good as from one.

The strings of a harp vibrate independently to sing the same song.

The Oak and the Cypress cannot grow in each other's shade.

And the pillars of a temple must be separated to hold the weight above them.

Some nights when I lay alone, awake,
I dream of you,
And my lungs emit an echo,
Like a dog missing his master,
I moan for you,
It’s like crying,
With no sound.
It’s like dying,
With no blood.

I crave the texture of your skin,
The color of your eyes,
    Even if I can’t see them at night,
It’s enough to know you’re there.

But I long for you,
And I hear the sound of my blood-
        Beating.
Because the flesh in my chest is dragged in your compass,
And the blood in my body is dragged to your presence,
And the hands at my side are dragged to your essence.

I miss you.

-July 20th 2013

After the morning dew melts,
You can find me,
I will be outside
My local Library.

Inside are more than books,
Recordings and tapes,
Inside you’ll find Captain Hook,
Earthquakes that shook, and probably a Rook.

The pages are black
And white,
But the stories can easily make us
Cry.

Go.
Read just one,
A dozen more,
Who knows.

But read,
Because reading opens doors.

I could love you if we tried,
I really think I could,
But I think right now,
I don't really think we should.

I'm trying not to,
I'm trying to ignore the urge to say I love you,

Less and less of it every day,
But those memories won't go away.

I thank god that you showed up,
I'm glad I found you with my luck,
And I'm glad we loved each other for a week,
But I'd really rather just remember that ****,

That night, those days,
My heartbeat and yours
No regret.
None.
And society will call me a *****
And I will laugh and say
"I loved her."
"I really did."
And it will not be a fib.

Overcoming you has been more than I care to say
Seeing past the facade before me has defined the fence
and hidden the gate.

I'm trapped here so long as you exist, no escape,
Without you, longing for another way to love
Or appreciate without you near.

I could passively sit and watch life pass you by
Or dig myself out and hope to finally say goodbye
Or simply end my life.

Forgetting you doesn't seem the option
Appearance in my dreams underlines your apathy
and my heart only spells caution.

*Te odio.

The salty ocean air bit his ears.
The sea was angry.

I'm not like you.
Stay there.
Go away.

Silence.

He turned around and walked.
She would never let him truly kiss her.
But his lips had been all over that skin.

I'm done.
You won't let me in.

He felt something crack inside him.
Like a plank of wood shattering.
He felt the shrapnel.

*Medic...

Jami Belle,
<smiles>
I knew there was one more name to yours when I met you
And I asked you about it
And you said and you laughed:
"Peterson. I hate it though."
I could change that.
Does Hiatt sound nice? It did at the time. Jami Belle Hiatt.
A nice ring.
You liked it.
God I miss you.

We'll see if 2017 is worth living.
Sixteen at nineteen wasn't.
But I guess hope drove me through it
And Tyler.

Here's to coffee
And the pursuit of happiness.

The sun doesn’t wait,
Neither does the moon,
The birds get to see you,
The flowers around you,

Hundreds of strangers,
Watching you,
When
    I am the only one,
Who needs to.

-June 19th 2013

These cloudy nights I'm grateful
For how I cannot see you,
The way the water blocks your eyes
And makes my heart less see-through.

One year ago we made a choice
How fateful that weekend was,
By chance insomniatic texts
Lead to a night sin lust.

My car, coffee, a couch, so free,
I could spend days remembering,
My love for you had expanded
And beauty lead to simile.

"Your eyes are like the brightest stars."

And so began a life of soil
As I can only look down.
Not up, above, at those lights
For if I do I frown.

I recall your use of words
Beating around the bush,
Eventually you came to terms
And "I L you," came, pushed.

They say a prestige only works
If you can reappear.
I know you are not a magician
For nowhere are you near.

And since you left,
My heart feels cold
Whenever I look up.
I can't help but to wonder if
This will persist enough,
To drag onto my oldest days
How I had pushed my luck.

God,
You ****** me up.
There's damage here that's permanent, unchanged, unchanging.
I will never be the same since you've harmed me.
Sure, I've grown and
Sure, I've learned,
but ****
I will never be the same.

I will always seek the comfort you changed my psychology to crave,
I will always reach out at night to grab the body that isn't there.
I will always be the remnants of a scar on a short part of your life,
But you will always be so much more in mine.

I wish I could cut you out like a tumor,
Take a knife, sharp as day, and slice at these memories and scars,
Slash until you're gone.

Please just, go.

Every time I wrote of you, it drained my pool,
My pens are dry, But my hand keeps moving,
It’s strange seeing you laughing, smiling, living,
Brings me so much joy I forget to breathe, speak or walk,
I am stricken by your beauty.

-May 34th 2013. (June 3rd)

A month ago,
If somebody told me,
My soul had a match,
And her name was Jami,

I’d tell them,
I’d say no,
But that was,
A month ago,

Way back then,
I was scarred,
Blood all over,
Healthy seemed far,


But since you said love...

My minds been a haven,
And the kisses you give me,
    Heaven.
My heart was your capture,
And when you held me,
    Rapture.

A month ago if you said,
A new girl’d walk in your head,
Plant a new mustard seed,
And watch and see,

See your head split with,
Passion so mythic,
And fruits so clever,
It’s like never.....    Before.

A month ago I was a shell of a man,
But now I’m walking on this new land.
Haven.
Rapture.

-July 6th 2013

Cathartic dirt,
I lay.
Letting dust and bugs settle
On my skin.

Breathing damp musk,
Breathing particle air,
Skin cooled by old tile.

Embrace this darkness,
Embrace this entropy,
Give love to the chaos.

*I love it.

A uniformity in expectance,
A subconscious wait.
My mind knows it's coming
Like some kind of date.

Her words,
Be they good or bad,
Are expected,
If only a tad.

2 AM,
My body wakes
It's so ******* late
Will it come?

I wait.

One soul is missing from this pauper's mansion.
One bed stays cold all day, all night.
We were three, then two. And now the two are really each their own.
One and one.

One soul is missed in this casa.
La alma de mi perrito.

Just, sit.
And stare.
And sit and stare.
And listen.
And move.
Then sit and move and listen.
And stare.
And wait.
And wait.

Oh wait maybe.
No.

****.

There's a twitch on my top lip,
It's a little to the right.
It's being caused by a torturous,
Distasteful sight.

My heart's beating faster,
It doesn't know what to think.
What the **** is this,
Why didn't I see.

I'm going to explode in a thousand little pieces,
Not one of them will be Marshall.
I cannot play this game again, this tango, this grind, this pain, this mistake, this step too forward, this ache, this.
****.

I have bloodstains everywhere and
They like to watch me when I sleep.
I can't help their eyes scan over me
And watch for when I bleed.

These greedy bloodstains
These greedy blotches.
The color red waits and
The color red watches.

Go blind.
Go Blind.
GO BLIND.
Grow old and die and watch me from hell.
Because your eyes will tire
And you cannot beat my fire.

My fire is my lyre
And my lyre makes music,
*Not blood.

What you don't see is her thinking.
Sitting there with her 7-11 pizza and coffee,
She's thinking.
The root of equations and their solution.
Squaring and cubing all issues in her head.
She's always solving problems which don't exist yet,
Always dissecting problems and applying mathematics to everyone and everything.

It all comes down to molecules and their relation to each other.
Numbers in it all.
In art and love and the patterns of weather,
Everything can be predicted and solved,
One way or another...

You don't see this.
You see her shell,
And that dazed look on her face
Her dark, torn clothes,
Piercings and tattoos.

I love her.

Would you come to my funeral?
Would you wear black all day?
Would you mourn me at all?

Or maybe it’s fleeting,
Your needing, our leading,
It’s seething, I’m bleeding,

The painting of a morgue,
My body on a table inside, checked all over for his cuts,
Accused of ******* ******,
And using their bodies, for all of his worst intentions,
His cold lifeless corpse still needs warmth, still needs someone,

Where are you,
Why aren’t you here,
You say you’re fine, you say you laugh, you say everything’s good,
I cry, why don’t you care, I need you please, I need all of your warmth,
Please keep me dry, my cold tears, they all fall, they cover my warm clothes,

It’s winter, it’s freezing, I’m stuck out in the cold,
It’s thawing, I’m gnawing, I’m craving someone’s meat,
It’s yours, I need you, I need to know you still care,

Don’t waste your time. And please, don’t waste mine.

Pinpricks. All over my body,
A topic undiscussable,
My cheeks like fireworks,
My arms like flame,
My heart like mud.
I’m sorry Flaxen Maid,
Not even this Sherlock,
    Can solve you.

I want to touch you,
But like ice I remember,
What you did with him.

I can't blame myself,
God knows I'm trying so hard,
Searching for a cause.

Silent echoes scream,
The avalanche of regret,
The weight is not mine.

I don't dream of her
But I do.
I really don't want to.

She shows up sometimes,
I get excited, turned on.
But I am reminded,
Your good days are far gone.

Always and never.
Two words of weight.
With you,
I prefer hate.

Thermoplastic acrylic acid scent suspended in my sinuses
And red splatter on my glasses
Camel Turkish golds in my lungs
The way this air sits is low hung
It's impossible to make it by
Without asking why we play these games
With ourselves.
Always playing time games with ourselves.

These murals can't capture what I'm thinking
My breathing can't relay how or why I cheated this world.


I'm simply
Alone
And on top of this mountain.
Freezing, breaking the law.

I hope you don't know my secret.

I'm actually a monster.
In the guise of a boy with long hair.

Beneath my jacket of skin, scales coat my body.
Beneath my mask, I have a face of teeth and tentacles,
A beak made for chomping, and eyes glazed black.
I have webbed wings on my true back, but you can't see that.

My toes are made of bone, and just as dry.
If my instincts kick in, I can run faster than any man,
Hit ten times as hard, and **** in the blink of an eye.
I am no man. I am a monster.

A monster with one goal; protect you.

Gorgeous quicksilver clouds drifting silent as the revolution continues,
Masking slightly that white orb come so near,
Together in heart but not in body,
Twin souls, with no matching blood,
Catatonic, safe, and liberating,
Never destroy this sensation, sunshine,
Never shine a light too bright.

-June 22nd 2013 (Giant moon tonight)

So sorry, my blue eyed beauty,
So sorry, my wonderful flame,

I’m bleeding, Can’t breathe,
My heart, Doesn’t beat,

Understand, Isolate me,
Step back, Please just see,
I loved you,


So sorry, I let you down,
So sorry, I let it die,

I’m burning, Third degree,
My eyes, Just can’t see,

Understand, Drown it out,
Watch, listen, Drag it down,
    Forgive me,


I can’t feel any joy,
I don’t see myself,
Was it just a game,
Please save yourself,

Heart stopped dead,
No breathing here,
Hands drenched in blood,
I broke my mirror,

Understand, Let it out,
Please just see, and try to breathe,

Without me, You’ll be better,
No room to see, Please come clean,


So sorry, I let you down,
So sorry, Can’t see you out,

So sorry, I let you down
So sorry, I can’t be you now.

-June 16th 2013

Memnoch,
My Devil,
I don't know what to do.

You speak of lies,
You speak of life,
And I know you speak of truths.

Why do I let you ruin my mind,
Is it because I love you so,
Or is there some reason to find,
Why I let myself go so low.

I feel my words bounce off of you
Going nowhere, the void of space.
Why is there no response from you?
More time is what I need. More days.

I can feel it.
There's something.
Or nothing. But it's there.
I can feel the hatred.
Or rather I can feel the hated.
I only feel the hated.

I was dumb and I was young and I thought I was ready.

I thought I wanted it.

Society told me, from day ONE
          That I did.
Nature told me, from day ONE
          That I did.
I convinced myself, from day ONE
          That I did.

And her body said
          "Marshall, you know you want it."
                    And so I did.


For months after that I hated myself.
I wanted to carve out those memories
         With any knife I could find.
I had betrayed myself
          And no sympathy or empathy could find me.
I had prepared myself for failure and executed it beautifully.
I had obeyed the hormones in my brain
          And the actors on TV.
I had become a product of society and evolution
          And I should have been happy
                    But. I. Wasn't.
My dreams became nightmares before
I could even fall asleep at night.

I wanted to forget.
But it's hard to forget one's own downfall.
One's own betrayal.

The scar tissue on my brain
Brought back all the pain,
No matter how hard I tried to fight,
I kept bringing myself back to that night.

                                                  I want to forget.

Untouched by inactivity.
Untouched by activity.

Unmoved by push.
Unmoved by pull.

Impossible to affect
Impossible to revert me back.

Unfuckwithable is what they called it.
I will call it sturdy.

I will not be changed by you.
I am happy and I will not change because of you.

You.
You you you you you.

Not many see the lightning which arises,
It comes when she tilts her head just right,
The sun enters her stormy blue eyes,
And lays an egg soon to explode in a streak of light.

She was my new cloud, my new nimbus,
Before I even knew what was happening, I flew,
I sailed under a new mast, never doubting,
My body was so used to pain, this was new.

Could love exist without ache?
Could a vampire thrive without the stake?
Could hearts pump without any death?
Could lungs breathe without stolen breath.

-I don’t know when. (Before December 15th but after the 12th)

When you come near, I can’t disappear into my mind,
When it’s so clear, I can see what you were trying to find,

I’m so done.
I guess nobody won.

‘Cause hours like these, come with dead flowers around,
And towers like these, always come showering down,

I can’t pretend.
That wasn’t the end.

Some parts of me, come with holes- for you to see,
Some parts of me, parts of my soul- have holes that bleed,

The good parts of me, can fold and come undone,
You versus me, I guess nobody won.

                ~Marshall Hiatt, 11:25 PM, 11-13-13.

I am searching for a soul in the darkness,
A light I may have found.
The seventh sense of mankind,
The fourth primary color.
The chord you cannot hear,
The not that isn't strummed.

I am searching for love.
         And I may fave found it here.

                                  -Marshall Hiatt
                                             1-24-14

You make me feel like
     If I just disappeared tomorrow,
     Somebody would come looking.

I still dream of that first love,
    That perfect composition of black and white and blue eyes to freeze the sun.
I still dream of the second confusion,
    That flowing figure who had too much fun with life even though she cut.
I still dream of that third promise,
    Those two eyes of lightning storms and a smile to quiet the loudest gun.

Three strikes,
     the third was the charm,
          but the lock on my charm bracelet fell off,
               the luck ran out.

This charcoal paint
He draws himself an anti-saint
The cross on his face makes way for worthless thoughts and glares
He takes his pain and less mundane
Makes art.

Sacrifice the bowels of animals and coat this ground with dirt and blood of goat
Say the worst of me
I am the worst of me.
Dagger, no- knife of surgeon, scalpel doctor
Lector no cannibal, Hannibal I cut,
And slice and stab and FEEL
I FEEL
GOD I FEEL you!
I feel your cells tearing, schism of church my blade makes works of Raphael and Michelangelo
The Adam finger of my hardened steel makes contact with your God,
GOD
I
FEEL
YOU.

Creation of Man, creation of this man on this earth,
I give my ribs to you,
I cut them from my chest.
And make one *** into two ***,
I make our ***.
Your ribs make my ***-
X! Out my eyes, I am dead,
Slain by thoughts and feel
Slain by day come next after you and I make
TEXT unreal, unnecessary, unneeded
I need not capture my lance of piercing Christ
Destiny not speaking to me in words,
My blood speaking words which turn thoughts of water
Into wine,
You are my Christ
And like Romans, I will pierce you with my spear
Pierce and tear my surgery and tactful share of shaft
Into your ribs as John (19:34) had claimed.

Claim you and shame you for being the true daughter of God.
My savior on cross,
Veronica's veil, placing your Jesus on my face
I will memorize the runes in this literature
With the nerves in my skin,
My charcoal skin.
Paint the flesh on my blood lips with your wine,
So sweet and finely fermented water
I will alter your purity into eternity,
I will copy down the bible.
I will be your Peter and John.
And hope not I am our Judas
Pray only good fortune to us
And we may slash and tear these days away.
Slash and tear and share our ribs and cross,
Indulge in your fruit of knowledge and Eden.
God is dead but we don’t need him,
We have you.

Adam made one *** two.

A heart could tell a lot of it could talk,
But my heartbeat could tell you just as much.
It tells me that I have anxiety,
And that I do not know how to calm down.

My lungs could tell a lot if they could talk.
I hear the air but not the flesh itself,
I hear the pain, the scare, the ache inside,
I hear the lack of any laugh at all.

My brain could tell a lot if it could talk.
"My mom left me when I was ten years old,"
"My dad is an alcoholic *******,"
"I have a future unlike both of them."

Just enough,
Far enough,
Moving and swaying,
Seeing and breathing,
Words and rhymes,
Passion and play,

Just enough effort,
And not a drop more.

-June 6th 2013