i've realized that my poetry is far too bombastic
as if all of the big words will distract everyone
from the fact
that i have nothing to say.

spiritual striation light my path
a focused array too hazy to grasp

my grip soft like putty
sand slips through the cracks

my hands unaccustomed
still grace everlasts

there were soggy, downtrodden cigarette butts
on the stairs leading to her apartment
where fresh ashes smoldered--
the remnants of her newly-cremated self.

The greedy little ladybugs
eagerly waited to mourn me,

dying
to don their black spots as veils
meant to cover the raw redness of their bloodlust.

Dying...

and hoping that I would return the favor.

I've been singing of my unsung brilliance
All my life
And I've only just now taken the cotton from inside my ears
To realize
No one else is harmonizing
And I've been singing sharp anyway

My yearning deep bodied like a healing broth,
a cacophony of sirens to cure a bad cough.
Browned bits on the bottom,
warm aromas within.
Bobbing for feelings and veggies
to drown out the din.

You told me that I was only eighteen
and I had the rest of my life to love other people,

And you told me that you weren't good enough for me anyway,

And that it isn't even worth trying long distance because some girl you met online broke your heart in middle school,

And you told me that you'd still love me,
only in a different way,

And you compared me to your ex-something-or-other and a cloying cookie,

And I kissed your neck as you were leaving
and you rubbed the lipstick back on my dress.

teardrop prism,
graceful dew
beaded upon my stillborn heart,

pool in the roots in my soul,
Holy Spirit take hold,

grant me an honorable transfusion.
make my dead end a good start.

and the color ate away at the darkness

but she just remedied it

by placing a monochromatic filter on the world

The water was murky
with ashen clouds
and my thoughts were overcast
with fears of nakedness.

on a tightrope of blessings
hands clasped in prayer
a twinkle of mischief
entrapped in a stare

no ocean in sight
yet adrift in your eyes
a score swells of Love
zeroing in from the sky

Spiritual Centrifugal
wring me of my wrongs.
Osmosis of my soul
keep me awake in song.

I didn't think that I was comfortable enough to fall asleep in your arms,

to snore in your arms,

to drool in your arms,

to babble incoherently in your arms.

So I dreamt that I was lying awake while you slept,
enveloping me in those gangly things sewn into your shoulders.

But when I woke up,

you were gone.

And I thank you...

...for having the courtesy to get up to ***
instead of doing it in my arms.

You're the silent promise held
in fingertips lazily murmuring to my naked skin
while they cross theselves behind my back.

Once when I was at an age at which I was
embarrassingly old enough to have known better,
I feigned "coolness"
by taking drags out of the end of my pen
like it was one of those foreign, long, skinny black cigarettes
that was all the rage in some exotic country like Italy.

But I ****** too hard,
and instead of sampling a taste of ink-flavored air,
I dove headfirst into the real thing--

which is to say,
that I tried not to laugh for the next few days
lest anyone catch a glimpse of my ink-stained tongue
and think that my love for calamari
was anything other than platonic.

My favorite birthmark
is a brown dot near the center of my left eye
that makes my iris look like a leaky egg yolk suspended in time:
the mark of a girl
destined to never quite color inside the lines.

**** these acid tears for staining my face,
Carving rivulets of bare, scarred skin into my made-up veneer,
Exposing my raw flesh,
Betraying my stoic exterior,
And calling me out on my *******

I can't write poems
because they won't give me a pen

because they're afraid that I'll **** myself with it.

But what they don't know
is that I'm not the perfect Venn diagram
between suicidalness
and patience,

that I'm not creative enough
or desperate enough

to use a ballpoint
or a fountain
or a quill

to hang myself
or poison myself
or slit my wrists.

And because they won't give me a pen,
I can't write poems
to
    save
            my
                  own
                         life.

I'd like some sugar in my tea:
souvenir of sweetness,
saccharine delight

remind me of simpler, cloying times
nostalgia bittersweet,
a peachy respite

(I think I've lost the ability to start things, so please forgive this poem for not having an attention grabbing genesis)
I've been twiddling my thumbs for almost eight months now
Putting off all that I care about
(And especially everything that I don't. Here's lookin' at you, AP World History)
Sitting around amassing a booklet of words to use in the future for novels and whatnot
But only using them in essays so I seem smarter than I am
(For example, susurrus means 'a whispering or rustling sound; a murmur')
Hoarding anything affiliated with Ben Folds because he makes me feel things on occasion
(I currently have 189 songs of his on my iTunes library; No one understands me.)
Making **** jokes at lunch while masking the thoughts of substance ricocheting around in my head
(Also your mom jokes because no one would think that you're crying internally about the uncertainty of the afterlife whilst making lewd stabs at their mother's integrity(and ******. Ba dum tss.))
Apparently craving the lingering feel of another's touch
(I had a dream a few weeks back that Ben Folds licked my hand; My stomach folded (hahahah, folded) in on itself.)
Thinking that my feelings of misanthropy and apathy and everything else I can't find the words for yet are mine alone because everyone else is too stupid to have thought them themselves
(Even though I know that I'm not particularly special and I should stop being so elitist and stupid)

But I've finally found a light at the end of the table in the last place I'd expect--
(I meant to say tunnel, but hey, the source of said light does sit at my lunch table.)
A cherubic Presbyterian boy with an aversion to all things perverse,
(Which includes my sailor's tongue and occasional tendencies to want to put it on a member of my own ***, though he doesn't know about that)
A spec of cleanliness on the grimy waistcoat of humanity who makes me want to be the best I can be
(Today when I saw him, I only swore once; I was very proud of myself)
But maybe I'm just jumping the gun
Because what would a good Christian boy want with a heathen like me who isn't even sure she believes in God?
Maybe his prolonged contingencies were merely contingent and I'm just overreacting because of my few and far between incidences of human contact.
(Seriously. Don't touch me.)
Maybe I just want someone to talk to for hours about everything and nothing at all.
(What with me being relatively antisocial, it's hard to find people with similar mindsets.)
Maybe I just want someone to funnel my adolescent attention into
(Because teen movies have taught me that one obviously can't be happy without having a crush on someone at any given time.)
Or maybe it's just because the way the Bible quote on the back of his t-shirt conflicted so humorously with the way he shook his hips to a J-Lo song on "Just Dance."
(Seriously, though, it was hilarious. I was dying.)
Or the way our fingers brushed when we were catching frogs
Or the way he blushed when I stepped out in my bikini
(I went to a pool party today.)
Or the way he held me momentarily in the delirious confusion of the flashing strobe lights
Or the way he got one point higher on his research paper than me a month ago
(He was excited; I was upset.)
Or the way that he does everything nearly to perfection.
I could go on..
But I don't know.
Maybe I'll get over him in a week and slip back into myself.
Because, like I said, what would a good Christian boy want with a heathen like me?

ubiquitous stanzas,
grounded community
found in the perforations we leave

lips parted,
professing shared sorrows still joyous
threaded within tapestries we weave

peeking out behind blinders,
blink away tears
two pupils of affection learning to see with new eyes

fingerpick heartstrings,
plucking chords holding hands
marionettes interlaced, flitting, strung up from on high

You could be my Jericho,

and I,

your blasphemous lover.

you remind me a lot of your brother.
same delicate temperament,

but i could break through your walls with a twitch of my garish fingers.

you could be my Jericho
and i could be your blasphemous lover.

Why doesn't my boyfriend want to hold my hand anymore?
It's always been clammy and frigid,
though I suppose it has gained this new
rigidness.

And no one wants to feel responsible
for a dead weight abandoned
in the palm of his hand.

And because it's my lifeless hand,
severed with all the fixings,
rabid and unruly,
nipping at the palm that smothered the life out of it,

Because of this,

he can't even pass it off
as a gag paperweight for Bill at the office.

Last weekend,
one of your friends called me your manic pixie dream girl.

So in the movie that is my life,
I'm not even the main character,
just the quirky sidekick to my male protagonist.

And it's probably my ego speaking,
but I don't think that's right.

And I don't think that I,
of all people,
should be the one showing you the beauty of a world
that I only see in kinetic blurs and swatches,
passing by me in my free fall from this life to the next.

Because I tried once to see the world without a filter,
but its stagnancy sent me in a downward spiral
and somehow I ****** you into it--
into me.

And I don't mean to be your whirlwind woman,
destined to spit you out--disoriented--
somewhere that you've never been before,
somewhere that no map ever cared to acknowledge,
somewhere stained with my essence,
my idiosyncrasies,
and your new found head trauma.

And you're a rational guy
and I'm an on again off again rational girl
who needs a little help stilling the edges of her narrative,
who longs for a tether or a buoy
to keep her from flying off or sinking down.

So maybe if you held my shoulders to stop me from spinning,
my vision would sober up,
and I'd focus solely on your curves and your angles
as they entered my retinas,
while the rest of the world behind you
faded into blurry suggestions
to be adhered to by someone who gave a **** about them

And after you wiped the puke from your shoes,
maybe you'd see me focused in your eyes
and maybe, just maybe...

...you'd just call me your dream girl.

deified detritus
shed my snake skin sin

the apple of His eyes
transfigured from within

bare my teeth
lay bare my soul
before it's too late

a penitent paper tiger
praying not to immolate

Take my hand
and take off into the woods with me.
We can meander
until we find ourselves together.

Let love nest in our lovely mess
and pray the bees turn their ***** to us
this honeymoon season.

Let's get cheeky,
toss our clothes
and our cares
into the fire,
and watch the flames lick their lips
at the bountiful harvest
of loose ends and broken heart strings
we use for tinder.

The kindling kindly spits embers at us
like ****** on sunflower seed hulls,
cleansed
and ready to be born anew.

When I fell back into the cramped nook of your shelf,
you didn't even acknowledge me amidst the other knickers and gnats vying for your attention.
You overlooked the viscous hatred glazing my bronze porcelain.

And after you spit-shined me in an attempt to erase the set-in stain
that so starkly contrasted all of the work that you had put into the cocoa complexion nurtured in the heated vacuum of your built-in incubator,
you showed me off to your friends,

your little nesting doll that had shrunk down to its true form,
so cute and abridged that you could fit its summation in your pocket,
doomed to eternally room with your dusty love shields and dingy photocopies of past mistakes.

sometimes i swear
nostalgia
is the bane of my existence

If I were poetically eloquent enough,
I might spout some poignancy
About how her presence
Breathes hues of love
And life
Into my cadaverous cheeks

Or if I were less scatter-brained,
I might muster up some cliched profundity
Comparing her irises to pale twilight

And I might throw in some alliteration about her electrifying elbows
Or something abstract along those lines
Just for good measure

But...
Since I'm just
Little ole typical me,
Maybe I'll just say

That
I like her...
Quite a fuffing bit

compose my composition
for a golden ratio shimmers anew

a whirlwind woman whipped by wisps
transfigured out of a precious spiral
reframed to behold a glorious ascent

you'll find me in ellipses...

in brightly threaded trails of breadcrumbs
meandering in fields of honeysuckle dew
in unspoken stanzas and lilting prayers
in abated passions under bated breath
in unabashed hollers and whispered streams
in the whitespace where my hopes reside

you'll find me wanting, wonting...
waiting for Him.

If fathers teach their sons the art of shaving,
shouldn't mothers teach their daughters the intricacy of doing and undoing bras?

Unfortunately, this world isn't a utopia for gender role demos,
so I'd appreciate it if you didn't laugh at me
while I fumble to get you *******.

echoes and ripples a stone's throw away
on a body of water, corporeal form
atop spiritual warfare, ethereal disturbance
assured by a shoreline longing for warmth

pots and pans,
plots and plans,
a bouncing of the knee.
a trip, a stare, caught in a snare,
my face too red to see.

in trying times
energy expended
attempting temptations on the back of the shelf

cobwebs and mothballs
make light work of feasting
my apprehensive appendages
afraid they'll bite back

spiritual sussurus
whispering wisp
whip into shape
to give Thee a kiss

rebirth on horizon
labyrinth of light
radiant grace
raise beams of delight

you asked if I'd tell you,
you said that you can't.
pussyfooting intensity,
we watch the flames dance.

kaleidoscope of emotions
focused and refracted.
papaya is the safe word
for falling in [redacted].

a bouquet of jasmine
held with a bushel of pecks
to satiate a peckish heart

a longing way to go
we push past mirages
running while chaste
to a tangible start