i wanted you to know
that the other day,

i went ice skating           in St. Paul.                      

in the middle of the city.

                                             (there was an old man that looked like Santa doing beautiful graceful twirls,
                                                         two teenage girls holding hands, one was blushing
                                                                         lots of little kids falling down, and laughing as they got back up)

and i thought "you would have loved this."

you would hold my hand
like all the other couples
and i wouldn't be cold

                                                           ­     at all



you would have looked right through me
with your jaded eyes
and smiled beautifully




(i would know that it was me making you happy)

your hair growing back
and your lips all mine to kiss


and i wouldn't miss you so much.

These days I hate being told about my strength.
I hate being handed a title branding my chest
With a word so full of magnitude.
I am discovering not that this world has taught me strength,
But that it has carved creeking creavices of weakness.
Straight to the base of my bones.
If I should ever walk past,
You are more likely to hear my
Fault lines shaking earthquakes
Through every fiber of my woven body.
Lately I have no peace of mind to find some sleep.
I"ve been scraping the avenues we paved together
Knees broken, ****** hands,
Praying to find a piece of you.
My eyelids refuse to give me darkness
With such a measured distance between us.
Knowing that you will not be there,
Playing symphonies through my ribs as I wake,
Is too much a burden for my tired heart.
Can you tell me, where is the strength in this?
I can no longer look at my mother
Without some shame swelling
A fierce sea inside of me.
Waves of my mother's failure pummel my gut.
Yet I could never tell her this.
Could never say that she
Ruined my life,
Put me through hell.
Fed my childhood to the mouth
Of the monster of addiction.
Knowing my innocence was spilled as blood,
A sacrifice to the God of her fix.
Ten years later,
I still cannot look at my mother.
Now tell me, what is the strength in this?
Loving me is a death wish.
For I will drain the life from you.
Facing such a world with these hollowed out eyes,
I cannot do so on my own.
Make sure to keep you distance,
Too close and I will bind our wrists
With rope a burning indian.
So when the knife comes down,
I will not bleed alone.
So tell me, what is the strength in this?
One year since flashbacks of things,
I never knew I remembered.
When the darkness comes I
Cannot close my eyes without
First feeling his hands,
His eyes,
His breath.
I cannot love myself,
For disgrace of the woman he sculpted out of me.
So show me where is the strength?
I hate being told abbout my strength.
I hate being handed a title
Branding my chest with burnt crooked lies
I hate being granted a word so full of magnitude.
My shoulders weren't crafted
To hold such weight.
You may never find that in me.
So if you call this strength,
Here take a look
At my book of weaknesses.
How much strength do you see in me now?

So i have this some kind of past..
I spend most days crawling away from.
Most days, shoving the sound back
Down below my rusting throat,
Past my blackened lungs,
Behind my rotting ribcage.
Here lies its den.
Back into the deepest reaches of a
Cavern somewhere below my belly button.
Here lies its den.
Here resides the demon.
Born of dark corners asleep on the floor,
**** mouthed mothers, fathers,
Shaking words through their jagged teeth,
A mile a minute,
Too much speed for this babygirl mind.
Born of dark couches
The only light some type of grey-cloud
Frenzy on playback from the television.
And some girl is crying for mommy to come home.
Some days this little girl face is so distorted,
I forget that little girl is me.
Born of dark streets with concrete arms
To hold me.
As I am sending my tuck me in prayers
To the God who has let me become this...
Homeless.
And I am hiding all of this
Behind rotting ribcages
A darkness, chiseling its way out
I can't I won't
I can't can't let them see.
Every new face I am pushing this down
Farther
Harder
And it is SCREAMING louder.
Please!
SHUT THE **** UP.
.. I cannot let you out.
Here lies its den.
Some days it swells so swift
I feel it brimming at the specks of my eyes,
Pushing black ink from my pupils,
And I fear they might see it, pulsing.
This ugliness born of dark bedrooms,
Where the only sound, an opening door,
A sliding lock
faster than the closest gunshot,
It scrapes up your cowering spine.
Never have the hands of a sixty-year old man
Left so many fingered scars across my
Six year old body.
Some days this face seems so distorted
And then I remember
Some foreign, horrid tasting word,
Leaving desert sandstorms in my mouth..
Grandfather.
Here lies its den.
Heavy is the thick of its mane
Rought with iron roots,
Haunting with eyes of mercury,
Spurring an oncoming
Hurricane season,
I shall be torn from the inside out,
The darkness seeping out thicker
Than the rush of blood.
Exposed to the ***** eyes like ***** hands,
Stained by the unclean places we have become.
Disintegrating more tragedy than
The carved stone walls of Greece itself.
Give me sanctuary,
Yet when Evil holds its nest from within you,
No pearly white gates
Bask open arms
To hold you.
So here I've got sin,
Or sin's got me,
Planting seeds behind my rotting ribcage
From even the first of days I can remember.
So here I stand
With this some kind of past
Bursting from me,
From my torn apart seems.
And Now,
Now the ugly eyes of the world have seen..
Here lies its den.