This is to every sour patch kid
That ever tried to be cool by going off the grid
But you’re only as cool
As that mouth behind your cig
And the thoughts you numb with aspirin

I think we all know
It’s sour
Then sweet
But not before it’s gone
So keep it in your mouth a little longer
And then maybe
Just maybe
We won’t cry every time the bag is empty
And the lights turn out
And all we have left are those little grains of sour
That we still eat anyway

This is to every sour patch kid
That ever wrote “I love you” on your eye lids
Then fluttered your lashes
But closed your eyes for too long
Too long to see that the party was gone
And that you were the only one still pretending to have fun

Lets for a minute pretend that
The red ones aren’t just Swedish fish with a little bit of tang
And that the slang you throw in there
Doesn’t make your words anymore true
But were all gonna scream it anyway
Then maybe
Just maybe when we’re screaming
We’ll forget how to talk
And have to use our hand to say more than
Flipping the bird ever could

This is to every sour patch kid
That only did what they did
Just to say that they could
What society forbid

Well this is how it ends
The bag in which you so snugly live
Is ripped open with teeth
And when that happens
You’re gonna fly in between the
Gear shift and the seat
And then maybe
Just maybe
The hand will be skilled enough to get you out
If you’re lucky enough they even look

But even as messed up as that is
Or even as wasted as Kesha is
She has a point
We are who we are
Sincerely, The Breakfast Club

Dad had dragons in his cigarette smoke,
and hummed to dog tags jingling like wind chimes.
Mom has excuses titled “college textbooks”,
and burned her problems over the kitchen sink.

The war ended, dragons went extinct
and the class of 03’ moved on.
Now I christen the silence with Ozzy era Sabbath,
and  fill the empty beds with perishables
to rot with me in the teenage years.

You strangle me with your eyes,
and I sweep our past under the bed.
My heart wanders from room to room.
The prisoners of war jump out the windows,
falling like the day’s hundred follicles.
The parachute men die at the hands of their lovers,
with slurs as theirs last words.

I spend dim lit days waiting for the permanent  
to change its mind to temporary.
I wait a year to exhale,
I wait two to heal,
and I wait many more for you.

All because I’m scared by the thought of things expiring,
but my greatest fear is to be alone with the rotting.

It’s hard to see looking through your eyes
Because all I see is Facebook via iPhone 5
But then again, talking **** is America’s favorite past-time
So I shouldn’t be surprised
I’m hitting the “Unfriend" button
On every lost cause
That shoots me a smile

“There’s 7 billion, 46 million people on the planet and most of us have the audacity to think we matter” –George Watsky  

Dear George,  
You were there for everyone else. I cried for them all while my dad begged you in whispers,
and you melted into the crowds of people,
and you dove from the balconies,
and pretended like the world consisted of somebodies.
You left me with cold copies and ignorant earth.  
Somehow you made 4am into something selfish.
I was losing lessons I was willing to learn. I had no songs to sing,
while you were serenading the ****,
and were packing his bags, and became his love letters for her,
and you made me lose someone I never had.

You wrapped every lesson I ever needed up in an empty inbox.    
You painted San Fran diamond sidewalks empty gold,and I needed you!
You were there for the mutilated, and kissed their filthy trigger fingers, and spat on birthday wishes, and you made me desire the life of a passenger.
You were the only one that reminded me how to smile; you drowned out slamming doors…  
You didn’t have to make the water thicker or make the bottom seem so far.
You didn’t have to give them boats of Titanic shards!
Your silence  made sinking inevitable.  

You gave me more with empty hands than I ever would have thought.  You taught me that every hero dies,
and that I will always love the traitors,
never love cardboard cutouts, or dream of cardboard castles.
You showed me how it feels grasping at ghosts,
and how much you can doubt,and just how much that hurts.  
I hope you never write your idols.  

With Love,  
The Girl That Will Never Learn

I’m not in the same place I was this morning,
And I never left my bed.
Maybe I time traveled,
Or I just have a new way of looking at things.
Probably not.
I need to stop pulling out my eyelashes.
It’s funny how having two things in common with somebody,
Makes me feel like we we’re meant to be.
When really we probably just share a kidney,
Or the same blood type,
But that doesn’t matter cuz I’m not a creature of the night!
Or maybe I am?
My life isn’t made of calendar pages!
Only one long all-nighter,
That never stops having the same dream.
That’s like calling the future obsolete.
Because everybody out grows Barbie’s and Care-bears!
Now my face is covered in God’s connect the dots.
So I’m kind of like the kid’s menus
They give you crayons with,
“It’s what’s on the inside that counts”
Well there’s acne in there too…
Awkward silence.
If life were a horror movie
And nobody was a ******,
Who would survive?
Certainty not me.
Because when I wrote the script
I wrote it in cap lock.
See you on the flip side Jamie Lee Curtis.

Today we were vandals
And yesterday we were saints
Nomads of the commonly know
Where bad poetry lines live
And Facebooks are forgotten
Where ice castles witness first kisses
And they dine alone
Dashing between the straight jacket high fashions
And flipped birds instead of words
This is where we belong.
I will stay until streetlights explode
And suns melts
And all I need is in your eyes
I carry you through mouse hole thresholds
And you never made drifting look so unbearable

You are the smoky breath of a liar,
the paper in which he is licked and twisted,
and the only betrayal he will ever know.

Could you taste ashes
in the mouth of the other man?
Could you find satisfaction
in the burns of the other woman?

Your eyes are the black and blue bruises of night.
You are loud like broken glass,
quiet like the cracks,
and never saw sympathy in thread fuses.

You are a woman of fire
and love only those with gunpowder hearts.

For the first time I couldn't see ***** water under our shining city lights.
I kissed you in the site of where I made my first great mistake
and found that nothing ever changes. How did you make me forget
those seven months without you?  

For the first time in a long time, you spoke to me without her
in the back of your throat. You made me seek comfort in the frigid grass
where our friends once stood.

For the first time I wanted to remember you in the dark
formations of frostbite. Your love is the pink, needle stabbed skin of hypothermia and I will never forgive myself for wanting to freeze.

For the first time in a long time, I thought I had truly won
since you showed me the pain of losing. I let you feed me three word lies
in cold smoke and twirl me across the concrete. I let you try
and cushion the blow of broken bones. Failure, I’m sure,
you never saw in splattered marrow.

This was the last time you let me love you and this is all that’s left of it.
I swear this is the last of it.

My childhood ended when my dollhouse got repossessed,
crying in the back of Daddy’s Caddie.
You traded your daughter for diamonds
and left it all behind in a U-Haul.

You blamed his haunting city streets,
and post-war reenactment dreams.
You couldn’t be the queen to his beer can kingdom anymore.
He flipped too many coffee tables,
and let the kids grow up wrong,
and suddenly wasn’t the man you loved in high school.
He’s just another excuse,

But this isn’t about him,
This is about you,
All 534 miles of it.

You’re a woman without mirrors.
You play victim too well,
and love me like the favorite chip on your shoulder.
I gave your title to a deserving stranger,
and you flew from my human scent.
I never got to tell you about the splatter.
It’s hard to forgive someone who’s never at fault.

But this isn’t about us,
This is about you!
All 534 miles and counting!

This is about your life in 5 year chapters,
and sweeping your problems under the bible-belt.
This is about looking for happiness in the small town Carolinas,
and loving another man,
and another daughter,
and all the people you don’t owe apologies.

This is all about you,
And what you’ve done,
And you will never be more than this.

You took my eyes
Your body is the braille for my words
You took my air and replaced it with electricity
You took the subtle gravity and replaced it with only you
Your words are soft like skin
Your presence is a lullaby to a girl that never sleeps

I’ve got scabs to pick:
Remnants of a bleeding heart,
Memories of a first time smile.

I’m still hoping on wishes made from dead stars,
Our promises exploded light years ago
So I put my faith in ghosts,
Dazzling liars

I pretend wasp stings are butterfly kisses
And that atheist’s prayers don’t scare me
Don’t question empty churches and disappearing bees

I need something to believe in
And something to see in the mirror
Other than my mother.

I need scabs to be scars
And stars to be stars
And something stronger than butterfly wings

I want a lot of things, like shirts of him.
A drape of cotton haze, a bandage for
the nights you spend beneath blue sheets, a swim  
instead asleep. A shred of what’s no more.  

I want my life to be a movie scene.
We drive across the Golden Gate, the bright
and trembling lights like camera’s flash. You lean
against the window, saying you’re alright.

But nothing’s ever good or great or fine.
The shirt is not the same as him. The car
is short a person that’s cuddling coffins in wine
Imbibing soil. I’m saving scabs from scar.

I want another look in electric eyes
and pain to have no place in last goodbyes .

Dance one more song on trembling lips
And seep into the eyes of a coward.

Put to rest his show and tell body
And break a streak of half-baked hearts.
Illusions of life are crueler than
Revelations of death
So put to rest the pursuits of dead ends
And pity the starving rats

Twist his blunt wrap soul
Into a long awaited sober promise
And give his words a life behind tangible lies.
Cruel intentions spark up the only honest attempts
So set fire to the liars soul
And pray for those who believed

Remember the kisses from a Prozac smile
And know this is the last of love.

Somehow they made us places.
You were a king’s vacation home
and I was everyone else’s waiting room.
They made you something for the best  
and I got the ones stalling someone for better.

I want to know the first person to fall in love.
I want to tell them of you and I,
and what happened to you and I,
then maybe I can be the first one to break a heart.

Scene 1: A Night with the Time-Bomb
We sleep under paint and plaster: impressionist probably.
I slaughter my feelings in my throat.
My heart sends telegraphs instead of beating,
but you prefer the silence.

I hate that I could never enjoy this.
I hate that they all love the stars.
The only difference between us and them is where we’re burning.
The only difference between you and I is who we are mourning.
I never thought it would be me.

For you I tear loopholes in my morality
And find suffering in getting everything I ever wanted.
I pick at the plaster,
wake me up when it’s over.

Scene 2: Lunch with the Comedic Relief

I greet you with defense of my mistakes,
justifying the difference of these dog days,
comparing a grenade to a grenade.
Meanwhile the real contrast is in now and who we used to be.

You’re not laughing anymore.
I haven’t been the punch-line in weeks,
It kills you to look at me,
And when you do I hate what I see.

It’s all a waste of good material.
Cue the canned laughter and suddenly it is sloppy sit-com.

Scene 3: After School Specials with the Stereotype

You run to me: lanky.
You yell my name: cracking.
You’re my dollar store Halloween.

You’re the only reason I’ll go anywhere today.
You laugh: choppy.
You read from the usual script,
I say my lines from the in-between.
You’re the only reason I’ll feel genuine today.

We’re screaming at traitors in voicemail.
Strangers dive in the unholy waters.
I feel how I should have all along,
and I fear this perfection is solitary.

Scene 4: Piloting a Corpse

I lay in bed listening to the endings.
I measure the distance between me, everyone and everything.
They love all of me, including my worst enemy.
They take the ugly and wait for the beauty.
I take this desolation and try to dazzle;
I ignite like sulfur.

I fall deeper into my temporary bed,
of my temporary house.
Tomorrow I’ll tell you how everything changes,
Tomorrow someone might form a complete thought.
Tomorrow I’ll tell them all how I feel.
Tomorrow I’ll give up after “I love you”.
Tomorrow I’ll try to glow like neon.

Our bare feet danced on rocky grins
and we sculpted the mountains with footprints
until we became the poster children of lost causes.

God glared at our river through cloudy fingers.
They stuck paddles in his eyes
and sent ripples through heaven’s image.

There were skeletal faces in the bluffs,
an unsettling stillness in the trees
and a lethal sense of freedom about us.

Our hazy days brought darker nights
and we ran deeper into wooded revolution
until we became the monsters of a hand-me-down fear.

Natives watch us from the water
with all the same forgiveness of a wanderer,
but knew us with the bitterness of the choice they never had to make.
We saw them as the lucky ones.

We saved ourselves from the white picket daggers
that came with delusions of all-American purity.
You loved me enough to break a little girl’s white dress dreams.

Now we live in the dark chills of runaway fantasies
where thrill turns standing hair into pine needles,
and we cloak our paranoia in smiles.

You and I are inhabitants of an untamed Washington.
We’ll die out here in golden fields by the water,
without ever fearing what we know we should.
I became human under trees and sky,
and I swear I will never go back to the smoking houses.

Remember I was beautiful.
Take tissue paper roses
And remember how I bled for the thorns
Stare into the eye of the tittle and see me.
We will dance across the lines of life and death
And even when I’m gone you will feel my marble hands on your hips

I will walk your hallways in paper sheets
And tell you secrets in television static
I will talk to you with the words of infomercials
And tell you who I was in the braille of your goose bumps

Remember how I wanted to be beautiful
I kissed every letter goodnight with raspberry lips
And dressed every cry in silk and cashmere
Find beauty in the dark of my shadows
And in the arms of a poem’s phantom
I left my body in the dust of empty deserts  
and my soul in lines of free verse obituaries

I’m using my best words
Saying my greatest lines
For someone that can’t even hear me.
Come on, you know I’m there,
You can feel me.
Feel my breath on the back of your neck,
My fingers tracing the curves of your back,
Cold feet on yours under the covers.
You know I’m there
I am forever in the corners of your eyes
The eyes that focus on her porcelain body
What we were is swept under the bed
While she is cuddled up under the covers