Wrapped in scraps of newspaper,
a bouquet of yellow roses burned bright against dispair
and the train
rattle
rattle
rattle-d

so far beneath the earth
that the sun was
once again,

merely a star

I stand alone,
entranced by the sun
confined by my own resistance

Infinite love and hate concomitant
adhere to my bones,
trickle from my pores.

I have these dreams that haunt me when I wake
and I'm not sure
if I believe in god but
I don't think I'm strong enough
to believe in nothing
  and survive it

I guess I should be
grateful that the pollen
doesn't make my throat itch
   like it does Naomi's
and it doesn't make my eyes itch
   like it does Naomi's
        but it does make me itch
to get out of this godforsaken place
            once-and-for-all

In my dreams I walk through
fields with needles where the grass
should be but when I wake the
crickets, birds, gossipy girls
whisper when I pass
and its so hard to stop listening
  (the streets swell yellow with the ***** of spring)

my body is still warm in the
places where you pressed
  against me as you
****** out from my bones
any ounce of apathy
I might have had left
  and my guts flutter
violently like a moth trapped in a glass box
  and I can't wait
to never have to see you again
because I could love someone who is
seven times better than you
        but right now
    my waist can't stop remembering
    the places your fingers sometimes liked to rest

I suspended my disbelief for you
but you forgot me somewhere
   like a flea
   behind the cigarettes and ******
   behind the pretty girls who tease
   behind the marrow in your knees
but some mornings, you wake up panicked
swollen with the sweat of something you might have once dreamed

Ashes, Ashes
what is this life?
Engulfed in a fire
of anguish and strife

we claw through this labyrinth
one brick at a time
How long till I realize
that none of its mine?

Ashes, Ashes
what have I found?
The mortal remains
of a woman who drowned

in her own hidden river
of pain and desire
Its not ours to smother;
we’ll burn in this fire

I passed by Death with a gracious smile
And held my breath for a little while
In my rearview mirror that night
I could see him watching me go

In the young, quiet hours of the morning
With soft, grey light adorning
I drifted on the smoothed terrain
That Life would have me know

I know not what will come at dusk
The winter haze, the sweet summer musk
But neither will lighten the bearing of both
Which weighs my eyelids low

It's been 19 hours
  and I think I've finally ****** away
  the ***** I drank while giving you shots of water
  so you wouldn't get sick
I thought maybe you were too drunk to notice
but I guess you weren't because you smiled
at me with a sincerity I can't come close to describing

It's been 19 hours
  but the wrenching pain in my stomach
still hasn't gone away.

       and in the airport today
I bought a bottle of water and some pepto bismol
and as I handed her my debit card,
   the cashier asked me
             if I was heading home
                   and I just
*******
choked
  and I'm talking about the really ******* ugly kind of crying here
   and the poor thing didn't know what she had done wrong but
she told me about her grandfather
         who used to say that crying
         is just your body's way
         of getting rid of the toxins
         and making itself stronger

Its been 17 hours since I last saw you
and I don't know how long it will be
before I see you again
but I really,
            really hope that it isn't too long.

my skin is burning crawling
it knows more than i ever will
my skin has taken quite the beating
but at least I can see
the bruises
even though
i may never know where they came from

Is it too late to dream?
The first gleams of sunlight are creeping through the glass
and the birds sing of morning
but i stay wrapped in my sheets
and in my dreams
of you and me on a dock in summer
but the water is red
and it stains your toenails

don't ask me what I'm doing
because I have no idea
  but its like
  
I could sit with you forever and
never have to say anything
   because just knowing
   that there are words
buzzing around your head at a million miles per second
   and there is blood
pumping through your veins, soft and sweet as sugar
   and there are all
the things you are glowing
       beneath the weight of all
           the things you want to be and
just knowing that you exist

is enough to make the world stop-

so don't ask me because
I don't know what I'm doing
   all I know
is that I really, really like
being around you

and I think that's kind of wonderful

gleams of sunshine
sprinkle divinity upon my eyelashes
cement under my body-
                            a solid launchpad

clear divisions of shadow and light

brisk air fills my lungs and
   makes me free
(freedom is all you strive for
when you’re a slave to expectations)

I used to be soft
with supple skin
and laughing eyes

but look what I’ve become
a statue of indifference
cracked and brittle
with a concrete mouth

Scents of voluptuous spring
creeping through thick february air
in whiffs of natal blossoms
and dew which lingers on the grass
like beads of sweat
are harbingers of the change
which will end the weary winter

So near is the season
of life, of renewal, that
bones shake in anticipation
skin quivers with restlessness
gates part, sunshine
sneaking through the openings
and the scents of
voluptuous spring
creep through

I have this bad habit of lookin at the ground under my feet
When my daddy always told me, he always said sweetie, look in front of you, look at where you wanna go
And I dream I dream I dream
of an open road…

and I'm always amazed by how much I can feel you
and know that you are flooded,
   just like me,
with those stupid words we're both too scared to say.

your empty strings were prisoners
your waxen wings were true
and down below the ocean
was a nauseous shade of blue

I carved your face in stone
upon the mountainside
so every weary traveller
would know what he’d left behind

Abe Lincoln went to Gettysburg
to bury those who fell
and the highest king dove burning
from the highest citadel

and I will fly away from here
somewhere the air dissolves
beneath the sunlight
and the gutters drip with rain

I am the only one responsible
for the rotting of my brain

but thinking about how
happy you make me makes me
so sad, and full of self-pity
  for ever having lived without you

sometimes my fingers find spots
on your skin that they like to
gently scratch and I wonder,
if I gently, sweetly stroked one spot
for an infinite amount of time,
would I eventually wear into a
vital ***** and bleed you out?
   because a gentle wave, over
   time, turns mountains
   into fractions

and I guess I'd probably lose my finger first
but still, I wonder.

I do know one thing though, I know
that one day we will miss this twin bed
  and we complain
but I have found that it is
my favorite way to sleep
and the only way to keep
at bay the flood of aloneness
that presses against my chest every day

     I should try to give myself some credit.

I am trying to give myself some credit,
but then there's you.

1.  I've known for a while now,
    but putting words to feelings
    is one thing, whereas saying
    those words is quite another.

2. You said it one of the first
    times I made you come.  You
    didn't mean it, and I laughed.

3. I looked at you while
    we watched *****
    Wonka in your dad's favorite
    chair, and I knew.

4. I tried to tell you after Thanksgiving,
    but it just made me want to cry.  I
    turned away; I don't think you saw.

5. When I said goodbye to
    my mom on the phone and
    said it habitually, I thought
    I saw you smiling.

6. You left a poem in one of my
    notebooks, and wrote it in morse
    code for me to figure out.  A little
    piece of my heart flew away; I haven't
    seen it since.

7. Your drunk best friend casually
    said you did, assuming you'd
    already told me.  You gave him
    a look, and I laughed.

8. I spit it out in the middle
    of the night, after weeks of choking
    on it, and you squeezed my hand
    and mumbled.  The next morning, you
    brought it up and I said "well, just
    so you know!" and we laughed.

9. It's 4am and I can't get it out of my head.

10. "I love you,
       I love you,
       I love you,
       but I'm so ******* scared."

haunted girls
with whiskey smiles
and miles
of hate behind them

they don’t care
what they’ll come to
for you
will never mind them

haunted girls
with whiskey smiles
you ******
them out and kissed them

but they’ll be
gone before you
even know
you’re gonna miss them

Of all the things I’ve ever heard
(a song sung sweetly by a bird,
the hollow rumbling of a drum,
the trembling strings of every strum)

there’s nothing
like the way you sing
when you think
no one’s listening

your face is leaking shadows, baby
you ain't got nothing to lose today
so tie up your white shoelaces
and get on your way

deep inside yourself you'll find
something glistening to remind
you that you've got to get a move on
and never look behind

fingers crossed
your skin is seeping with
the things you didn't say
its sort of like sweat
but it won't wash away
   engine sputtering
        eyelashes fluttering
as you roll the skin of my wrist
  between your fingers
and somewhere in my brain
        I know
you don't care what I say
you just want me to look pretty while I say it
  but hush little darling,
its better this way.

Its been a long time
since I’ve seen you smile
with those teeth that light your face
like cigarettes on a clouded night
and baby-

I don’t even know
what I’m doing here anymore
sickness seeps from bathroom doors
and when I wake up
tangled, gasping for air
I can just about smell the smoke in your hair

and almost savor the cracked lips
you only let me taste
if I’m not sober

I love you, silently
selfishly
with bones searing white-hot
and skin speckled blue
or sometimes,
when sleep’s so far
and my lips half chewed,
I can even remember you-
steaming and steeping
and oh-so-almost-real

March comes in like a lion
and will leave like a lamb
coughing up teeth on the bathroom floor
you didn't give a ****
    I wish to be stern, resolute
    how a panther stalks its prey
    in a jungle weaving winding vines
    until the judgment day
but somewhere
you could see yourself
gums bleeding bright and red
so you spat in the sink
climbed under the sheets
and wished that you were dead

Outside my window the morning sky is pink
like your blushing skin
flushing down your guilt
somewhere underneath your bravery
it will eat you from within

and I can't stop thinking about
your fingers locked inside my mouth
to lock my voice away
I'm still not sure
if I wanted you to stay
because I wanted you,
or because I liked the way you
filled the space around me

There's a ghost in my left mirror
a perfect image
with tan, plastic skin
and hollow, black eyes
showing Itself only for
a moment so fleeting
I begin to doubt myself

Maybe "begin" is too generous a word
And the ghost in my left mirror
knows it
And mocks me

my first-ever valentine
walks on pebbles soaked in limes
****** out rinds and empty shot glasses
street lights sparkle as our taxi passes knoxville’s twisting highways of black
your voice, wailing, raking, sent shivers down my back
a million voices are singing your songs,
but one less than a million are singing them wrong
a million aching empty eyes glaring,
five hundred thousand pairs are staring off into space, all stuck in the past
I’m sitting here wondering how the **** my glass got empty again,
so toss me a lime, and pass me the bottle before I notice the time

The weight of your skin
is crushing me rushing me
under your eyelids
and kicking me out to the curb
But when will you learn
that whatever you earn
is nothing compared to what you could have been

Your knuckles crackle like paper bags
The streets are all spackled and sparkle with rain
and I should go home before
the words that you throw at me
singing and swaying start to all sound the same

we'll cover all the laundry lines
with hopeless dreams and dandelions
and dance barefoot
until our feet are dry

your sister looks so pretty when she's sad
and I think she knows it

I'll call you when I'm needing more
than a house with columns and shiny floors
and a grand piano no one plays

cigarette butts in the yard
buried under bits of tar
halls that twist and bend like in a maze

pretty people neatly fall
into place like bricks in walls
we'll catch fire in a drunken haze

Rain drizzles down the
          window, and its steam
               coats the inner sanctum
               of my skull
          with a moderate frost
I grasp for the memories which
have been buried in the rime
               of the earth’s poles
by my
              fleeting
                              lucidity
            My quest leaves me shivering,
            like the tectonic plates
            as they bid each other
            an eternal farewell

My body can remain so still, alive only in breath, yet my soul swims, drowns, in a sea of troubles.

I am the stars, my beauty recognized only postmortem.
I am the earth, rejected and scarred by those to whom I have given so much.
I am the ocean’s waves, pushed and pushed until I break.

I am the wind, I will never be still.

There was something primal about his beauty,
something overwhelmingly human
about his charm.
His white-ringed eyes
could trigger within me and animalistic emotion
I didn't even know I had.
His existence baffled me,
yet simultaneously comforted me
in a way I couldn't quite understand.
All I knew was that I wanted him
I wanted him to understand me,
to touch me
to love me
I wanted his strong hands to trickle over my skin like water
or to hold me like stone.

Your words are infused
with the sweetness
    of your youthful laughter
and the melancholy
    of your haunted soul
Mine are a mere echo
   and infection of sorts
But words are words
   are words are words
Anyone can be a poet.

I feel the sun just

kissing just touching

just drinking out

my in     -sides

until I am nothing

but ivory

bones and sunlight

The days have gotten longer
your knees more blistered, scratched, and red
and I cannot remember
even half the things I've said
in these hours which seem to last forever
I might as well be dead

We stayed up all night
yet somehow missed the sunrise
I threw you a ***** shirt
to wipe off your soft, damp eyes

It seems that we could walk forever
and never get away

I don't
remember exactly what I was thinking
in the moment when our car
spun into the middle of the
interstate, or if I was thinking anything
at all

When it settled into a pile of snow
on the shoulder, you told me
to pray because we were okay
but I was too busy loving you
and being sorry with every inch of me
that had somehow survived

You told me late that night
that you would be around for as long
as I wanted you to be.

and I hope you were right,
    but I don't want to ever find out.

I've always hated PDA

but when I see you I can't help but to
reach out and scratch
your beard because its a
really basic human pleasure,

  to touch something and know
that it is yours-

especially when that something
is a someone
and that someone
thinks and feels and tells stupid jokes
and laughs at his own stupid jokes
and is better than me at the
    crossword puzzles we can only finish
  on mondays and tuesdays

I measure the passing of time
in crossword puzzles and the number of nights
until I can fall asleep with at least
65% of my body touching yours because
    I miss you
       any other time

and
all of the sudden
I'm really scared of you dying

I thought that by
   spreading out my obsession
I could make it easier to bear but
it only made me more
                   certain
that nothing could ever
live up to the way  you make my chest
bubble with electricity
                            and unease

and wrapped
  in the sour scents of someone
  else's childhood
it becomes easy to forget
where I came from

     but at least I
can be sure
I'll never forget
where I'm trying to be

you told me the
  other day
that the heel of the foot
is the least sensitive part
of the body
because your brain tends to remember
trivial things like that

well I feel
   from the bottom
      of my feet
that someday soon
                         I might be free

running through the pouring rain
while lightning pierces the sky (like

ribbons in the hair of a child
smiling and beaming with youth
I wish she could stay young forever)

I dream as the seams of my dress
      cling to my skin

You'd think I would have learned by now
   not to take the things
   you say too seriously
because to you,
a promise is little more than
a few flimsy syllables and spit

and if words were a currency,
your's would cause inflation
of the highest degree
         but I live
in a place where words are precious
and dripping with sincerity

and that's why its sometimes
so hard to come up with
the right way of saying
  the things that I mean
and that's why I sometimes
say nothing at all
because words that fill space
  just feel so unclean

so you'd think I would
have learned by now but

    they say that gambling
    is an addiction
[and you know I've always loved good fiction]

Something strange happens
when you find yourself in a room
with all the boys you ever
thought you might have loved

each with their own poison
their own pressure points
                          inside you
               one in my knees
              one in my lungs
             one underneath my eyelids
            yet all of them together
nestled some place inside my skull
in some tiny electric current I'd like
to pretend doesn't exist

        But something strange happens
because when you see them all
                  side-by-side
it suddenly becomes so much clearer

        that really,
they never mattered too much after all

   and it was always just me

you have kind of a cool brain
and today
I told you I was sorry

but it didn't make me feel much better
      at all
because I didn't really get to say
what I needed to like
how ******* brave I think you are
and how I hope you'll never
let anyone walk all over you
    the way I did because you
deserve
so much better

I guess maybe
there are some things I'm going to miss
but never enough to make me stay

The last time you trusted
me with yourself,
I knew it would never happen again
so I

ran away with a mouthful of you
and burrowed into the ground
and added you to my nest
  of people I never wanted to forget
  the taste of

cheeks puffed out
and scurrying feet
  I was gone before you had time to notice
  that I had
  taken a piece of you with me

They hardly ever notice

   because I only steal mouthfuls of
   things I know they won't miss
like distrust- which I'll bet you didn't know
      tastes like cinnamon
or fear- which tastes like milk
      that's just a little bit too old
      but when you add a squirt of chocolate syrup
      you can hardly taste the sour-ness
or anger- which has that charcoal taste
      of anything that's been cooking for too long
      
and it all makes me wonder
  if I had stuck around
         long enough
to steal a mouthful of your love

what would it have tasted like?

you'll be able to tell if
he touched my tongue
by the pressure with which it presses
  against yours

and you'll be able to tell if
if he held my hand
by the placement of my fingers
  between yours

and you'll be able to tell if
he broke my heart
by the length of time it takes for me
  to break yours

and its funny to think of certain things
like that elevator painting  with colors
flying off the canvas that you
wouldn't touch
because you wanted to believe
that it was real
but I had to touch
because I would rather know the truth

and I couldn't tell at the time
but I can think about it now and know
by the way I remember you feeling
beside me
that you had a kind of
fleeting realness about you
that I wanted so badly to be permanent

and it took me a long time to realize
that I was better off
knowing the truth

every time I wake up without you
is another tiny heartbreak
  but how many tiny heartbreaks
   does it take to add up to one more
noticeable? how many lonely mornings can I...

unpacking my stuff/moving in
I'm leaving 3 drawers and part of the closet empty
so you have room for your stuff and I wonder
if I'll fill them after you leave
or if the space between my clothes
will be a reminder of your ghost


being busy is good.  being busy
means less time to think about ...

I'm going to learn how to ride a bike.
I'm going to learn how to ride a bike.
I'm going to learn how to ride a bike.

I really like the way you look sitting in this bed
with the sunlight creeping through the window shades
and giving you tiger stripes
but you like couches better

"I can't wait-"
but you will.
You don't have a choice.

I hate myself
for wanting to be pretty
but even more, I hate the world I live in for
   making me feel like I need to be
pretty
in order to amount to anything
   but it's been etched into my brain
      like the alphabet or "I'm fine, thanks, how are you?"

I guess I ran
out of words
when I stopped believing
   that I needed you to love me back

sometimes I still think of you but only
in the moment between tracks on a CD
or at stoplights
or in the the spaces of light between my fingers
  when I shield my eyes from the sun

but there are a lot of things I
sometimes think about
so maybe
   you're not so special after all
just a speck of static
I clung to
  when I had nothing else to hold
  or when there was no one else
to fill the space around me

(I’m so incredibly alone
I might as well not exist at all)
my transmitters are malfunctioning or they’re
       fine, and its the source
which is broken
what is happiness?
A sensation unfamiliar to my blandly textured existence
if only I could be once again
      needed
My Terminal Countenance
scares away not only predators,
but friends of the same form
where lies the line which separates the two?
If it is even real
it escapes my clouded vision
(obstructed by the gleams it so desires,
                               it averts the illustrious sun)