The urge to run will breath life
into your limp figure
and shock your spirit into flight;
there's something whimsical
about the West, a spark
which was birthed within our
ancestors and simmers in us still.

Your amber eyes light up
at the Californian fantasy,
your skin crawls with
anticipation and restlessness,
your lips tremble with excitement
at the everlasting roads

So dream on, dear child,
because you're not going anywhere.
You're trapped here and you know it.

I didn't ask much of you.

On the wings
  of summer winds,
I tried to breathe you out of me
         and
seal my lips tight round their own solitude

  but (and I learned this one the
hard way) you
can only hold your breath
              so long
   before the body takes control.

                            No-
I didn't ask much of you at all.
     I only wanted you
     to let me believe-
     even for just a moment-

that you liked me best.

I liked the way it felt
inside you,
curled like a cat
  
it was hot so
I was sweating
   which may sound gross but
  it was hot so
you were sweating too
and my sweat
    mingled
with your sweat
and became us-sweat
and we both knew that it was hot
and sweaty and gross
   but
inside each other we were comfortable
so the
    us-sweat was okay

until the morning came and with it
fear and silence and the us-sweat
became
        me-sweat on you
and  you-sweat on me
and I just wanted to jump
into the ocean
  because the
ocean,

when you think about it,
is really just a giant ditch
filled with salt water which
  is pretty much the same
  as sweat except
  people don't think it's gross
so in the ocean no one
cares whose sweat is whose

and maybe if it
had been just a
little bit cooler

  I could have stayed
forever inside you,
        my breath
trapped within the mercy of your body

It was the monday-est
of mornings and
I left empty
but for five hours of sleep
and a bit of
momentum

and when I watched you
pick up a handful of
white-hot coals from the fire
  and hold them like
  soft wet
     petals
in your hands
I screamed and
begged for you to drop them
because I didn't
  couldn't under
     stand
that you were only trying
     to burn
  the sickness out
from the gravel in your   gut

and I didn't
  couldn't under
     stand
how when you woke
your hands were white and clean
  as if straight from the
  womb
because when I
coaxed
the fire to grow
my finger brushed
a white-hot coal
and (where they kissed) was
raw and red for weeks

but now I do
  can under
     stand
that the gravel in your   gut
made you immune

while the
  soft wet
  petals
in mine made me fragile
as if straight from the
  womb

and something tells me
I won't be building a fire
  with you again
anytime soon

A friend the other
day
told me a story
  of a cousin-neighbor-friend
some kid
who saw a kid get bullied on the
      TV
and he told his
grandmother the story
  as if the memory was his own
           and she
                      freaked
out and called the school
   raving/yelling until
she found out that the story
wasn't her grandson's at all
          just a fabrication
in a blank space
his mind thought a
   memory
            should be and
a friend the other
day
told me that last week she cut
lines into her
   self
because she needed to feel anything
         and I didn't
                       freak
out because I understand
that we need to feel
pain
and we need to remember
pain                          
   and you can try to ****
   the feeling out the feeling
       that too much is easy and
you   are    weak
    because of it
or
you can
             fabricate
pain
   in a way that let's you
tell yourself you deserve all of the
love you crave so severely

your favorite season was winter
[except when it wasn't]
because you liked the way
   the cold
made your body feel alive
[except when you didn't]
and you liked the way
    the trees
could die and be reborn again
because sometimes you wanted to die
but not have to be dead forever
and you liked the
   stillness and the calm and the quiet
[I miss you]
and I'm not quite sure how the
tilt of the world works but
I'd bet whatever's in my
  pocket that its
      spring wherever you are

I've wanted you ever since I learned how to want.

With a box full
of toys in your closet
and a mouthful
of love on your lips,
  you are just a boy

and there's something about your hometown
that makes me want to fill my lungs with poison,
its all awfully familiar.

Things are different now, but still the same.
     I still get random urges to kiss the top of your head.
     I still **** in my stomach when we have ***.
  but I'm more scared of losing you now

When my dad tried to teach
me how to ride a bike he said,
look at where you want to go,
look ahead,
and I still can't ride a bike, too busy
  staring at the ground.


"a lot of what floats in head comes from you, it always has been because you are me"

Oh, queen of ice
your sacrifice
was the skirt your mother threw out of her window
because she didn't want to think about
   the boys
   with their cigarettes
their hormones and sweaty fingers
pawing at your bare thighs

and the idea
of us being together
is like a bad joke
all the buildup
   and none of the satisfaction

you're alive too
and sometimes
that can be easy to forget
but there's one thing I know
I know that when I touched your skin
you got goosebumps
because all living things need to be touched

     and I often wonder
if you ever remember
how very alive I am

it knows the taste of human flesh
and it eats me, raw
from the inside out
sitting in my stomach
   and tying me in knots
   and prying me open
   and leaving me to rot, hoping
for some sort of cure
a divorce
between this wretched body and restless mind
         now
my innocence hangs by a flammable thread
and the moon is burning the faintest of reds

there are so many
things
I don't know how
  to do yet
but I know how
  to truly love the sunlight
and I know how
  to build a fire
and I know how
  to care about people
just enough for them
to never really hurt me
              so maybe
being scared to talk to strangers on the phone
isn't so important after all


they say
that hair follicle drug tests are more accurate
than anything you can **** into a cup
   because your hair
   follicles
   store the history of
   everything you've ever done
so I want to rip out
a lock of your hair
but a small one, so it only hurts
a little bit
and I want
to put the hair in a metal jar
and bury it in the ground
   just in case one day
   they come up with a
   way to see everything you've ever felt
   by looking at your hair follicles
so I can dig it back up
                   and prove
that you felt
       something
for me.

I said your name aloud too many times
  it started to sound
  alien
and feel like old chewed up bubblegum
stuck to the bottom of a shoe
   spread thick
   between the cleats
disgusting
and irredeemable

how many times
can I tell myself something
   before it becomes
a[lie]n thick
and sticky like gum
     and so disgusting
-ly untrue

I loved you once.
but now you are a ghost
clutching in your
               tobacco hands
a violent whisper of the boy I once knew and I
  wish
  that you could see you
  the way I do
but I also wish
  that I could see you
  the way you do
so maybe
together we wouldn't
notice the distance between you
and solid ground

you say
that people change
but I think that maybe it's just
the spaces between people that change
       and I'm left alone
       counting the miles
   between your hands and mine
   [which you once held so severely]

I wonder
if the lobster chested
  orange women
regret the youth they spent in the sun

My momma always warns me
to wear sunscreen so I won't look
like one of them and sometimes
   I do but sometimes
I have trouble
finding fear in the lobster chested
   orange version of me
              because the sun
              makes me happy
and if being orange skinned and
lobster chested means
I was happy once
would I really be ugly at all?

and when I see the
bruises on your throat
    soft and
          orange, it
makes me jealous
because your version of love is so easy
to come by but I
just can't swallow it.

I've heard some girls boast
about swallowing because I guess
it's supposed to make boys like you
   well
I can swallow too
I can swallow
   my fear and
I can swallow
   my insecurities and
I can hide them deep within me
    where
I don't have to show anybody
    and
I don't have to tell anybody

because the summer rays of sun
run circles round my eyes
and all I'll ever need is
to know that I survived

Listen closely,
and you can just barely hear,
stifled by the heavy doors, your
mother crying down the hall.
Listen closely and you'll know,
or else feign your unawareness
and maintain your little facade.
Assure yourself that there's nothing
you can do - and maybe even
believe it,
But you did listen, you did hear
her sorrow pouring out, so
pretend all you want, but it will
never not have happened.

Your mother is crying in the bathroom.

Your mother is crying
in the bathroom,
and you're no
better
than the rest of them.

She said “I feel so down and out”
I said “you do not have to
close your eyes” and watched her smile
twist and leave as in some miracle
and as you drove
I watched the streetlights hit your face
and fade again I could not understand
how anyone would want to hurt you
and now all I see
are leaves turning brown around me colors
brilliant as the sun
will return when the winter ends
but for now
I just sit alone and let the light in,
blinding me a glorious white surrounds me
what else could I ever need

I was homesick until I remembered
how toxic this place was.

I am a decaying organism,
and I am dying in your arms.
      every time you touch me
     another couple skin cells fall,
     and every time we kiss,
      I lose a bit of DNA

    so **** any way of living that isn't dying.

I was homesick until I realized
I had found a better one,
and now
I'm only sick for you.

Recently, I've started to wash
my sheets less often
   and maybe its because the nights
   have gotten cooler
   and less sweaty
but also,
I think I'm getting attached
to the way my bed smells like you

I have the blues again and you asked
if you could **** them out
through my mouth
but I like you too much to let you taste them

and I'm ******* tired of being tired all the time
but I've never been
more motivated to keep breathing
   than with you sleeping beside me,
   just close enough that your fingers
   brush my stomach
     when it expands with air
        and your breath
in mine, weaving simple harmonies

and I don't need you,
because I would never let myself
depend on a garden I can't water alone
but the flowers you planted
in my eyelids
are so ******* beautiful
and I'd really like to see the world the way you do.

I can't quite describe the scent
but
it makes this little
  concrete room
feel almost like a place
  I could call home

One foot after another
chin down, eyes
burning like gleams of
sun through the trees
on a hazy winter morning...

When my eyes are
closed, surrounded
in black and still
I could be anywhere
I could be anything
I could be nothing at all

sometimes I think that if I
pry open your ribcage
and look inside,
I'll find silver and flower petals and things
that glitter and dance in the rain

but I always (usually) remember
that you are human and you are
filled with blood
and guts
and bones
and bacteria
and all the gritty bits that
  fill me too and we are the same

except
that we're so not the same at all
because when you look up on a cloudy night,
you can see all the stars you know to be hidden
while I can see only darkness

  the worst part
  about happiness
is knowing what comes next.

   he walked
in on me crying and he told me
that he didn't want to leave me like this
    "but you will," I said,
          and I was right.

Your music was so
sweet and thick
I could taste it
swallow it *** it
up into a ball and
hide it dark and safe inside my chest
and peel away at it until
it was just a memory, sweet
and thick and warm behind my
ribcage, dark and
safe beside my heart

I walk with the weight of the world
cascading from my shoulder blades and leaving
bruises up and down my spine

I walk with the ghost of you
dangling from my knees and kissing
purple into all the places no one sees

  I told you today
the things it has taken me eight months to formulate
       and it's probably just wishful thinking,
       but I am feeling the spaces between my
       vertebrae getting a little less heavy
(or as some would say, a little lighter

)I miss you,
but only in parts.
   I miss the part of you that loved me.
      I don't miss the part of you that spent our last two months together pushing me away.
      I don't miss the part of you that doesn't miss me.
  
I miss the part of you that glows.

sometimes I
don’t brush my teeth
because I’m too depressed to move

but sometimes

I don’t brush my teeth
because I want to taste
you over and

over and

Today is a tricky substance.  In its
delicate intricacy
we sense the echoes of yesterday
and the prospects of tomorrow,
but all is lost on the ticking clock
as it gently
weighs the day away

a relapse of happiness
or just another
                           high?
my eyelids warm
                           heavy
the sun dries them
      like raisins
I had forgotten the texture of autumn leaves
a weary
                 memory
                                   of colors

the words catch on my tongue
like they're bound with saran wrap
I can feel them
clawing for escape
I bite and bite and bite on the speckled pink flesh
but I cannot free these pathetic
slaves in my museum of emptiness
chained to my esophogus
by long, thin, elastic threads
my teeth are too dull
to rip through
despite my constant gnawing

like that rat I once saw
in a memory so faint
I may have imagined it

The severity of
        shadows on the wall
claws at my conscience
        trying to dismantle me
               bury me
                     I long to
be overwhelmed by my senses
but my own personal prison
                    (what you call mind)
        bars me from pleasantness
              and scratches at my
skin
             until only shame and sorrow
                                remain

I've always been jealous of leaves

because they have the luxury of dying
with the promise of being reborn
in a few months' time
even brighter and more
beautiful than before

    sometimes I want to die
but death is such a big commitment and
I've never been a fan
of permanence

I miss you
but
not in the a-piece-of-me-is-missing-when-you're-gone
kind of way
I miss you in the
I'm-okay-with-being-alone-but-I-like-it-better-when-you're-ar­ound
kind of way and I think that
that is a pretty healthy way to feel

It took me a very long time
to realize that I was whole

    and I'm not so scared of winter anymore

I've been wasting fall, preparing for the winter.
and it ***** to miss out on the best season,
but I just know that winter
will be so **** cold.

happiness starts with some weird chemical reactions
in the brain and is carried by electrons
where it ends with some weird tension
of the muscles around the mouth but I
learned in electronics that electrons
will only travel in a complete circuit
   so logically:
if I smile, I should feel happy but
        it doesn't work

and I've spent too long thinking
that I'm too privileged for my
depression to be real.

at least when you leave,
my (previously our) room
won't look too different, because
you never bothered to move in the things
that make a place home.
I'll fill the empty drawers somehow.

I know that I need to be stronger and I try but
          it doesn't work

and trying gets hard when my eyes are so dry
and trying gets hard when the crickets are so loud
and trying gets hard when my body
   is in so much ******* pain all the time

I wish you had gotten me
  an anniversary present.

I wish you would call me
so I could know for sure you didn't
die in a tragic car accident.

   I'd give you everything I've got,
for a little piece of pie.

The soft ***** of your
                               shoulders
reminds me of a time when everything was bright
innocent
your allure exists in my desire for salvation
to lose myself in you
would be to find myself once more
         among these steamy mirrors
         and speckled windshields
Let me become your Bad Habit

Far away, a glimmer of light just barely breaks through the vast darkness which surrounds my flying hunk of metal.  I imagine that I am falling through the blackness below, or maybe soaring through the one above.  If this eight hundred thousand pound machine can do it, why shouldn't I?  
The perfect, twinkling stars above are mimicked by the harsh yellow street lamps below, as if man admired the stars so greatly that, with youthful clumsiness, he attempted to recreate them, his hands clammy and unskilled compared to the divine and perfect ones of nature.

The only girl who's
ever seen me
is locked away in
a tower
miles above the ground
high up in the clouds

She's closer to the sun
than she is to me

there are flames the lick
the ancient bricks
and all around- a moat
filled with piranhas
and sharks
and poison

I built a ladder to the sky
but lightning struck me down
I built a helicopter I could fly
but the blades wouldn't spin around

I thought I'd try
to sneak inside
but was chased out by a troll
he warned me,
"if you try again,
your life will be the toll."

Sometimes, when the night is silent,
I can hear her soft, sweet cries
and I howl up to the merciless stars
and spell my grim goodbyes

for I am gone
I've disappeared
from so long not being seen
I've been invisible
just enough time
my life may have been a dream...

and then-
just when I’ve finally recovered from you
just when I’ve finally let you go
you sweep me up again

maybe this time I won’t turn to dust
maybe I’ll crumble until I’m a particle so tiny
I just float away

I'm tangled up
in the ribbons of your hair
and your eyes, like sequins
on the silken canvas of your features
      You don't belong to me.
We only meet
in crowded rooms, or perhaps,
in dreams
      I'm in deep on the surface
      I'm treading in your gravity
Maybe this entanglement
isn't such a bad thing after all

From down the hall
       I feel you sigh
         your head between your knees
behind the locked door
my legs are wrapped around his neck
and my innocence forsaken
     all I can picture are
        your sculpted collarbones
          and my fingertips
              l     o     n     g     i     n     g  
you need a cigarette, you grumble

and I need a hot shower
(to cleanse me of his filth)

I wrote something
beautiful
in my sleep last night
    woke up grasping
clawing for words which
had just been so fresh
   so easy
       but gone.

My bed is a cave, shielding me
from the sun which burns holes
in my heart.  There I shall wait
for the soft illumination of the
moon, and stifle my urges to howl
into mere whimpers,
        because such is my existence

The wondrous ground on which I
trekked only left my feet ripped
and shredded; the fantastic sights
which I beheld left my eyes
stale and tender

Colors become shadows
the sun struggles
to illuminate beauty
      and all is dreary
from the perspective of a carcass

Insomniated by this urge to write,
I am enslaved by the pen I find in my hand
    perfectly filling the crevices
       of my fingers

If I knew every word
or every language
then maybe, maybe
I could describe the unique brilliance
        of the sun
If I knew every word
or every language
then maybe, maybe
I could let somebody truly understand
       the enigma of my mind
If I knew every word
of every language
I could still never illustrate your beauty

Maybe I once loved you
I don't know, nor do I care
For the part of my heart which loves
Is now as empty as my stare

The weight of my world surrounds me
Which only I can bear
Melancholy drips
From my vacant lips

is anybody there?

The inexhaustible
vastness of the
ocean is humbled                  
by the excruciating immensity
of your              
ethereal eyes.
If only I were that
cigarette,
balancing ever so softly
between your              
gentle lips
or the lace which quietly
embraces your          
velvet skin
or even the chair on which you perch
like a bird        
light and agile
as you wait for the wind
to carry you away
But wish- I shall not, for
the dirt beneath your    
precious feet
       is the greatest thing I have ever been

I'll breath in life
through your damp mouth
and watch your fingertips dance
across my skin
like tiny tornadoes
twisting my aura between
your ink-stains
our breaths will become one breath
and our bodies one body
no words to express our orbit,
our silence will say it all.

I wish I could capture
every moment of you
every shiver of your voice
every stroke of your fingers
every word of your lips
I wish I could memorize
the warmth of your chest
against my cheek
and the way you fiddled
with my dress sleeve
while you spoke

"I see you," says the mirror.

"I'll show you," says the window.

"I'll take you, says the door.

You wouldn't lie to me, would you?

Answer with Spring
O, succulent Earth
who’s leaves I’ve yet to write
the flowers thirst
and the people pray
for the sweetness of your light

the harshness of
the Winter fades
when dew replaces frost
and yet the blooming
of the trees
is not without a cost

for when the heat
of summer ends
the dying months will bring
the loneliness
and longing for
yet another Spring.

sometimes I want to drive my car into a lamp post

just to feel the impact

or to feel anything at all

it's too cold for this time of year