She wears a sad smile
Flaunting a ruby necklace of tears
Her sobs are her sweet song.
She tried to cover up her scars
But now they are her bracelets.
There was a time in which
She tried to change herself for others.
But now
This is her new reality.
She knows that she is pretty
It is all because of her honesty.
They say the candid shot is the lovliest
And her candid shot is wry and skeptical
She is a cynical beauty
And she couldn't be happier with herself.

grey clouds bursting stark,
volcano
ash exploding
crawling
drowning
amber measures of coal black
lungs
back aching,
carrying newborn mornings.

i want to be touched by somebody
with burgundy blood on his hands;
red handed
raw palmed
legs strangled in maroon bedsheets.

a murderers kiss must be a rush,
blood exploding from every pore in my
bled out skin,
wounds opening willingly for his searching
hands to make
a sort of house out of my bones.
creating a home for something
wild
who has only ever met closed doors
and distant, fearful faces.
i'd prove i wasn't scared of
the dark eyes,
and hungry lips,

knowing at any moment he could push the
cool lips of a golden .45 caliber revolver
and splatter my ****** through the
wooden bedpost and the
flaking, collapsing drywall.

i've followed thrills ever since i was
in third grade,
convincing a boy to take off his clothes
and show me what "men" are made of
and sneaking behind my mothers
injured back
stealing things i wasn't supposed to know about.
i liked putting myself through the danger,
unknown
it rushed up my legs and
rendered me breathless and craving more.  

i've always wanted to hold
something shaking
and cold
and let them tell me stories
out of their biting teeth
of when when it all started:
they were small and rode their bicycle
so fast they fell and skinned their
soft pink cheeks on the black cement
and went crying to their mother with blood dripping
down
a mixture of tar and red.

i'll tell them there's some place in hell
in the beating, drumming heart of the earth
warm darkness compacted,
where you can buy cigarettes for
50 cents a pack,
and whiskeys in water bottles and skin is naked
guns are loaded to shoot down the moon
and eat it with crunching, crumbly golden crackers.
where there is no sleep
only midnight writing furiously on the stark pages
of a shredded journal
dawn walks down the lively sidewalks where
other sleepless figures of orange peel flavored darkness
and coffee bean stained teeth dance and laugh and touch
in the darkest parts of the invisible morning
sweat intermixed unrecognizably with tears
and people hold their belongings in
the drooping bags under their bright eyes,
where screams of pleasure echo in every
cavern and creaking limb you touch
to the atmosphere
and people make love easier
than they
destroy necks.

i'll whisper
"when you're rotting underground
with your teeth in a
waxen, strained smile with lovers flesh embedded
in your own homely skull,
and your fingers are feasts for writhing worms,

and i'm dancing chaotically as ever in the raging wind,
a desert flower reduced to
bright-eyed dust
thrown lightly into the sinking seeds of a garden
with flowers growing out of my decomposing
echo of a body
like an
articulate oil painting decorating the earth to remind them
of my eternity,
i'll sink all the way through the soil
and follow the heartbeats

i'll meet you there."

jerry's voice weaves a net
to catch my drunken skin,
sagging and dancing against
his cherry pie voice
warm and sweet in the dark of
the 7:17 dawn,
sun still sleeping behind a tall mountain range.

it makes me ache for open hearted
companions
barefeet wet from dew and black from distance
fearless,
unapologetic as they scream their throats out
raw splattering on the gasping earth from
the heaven high rooftops.

flowers poked through the pores
of ocean flavored skin,
peeling from laying too long
in the morning-faced
sun.

i wonder why people feel
so ancient, when their skin is still so young.
we've built this generation in the
imprisonment of fear,
the shrill avoidance of beauty,
we've forgotten what it feels to be living
free and loving
true,
and that's why you see so many young bones
crumble when their lives have just
begun.