There are more songs on today about suicide than love,
My beauty queen friend died of a ****** overdose
A day before her fleeting birthday.
A kid in my brother's third grade classroom
Hung himself "trying to be Spiderman"
When not even a week ago
He was trembling on the playground,
Begging for help when no one would listen.

Girls flash pieces of lumped skin called scars,
Proud of them because they have overcome.
But I guess no one ever told them that those scars
Were supposed to be metaphors,
A smoking gun at the back of a hero.

There's a kid in my class who picks at his scabs
And pulls his hair
And I can picture him
At the bottom of the bottle in a year or so.

We find more solace in fiction than fact,
Because 35 people were shot this weekend in my hometown
But in Megaman the shots never actually hurt.
We shouldn't be thinking about all the violence, though,
Because at least Miley twerked a solid and dropped it low.

A drunken fool killed an old couple last week,
But all I heard on the news was that Transformers 4 is spiking the charts
Even though Michael Bay directed it
And he can't make a movie
Without filling the seats
With people wanting to only see
******* and ***** and explosions they could see
If they looked down their own street at the right time.

Sometimes I get caught up in the mess,
Obsessed with those who post offense on articles
While we ignore the fact that a baby has been cured of AIDS!
I bring myself to wonder at the insignificance of you and I,
As bullets fly and young girls cry
Over slashes and stretch marks in their thighs.
If mirrors are out greatest enemy, than
Why are we fighting the bosses of our lives,
Ready to strike down the opposition?

Life goes on past all these insecurities.
There'll be graves to visit and chances to take
But I'm not the only one who thinks this way.
I can't be the only one who thinks this way...

So here's to Spiderman,
Who told us that with great power comes
Great responsibility.
Throw your fist in the air with me and face up to that.
We've driven ourselves to suffer far worse
Than we have to.
Fight the important battles and
Leave the rest to sand.
And come back to me,
Refreshed and renewed.

Bring my reasoning your weak and I
Will make them whole once more.

Whoever originally told you
That your eyes were angry ones
Was a person
Who had never seen love before.

Other women
Have never posed a threat to me.
Maybe it's the spring in my step
Or the way I wear my hair,
But men can never get enough of me.
The way I walk
Has never been graceful
But I have always tread on hearts
With love at first
And destruction second.
Yes, it's true,
Men can never get enough of me.
The switch of a film reel,
The spring in my step,
I've never had trouble
Finding a person
Who lusts for me.
With the wiseness of an elder
And the recklessness of a droog,
Men can never find their fill.

The wolves did not leave me
Where it was they found me.
Rather,
They stayed on my heels
And tore away my flesh
Before I even knew that teeth were in my skin.

The candles on my birthday cake
Are a body count.

We writers are insane.
All of us.
We revel in our own sad mess
While picking green grapes
Off the wallpaper,
Smecking away like mad
At the wondrous juices
Of the imaginary, judicial
Forbidden Fruit.

We, like Hemingway,
Take our scotch in the morning
And our gin at night
And try with brutal, lashing effort
To make it through
Everything in-between.

We have put ourselves in shoes
We will never be able to walk in.
We must walk miles as
Linguists, as
Assassins, as
Outsiders, as
victims, as
AIDS sufferers, as
Brutalizers of women.
We must deal with their pain
As if it were housed in our own entity of being.

J.D. Salinger wrote that
His literary son, Holden,
Wore a “people-shooting” hat and
Made it **** clear that he suffered from wild
And erratic fits of overwhelming depression.
Writing from a bunker
Far from his wife, kids and home,
His stories sparked ****** in the hearts
Of already oppressed men
With “people-shooting” hats of their own.
We must toil with language;
Put it in the corner,
Love it, hate it,
Shift it and slave daily with it.
We must lose hours upon hours upon
Days of sleep
Before we find ourselves
Dangerously asleep at the wheel in front of us
In order to make the slightest change in our regular ways.
Even then,
Our handwriting only becomes sloppier
And our words,
Only fiercer.

Kaysen, alone in a psych ward
With women who slept around and
Tried to maul each other,
Wrote diligently
To try to release the the demon
Boiling the very blood inside her veins.
But demons do not disappear easily
And unfortunately,
Neither do the tortuous memories.

Even today,
They attempt to label me
With words of the disturbed.
Anxiety
Floods my synapses and neurons.
Depression
Happily urinates on my serotonin levels.
I bring myself to write
The effigy of the ******
Day by day
As my pen scratches paper
And the doctors expect razor to scratch skin
Though it never has
And never will.

Writers are psychos.
We all are.
We remain the mad, psychotic, literate monsters
Who worm our ways
Into your head.
We nestle beside your dreams and fantasies,
Waiting to strike
And tear them apart or,
If you’re lucky,
Build them up.
A woman writer named Sylvia
Once put her head in the oven
Because the writer-demons were driving her to madness
And they wouldn’t leave her be.

Handling us is a torture
Only the most eloquent and experienced reader
Could enjoy.

Love Always,
Salinger and
Plath and
Kesey and
Vonnegut and
Burgess and
King and
Sandburg and
Snicket and
Hemingway and
Palahniuk and
Kaysen and
Gaimen and
Green and
Trumbo and…

Holtry.

Like Severus and Lily,
We came to each other by chance.
I transfigured myself into your life
Already on a pedestal,
Our words chaining ourselves
To each other
Until death.

Years have passed
Without so much as a flicker between us
But here you stand
Today
With the words of our pasts
Strung together and hanging like frayed ropes from your wrists.

In my dreams you come to me
With your hand outstretched,
A snake burrowed into the cuff
Of your long sleeved,
Blue-collar work shirt.
I do not hesitate to take it.
I am bitten.

I wake up in a cold sweat,
The snake of men past
Now burrowed next to me
In the king sized bed.
I am not afraid
But I do not trust.

Everything around me
Keeps me coming back to you.
I'm a lost puppy
Wandering in the woods
And I'm a hopeless case
When you're not around.
And I can't tell if this is admirable
Or sick but I'm only happy by your side.
The anxiety boils in my veins
And taints my mind
When you're so far away.
I fear for your safety daily
Because of past violences
And pill poppers
And self destroyers;
You're the only sane person I know in this world.
My guardian angel,
My one and only
Savior and protector.

I pretend to be a hardass by cutting my hair short
And smoking a cigarette a second
But it's only becaue Bruce Willis was safe
Climbing vents is Die Hard
So long as he had a gun in one hand
And an import smoke
Twisted in the knuckle of the other.
I am a lost transmission
And all of these words
Are just different combinations of twenty six letters
That could never encompass all you mean to me.

I am not a hardass,
I'm a pop princess
Longing for a God
But I am too intelligent to believe in one.

When did it become the norm for teens
To turn into Holden Caulfields
And when did I realize at first
That I see things other don't
And often suffer because of it?
It's like when I walked out of that theatre tonight
I was reminded what real life was
And promptly found myself again at the hand of anxiety.

I am not a monster
But this is a rant
Because I can't go a day
Without wondering why I'm still here.
With me
It is no depressive item,
I am only wanderlost.
How do people live past 25
When the world I live in is demented
And scary
And I am so, so
Small.

I breathe.
I am released.
But the air I fill my lungs with is heavy like lead
And I can only picture myself
Sinking to the bottom of the lake
Because my boots are too heavy
And I have decided to dive in headfirst.

I am a fool.
I am a disgusting imagined facet
And I am lost.
I am not thinking rationally tonight
And for that I thank only God Himself
Because I know He's ******* me up for a reason
But that reason might as well be for naught.

For I am no saint,
But a sinner.
Yes, I give little girls faith in themselves
By explaining to them that just because
They are ten years old
That does not mean they are not kick *** people
Because MegaMan was ten
When he was trying to ignore
****** puns from Cutman
And the same idiosyncrasies
And the same existentialist suicidal ideals
I try to ignore today.

I told my father today
That I wish I would have tried ditching school
Because then I would have felt as though I had
Even the smallest bit of control over my fate.
But I am so, so
Small.

I know the school
And everyone in it
Would not have noticed me go.

I know the world
And everyone in it
Would not notice me if I were to go.

It was always natural for him
To smell like cigarettes
Even though I was pretty sure
That he had never touched one directly
In all his years of living and lusting.
But who am I to judge,
The local Laura Palmer
Who thinks with ambition
That she has the world by the entrails?
Sweat dripping, anger sipping
Wine out of her clavicle cavity,
She and I are a beast,
A torrential force to be reckoned with
Though I cower.
So bravely, so tenderly,
I cower so as not to ruin
The pleading ferocity
Of cigarette boy,
His hand pressed
Firmly against the curve of my hip.

Cigarette boy pulled me from my cowering the other night,
Took his own hand off my hip
And whispered to me
That I was as big as I wanted to be
And I could over power the earth
With my love and care.

These are the things I love him to say
Between the drags I take off him.

I promised you I'd take you away
From here one day
And that's a promise I intend to keep.
If given the chance,
I would take you with me on my every daily endeavor
And I would kiss you with every passing second
To make up for all the ones you deserved
But didn't receive
When I was just a little girl
And the world was turning it's back on you
So harshly.
And I would be criticized
For my loving you;
Too wide of an age gap,
To vast of a difference
But I am closer to you
That I have ever been
With anyone else.
I will take you to the beaches of California
I have never seen
And I will make love to you
In the crisp Colorado air,
So long as you're willing to run with me.
We can go to New York
And skip rocks in the pond
In Central Park where Holden Caulfield
Almost drowned himself because he was drunk,
But not quite as drunk as I perpetually am
On your excellence.
Maybe we could go to the Natural History Museum
And we could look at the really cool Indian statues
That emulate my love for you
By never changing.

Wherever it is you want me to go
I will follow you with no questions asked
So long as when I'm finally able to save you
From this wretched place,
You will take my hand and save yourself
With me.

You are going to find yourself
Hating everyone.

And it should come as no surprise
That one day you'll pick up smoking
Because that fat ***** you fell for
Thought you looked **** doing it.

Men will crave your lips
Not for kisses but for *******
And you will have to battle them
On every insistence.

You will sleep with a teddy bear,
Human-sized
Well into adulthood
Because there will be nights
That you are so disconnected from the world
That you feel as though you are floating.

You will be sneered at
By mental hospital nurses
At the age of sixteen
As you visit your boyfriend
For your first date
In Good Samaritan hospital.
They will see your youth
And rage inside.
You will waste yourself.
You will die and redeem
Within yourself.

You will fall in love
With a man much older than you
And suddenly
Thirty won't seem
So old at all.
Thirty will seem
Like a world your old soul
Could get lost in.
And you will.
And it will be wonderful.

You will become paranoid.
Walking to church at midnight
With the love of your life,
You will constantly
Be looking over your shoulder.

You will forever
Be looking over your shoulder.

This will become
A necessary hobby.

You will tear down your Beatles posters
And replace them with Wes Anderson ones
Shamelessly.

You will come to a point
Where you hate yourself
In a most incomprehensible way
But you will write a poem
And you will be paid for it
And you will pay your cell phone bill with the money
And you will be successful.

You will have your escape plan
But you will never use it.

You will never need to.
His charm and his wit
And the way his eyes sparkle when he sees you
Will keep you rooted
Even when you are ready
To book it.

You'll be subpoenaed
And you will hate it
And ***** over it
And you will have to stand trial
But life is a trial
And you will win.

What was it like
Bleeding out into your wedding dress
When the wounds cut too deep to bear?
Fighting back our urges to help,
We instead flocked to the funeral
Where the beer was free
And finger foods flooded our senses,
Immunizing us against your cries.

Coco Chanel told us women to apply perfume
Where we could like to be kissed.
But I cannot apply perfume to my open wounds and heart
Without it burning immensely.

I've got friends who work in pharmacies
And talk about nothing but addicts
And I've got friends who are addicts
Who talk about nothing but drugs
But what am I supposed to say
To my drug-addled friends
When you're the only addiction I have
And there's no cure for
My pharmacist friends to figure out?

I've managed to draw my anger
Back within myself
In favor of moving forward.
Anyone who has ever shot an arrow can tell you
That in order to move forward
You must pull back.

I raised my arms
To greet the day
And I swear
I could feel God
Grab me by the wrists
And sling me against the ground
Again.

I've found myself fighting for words.
But not one: Me.

I brought him to his feet
And he brought me to my knees.

You killed yourself weeks ago
But the wound still burns at the edges
As it always has.
I am the lost, the wandering,
The unprefered.
Waste away in the calm with the remnants of my sanity
And you too may understand.
I am the discovered faith;
The found Jesus of my time
Though my kidneys are failing
And I realize that my existence is drastically limited.
I am afraid of time,
Of the fact that he will probably go before me
But alas I am reborn.
I am awakened to the succulent love
I have by my side tonight
As my pen
Scratches away at the integrity of my page.
I am the sailor at the helm of my ship.
I will forever rest
In the solace I have found in your arms tonight
And the intelligence within the life we share.

Have you been shredded
By the tenacity
Of your alcoholism
Yet,

Or will we have to funnel
More worldly atrocities
Into you,
Filling you to bursting?

The swish in your belly,
The boldness of your talk;

Decimated.

Let me be the one
To **** all you are
With my well-kept home
And all-American children.
Let me poison you
With my son and husband's baseball game,
My seasonal dish towels.

Let me tear your being
With my baby
Who doesn't even suffer a diaper rash,
With my laundered and ironed clothes.

Let me destroy you in domesticity,
A cold beer at the end of the day
And too many addictions
Kept hidden.

Let me dismantle your establishment
While I bear my blemishes under the skin.

Let me break your concentration.

Let me make you think
I am perfect.
Let me make you think
That my family is sound.

Let me convince you
That you mean nothing
To the world
If only because
My children will be more intelligent
and more well kept
Than the one you poisoned.

Let me be
The Stephen King novel,
Bruce Springsteen song,
All-American house wife
And let me be kept far,
Far away from You,
Dazed and Confused
And depressed and medicated,
You.

I broke it off with the love of my life  
Two weeks after I started a second full time job
Which would have given me enough money
To rescue him.
When I had told him,
His eyes fluttered away from mine
Like a parent's would
And being twelve years older than me,
I guess he had room to look at me like that.

What do you do when the one person who you care about
More than Kubrick or living
Decides he does not want to
Put you in a position where
You have to take care of him
Even though you've always been the adult in the situation
And you've grown quite fond of it?
What do you do when not even a week after the parting
You find yourself
Growing attached to another walking disaster
Who's body may quake when you touch him
But who's skin crawls with the ghosts
Of lost admiration
Under your fingertips?
In a world where I was made out to be a goddess
I am now just another cog in the bougeouise high-earning machine.
I let love make me it's victim and now
I am the Greek goddess of regret
And I am fascinated by the way men ruin themselves.
He told me he didn't want me to have to be
The person who is constantly drowning in work
Just to keep our heads above water
But I would have walked to hell and back
Barefoot
If it had meant helping him and staying with him.

Today I woke up in the same bed as my new love
And when my fingers grazed his bronzed
And toned back,
I looked for your scar
And it wasn't there
And I panicked.

Tomorrow I will wake up in bed alone
And I will look for my own scars
And I will find them
Stretching across all the skin you caressed
And the heart you left in shambles
And I will rejoice in being home.

I. I thought you were her world;
   Her paperback novel
   She could ponder quotes in
And crack the spine of.
   But you’ve now got police orders against you
And the pain of missing you
   Seers the seams of her striped-sweater heart
   And though you’re trying to get into Green and Ginsberg,
   She can’t see what the big deal is.
   You were the Holden Caulfield
   To her Jane Gallagher
   But Holden never took Phoebe
   To the mattress so
   I guess that makes the two of you
   Sid and Nancy
   Instead.

II. I suppose she never believed you
   When you told her that you were an alcoholic.
   Because alcohol burns
   And though you lit her fire,
   You couldn’t keep it burning.
   You told her that you didn’t read
   And she should have
   Backed away then.
   But she didn't.
   Because you played accordion
   And dressed like Gatsby
   And she adored that for a good while.
   Until you told her that you despised the Rolling Stones
   And may have committed a ******.
   Even then she did not back away
   Because you bought her cigarettes
   And hit on other girls
   While she waited for you
   To give her the boot.

III. She liked your accent
   But it was just a sweet, endearing cover up
   For a mind as empty as a gypsy’s wallet
   And a rich man’s soul.

IV. You liked to give her drags
   Off your E-cigarette
   Because it tasted like cherry Pez
   And you wanted her to see
   Or rather, taste,
   The magic.
   Kissing you was like magic
   Until
   You moved on to an older broad.

V. Everytime
   Her lips met yours
   You tasted like heavy *****
   And she was too desperate and twisted
   To really give much of a ****.
   So she accepted it
   And moved on.
   Because you called her pretty
   And made out with her in the forest,
   Denim scratching denim,
   Hearts hurting hearts.

VI. She didn’t know you were homeless.
   Or, rather,
   Maybe she did
   But she didn’t accept it.
   Like an elderly doesn’t accept death at first
   And attempts to bargain.
You smelled horrible…
   She believed it to be a natural thing.
   But you were neglecting your hygiene and with that,
   Her as well.
   And the only thing you cared more for than ***
   Was the *** Pistols.

VII. You asked her to take off her glasses one day
   And with one look of her freckled,
   Pimple-shell ridden face,
   You told her she looked like Ramona Flowers
   And upon googling who that was,
   She nearly crapped herself in glee.
   She should have taken it as a sign
   When you began to find
   And tiny reason to touch her in as playful a way you could.
   Through tiny nudges
   She should have seen the possibility of romance blossoming.
   But you were 29
   And she, 17.
   Twelve years, practically
   Three Presidents
   Between the two of you.
   But your undivided ideals
   Brought you only closer together.
   You were an English education major,
   With a III mark after your name
   And Megaman on your walls.
   She took one look
   At the astounding possibilities,
   Drew a breath and fell in love with
Every little thing about you.
Every single,
Unnoticeable thing about you,
From the scar
Stretching down your spine
To the scruff on your chin…
She fell
Deeper in love with you
Than she ever had before.
And she saw a dream,
A future,
That came in on a hot summer day
With Taco Bell
And destiny.

The nights have become the most difficult
(Never sleep again, never rest again)
To manage.
Deeper, dreadfully
I soar into what I do not believe,
Into a pain much too real
And much more haunting
Than I have ever experienced.
The ghosts are back, Stephen,
They have returned to become the captain
Of my being,
To lust and breed and **** again.
I feign interest
And parry their blows back
Though my defenses are falling
And the blanket on my bed
Is never,
(Never sleep, never lay)
Ever quite long enough to cover me.
My worries today
Are an overheating boiler,
(COME QUICK I NEED HELP
I'M DYING HERE)
Pumping steam and pressure
Out of my jagged edges.

It is getting harder and harder to breathe.
Do you believe in God, Stephen?
I know Kubrick called you and asked the same
Many years before my birth,
But today I need your answer more than ever,
In that my every move seems to propel me
Into many-a-numbered
Ceiling and wall traps
And I am being crushed,
(Never sleep, never rest)
Soiled and trampled at the hand of fate.
I once thought myself too intelligent to believe,
But now I need a higher faith
If only to know that darkness is never truly darkness
And the candles I have left burning in my body
Will never be blown out.

Did you really see that boy,
That childhood friend of yours
Struck down by a train
In your ever so tender youth?
Was his blood and brain matter
What came to you in your darkest hour
As you wrote about presidential suites
And Danny Torrance seeing reverse ******
Played out in front of him for eternity?
Is ****** played out for eternity in your mind,
Too?
(Do you Shine, Stephen?)

They taught us about you in school, Stephen.
They made you out to be a God in yourself,
A novel machine
Intent on overpowering the industry
For your own gain and prosperity.
But those who read you,
(Those who know, those who feel)
Know you as a human.
You spirit, you singer,
You light of my life,
(You twisted man, you monster, you seer of sights)
You have kept the world alive
With sparks and shines
Under eyelids
For decades.

Stephen, I have stuck my hand in the wasp nest again.
Bring me your salvation.
Bring me
(Your understanding, your writer-virtue.)

And so I write to you today,
A young girl of but 18
With her own Shine set to murderous visions
And Terrifying conundrums.
My ghosts follow swiftly in my foot trails
And your novels warm my lap as I try
(So hard, so)
Desperately
To hear your voice,
Bellowing with contempt,
Your tone so monotonous and
Matter of fact,
Even when speaking of such malicious things
I have to stop children from buying your movies at my job
Because I could get in trouble if they see
Jack Torrance kissing a decaying woman
Or Carrie being burned alive in her prayer closet.
(I could get in trouble with the law
If they see the truth you speak,
The tales of loss and preservation you weave.)

Because of you and the horror you have struck me with,
I leave the lights on.
I am fearful
(But so hopeful)
Within myself each day.

Because of you
I have seen men and women
Find peace
Within their own private Overlook Hotels
Housed deep and high
In the mountains of their own consciousness.
Because of you
I have found
(Breathe in, breathe out,
Nothing to see here)
Solace
In my self-contained
Madness.

I am nineteen
And sitting in an over-glorified sports bar,
Telling him about my ex
Who would sip from the Devil's cup
And pummel my face
When he tells me
"You are too young to have dealt with that."

And I almost cry.

Because having been involved
In some serious **** before my 18th birthday,
I am afraid to tell him
That I have seen my friends
In coffins with track marks kissing their veins
And truly guilty rapists walk free.
I am ashamed to say
That I know what it is like
To have a person say to me
With no concern, only disdain
"Are you going to calm down
Or do I have to call the police this time?"

I took Atticus Finch too seriously
When he said to put on your fellow man's shoes
And walk around in them.
I have been on first dates in mental hospitals
And I became addicted to nicotine
By tasting it on men's breath
And he would be appalled to find out
The real reasons
I don't drink.

In a world where a year ago
I had to ask to leave the room and ****
I am now in a world
Where I am condemned
For not knowing where I'm going yet
But I will be dammed
If I do not know
What you're allowed to gift someone
Who is in the hospital after a suicide attempt
Or drug overdose.

Books, but only ones with non-controversial themes,
Shoes, laces prohibited.

It seems to me that they know
That my connection to this earth
Has become so frail
That even a shoelace
Could sever it.

His eyes are as young as mine
But he is saying these things to me
With a cigarette in his hand
And the weight of sleepless nights on his shoulders.
And I want to tell him that pain isn't relative
And what hurt me
May **** him
But I will not burden him
With the knowledge
That life gets better
Because I know he is hard headed.

I wonder some nights
If a shoelace is all it would take for him, too

And I almost cry.

You used to make me nervous
And I liked that.

Now you make me nervous
And I want to die.

I felt his hands
Tremble across the small of my back
And I knew neither of us
Had a clue what we were doing.
But we did it with such a fit of glory
That none of that mattered anyway.

It occurred to me this morning
As I shuffled under the sheets of his skin
That if he was Fat Man,
I was Nagasaki
And if he was Little Boy
I was Hiroshima.

Because in the end
I will be the one with the disintegrated body
And deformed children of memories
And he will fly free,
The mushroom cloud of my soul's ambition
Billowing in the distance.

My favorite memories with you
Are by far the ones made
While dancing in your kitchen,
Sitting in silence in your room
With everyone else either at work or sleep.
I've longed for the calming ocean
To swallow me before
But never like this.

I'm only interesting
To men who want to discuss Kubrick
And **** after.
In a world where we expect our lovers
To pull themselves under the influence
And sodomized freely,
I expected mine to rise above
And he did.

I used to date a guy
Who ****** a lot of people out of a lot of things,
Who pretended to be an alcoholic
Just because he was lonely
And the AA people
Had voices that spoke to him,
Voices that weren't in his head.

In Alcoholics Anonymous,
They have a saying that
"Fear" only stands for
"**** Everything And Run."
This is a saying
I wish that I knew
When all those tacky neckties were holding me back.

So it's needless to say
That I didn't have the wise words
Of AA on my mind
As I studied the Big Book on my own.
Instead I marched into his mind
And flushed his month's "sobriety" token
Down his mental *******.

Because sobriety doesn't mean  
Stealing a bottle of wine from Jewel
And finishing it off yourself.

And I was used to getting lied to,
But I felt bad for those poor AA guys,
Listening to his ramblings on a girl
Who loved him
And wanted him to change
When in reality
She just wanted the lies to stop.

They should have given that sobriety token
To a man who earned it.

Give your tokens
To those who deserve them.
Do not put your pennies in a piggy bank
That only siphons down a gutter
In the end.

I know I've been sent before
To scream and proclaim my innocence
But I've always been the one
Who people turn to
When they don't know where they are.
I'll press my hands against the wall
You've built around your voice
And I'll tear it down gently
If you'll allow it.
I've always been an expected saviour,
But you're the kind of person
I wouldn't mind saving once in a while.
I'll never learn to accept
Your humble praise even though I know
Just that will number my days.
I'm not a peacock,
But I'd like to believe that in the beginning
And even now
I had something beautiful
That benefited you in some way.

I get easily annoyed,
Being the only sober person along
On this tirade
Of ******* kisses
And malformed care.
I spend my time easily convincing myself
That the only way I will believe he loves me
Is if he splits his bleeding heart
Over my chalice
When they display my body to him
At the morgue,
Toe tag so lifeless against my sole.
I think of my body not as a temple
But a bear trap,
Sprung or in the process of springing,
His ankle twisted in it's teeth.
We walked into this together
Knowing each others baggage
But suspecting there to be hidden compartments.
With ease
I compartmentalize my anguish
And move one,
My emotions just a simplicity
Too enticing in their entirety
To be dealt with accordingly.
I have brought myself to believe that he loves me
But only in his frontal lobe,
My life and personality
Being at the root of who he is today.
I say ******* kisses because he is addicting
But I say ******* kisses because
He is deadly.

Shortly after the school systems began defecating on the dreams of my generation,
We found different outlets
Through which we could bring our loathing to a head.
My generation now writes poetry and
Finds solace in video games we can beat
In lives we can't seem to live the right way.

It's funny to me that The Legend of Zelda,
When completed,
Tells you that "You are great!"
While your teacher berates you for being sub-par
Though you tried your damnedest
To please them through drafts and drafts
And drafts of work
Spat out at 4am because
There are more important things to deal with
In regular waking hours,
In regular waking life.

They tell us that we have failed
Because we ****** up in one class,
A single credit,
A single number on a sheet of paper
That tries to measure us
When we can't even attempt to do the same.
They tell us we have failed
Because we do not look good on file
And apparently we do not look good
Walking down the street
With ****** eyes and baggy sweaters,
The only clean clothes we own
Because the system has ****** us clean of time
To do much else than
Study, study, STUDY our **** lives away.

This is atrocious.
When a young boy feels more accomplished
Beating Pokemon
Than he does when he writes a stellar paper,
The best he can pen
Only to be told he has a lot more work to do
And that the paper
"Is good...
But it needs work."

The culture of my generation does not discriminate.
It does not tell us that we have more work to do.
Instead, it tells us that "we are great" and
It gives us a restart screen when we **** up beyond repair.
It does not tell us we have failed,
Instead offers us a kind
"Try again?"

It is sad
When the voice over of a video game
Offers more kindness
Than our instructors and parents
Combined.

School should not send us home, wanting to **** ourselves.
The system should not make a pen cap,
A pair of underpants, a simple metal bookmark
A weapon
In the hands of the human entity of depression.

We will not be marked suicide risks.
As long as we keep getting our restart screens and
Compliments from bits,
We will triumph.
We will be the heroes of our generation
As long as we keep getting the chance.

One day, when all the suffering is over
And we have escaped this war-torn soul of "The Caring Community,"
Maybe those words will extend from an NES and find their way
Into the mouth of a boyfriend, girlfriend,
Wife, husband, friend, professor...

Someday, we will hear the words and we will truly believe them.

"You are great!"

Maybe not today...

But someday.

Soon.

I let you step all over me.
And I let you **** on my authority,
But I guess it's just my place.
What ever happened to earning the key?
Now I'll never escape this insanity
But I deserve it.
Because I ***** about the politics
And fight harder even though I've got the world licked
But I'm a street fighter in an arcade game
Playing the same jukebox melody
That annoys you the the point of suicidal tendencies.
I'm the chick in the corner shooting down advances
Because the boys have never read Palahniuk.
I'm a ******* waste.
And what's with all the haste
If I'm going nowhere?
It's such a shame.
I was on top of my whole world.
Now I'm throwing drinks in the face of life
But ignorant moves like that won't end the strife I feel.
But I tell you, I'm just like you.
Trying again and again though I **** up each time
And it's true
That I don't know where I'm going but
At least I'm on my way.
And I'm gonna stay
In the hell I've built inside this bed tonight.

A man at my local zoo
Once showed me how snake venom
Effected human blood.
While dripping a drop of the acrid mess with one hand,
He held a small container of life in the other
And with a drop and a swirl of his wrist,
The blood was coagulated
And obviously unable to flow.
In that moment I knew
That love
Was the venom
And I
Was the blood,
Slowly congealing and
Falling at my only purpose:
Staying alive.

I kept poems
Hidden in the darkest corners of our house
So that he would not find them.
While in bed
I would look to his resting tomb of a body
And wish that he understood.

Three little kittens
Lost their mittens
But I'm the only one
Hanging high and dry,
Run up a flag pole
For those I despise
To see my bloomers.

People are going to walk away from you
And some are going to run,
But you will always be able to measure your worth
In the amount of steps it takes them
To leave you.

I would ****** my arm
Above the water's edge
If only I could be certain
That you would save me.

We crashed into this world
Punching and Kicking,
A promise and a fortune clenched hard
Between our teeth.
I've been a sinner and a beast before,
A lost meaning in a world full of lies
And policy haters,
A ****** for experience
With a blood lust for love and life.
I've never been one
To try new things
But I've found comfort in those
You've brought to me.
Within all the lies and misfortune,
The world seems brighter through your eyes
And I thank god every day I awaken
That there are people like you alive.

What was the point
In idolizing and utilizing my resources
Without truly taking or replacing
Anything within my being?
With what anomaly's prejudice
Did you plan to take me down?
It's like you're Little Mac
And I'm Glass Joe,
Throwing punches even though
They don't connect.
You overpower me in so many ways
But back away before credit is due.

I would call you humble,
But in the end I'm still a ****;
A slit in a gown clean up to the hip...
And you're a dancer,
A ******* epiphany
Sweeping across the room.

My teddy bear is dying.
It cannot see the light.
My teddy bear is dying,
But it's trying to fight.

My teddy bear is burning
As it is held over the lit stove.
My teddy bear is burning
And I have not been told.

My teddy bear is drowning;
Its polyester is soaked with sea.
My teddy bear is dying
And it cannot see me.

It cannot see me as I cry
Praying to God it will not die...
But as it drowns, it will not see
That with it, my childhood is dying in me.

My teddy bear is dying...
Someone?
Pull it up from the sea
And please save me.

When you kiss him,
You taste Blistex.
A million drops of envy
Glistening in the summer light.
You taste his cigarettes
And girls in cotton,
Polka-spotted dresses.
You taste the fractured spine
And shattered mirror
In his skull.
You taste Incubus
And Brand New;
Music you aren’t into
But for a while,
Pretended to be.
You taste his torment,
Years of the abuse
He suffered
At the hand of the infamous innocence-taker.
The brown, caramelized
Hand of fate
Reaching down to wring the neck of justice
And all that is right.
You taste the hypocrisy;
How he tells you that he loves you
And then takes photos of another girl
In her bra.
You taste David Fincher.
Fight Club, Zodiac,
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,
All coming to a head
To come and strangle you.
When you kiss him,
The fairy tales are gone.
All that’s left…
Is the taste of Blistex.

I was told today
That my life choices
Offend some.
Offend,
The same word my editor used against me
As a precaution
When I told her
That I wanted to write an opinion article
About why Mark David Chapman
Should be released from prison.
I was warned that I would offend some readers,
And that was to be expected.
After all,
It was an opinion piece.

But today I was told
That some of my lifestyle choices offend
And I couldn't help but to ask:
"Which ones?"

At which point this woman lost her **** on me.
"How can you possibly be having relations with a man
So much older than you?
Isn't he graying?
Isn't he...
More mature, intelligent than
You?"

And I felt my world implode.
This woman, this foul, wretched beast with ****
Was openly denouncing
Everything I had built myself on over the last year.
And I could tell this woman
Went home to a white picket fence and
Screaming, spoiled, ******* kids,
And a husband who beat her ***
But was at least in her age range
Every night.

And I seethed.

And I sobbed.

With what wretchedness I took down the notes of the Earth today,
For it continued to turn
Even as I felt myself shattering inside.
How can one be so obsessed,
So offended by another's
Choice in love;
As if I even had a ******* choice
To begin with?

Who's to say
That even though I don't go home
With him every night,
That I don't go home to solace and peace
And all those other ******* things
I could never find
While making out with men my age
Who had whiskey and PBR on their breath
And strong, red cigarettes twisted in their knuckles?

Who is there to say
That love is not present
In our every move, our every caress
During the films we watch every time we see each other?
We watch The Shining and he holds me close
Because jump scares make me scream like a little *****.
We watch Moonrise Kingdom
And I can feel him kiss my cheek,
Making me blush
As he remarks on how we are so much like
Those children on the screen.
So in love.
So innocent.
So tender you could puke.

I have nightmares with every evening-fall
And he dies in each of them,
Making each night a new horror
That I have seen so many times.
I woke up screaming in his bed once
And he was clutching me from behind,
His arms coiling my midsection,
His panicked breath hot on my neck.

You don't cry over scaring someone
You do not love.

He loves video games,
Megaman's his favorite.
When he tells me the stories
Because the games are much too hard for me,
I see his brown, sparking eyes
Alight with a shine of wonder
And I know
He doesn't know that he's a hero in himself,
Much like his little blue childhood
Role model.

My picket fence
Could easily be sufficed
With the balcony of a small apartment
Or a suburban chain-link fence
So long as I know
That I am standing on or behind it
With him at my side.

Twelve years is not a death sentence in love,
Neither is being told that your choices are offensive.

There is a beauty that comes
With courting an older man.
Words flow easier,
Advice is given without judgement.
Arguments are had over
What the **** Alex Hirsch meant with that episode,
Rather than who the hell were you just texting?

I am young.
And I am in love,
The kind I would not mind
Inviting in for the rest of my days.

He is not graying.
He is not a monster.

He is my friend,
My lover,
My partner in crime,
The man I make watch too many Stanley Kubrick and Wes Anderson movies,
My darling,
My sweetheart,
And the light of my life.

I couldn't care less if that offends you.

Dearest,
Killing yourself would be easy
But missing out on the next Stephen King novel would not.
Imagine the ******* you'd never have,
And the video games you'd never play.
They just put Megaman in the new Super Smash,
So he may be getting a new game soon.
Think of how many viewings of Back to the Future
You'll miss out on,
The indie concerts you'll never attend.
I want you to picture your perfect, glowing effigy of manhood
And now I want you to see him
Caressing your cheek
And pressing his lips all down your spine
Because this time two years ago
I wanted to be in a hole
With maggots eating my skin
And now it is lit on fire every night
By his touch.

Don't think of your family,
Your friends,
Think of yourself.
Be as selfish as a member of AA
And as resilient as one, too.
For I have felt the hot breath of depressive temptation
And anxiety bubbling in my tendons
But I overcame.
And even if no one else says it to you today,
I believe in you.

Think of all those cups of coffee with cigarettes
You'll be missing out on
And you'll never get to read the sequel to Fight Club
That's coming out soon.
Remember the book stores you'll never smell
And all the record shops
You'll never get to laugh at hipsters in.

Breathe and keep breathing
And I swear you will live
And find beauty.

I am being devoured from within
In the most whimsical way.
It is with ease I feel it to say
That an obese leg amputee
Is standing on my chest
In their single high-heeled shoe.
I am being devoured from within.

I need a cigarette.
Because the word "okay"
Has become my safe haven.
For I am all right
Though I'm drowning
In skepticism inside.
I need a cigarette.

I am a toddler's tantrum.
My innards have been twisted in knots
Not even Maniac Magee could untie
For the promise of all the pizza in the world.
I am a toddler's tantrum.

I am an anxiety and not much more.

Pamela, I suppose,
Has taken one too many lines
And has given birth to a child
With a few extra mental arms and legs.
Green trees and
Vietnamese agent orange
Fell into her lungs a bit early
As she painted her portraits
And found her ideal of love in mine.
Women, I’ve found,
Have quite the strange way
Of making change.
We can’t all be  Elizabeth Stantons
And Sylvia Plaths.
We can’t all be the bra-burners,
The Vietnam-Veteran spitters
That this generation of tetosterone-enticers
Has emerged from.
Pamela, like so many other long-haired,
Nail-painted beauties before her,
Lost herself in an opus of *******
And promiscuity
That brought her down
To a level terribly under
Those of substantial criminals.
As Burgess wrote, “You were not
Put on this Earth just
To get in touch
With God.”
Pamela, I suppose,
Failed at just the same,
Became a Russian spy
And illuminated a flame of displeasing energy
In the heart of my breathless being.

I see a lot of myself in you, friend.
Where your scars lay,
I have glittering embers coursing through my veins
And I feel the same about poetry.

This is our challenge.
This is what we were made for.

Yes, you and I may delve deeper into the darkness than the light,
But we are phenomenal at our craft.

Your bio searches into the metaphorical implications
Of slicing butterflies that stand for our love
And nothing has ever sliced me deeper,
Because it is that kind of thing
That brings me back into the reality of my being.
Every drag of the cigarette
Takes away a second with my children,
A minute with my lover
And that is so scary.

With just your biography,
An explanation of something a thousand men, women, humans have done,
You have touched me in a more profound way
Than I have ever previously experienced on this site.

You and I,
We've got to turn that burning darkness in our synapses
Into gold.

I'll let you take pictures of other girls in their bras
And I'll never quite get over it.
And I'll let you sleep all through the night
And I won't say a word when I'm feeling left out.
But I'll save all those rocks in a little purple
Crown Royal bag on a tack in my room.
And I'll throw those rocks at you when push comes to shove.
But I won't tell you how I'm feeling, I won't
Let you know how I've been doing
Because I'm your little princess and you
Expect me to be happy
But I'm not.
I always order too much
Food to handle and I
Pay for movies with a gun
Stuck in my back because I'll never watch them
But isn't it nice to think that I'll have a way
To stay sane in the case of a catastrophe?
Isn't it nice to say that I'll be able to
Mask my self indulgence in
Cigarette smoke and bad puns?
I hate myself, I hate myself,
I hate myself for engulfing myself in this load of *******
But I didn't ask to be born.
If I had it my way I would have been a wasted mess in a ******,
A wasted race in a piece of latex
Because I hate myself and that won't change.
I want to go to Chuck E Cheese
But I'm a hundred and twelve percent sure that
I won't fit the tubes.
I'm the lost cause of the century,
A piece lost in the puzzle.
The piece you dropped while making love
Underneath the covers
With that ***** you call a friend who's really just
Out for blood.
I want you to see, oh how I want you to see,
That you're a ******* and she's a ****
But you're building your castles and I'm just
Sending smallpox-ridden corpse heads over the fence.
I've never put my lips to the bottle because I'm tired
Of people using ales and hard ciders as excuses
Because we were all born once and we'll all die
But these people won't even let the most solemn of us
Dream.
Why can't you let the solemn ones sleep?
I've gotten older and I long for deeper things
But I'm a casket in the courtyard,
Not the body so much as the casing
Of a human bullet heading straight into your back.
I'm the whiskey in your glass, the nicotine of a cigarette,
So addicting but so remorseful.
I am the unwritten play,
Waiting for the day in which I'm published
But I'm ahead of my time and no one will do it.
But at least I'm in love with the best of the best
Because I know that at least if I **** up,
I'll still be loved deeper and more succulently than any of you losers.
I'm that geek who sits with a plate of food in front of them
But doesn't eat.
I don't care if my games don't come with the instruction manuals,
I'm all right with the value of being incomplete.
I'm intelligent because I see all these maddening things.
I'm the better person because I am walked on.
I am the queen of my own kingdom
And I'll have my king by my side through and through.

I am at a loss for words.
Why do I feel like a corpse
Day in, day out?
Today I am famished.
Not with a hunger to be satiated with thought
But with a candid urgency
And a hankering for vengeance.
I boil, I seeth.
I teeter on the brink.
I kiss with tongue
And spit out my entrails.
They say your ******* is just the end of your mouth,
But that's common sense.
Have you ever felt terror strike and shine
All down your spine?
Have you ever been unable to breathe?

Sometimes when it's cold outside
And you blow cigarette smoke from your mouth
You can't tell where the smoke ends
And your chilled breath begins.
This is what it's like to completely lose yourself.
Where do I begin and, more importantly,
Where do I end?

Am I just smoke on the end of your cigarette?
Or am I the glowing ember?