I've always written my best romantic poetry
When I was suffering
In one way or another.
Thank you
For taking the suffocating suffering
And hiding it under your pillow
While you hold me.

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.

You and I,
We've tried to be good.
The self flagellation we took part in
Has left whip marks on us
That will betray
Our forced smiles and forked tongues.
We will be better
This time.
Show me agony, yours, and I will show you mine.
Meanwhile we will make do
Until the pain is gone,
Until breath can come
Without gnashing and gasping.
Meanwhile we will trudge the canyons,
Kick against the snakes that lap at our heels.
Meanwhile we'll lie in the harsh landscape
And see, overhead, the geese we read about
A dozen Summers ago;
Watch them as they continue on.
Watch as they disappear over the horizon.
Watch as metaphor becomes reality.
Whoever you are now, whatever time has turned you into,
Let the canyon buckle beneath your feat.
Lay the whip down
And claim your place
In your chosen family of things.

It's my duty to finish
This book of love poetry
But it's so hard
To do that when all I think of
Is the contempt I breath
With every drag of life's cigarette.

People **** me off
And I'm scared of talking on the phone.
I could once run miles
But now I'm dying in the mines.
Ambition was my strong suit,
My scars were my weapons
But I let love in
And changed for the better.

What are you supposed to do
When you're good at writing about desecration
And you're suddenly placed in front of
A communion wafer?
What happens when
You're so distraught
You're reading the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book
Just to feel closer to God?

What is there to say
When you've gone off the deep end
So quietly that those who love you
Have got no ******* clue
That it ever really happened?

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.

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.

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.

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.

I took to you
With the agony of lost submissions
Hot on my tongue.
Years have passed
And time had taken its toll
But today I'm certain
That if you were an angel
I'd snort the dust from your wings.

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 saw this coming and bit my tongue.
Tyrants dance naked
In the pools of crimson they've spilled.
A mistress of forked tongue,
Scholar of vitriol,
What will I have left
When the tyrants see I'm not
Dead?

I've gone
From writing with flourish
To writing a novel
That only goes
"And then, and then, and then."

I've gone.

Black bats beat
Blast beats with black wings against a
Black moon.
I stare at the blood on my hands
In an effort to feel close to you.
I hold my scratched skin
To the florescents
And study the funeral card for the event
I never got to attend.
You and I were only carrion here,
Buzzards floating close enough to touch
Our pale eyelashes.
But you,
Sweet boy,
Quiet boy,
Secretive boy-
Were smart enough
And strong enough
To leave.

It's always been funny to me
How parents are always quick to blame you
For their  diminished bank accounts
And stretch-marked thighs.

As if you asked to be a torn ******
On a drunken night.
As if you asked God
To **** you out onto this earth.

I have loved and
I have lost and
I've gone to church,
Never bore the cross
But I'm able enough to see
When I'm not welcome.

And I'm not welcome here.

We see our fathers as Gods,
Our mothers as tourniquets
Knotted at the scathings
Our Gods have given us.
Are we gifted or are we at fault?

I've never seen someone as sick
As you were in my arms the other night.
What kind of a mother
Acts as a monstrosity
When the chips are down
And the thermometer reads 105?
I thought for a long week
That I was gonna lose you
And I'm prone to panic
But I promise that
I'll be brave for both of us
If that's what you need.
And I'll give up smoking
And crying and sleeping
If it means you'll be all right again.

Today my feet feel lighter.
Lying through omission,
I relayed to you
That I believed death
To be a great anomaly;
A pleasure swirl of brain drugs,
Encapsulating one
In a solemn yet impeccable nirvana
Of their choosing.

My heaven smells like the hugs you get
From smoker's seventh sons.

My heaven tastes like the metallic urge
That burns in the back of your kiss.

I am untamed,
A sorcerer, and
A God in my own right.

The fig tree metaphor
Seems to gain much more meaning
The older I get.
I put a cigarette behind my ear today
And when I removed it to smoke
I realized that it was wet with the oil
From my scalp; I smoked it anyway.

Does smoking my ****** fluids
Make me seem a little more
Bukowski than normal?
Bob Dylan, the unwashed phenomenon
Of his day
Held no candle  (in my opinion)
To Phil Ochs
But here we are,
Marching on
Because the Times Are Changing.

Remember me
When the draft comes
And they forget your sunken eyes and sallow skin.
Remember me and how I said
That purple and yellow
Were my favorite colors.

I'm sickened by people my age
Who smoke but don't pay for their cigarettes
On their own accord.
What's the point
Of committing the only legal form of suicide
If your parents are paying for it?

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 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.

When you were a little boy
They would lay you to sleep
With small prayers and a leap of faith,
Your angel-blonde eyelashes barely touching
And you would stop breathing periodically,
Gasping into the void,
Creating sounds that would echo against the cacophonous
Tomb of your mind for the rest of your life.
I hear your screams reverberate
In every instance of a Swedish accent.
I guess you were lucky enough
To be pronounced Dead three times.

Of course you'd call it an ice skating accident;
Ever the man, ever the glowing effigy of strength,
How could you bring yourself to tell us how you'd been mangled,
Beaten so badly that your organs broke and bled,
Your ten year old knees
Kissing the carpet of your mother's living room
As you fell and died that first time?
You'd later tell stories about the progression of death,
Colors enrapturing you,
Everything dipped in blue.
There were levels to this,
You said,
And you'd stuck your skin into one that no mortal could have
And yet you returned to us.

Nothing about this poem
Is going to make you seem more evil
Than the vision you've already placed in people's minds.
Thin, pale hands tossing a severed pig's head into an audience,
Those same fingers tracing the path of a jagged bottle blade
Down your arm in a business motion;
Pelle, I'd write an ode to every scar on your arm
If I wasn't sure that you'd already done it.
A heart corpse painted as black as the inside of a closed casket,
Your closed casket,
What was it that ruined you?
What was the trigger that pulled itself
Besides the so obvious one?
A broken kid from a broken home,
What made you run so far away
Only to hide in the arms of those who
Let you parade your mental illness like a banner,
Let you wear your delusions like a cape around your neck?
Who let you climb to the roof
Just so they could cheer for you to jump
With your fantasies and shredded silk hair flying behind you
Before your bones crumbled against each other in skin
Too tender and frail to contain you?

When they talked about you in magazines
Writers were always lamenting the tragedy
Of your cut-glass jaw and your piercing eyes,
Masculine beauty of such a caliber
Wasted on a character so evil and vile
It might as well have blotted itself out against the sun.
What you thought you were
Doesn't define your worth.
You're so much more than a corpse on a bed,
A couple of necklaces made from your bones.
You are so much more than a voice that was
Throttled out of existence by its own hand,
So much more than a statement piece.

For years after your death
Your family would receive packages for you in the mail
From bookstores around the world,
Tomes of witchcraft and ancient magics,
Spells designed to enchant and bewitch,
Pelle, were you trying to necromance the Dead?
Were you trying to take the parts of you
That felt less than human out?

If I could talk to you,
If I could say one thing,
It would have been what I've told
A dozen friends who've jumped in front of trains,
Called me from mental hospitals,
Called me with guns and knives in their hands.
I wish I could have told you
To wait one more ******* day.
In one more ******* day your father would have called.
You might have had a ticket back home.
You might not have a strike through your name
On every online page referencing your work.

The screaming may have stopped,
The air raid sirens in your head might have dulled
To the point where you wouldn't have felt the need
To blow them away.

If you didn't feel human,
If you felt like this was all a dream and that you'd wake up soon,
Why are we still living in the remnants of your nightmare?

My life has become a countdown
Of moments I wish would end.
And soon I will be coming home
Not with a chip
But with the weight of the world of my shoulders.

Amen.

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.

When your life is measured in years and miles,
It is easy to bring yourself to spar with reality.

A brand new car will last you your entire life
If it is taken care of
And well-maintained.
A used one will net you ten years, tops.

This is why I am jealous of those
Who bide their time and
Make things used.

This is why I am ashamed that I am used.

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 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.

Mom's in the kitchen
Weeping openly over the loss of a human life
For the first time in who knows when.

A solitary friend comes to visit;
Someone caught in the crossfire day in and day out.

We are a ****** of manipulators,
Parents and children quickly working to out think each other
In a game each one of us will lose.

There is a tension here.
I refuse to take care of you.

Your bullet eating daughter,
Your easily impressed son,
We do not flourish here any longer.

A lady asked me today if I could give her a discount
On the **** she was buying
Because she had already spent so much at my establishment.
And I just nodded my head and ******* agreed
Even though inside I was screaming.
Because, *****, I didn't ask to save all those lives I did,
I didn't originally
Feel the need to talk the world out of suicide.
But I subscribed for the long run
And ******* myself over
Because I've got men grovelling at my feet
But they're all doped up on Xanax.
So take your ******* discount and
Shove it up your ***
Because you earned it.
But somehow I still haven't
Earned my day of peace.
Imagine if he was better at timing
And jumping?

They say that
Absence makes the heart grow stronger
But all its gotten me
Is an addiction to your scent
And an adamant responsibility
To be true.

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.

When I started working fifty hours a week minimum
At eighteen years of age
My father told me he was proud of me
For the first time.
What he didn't know
Was that I had been chasing my depression away
By masking it with exhaustion.
There have been times where I have worked thirteen hour days,
Four days in a row
Only to come home too exhausted to eat.

I consider this a triumph.

I spend my days off thinking too much.
I think about how easy it is to buy a gun in this state,
How I wish it was more difficult
If only to erase one more burden from my mind.
I spend a lot of time buying make up
That I seldom ever wear.
I read every single issue of The Walking Dead comics up to the newest one
In two days
Because my mind frightens me more than fiction.
I think a lot about leaving here;
Not in a way that would constitute a cry for help
But more in a way that sits in my belly
Like liquor on a cold day.
I feel the urge, it is there,
But I simply carry it with me.

I think of you
A moment,
A summon away
And I feel a trembling in my heart
Long displaced by misfortune.
Waiting may be synonymous with patience
But certainty not with love.

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.

At nineteen years old
I had to ask my coworker
What it meant to have someone
Stand at your wedding.
I have seen more overdoses,
More suicides,
More accidental shootings
Than I have seen lives created;
Lives joined.
I do not know what it means
To stand at someone's wedding
But I do know what it means to be a pallbearer
Because I remember the tears
In my father's eyes
When he laid his father to rest
Due to medicinal negligence.
I do not know
What exactly happens at a wedding
But I can tell you
What happens
When they find your best friend since kindergarten
Cold
In a hotel room miles away
With a needle in her arm,
I can tell you that we all hugged her mother
And smoked cigarettes
And wished that we could be spelling it
Heroine instead of
******
But the world doesn't work that way
And sometimes,
Most of the time,
When people ask you if you want some coke
They do not mean the soft drink
But sometimes the people I love
Accept it any way.

The candles on my birthday cake
Are a body count.

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.

Leave me
And you will find me
Awake until seven the next morning,
Scrawling haikus onto the wall
With my own blood.

With a voice as grainy as sand,
I was told by many a man
That love was a curse,
A soft Gypsy hand stroke on the cheek
Endured by the lonely
And accepted by fools.

In a world where he accepts me as his prodigy
Instead of his lover,
I live in a chasm of ignorance.
I look up to him as anything;
My hero,
My love,
My place of enchantment,
Though he looks upon himself
As nothing but a loser
And a failure.
In a life of looking up,
I've seen quite large men and women
Shrink when challenged
But I have yet to see him falter.

The other day I was called a *****
For loving the same man I have
For quite some time.

People are rather stupid
When you get down to it
And sometimes I feel as though
We are the island of sanity
Cast away
In a vast ocean of insanity.

Of course,
That last part
Could go both ways.
I am but a human
And your choices
Will seldom mirror mine.

No good art ever came from people
Who had the world's admiration hoisted
On their shoulders
And no great piece was ever penned by a human hand
While the creator was holding society's *****
Tightly in the other.

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.