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.

It's been one of those days
Where I hope that you still stalk what I've written
So you may potentially see
That I'm starving for salvation.

Every minute
Of every day
I trudge on to make it to this moment:
His heartbeat in my ear,
My hand on his rounded hip,
Love in our hearts.

With whatever soundness of mind
I've got left
I will bind your pain
And level your being
So you may be whole again.

A child stolen
Beneath her mother's
Scornful eye,
A dying bride
Slicing her skin
On her wedding night.
I see with no eyes
And I taste with no tongue
The rapture of the absence of your love.

I awaken from nightmares  un-remembered,
I cross seven seas to find you wilting.
I offer you my breast
On which to lay your head
And when you do, I feel it:
The rapture of the absence of your love.

She curses your mother daily,
Your wife only an obstacle in her wake.
She bides her time,
Wastes her life,
A moment gone in a flutter
And an opportunity taken too late.
Divorce? But what of the children,
A million fireflies scorching the night.
A puff of smoke,
A clip of the wings,
Her dead seconds will never take flight.
Who is the bearer of bad news,
Who will alarm the saints?
Who now will fit her ashes in their gloves
In the rapture of the absence of your love?

In what lifetime was this fair?
A tragedy born on the edges of procrastination,
A love story taken up in the middle,
Strangers only reminders
Of you in past lives.
Hesitation,
The knife slick with blood,
The truth hidden in the liner notes,
Stuck pinned like a moth
In the rapture of your absent love.

There's no more story to tell,
What burned for six months
Was dead in six seconds.
A white shroud was laid over the memories,
A bouquet of lillies laid in their hands.
Graves dug sixteen feet deep,
Traditional overkill.
What then do we make of the rubble,
The dirt left from the hole?
The woman who was shoved, shoved, shoved
Into the recesses of your mind,
Into the rapture of the absence of your love?

1.
I have been told
That I am too pretty to smoke.
I did not understand what he meant by this
Because I knew plenty of beautiful girls who smoked
And their boyfriends did not comment
On their vices, instead, only on their virtues.
Then I understood
That he was remarking on my insides-
My lungs and my horribly scarred soul.

2.
I didn't know anything about Batman.
I asked him about Bruce Wayne once
And was called a ******* idiot.
Now Batman scares me
And makes my stomach twinge
Because I feel guilty
For not knowing who he was,
I am a ******* idiot.

3.
Your mother loved Reagan
And I told her that he was
A dishonest, morally twisted pig
Who sat back
While thousands of Americans
Succumbed to a disease
Who's name was whispered
On the winds of her generation.
I don't think your mother likes me much anymore.
I think she may get in our way later on.
I wish she and I
Didn't care so much about Ronald Reagan.

4.
You told me about Joy Division
And I thought it was beautiful
That Ian Curtis hung himself in his kitchen
for his wife to find
And later had the words
"Love will tear us apart"
Inscribed on his headstone.
You called me cryptic
And then assaulted me in the night.
You made me want to die
So I could write "love will tear us apart"
On my own headstone.

5.
He asked for **** photos
And I told him no.
Upon which I was called a ****
And demeaned during intimacy
From then on.
He taught me that virgins could be *****
And now I am the ******
Time has made into the ****
It has ****** time and again.

6.
He called Wes Anderson films "hipster garbage"
And told me instead to watch things
Like Reservoir Dogs and South Park.
A year later, I only know not to tip
And how to be an *******.

7.
You told me to grow my hair out
Because a girl with short hair
Was a lesbian and you told me
You didn't want others to think
That you were going with a lesbian.
But in the end you still pulled it
With regular fierceness
And I was too much of a coward
To tell you to eat ****.

I guess I'm just going to have to hide under my desk
Because every word, every second with you is like a
Nuclear explosion in my eyes.
They taught me to cover my face and neck
But not my heart
From evil weapons like you.
Burn another cigarette hole
Through my lungs
And hang me up to dry.
I can let you destroy everything
Cause I know you'll feel better
And destroying is easier than building
In a world where
I can't have anything nice and remarkable.
I'm dying alone in a classroom
Full of kids that understand
Until words like "alcoholic" come into play.
I know they care
But I know they don't.
Not enough to try to aid
In my recovery from these scars.
I've been called a *****
Because I like my friends as men
But that's simply because they seem to understand
A lot better than these ***** faced hoes I get
To try to solve my problems.
They sit in front of desks and ask me if I've done bad
And I can't help but to say "yes"
Even though I've done all I can.
I'm going to sink into oblivion
As I watch the lights flash and take over my thinking.
Anything is better than thinking
At this point.

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 promise
That I will not notice
The little things about you.

Like the way your lips curl
When you impersonate someone
With an English accent;
Or the way you hold your glass
Not like a forty ounce
But like a hand.

I promise that I will take your kisses
As what they are:
Merely stone-faced
Applications of misplaced subterfuge.

I will make my sufferings my own in you.
I will bear my cross and carry onward,
A gaunt figure in your otherwise electric life.

I am a sallow husk
And you are the sun,
My jaundiced being yearns for you
But only through artificial means.

I am the sociopath
Who writes you letters
In coded tongues
That the New York Times
Will ask for help deciphering.

I will ask you for your love
In the fleeting moments of the morning,
The brightness in your eyes finally aflame
And you will give it to me
But take it back when the Earth rotates once more.

I was only a soft experience,
Pounding on an anvil,
Ironing out my life.
And you were quite unshaven;
But you had a quiet disposition
That made me immediately
Go weak in the knees.

And I let you take me down
And breathe into me a frown,
A permanent elegy of light.
My darling, you were the only thing
That I was willing to hold on,
The only thing I wanted to wrap my arms around at night.

Loving you is the only thing that makes sense,
The only thing that keeps me breathing so deep.
And how can I repay you?
How can I ever thank you enough
For loving me in spite of the danger?

In a world of clasped hands
Please be the pair
That opens to me.

He saw you vulnerable,
Bleeding from the inside,
He saw your purple stomach and
Pressed his knuckles to it.
He is a narcissist.
He took advantage of you
In every human way.
He set no bar.
He is not the way to love.

Take down the altar.
Cease your worship of demons.

You used to make me nervous
And I liked that.

Now you make me nervous
And I want to die.

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.

When calls come in the middle of the night
I should know by now to expect them to be
Either ****** invitations
Or suicide threats.

Blunt my sense of mischief
With your Christ figure mentalities
And I will caress the concaves of your body
With my Satanic, forked tongue.

You are a mystery,
Twisted into blue veins
And around my left ring finger.
I am solemn,
An undisturbed rambling
From your selfish heart.

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.

Someday you will die
And leave a scar the length of my patience
On my psyche.
Someday you'll be rotting
With worms eating your substance
And I will be just as dead on the surface.
But there's nothing I can do
To stop the circle of life.
I could have treated you better
But I also could have treated myself as though I was worth something.
So I'm going to end up wasting a lot of things
Like food when there are starving kids I can't see
Across the universe.
I have dreams constantly
Where you're suffering
And I can stop it
But no one will listen to me
And I know that's a reflection of my real life.

How old were you
When you realized
That your friends
Were slowly disappearing?
Waxing,
Tracing the moon across their fingertips
As they dissolved into stardust?

I am twenty one years old
And I am the loneliest
I have ever been.

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.

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.

Tonight
I know for **** sure
That I won't sleep well.
I'll be too busy,
Wrapped within my inhibitions,
Pondering the ******-social ramifications
Of telling you
To *******.

Because in the end,
I know we're all just cosmic play things to God,
But why the **** did you get to be Legos to Him
While I got stuck
Being some Barbie,
Some Malibu Stacy doll?
Why did you get so many possibilities,
So many complicated pieces
While I got a primitive set of dainty high heels
To run the world from?

A nihilist will tell you
That suicidal thoughts
Are not bad,
More of a comfort actually.
Because as long as deep down,
You know you don't have the ***** for it,
You can use those thoughts
As a plan to run.
It's easy to deal with what's in front of you
When you have a ******* escape route.

Always have that escape route ready,
But never use it.
I promise
That your heart will feel lighter
And your soul
Just a smidgen freer.

My only fear
Is that I will spend every night
Sobbing in your arms
To make up for all the times
Everyone else
Left me to fend for myself.

When the police came to get me
There was no force, but tons of crying.
If you've ever felt what I felt in that moment,
I hope that you had the sense
To put a bullet in your head.
Six kilometers East and another seven South
A baby no one loved was being born
And a young woman's innocence was being stolen
Through a paraphysical form of ****.
I stood shrieking on the corner,
Mouth agape.
And I got in my car that night
And I took nothing but right turns
All the way to the nowhere I was inching towards,
Trying to see if that myth about the world being flat
Was true.
I wanted only to see for myself
That driving a long enough distance from home
Would eventually drive me over the edge.

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.

Sometimes I feel as though
I'm the poker hand
You should fave folded
But instead, held.

I wish I could tell you
That I have fallen in love
With warmth seeping from my pores and pain
Departing from my body,
But I fell in love
With thumbs pressed into my eye sockets
And a noose around my neck.

I wish I could say these things
Without implying that I fell in love
With an obligation
But there are only so many defensive words
When your walls have fallen so far.

I live for the nights
That tread lightly into the hours of day:

Talking to you about anything
Is like mind-*******,
And not in the David Lynch way.

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

I think of suicide
In the way a small child thinks
Of honey stuck to their chin;
Something sweet and saved for later.
Your eyes as you ponder me
Are still like tea
Steeped from dogends in puddles,
Formative yet empty.
Our time on this plane
Fizzled and sparked,
Lightning in a bottle
Shaken by our unborn child.
I laid myself to rest
Amongst the fresh March brambles
And forgot to craft a tombstone.

A spirit lost amongst
Corpses fetid and sweet,
A gunshot sprayed across the countryside;
Here for a second,
The scent of snuffed embers
Alive in the night.
We sent you to sea
In a casket wreathed in gold
And I broke my fingers in the hinges
Trying to keep you to myself.

If I were to die,
The universe would unravel
And stars would pour from my veins;

At least to somebody.

Number one
Smelled of Marc Jacob's cologne from Kohls
And he tasted like the cigarettes he never smoked.

Number two
Smelled of alcohol,
Tasted like alcohol.
**** Everything and Run.

Number three
Smelled like home
And tasted like fleeing dreams.

I'll take
Contestant number three.
**** Everything
And Run with me.

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.

On the first day, I'll look to you
And see the light of the Earth
Alive in everything you do.
And on the second day,
I'll create my own world of seclusion
Away from all of your ignorance.
But they can't all be ballads
Because where would suffering
Finally find its home?

On the third day, I'll discover
Folk music and rhyme.
I'll waste my time
Seeing what isn't there,
The ideals I've made my shelter.
On the forth day
I'll hold you in my arms,
Kiss you deeper than I ever have.
Force you into things you don't understand.
Because you're like a thirty-something year old ******,
Thinking a metal underwire is a pack of smokes.
But they can't all be ballads,
They can't all be the same.
If they were,
None of us would be in possession of our names.

On the fifth day,
I'll leave you after finding discontentment
Over how you find upset in unfamiliar places
And make minnows into whales.
On the sixth day, I'll regret it
But have nothing left to say...

They can't all be ballads anyway.

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?

You surf on the open waves of my tyrant mind,
A nymph at play on my heart strings
Plucking away your song of healing.
I am a just-born child in your arms
As you rock me and sing to me
Even though we're both adults;
For the fear and hatred never escaped my soul
And I still crave the touch
Of your figure as I lie awake at night, cold
And alone.
I can still feel your hands on my skin tonight
Though my love,
You are miles away.
With what anguish I still yearn for your embrace,
Your calming tone.
Tonight I lie in wait
For my prince to return home.

This morning I was looking at time capsules on Amazon
Because I thought it would be cool
To bury some stuff I love
So I could remember myself

And tonight I want to die in such a way
That I am collapsible,
Able to fit in your pocket,
Behind a locked bathroom door so strong
That all these men around me
Have to team up to break it down
Because I want others
To remember *me.

Freshmen year
I was involved in a play
About women in the 1920's
Who were paid to paint watch dial numbers
And hands
With green-glowing,
Radioactive paint.
The point of doing this
Being so soldiers could see their watches at night
Without giving away their position.
However,
After years of exposure to the radium,
The women themselves began glowing
And forming cancers in the deepest recesses
Of their young and tender bodies.

Before the horrors began,
The women had taken a trip to the beach
Where they ate sandwiches
And talked about the things that shined
In their lives.
And between the Rudolph Valentino's
And pearl necklaces
In the windows of department stores,
I believe they could also list you
Among the beautiful things they had
In spite of all the danger.

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.

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.

My mind is a battlefield;
An ashen Earth clawed away
By birds only seeking their freedom
Who damage so much in the process.

Great valor, hear my cry
That I may slay my demons and reconstitute my trials
Because this mind is a beautiful one
Yet ever so clouded and coiffed at the edges.

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 couldn't trick myself into loving you,
Just as I couldn't bear
To bring rhyme or reason to my writings.
Trochees and caresses
Are for *******
Who don't know how to deal
With chaos and rejection.

It's one in the morning
And I'm in the bathroom contemplating
The social repercussions
Of grabbing you by the shirt
And punching you
With Tyler Durden might.

It's one in the morning
And I'm thinking about
Making love to you
Because you're drunk
And you won't remember it the next morning;
Because you know how badly
I wish people couldn't remember
My mistakes.

And I would just like to assume
That no matter the age difference between the parents,
My children be blessed with ones who love and cherish;
Rather than ones who are close in experience,
Who command the household like tyrants
And make their children bleed at the seams.

I would just like to know that through the flower of my love
A courageous seed may be planted,
One that will outwit the darkness
And fight on to a world of light in which
Love is simply that and
Assumptions are kept in the minds of tyrants.

He looked me in the eyes
The other summer night
And told me of the abominations men of the world
Impose on women of the world
As if I didn't know them.
As if I weren't the ******
That time had ****** so,
So,
So ******* many times.
He told me I would never find a man
Who would treat me better than he.
But I found my hero
Without having to run away with Proud Mary.

And I may have found him
A midst empty days
And a longing to fill a chasm I found deep within myself,
But I found him nonetheless.
And as I sit here,
Awake for days and
Sick,
I hear his words echo
Like back blows
Administered
To the lungs of a Cystic Fibrosis patient.

He told me men on Craigslist
Look for women to ****
And women call their vaginas "oceans"
To try to pick up men.

But my love wants only a partner
To participate in a round of Super Smash Bros. with.