*** sickens me as an artifact,
A cruel twisting of the womb;
An androgynous vein
Bursting out of a wealth of shame.

They tell you not to soak
A new tattoo for two weeks time
But these wounds, these ethereal,
Spiritual tattoos of mine
Have been festering under water
For a lifetime.

If only the ink
Of the pen
Of my past
Could just bleed

Out.

I can hear them now,
"Get off me, get off me,
Poor creature, poor creature,"
I have arrived at an impasse.
In what kind of world
Will justice be served
Based on the hem of my skirt;
In what world be it served,
Based on the drink in my cup?
I speak not on the forked tongue
Of a miserly bedfellow,
But on the wings of a **** moth,
Gorgeous and pale
And fragile and small.

I may be a **** moth,
But they named a war plane after me
For a **** good reason.

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

I brought you a daisy
Because that was the name of my dog
And one of my favorite literary characters.
I came up, let the light shine in
And now you're alone.
I wore my necktie made of rope;
I was ready to die,
But not ready to choke.
And when they found you in that hotel room
I flashed back to the days I spent
Locked away with the speech team
In rooms very similar to the one
Your life escaped you in.
Would holding my hand have made it easier?
If I would have talked to you more often
Would your quality of living been better?
I do not condemn you for your actions,
For I am surprised that I survived my own turmoil,
Grazing through with nothing but a nicotine addiction
And the tendency to lay awake
When sleeping in someone else's bed.  
I am ashamed to say
That I was not by your side for your departing lessons.
Would it have made it easier if I had talked more?
If instead of repressing my worlds
I had shared them with you?
It was easy to assume that you didn't care much for me
Because you moved far away and no one knew why.
No one knew about the twenty-six year old man
Beating and threatening your gorgeous existence.
Not one of us could have come to know
The parasite growing in your guts and veins.
I remember the day when we were five,
You splashed my outfit with dark and sticky mud
And I told you that I hoped you died...
Our mothers laughed.
But the other day I saw your mother weep because my prophecy
Had come true.
The only movie I have ever seen
Depict eye make up melting accurately was the movie that played
For me as I knelt at your casket.
So I brought you a Daisy
Because there was a Rosary in your hand
I didn't want to taint.
And I prayed to the God I did not care for in that moment
That you would make it to where ever you were going
Safely at least.

I still want to hold your hand.

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.

I swear we were loosing it.
How can you expect a regular man
To last longer than a week
Alone
On an island of sanity
Amid an ocean or insanity?
How could you expect me to zip my mouth up
Like a woman's dress
And keep calm about my situation?
How could you let me count off the numbers
Only to put them back once again?
How could you think
That white walls
And impertinent lies
Could mask the suffering fear
Swelling inside of me?
How could you touch me
With those cold unfeeling hands
As my friends washed up on the shore
More dead than they ever could have been?
How could you lay me out in the sun,
Watch crimes unfold
While you still expected me to be a regular man once home?
In that moment
With the knife lingering over my scalp,
I made a decision to get the Hell out
And I have no regrets regarding it.
You can chase me down:
Scream at me,
Rap your knuckles at my door.
I'll tell you to put it where the sun don't shine
Along with a dishonorable Section 8 discharge
And the little bits of my decrepit sanity.

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 was not the one who lost your ******* daughters shoes.
I did not force you
To have *** with a man
Who you viewed as a mistake in the first place;
I did not force you to **** him,
Sans ******
And bring me into the world.

***** do not know what they are racing to
And if they did,
I can assure you that no one,
No one
Would be here today.

I did not tie your tubes
And force you to raise three children
When you are still a child yourself,
Unaware of the grace of JFK
And knowledge of basic admiration
That fuels the care of this world.

I did not make you become void and listless,
I did not make you my personal servant
Rather, you made me yours.
I did not ask for such torture as this,
Bleeding my veins through everything,
Loving me only when you are out of smokes
And want a cigarette.

I did not ruin your life
And I did not waste my time
Trying to make you happy through these years.
I attempted to better myself
All the while looking at you for reference.

Do not blame me
And look at me as if I were a criminal
When I pack up my things
And run, run
Run the hell away from you.

Because I was not the one who ****** up in the first place.
I was not the one
Who lost your ******* daughters shoes.

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.