lambskin cut the wrong way
to make the wolf more obvious

hanging from powerlines
floating, endlessly ******* floating
motion forced into reality
next to the wall I'm slumped on

when we see the blackboard
we get angry
we get queasy
we get sleepy

last night I had a dream of a car crash
hot steel and cold earth
******* upon collision

imitating sleep
hallucinating underwater
delusions of grandeur
fold into my trachea

at long last
the sun is born
at long last
we can last, again
at long last
we'll try to go to sleep, again, and again, and again

a pack of liars and thieves
you trust them all the same

unconditional

humans are by-products of a bygone era

the stage is set for a performance but the chairs do not contain people they contain mouths with knives for teeth and applause sealed with blood

the stage is set for me so I perform but I do nothing

the performance is intrinsic to the spectacle
do not tell the spectacle right from wrong
there is no registration, ever
but it will hurt you

rearrange your realities
alter your mentalities

**** yourself
you are in bloom this season
we can pick you when we want you

i am an orphan
until my organs function and my heart beats and my hands move correctly
i am surely made of glass, and through no fault or choosing of my own
have been abandoned by my own flesh and crumbling bones

i am a surrogate for someone else
i was never here

You won't see me on the
crisp autumn mornings or
the evenings, the sky filled with
smoke from the paper company's smokestacks

I am not a pedestrian
I am a civil servant
I am the voice of the wrong people who worship dismantled Gods

I am not a janitor
But I will clean up the mess you've made
My commitment may stand; I may be a low-life for the rest of it
but initially my heart, about to burst, was in the right place
Originally, I did this for the right reasons

I am not a flight attendant
Those who operate the vessel will soon find that I've left
Unfortunately they will find me hard to replace
But, I think, that's how this **** goes, sometimes at least

What we have found of each other
will **** all of us

These words come from a mouth that never closes
With thumbtacks for teeth
and a sandpaper tongue

The monsters we create are soon to pass
Old blame needs new hosts
Throw the baby out with the bathwater

I live in a room without walls
I share my home with total strangers

We are captives but we are floating in the water
I built a boat out of inconclusive arguments
and slept on the floor of the sea

Finally.

the autumn flowers were already in bloom
early this season
i admired the sight, but didn't care for the smell

and as i walked along the driveway i remembered something you said
last night, entirely out of context of course but you said that everything happens for a reason
and despite the angsty teenage stigma attached to that statement, it made me think
i hadn't qualified whether or not it was true yet
but i wanted to talk to you

like a spectral odyssey from kitchen to upstairs to the basement
all covered in blood, like individual grandfather clock pieces, dripping in perfect 4/4 time, on our ****** linoleum floor

don't worry about the mountaintops
don't worry about memorizing prayers
don't worry about the cheshire murders
don't worry about the economy
don't worry about voices
don't worry about the weather
don't worry about heaven
don't worry about hell
don't worry about ships
don't worry about haircuts
don't worry about fabric
you aren't here

Every time we went to the pool
You mocked the lifeguards
For their hair and the way they applied their sunscreen

I bet you thought that was funny
Until you drowned

Higher planes
Blood is boiling

Cities made of chalkboard scratchings
with mock airplane pilots and people sipping coffee
leaking with black ink

I try to exfoliate the earth so that I  may be released from her pores

if you've met god then you know satan and I don't know if you or I are the odd ones out

sentences that mean the same forwards and backwards

sentiments carved into cracked hulls
my neighbors died too early
my landlord doesn't like cigarettes

my landlord's heart is full of *******

preaching to a deaf congregation
the same outdated rhetoric
television too loud to hear it

the fingers on my left hand
grasped around someone else's today
but only for a little bit

I decided today that it would make it easier if I just ******* castrated myself and then cut off any limp remains of anything

it would be easier if ***-parts mattered less to you, for a forced congruency is to be established as fine, and the fact that you **** me you **** me you **** me it makes no difference

I have been ***** of my being by my being, and I will be ready shortly, once I figure out who I am for today.

compartmentalized in an overhead cabin
gestures of kindness
favors that only exist in the past tense
and lose meaning in the present

fell asleep in my seat
they locked me in

people with good intentions
are always the slowest to get the punchline

quick to point fingers
sitting in judgement

this is for dead cavalry
this is for fodder with no available cannon
this is for water underground

this is for children
this is for adults
this is for everyone

this is for those wounded
but weaving a web of past sorrows through their teardrops
this is for those on the ground
who will never hope to get up

forgotten winter clothes thrown to the side
a suitcase i was thinking you wouldn't be needing for much longer
you cooked dinner that night but it was tough for me to indulge in the idea of  you in my house

you know, my house
it took a while to get that way

it's hard to tell sometimes what place i'm in with you so
i figure second is the safest bet

finish line crossed
finally
over
done
completed

celebration
not warranted
but appreciated

christ almighty do you have to keep that **** on all night?
it kills my ears
it cracks my teeth
like twenty mouths open not in awe, but in disappointment

swallow your teeth but not your pride

exhaling smoke
i come to you

existence measured in evaporation
a small break in the page margin

whiskey and coffee on a cold night
makes my nasal cavities sting

but mostly it just makes me love you more

i remember all the pictures we took
how i made you come out of your shell
look at it differently
i would always say that to you

you've gone bad
you aren't ripe
you're starting to bruise easily
your blood won't clot
the same as it did the day before

i could hang one of your shirts from the highest tree
douse it in gasoline
strike a match
wrap your garments around my neck and hope for something

but **** will never change
just know how i loved you

in killing all the natives of what i
declared my
homeland
i felt
a lot better
about myself and
everyone else around me

i sat in the forest and tore myself apart
i threw myself a party and then i threw up my dinner
and then i spent the rest of the night in a bathroom i made

entering here, i have
realized that
never will i leave

i strung myself up by the throat between the trees at night
and hoisted myself to final mental victory
this is it
i've done it this time
this is it
and i am sure
there will be no more

welcome to my house
you can’t stay long and
stop moving around so much
it makes me uneasy

You have too many words on your geographic tongue
My heart is dancing in the rain with a
strange man with no ****** features

My umbilical cord was involuntarily cut

I never told them I wanted this body

I cannot move so instead I imitate who I think I am over and over again until the door opens

colonial hivemind
we are the active force
we are the agents
of our own pesticide

we are what's already been

dry heaving at lunchtime
pulse radiating
through every intact hull

fibers of final standing
remain, and will stay, and will stay, and will stay, at ease and incomplete

if I can't **** where I eat then I wouldn't be conditioned correctly
all of my archetypes are made of wicker
to burn easily and dissolve brain cells more quickly

closer, more palatable, one-sided hand-me-down closure
comes to me indirectly
and wanders back out to sea

my own anxious battle ship
stiffened with paranoia
jolted by nicotine-amphetamine shock and
with everyone accounted for and on board
drifts aimlessly out at night

but there is no battle to be fought
there is no war to win
there are no guns
or knives
or hand grenades

just me

i dragged this **** fifty miles across the border for this?
that hurts, it does, it really does

like a deep burning stabbing twisting the sort of thing

i lugged this all the way here for you
i got a flat on the side of the highway so i had to carry this to you

by hand
and you don't want it

donate your organs to me
mine make my **** smell funny

this morning i watched them build a sidewalk
this morning i wanted to take the train downtown
this morning i got hit by a car, twice
this morning i learned the difference between hot black tar and raw concrete

i don't know enough of gun powder and pressure points to stand here
there is no fabric to cover my burns any longer
i am starting to decay, like a fox in the woods

you let me inside you on your birthday
but you wouldn't let me blow out the candles afterwards
and that's fine because i knew that, if i had any semblance of a wish, quantified somewhere in my mind
that night it was fulfilled
in full

i ripped out all my stitches
and i bled on your doorstep
i wanted to prove to you that i have never been coward
that i am nothing less than what everyone expected
that i can live up to embellished standards
that i don't need fixing
that i don't cry in my sleep
that i don't look over my shoulder at least three times before i smoke a cigarette
that i am not becoming a creature of habit more and more every ******* day
that i wish i had no mirrors around here

note from the author:
i have always loathed myself
i can't stand who i am anymore
i am tired of changing
but i need to
i am tired of hospitals
and neutral colors
and pills
and names that i'll forget
i am tired of pretending to be a *******
and not even living up to that

you know i'm sorry
and you know i will be
for a long ******* time

i hope you know who you are
because i've been losing a lot of faith in myself lately
but i hope you know i wrote this to make myself feel better
because no one's hearing me

i hope you know exactly who i am

Sweet Mother Mary
Please throw me away
Heaven takes a toll
and I cannot pay

Sweet Mother Mary
Take me to your sky
Fill me with goodness
Then leave me to die

And what is this red
that stains my hands?
Will you cleanse me
and then leave me be?

Sweet Mother Mary
Keep me outside your heart
Reduce you to nothing
and pass away vicariously through me

I wear this mask
to see the world
Take in what I want
and then nothing more

Sweet Mother Mary
Knees covered in swollen stings
Please pray for them
Please

Oh, Mother we are not holy when we are here

Am I a part of this?
Tell me where to go

You have birthed the world
and you must end your creation
or give me a gun to stop myself

My skin peels back
Sooner forgetting later

I say what I must to appease those that speak in tongues only my mind can seem to process

Your message is precious and I value your time

You will never know what victory really is until you lose everything

implosion

if time bears no witness to what you have made it into
nobody can save you

i wore your grandfather’s favorite bathrobe
it fit loosely
turned the taps on and by the time you came back the entire house was flooded

when I fell off the operating table I knew it was meaningless when I found out the doctors could not see the same shapes and bones and muscles I saw and I seen all of it I see it all I told them I seen it all before I swear if you offer me a hand out of this hole I will rip all the skin off your wrists you ******* I will never have revenge I will never know what truth feels like I was born waiting waiting to die that is the body is contorting and breaking because it cannot contain me I am free at last oh freedom what a feeling I say as the chair is kicked as I chuckle and tell you everything

WELL AREN'T YOU THE QUEEN OF SOMETHING OR ARE YOU THE PRINCESS OF CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS

i can't tell
the world makes less sense
through a tinted lens

i like things that make me sleep or dream
although sleeping doesn't always imply dreaming
i'd like to think that i am dreaming a lot of the time

see, and the thing that bothered me the most about it was that
i remember a flashing light i'd stare at out in the distance at my own house
a 4am train or something maybe, i was never sure because sound never accompanied the sight

regardless coming to the staggering realization that i may never experience that small, trivial piece of time ever again in my life is

why i wrote this

when my home burned down
i can't say i learned much
only that old televisions warp themselves into ashtrays
and that mice love to **** in rolled up carpet

i took a screwdriver out of the toolbox, the closest one to the right
and i stabbed myself in the face with it
the deeper i dug the more i thought about nothing, really just no things
no me
flesh rips more easily than plastic wrap if you plunge your device in correctly

my dog is dead in the backyard we made a grave for him and now a tree grows over his corpse and every time i go over there i call his name and he never comes

forget all that burns for all that soothes
forget all that pulls for all that keeps you in place
pupils as wide as dishpans
like a deer in headlights, but like a deer who forgot what headlights meant

I thought I could do one thing that matterd
mincing flesh and chewing animal fat

ripping the spine out of the catch of the day
only to find that the creature you thought you dominated has stolen your fragile spine of thorns, metastasizing itself as you and spitting venom in all of your *****

why do belts and switches hurt so much more at night than in the morning
this i have never understood

i'd slam my skull into the ground for each year i wanted to forget
i'd do it if my fingers weren't all broken already
trust me i'd do it

the hunger feels funny today as if it has been made to
drill several individual holes into my intestines
in which case the hunger has at long last prevailed

if i could change one thing
i would make the sun hot enough
to burn holes into my frontal lobes
and destroy my ******* mind

the only reason to participate in sunday school
is to please the preacher

reap what has been sewn into neuron coated fabric
return the parts to proper place

to make me whole again

You only need to say it so many times before it becomes true
The question answers itself if you already know whose correct

Drown me in chemical baths
Lock the condition in place
Let time run, unravel, and damage

This is here
This is now
The subject presupposes the predicate

I have only a month to heal
It reaches for you
It grabs you by the throat

Burn my eyes, shut
Use hot tongs to demolish my ****
Brand me like your livestock but this time you'll decide

The planet is in your ******* palm
It just took too long to know for sure

There is a reason for the fifth of gin in the coffee
There was a reason, but I've forgotten

A wish for heat to meld parts back together
I can hear you talking through the floors
to all your friends
and ex lovers

I can hear you singing along to nothing in the shower
The problem lies not within you
but in me