Turning up and down in the wind-every single crane I folded
On the seventeenth day of the fifth month
I took you to go see the gardens
To see the orchids bloom
White Purple and blue
Hanging leaves
Trees like statues on a night without wind
The ghost festival
It was dark in the perfumed gardens
Velvet purple sky
We sat and listened to the far off music
The sound of drums
Traveling along the gurgling river
Sitting down on the edge of a rock
You were laughing and smoking one of my cigarettes
Those wisps of smoke curling around
And the flick flick of your ash on a rock
You thought you were so cool sitting there like Joplin, all strung out and white looking like Courtney love
Your knee high socks
Are smeared in mud and pollen
Just then the music all stopped at the festival down the river
Except for some lone flute playing a haunting other-worldy melody
As we sat looking on the calm purple waters
The children and old women took small paper boats with candles inside
The mothers and the fathers
The sisters and cousins Uncles and brothers
All knee deep in the darkened waters
Pushing those small glowing ships down the river
Leading all those lost souls and spirits
The ghosts of this year's dead flowing out to sea

Like a fleet of stars they slowly drifted
Water reflecting the hundreds of candles
That crescent moon looked so right above the spirits
I watched them clear the bend
- Without taking a breath-
Until you laughed and flicked your cigarette **** into the still water
Ripples of moonlight
Talking about yourself in the dark
Somewhere down the river the music started again

My mother said I had my fathers eyes
I always thought I kinda looked like a bug
But not in that
Strange-insecure way
Just in the way we stare at lady bugs when were kids
And we don't judge them,because they just are
Before we learn to be afraid
And start calling them "insects"

My mom also said, drugs were the best thing that ever happened to her
to the world
to society
A teenage girl in a woman's body
Forever sifting through history
The never ageing blue eye'd hippie;

So I set out on a journey
to somehow find what she said was so great
I swore to myself that I would be the next drug
And do what it takes
To change the world
   To change society
     To be the best thing that ever happened to my mother
        The eternal hippie

I also think the women in my family
Have this uncanny knack
At finding these beautiful
wrecks of men

Her last boyfriend blew his brains out
  I was three and thought we painted the walls

Steven was her boy toy, with an artist's deep dark eyes
  I used to watch him paint
   He'd drink a little too much
   watch a little too much ****

She found him in his car
And then Brett
Who was the whitest thing we saw
Blonde hair and white eyes
  Well by the time we got there
He was already gone

So she says to me "Honey, don't make the mistakes I made, these weak men,
    well they aren't tortured artists, tortured souls, just misguided little boys."

     I haven't been able to quite shake that curse off
  I guess its something in the nature
  In the way that we walk
    The words that we say
      The way that we talk

But I'm sick of being the unpaid therapist
And staying up all night thinking about
   Problems that aren't even mine

  Dangling the live's of people with this terminal illness
    This disease no one talks about
      Because its so ******* "Taboo"
         Hoping they will survive the night
             Leaving my phone on just instead

Being thankful when they call me
Drunk and sobbing
About this dark abyss of water
The chains around their ankles
In the light dawn of day
The clock says, 4 AM, the bed says come
Their cries say "stay"

Holding their mother's hands
At funerals
Thinking of something beautiful to say
When really, I think I just need to start hanging around with a new bunch of people

But I find everyone else quite boring, quite stupid, quite dumb
You know, the kind, go out get drunk
For the sake of a friday
Study for a test you'll take on monday

Its like they never feel
out
   of
      place
And like they will always be
quite
    okay

  I hope they will make it through the weekends
    Make it clear they are not alone
      But ive always been icky with emotion
         Talking about these "heavy" things
I
   just
      want to
quit

his whole life, in those
big-brown eyes
(burning, why aren't you helping me?)
everything wrong with the world is in
the divets between his ribs
the sharp jab
of his collarbone
against his black-black skin
(****, my iphone's broken again).
this kid has got to be twelve
starving years old
(he doesn't look half that).
we first-world *******, looking at that photograph
(feel sorry for a moment).
his whole world pooled in
the furrow over his eyebrows
(not understanding
his misery).
a hand wrapped
all the way around his arm, pulling him
back towards
the hunger,
but he stares
he
watches
that camera lens,
waiting
for
his
call
his
cry
to
be
heard.