There are pleas
that disguise themselves
in trees
that whisper in the dark-
Like a crinkle in a kiss,
or the words that you'll miss;
too late for meds,
too late for sleep
this time.

We ride on the beaches
with cool kids and leeches.
We **** blow off the ground
because there are times you feel,
and some you fake
when everyone is around.
The bodies in red
that you leave in your head.

The trees tesellate
into nooses and goodbyes.
And I swear this isn't the first time
that you've loved me
like it's the last time;
when I've been something to lose.
The love you have
is the love you refuse.

Your cries are milk-
I wish your cancer was mine.
To be a mistake.
To be left behind.

She said that biting my nails was a bad habit,
as she pulled a puff from the lipstick stained cig.
Habits, I can tell you all about them, she croaked this,
Men, War, Love -- Forgive me for being redundant.
I shook my head and released a laugh that seemed to
float past her, with little acknowledgment, little care.
Men, War, Love, Drugs, *** -- I've had it all inside me,
I've witnessed it tremble through and pass, with gradual
recklessness. I've seen and felt it all, but I wonder if I've
experienced glimpses or the entirety of what life has had
to offer me, bad or not, true or contrived. And this, this
wonderment is my most terrible habit; it will destroy me,
through and through, until nothing is left but a smoldering
foundation; a shell, burning through cigarettes and life.

Her eyes are like a bowl of cereal:
swirled with sweetness, soft but cold.
She lays in the center of a cobblestone intersection,
as tires bounce like knuckles off of teeth.
And ruby ribbons run from her mouth,
heading down the street that breathes south.
The sky above her stretches like notes from a guitar,
spitting acid rain tunes that'll turn into the pitter patter of a musical monsoon,
washing her body away from my sight and yours,
cleansed from our memories and the city floors.

Techno-blurts bleed between neon corners.
And she walks among the flashing lights,
an illuminated epidemic.

His name is Arthur Brunswick,
or so the rumor goes and goes.
Art. Artie. God of Death.
With a hand on a gun,
the other on the pulse of America --
redundant --
his eyes slide up and down
her shimmers of symmetry.

If there's another place, somewhere,
he said bedding tobacco behind lip,
Let me know. Hell, let yourself know.
There would be no greater shame
than becoming a mystery,
even to yourself.

Whether or not she is nameless,
she strutted around body of the room,
untouched by the God of Death.
Stopping, her stare turned towards his,
Your name isn't Arthur Brunswick.
I know this, you know this.
Whether or not, you say my name,
you know who I am.
No matter who you say you are,
I have known what you are
since we were created
to be in this room.

They both turned their heads towards the ceiling,
waiting for the author to acknowledge them.
But he couldn't -- wouldn't -- for whatever reason
he told himself over and over and forever.

He grinned, Arthur of course, before saying,
This may not be entirely original, but you
cannot, will not be saved. Even by him.
There are a thousand girls like you,
nameless, an object of a wanna-be
pseudo-provocative, pretentious, poem --
Too many P's, big guy; let's tone it down.

Listen, this ******, he said as he pointed up,
wants to be David Foster Wallace;
all soft-spoken, trying too hard to be smart --
which came effortlessly to Wallace, not him --
but I can tell you what he doesn't want to be:
The person that saves you. Your messiah.
Are we using any words correctly, yeah?


Either way, he doesn't want to save you.
You are meant to die -- you're going to die --
know how I know that? Because. Because he...
He, Arthur pointed towards the ceiling,
He is telling me what to say, and these words
are leaving my mouth. You die, I die -- **** --
I die... I don't want to die, but we die.
Maybe you could have all of this dialogue,
but it's common for his males to, well,
you know, be interesting and somewhat developed.

Her body, pearl and on the verge of objectification,
had glimmers swim across her moon-crater-pores.
Looking up, as she had throughout her
line-by-line life, she asked the creator what next.
And, before she was given another breath,
the neon of the lights dissolved into her skin,
burning her alive, eating her alive;
her body falling apart, disintegrating.
Fatty rain drops of blood, bile, and memory,
gathered at the danced-upon tiles.

Arthur, frozen in the now disco heat,
swung his face towards the stripped away ceiling,
a lava sky staring back at him, waiting to choose.
He said *******, He said Just ******* do it,
and, at first, he was to live, out of spite,
but the temptation of choosing death over life
was too great for the author.

Arthur's skin flew across the room,
in differing shapes and sizes,
clinging onto the lights, revealing
the God of Death: the reader,
the absentee father, the scarred brother,
the crooked teeth heart-breaker,
the author, himself.

The pearl girl woke up, next to the author,
in a place in a space in his head,
telling him that she had the strangest dream.

I go back to Hampshire
to pretend I have old friends.
I drive around the mountains
to look for an end
to the violence
that's been breeding inside.
I've been a god ******,
god ******, god ******.

There's a dying wild
surrounding this town;
a girl limping with her mother,
holding ****** hounds.

You can consume it,
the blurred out dreams,
that these rubber-lovers
hung in Christmas trees.

There's a sense regret
amongst the ****** chic;
a romantic degeneracy
not lost on the teens.
Push in the fate,
to let something out.
I'm such a god ******,
god ******, god ******.

And I blot the ******
remnants of the past,
fire a cheap cigarette
and cut myself on the glass
of the car I drove into
the bank of your dreams.

To get out, to get out,
I've become such a ******* fool.
To get out, to get out,
I've hurt everyone that thought I was cool.

I feel them staring, glaring --
I'm never sure.
My mind rewinds
to a different shore,
where fish have armored skin
that protects them from
pressures of Earthen spin.

They have legs like fingers,
the fish, the people,
that tramples me, samples me
until I'm withered, feeble.

The stares are like bugs,
striding across with curious rage.
Biting, learning, living
in the hollow of my rib cage.

The buzzed people
burn out on the street.
It's four a.m.
and cold toes are leaving imprints
on the concrete face
where the drunks and the homeless
beg for help
and for the past to change.

You, me, and every one we've met,
lean on the side of the tattooed bar,
smoking cigarettes that stain our lips,
slurring words that escape our souls.

You're wearing
Black Chuck Taylor All-Stars,
as we stand underneath
the black, starry sky.
You tell me,
as you put out the cherry
with your wet thumb,
that, "I busted my cherry
while riding my bike.
I hit a bump, then another,
and another."

We kiss and you whisper,
"It sounds better than the truth, right?"
I feel overwhelming sadness,
as I look at your freckles,
your speckled irises,
and I want to believe
the manufactured ignorance
that the world offers
and you take,
saying, "Of course, love."

The news needs my fear.
I struggle to survive.
Is it terrible that if I
can't tell stories,
I think I can't be happy.

3AM is the prime-time slot
for the show, in my head,
entitled, 'Thoughts About Dying'
Starring, Attaching Sentiment
To Anything is Absurdity.
I wish I didn't have
post-****** clarity.

All my old friends are old friends.
I miss my brothers.
I miss my grandma.
I miss having the wrong
answers about death.

Be the reason I don't drink;
the oil in the lamp, car, pores.
Help me realize rock-bottom
in your backseat; two lovers
in a car on a cliff, watching
the dark brown sugar shores.

I gave up smoking like
it was my child. I couldn't
hold what was killing me,
no matter how smooth, mild.
And I can't hold this baby;
this burden bruising my bladder.
I told my father I wanted an abortion,
he said, "In this country,
your choice does not matter."

Be my reason, Pre-born;
not yet breathing; not yet
crying; not yet teething;
not yet amorous; not yet alone;
not yet loveless; not yet a stone
sinking far, sinking deep
in an ocean of heavy sleep
where you ignore my decision;
my ****** tells; my existence;
where your father is God
and erases all frowns; where
his presence suggests that he
created your hair, your smile,
your sounds; Where he is
responsible for the oil in
your lamp, car, pores; where
my only purpose was in a car
overlooking sugar brown shores.

My stomach
churns
acid.

I lay in bed,
counting
the sheep
in me.

And I
hate myself
for every
lost cause
I find and
pet.

I want to
cut open my
stomach
and burn
the wool off
the sheep
with the
churned
acid.

Jesus loves me,
yes I know.
For my nation
tells me so.
Cut the wool
off of every one.
My words go on
but I am done.

Yes, Jesus loves me.
****, Jesus loves me.
Yes, Jesus loves me--
my nation tells me so.

These hearts have become racist
What used to be kind
And all hope to be seen
is wasted
On the stampeding blind

These teeth have become stained
What used to be white
Has been darkened by the
viscera of
those consumed by the night

These hands have become destroyers
Fingers that once saved
Equal and human;
Clean or depraved

These hands have become destroyers
I feel you chewing the limb that
used to be there
Your skin is under my nails
You're burning my fingertips
And pulling my teeth

You strangle me deep
among the sea of leaves
Flashing advertisements
in my eyes, Listening to
my every word. You tell
me I'm sacrificing for the
greater good. But I feel
submissive. I feel hateful.

You say Eve is the reason
for the downfall of mankind.
She is nothing but of rib and
even bone cracks. Saying this
as you dislodge my jawbone.
I try to argue with you, but
my language is gone.

You say that a dog is harmless
if surrounded by fence. That the
owner of the dog should pay for
the fence. That the ***** could ****
or produce pups that would ****.
I am still without words and losing
copious amounts of blood.

I am poor and no-one will acknowledge
my death. I am someone people will
forget died and will have to be reminded
years from now, during a cook-out or
amateur bowling tournament. My legacy
is that of failure and being obliterated,
justifiably so.

These people look to money,
to colors on fabric idols,
to pages in a book written by
share-croppers afraid of flooding.

Remove me, so, to remember me
for what potential may have existed.
Kindly ignore that I never resisted,
and that I, the apex of forevers, was
always ungrateful. That I conformed
and became deeply hateful.

Tonight is for peanut butter
and blue dreams,
soaked in ***** blasts.
I feel okay but my friends are
dead and it will always last.
Don't count on me
to care too much.
Don't care for me,
because you can't
count on me.

I've remembered the neon signs;
all the life I've left behind.
It's not easy being lost at twenty-three;
my bark is hard but I'm
a rotting tree.

Yellow soap for a yellow me.
I don't feel like being pure
means being happy.

- I scrub scarring
with more definition
than a dictionary.

Moldy bread kissing
gravid navel oranges,
in a cherry plastic rib cage.

- Can you find me altruism
hidden in the heart  
of ecstasy and rage?

Satellite bobbing above
the air supply,
are you out of reach or am I?

She was taking pictures
of us in the aphotic zone.
Saying, it was the only way
to capture me vulnerable.

Extirpate my species
to save my life.
I am saturnine for
the only adoration I accept  
is mine.

Your trembling hands
are steady for me

Ma and Pa,
lover doves,
kiss with fists
and hug with shoves.

Possibility A:
I still love you-
(Hip Hip Hooray!)
I pretend that I'm okay,
but I'm not the same soldier...
...now that I'm older.

It's all in vain,
turning on the porch light.
And it's only right,
that I dream that you would come home,
or change overnight.

Love overall
relates to a prescription thrill:
I want to feel good,
as long as it doesn't ****.

Under the tree,
doused in gasoline.
I would have burned for you
for however many rings.
For however many rings.

Possibility two:
I would have loved you,
the best that I could,
until my lungs would collapse.
And I would have pulled you
out of the car crash.

But I watched blood stain,
while trying to save you.
But it was washed by rain,
as you grew blue.
I didn't know what to do.

I waited for the ambulance,
the sirens blue and red.
Did they know that I loved you?
Did I know you were already dead?

Your breath still lingers,
swarming in the night air.
And I still feel your fingers-
God, it isn't fair.
God, it isn't fair.

And you would have loved me,
under falling tree branches.
And I would have kept you warm,
after avalanches.
After avalanches.

I would have kissed you,
as the snow crushed.
And I wouldn't have missed you,
if my hands rushed.
If my hands rushed.

Possibility last:
It's all in the past.

It's
all
in
the past.

I feel like a folded symbol,
inside the chipped-cherry boxcar
that is my damp, June mind.

A fetus seizing in the womb,
hooked up like a cheap monitor.
A foreign strandedness, wrapped
by a boa of dark country back roads
and sterile air skipping across grass.

If I stop, If I sleep
the sweat seeps from my pores
like a sterling grey squad,
oxidizing in the fog,
swimming around headspace,
guns melting with claymation cheeks,
howls into the night, darling deadbirds.

I am now happy and remember
only other happy memories.
Over a decade of depression
and now this.

I feel unfinished, unwanted
by the quickness of life.
I feel like a grain
caught in a gust so swift,
I may never adjust.

I, the empty-headed boy,
causing jet-black glass
to appear on sand,
to remove my footprints,
and incase them, phantoms.

Your prayers and thoughts
  are not sufficient.
Tweeting and posting self-indulgent
  *******; you are shallow
and your not-so-subtle
  political agenda sickens me.

The President said we should unite,
  despite a year of trying to divide us.
Although, he doesn't need to say much
  because all we've ever masturbated to
is one country for all...
  except for people we don't like.

I am caught in a web where
  each strand is a headline;
where every attempt to be free
  pulls me deeper in; where
the spider is me and you
  and you and me; where
I am eaten by myself.

  I tell myself to not care
-- it never works.

Now,
Don't you tell me to chill.
Like the Beastie Boys I've
got a license to ill.
Over-confident for
insecurity's sake.
An ego so big
sudden drops could
cause a quake.

Now,
Shake-Sha-Shake
                    it up.
A poem so apathetic
it might give a ****.
Wanting to rap; also
wanting to write --
don't mistake my words
for something tight.

This reality, different from yours.
Sandpaper ice-cream cones sold
in engulfed, aflame stores.

This body, tense yet soft
tears underneath
the rub of rope.
My friend's feet swiped
a flailing chair,
And her neck did snap,
feces everywhere.

This sky, wrapped in saran wrap,
becomes pregnant when it rains,
the plastic weighed down by water,
slumps down the aquarium sky,
we slump down as it kisses us,
crushes us, mashes us, thrashes us.

- It all changes here,
from god to god,
from year to year -

Her hips lay like cursive,
pale, promising, pent up
like the shoulders of
an anxious angel.

Her hair a burnt brown,
wrapped around a whatever-count pillow,
like a L'Oréal snake, sleeping sullen,
drifting off into a designer dream,
unsure of this, unsure of me.

I see her as a child --
No, I see me as a child --
No, I see us as children.
This. This surreal feeling I get
when you're around me.
When the world is around me,
vibrating underneath my Toms.
Vibrating in my prescription bottle.
Vibrating between her legs, my ribs.
Between each page, so much is hidden:
my early swearing that my late love
is slowly draining.

Leaf spines do their damnedest
to hold onto broken branches.

"These people -- if you could
                      call them that,"
the old man's shoulders pinch
his bubbling neck, "*******,
******* -- these opinionated
women; my god, I have never
seen the like, no sir."

Mother, why have you left me.
I can smell you on the freshly
                           salted roads.
It is so cold here. The snow
may never stop. The wind
has been picking up. I'm
afraid it may ******* away,
somewhere your direction.

"You see, the thing is, this
country -- no, this world --
has changed so **** much.
It's struck me, fearsome, of
what may stay; what may come,"
he runs his thick fingers through
a rather handsome silver patch,
"I wonder if what I mean to say
is that people scare me?
I don't know what that says
about me or about people."

Father, you sit and you drink,
dying in your work boots;
dying in the arms of my dream;
becoming a man slowly razed.
Your eyes are pale hazel
and they grow apart, as your
tongue pushes out, gone for
a few hours; soon missing.

"Mmm. No sir, I suppose this
world ain't for me. Virginia is
hardly the place I once knew...
You know, my wife, she found
the good in everything -- swear.
Found the good in me.
I envied her, in that one way;
she'd see the good in the *******,
*******, and these women who
just, well, don't know their place.
She'd know. But she ain't here.
Hell, I'm hardly here, tell'ya."

And all my anger I harbor for you,
my mother, I give to the women
I sleep with; the women that
break my heart; the women who
love me forever.

And all my anger I harbor for you,
my father, I try to forget, for you
are my idea of God's love, and
I desperately scratch at your surface,
excusing your roughness injuring my
fingers; forgiving you for covering me
in your blood and everything else you.

The ***** ate into rocky soil,
pushing through clots of dirt.
It reminded me of
the girl I love
from two-thousand fifteen
and how she
struggled to be clean,
because of a needle eating skin
burrowing towards vein,
against what was within.

My fingers pushed on it's ribcage
-- I never found out it's *** --
only forcing brief breathes
and gasps flowing from
my grasp, knowing that
I can't save her and that
I can't save him.

Patches of white were
framed around squid-ink clash;
fleas fleeing from
an ever-slow dying of heat,
hopping onto me,
a host with a heartbeat.

She never had a name
and all I can call him is 'it'.
It's paws fluttered like
a desperation dash across
the invisible wall of life,
a borderline between
eternal logos and
dimming pathos.

Whiskers brushed against the
plastic, grocery store bag,
destined for celery,
destined for dead cat.

And as the shovel
drank the soil,
And as the bag fell
into nothing --
Heaven or Hell --
I feel so tainted
for a life so fleeting,
for a love so wasted,
for everything leaving.

For everyone leaving.

White whiskers rooted above the trumpet player's lips;
his body moves like a sci-fi parasite, as he spits out songs
at the big bellied, Skecher-chic, boardwalk children.
The kids give a moment's interest before passing by like
armored flies, if armor were cheap cotton shirts and
helicopter parents.

Sooner or later, the sunset meets the brim of his hat.
It's a mystery as to the speed of the trumpet dropping
from his lips to its case, but you'd have to find someone
who cares about those types of things.

His brown, leather, Payless feet jut outward; away from
one another and towards American stores reflecting themselves:
Italian restaurant, Thai restaurant, Car Insurance, Dollar Store.

Quicker than you'd think, his denim hips are clamped by
the wooden arms of a misplaced deck chair, relocated to
a dining table as small and low-income as the man who
saw the dreamlike orange and purple sky drift away
behind the cemetery gray blanket of smoke, rising from
a fractured ground littered in mud-bathed, leaking bodies.

When the night has only begun to settle in, the man's
thick hands carefully adjust her picture, for he fears
the paleness of his fingers will leave more of a residue
than he is accustomed to.

Kept within the copper and green borders, she has
only begun life; twenty-three and never having to apologize,
there is still so much left to the imagination; her olive grey
cheeks are sided to his eyes, ready to be jammed with
baby, mommy, and daddy fragments of windshield;
waiting for the last embrace of a sturdy steering wheel;
her hair still dry and not dampened by insides coming out
or the flying weaker-than-you-think half-gallon of whole milk
that covered -- or washed, depending on your attitude -- the
back of her fifty-three year old head; the eggs fortunately
missing twelve times, hitting what was left of the windshield,
leaving an image comparable to the wall of a bar that not only
has a dartboard but also a man with terrible aim or who had as
much alcohol as the man who slipped his car into Margaret
and Joseph's life.

Joseph looks away from her picture, as his glass eyes begin
to shatter. Running fat palms and bulbous fingers through
the white, over grown lawn on his scarred scalp,
he says her name three times before retiring to the mattress
Margaret picked out.

He was older than he felt
but his accomplishments
made him feel like he
was trailing behind.

Middle school said the
next step mattered.
High school said the
next step mattered.
College said your
degree would matter.
Here I am
making your drink.

Hey—did you hear?
I’m selling salvation
in a pamphlet.
Oh—is it clear?
I’m in cheap slacks
on your cheap
doorstep.  

People are dying older.
Politics keep getting bolder.
Can’t afford my prescription refill.
Sign me up for war. Use your
******* blinker. I’m only a season
behind.

He looked younger than
he was, all just because
he didn’t live life hard.
Nothing wrong with that—
some people say it’s lazy,
while eroding their bodies.

I thought that looks
would matter.
I thought wits
would matter.
That a career was just
a ladder
you scaled.
Here I am
managing pennies.
There you are
managing memories.
Hope I can afford a
vacation.

Hey—did you hear?
Your death won’t even be free.
Oh—is it clear?
You’re a tenant in your plot
until the landlord forgets.

People are getting older.
Politics are getting bolder.
Choosing insurance over groceries.
Sign me up for Hulu. Five dollars on
pump five. I’m only a paycheck behind.

They said they had to **** my dreams
because I didn't have enough zeroes.
In other words, Mr. Doe, you were
                     lied to by your heroes;
money isn't everything,
but not having it is being invisible.
You can work sixty hour weeks,
but only earn ways to be miserable.

My parents paying four-fifty, monthly
-- which is not a lot of money; we had
to eat out of cans and delude ourselves
into thinking it was funny. Sorry, Does;
                              sorry for your woes --
but America is the big hunter, and your
                            death is how it grows.

We were not equal; no account because
                   we had no account. Asked by
our family members if we bought junk
                      in a large amount. I'm sorry
to disappoint myself -- but I
                                         cannot afford
                                                   to lose.
I am the result of a flawed America
                                     that has learned
                                                to abuse.

They spent the day
eating t.v. dinners;
she had Hungry Man,
he had Kid Cuisine.

Grandma changed the channel
from Middle-Class Meltdown to
an 80's cartoon about robotic bears.
And he said, Grandma, this is scary
- so she turned it to a show with
pre-teen children and vanilla jokes.

The sun melted into orange and purple,
spilling over the horizon like melted sorbet.
Surroundings purged a different dark.
Shadows stuck more than usual, she noticed.
The Lurking was present, even if she didn't
quite understand what it was or where.

A few days passed, where she could
feel malevolence nip at the heels of her home.
She remembered her daughter,
at a recital, dancing with grace --
this helped her fall asleep.

She remembered the phone ring,
radiating a green hue, stating
words she didn't understand.
Answering it. This helped her
wake up.

Dead names scarred onto the mouths of trees,
teenagers as stripped as the bark,
fenced by the flutter of the leaves.
I once loved a girl who loved
to remember the old me.

There's a storm, scurrying across the saffron.
You'd have to ask if this would always go on;
the broken hair, grape jaw, leaky gums.
An embrace, tortured knuckle,
all before the Sun, the bodies buckle.

Incurable beauty explained by the hunting game:
Is there a God who molds the fumes,
escaping from my brain?
I don't want to think, that all my thoughts
are all just the same.

And I think I should say
I did not find God, today.
I'm being told that my mind
isn't considered right and that
I will always lose the fight
that is life.

I think I should melt away
with the tangerine dusk;
float away with the
copper-colored dust.
And I shouldn't be mourned
or become a chore to the
people I should have warned:
I am a Godless void, ruined by
my own mindless self-indulgence.

For what it's worth,
it no longer hurts or can
be mistaken for
something bigger
for our Lord.

Maybe I should find a
Texas hole to melt inside;
a place to rest my burden,
fall apart and die.

I've always lived this way;
used to wish for other
                         ways to feel.
On a tidal wave,
with white walls and
           a body made of steel.

And I'm drinking,
      in the sunlight.
Wind whooshing by,
says I'm James Dean.
I can't fake it,
because I'm so uncool.
Better make it
to an ivy-league school.

I've always lived this way;
always running to get closer
                       to how I feel.
On a tidal wave;
not enough money
       or looks to buy a meal.

And I'm standing,
  before the teller,
       and I tell her,
to close my account.
There goes my religion;
well, the one that isn't
       west coast bound.

I've always lived this way;
watching people on t.v.
communicate how I feel.
Wanna be a slave,
with the screen as my
                      new shield.

You know what I think is sad
I used to miss the way you would curse
I missed every lie you said,
even though your lying was the worst

The tapes in your bag said it all;
the discs you spun said 'whatevs'
or 'I'm deep and loving'
I betcha you thought people heard The Smiths
and didn't think you were bluffing.

Your poetry was garbage, too --
I don't blame you for scrapping your work.
You lied about cutting your legs,
the pain under your pale skin,
you exhausted every quirk,
and wished for more within.

I betcha you're sitting somewhere
twenty-something and super-bored.
Probably still choking on your cigarettes
against your matress board,
criticizing people thinking differently
I hope one day you read a book
and ask who would publish me

You're probably the words
stuck in some other's throat;
resenting you and the
****** Mountain Goats.
I never liked to criticize
the way you looked,
but your teeth are the
second most crooked
thing about you

We ride bikes
to parks in our heads
and pedal our bodies
to safe-ish places
  in our beds.

We spend cash
in eight minutes,
that we worked
eight hours for.

We talk about
our ceiling
but are content
at our floor.

We experience
suicidal ideation,
on a day-to-day stasis,
and insure our
  troubled vessels,
on a six month to
  twelve month basis.

We ride bikes
alongside trainless tracks
and wrestle, naked,
on our backs,
smothering the grass,
muddied past our feet,
we ride our bikes, incomplete.

The girl and I
were tickled by sea foam,
our ankles wrapped in
diamond studded leeches--
We are the
yellow-bellied *******
in a porcelain nest of water.

Our running is stunted.
Our heels are bouncing
off the beach-face
and we are distracted
by the butterflies
because they look like
flowers floating before
the orange
and purple bled sky.

The girl and I
are in love,
but we laugh at feelings.
There's a polished
wrecking ball
swinging between our
chewed lips.
And we agree
love is for tin birds
in a flame cage.

I fell asleep after "Good Morning, Vietnam":

I can feel it all, in your hair.
Under trees.
Flying above the stratosphere.
My arms extended.
The skin burning off my torso-
struggling to breathe,
with a smile on my face.

(Canned laughter)

You're in a living room.
You are me.

I dug into my chest and petted my heart.
Groaning, the blood swam around my hands
and ate it's way up my forearm,
to my elbow,
to my neck,
to my chin,
to my lips.
"I can ******* blood,"
an internal piece of dialogue.

She whispers in your ear,
"I know who you are."
I am you.

I cut my voice on the air, calling out for her.

Why'd you abandon me?
I love you so ******* much.

Why'd you abandon me?
I love you so ******* much.

(Canned laughter)

Why'd you abandon me?
I love you so *******-

You are in my room.
I am you.
We are everything,
and we are nothing.

That's my mirror.
It's shattered.

Hey, there I am on the ground.

There's a brunette, mediocre poet.
It's shattered.

And on my hand are specs of heated sand,
sleeping in my skin-
a glass garden.

How can one find schizophrenic kisses
in a reflection.

(Canned laughter)

I said, "How can one find-"

Part of a mud-caked quilt,
between the city walls
and the tornado path,
*******--not at all.
Because he's a voice
in the crowd.

No doorknobs exist on this floor.
I can't find any outlets.
The belt that lady--I didn't mean to
disappoint--bought me is coiled,
surrounded by Tupperware walls.
A nurse checked herself in. No
affect; asking for charge; reset.
I'm twenty and letting down my dad.
My belt used to live at JC Penny
and has navy-outlined bass on it.
One of the counselors is black,
from Africa, was adopted, moved
here to be raised by two JP Morgan
lifers, played collegiate soccer, married,
got pregnant, lost the boy--which he said
he had a feeling it would have been.
So, he can relate.
No doorknobs exist on this floor.
I am twenty and this exists in the past.
Wheeling in due to an inability to walk
--totally her brain's fault; a real former-
controllable, current-uncontrollable thing
that her mind pulled on her, on account
from the cold, Vaseline touch of a relative
--this redheaded girl pretends to smile
before apologizing for pretending to smile.
Our black counselor, former soccer player
and father says to not apologize and that
we are all pretending, all the time, even
when we don't think we are.
I find this strangely comforting.

The window is up;
sounds of rain crinkle in,
like the static in the voice
of a faraway caller.

My cats are perched,
one grey, one tabby,
listening with me, as
we stare at miniature
mudslides glaze gener-
-ations of ants, probably
clinging onto strands of
grass; waiting to become
the past.

I think of success and
what it means to me.
I look in my wallet and
count one-two-three;
one reason to like the rain;
two reasons to embrace strife;
three reasons to consume pain;
enough zeroes to choose a life
not smothered in mud, not one
where I cling onto the grass.

I dream of a dream where
my dollar bills can last.

Tie your powder blue checkered sheets,
and dangle them out of your
splintered window frame.

Wire bodies scrambling down,
you and your sister, tan and loud,
bringing ultra-light cigs and
burner flip-phones,
promising *** without
the feeling of being alone.

This is for the chips on your polish,
much like you: red and drawn
by a shaky Saturday night,
where I'm your friend,
unsure and twenty-two,
driving through muddy water
like a submarine submerged in time.

The stereo shouts out Minor Threat,
neon and done, are we, the naked,
parked outside the park
where you wrecked your bike,
we threw mixtapes off the bridge,
where we had fun.

I can still hear our theme song
beyond the headlights
beyond the moans.

I have a hard time in bars,
specifically ones I don't belong in.

Sometimes I stand at the bar,
this wooden horseshoe, among
other faces that I probably blend
into. I want to say, Can you see me,
but don't because why would they?

My friends are mostly gone,
scattered across states like bats:
blindly searching for life.

I didn't deserve them, anyway --
that's not self-pity, that's just
how it is.

At most midnights,
I find myself swallowed by
existential terror.

Like most Americans,
I want to be the best
and have more than my
parents ever did.

Anyway, I don't belong in bars
because I think I am better than
the people there and someone,
who thinks that type of stuff
doesn't deserve a drink -- just
repercussions.

I think I deserve everything
but I don't work hard enough
for the books, people, and love
I imagine.

Perhaps I am plain,
like discount yogurt, waiting
to be touched before I expire --
but there's strawberry, which,
of course, is so much better
than plain, low-fat yogurt.

There's not a universe
where I am low-fat;
why would that happen.

I am stunted: four years
behind every one else.
People like me stay
strangers: the darkest
inside the night.

I gave them all of my faith
because the alternative
was death.

I was afraid of God because
he loved me and I was his
- his imperfect child, in need
of divine intervention.

Did he watch
when stress caused
my hair fall out,
gathering on the drain,
by my eighteen year-old
feet?

I have been spiritually mugged;
giving up my faith to a
weaponized religion, created by
men, who wish to enslave.

X's dim bedroom featured two tones: olive skin and rind of lime. Like her walls, her sheets and comforter clashed. The contrast in color reminded me of 80's clothing.
In her room, X smoked cigarettes that tasted like a mechanic's finger. A clunky radio played 24/7.
  "Do your parents know you smoke in here?" I said.
  "What?" She said.
  Her parents were phantoms. She barely knew them, which makes me barely able to describe them. A week ago, I asked what they looked like. She shrugged and said she'd check the side of a milk carton.
  *** was the only thing that connected us. We took turns touching each other like we were being dared to run our finger through an open flame. I said I loved her. She said not to be silly.

We are nothing but the interweaving of bleak and hopeful threads that we fasten around a branch to hang the ones we love and cut free the ones we loathe, so they may prosper and thrive from our anguish. Never focusing on others, we are inaudible to their cries in the dark stations that we possess as they morph into cavernous cancer vortexes that absorb their happiness into our misery. There is no reward at the end, there is only the validation of endurance and the uncertainty of purpose. We are loveless quasi-predators that want to be mistaken as selfless and proven important.

Some wolves mate in the glow
of a satellite so slow,
can't see it move -- not to
  the groove.
And music plays,
  from a radio, retro.
Gotta spill some blood
and add a cigarette
to my silhouette.

American Spirit for
my american spirit;
gotta tweet my thoughts
because my friends
don't hear the words I say.
  Ah, no; wanna live in
Los Angeles,
  Ah no; wanna live in
New York City.

Oh, no.
Oh, no.

Some babes in the hay;
laying in a pile, so deep
  cannot find my body;
cannot fall asleep.
  Random rambling to
what my media tells me;
cannot find my mind;
cannot fall for this.

They look like thumbs,
throbbing at me for
  my attention.
Yelling over each other;
yelling when
  I'm not allowed.

Ah, no; wanna live in
Los Angeles.
Ah, no; wanna live in
New York City.
  Wanna be
validated by the wolves.

Maggots boil from under her skin.
  I will never see her again.
I have heart aches that
  stem from mistakes.
I count them as they
  leak from her skin.

Her eyes are raisins;
  I will never find what
they last captured.
  Cheekbones higher than
my song. My finger brushed
  along all that was black
and seeped into her back,
  tripping on her vertebrae
like a boy frolicking home.

  The cacti stand still--
while I feel quite ill--
  standing in an ocean
of honey.

  The people stand still--
America is ill--
  standing in an ocean
of money.

  You stand still,
too afraid to ****
  an ocean of hate
you tolerate.

Fire. Orange flames waving towards the sky
with blue bellies and a hunger for havoc.

Split foot bottoms sprint, infinitely unable
to stop the annihilation swallowing whole
stained, splintered floorboards
that held sand-speckled toes,
extending high,
as embraced but separate never-lovers
kept thoughts of together
in the sky.

Gravel flickering from under heels;
might as well bounce into a void:
a place happy in its tornado-time.
Where sounds escape, return home;
abstract assurance: kind of alone.

White siding peels off
like a smoldering fingernail.
The roof holding heat
like the lid a *** kisses.

Her head halts,
with an ash blonde swoop
flailing by.
Staring and learning
the world is a skeleton dream.

Never knowing when it started.
Never knowing why.

Upon a milky hill
beneath the mounds of snow
Frozen with the horn I took
but was too afraid to blow
Beyond the sound of muffling
around the river’s bend
Walked a true love of mine
to whom I was a friend
Come cast your voice yonder
Your shrill towards the sky
I hope for your hand in mine
I am afraid to die

I imagine you're disappointed in me. I can't say I blame you. It is not my fault that I didn't become the laborer you dreamt I'd be, split palms stung by sweat.  It is my fault, however, that I became nothing at all.
  
  Our family was defined by a cardboard box. Your job was to move them, hundreds an hour. My brothers and I were raised by a box that puked The King Of Queens and censored 90's dramas. My mother buried Polaroids of frozen dance moves and eternal smiles, under fake jewelry in a cheap cherry box.

  And when I carried the box that ate my grandfather, I showed no stuggle, tucked in my shirt, not wanting to embarass you.

  And when I forgot the Sea Bass belt, I promised not to **** myself with, in a box at the ward.

  And when I carried the box that sealed my grandmother.

  And when I burnt the box of letters she wrote from far and away; trying to erase who I was.

  I think I have let you down, father. I can only offer myself the way I'd offer a box: disappointing on the outside with a chance of beauty in the inside, if you're willing to open up.

I have taken
her shimmering body
and have made her
believe it's dull

Maternal French kisses
Mental illness defines her
Pretend to forget

There's a jukebox,
in my mind or yours,
and it plays my song --
or, maybe, it's for you.
And it says what I
never could say, which is
that I am very sorry.

I thought of how I was --
or how we were --
which was not as good
as we had hoped for.
You protected yourself
from remorse and I was
fearfully unapologetic.

You were, and, probably,
still are a cold *****, and I've
been a ******* for years.
Your nose was so crooked,
it could run for office, and
my head was -- and still is --
really big, which is fitting,
considering my ego, and
ironic, since I'm borderline
mentally-*******-*******.

There's an eroding jukebox
and its so confrontational,
due to feeling inferior,
unrecognized, and without
a responsible purpose.

The music from the machine
flows like rushing thoughts,
and the thoughts say:

I sit and write,
I don't mind you
when I don't know you.

Some people are roots,
meant to help with stability,
but you are a branch,
meant to offer a new view,
but also meant to fall off,
maybe, killing whomever
catches you next.