Eloise in a Christmas tree,
swinging a straight razor
at the children below.
  Never held enough
as a baby.
  Never in love
just a maybe.

Eloise's father
in the living room,
drinking the news.
  Those *******
******* and *****,
  he screams.
Never held enough
  as a baby.
His mother smelled of
  a late night and
pineapple blend *****.

Eloise popping Prozac
like Tic-Tacs.
  Fantasizing about
shooting the school body.
You sonuvabitch,
her father screamed.
He penetrated--
She screamed
  and writhed.
Wrists held.
Body pressed.

Beans and toast
  for dinner.
Mom left dad because dad
  isn't big enough
or makes enough money.
Enough. Enough. Enough.

Eloise was supposed to be
a miscarriage.
Her dad lost some toes
when he missed a log.
  Chop, the axe said.

The world is a swinging place.
Whispering in the dark.
A hushed frenzy.
  Mix and **** out,
her gun let out a shout.
Eloise, queen of the
  student mass grave.

Eloise's father turns on
the news.
He drinks liquor instead.
Eloise on the t-v.
Oh, woe is me.
He went to the shed
  and blew his head
clean off.

The world is a swinging place.
The world in a frenzy.

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.

Somedays I don't feel like writing
and it worries me because
'Writers write everday --
real ones, at least.'
I fear being ordinary,
which is tasteless because
maybe being ordinary
is what I need.

The appeal of snapbacks
and hipster haircuts
is starting to make more sense.
Blending into a crowd
might suit me better;
to be invisible but
to no longer be insecure.

Rap lyrics make more sense,
even though I can't relate;
these words are my sedation,
these clothes aren't armor
but marketable camouflage.
My words have been said before,
but that might be okay because
I'd hate to torment myself
wondering about my relevance.

So, to move on, I write,
and I write, and I write
to pander and to conform.
Substituting thought for
appealing diction and
strong imagery, afraid
to show myself because
maybe you're too much
like me, which, surely,
would eat me alive.

O, ethereal Earth -
tortured town towering oneself.

Under Grace, thy swift death -
and upon mercy, a light, jest.

To be your Savior -
your only favorite -
is what's best.

It's raining.
And people are dying.
Somewhere. Everywhere.
Nowhere. On television.
And I don't care.
And their life is static
stuck in the waistband
of some dude's underwear.
And he scratches his *****.
He's shocked and ****.
He calls himself a "God".
He sent his son to die
as a guilt trip
and to spike book sales.
But he's scratching his *****.
And his wrist brushes
against his waistband.
He's pinched by the shock
of electic death.

It's raining.
I'm sitting on the edge
of my bed.
Closing my eyes
and pretending
my feet are hanging off
a shopping cart.
My parents are pushing me
and I'm facing my mother.
She looks young enough
to avoid
   every thing.

I don't care. I don't care.
There are snares
  hitting the cymbals.
And there's
a jazz musician. He's
nodding his
   head
back and
   forth.
   Back
and forth.

I don't care. I don't care.

It's raining.
And we zoom in on God.
And, clearly, I have a vendetta.
Have I been subtle?
He answers, "No."
Did I meet a jazz musician?
He shrugs, "Yeah, I guess."
And the room slows down
to a jumbled vibration.
And he smiles. Smiling.
Smiley-smile smiles.
There is no ******
like the second hand.

It's raining.
I don't care. I don't ******* care.
My dad yelling.
You have daddy issues!!
You ******* *****!!
And the room slows down
to a jumbled vibration.
What's true is a tumor
and it grows and grows.

It's raining.
Music is the shout
in a raindrop.
The wrists we forfeit
is the church of
an eternal solitude.
And we is I
and the mixture of
animal-speak
that swallows my
   brain.

It's raining.
There are joggers
in the park.
Their feet are smashing
the cement.
Slow down.
They don't care.

Then seven billion
joggers enter the park
and smash the cement.
My family is unearthed:
the swallowed inertia
of an undying thought.

It's raining.

Drinking summer skin,
I hear the voices in the night sky
I'm a slave to the darkness around the stars,
and I can't remember why

One, two, twenty-three percocet in my soul.
Ambulance lights breathing throughout the mist.
Pump my stomach like the sawed-off shotgun
that I was too afraid to use,
because what if I 'miss'?
What spectrum of desolation to be traced with lips;
to kiss away the desire to exist.

Mirrored reflection injection causes the resurrection of my imperfection.
I see me for who I am, who I was, and who I won't be.
It's the collection of
my eyes dilating and my knees speculating their arrival
to the blue and white tiling disguised as neo-survival.
My mind is evaporating. My body begins to convulse.
I am a ghost in a machine. I am without a pulse

Slumping over their shopping carts
like porpoises on parade.
Baskets overflowing with
fritos, doritos, and sugar-ade.

Reckless the dream that changed
what they couldn't,
to swim through foil bars
soaring from cash to vein.
Girl with scissors, cutting hair,
to reach a new brain.

Sofa-living, so much thwarting
thoughts of inadequacy.
Streams of image, money
-- and American Honey,
I think you are fine
the way you hurt.

Sheers of shimmering gloss grace her torso.
And I have broken her bones,
imploring that I love her so.
Blueberry lips belly the cold;
hold her too deep, hold her I'm told.

I.

He says Call me Mr. G.
G for Gore, Greed, that Green.
An atypical stoner
with hair wetter than his mouth.
With more ******* than a pound,
he says, With an understanding of
all the suffering in the global delusion
that is the Earth. Mr. G, his name.

Oily brunette, Mr. G., would smoke
Marlboro Green Blend -- menthol --
and spit shot out between stained lips
after each extracurricular exhale.
The saliva would land, tremendously,
and puddles of Rasta shooting stars
would lay, stretching across concrete galaxy.

Hazel eyes invaded and shamed him,
for he wished to be green, like life,
but only envisioned a contradiction:
death (see nature),
for which he learned to embrace, stoically,
like a shepherd of an endangered breed
meant to die among skewed perspective.

II.

This house could be mistaken
for a cinderblock purgatory;
between color and absence of,
eternal and temporary.

A raptor laughter purged the tension --
he abided by no accommodation of civility.
As smoke followed his hyena howl,
the landline lay suddenly of purpose.

Resin raided the clunky, black buttons;
a voice was whispered like a blue phantom:
*******' cheese, pineapple, pepperoni
-- no, extra ******' cheese, extra pep --
Sure, add some more pep with your driver:
he, she -- honestly, man -- they better have
pep-in-their-******-step-you-feel?

Minutes passed like sentient matchbooks
dropping towards a skeletal fire.
G threw the phone across the room
and, like a disenchanted drunk dance,
his words wobbled over each other,
I ordered a 'za, a pizza for the layman.
About thirty, probably thirty-one
minutes, that is.

Passing me the flower-stitched ****,
I ****** in one, maybe two, three,
blasts that I swore
had some sort of nano-insects
bite and burrow into the holes
of my sponge for a throat.

Wringing my rubbery neck,
watching my words leave my toothy cave,
I found out that G doesn't believe in beer.
Believes in souls but not beer,
believes in green men, not beer.

Alcoholic splash is what we all need,
at times. So I told him the obvious,
I'm going to get a case of
(Insert your ****** choice)
and I'll be back as soon as possible.

G stared at me and made a guttural noise,
Do whatcha please, I'll stay here and
protect us from vampires.
You know, blood-suckas.

Pale stoner vampires.


III.

The leather painted door was wide open
like the legs of ominous spider cave,
but the doors of a car
I had never seen before
were as closed as the lips of a VCR.
There's nothing but silence in these situations --
is this one of those situations? Grassy knoll?

Approaching the mouth of purgatory,
I entered with the hesitancy of a lost dog.
On the plastic covered couch,
two people sat atop the invisible cloud
above the patterned fabric
and above the fingers of time.

Blonde hair sprouted from her scalp,
raining down upon vanilla shoulder blades,
her chest a harbor for two pale, freshly mounds,
with crooked, beige diamonds in the center.

She trembled when G said, Meet Steph
-- can I call you Steph, Steph? --
Meet Steph, the artist formerly known as
Stephanie, holding up her licence,
Vanmeter, of 441 1/2 Locust Ave.

That's creepy, huh, Steph? Locust Ave?
Are you something that lives in the ground,
comes up every several years, making noise?
Has this been years in the making?
Are you bound to make noise in my house?

You know this is a house, right?
Whatsa matter, unfamiliar due to ya
living-in-the-*******-ground
or is it because you share a house,
an apartment, Steph? Is it one of those?
Pizza deliveries ain't paying the bills?

G gets up, I, a coward, approaching him
about to say -- Hold up, brother, he says.
Not another move, pulling his hand from
behind her shaking, confused head,
a silver cannon an extension of his arm.

She's here to **** our blood,
She's here to ****. our. blood.
Whether she means to or not,
I know you don't think you want to, Steph,
I know you don't mean to,
But you're here to
drain-us-like-the-Red-Cross.

I tell G that she isn't,
What have you done, G,
You need to let her go
before this gets worse.
That cliche dialogue.
Because these things always do,
cliche or not.

Brother, you don't understand these things
-- It's impossible for a godless man
to understand the mechanisms
of something bigger, something holy --
but you need to listen, G said, You need to --
she tried to move, quickly,
but G grabbed her by her blonde strands,
pulled her back towards the couch,
She swiped at his eye, drawing blood.

There was a pause, a deathly silence,
by the hair, she was rendered motionless,
Oh, no, he echoed, Love, you shouldn't,
You ought not do those things.
Looking at me, he asked me to listen,
Always remember this wasn't your fault.
Sometimes, you can't be in control

Holstering her neck with his gun hand,
G picked her up, slamming her,
head first,
into the drug covered,
resin sprinkled
coffee table.

He dropped on top of her,
Looked at me, Remember, okay?
and beat her head with the **** of the gun,
until the cracking of a larger M&M; shell
muffled towards all eardrums,
maybe even hers.

With blood,
that could be mistaken as war paint,
swimming across his jaw and neck,
and sprinkled on his forehead,
G whispered, You are free,
and I was never sure
who he was talking about.

My feet left before I did,
I was suddenly in my car
with only the ignition
and G's voice registering.
I passed car after car,
pastel metal wagon after
metallic matte creation,
not sure if I ever saw him,
not sure if he ever existed,
if I ever existed.

IV.

Sheers of shimmering gloss grace her torso.
And I have broken her bones,
imploring that I love her so.
Blueberry lips belly the cold;
hold her too deep, hold her I'm told.

Waking up in a cavern darkness,
my dreams disintegrate from my eyes,
swirl in my headspace, evaporating to
heaven knows where.

Scattered pitter-patter
drowns midnight Seattle,
killing and washing away
cluttered, modern filth,
******* carnivorous minds
into hungrier gutters.

This is the part
where the screen of my life reveals:
SIX MONTHS LATER,
in yellow, stenciled letters.
But what it wouldn't say is
how I still feel like I'm dipped
in the ink of Ithaca, NY.

If this were the indulgent
autobiography of my life
it wouldn't say that
the distance doesn't matter,
because that'd be a lie;
I feel like I have only escaped myself.

The rain swells, sounding as
thick as blood, swishing around
the veins of the city.

Stephanie dies every night,
disappearing and reappearing
behind secret doors only she can open.

When she comes to me in sleep,
she is baptized in green, head caved,
Forget-Me-Nots sprouting
between fragmented skull
and select spots of brain soil,
the flowers singing jazz
with a different voice, every time.

One time she spoke.
With blueberry lips that belly cold,
she sounds like my mother:
I am so proud of you, she statically says.
You saved me. Remember.

V.

To be continued.

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.

Mother, Father
I am six foot one and I can see over the trees
I can **** mountains and bury my bones in the soil
I am six foot one and I am just tall enough to see the truth
I can look over others but I can't look over myself
My shoulders bend like a bow, waiting to break
And I can feel it all. I can feel it all.

And to you,
May your temporary smile be a golden forever
And your heart existent with or without hope
Let your brain open doors your hands cannot touch
And your chest not collapse when the smoke is too much
To live and to love with you is the grandest adventure
And to cut myself on your edges, bleeds into itself
And to live in your heart, is the biggest place I've ever found
And to kiss you until my hands break and there is no sound

And to all of us,
We're a dark piece of trash
Ribs are a cage and holographic souls sing
Disenchanted by the human experience
We're pretentious and objectify everything

And to all of us,
We're all light, we're all eyes wondering wide
And we all shine bright, some of us cannot hide
May your hands slant, slowly slinging
towards the bells that are slowly ringing
and may you strike a chord in all of us.
May your existence be a temporary forever.

I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

When she died, I was jobless,
sleeping on her couch,
and a few months out of the ward.

My mental instability helped me lose friendships, love, and my identity.

I used to hope death would touch me
and I did not know why I wanted it to.

Death instead touched her,
drifting like a gas, underneath her door,
into her lungs, erasing consciousness
like lavender being blown by the wind,
into marked a detergent bottle.

I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

A blue shock spread throughout me,
like the ocean swallowing animals
and forcing them to adapt.

I began drowning in water that looked like gas station slushee,
my ribcage hugging frantic gelatin organs,
beating alongside the spindle of time.

I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

My carcass became Sun-kissed from the burning of change --
my grandmother died before I could succeed:
my grandmother died before she could see me live.

I crawl through the coarse, wheat-dyed sand,
hoping the blood I trail can be measured in her love.

I hope to make her proud, to learn to work hard,
then harder and harder and harder.
To become fully healthy,
to become what she stayed by my side for.

One of the few.

I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

She said she was proud of me.
It probably was me and not her,
but at least someone is proud.

I drank in the steely woods, fragmented to all within;
a manger boy without his Godly toy, swallowed by the sin.
And without the gaze of the zombified masses,
scraping their plates, buying, then christening their glasses,
I realized that I was the fire that I had always feared;
a pretending son of something other than what I am;
a shimmer of a crystallized storm, smothered by shame
and tortured by the resent of recent rain....

Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah
A desert-dry painted scorned
Ripped to shreds by hell-gate thrown
Forever summoned to grated life

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.

Maternal French kisses
Mental illness defines her
Pretend to forget

When the girl, I loved, died,
I locked myself in her room
while her parents were in Arizona.

I went through her things
and found
**** photos;
A few where she seemed
ashamed
and a few where she
liked her body.
She had a gummy smile
and in others
she looked down at her *******
while having a blank expression.

I found empty
alcohol bottles.
Cheap bottles of wine
and a bottle of red,
stuffed with tissue paper.

Under her dresser
I found an unopened
letter she intended to
give the boyfriend before me,
where she admitted
to being ***** as a teenager
and how she hoped
it wasn't too much
baggage.

I threw out the photos
and
alcohol bottles,
but not the letter.

I don't know why but I kept it.
I occasionally read it,
because it's her,
and I love her.

I told my friend
and he called me a
Halomaker,
because I made sure
she was remembered
as an angel.

The strands hanging from her Selsun Blue scalp
like pasty, jittery children's legs;
beyond buckwheat, before bottle-ship shoulders.
And she's so kind with her philosphy books and new diet,
I think back to when she was four and where she believed in me,
for the first time.

Her jawline is made up of alien angles,
she has tattooed forearms;
peach fuzz skin decorated with cheap, olive maps,
pointing towards a choreographed heart,
towards a neon mind.

And she has one thousand paper coffee cups
discarded across the urban earth,
spilling out onto the asphalt jungle,
much like every chance she gives.
Bloodied and twenty-four,
an abstract thought in a lonely existence.
I've never known.

Forever haunted by the words you say.
Forever haunted since you've gone away.

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.

Antarctic stares from Arizona eyes; white knuckles, heavy blue pores.
No, nothing changed you anymore.
Rapid touches to the abdomen, the sound of violins breathed in your mind
and he's not usually like this, you said, "He's actually really kind."

What didn't **** you, left you broken.
And you had misspoken, as your words slurred into tears that never fell,
after a fifth of alcohol and half a night of hell,
as you revealed that you thought without him you were nothing at all.
You whispered this
while I cried to you for the last time through a cellular call,
through an invisible, static, insurmountable wall.  
And I disagreed because I had seen it all:
heavy blues and brave bloodshot brown eyes,
"Please don't, I think there's more to you than you realize."

She kissed me
not because
she wanted to
but because
she could.

We fell in
love.
Not because
we could
but because
we wanted to.

We made
mistakes.
Not because
we wanted to
but because
we could.

We thought
we were
perfect.
Not because
we could
but because
we wanted to.

I vomited in
the bathroom
of a
Baltimore
7-11
because
sometimes
you cannot
hold it in
much
longer.

Her hands shook
as she held her
mirror
because
sometimes
your reflection
can only
tell you
so much.

My body shook.
Her body stiff.
And when
the bodies
move
the hearts
stop.

She lied some.
I drank words.
The veins
in hands
are maps
to imagined
consciousness.

Really,
it's just
a
*******
*****.

Music to
my ears.
Nervousness
between
blinks.
Noise to
my brain.

She said,
"I love you"
not because
she wanted to
but because
she could.

I said,
"I love you, too,"
not because
I could
but because
I wanted to.

Apply plastic to my face; I can't embrace
the way I look, the way I waste.
My God is dead, because I erased him.
I am trapped in a daydream nation.

Rip the cords out of celebri-babes
I wanna be the end of a film
I wanna fade...

...Fade in,
My God is your God and I declare you're full of sin
Hollywoodland is my mecca and it's all that I am
Give me a star on the walk instead of the sky
I don't wanna live, I just don't ever want to die

Hollywood, Holly would
give up her soul
if Oscars and movies could
make her whole.

The night before, she whispered,
"The quickest way to break a heart
is to pretend you have one."

Howling,
like you've never heard before.
And she sat next to me, radiating.
Her body jumped with every bump,
as foam blossomed out of her mouth.

And I promised her
that I would get her there in time.
And her dealer promised me
he didn't give her anything.

Howling.
I was howling,
like you and I have never heard before.
And her glazed eyes would open.
And my eyes were wide shut.
Her body lain crooked,
like the antenna of the wrecked car
my grandfather left me.

And I wondered if the planet
was moving too quickly
or if I wasn't moving fast enough -
before I decided the only time
that was real, was now.

Howling.
The police sirens were howling,
like the suburbs have never heard before.
The wails were begging me to pull over.
And the flashes of red and blue
danced across her ivory skin.
She mumbled to her deceased grandma,
and I asked her to stay.

And in that moment,
I tried to numb myself.
I tried to detach
and let the river carry me.

Howling.
I was howling,
like the deputy
had never heard before.
I begged for an escort.
I begged to go back into my car.
He looked at her knotted body
but didn't see her like I saw her.
And he told me to remain calm.
He told me to stop yelling -
but I couldn't express enough.
I couldn't release enough desperation.

And the river carried me
to the rocks before the fall.
At the bottom, I knew she was dying,
and this killed me, most of all.

Howling.
I was howling her name,
like she had heard before -
but not this time.
No, not this time.

The night before, she whispered,
"The quickest way to break a heart
is to pretend you have one."

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.

I can tell you about the girl.

Her freckles were beige constellations,
and her voice was husky and rasped
like birds before the churning of a storm.

She was weird and laughed at everything I said -
which made her even weirder,
because I'm only funny in certain photos
and in certain clothes.

Her left arm was covered in scars and burns.
"As you can tell, I'm right handed," she said.
Arthritis surrounded her wrists and other joints,
and all I could think about were my
grandmother's arthritis crippled hands,
and if the girl would thank the arthritis, one day,
for no longer allowing her to self-harm.

One of her feet were bigger than the other
and, when she walked, she would lose balance.
"I'm not sure if the world is too fast
or if I'm too slow. Then again," she winked,
"it's probably because of my feet."
I liked her because she treated me like a person,
but didn't take me as seriously
as I took myself.

I struggled with self-respect
and she struggled with a drug addiction.
Her arm was needle park
and sometimes she missed ******
more than she missed me.

She wasn't the type of girl to shake
without her drugs -
she'd, instead, talk about them
like they were old friends.
She understood them
more than she understood herself.

After a few months of ***
and, "I'll be sad when you leave,"s,
I called her my girlfriend
and she smiled.
Flecks of speckled angles, bright,
I saw her, first, she accepted
my night.

Five days later,
she overdosed on morphine.
I picked her up.

Her eyes were glazed over.
I said, "I love you,
but this is *******."
She cried and said,
"Forgive me."

I lain in bed, next to her -
next to the avoidance of death.
She asked how I was
and I said, "Everything I write is ****,
but I'm glad I can write ****** poetry
about how we'll be okay."

She asked, "We will be okay, right?"

I hope.

If I want to die, I'll do it myself
I'll save a kid or some **** and make it look like I died a hero
But nah, I had a death wish.
Didn't any of you know?
I said it probably forty-million times.
It's cool the kid is alive, though.
And it's cool that this all rhymes.

Tell the kid while I convulse, choking on blood that  I said,
"Eat your vegetables. Stay in school. Being in love is really cool.
It's okay to be alone. It's okay to be afraid. Don't make the decision I made."

Then play some surfer music and have him stand in front of a projector,
projecting video waves and dreams, as they start to dance.

Honestly.
If I wanna die, it's by your side.
But you're gone.
Away.
It was too hard, and you're afraid.
I'm afraid, too. I don't wanna die.
But this isn't living, what I'm doing now.
It's survival, and it's just
blood and bone.
Eat and walk.
In a crowded room, alone.
Smile and talk.
I can't feel. I can't feel. Keep saying it: I can't feel.

But I feel it all, and if I want to die then it's by your side.
If I wanna die, then I want to talk to you before I go.
If I'm going to die then it's because it's hard to cope
knowing that I love you, and you love me, but you don't wanna anymore.
So I don't wanna anymore, anything.
I don't wanna be here.
I don't wanna be anywhere.
I don't wanna be.

I dream a lot now, more than before.
Reality has become the compass to a draining nothingness,
and I don't want to stick around.
Either way, I'll dream or think of nothing, and it couldn't be that bad.

"No one is worth taking your life over."
"It gets better."
"What if she wasn't the one?"

How do you know how I feel?
What if it doesn't?
What if she was?

Can I bathe in nihilism or is that too transparent?
Should I shake the salsa in the silver room of the Lisbeth Salander character arch or should I be in the ark, two by two, with Noah?
At least I'll be able to feel, taste, see the shine, relate to another's pain, realize a life, be next to one meant for me in the shelter of doom and eventual hope, and be with a man with as much certainty, perceived as crazy or brilliant as me.

Can you walk home to me?

To know that what I knew is what I may never know is something I don't want to know, and something I'll always know could be something I live for and by, and that's all I knew before and now I know nothing but that.

If I wanna die, then it's knowing you as I walk to you or you walk to me, in depth, in death, in soliloquy.

The crumbling clock is my hoarder as it keeps everthing I don't need like memories, future events, and times and dates for places I don't want to be.

Is it too much to want to be a fly on the wall that is smashed?

I've never been so lost.

"Don't be so dramatic. Don't be so dramatic. Don't be so dramatic."

Okay, thanks. Now I can think of that, and what else is wrong with me while I feel lost. So lost, and unlike ever before if I ever was lost before.

What do I even say on my note?

Ooops?
Whoops?
My bad?
It's never enough, isn't it?

If I could wrap your sorrow around my lungs to where I could only breathe your sadness as I give you my hopes, joys, and everlasting essence to fuse with you as you feel complete, I would, I have, and I lay empty.

Is this enough to say?
Do you get my point?

You're my favorite
  ****** cover.
Sing for paint drizzle.
  Kick me in the leaf
    stuffed gutter.
Put me aside. Pull me aside.
  Tell me you've kinda lied.
Tell me you're kinda sad.
  Tell me you don't
    have a future
  and that you're
    kinda glad.

I love you--I want you dead.
  I want you dead. Why'd you
gotta me feel free
  and pretty?

You're my favorite
  failed abortion--
pure shock value, baby.
  Your past is a ****.
I want you to be a
  plastic bag
so I can suffocate myself
  with you--
pure shock value, baby.

I love you. I love you.
  I love you.
Welcome to getting wet.
  *******. *******.
I want to ******* like
  I have cancer--
pure shock value, baby.

La, La, La
  Go **** yourself.
La, La, La
  Go **** yourself.
La, La, La
  Everyone is a drum solo
by a numb drummer.

On, Dancer!
  On, Cupid!
*** is fun!
  No violence?
Stupid!

She is attached to the couch
  like a swollen tomatoe;
glued to the TV, supine and subservient.
  Texting while while writing a generic fantasy novel, with the
  televison serving as an audio fireplace,
  she believes she'll be famous despite
lacking concentration, respect, and will.

  O, call to the daycares; a baby is loose --
neck fastened by an electronic noose.
  America come and receive thy child;
harbor a body sheltered from the wild;
  And how could you expect such
sofa fungus to survive? Well,
  first, to save someone else, they
must be alive.

Well, we were the History club rejects,
focusing on the effects
of being us
instead of in a book.

Two college drop-outs,
calling in shout-outs
to our friends,
hoping that it affected
how we looked.

Our dads would sleep in,
and our moms were crying
until a quarter past noon --
and we knew
if we didn't start trying,
that would be us, soon.

We were the starving artists,
painting fruit we couldn't afford.
Hoping each brushstroke of an artichoke
would be fruitful to our wallet,
or at least strike a chord.

Two love-loss orphans,
dreaming of morphing
into something or someone else.
But they told us
to remove that fluff
from our head
and put it on the shelves.

We were the film club fanatics,
studying the dynamics
of how to be a pretend person.
We wanted to be
a Wes Anderson flick,
but we were never any thing
other than who we were
and that's what made us sick.

And I swear I miss the desperation:
I'm nostalgic for yesterday's conversations.

In flashes,
her face dances
on top of a
broomstick body.

She refills
coffee cups and
her stomach with
butter pecan ice cream
and lovers' saliva.

But her lovers are
strangers
and her mouth is a
place
where secrets are locked
behind smoke stained teeth.

In flashes,
her ambitions escape
into the jet black night.
Cigarettes dropping like
sputtering fruit flies.

A size seven New Balance
buries a Marlboro corpse,
burning out like the light
in her kiwi eyes.

She returns to the diner.
What echoes reign free.

I love you as the air escapes
As the blood slows
My heart beat spaced out
I love you, I love you, I love you
As I go

When I fall asleep my eyes meet yours.

Thoughts provide internal expression in my external repression
Bring me your eyes, loved surprise, stay until sunrise, more honesty in lies
Violet past in the violent pass glances at me through the sky's glass
And it's hard to last, but worth it to show that I know, yes I know ever so sure
That you are mine, and I am yours

By the shore of the ocean of the golden crown of the sun
Do you remember when we were fun? Do you remember being new?
I was enthralled by myself, but more enthralled by you.
Now, in love so strong that God couldn't scoff if I were to slice wrist after wrist
If I had to stop you from all that is wrong in the suffocating mist
Of our parents, our friends, their lies, their ends
Influencing us because we're alone by ourselves
On a burning boat floating on a ocean containing whispers in seashells

And I remember you, the way I pushed my fingers through
Around and past your skin
Touching what was ours, but cascaded by the sin
Our parents decide to keep, and we try so hard to weep but we feel nothing more
The sugar in the sands of the seashore run so deep, and we lay and lose sleep
Missing out on dreams of us and money signs, on clothes and smiles, wherever
So I can love you forever

I get so scared in this place, so out of place, so many people that aren't people
Pretending to be doctors, lovers, gods, and human beings
Soft and free, could it be that we are drifting near any other home at all?
Shoes, pants, shirts, and skirts shaming our sweet shore. Is there any more?
Scandalizing scents scold sure souls soundly supplementing suffering sons
Profoundly, I look at you and search within myself to someone else
Because the words I say are stronger; lets stay out on the coast longer
Nothing could be wronger than living in a home on fire
So let me hold you close until I grow tired

On a body of moving life, is my heart ready for death?
I don't want to think of you dying at all
But someday you will die, and what have I
Some lonely nights and dreams we used to share
Until I watched that man drive into your passenger seat
And your head hit the dashboard
Your feet kicked underneath
As blood left your nose, I tried to be so close
To keep you from the hurt
To keep you close and safe
But the bone disagrees, and in forty five degrees
I watch your fingers grab at your face
Let me get closer as my heart will race
If I lose you I will fall, into a loveless call
That keeps me awake at night, and I'll scream into nothing
Asking for everything, now and please
Because my heart with you is at ease

Without you I would be left breathing through a tube
Eyes glazed with an 11:14 truth,
because I did remember you
In 2078, my heart will stay with you and break
As the nurse breaths my words, everything at stake
Her hand will clutch my shoulder, and my chest will crash into itself
Every book falling off the bookshelf at night
My rusted hands from left to right
That used to hold your hands up the street
So proud of you, I bragged to everyone we'd meet
I love her so, and if you don't know, with her everywhere I go
Love into another dimension or time, she is my heart, my reason, my rhyme
And I'll remember her, as the hurt digs ever so deep
Losing sleep until the time is gone, and I am done

Don't tell me it's okay
Don't tell me it's fine
I drag
the heart
that's torn apart
into a straight line

Don't say it's okay
Don't say it's fine
I drag
the heart
you tore apart
into a straight line

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 want to be a dog's growl:
  as rough as bark.
As I ruff and I bark
  until my throat bleeds,
down my tongue,
  and clots, choking me.
Strangling my anger.

  I want to bite God's hand
and taste the scars and lines.
  I want to run alongside
the downfall of man
  like I'm chasing cars.
Waiting to be run over.

I want to be castrated,
  neutered,
so I can fall in line,
  so I can conform,
so I can be me in a sea
  of nobody else.

I want to be beaten
  with a chain
attached to my neck.
  I want to be on t-v.
I want to be saved.
  I want to betray trust.

Generic. Generic.
  I want to be like this poem:
  generic, you martyr.
You genocidal ****.
  You deadbeat.
You racist.
  You sexist.
You intolerant ****.
  I want to chew off
my trapped leg.
  I want to be a dog's growl.

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.

I'm a ******
I don't do drugs or drink
my only flaw is how much I think
I don't believe in God but I believe in me
And I don't know where I belong on my family tree

I don't propose that **** is based on a girl's clothes
I suppose I'm dumb or brilliant but who really knows
You could say that I'm narcissistic or have low self-esteem
with a girlfriend with a pocketless pocket and a head full of dreams

Whoa that didn't flow, that last line
Imperfect effort seems to be an attribute of mine
Look at this rhyme scheme, it's so diverse
I guess I can get away with this; I couldn't get any worse
One favorite, three favorite, fifty-four
Give me validation, I could always use some more
Hello, Hellopoetry! You've been so forgiving
of my beautiful poetry that reflects an ugly way of living
Tell me, tell me: Should I write more?
What if my sadness is gone, and my melancholy no more?
Will you still love me if I write about crinkle-cut fries?

"****. No more suicide poems, does this kid still try?"

Is there still a Josh Haines if he no longer cries?
Is there still a Josh Haines if he doesn't wanna die?
Is there still a Josh Haines if he starts to fall?
Is there still a Josh Haines if he gets it all?
Is there still a Josh Haines after every kiss?
Is there still a Josh Haines after he writes all of this?

Eh. Maybe, baby. Maybe.

Dear Talia,

I don't want to be a tortured artist.
I don't want to be depressed and I don't want to be anxious.
Competitive sadness and disorders treated like accessories disgust me.

The world glamorizes mental illness, and I don't understand why. There is nothing romantic about being mentally ill just like how there's nothing glamorous about a broken wrist or a torn medial collateral ligament. There's nothing romantic about constantly being afraid that the world will fold in itself and **** you with it. There's nothing romantic about feeling like you could break down and cry at any moment.

This is the first piece I've written while being medicated.

I want it to be Christmas already.

The world dreams itself a halo, but can only attain horns. The halo is an illusion and the horns are an idea.

I'm due to take another Lorazepam. Would I look cool to the kids who idolize dysfunction and misinterpret pain as style, if I were to take one of these, with water and a distant glance, in front of them? Geez, to have their approval would to have everything and nothing at all.

I'm not sure why I've written as much about this as I have.

You.

It is 2:48 am and all I can think about, in this moment, is you.

I can't wait to spend Christmas with you. I can't wait to wear bad Christmas sweaters, and be the couple everyone hates, as we sing Christmas carols and spread holiday cheer.

I wrote this poem a few minutes ago. Sometime around 2:30 am. I'm not sure. I'm exhausted:

I sat on the edge of my bed, and on the edge of my life,
medicated to the point of pointlessness. Soft.
It was the nineteenth, not the twentieth,
and I wished I saw the fireworks with her fifteen days earlier.

My gasps tore the shingles off of the house.
And they hung suspended above the hole in the roof.
And God stared down into my room, as the shingles swirled skyward.
"I see you," I said, "but I don't believe in you."

I left home and ran until I was a dream that had passed itself.


I hope that was okay.

I love you.


Yours,

Joshua Haines

In seventh grade I watched my friend bleed out
Holding what was left of his leg, he whispered, "This isn't good."
They say that the human body contains eight pints of blood
I counted nine.

When you were born, no one knew.
No one knew how intense the galaxy inside of you was.
How each star would illuminate your eyes,
and how you would illuminate mine.

In tenth grade,
my dad didn't talk to me for three months.
I didn't know who I was for three months.
My light became darkness as his love became emptiness.
Father, love me the way I love you. I pretend not to,
please be the same way as me.

Your heart grew faster than my hands, brother.
I hope someone loves you more than I.
For I am what you are, everything without and within,
forever and without the night.

Mother,
do you feel what I feel? Do you see what I see?
Am I what you imagined, more or less?
Do my words matter? Does my heartbeat pound alone?
Do you love me?

You are what illuminates my eyes, Queen Anne's Lace.
With or without, from your eyes to mine,
silence with noise, electricity moves throughout
yet I am calm. You are what I know,
and all that should be known is that
you deserve to be happy.

In twelfth grade my father tried to stab me.
If he was successful, it wouldn't have been the first time
one of his actions got past the surface level.

It's not your fault, burning rainbow on the water.
Adaptation without reclamation I find you in my translation
as hurt yet elation. Mother.

My kaleidoscope,
so soon,
mirroring colors and shape.
Am I looking at myself?

I don't care if you don't comprehend, the words I say or how I end.
And if you don't understand the words that pass,
your eyes, like your heart, are transparent glass.
Taste throughout, with blood mixed in, the way I beat has always been
to know, to show, to allow what I see now to be seen,
may I know what I let go is what I'll always mean.
Thunderbolts from your mouth, good luck to me because I am shocked.
There is no lock. There is no lock. There is no lock.

I live throughout different years, with evolving eyes without resolving fears.
I've been afraid. I've been lost.
Kaleidoscope.
No longer, no more.  
My heart is an open door.

Blood stained pants.
Hands without.
With every word,
every shout.

Your crooked smile flows upward
and I can see it from the ground.
Haunting myself with
a film teacher's creature feature
in black and white,
an old orchestra for sound.

You said you'd get nervous
when on our clunky telephone;
saying that customer service
could hear the fibers
in your voice
rustle like tall, dry grass,
with a wind whispering through
confirming, with every breath,
that you feel alone.

We'd recite fifties sitcoms:
Honey, do you --
do you have the keys?
Well, gee whillikers,
I could use someone to
open me, close me, and
dispose of me, please.

I write this for no one,
which is the category you fall in.

Sincerely,
signed Issues,
P.S. The television
is in color,
and I don't miss you.

- There ain't hope in the U,
the S is for Show me your soul,
the A is for Always forget:
the United States of
Killing it, Killing it -

Leaving kind eyes for bright lights; a place to live without my shadow
Digging in the fiber of the streets and the passersby;
Penetrating a future with dark brown hair and dark brown eyes
Her ******* smother my scarred breaths
Her father didn't love her
Putting my finger in her; neither did mine
Scraping lips and she tastes like summer blood
It'll pass and I'll never be the same
Looking for people in a crowd
Empty stares and broken sons, used daughters
Tearing skin and watching my past decay in hours
Bathing in painted lips, just to be born in my own eyes
Flirting with the hurt I left in the beginning;
Staying away, leaving my parted loneliness in her mouth and I should be sorry.
I'm so sorry.  
******* that make my mother and father something I forget;
Nobody loves themselves, so how could they love me?
You weren't very good to me.
And I writhe in ‘comfort’ just to feel.
Provoking searing glares because the numbness is like dry blood jarred underneath my nails.
My life encapsulates a warm goodbye.
Running to nothing to find myself.

I know that you are lonely and I think we need to walk.
I keep wasting words about the weather and other small talk.
You gotta promise to keep pulsing just like the April rain.
Your lips are just flesh but they sure cover all the pain.

I walk beside you because you are my best friend.
We can walk through the park, hand in hand.
I'll keep you safe no matter where, until we reach our end.
I promise to love you past the trees,
but there's one thing I don't understand.

I can't see the harm in loving,
despite all that comes.
There were those that left before me,
but I'm not that one.

Your leaving is death,
but I still keep you alive.  
I wait for you, Kori,
and that's how I survive.

They say you never get over it, you just learn to tolerate.
I let cups of coffee stain my lips to remove your taste.  
I don't wanna think less of you; you can't be someone I hate.
I don't want you to disappear or for my love to go to waste.

I could die from anticipation just to **** the wait.
Until I see you again, my dreams will create
a way to visit you in my own personal paradise.
What it would be to hold you again as you shiver from the ice.

I'm not sure if anyone could love you more than I.
But I welcome them to do, or at least to try.
I want you to be loved. I want you to be happy.
I want you to be loved with or without me.

I want you to be loved.
I want you to be loved.
I want you to be loved
with or without me.

Sunset orange spilling onto
the grass-splattered grotto;
where silicon body lay, wading,
and the ******* float up,
hovering bone-white ****,
emerald eyes towards the
galactic-gutter ceiling.

I.

Their knuckles drag the dust,
kissing broken boulder.
She wraps ***** arms around,
as she rests on his shoulder.

Birds swing and spin like
fleshy, fluid tops.
If you study them
with your tired eyes,
their dancing never stops.

II.

The cactus juice helps them
see each-other, and they
sing of spontaneous Gods
that torment the desert floor
they swim upon, waiting for
her, whom wades amongst stone.

Movies and shows, albums and
singles splinter their psyches;
what could you remind
that sneaks from behind,
and nibbles their Nikes.

III.

I remember the ways
she lied, his face cracked,
but I forgive her. I forgive
the other men she loved
instead of me, I forgive
her for accepting me,
I forgive myself for
believing that the
greater I hurt,
the deeper I loved.

Little girl scratched at the sand,
looking at him, her hair as dry
as the plants scampering by.
I have always loved you,
she croaked, I have always
been more than a child
in the dreams I share
with you. I feel as coarse
as this wasteland, existing
only to us, her, and a thread
hanging suspended from time.

IV.

Their bodies plopped onto
the moist, coffee soil.
They drank the ground,
their blood pushing faster,
racing the rushing tide.
And in the distance, a shine
before the eternity, a hope
beyond the shore.

A skeletal fist wrapped his wrist,
at the end, she asked him to forget.
But he dove and swam towards
the rock cave tomb, breaking
through the electric waves.

Little girl fell, knees swallowed
by the baptismal sand,
she wept and asked him
to come back, please
come back.


V.

His face brushed the stone wall,
he kissed and called until
wine-red smeared his face,
until he tasted copper
swarm his mouth.

A brief moment, he felt himself,
he felt the world photographed.
Rays spit out between the cracks,
rocks explode, vomitting over.

Shard of slate speared his stomach,
and he remembered October:
Santa Fe, where they fought,
she shoved, he begged,
battered lips brushing past,
leaving photo albums and a
note, in blue ballpoint,
stating that it would
never last.

VI.

Dying moments consisted
of anxious pulls at the shard,
cutting his hands open,
adrift towards her lifeless
pearl, pure exposed rib body,
begging, kissing, shoving,
proclamations of forgiveness.

Bleeding out, he shook her,
asking to be loved as the wall
closed, capturing their bodies,
preserving the desperation
of his broken nature.

Above all that is radiant and bright,
she floats above the New York night.
Neon signs and grey faces
look up, pointing, exclaming,
'Look how amazing
the human race is'.

Phantom girl floating, sifting
past and through all that's drifting:
empty eyes and the cracks on
every sunken, cigarette *******
ivory American cheek-bone,
belonging to a person, who
feels like any person: here
but sweetly alone.

All that is radiant,
all that is bright,
think what is beautiful
is flying past and
out of sight.

Altogether, the night we wove
a trickled treasure, tangled:
skirted legs spilling out from
the teacup of a denim lap,
validation in the vacuum cove.

- Dusty Nikes before the dusk,
who art in heaven, my god
he thrusts.

- Why'd your mother
let you talk that way:
You smoke cliche cigarettes
in such an unfamiliar way.

- The hanger left welts, weeping
into post-relevance landline love,
body lay like the hands on the clock,
copper landmarks seeping.

What a feeling, ever so same.
Arched eyebrows, a trademarked shame:
like a fighter, like ****** oozing.
Like a functional inability,
divine in its losing.

A cigarette after ***
  gets old
when it's the only thing
  burning
in your world.

When Netflix feels like
  family,
you wonder where
  everyone went.

******* feels like
  a cry for help--
So help you God.

Missing your home
  is second
to missing who
  you once were.

Eastern philosophy,
Karl Marx, Rawls--
We don't know
  any ******* thing,
really.

Pretending to be more.
Pretending to be smarter
than we really are.

May holes in our sides
let others see
that we're beating, too--
just not as ferociously
or as honestly.

May we vanish
into the darkness
that best suits us.

If the light is our night,
may we follow it.
Follow it...
Follow it...
Rebel from our frame.

May God grant us
to be more
than losers.

Homegrown but hermetically sealed
from people, places, ways to feel.
Dropping a tablet on a tongue,
Korbel divides around pink sponge;
swallowing four or five, to avoid feeling alive.
There are cars leaving trails of thoughts.
Dare them to drive,
drunk on moments,
stuck on other people--
her freckles could fall to the floor
and turn the tiles into an oceanic remembrance.

-

We are lost trees, reaching out
but stuck where we say we'll soon leave:
rooted even after death,
relying on escape so much that hope
becomes our prison.

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.

Laying on a sheetless matress,
day-drinking until bottled spirit dry.
Loveless in a ghost's nest,
never believing I
could be something more,
something from a Christmas card.
Take the long neck, smash the body
and fantasize to the shard.