I lived in a house on the hill of my thoughts; a broken home with parents with halted hearts
My blood was young but my mind so old; my body tattered but never my soul
I met her in the valley of my dying dreams,
radiant with romance running in her ravenous veins
Relating her prose to carnivorous crows;
she was as disparate as me with as many internal foes
On the grass we kissed with an appetite,
she tasted of salt water, but drowning never felt so right
I didn’t know how to swim, but for her I would dive
I had never met anyone who made me feel so alive
Soon by noon I went home, after we grew weary
I don’t know where she went, but I hope it was somewhere near me

The cluster of ice in my glass
  looks like a milky fist.
I shake my cup and ask
  about the weather.
He says, 'Hasn't rained in
  one thousand or so years.'
I say how that's unfortunate;
  he says how **** happens.

This party transitions into
  something out of an art-house film;
the Cali-tens are dancing to some
  80's song you would vaguely recognize.
They bump into one another
  like bees in an electric hive.
A Russian drinking a Russian
  asks about drugs.
I say into my drink that I
  don't have that many friends.

Looking for a bathroom,
  I am bumped by hips and lips
into the former eggshell/cigarette stain wall,
where I find my partial reflection
  looking back at me in that familiar
transparent parent way.

I find myself apologizing.

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.

I can hear your back crack,
in the dark.
Removing your underwear
with chewed fingernails:
You softly ask
if we can share scar tissue
and if I'll stay
despite every issue.

You try to kick the covers
off of our bed,
and ask if we can share the thoughts
buzzing inside of your head.

When insomnia erases your eyes
and disease steals your brain:
You inhale ways to die,
because you still dream
but it's not the same.

I can hear the static in your skull.
I know why you keep
the kitchen knives dull.
You pull on my fingers
so I don't forget you.
You cry on the pillows
and hope I like romance too.

I kiss your temple
during each thunderstorm.
I read you books in bed,
because your eyes are worn.
I put my ear to your chest
because I want you to see
that the air you breathe
means everything to me.

I watch you breathe
as you sleep.
I'm afraid of what
you could mean
to me.

I study the stripes
on your shirt.
I think of all the
ways we'll flirt
and all the ways
we'll cry and I'll choke
with your hands
around my throat,
and Malboro Black
cigarette smoke
pouring down my
esophagus--
I wish I wasn't
so fond of us.

Love is for tin birds
in a flame cage.

I miss my stupid perfect girlfriend.

With her stupid cute face.

With her stupid nice smile

that makes the pain erase.


And I miss her stupid lovely eyes,

so stupid pretty brown.

And I know I’m stupid in love with her

because for some reason,

when she’s feeling stupid or unpretty

I feel ****** and down.


I miss her stupid laugh

full of joy and wonder.

And I miss how she doesn’t make me feel stupid, at all

And how she makes my heart feel like thunder


And I wish I was with her right now

I wish we could be stupid together

But I’ll give up a few stupid days

In exchange for being stupid forever.

Her hair is buckwheat, straight,
hanging with the ease of
an assisted suicide.
And the smear, red and from
ear to ear, shows what she cannot:
that beauty is fluid and that we've forgot.

Sun-freckled and speckled
with cheap, off-brand gloss --
she is the monologue of
an anxious man across
the girl in the catalog, who
wore the Fall before the fall.

The yuppies are by the
  Cotto Café, asking those
not to call them hipsters.
  An auburn feminist drinks
Mexican blend, black, while
  reading Margaret Atwood.

I gave up smoking, I say,
  about a month ago.
No one really listens, which
  I sometimes find comforting.

After I walk my isolation off,
  I stumble into a Taco Bell;
one of those hybrids: this time
  KFC. The cashier is curly in the
way that broken legs are curly.
  Her eyes are green but I dare
not objectify her, I hope I don't
  say out loud, because I fear
nothing more than being
  patronizing.

Construction loudly stutters
  and cars squeak and shush.
On this griddle of a sidewalk,
  I feel alone. Vehicles vroom
while I stand silent, a monument
  to my generation.

Up until my insomnia meets me
I lied when I said I forgot
I was scared what you'd think
If I said that  I love you a lot

People have only cared for minutes
Leaving me to care for days
When I look at you all I can think
Is please don't go away

I can see me in your eyes
I dream of dreaming with you
I can trace your scars with mine
My thoughts are bleeding through:

My Talia, I know what it's like to not be seen;
what it's like to be alone in a crowded room.
For you, my star, I want you to know:
that no one shines as bright as you.

I can taste you moving on my skin.
My gasp is air you sustain.
hand in hand, under an umbrella
with you, I am safe.

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.

My breath is barbed;
skeletal strings shift into smoke,
drifting into the shadows
as the darkness will choke.

Pearl snow stuffs my skull;
my grandmother in an earthern womb,
sleeps under it all.
A tombstone the last thing we bought--
a report card of her life:
She is with Him in Heaven, In Paradise...
With Him, Without Pain--
is speculation but turns into thought.

The icy steps do not deter me
as I sit on the crooked concrete spine;
speaking to her, hoping the snow
does not make her cold, any more,
'I can stay a while longer...
I do not have to go home, yet.'

-

Eco-friendly light spills from under the door,
forming a pool as yellow as diseased skin.
The brass doorknob is like a girl I once loved:
******* the outside, hollow in the inside,
unable to be moved and okay with it.
Fury from a faucet fills the bathtub
and rings my ears with its intent:
to fill a void and go away when cold.

She lays in the water
the city treats better than us,
wading in a wealth of watermelon wash;
her body flushed from fading flesh,
pores swim and stretch around
cursive carvings, kissing cursed curves--
and I sit upon a bone-white curb,
stirring my finger in the soup of her day;
watching the drain ****, wondering
if she'll, too, drift away.

The roaming rebels smoke their pipe-dreams
by the eroding wall.
Their pockets are as empty as their hearts
and they know it, and know
that you know it.

Her hairspray is a mist around her
beige-caked face --
and she swears she used to look good.
She swears that things used to matter;
that words once made sense;
that her boys won't forever stand by that wall;
that her boys won't forever stand still,
swept by the grains of time.

And you, in your desired attire,
in your calculated speak,
will never know that they know you don't know.
And you, well-adjusted and forever fluent in their inability to be temporary --
in their heartless self-awarness, with no ambition --
will sigh with sympathy
unneeded for the ******.

The darkest fields, an interlude
to parallel sparkling, suspended
watching eye upon vermilion sky --
like a harbored god pretended.

Killing trees, roots eating deep,
my father mercilessly alluded:
branches high and branches wide
found the sky and intruded.

I don't believe in God,
I believe in me.

Because
the only thing
that scares me
more than a God
is myself.

I am
so many people
that I can't even
keep track of
myself.

I am
group-******
ideas, personas,
smiles, images;
fractions of a being.

Phantom in plain sight.

I am a joke.
I am *******.
I make you laugh,
so you can't hear me.
I sell you someone else
so you don't see me
as I stand before you.

I am the ghost.

So, so many
voices
but none of them
are mine.

**** me
to pieces,
then gather
what fits.

It never does.
It never does.

Punk lips in perpetual paralysis,
and they're too afraid to let them kiss.
Too afraid to try to let it last
because of the blurs in their past.

I think the kids are in trouble.
Hanging out with temporary people;
making the wrong times never stop.
Smoking dreams with glass lovers
to indie sonnets and neon power pop.

The world knows they can pretend,
and it's their hearts they can't defend
from the illusion of what they could be,
and the loneliness of what they'll never see.

They skate the pavement until the sun sits,
and drink ***** from water bottles until their hurt slurs.
It's the preparation of tomorrow and what it may not bring
that makes every moment before, everything.

They're scared because it's real,
and I'm scared because they're scared.

She kisses the boys and girls
that pay the most attention.
The boys play with vapor
and her girls play with tension.
I wish I was the only one
that she will decide to touch
but I am who I am
and, in a way, that is too much.

Sawblade-sunflower petals
wrap around an earthy cushion,
and the humidity hangs in the air
as her beige body is crumpled
and I feel too sober, pushing.

Baby yellow falls apart,
in her hair the flower starts
to trickle onto sheet and pillow,
decorating the absences
that define how hollow
she and I have felt before --
******* like an endangered species
on the killing floor, I whisper once,
I whisper sweet, "Don't you wish
that we didn't meet?"

She kisses the boys and girls
that give the most attention.
I played with vapor
and she played with tension.

My foggy mouth tries to hide behind rain-smacked glass.
She says goodbye with complacent stares
and with the sudden flash of an umbrella.

The red of her dress doesn't belong in my life.
Each of her strides carry my resentment and weariness,
alongside the melting grey of the Seattle skyline.
So, I don't yell for her or imagine our lives,
as the windshield wipers sweep her image, out of sight, but not out of my head.

I return home, the half I was for decades.
The tread of my shoe mashing bluegrass,
digging up seeds and insect carcass, with every step.
Storm-soaked magazine subscriptions lay on the porch,
and her name is tattooed on every one.

The dog lays on the carpet, ears and eyes perking up at me.
And he knows he's truly alone, because I'll depend on him.

Eggshell kitchen cabinets are jammed with her:
Vermilion, saffron, and burgundy glasses hold
half-empty hangings of golden flat draft,
keeping her day-old, dried saliva smothered on the edges,
like transparent ocean waves dying on a glass coast
and buried in the bottom of the sun-pierced vortex.

What I couldn't realize is that the cup was me:
marked in so many ways,
letting decaying memories burrow and stay.

I’ve grown with little—
primarily attention
until it withered.
An identity dependent
on trends and demographic—
trading vulnerabilities for
Hollywood escapism.

The brighter the light,
the longer the shadow.
Within circle aflame,
reaching towards memory.

Saint Fluoxetine,
deliver me forward.
Allow me happiness.
Reveal to me my foibles
so that I can admire.

There is no I in denial.
They kiss in bed.
They roll around.

There is no I in denial.
He bought her flowers.
She placed them in a vase.

There is no I in denial.
They hug outside of
traditional thought.

I do not know how we got here,
but I know I don't want us
to stay.

There is no I in denial.
They **** in bathrooms.
They make love in gardens.

There is no I in denial.
She blew a kiss.
He caught a tough break.

There is no I in denial.
He holds a box of his things,
after being shown out.
She says they'll manage.

I do not know how we got here,
but I know I don't want us
to stay.

There is no I in denial.
They kiss in bed,
but it's not the same.
They roll around in bed,
but it begins
to feel
like effort.

There is no I in denial.
He bought her less.
She said it didn't matter.

There is no I in denial.
He feels like his father,
imagining things
she's doing.

I do not know how we got here,
but I know I don't want us
to stay.

There Is No I In Denial.
They don't talk as much.
They sit farther apart.

There Is No I In Denial.
She asks him what's wrong.
He resents her care.

There Is No I In Denial.
He gets drunk and
breaks the vase.
The flowers lay,
covered in wet glass,
sleeping in a puddle.

I do not know how we got here,
but I know I don't want us
to stay.

THERE IS NO I IN DENIAL.
They don't talk, they yell.
They don't remember each other.

THERE IS NO I IN DENIAL.
He drinks more.
She feels less.

THERE IS NO I IN DENIAL.
They were married underneath
an oak tree,
  She said, "I do."
He smiled and said,
  "I'm so lucky."

The flowers lay on the floor,
  dying.

I do not know how we got here,
but I know I don't want us
*to stay.

Maybe we're from the same scar.
Maybe the same galactic gutter.
Maybe the same pulpy punch.
Maybe you were my sister
or you were my brother.

Maybe there is a place
where we used to go
to plant our feet
in what we didn't know.

Maybe there is a place
where the whistle grows,
the voices chatter,
the stillness slows.

And maybe, somewhere
or the whistle grows,
the voices chatter,
the stillness shows.

And maybe, somewhere,
or this place, you said to me,
"I hope you remember
that this is a false memory."

His dog chased her
through the woods.
The rifle can **** from
three-hundred yards.

Watch her leap logs
and sidestep
sticks grabbing
at her shoulders.

There are three Gods
in the woods,
behind any tree.

No one is as ruled
as the lawless.
No one is as sedated
as the frenzied.

Sympathy couldn't be
measured in screams,
but measured
in her breaths.

Beyond the
honeydew horizon,
the senseless cease.
The half-life of eyes:
her only escape.

Where the tree-trunks
are furnished by the
candied corpses.
Her feet chomp at the
prostituted ground.

She will die, here,
whether she lives
or not.
For what is stolen,
stays.

It's loud.

Violet, Blue, and Green lights
scatter across the floor,
across a canvas of house music,
echoing back into itself.

She crawls towards me,
wearing only poorly inked tattoos
and the lights that kiss us all.

I touch myself,
wishing it was her.

- I leave the room,
the music fading away,
like retreating from
sound-carrying-birds -

The smoke that comes from the cigarette
forms a skeletal web, reaching for the moon.
With rain slapping the dark brick walls,
hugging and creating an alley reminiscent
of a salivating, crooked-cement mouth,
I stand drenched in silver forgotten.

I drop the cigarette in a petrol-colored puddle,
watching it sink, become hard to distinguish,
and fade away.

- I reenter the room,
the song has changed
and is more mechanical. -

It's loud.

The lights are now
Bubblegum, Aqua, and Tangerine.
She lays supine, watching dollars
drift down, slowly, almost frozen.
Then the splitting of the air.

Fat-Man's body does a half-spin
as I lodge a bullet into his obese shoulder.
The music still blares, almost meaning more, now.
Regrouping himself, Fat-Man is weaponized,
drawing a greasy, inky blaster, desperate to spit.

A supernova erupts and quickly disappears--
like the aftermath of blowing birthday candles--
as his black speckled, crewcut scalp peels back,
letting fragments of chalky skull and pink penne
***** out of his square, boxed head.

Blood appears black under these lights
and instantly whips across
Samantha's still supine body.
The remaining people in the room
scatter like light exposed roaches.

Haunted, she is a toppled statue.
My steps move with the rhythm of the song.

Fat-Man's leather jacket
holds more meat than some mouths.
I plant my hand inside all pockets, find $6,480
in greasy, bloodier-than-usual presidents,
and move towards her, with the music.

Crouching beside her, I wipe the blood.
I clean her pale, tense torso
and help her up.

On two painted feet, she looks detached.
Silence exists, now, despite the music,
while she studies me with the same brown eyes.
Her lips quiver, she remembers
and wraps me with much thinner arms
that used to exist in nothing but memory.

Pale body, blue eyes
Dark haired WASP;
adopted.
Cigarette burns
Cigarette breath
Black nail polish;
worn like her gaze.
Plump lips;
Tastes like
*******
and
"he left."

Milk body, brown eyes
Blond haired voice;
accent consumes.
Diseased brain
***** like a parasite
Blood-shot red nails;
scratching at life's surface.
Chapped lips;
Chews on them
like a blown tire
dying between metal
and the road.

Our bodies shifted in and out
like an ameba.
Suffocated by lost teenage years
and daddy issues.
Riding my knee.
On my face.
I want to disappear
into outer space.

Skeleton ***;
our corpses mix.
Sweat stained smiles.
Soap smothered tiles.
Showering with two souls
as lost as mine.

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.

I heard your voice on the radio
Each word transmitting
from your lips
You touch me more than you even know
From my neck to your fingertips

To be under your skin
is where I should have been.
From the start I knew
a little bit of everything
except you.
And to know you
is to know everything.

Asked to be safe, to be calm,
with the suction-pores of each palm.
Lips in twist with skin so sour,
drawing blood to drown a flower.
Pulling back, to study faces,
shaking out of sure embraces,
her heels kicked out
and her face soon followed,
and what she left,
I chewed and swallowed.

When I was little
I played with plastic toy knives
and dragged them across
my brother's throat
saying, "You're dead!
You're dead! You're dead!
I swear, you're dead!"

And we pretended
kool-aid was blood,
letting it drip down
my chin and neck,
down my chest,
past my pec.

I wrecked my bike
and ran for days.
I was stung by bees and swore,
"Nothing could hurt more
than this."

And when I turned twelve,
I learned how to ******* to dreams.
The grip on my skateboard
wouldn't let go of me.
I ollied over plastic bags
and stared at lottery tickets
sleeping in the garbage.

She and I played with fireworks
faster than shooting stars.
We waded in the lake,
being a cliche.
She and I rolled on the grass, naked.
I don't know where she is, now.

I don't know.

The bloodied marble is
where the youth was sold.
I sit and wobble on
a mind of gold.

Burn the end
and pass me a thought.
Pale smoke differs
from state to state.
Top forty hits;
songs or cigarettes.
What was your dream
but an isle of regret.

Your tears were insects
burrowing into your cheeks.
Red painted hands
and yellow stained teeth.
I could've remembered
that I had sworn.
I never found your death
a place to mourn.

I wanna fire you in my veins;
have you ruin my life
I want you to be the cancer, baby
I have to cut out with a knife

You stab me in the back with a knife,
and I apologize for bleeding on it.

Your trembling hands
are steady for me

Stepping in front of a car has never struck me as w**reckless.

I remember God on the family tree.

Carcinogenic gasps
between photogenic thighs
create esoteric muscle movement
that moves me inside.
Your parents are therapists,
and mine choose not to be alive;
the words they say
don't work for moments we hide.

Jesus Christ before the sunset rust,
if I'm so alive
then why do I lust
absence.

There's a place
where I'd like to drown
every Saturday.
The water's warm
and thick in my lungs
and I'm no longer afraid.

Colliding with epinephrine,
your neck thrusts forward;
you kiss the steering wheel.
"Do you know
how much
you mean to me?"
Your eyes meet mine  
before disappearing in the glass mist.
I love you.

And beyond the Marlboro clouds,
a God so violent and true,
there is a shriveled, purple stare
prefacing the burnt orange fog.

Where felt-up boys and girls
go to play, a perfect Devil, watching,
boundless in carbonated memory,
drunkenly gazing at trauma, fire --
celebrating each skin-sticky melt
that happens in each razed brain.

Vanished on top of an green-spread hill,
******* in the damp Irish air,
a neutral party does emerge,
taking in the tumblr wave,
witnessing water-logged Amazombies,
bruised with ambition.

Still-birth emotions laying on the snow.
If I let you smile, will sticky lips let go?
After-birth sensations, beaten under hail.
I want to **** the blood out of your gums.
I want to touch you until your body's stale.

Venus in the snow -- the more I taste you,
the more the echoes in our mouths slow.
Shake it, baby -- **** me like I just got out of a coma.
Nothing more that I want than to be your trauma.

And I just have to bury myself in your emotions.
And to drown in the swell of separate oceans.

I gave my car insurance
but myself none
Living in a bed sprung by money
and covered with a loaded gun
If you want to ****
then ask to be mine
We can be smoke breathers,
tossing our leftovers in
eachother's freezers.

I've got America's chewing gum
stuck to my vintage tread.
Viva la sell me myself
before I'm dead.
But my hair is knock-off foaming cream,
and you have to ignore it in my
wanna-go-far movie star dream.

My nails are splintered with dirt
from twisting the skirt
of my reflection
and I feel so deranged
because my whole life is staged
and I don't have enough
money to watch it.

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.

At first I did love you,
but then the rain caught up.
Always thinking of you,
laying dormant on your crest.
To drink until you blurred,
until as velvet as the mist.

When I grow up, I'll be cool.
Smoke until my lungs float.
Drink until my body's a pool.
Think of people with three felonies,
singing the same penitiary melodies.
Think of girls that said no,
love that diminishes
while a fetus grows.

I'll think of my dad growing up
under a different circumstance.
Think if my mom could hear,
she'd probably like to dance.
Think of my grandpa and my brother,
one isolating, one with too much love--
I wish it'd smother
me, under a Christmas tree,
whispering, 'I wish I could give more,
but all I have is me.'

At first I did love you,
but the frame spills metal guts.
Always thinking of you,
the way your eyes, wide shut.
To think of a turn,
I watched it blur,
the glass shattered.
The paramedics mimicked me,
lifting me up,
'What's the matter?'

When I grow up, I'll be dope.
Find a nice blond and maybe elope.
Shake into her what was stirred into me,
and tell her not to mistake it for chemistry.
And bleed no more, so she doesn't believe,
that there used to be a weaker me,
but it's hard to control a certain circumstance--
like, what if my mom wished to dance?

Green, stringbean bodies.
  Neon skin, the color of
a lime being crushed
  underneath a heel.

Tell me about earth,
  I could hear the voice
in my head. Like a
  radio being crumbled
up into a ball and
  thrown into my
train of thought.

Earth?

Yes, Earth. Tell us about it.

Us?

There are forty-million listening.

Oh. Well, Earth. Earth. Earthy-Earth.
  Earth is full of humans, like me.
People. Humans are people.
  And people are hell.
In No Exit, there are these--

We've read No Exit.

You've read No Exit?

We've read everything humanity
has published, in a matter of
  m o m e n t s.
You aren't as developed as you
seem to think you are.

What was the best thing you read?

We were partial to
Last Exit to Brooklyn.
Now, back to our question:
tell us about Earth.

If you've already read everything,
why do you need to ask,
let alone ask me?

You are the most
insignificant person
on this planet.
We are interested
in your thoughts.

I'm insignificant?

Yes.

Oh. I see.
Earth... Well, people...
People are beautiful.
The Earth is beautiful.
What makes us gorgeous
is our growth and our
desire to progress.
What makes us dazzling
is our belief that
a collective happiness and
an individual happiness
is both attainable
and sustainable.
Now, **** me
and annihilate
my planet, already.
That's why you're here,
right?

No. We're here to
harvest your women
and to colonize
everyone else.
You just persuaded us
to breed with your women.

But, that's ****.
And colonizing?
That's slavery.

We've read everything
your planet has ever written.
**** and slavery has been
encouraged on your planet
since your brief breath of
e x i s t e n c e.

There isn't much to say;
the hot, bleached grid system
is no longer a map to my stars.
And I wouldn't say that
unless I meant it.

Your faces are too smooth -
like honey over burnt bread,
I can taste the sweetness over
your selfless stripped sky
and your blistered babies.

The sun belongs to the city;
boiling the bay water, until
your skin falls off and reveals
that you are as empty as I was
before I left. Your sun touches
you; molesting your flesh like
a surgeon preparing rib eyes.

Of course, I'll say it:
When I return, part of me will perish
with your evaporated esteem -
finding that piece of you that I took,
hoping that you will forgive me
like how I have forgiven you.

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.

Her eyes were yellow love
when she walked away.
Her pearl skin, thousand count;
so taut, smother ***** pound --
the steps beyond thought process
sullen, floundering less and less...

And when she becomes real again,
the hollowness, whatevered wan.
Broken, broken: he loves you
without any soul.

FADE IN.

Mama, come try to deliver me;
I've been a rubber baby
since nineteen-ninety-three.
Father, come try to educate me;
I've been your no-good
since I turned thirteen.

Please, Lord, find the redemption in me --
I've grown weary of the way worry
boils, brews, and eats me slow.
See, friend, I can feel, too;
I used to let you down because
that's all I thought I knew
what to do.

Dah-Dah-Dah-Dah-dadada
Dah-Dah-Dah-Dah-dadada

Sister, angel, become bloodshot
at the way I hang; swaying
from the bedroom tree.
Sometimes I mistake my
bad brains for rotting fruit;
mushy peaches, doused in
fishbowl alcohol and
worries I can't shoo.

Good God, Lord,
what am I to do?
Good Lover,
what am I to say?
Good Brother,
I've failed you so.
Good Father,
I'm sorry I'm made this way.

I'm just a young boy unaware
of the stretcher
I think is a bed;
Bad brains make the
star-kid in my head.

Dah-Dah-Dah-Dah-dadada
Dah-Dah-Dah-Dah-dadada

FADE OUT.

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.

You'll learn to love too much
when smiles turn to distant glances;
as distant as the galaxies
she'd used to point to and say
'that means you and me':
speckled and splattered
across your milky way of
coordinated highs and byes.

You'll learn to love too much
when the words you seep
are dulled to a different sleep;
one that used to put your
fleshed-whole-soul to bed,
but now keeps you up
regretting what was never said.

And when you hallucinate,
to escape the bronze lonerism,
you may will yourself to
a golden-childlike-aura,
believing you are brand new
and are never blue, because
the love you splurged
can never hurt you or
never be enough.

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."

That's not a God, that's a sense of entitlement
A sugarcoated dishevelment in disguise
You don't have dreams, just infatuations
Turning hope into self-indulgent lies

I turned away from New York just to know you
Silver showered soldiers singing serene
I turned away from myself just to love you
But I don't think you know what love means

You're not alone, just afraid of isolation
Afraid no one will be better than me
I'm not that great, I say without hesitation
Someone will love you more, just wait and see

My opinion of you changes like the skyline
A star among the cascading dark
Baby, don't let yourself flame out
Before the rest of your fire starts