a wound sliced
into your thigh
is an emergency exit
for emotion to trickle
through
because you're filled like
a hot air balloon.
dunk your head back
and take a swig
of the cough syrup
for extra bliss
and then you should feel
okay
about living

like a renaissance the way you
curl your lips is
raising the dead

this sainted air of emptiness in bed with
the distance touched off of unkept promises
of woolen clouds and a shroud of sundown kisses
christen the scorched skylights from bedrock to core

supposedly
never lying
would help me keep
my life straight
but i'm not sure
these pythons
would stop choking me
just for a spoken word
of truth.

i tried to **** myself
a year ago-
a year ago
i wasn't me
a year today
i've experienced
so many things
that a year ago
i would have
missed out on
had i
a year ago
succeeded
in death
so a year today
i'm quite thankful
my
[heart still beats in my chest]

n lungs, growing
up, wrapping around
knotting with nerves,
veins reaching
for the rest of me.

pulling me apart.

inside I am old
ancient, crumbling
building with shattered
stained glass windows
bursting panes, bats
in my eaves, dust clinging
to surfaces stirred
with breezes rattling
around my bones.

beautiful.

the piece fell in the James
floated away to lands unknown
off on its own adventure
and we were just ****** to see it go
if you fill up a room with enough smoke
you start to see the things in people
which writhe, twist, and turn like snakes
the poisonous reaction sending up cries for help to an empty throne
and the fuel we run on:
nothing more than chemicals ****** out of the long **** of corporate fat cats
and we drink it happily
and wear the clothes they say we look good in
but in that room,
slowly filling with smoke,
we were trying to take it some place else
somewhere naked and honest
and full of the shame and secrets
that the youth of America have been carrying with them for years
like bowling ***** sitting in our gut
in the smoke filled room lies become prophetic wisdom
and like dominoes
our flaws and false beliefs
all fall down
one at a time
and when the room is completely full
we suffocate
only to disappear when the smoke clears

adolescence fit him like
hand me down sweaters
with missing buttons
he was always meant
to not fit
into it.
he watched
her graceless fingers
lace up the battered boots
that rose past her calves.
his eyes hugged the curves
her legs like snaking highways
in hot arizona summers
heat lightening
in his heart.
they all knew the sweaters wouldn't fit.
maybe he knew it too.
because the taste of her was
like holy water
and the child he never knew