a fever trembles through me
soft madness, river of joy
to see you, half-asleep
like origami
all folded up and delicate,
beautiful bones in sharp lines
my paper-cut
heart of the sun.

i’ve seen the shapes
and lines of your fear
mismatched animal in a glass jar
the world rattles you but you don’t
wail; your wide moon eyes
paint more than this:
you are so much,
you are everything.

the nest of your arms thaws me;
you crack my air wide open when
you speak
rearrange the needles in my chest,
cotton voice lined in mirror shards --

        ‘survival comes in many forms.’

show me, then
allow me to know
your lonely, thicket-veiled garden
the orchard you fed your blood and
hid your hunger in, until
you picked me.

you gnawed at the peaches but
spat out the pits
like they were a secret you couldn’t
keep.
explain to me, how you kept
that slow shivering spring
all to yourself;
that graceful richness
that gentle strength
they couldn’t carve
right out of you.

less than
these things all clotted me
but you still freely flow
jagged child, true heart of mine --
unto yourself endlessly.
you’re not peaceful but
you are kind. your kind
is my kind and i
am yours.

(my lungs want your lungs
like my lips want your nape
like my ribs need your ribs
like my hands need your face.
your wrists and
tongue
and sorrow
find their twins
in mine.

you drench my body
in swollen love --
your body, swollen, drenched --
you grant me
the seas of your skin
blushing sweetness, teeth-baring
grin
spilling clouds of wit against my
neck when you move --

i am offering you my bare
forever.)

sink into me, remarkable
prince of starlight --
for when you fight or
when you rust
my cup is full.

our true natural state
is death:
life is an anomaly.
we are meant to be
corpses,
yet we flail about in this
glitch
of existence.

like a rock is drawn to its place
on the ground
a certain gravity pulls us
towards death,
towards the end of that
mistaken spark;
all as it should be.

the earth swallows us
gently strips our bones
because we are food,
we’ve always been nothing
but food.

it’s no wonder our
decaying matter causes it
no indigestion:
we belong to the worm,
to the inanimate,
to the world’s gut.

our innards, our marrow knows
that all this frenzy to preserve
our fleeting inertia
is futile;
still we rage, rage against
our place in the family of things.

i want you to
crush my skull like a watermelon
gently step on it — till it explodes
and leaves a wet pink mess,
until the dark seeds in my brain
come spilling out into the concrete,
red watery juice seeping into the cracks.

oh, what a sweet
release of pressure, what
a satisfying sound
it makes when the ripening fruit of my fears comes
undone by your hand.

don’t tell me to open up, to join in;
don’t tell me i’m no fun, killjoy, wet
blanket, spoilsport —

maybe instead consider for a second
(roll the thought from palm to palm,
measure its weight)
that the things that make your body
sing and vibrate with joy and
warm lightning

are the same things that twist the
restless branches of my veins into
knots and drown my brain in
frigid paranoia;
make an earthquake in the bones
of my hands and birth live spiders
in my gut, billions, creeping
upwards and all over
my insides,
blocking my windpipe.

the higher my age climbs
the more i feel like that little kid again
staring into the mirror, wearing their
parents’ clothes;
a first attempt at performance,
roleplay.

those two numbers seem oversized,
daunting and ill-fitting
too grown for my
tiny body, tiny heart, tiny brain,
tiny ability, tiny understanding,
tiny sense of self.

i cannot fill the sleeves of my father’s jacket
i cannot stand confidently in my mother’s heels
i’ve barely transcended toddling,
and my hollow translucent arms are too short to
reach the shelves of Adulthood.

(i’m not a daughter or a son
i’m a child.)

(tripping gracefully over her gory visage,
        she bashfully, covertly unveils her
        untruthful veracity,
        invisible in all things seen)

her phantom form surrounds me and
slides her arm between my lips, into my mouth
                                                    finger - after - finger;
i slowly swallow her whole
(she leaves me no other choice)

the quick fog forming in my eyes
threatens to spill
(i think it does)
i choke, my teeth grazing her entangled marble limbs.

my once untarnished tower of a neck
now a blemished python, bruised by suffocation
finger-painting, hand-print impressionism in
                    russian red and prussian blue and palatinate purple

my angry lungs drink her in
the space between my thoughts and veins becomes considerably smaller.


(i am crowded,
        i am
                 o
                    ver
                          whelmed.)


e­xhausted, i gasp for words
but those too have left me a while ago,
when her impact carved that permanent indent on my chest:
i can never rest.

if i could control your Heart
(which i can't; other's, yes; yours, no)
i'd ask you, not force you, to give me what i want

for my greatest pleasure would come from
you simply blindly handing me
        everything
                  you hold dear

of course, i'd want you to suffer as you do
(i'd want you to scream for no one to hear:
                          a silent, pathetic thing, crawling out of your
                          straining throat)
                                             struggle, as you do,

while having no choice.
                                                 [ a war between heart and mind! ]

but, after that initial brawl
kneeling, bent as a nail hit upon
by a hammer at the wrongest angle
the palms of your Large Hands would face the sky

                  and you'd deliver.

you have me running in
dangerous circles (round and round and round and)

or is it you that circles me ---
                  the helpless prey
                  ?

                  ((well, all the helpless can do is pray))


those alien teeth, they
close around my jugular, only slightly
i forget what (wheeze) air is for

she's are no declawed cat!,
scream my back and cheek and neck and arm and mind
                  [that's gonna sting like a ***** in the morning, warn-growls she,
                  predator woman
                  (chimaera, monster she, sphinx)]


just ******* let me go and let's
(make this mess)
get this done
i can feel the words shriveling off before reaching my tongue

[i know the chase to you is foreplay but]



                              mercy! mercy! timeout!



                  --- has no one told you that it's ugly to play with your food?

hi, god?
****, where the **** are you, man?
we've been trying to reach you for like, literally centuries!

(are you hiding or something? what happened?)

just, call me back when you get home, ok?

i'm all for the separation of church and state but

the buildings are too tall now and
i can't see the sky.

or
how very ******* rude!*

your unintentionally agressive, shining glare
reflects on all the
silverware and china and crystal
and it's the
                       last
                                  drop.

i say,

but enough about that
let's talk about
the fact that you're really ******** distracting
(see, i can't even finish my tea!)

you are
neon and flashing, police car lights
a warning:
blinding,
seizure and discomfort inducing
and tacky
but oh so ******* beautiful

(in the wrong way
i suppose
laugh)


                       can't you see the commotion you cause?


always *******
parading
like it's something to be proud of
like you don't care
like you don't know
like you don't even ******* notice

your appeal is
offensive and
disgustingly disconcerting and
impolite

                       [ sometimes i wonder if you even own a ******* mirror
                       and if you did,
                       would you, [upon
                       gazing at yourself staring
                       like it's just the thing to ******* do,]
                       would you *****
                       (like i want to)
                       on the floor
                       on the food
                       on your new shoes ]


sigh look
can you just go
be you somewhere else,
                       please
                       ?

you're making me sick
to my stomach and
i
                  can't
                                   breathe


cough
i'm sorry,
it's just

the bile isn't helping my sore throat.

sunlight plays with
the skin that wraps you up and shields you from all that is the world around us:

fear.

we have been stripped from this
from this discerment between
what is
        intimate and private and public
        and a spectacle
        of its own

social stigmas and rules and plots
should they be followed, or
        understood
        ?

all should be seen but
none should be witnessed
by the
        distant ever-present all-encompassing
        eyes
        of the people

i consume you
furiously
devour you
but, lovingly ---
i mean no harm.

i must feed
you see ---
and you are all i
have left

teeth and flesh and blood
are one, see ---
my love.

i am greed and
desperation ---

until you are nothing (but my eager breathing).

trapped between caring and not--
          let's pinch our noses to avoid the stench that is our own.

And I really wish that I could say
I don't want you the way that I do
But I'd be lying if I implied
I don't constantly think about you

We're two halves of a different whole
Don't quite fit well together, it's true
Yet I find myself drawn
From the dusk 'til the dawn
To all of the things that you do

The dew on the grass doesn't know
It'll be gone by the end of the day
I can swear, I did not see it coming
Your existence coming into play

As I try to avoid misbehaving
Muscle memory drags me to your door
I can't knock, I am weak
And forbidden to speak
I wander the city once more

It is quite sad, what you have made of me
Without thought, I was stripped to the bone
There's no blame, just an aching, persistant
Without nothing, I wander, alone.

ou
'querer' em quatro tempos*


1.
Você está aqui
Eu estou lá
Perco o espetáculo
Por querer
Demais, mas
Sem querer--
Todos querem
Um pedaço de mim agora.

2.
Você está aqui
Eu estou lá
Prendo-me ao espetáculo
Por querer
Demais, mas
Sem querer--
Porque querer foi
O que sempre fiz(emos).

3.
Você está aqui
Eu estou aqui
Cegos ao espetáculo
Por querer
Demais, mas
Sem querer--
Amanhã, quando 'quero' for
Sinônimo de 'podemos'.

4.
Você está lá
Eu estou lá
Partes do espetáculo
Por querer
Demais, mas
Sem querer--
Querer nunca foi,
O suficiente, foi?

when I said I wanted to have seventeen kids, you laughed
you said eight were enough, and I laughed
the night was the only witness.

the shoes you left
on my balcony
are rotten
but yours

I keep a lock
of your
dark curly silky
hair in my drawers

stalkerism is
the sinless habit
of modern days
please forgive me

inappropriate name at it's best---
because they refuse to hold halves together
and hammers aren't the best choice of tools
and who nails a fingernail?

like twilight on icy mountains,
although the sky's colors come from flesh
and not reddened sunlight,
and the snow is empty as air

inconspicuously (fashionably) hidden skyline---
by color, but still there, granted
half-moons, waiting for dimethyl ketone relief

small as they come
unappreciated, underlooked---
as common and human as blood.