sometimes it creeps into the bones in my knees and it gives me artist's arthritis
i massage myself with the dull point of a pencil,
listening to the soothing sound of my thoughts coming to life

and sometimes an idea will crawl into my ear and lay its eggs there
if my passion is warm enough, they are incubated on the inside of my skull and crack open without warning

and to clear my head of the leftover eggshells, i have to play minesweeper for days on end

wond'ring when my days will end
and if my poetry will still be breathing

take me to a swimming pool that has not been peed in
with no grass or dead wasps floating around my bare skin
one newly installed that hasn't corroded yet

take me to fresh snow that has never been walked in
let me feel the crunch beneath my feet as i step into fresh turf and smile
knowing that they are all my footprints
knowing that i am the only one who has ever touched this ****** powder

take me to a coffin that has never been opened
a faceless, nameless beauty
one that nobody else knows about

and i will treasure it
like it is my own
because i am an old nobody, too

if i drowned myself
somebody would ****** their hand into my bowl of fruit loops and pull my face up

if i jumped off a building
somebody would put pillows on the carpet to soften the fall

if i put a (glue)gun to my temple
somebody would snap a picture with the caption "idiot pastes her hand to her forehead"

if i ate poison
somebody would rush to my side and ban me from eating fast food ever again

if i committed a fashion faux pas
my best friend would tell me to change my outfit

but if i pulled a trigger on an entire country
the world would go silent
just to watch

the world crushes you to pieces
i wanted to be an altoid
because who doesn't love fresh breath
but everyone mistakes my dust for anthrax
and i thought we were way over that phase
but apparently short-term memory loss doesn't work with traumatic experiences
and everyone remembers
the chill in their throats, the cool air in their nostrils
when they saw
mad shoe and mailbox bombers
images on a news screen
hardly even real

i was real
and i was chewed to pieces

i want to throw up all over my auto-biography
want to set a timer for 3 seconds just to be able to say that i started at zero

my heart is just that

but it doesn't measure up to its intended purpose

if my heart is on a swingset, the metal chains are too hot or all of the children lost their shoes and are forbidden by their mothers to walk on wood chips
if my heart is a sock, the match got lost in the dryer
if my heart was soft
i wouldn't feel like a hollow tree
withered branches shooting through my veins
i've lost all will
to love

Satan
handed each child a blindfold

"Take it"
he whispered.
(it is a prison)

"But what is it?"
they asked.

"It is anything you want it to be,"
he answered.
"It creates darkness,
and darkness
is the absence of light.
it is the absence of truth.

and you can fill that void with anything you want to see."

(but only in your own mind)

swear a lot
yell with the loudest voice
take control of the media
make very loud and convincing claims that everyone is a racist, bigoted, hatemonger
dodge every question that has a "yes or no" answer

congrats
you just won the votes of the ignorant idiots of America.