The only thing I've ever committed to
has been cigarettes.
So I've been stockpiling my doubts
and all my little regrets.
Maybe I'm useless, maybe I'm a waste.
Or maybe I just haven't found it;
maybe I haven't found it yet.

And the taste of smoke is jolting, renewing,
reminding
me of that fear that I
am designing my life around:
desperate to find color in the insipid motions of living.
Maybe I am committed to the search;
That one day I will wake up and be found
And the first thing I reach for in the morning
will not be the lighter but
her
or him
and their pluming breath, rhythmic will surround me
and the warnings
on the side of my pack will seem real
and my god, will I finally ******* feel.

Do you remember me?
I'm sure you do but do you
see through the blown glass
warped blue-green?

You must remember me
I tell myself as I stroke
the puckered corners of my page.
At least some shred of me
is lodged in your shrapnel heart.

You don't remember me
as you walk past in booted stride;
you have gone south for the winter,
I hibernate and hide.

Around my bulging linen waist,
my knees upon the tile,
my cotton chest, my very best,
stained and smudged with bile.

My mouth, my chapstick lips are smeared,
my knuckles painted white.
I run the sink, I fear to think
and cleave to shrouding night.

My throat remembers its baptism,
flat and sharp my stomach sings.
As I fix my hair, in the mirror I stare,
a wistful smile of secretive things.

Sense comes at the most senseless times and
wonder comes when the world is dull.
Neurotic, I stumble into the calm
and sunlight unfolds in the throes of depression.

My life is an ill-timed spectacle; my big top is freshly painted and moth-eaten.

Come one, come all to see my brilliant downfall
at my own hands. Can one girl have devised so masterful
an undermining? I think not, patrons young and old.

I am listless when it counts the most
and engrossed in the extraneous.
Trust me, I'm a master of these believings and disbelievings.

I can tame tigers and yet the pests undo me.
Beetle-brained, I guess you could say.
There I go again.

Undoing and redoing, rethinking, unthinking and linking all these meaningless experiences in a chain of being that takes the guise of sense but bends into a pattern without purpose and a gobbledygook message spelling out the things I've already read a thousand times but can't seem to memorize.
My brain is a storm of confession and repression and a sense of self that is in fact the lack of.
Does any of this make sense to you? This absurd gestation between bright and blue?
And all the nonsense in between that braids the random with the fated?
Now you're probably irritated at my own madness; darling, you're not the first that has cursed me.
Nor will you be the last. I've heard this lecture; I've taken this class.
It's the one that tells you everything is sense
and there's a great symbol
and when you die you'll receive recompense for all those little goods you did.
Aesop promised, didn't he?
Well grow up, because there is nothing beyond for me.
And I'll die knowing that at least I could see how ridiculous we humans can be,
searching to name the stars and the rocks beneath our feet.
It doesn't matter; perhaps you're better off naming the worms that will soon eat
both you and me.
Life is does not fit in some neat box of god and good and bad and right.
In fact, the only thing that is sure is the day and the night and ultimately
the loss of our fight for the eternal and the immortal.
No one will read this, the writings of some girl who curls inside herself when the world comes knocking.
There is nothing that will not rot
and we ought not try to fight that.
The pearly gates are the crumbling stones in your backyard;
god is yourself and I know this may be hard for you to realize
but stop clinging to these comforting lies because
I'm not a fated poet, and I'm not meant for words
we just happened to meet one day
and realize we both were a little absurd.

I ran a red light today, and god that's so mundane
but I thought some thoughts I think are worthy
of putting on a page.

I saw the car to my left, the slick road glowing red.
I thought, just for a moment, what it might be like to be dead.

I ran a red light today, and god that's so morbid,
I thought that if I died, I'd never
finish something I started.

I felt my lungs twitch and my heart freeze,
signals shooting from my head.
Just what would I be missing, if I was cold and dead?

I ran a red light today, and god it's not that big a deal
but my mind went still and I didn't know
how I should feel.

I still need to lose a few pounds, meet someone new
all those petty things
we people go through.

I ran a red light today, and god I don't know why I care
but I guess it's because I like it here
rather than nowhere.

what has my skin ever done to you?
has it sinned or lied or driven you mad?
it does to me, but to you?

what has my skin ever done to you?
besides existing in this world where the beholder is shot by firing squad and his eye spooned out for all to see, what?

we were wed in the summer some sixteen years ago, my skin and i,
those years of discontent.
i filed all the papers
but i think they got lost in the post.

still i sit here sewed into swatches of white
writing down this question:
what has my skin ever done to you?

We walked on fields of hellish amber,
our bare toes scraping barbed wire.
we held our naked palms out flat
so that they might feel the air thick with dust.
We walked in the black rain, dying our hair a sooty grey
and leaving vertical wrinkles on our cheeks.
We walked towards the end.

We watched the phoenix plumes rise up
then crescendo in an extinguishing fire.
we saw the mountains crumble, as if tired,
and lay in purplish rest.
We saw the shining sea stir against the coasts
and eat back the Earth.
We touched hands,
and we walked towards the end.

We saw a billion mouths demanding, reprimanding,
consuming and presuming, quiet to a hum.
We saw them crumple on driveways and in shopping malls,
murmuring so many names to the same effect.
They were still then,
but we,
we walked towards the end.

We trudged in our clothes,
shreds of some past life
we left there in the ashes.
We walked under the studded sky pierced by skyscrapers,
peeling back as easily as skin.
There, the torn fabric waltzed in a hissing breeze,
burning orange at the bulging seams.
Lopsided stars hung askew as decorations
and cartwheeled to the steady rythmn of gunfire.
Swaying, we danced along,
as we walked towards the end.

Scorched prairie grass crumbled beneath our feet.
Ringing filled us, and we broke cleanly in two.
Asphalt melted and mingled with the crust
and buildings knelt to pray.
We laid down side by side,
brushing our fingertips.
The sky bled lukewarm tears above us.
We knitted our hands together
and unfolded ourselves upon packed dirt,
black and singed,
as angels stitched the lacerated heavens.

We rested, tiny scars on Earth's craggy face.
We nicknamed every star and every worm,
orange with nuclear light.
Laughing, we closed our eyes,
flowing with the fire and the night.
Our hands were sure and firm,
as we drifted out of sight,
fading towards the end.