im shaking a snow globe and all flakes are stuck to the bottom.
i can't make it snow inside.
the smiling statuettes are broken and there's a hairline crack that slashes across the glass.

it used to wind and play the lightest tinkling music
like a jewelry box my mom bought for me when she wanted me to be her girl.
that's all over now.
i think it got thrown in the trash years ago with my pink baby blanket and the arching ballerina doll.

i used to be someone's daughter.
i used to be a girl shook up in snow with music ringing in the background.
it's dead quiet now.

my thoughts are stuck to the bottom of my skull
and can't be shaken up and the music crank is jammed and my heart is a silent overture.

i don't want to be a girl
or a boy or a thing
with limbs.
and i don't want a girl or a boy
or a thing as fragile as those statuettes with fractured arms.

they're still smiling even though they aren't whole.
how do they hold their pose so completely?

ive never been much good at that so i just watch with admiration at the
art of the inanimate,

cracking a hairline smile that can't stir my eyes.

i don't think i can shake you any harder and i don't think i can unglue those tiny flakes. after all, that's the whole ******* point, isn't it?

what good is a snow globe that doesn't snow or a person that can't love or a daughter that isn't?

what good am i to anyone if i can't be whole or good or correct?
ive been playing at the art of the inanimate and
those eternal smiles and pointed ballerina toes.

i thought if i was quiet as a figurine--
i thought.
i thought.
i thought.

and I'm shaking
shaking
shaking

and nothing is coming unhinged.
there's no music.
the hairline crack has become
formidable.

I can't tell anyone still
because of the complications of
this grotesque girlhood and the *** that hangs suspended between us
so artificial and illuminated.
do you see it hanging there? or is it another thing
that can only be
and never act?

im getting better at this
art of the inanimate.
and this veneer of wholeness
and manufactured joy.

smooth down my body in poreless plastic and close all entryways to trespassers

and the womanhood that fast approaches can't find me and the selfish needs of limbs will be void
and the human desire to destroy everything it touches will be curbed
if just for a moment.

i want to destroy you with how much I want.
how much i want the snow to fall. how much I want to be baptized in the cold and kissed in a vacuum separate from the world.

our own dimension of mistakes and quiet
where both of us can practice the art of the inanimate
in peace.

i see you performing it too,
and your own hairline smile that cracks.

did you think i wouldn't notice?

i think the snow is coming loose.
i can feel it running down my cheeks.
and im smiling even though it feels wrong.

the thoughts are dusting over me and resting in my eyelashes.
i see them every time i blink.
she's gone and so is he and
there's more than i can count on all my fingers and toes
that have left.

my knuckles turn white.
my fingers tighten.
the world is glittering glass
that falls like the first snow.

I wish I could warn my past,

                      I wish I could send a smoke signal
                                         or a telegram.
                      or a letter.
                                                         ­      Just to say,
                                                            ­  BE CAREFUL
you may become,

                                 so accidentally,

                                                  ­                                                                 ­  an ugly person
                                                                ­                                                     one day.
                                                            ­                                                                 ­            Love,
                                                           ­                                                                 ­             K

Inadequacy is heavy. I've never weighed it but I'd imagine
it's at least a ton.
After a while, the back becomes bent and the neck curved
and eyes twisted from the sun.
With love in our hearts,
we pass this on
to our daughter or our son
only to crumple,
exhausted and undone

i'm
feeling so much
like an object
i'm becoming
inanimate.

You can be my ball of wax.
I'll roll you between my fingertips
until you're warmed and soft
and I can mold you.
Some are impressionists
or modernists
but I wanted to be a
realist.
So I made you in the image
of my reality.
Only I made you
taller,
kinder,
handsomer,
sweeter.
I shaped you
with so much
self-deception
and so much
failed perception.

You can be my boy of wax.
I made you in the winter
and you were strong
and solid
for a time.
But the summer came and you grew
smaller,
shorter,
quieter,
farther,
and you,
my artful manipulation
of
what I so
wanted
to create,
melted.

You can be my pool of wax,
a shapeless
well
of malformed memories
that change
with every touch.
I curl my knees to
my chest and
do my best to stop
prying and prodding you,
my pool of wax.
Because with every touch
it burns
my skin and turns
my fingers
an angry red.

I made you,
and I never
knew
that
a boy of wax
could unmake
me.

i like to feel my stomach,
where it's soft and then turns
into the hardness of my ribs.
i like the contrast, the
feeling of it underneath my hand.
i don't know why
but i like my contrasts
and the way that sometimes
i feel so low
and other times like i'm
ten feet above the ground.
i like that i can laugh
and then lie in bed at night,
feeling the loneliness settle on top of me
as an extra sheet that fails to keep me warm.
i like that the wild, contradicting variation
like New England weather, like a prediction
versus a storm.
i like knowing that i can feel everything,
all the violence of myself.
i like hurting because it means i'm real,
and happiness for the same reason.
i like my contrasts.

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.

it's 4 a.m. and i didn't study
those latin conjugations
no, i studied
the last few weeks.

i don't care if i've ****** a thousand men;
i don't care if i've ****** one.
none of you have the right to
make me seem like i'm unclean.
because if i remember correctly
it takes two bodies,
two sets of limbs moving in the dark unseen,
and two resolves to explore
the sensations of their ***.
and i'm expected to sit here quiet and placid
while you throw my sexuality in my face
and make this an unwelcome place
for ****** like me.
*******.
*******.
*******.

i'm a person; a human being
and stop playing nice,
stop playing dumb.
i'm not going to pity *******
because you were kind to me
a time or two
you pathetic *******.

you came at the wrong time,
when i was already seething so silently,
and you asked again and again
like a kid asking his mom for a new toy in the store.
it's hardly even you i'm mad at:
it's this systemic poison in the great pool of people,
and there are plenty of fish in the sea
but how many are free from this toxicity?
i thought *** was an exploration, a harmless invitation
to enjoy what felt so organic and good
but you're the ones who've made it *****,
who've made me feel like a ****.
who've made it your personal business to erase me,
and displace me
because i liked the touch, taste, feel.
this is unreal to me; and i'm sick in my heart.
because everyone wants to try and isolate
this one part of me
and simplify who i am into
the whims of my skin.

no. the answer is no.

so *******.

Every moment blurs into a bend
of semi-reality, a question of
recollection. A thread fraying at the ends.
My heart pounds in a flurry,
and I'm in a frantic hurry
to dream my life a way and whisper nothings--
not even sweet--
and to disappear as soon as we meet
inside myself and inside a heart of amber,
in nectarine stagnation
of my own creation, balancing on the thick cable of separation
between thoughts and action, too afraid to fall into either.

Not a wallflower, but a wall indeed
caught in the mire of my own selfish loneliness.
Can you see me there? With my eyes in kind forgetfulness
and my hair cut short to show my face,
but finding it an empty place which is a cardboard front to my sagging edifice.
Oh god, I'm so afraid of being dull,
yet the harder I push, the more I pull.

I feel like I am a glacier on the run,
forced to move, afraid of the sun.
My bed is as cold, a glacial sheet
and I draw it up to my chin.
Within my head there's a circus of love,
clowns with painted faces and mirrors ten feet high.
And sometimes when I'm alone I cry and point my finger in my chest.
Always knowing why feel alone.

Is it possible to doubt yourself as much as I?
I kissed a girl once and felt blank
and I wondered why, and when
I found I sank to my knees and prayed
to my atheist god.
I am so ashamed, and with every rising sun my heart sinks in turn.
Why do my thoughts think and my courage fail
on the brink of something deep and terrifying?

These thoughts creep up on me in the night:
seethe from my skin and lay limp upon the street.
I'll play my music loud so they can't compete.

I wonder too often if I've lived my life all wrong.
Sometimes I'm lost, sometimes I play along.
I've burned myself and I itch at my knotted brand,
wishing I could change it at a command.
     Too simple, too stupid to wish scars away.
What would they say? That thought paralyzes me, keeps me static and in ice.

What is the price for the sin of lying to oneself?
And where do I begin?

I dye my hair to be different
from the person I was an hour ago.
I didn't like her very much.

I take a picture or two
to memorialize my new baptism
of peroxide and pigmentation.

The chemical smell fades and the new
becomes commonplace
and I'm back to the person that I was.

And I'm fraying like the ends of my hair
and splitting and breaking and I'm her again:
just as ugly as ever.

whatever you are
is whatever you see.
whatever is your pleasure
your ecstasy
in this whatever generation.

it's equal parts beauty and degradation
driving this sulking generation
to the consummation of image, of physical perfection.
our bodies are up for approval and thorough inspection.

whatever chemicals work the best
whatever gets you drunkest.
whatever gets you hot, hard,
don't forget
to live life to the fullest
but only if you're worthy,
only if you've passed the test.

if only you could rise up from your room
or start a revolution through the phone
plug in, go quiet and
surrounded
you are alone.

this is our whatever generation,
**** your thought and your soul
and your hope:
that is the initiation.
blame society
and forget,
that it is our creation.
so join the fold and strive to reach
that spiritual elevation
of a perfect smile, body, hair
because variation
is god's greatest failure.

this is my whatever generation,
the caste system of beauty
where screens light the path to liberation.
all sins are forgiven,
save ugliness,
that is our only stipulation.
so do whatever, feel whatever,
and whatever can be yours.
aren't you lucky to live
in a generations like ours?

all my poems
have become people.
i've tried the imagery, the
rhyme, the stanza,
the verse.
but i think i'm cursed.

sometimes it's him,
or her,
or them.
sometimes when i start
a line
it twists into a familiar shape
and the poem is a polaroid
slowly appearing.

i've collected people
and things
and ideas
and they all weave together
like a novel.
more and more these poems
seem like snapshots,
or a failed attempt
to capture
all the little things that make
him, her, them
beautiful and real.

maybe i'm on a quest to feel
or on a journey of commemoration,
but the people i've let in
have stolen my pen,
my poem,
my heart,
without an invitation.

i do not only grow
up

i grow out and around and
over myself like a ****.
i grow in ways that contort
and confuse and construe.

i do not only grow
up.

i grow in ways that begged to be pruned
and i grow downwards into the below.
i grow set and seated and still.

i do not only grow
up.

i grow and grow and grow
and i can't tell if ive grown any taller
but i think that is ok.

they have trimmed me and stemmed me
and tried to pull me from my place.
but that is ok.

i do not only grow
up.

Grasping greedy claws for brilliance
nicotine, alcohol, smoke
trying to choke out brilliance
through these substances
variegated like a jangling ring of keys
to an enlightened door.
But the more I try to **** down
each little chemical, I feel
emptier, drained
and my strained imagination
leans on reality for support.

And I tell  myself that there is always time,
another tomorrow like a promise
or an I.O.U.
and that shining tomorrow will be
so effortlessly new
drenched in drugs
and sweat
and nostalgia
and I'll be present
and there
and full,
pulling on the sleeve of the almost known,
the call that could reach my phone.

And tomorrow I'll be thin
and weight as much as
smoke.
Tomorrow all those lies I spoke
will be true, and my selfish wants
will no longer be daunted by
my crippling doubt.
Tomorrow will be without error or pain
or disappointment, or that same monotony.
Tomorrow, that cool spring morning, will renew
Trust me, and forget the truth.

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.

You've made your world
of eggshells
and we're all just trying
to walk in it.

i sleep on top
of my sheets.
i don't need another layer
when i'm already burning.
i have so many:
glued to tendons, muscle, bone.
i wonder where i begin.
i wonder when the wafer-thin
barriers began to stack up
and when i became laden with them
i wonder when i got so fat with
fear
insecurity.
i sleep on top of my sheets
because i'm already blanketed
by safety.

I write on that binder
where you crushed
those two blue constellations
into stardust,
and I watched you pull heaven
into your skull.
I hope for a moment,
you were full
but you seem so empty now.

I guess your
blue supernova
turned to ash.
I guess your past
is orbiting you
as you burn out
against black.

I feel like I'm watching from Earth,
your implosion,
which has already been
and I can only
bathe in the
light
of those two blue constellations
hidden by your eyelashes.

i always thought poetry
happened as life
chaffed you over
and over
until it rubbed holes in
the fiber of you
and almost without even knowing it
you leaked your soul in lines.
i thought experience was beautiful
but its only disenchanting.

i think a cynic is such an ugly thing
and i think myself the ugliest of all.
i'm always wanting
always falling into a trope of misery;
i thought i was better than that,
i thought i was wise.
i can't hide my sensitivity or shiny pinpricks of hurt
catching the light.
i thought poetry dripped like faucet water
like a garden hose.
i suppose i've learned that poetry
is like pulling your worst fears
from your stomach where they thrive in acid dark,
and pushing them out through your mouth.

it's word-poisoning.
it's the ugliest parts,
it's vestigial tenderness
and i'm bruised
yellow black blue
purple red.
i've been living in the
tortured safety of my own head
and poetry is my writing on the wall
scratched into the sides of my skull.
it doesn't matter what i say
because i'll probably
live there till i die
but at least i'll have this graffiti,
this watery poetry sloshing like
brine in a jar.
what an ugly cynic i've become.

did you forget
holding me.
did you forget
the storm inside and the leaking windows;
i wasn't waterproof anymore.

did you forget the burn of fire in our throats
and the smoke we breathed.
did you forget the earthquake sending tremors through me.

did you forget how much it hurts
to have each nerve snipped
so you can hollow out some space for someone else
in your already packed-full chest.

did you forget
the hot summer sun and first love
and *****-stained dresses smeared with dirt.

did you forget the hard floor and the cricks
in our necks.
mine still hurts

it still hurts

I thought I tasted
something unique in your mouth.
It was clean and simple and
you smiled as our mouths
went in and out
like the tide.

I had a night that turned to day,
light touching the bedspread through the narrow window
and crawling up to where our heads lay.

And after months
of eclipse
you struck suddenly like a match
flickering into being.

I held you for a night,
but a match smolders
till it touches your fingers,
and mine are singed.

i feel like i'm swimming
in a petri dish.
and some gloved hand
has dropped in a dose
of self-loathing
and i'm dissolving,
dissolving,
dissolving
molecule by molecule.

why have you given me this poison?

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.

I want to make my body like fall
so that when I'm dying you'll think
I'm beautiful.
And why I'm crying you'll see
orange, red, and yellow
and the litter will cover every imperfection.
I want to be every cliche
wrapped in scarves and leather laced up tight.
I want to be your frozen dawn
and early night.

I want to be warm in your hands
like a mug.
I want you to understand
that I'm seasonal, I can only be so much
for so long.

I think it's trash
that society makes me feel like a *****
for getting angry,
for being brash.

I think it's sick
that I'm ****** for saying
words like
***** and ****.

I think it's a waste
that I'm looked down on
for saying jokes
in bad taste.

I think it's insane
that I'm considered
too fat, too ugly, too masculine,
and am forced to feel shame.

I think it's a tragedy
that as a woman I have to
undo and unlearn
me.

sleep that is not really sleep but half-lidded existence
and again, indifference that tightens
like summer clothes on a winter body.

pillowed flesh that never cares and
a greasy face who stares dully at
its twin who is a stranger.

angry, angry for a moment and
tears, rips, sobs
then desolate, desolate for a moment and

sleeps, sleeps, sleeps.

sliding into a hollow place where it is dry
and the rain is outside and it trickles to that
solitary holding cell where pliant curves are a thousand miles away.

desperate, desperate for a moment and
whisper, utter, scream
then lonely for a moment

nothing, nothing, nothing

i like power lines
theyre comforting
like a mcdonalds or a holiday inn
you know wherever you are the same power
is pulsing over your head. the same that lights up your home somewhere else
so gaudy and bright.

i like the way they ****** up into the sky,
their many-pronged arms reaching and holding,
connecting.

i like the Orange lights that illuminate them at night
and the way they look against early morning sky.
they are a reminder of this connection. wherever i am i am not alone. i am lit up
so gaudy and bright

My bones are filled like licorice
and my brain is marshmallow
under heat.
You're eating away at me.

You shake off little scraps of self
that I follow, grasp with two hands.
You leave enough to make me wonder,
but not enough to understand.

And from my sugary lips,
a thousand sweet requests,
trying to drown the bitterness
and keep the sour repressed.

But you're coating my skin,
dulcet and sickly and heavy
and all that's left of my sweet intent
are the bugs nibbling at me.

Stop looking at me
stop stop stop stop.
Their narrow eyes make me want to throw up
and I feel
so sick
welling in me like some ******* typhoon
and I don't know what do with this
energy gathering force, black and huge.
I don't know where to direct this
animal that grew in the cage
of the boxes
that they've tried
to cram the lid on top of
with me there silent.

I am more than ***, weight, gender, hair
and not that any of you care,
but I can feel and I'm alive
and my heart is banging against my chest
but nobody's home,
nobody's home.
And you might as well take a knife
and find a place for it between the sturdiness of my ribs.
Maybe you can cut out
some of my less desirable traits.
Maybe you can trim me into shape.

They look at me like a murderer.
Maybe you're afraid I'll stain your cornflower hair red
with my ***** touch.
And the more you
look look look
at me
the more I think
I'd like to very much.

So look at me
like I'm ****** and ******
and sin.
Alright,
okay,
you win.
I'll be the murderer,
the outsider, the stranger you'll never be.
And I'll ******,
god, I'll do it.
I'll ****** me.

i heard a song the other day that accessed
a private part of myself
and it unfolded out of me and wrapped itself
like vines around my bones, muscles, skin.
i heard a song that made palpable emotion
within me grow outward into tiny
goosebumps littering my arms.

that is the power of music,
art, poetry,
to make those inexplicable emotions free
and cover you in their shivering beauty.

wanted: someone to **** me

i want a written proposal on how you'll do it.
slow or quick, brutal or neat, personal or impersonal.

will you touch my organs? be the last man inside me? will you play around with my gut full of moving parts? will you take ******* and dip them into the ****** glaze and press them to your lips to taste?
i might like to die like that. it might be easier to see someone possessing your physical heart. at least then it doesn't have to live inside you.

love is saying
you won't get drunk on them tonight
you want to stay sober
coherent
together
but you
just
can't
help yourself

I feel stagnant on the shoreline
watching them adrift on a yacht,
a speck of white against grey and stale blue.
There’s salt in my mouth and
hate on my tongue
and I just want to build up a sandcastle and kick
it over and stomp upon it because I don’t
know what else to do except be childish
and alone
and lay upon the shoreline,
watching the phantasmagoria of lights play and shadowed silhouettes twist in social dance,
until the tide comes in and binds my mouth
with seaweed and my thoughts with tentacles so I can
suffocate my anger because I hate it
swimming here inside my saturated mind.
I want to drag you out like undertow and fill your orifices with foam and
and sea-stones rubbed smooth by years of your rough push and pull.
I’ve balanced my life in the palm of my hand,
but now I want to scissor it from my body because it’s so full of
nothing.

crying in the bathroom of a mini golf place feels like a low

All at once
this pain of being
bore down on me,
like a tidal of feeling
and sat curled upon my chest
like a knowing,
smug
cat.

I think I am transformed,
changed,
estranged from the cold humor
that kept me still.
But I'm filled with fear
for everyone I've ever known.
I see them sinking, drowning
and alone.
And here I am on the shore,
wishing there was more
I could do to drag them
from the crushing
depths of their demons.

Sometimes I'm so lost in people
I forget I can hurt
and  
this pain of being
comes from seeing
the world as it is.
From seeing people as they are
and loving them,
reaching,
even if they're too far out to sea,
too lost to pain,
too twisted to ever change.

i am smoking a lucky strike clamped with old tweezers.
i am sitting on the back porch of my friends house
he is asleep. it is 2 pm. i am alone with the rooms of accumulated years.
i feel like an intruder. or maybe a burgler.

there are children next door screaming as i tap out the lucky strike into a dish full of his siblings.
i wonder if he knew them. there were 20 packed in tight.

i am wondering why i instantly personified a cigarette as male. i am worried for the implications of this.

i am hungry and still somewhat thirsty. the cigarette is drying my mouth even more but i don't have the will to rise.

a lawnmower has started up two backyards away.
i am worried for my strange superiority complex regarding suburban life.
i wonder if i am better than the mundane despite this observation.

my friends dad put his arm around me and patted me on the back. it is the most physical contact I've had with a male figure in about a year.
i hope he didn't see the discomfort.

i am writing a poem in this style because the matter of fact is all that comes to me. i am realizing i will probably never write anything worthwhile and spend my young years in the halls of retail: customer service. fast food. i will not travel the world. i will not take Polaroids of incredible things. i will only have my body to sell and the tasks that it can perform. my mind will be placed elsewhere for safekeeping. i am writing a poem in this style because i do not need to write something good. i am not a young genius. i am not a prodigy. i am smoking a lucky strike with tweezers, if that gives you any idea. i just want to write. i don't need to be beautiful. i can be an important ugly, a clunky tongued verse. a bad poem. this does not ruin me. this releases me.

there are two
selves
fighting within me.
one wants
nothing but the
gratification
of anger, destruction
and on and on and on.
the other is so desperate to be liked,
needed, desired
and on and on and on.

i'm a run on sentence dwindling down
into a person
so small and petty
i mean nothing
despite all i have to say.
and what do i have to say anyway
aside from bitterness,
pity, anger
and on and on and on.

i'm trying to learn how to
breathe again
and how to exorcise the
chemicals.
i'm trying to bite back
all the things
that i do wrong.
i'm trying to fit in and to not be
an angry soul
with nothing but a shoulder cracked clean in two.
i'm trying,
breathing, exhaling, slowly disappearing
and on and on and on.

i hope your happiness grows sweeter and sweeter
and each layer of dulcet pleasure wraps around
your heart like some great red lozenge.

i hope your happiness grows hard in your chest
like a too-sweet lump
with a liquidy sour center

i hope your happiness tastes like my mouth
and my bile
and my love for you powdering your lips.

i hope your happiness grows like a tumor
and your skin shrivels around it
while you wither in late summer heat.

i hope you cant sleep at night
and your heart slathered in happiness
draws every hungry bug.

i hope you have it removed,
that jawbreaker you call an *****
and i hope you choke on it

There is a poetic irony
in being a victim.
It's an art, a skill
honed by abuse.
And the victim learns to be
one of two things.
The victimized, the oppressed,
or
the abuser, the user.

You practice
a higher art.
You can be
both.

In the crosswalk
With a male voice hollering
NICE SHORTS
at me. I looked down at those
Two pale things protruding from my form like ugly, overlarge monsters.
I tasted the fettucini alfredo and pizza I had let myself splurge on after a breakfast of coffee and fruit.
I tasted the tang of sweat forming in beads on my forehead and trickling down to my lips. Little rivers of effort on stationary machinery, my body moving but never really going anywhere. I tasted embarrassment and my own weakness.
Maybe I was better when I was sick
With wanting perfection. When I wanted what my favorite band sang to me through my speakers:
A perfect body; a perfect soul.
Maybe I was better when i was sick and the fettuccini swirling away from me
Down down down that liquid rabbit hole that consumed my secrets
Maybe I was better than these fat legs
Crammed into athletic shorts
Maybe I was better than just
Some joke

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.

i thought i liked to ****
rough, *****, ******.
but i'm only ever
sad
after.
i'm only ever
wishing that they didn't
leave me
laying there
like a used vessel
that has merely
served its purpose.

i thought i liked to be
empty
but i'm only ever
wanting for someone to come
pour their heart out to me
so that i might
carry a little
something of them.

i thought a lot of things
and now i
can only think of
how incredibly
quiet it is inside my ribcage

i think the beginning is always like the end
a perfect circle meeting a familiar point that draws itself to
completion.
i think i'm always going to meet that same point
despite the illusion of forward motion.
despite the spinning sensation of change.
i think the beginning is always like the end
and that's why i'm here alone.
you can cast a stone on water but it always sinks
you can take a picture of yourself and
think you're beautiful
but it never cures the sickness that comes like clockwork.

i'm a circle but i'm far from perfect

if i write a paragraph of
'*******'s
does that count as poetry
because i can't articulate much else
it's not an angry
'*******'
but said with a hitch in my throat
and red rimmed eyes and shaking hands.
*******.
i don't feel better.
i feel like im watching memories made into silent film:
the years and years that flicker mutely behind my eyes
astound me.
*******.
i feel like nothing.
I think that's the worst. im tired of getting chewed up and spit out and feeling like
nothing.
like i nod and smile and settle. im the cameo appearance in everyone else's sitcom.
im so tired of trying to be happy for other people
*******.
i want to scream it at you but that's not the person i want to be.
i don't know what kind of person i want to be.
i think
i want to be the kind of person that isn't so easy to hurt.
that isn't so easy to disregard.
that won't smile and try to make it right.
*******.
this is all i have after everything: a few piecemeal memories already rotten wth roaches and maggots. all the bad and the good going the same sour.
i spent so long trying untangle the wiring, trying to disarm the nuclear core.
i just want to be a safe distance away
now.

*******.
disappointment is a fond friend of mine and you are just another one in the long line of succession,
just like him.

*******.
im a person and im not going to smile when you hurt me anymore.
im not going to smile and try to be better than that.
im done im done im done.
*******

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?