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?

i can take pictures of the sunset again
i can ****** up a moment and hoard it as a memory
i can die
i want to
i want to

when will the sunset end
moments are forever when your eyes have gone
to glass in your head

my head hurts and the pills didn't make me sleep
i can't wait for this sunset to ******* end

I am convinced
    that when I was young,
         I nearly died.
I very nearly did.

And my soul,
   cast from my body,
was gone.
      My radiant, lovely form
          composed of collar bones and smooth hair;
I've lost it.

I have scoured all day
    and prowled by night,
searching for my beautiful bones.

Instead I have fallen
   into this body. This flesh knotted around me.
It is foreign, rough,
  and I hate it. I hate it.
      Where is my true self?

When I am keener, when I am stronger,
when I am faster, fitter, better,
   I will find my lost limbs and
       forgotten features. I will transcend this mediocrity
which is two sizes too small.

This is not me,
   this body bought on sale.
  
I'm afraid to feel otherwise.

being broken isn't beautiful
and it took remaking myself
to understand.

sad isn't pretty.
it's just sad.
it's crying over the toilet
and drinking cheap ***** straight.
it's looking down instead of in the mirror
because it hurts too much.

broken isn't beautiful
and don't ever let a poet
tell you otherwise.
broken is just broken
so remake yourself with me
and i'll help hot glue you back with humor
and love.
you are not
destined to be in fragments.
you will be whole.
you will
you will
you will

these are the moments
        it's said. the quiet
the grass, the dirt, beneath
      me.
       the breeze a touch cold
these are the seconds the
  transient frame-by-frame
               animations slowed
a thousand fold.
       Everyone is connected
    I swear life is a game  
             of limbo of
              cat's cradle. I swear
                       these are the
            pauses
               the breaks the
                 breaths in between.
                          all the chains:
                 these chords, these connections, these links
        curled around our ankles.
                   I swear.
                  these are the moments
                       i'm alone.

there's this pervasive idea
that love is needing someone,
that without them your world stops turning
and your lungs shrivel without air.

but i would rather
have someone wake up everyday
rising from their sleep and stretching
and smiling
and deciding to choose me.
i'm not their air, their atmosphere.
and they could go on if i was gone.
i want to be chosen
consistently and persistently
i want them to want to be here.

that choice
is our most definitive beauty.

i still think about you a lot.
and i don't know if that's weakness.
you're in the cigarettes i smoke
(when you handed me one after another and told me not to smoke so much)
you're in my car
(where we put the windows down and you flooded your body with medicine)
you're in my mind, and even after everything
(my hands shaking on the wheel)
you're there
(telling me how cute i was from my passenger seat)
i can barely remember your mouth or the way it felt
('this **** is fire')
and i know you were a cancer, preying on my softest parts,
(you swaying, eyes half-closed, caught in center of that 'fire')
but i can't **** that cancer i can't
(your arms around me through your haze)
because then i'd have to **** all of it
('thanks kiddo')
even the good parts.

i think a lot about my ribs
and about my stomach
and my organs
and how they would look if
someone pulled them out
i think a lot about my skin
and the way it's whittled
over me.
i think a lot about my mind
and
how the next smoke will calm it
to a dull hum.
i think a lot about my weight
and my mind is heavy with
the thought.

i think about my bed and my sheets
and how they might've once
been occupied by
more than just me.
but now it's so lonely,
lonely, lonely,
like my mind, my ribcage, my weight,
my organs persisting through the poisons
i put in them.

i think too much
and i want,
want, want
too much to say.
i don't know how i got the
privilege of this prolonged
purposeless
sadness.

if i just got out
out, out
of bed and fought for once.

but it's hard when you wake up
drunk, drunk, drunk.

There is a time
between the appropriate hour for sleeping
and complete abandon
an hour or two between respectability
and three cups of coffee.

I'm watching the minutes
flicker in the bottom right corner of my screen
there is a hazy sort of
beauty in this in-between,
where my eyelids
heavy and dark
pull taut and wide
my house is so quiet I'm afraid
to breathe or even
type,
hunched over the keys
in translucent
artificial light.

The hour
or two,
is passing from me and winking like a star on its path
to nowhere.
It occurs to me
that I should sleep,
that I'll be tired for work,
that my head aches from
the electronic glow.
But still I sit and wait for some revelation
in the half reality
of this in-between.

But it's late,
it's past,
and now I have to go.

i miss the butterflies and all that other
lovey dovey ****.
they must've run out of air in my stomach.

i miss the feeling of someone taking your breath away
like a punch to the gut.
i miss my thoughts being consumed and filled and bursting.

i miss love
and wanting it.
the butterflies are dead in the pit on my stomach and i dont know if that's all i get.

i watch romance movies and wonder about
That Great Love
and if i've used mine up already.

i turned it off because that easier and now the switch is stuck
and for a while i didn't care but now
my fingers aren't strong enough. the fluttering inside me is gone.

it's gone.

rejected poems and ***** clothes on the floor

this is what i have to give. this is all i am.

melted ice cream. cartons swimming with fudge swirl and a loose hair that's found a home there.

the other person on a couch that seats three.

this is what i have to give. this is all i am.

forgotten nail polish thick with chunks. pasta grown dry in its Tupperware.

surviving to the next year. wanting to make it. when that ambition seems Big.

this what i have to give. this is all i am.

i wonder if dysfunction
is learned or predetermined.

There's a somebody for everybody,
but I think my somebody
fell into a well and lives there
like folklore.
I think my somebody is somewhere
far away, not missing me
like I am missing them.
I think my somebody
might already be married
with two kids and a mortgage,
or entrapped in the idea of someone else.
I think my somebody lives somewhere
with dirt floors and no telephone,
and can't write to me
or even keep warm.
I think my somebody is lonely like me,
sitting and thinking
and shrinking away from a world half-empty,
while I'm here
and you're there.

i am early onset gum disease,
mouthfuls of pink spit lining the ceramic sink.
i am enough to warrant concern but not enough
to change.

i am skin stretched tight as a drum
with a living thing trapped inside,
stretching scars into its elastic prison.

i am ***** evaporating on suburban pavement
and the halo of litter around a garbage bin.

i am the stickiness of salt water drying on skin,
dribbling down and down and down.

i am the sensation of growing too old too quickly, of a rip in the seam of a shirt you once loved, loved, loved.

i am a nobody that is everybody.
i am so crushingly common and so
******* singular and i am the terror you feel
when you think of this.

i am lowercase i and capital I and grammar tables and the volumes of modernist poetry.

i am the twinge you feel when they speak his name
and hers and the ones who are just faces living in the corners of your mind.

i am touched and taken and drowning in liquids turned amber and sweet. i am gluttony and those six other sins which have never seemed so deadly.

i am speaking for myself, and i wonder if others speak for me.

i am nurture given living form. a product, a creature, a many-limbed thing.

i am all repulsion and vile intrigue. i am the
hall of mirrors and body cut in two. i am gemini sighs and red skin flaking free.

i am a half of a whole of a half that is
tired of completion and its worship.

i am a pilot, a lookout on the highest point. i am cracked lenses and falsely tripped alarms. i am the things that frighten then grow dim.

i am twenty and i am nowhere. and i am a living time capsule of things not worth remembering.

the parties and the drinks
and me stumbling and sinking in the slush.

i can't remember when but i danced with a boy:
a friend of a friend whose name escaped me then.

my memory is a dark pit
and i stare down in it trying to make sense of black.

he took me back to his room
i guess.

i woke up crammed into the edge
of a twin size bed with a body next to mine.

i've never dressed so fast in my life
fastening buckles with a speed i didn't know i had.

i cried walking to my room dressed in last night's shame
shaking with dehydration and an emotion i couldn't name.

i laughed about it like it was just another
joke passed around from friend to friend.

they said he was in a dry spell
as if i was a well in some man's desert.

i was a dumb drunk ******* a dumb drunk night
and in spite of my memory painted in swatches of black

no one said stop or no or
let's get her home.

there's a four letter word that sometimes comes to me
and holds me in his *****, ugly claws.

that emotion comes again like ink spilled on a page,
i don't like to think about it, to make it real

i don't want to be touched by a stranger again
i'm afraid of men's hands now

i'm afraid of men's hands now

i don’t even want this feeling
to pass from the safety of myself.
i would rather just
look at you and let a crush
crush me completely
than have to realize it
like i did before.
i would rather be crushed by possibility than
its death.
i would rather live in limbo than in
definitive
disappointment.
cause if i’ve learned anything in these
eighteen years
it’s that you’re kinder
when you tear yourself apart
softer
than a stranger who desecrates even the parts
you would leave intact.
i would rather look at you and think how
nice it might be to touch you, break the boundaries of social
propriety,
but leave it just an empty, unfulfilled
possibility. because i don’t want to touch, i don’t want
that tender, tender brushing of fingertips,
i want a **** to forget and a friend
to remember
and caring isn’t on the agenda.
so please just let me look at you
let me crush myself
before you
ever get the chance
to.

sleeping means tomorrow
and i can't let that happen.

somehow i will master time.
somehow I will live in the inbetween

somehow this cigarette will last
forever

nothing is must be are is when nothing
but nothing is felt and seen and touched
and felt and tasted and by ******* god
touched
with things that cling
and bear down on skin like teeth
and gum and jaw and little things
that **** through skin and let you know
they're listening and
touched and felt and
******* seen

I want to be as light as vaporous smoke
     Maybe then
        I could surround you,
              float wordlessly to you,
                  and fill you.
         You couldn't catch me, sliding
            between the lines of your hand.
                 But I think that
                  you would only grasp more.
I will be as light as mist,
   as fog,
   as blissful nothingness.
       Try and catch me with jars,
           but I will be everywhere
           and I will be everything.


I will never be as light as gas.
Gravity puts his foot down
and you pass around my
solid form.
And I look so longingly
at the clouds spinning in a storm.
Maybe I could be a cloud,
high overhead and drench you
or even
strike you dead.

What I love the most about you
is my name on your tongue,
through your teeth.
There's meaning in it,
and in me;
you make those five letters
sound like poetry.

im sorry i lived
and continue on living
with screws to hold me

you cried behind the steering wheel and said you didn't understand
why i hated myself
my body
my being
so much.
you cried as if i could divine the answer in those wet trails.

i didnt have a word then.
i didnt have an answer.
feelings are so much bigger than words sometimes
and that was the only truth i had to offer you.

i cried too
but my tears didnt shine like yours.

i think i understand now.
i think i have an answer.

but i think that would just make you cry even more.

the internet told me it was either
mono
or
depression
so i shrugged and thought
it must be mono.
the sleeping too much,
or not at all,
eating one small meal a day
and barely keeping it down.
i'm hungry
and everything smells
like sickness.

the cigarettes are going one by one,
and my room is stuffy
and feverish.
i listen to the music
pulsate from next-door,
thrumming near my ear and mingling
with voices and laughs and little jokes
i'll never know.

i put my ear to the wall to listen,
but i know i'll
just be there
straining to hear.

it's go to be mono.
must be,
has to be,
because i'd feel betrayed
by my own brain chemistry

i'm not that person;
i'm not that person.

and then i cry! oh do i cry! and it is written like this! oh it is written!

i am scripted and i follow it with solemn diligence. the lines of tears are angling down my face so precisely. yes! i am crying! and no one is coming to calm me down!

this freedom. this blissful terror of the waking and unsleeping, the unseeing, the unknowing. there is no kind hand to touch me, wipe me clean.
just the back of my hand, smearing and swiping.
no elegance, no beauty. i don't need beauty because i am alone.

and i am crying! choking sobs that are ugly and uneven! yes!

and then i am done. and i clear the thickness from my throat and i turn off the television and it is silent. silent and silent and silent. and i am basking in the perfection of my performance.

perhaps ill award myself with pills. maybe a drink. maybe both.

a actor needs his beauty sleep

**** college
you can't even smoke a cigarette in peace.

my life is a push and pull
between disappearing and
screaming to be seen.

**** college

w h y am i
c r y ing

you're a walking universe
and
all your stars have gone out

now it's so unfathomably
       dark.

smoking craters as planetary masses
collide
and
you there: remote, frozen
and held together with the gravity of your own depression
light years from any sun.

i wonder if every someone
is a universe spinning in
their own sphere of energy.

i wonder if universes can ever connect.

i look at you through telescope pupils,
flecks of dust catching light.

i don't know if our universes could ever touch
or if
we're both alone in the stretching constellations of our heads.

what do you do when the light at the end of the tunnel is there ?
i always tell me to get there but never what
to do when im standing in it ?
what do you do when it's too bright to see ?
when my pupils burn and strain and stretch like skin ?
what do i do with all this light ?
and the tunnel left behind me ?

nothing is making me happy
maybe fall will see me content for a little while
before it gets too cold
just as its too hot
and the world will be too much
and i will wonder why
nothing is making me happy

I spent the spare change of my life telling myself,
'I don't need anyone.'
And I think that I was right.
I told myself,
'Don't depend on anyone.'
Because people are as vaporous as clouds,
and I know that I was right.

And now I think,
'I don't need anyone,
but
wouldn't it be nice
to want someone.'

i don't understand
my impulses.
i don't understand the sun
or the moon,
or the veined leaves splayed
orange, green, and gold.
i don't understand
why i feel so
old
or why i make myself
so sad.
i don't understand
why i was born,
how things got so bad.
and mostly
i don't understand
what a ******* difference it makes.

the flow of information
so vast
it might swallow us up
a great flood of
pictures, pictures, pictures
and
people, people, people.
i don't know
how it's possible
for a grain of sand
to be alone on a beach
or a water molecule in a sea.
but sometimes it seems
like
the middle of
the torrent
is the
quietest place to be.

I woke up and slipped back
(into your arms with your cold hands
pressing flat against my torso.
You put your nose in my hair and I shook;
you told me I smelled clean.
Your hands were under my shirt and resting
there. Cold hands that burned like dry ice,
like the filmy haze of your eyes.
I could hear the catch in your voice
choking out while I trembled there
weakly as those cold hands
sapped me dry, dry, dry.
You said you were sorry
as tears rolled sideways down the bridge of my nose.
And you loved me then with your cool hands on curves.)
into a dream,
shivering with the window left open.

flecks in my ***** that look like pine needles
ever mean ever green ever
pouring out of me

im angry enough to type this
but not sure if im angry enough to make this specific

im angry and i hate that i want to make it small and quiet
so that it might go unnoticed

im so angry because im disappointed in the people ive given trust:
already caked with glue and long abused

im angry cause i can't be ******* sure if this pattern of being wrung dry is more about them
or me

i hate them but i hate me too
and i war with being alone or otherwise a planet in their orbits of conceit
  what is my life worth? (i don't think the value is much)

i used to write such pretty poetry
but now it's plain and matter of fact.
i just want to ******* scream exactly what i mean and burn metaphors to the ground

i came to say im angry without particular cause
so here i am and im angry and
poetry doesn't do a ******* thing anymore

life is like a song
cause sometimes there are
parts where the chorus hits
and it *******
erases all the doubt of life
before that swell of chords
and voices scratching against throats.
i've been alive with doubt and now the guitars are humming and the drums are steady and i'm screaming the words so loud
and everyone can hear me but i don't care
cause i'm singing the chorus so loud it hurts
because i believe it and it's real
and the laughter outside my door
is overwhelmed and alone is a
beautiful thing to be screaming
along with.

sometimes her face is like coming home
and sometimes it's like returning to a burnt down place.
sometimes her face, looking down, looking away,
makes me hurt in old places. places that shouldn't.

and i wish i was ready. god i wish i was ready.

but it's dark and im drunk and im crying because that's the only time it's safe.

where do i begin.

how do i tell her that im nothing. a person made of smoke. and how do i wake up one day and decide im free. nearly two years down the gutter and im still there.

and he put a heaviness in me that pains me still. like old battle scars that all have stories i can only tell after the sixth beer.

and she's looking down away from me with her hair tucked behind her ear. i remember the moment exactly, as her eyes relaxed and swept across the page. she didn't see me watching her but i did and i wanted to cry again but it was too bright for that; she tilted her head to the side and i saw her neck and the collar peeking up through her sweater. her face was so clean and bare. i wanted mine to look like that. i think it did once.

god. where do i begin.

eat your words like a last meal that makes you sick

fill yourself up with haphazard and call it finished

tell her you want and then watch it shrivel like wet paper.

make promises that die like bugs kept in a jar.

watch the hands that once held yours draw away, slick with your sweat

realize you don't know how to ask for help.

smoke because it hurts and you know you deserve it.

ache because you're so good and getting it wrong.

hide because your limbs so fragile and boneless

It's amazing
how people
love the things
that
hurt them.

no seriously im a fake deep drunk *******

thanks for the likes though

this is the only way I know to absolve myself
and it's not working

there is no relief.

i hope you keep hurting
but that hope
means I have to
too

i am so disgusting and fat and ugly. i am a pig and a fat ******* waste of space.

i am bulbous and horrendous and vile. i am a massive mistake. my future will be nothing but pain. that is all i am made for. that is all i am born beneath. burn me in smoldering smoke. scar me in shallow deeps.

i am built for nothing but struggle.
that's my design.
i wonder how much i dream
up and how much is real.

i am nothing and so much skin.
pull it off me please

you told
me
i was handsome and i said
thank you
for lying.

you were so kind
and so bright

tonight is the first night i have truly felt crazy

i know no one is here
looking at my poetry.
but i like having it,
so it can remind me.

i was born blue & you were born yellow
& you colored me with yourself.

only that made me green
& you didn't seem to like that very much.

you asked me why i was such a noxious shade
& i couldn't answer.

i couldn't answer

intimacy & *** are two different things and i know this
because i have always had one without the other

this isnt art im just drunk