She broke the bottle over our heads
and the milk mingled with the blood.
That's how one feeds monsters.
The fingernails dig in deep and pull out threads of fabric.
It might have held the world instead of bled, she said
But I can't toe the line of a killer.

Shhhh,
It's spoken.
Spoken like a dream in handcuffs
Broken like a relief in progress,
and single as an eyelash.
Trusted in darker hallways.
Sinful as the walkways of a stolen word,
Crash to open.
Send it to a brighter world.
Let the dim light linger.
Never let your finger
touch the lips of babes.

"I'm not sure I believe anything,"
words spilling out my mouth,
staining the carpet.
"And everyone's like Christmas on the outside."
Cold as it may be,
right as you were,
hanging like a lantern from a streetlamp.

If you are going to be dramatic, be dramatic in some new way.
Because the way you are being now wafts the scent of that old worn out you.
The one from years ago,
pining and whining and all together unpleasantly reminiscent of my younger years.
Oh to be young,
but never to be that again.
Yet there you are somehow captured in time.
Trapped in amber forever so as to perpetually present the same shade of tortured.
The same DNA ****** out of your bones to recreate that 'brand new you' into infinitude.
You haven't evolved
and I'm afraid I haven't devolved enough for us to be on the same end of the food chain.
I would shame you and wag my finger in front of your face,
but I'll hold.
One doesn't go to a museum to bemoan history.
I wanted to see how far I had come and man were my boots made for walkin'.

You pulled a 'My Sister' straight down to the ground
down, down, down
no one's going to miss her
my sister, my sister
no one's going to want her around
the sounds of the well as you wished her to hell
as you shivered and shook all around
you pulled a 'my sister', my sister
you pulled her right down to the ground

When I was young my mother painted the ceiling with every color there was.
She made the falling stucco and sealant into clouds and rainbows and horses;
horses of blue and purple and green.
One time I left my room and stared all night at the stars,
they were so much more vivid.
You couldn't deny their presence,
they were like little beings coming straight toward you.
Didn't need to look up, you could stare straight forward out of the window and it's like they were looking at you too.
But cautious, they never came close enough for me to grab them and trap them in my hand like a rolli-polly.
There were fireflies that loved to gather like tiny self supporting oil lamps by the tree next to our house.
They would swim around me because they knew they were far too clever for me.
There were toadstools that I would kick out of principal and river rocks that were never smooth enough for the current hadn't the will.
Caves where the ivy would circle for no reason but to give me the best hiding place of all time.
We ate snow that one time, when it had snowed for the one time it would in 7 years.
There was a single stoplight in a square of one tiny block where I would get dizzy riding my bike.
Then the Crawfords would let me ride their horse.
That's where I got stung by a bee for the first time and I fell on the red dirt road and cried and cried.
One time a tornado almost swallowed me whole while my trailer baby-sitter wasn't looking.
I remember asking with all sincerity for the third time how to spell cat.
Lolly-pops adorned the daycare where I watched trolls singing Kokomo.
These are all the good things I can remember,
so I cherish them.

frailty
in beauty, as if that was the way it was supposed to be.
with hollow bones, like sparrows, just a stones throw away
if she was wicker, someone paid a hefty price.
and the bed sheets smelled twice laundered.
thin and devoid of meaning.
such a silly thing,
that moved like wind and breath would sway her
willow tree, that one
bent over in eternal weakness
like a daisy, wilting
but how she lorded over all the thoughts of men like a sovereign

For the record, I suppose it should be stated I lost my soul in Vegas.
I would love to go back there and find it among those glittering lights and buffet tables of never-ending artful desserts.
It's funny that all I really remember are those pretty desserts and fried mashed potatoes.
I want those things back.

I'm like a raver with those lights.
I want to consume them.
I want to glow in my pores.
Not the cliched glow that wraps itself around the impregnated many,
but the glow that comes from sitting next to neon for too long.
That it could somehow stain you.
Rub off like fairy dust on skin.
That I could fly away due to its energy or wishful thinking.

Take me back to Vegas,
where they still hand that out for free by the boatload.
I need not gamble.
I need not glad-hand.
I would simply sit idly by the buzzing of pinks and blues and greens and reds.
And me and those cheap 1920's lights will have a moment,
a moment I can share with the cocktail waitress who asks me for the third time if I'm sure I don't need a little refresher drink.

Making new frames out of broken china,
the walls came crumbling down.
Out of new frames I make the greatest picture the world has ever found.
Of all the licks of orange,
the fabric torn,
the world and all it's sounds;
it would be you,
you and a box of matches to burn the whole thing down.
The whole thing down.

Fix me up a fine web to die in.
If you don't mind.
If it's not too much trouble.
Can you just hit me upside of the head a few times
until I forget where I am or what I was doing?
Shoot me in the face if you like.
If you find it prudent to do so,
dump me in an alleyway and leave me for dead.
Because I can't stand being stared at and waiting.

Broken boys make broken girls
who break the pavement down the road.
And all who follow best beware to tread quite lightly, tread with care.
Because broken girls make broken men,
who fall head first and break their shins.
With broken bones and broken hearts
and broken pathways from the start.

If she stands,
legs wide apart,
holding your broken soul in her hands.
Maybe she wants to grasp something greater than herself.
But what holding does is little,
and your fates are not suddenly transferred to those bones.
And if carpal tunnel should cause her to drop it,
or if her hands should simply grow tired of the weight and relax after some time,
where is the blame rested?
Whose hand do we place that in?
and in this ever exchange of weights and balancing acts,
when does anyone get to waive goodbye;
hands heavy with guilt and promise.

I would drag your broken body from a heap of ruin and pull it close to mine.
I would sit with you while we watched the fireworks of the undoing light the sky.
I would weep with you the tears that came with every broken bone in your body.
And together we would wait.
Wait for that God neither one of us believed in.
To pick us up by the side of this pile of rubble,
we used to call the world we knew.

Welcome yourself into a brand new world,
rife with neologisms,
teeming with abject complacency.
where all the shiny cars get off on your exit,
assigned parking spaces before them and all the gifts of heaven behind.
My fellow, he lives in a pea-coat some 3,000 miles from here.
He smokes Cuban and knows a great deal of city streets I know not a suit of.
We've yet to meet,
but he says great things about you through the mail.
feverish as those fingers may be,
chasing wildly after some long legged bottle.
The girls become mirages,
and the ground becomes the cold hands of a dead friend.
mountaineering mole-hill after mole-hill until,
dry mouthed and beaten,
he makes his way in this-away direction.
all broken and ill-willed as fate intended,
Twinkle Town's got places for even the most dejected of us.

the glory days of forever ago,
we drug ourselves into thinking that this was a good idea.
but of course,
as luck would have it,
i slipped through the cracks in the gene-pool that would have called me an addict.
life is good and all is quiet on whatever front i'm at,
at the moment.
life swirls on.
and so does the dust in my eyes.
big surprise, i'm still here,
mumbling indecency after indecency.
sip after sip,
soothsayers make mention of my doom,
in bubbles and in glory.

In starting off, let me just say:
I don't love you because you are a beauty I can hardly touch with my finger tips.
I don't feel the urge to contain your body by caressing those perfect molded edges.
I love you because you are greater than the flesh that contains you.
You have this ability to transcend the constraints placed on by matter.
You are almost terrifyingly free from those chains.
I cannot measure you.
I cannot contain you.
And you of your own accord kiss my lips and accept that I am merely that of flesh.
Finite and calculable.
Flawed and visible to the naked eye.

Cold limbs can't tremble in ecstasy.
They cannot hold the backs or clasp the body of anyone.
I am but lifeless flesh that moves only by the assistance of others;
a heavy marionette with too weak strings-
dragging along the bottom of a well of sin.
(Simple gestures as music plays in through the windows)
I don't know where the winds breathe and simmer in the open spaces between you and me.
If you could be anything,
I would love to play you like a piano.
You would lie in front of me, naked,
with all the princely dignity of a drifter from back east.
If ugly is pretty,
let me breathe into you the sickness that trembles somewhere deeper than my flesh,
seething beyond my decency.
In sickness and in health,
I rather prefer the poison in your veins as a pulse in tandem with mine.
I wish to scratch against you like bows against strings.
maybe not to become some beautiful piece written by some composer of utmost pretentiousness,
but possibly just one note and then another-
back and forth through the evening-
as would the whistling of trees outside.

If I'm going to survive the night, I'm going to do it with grace.
No more head tilted slightly resting on ***** bar tables.
No more pirouettes into the sidewalk.
No more fingers ****** into the air as a universal sign for more.
Give me more than this.

If I'm going to survive the night, I'd like very much to do it with class.
No more slurred speech.
No more mangled sentences.
No more off-tune renditions of 'Under Pressure' while I try desperately to keep from falling under the table.

If I'm going to survive the night,
(though at this point it seems unlikely)
I will not tout my youth in front of older strangers,
waiving it in the air like a gun as if to say,
'Who wants any?'

If I survive the night, I will have survived it with my dignity.

That's why I'm so desperate to die.

If someone's going to write me a novel I think we should title it 'Girl Crashes Into Windshield'
Then everyone would be intrigued by the violence of the whole thing.
Then maybe, also, you can use that old photo of me as a reference point.
With a dramatic asterisk next to it that says before.

That will get 'em going.

The first line would be something like, "Death is such an ugly word."
Then we could detail the effects of having your face smashed in at 70 miles per hour.
Make some remarks in scientific terms about trajectory and blunt force.
Get some of those good 'like an egg on a sidewalk' analogies too.
End it with 'had she only stepped into the street two seconds later'.

Now we're gettin' somewhere.

The whispers of bestseller start to breed in the aisles of Barnes and Nobles' everywhere.

Because everyone loves a good car crash.

let me be the first to say
if this was "a good run",
i'd hate to think what a marathon with you would be like.
if i had to venture a guess
somebody would lose miserably.
not that i'm trying to boast,
but let's just say,
in "the long run",
i go the distance.
you huff and puff somewhere behind me,
gasping for air,
trying to mouth the word 'water'.
while people place little shiny pieces of metal on my chest.

confined to your own head, you might as well be a steam engine.
burning little holes in your turncoat.
making new friends in old dens.
masking proclivities.
barking at intruders like a dog.
what caused her, so many times,
to remove herself from the same line of thinking?
the man with the cocktails doesn't know,
but he knows the solution.
the solution to all life's problems,
to be imbibed and controlled.
the embrace for the embittered.
the fuel for the fire.
the stoke for the engine
the energy to keep chugging along at a good clip.

If blood came solely from my chapped lips and the spit that issued from them,
maybe you'd know I meant it.
The force that only comes from the letter 'f' flung forth with great ferocity.
The fear induced by a sudden change in the airs humidity.
The fever that comes from fire stoked in between my four burning lids.
Pardon me for feeling such things,
for facing the truth that is the sham of these past few days.

"Forever my *** you fake *******, clean your face and *******."

If I was to write home
I'd have to tell them I died under a horse I beat far beyond death.
I'd have to tell them that I caught a disease from breathing in the atmosphere here.
I'd have to tell them I fell into depression on a milk farm out west.
I'd have to lie, I'd have to lie a lot is what I'm saying.

She's bleeding into thoughts painful and obtuse;
reclusive mysteries made apparent by violence
and forceful introspection.
Severing ties and reforming them
licking wounds and digging at them.
For once let the madness cease to be so vivid
that it erases me.

Give me a ring, to slip off my finger.
It moves to my right hand.
I move to my right hand.
and you raise your right hand at me.

I let my words drip onto a keyboard, since I don't cry anymore.
I am shocked that we never have time to talk, saving breath for breathing.
I cut down trees to reveal the forest.
And at my poorest, I never blamed you for being true to the version of you, you felt most comfortable in.
A second skin, for skin walkers.
I've had more and less,
in less space than one can have with the bitter tastes of phrases caught in the back of the throat.
What we wrote on pine trees scars me,
taking far too long to heal over.
But I grow as growers do. And so do you.

Pour me another one of these.
I'm going home with death tonight.
I love the way the strobe light dances off of open bone,
I don't want to be alone anymore.

I looked at him through a haze of Pall Malls
He held me briefly and fiercely in dirt encrusted finger tips.
When he spoke to me it was whiskyed and dry.
I'd writhe in sheets covered in sweat,
marred by too many bodies (only one of which was mine).
But we laughed that hearty laugh that comes from knowing eyes.
We danced with the weight of flesh and bone.
We held no pretense,
and my eyes stung with the knowledge that we were genuinely ****** up.

I'm flesh again.
Ripped out of the heavens.
Snatched up by something turning me from a metaphoric whisper,
to a tree stump.
I enjoyed being ethereal again after so long.
I've been metamorphosed;
repressively manufactured as the recipient of love;
been made 'real' again.
Soon I'll dilute,
wash out,
become irritable and complacent.

The death of the mercurial.

My deepest darkest fears of happiness.

I'm whistling you a tune to waft into.
Some say to walk with the wind on your heels.
I don't do that.
I crash forward with clunky, massive steps
cracking concrete,
shattering asphalt and charging onward like a directionless bull.
If anything, I barrel into you like a semi off a freeway.
You smile and say you never knew what hit you.
You fall backwards.
As I run towards, you cave in.
I'm pressing my lips against you with something akin to force.
(the desperation of the intoxicated)
I burrow into your chest trying to make a place to hide in.
You sigh and fall to pieces;
crumble into dust to lay in.

There is a cold wind that sweeps over this place
and I'm staring dead at you.
If you ignore the fog around our feet and the ominous smell of mildewed death,
you can almost see a point to this little adventure of ours.
I'm about ready to make you an offer to get the **** out of here and go somewhere else a little less, depressing.
But you're staring right at me with that look again;
that look that says you're not all there.
The one that says 'I'm sorry you have called the wrong number'.
To be honest, all I want to do is run,
but all I'm going to do is stare dead at you and pretend that this whole little adventure of ours was worthwhile.

My sister my sister my sister,
turns out she wasn't a doll at all,
once push came to shove.
She'd been beat up and blistered like the rest of us,
just clinging to the mast of certainty found in encasing oneself in plastic,
layers and layers of it.
I don't know how she didn't suffocate but she's still breathing in there, somewhere.
She cracks at the edges,
I try to look in, nosy as I am, and get her out of there
but she doesn't want to get out.
She hates me for trying.
But I miss her I miss her I miss her.

Sometimes I go visit the end of the railroad.
I sit down on the tracks,
drink wine and think back to the time when I had somewhere I had to be,
desperately.
It ends in a wall about seven feet tall that's been newly painted by some hooligan I cherished.
When I first wound up there I didn't know what I was supposed to do.
I tried climbing that wall for a few hours or days,
trying to go further than I needed to be.
But I never did like the destination bit anyway.
So I wandered off and found some new uncharted way to be for a time.
Every now and again I get the urge to reminisce.
I trot on back to the place and remind myself of the bliss
of knowing what the hell I was doing or where I was going.
I tag my name on a corner somewhere,
trudge down the tracks onto the parking lot,
hop in my car and go home.

Its getting about that time
that we all switch pictures
define ourselves in some new way
write plays about the years we didn't pay attention to whilst in them.

She glows.
Shifts in the distance like shifters do
mirrors the parts of me I cling to
splices in the new shade of blue

that some commoners cooked up one summer

I want to move like you do
I want to follow a tune that you grew
up out of that dangerous mouth of yours

I want to slip in unnoticed into your background
I want to leave you in the wake of a spellbound
insomnia silvia nightgown.

I'm a remix of secret decisions
that I would love to let you and your friend in.
Take the tour of the wicked and old sins
that I wrote when I worked for the lived-in.

But she's still staring loudly at the floor.
Forgetting what project I wrote for.
Forgetting what score I produced.
Forgetting why I haven't noosed myself quite yet.

She shifts in the distance like shifters do,
mirrors the parts of me I cling to.

I've succumbed to the fact that I am not good.

That I am some sadistic crusher of dreams, fates, wonder.

I am thus, I do thusly.


I am a destroyer of dreams.

Of all those good things.

A crusher of moths.


Foaming at the mouth.

Drooling at the prospect of all at once.

The want.

The need.

The cake and the presence of cake.


You look at me.

Sad.

Pathetic.

Endearing in being so weak.


The conquering of the mountain of you.

Done.

Complete.


I am the master here.

I win the game.

Every game.

Pick a game.

I win.


Everywhere I go

I can get you.

Have gotten you.

Could drop you and get you again.

Could craft an army of You's.

Them's

Us's


The luck of being the shade that I'm looking at currently.

So finite a selection of people.

Raise your glass to that if anything.

Enjoy the ride while you're on it.


At least be conscious of it.

Set yourself apart in that way.

Impress me with your special qualities.

Make me notice you.

Don't lose my interest.


I grow bored.

I’m obsessed with drowning you out,
of pushing your head under water
of choking the life out of this,
for fun.
For kicks to the ground,
for rocks in the gutter,
for some desperate need I have to ruin you,
to ruin this,
to **** it before it kills me.

The world pours in.
I wake to my morning coffee.
The cream of that idle Tuesday,
The wakefulness of regret.
Flashbacks to appointments I would have missed,
had it not been for this stupor.
Mulling over what activity to engage in,
the clock strikes never-mind.
So I fall back into my sheets,
stomach churning from hunger I can't quail
and work I can't get.

She's wiggling her fingers in her throat.
Got something caught back there;
some words she spoke.
But I'm not sure I want her to bring them back up
So I let her choke on them.

Give me a ring, to slip off my finger.
It moves to my right hand.
I move to my right hand.
and you raise your right hand at me.

I'm gracefully losing my mind.
Watching it spin in real-time.
Letting it crawl down my backside

Shiver me tenderly, Valentine.

I'm tripping up my own deceptions.
I'm writing more on human perceptions.
I'm living down, giving up screen time.
I'm pouring out more of your dream wine.

Well, what of my cynical rhyme?
What of my weekend romance?
What if my color-filled prime - tickled me pink as the springtime?

I'm tripping up my own deceptions.
I'm writing more on human perceptions.
I'm living down, giving up screen time.
I'm pouring out more of your dream wine.

Shiver me tenderly, Valentine.

I'm a terrestrial being.
so down to earth I might just be below it.
Up to my ears in the sands of time;
grounded, forever glued to the microcosm.
Entrenched in terra firma.
Homely maybe, there's tracts of guilt all through it.

Pick a cause, any cause, and slap your receipt on your bumper.
Everyone is doing it.
Everyone needs something to be passionate about.
What's your disease?
Not a one of us has it but **** if we don't act like it.

Walk it off.
Blame federal taxes.
Blame the government.
Why not your cause?
Why not your ailment?

***' you know Johnny is going to die if we don't do something,
and Susie's just runnin' outta time.
Buy a teddy bear to show you give a ****.
Donate that extra quarter.

It all piles up somewhere.
But who, I mean who ever bothered to cure anything?
A million lab coats are workin' on your answer.
Just give em' a sec,
this stuff takes time.

In the mean time throw another buck in like your the only one.
Like this is the only problem left.
Like Santa only cares about breast cancer
or the church only cares about Alzheimers.
It's got one of their own you know.

Uncle Jim's got cancer of the liver,
where's his save the children fund?
Timmy's got cerebral palsy.
Sara's got Aspergers.
Randy has the Typhoid.

Pick a brand any brand and show you give a ****.
Like the only one who gives a **** about the only thing that matters.
Forget them, what about me?
What about my issue?
What about my family?

Does the take a penny leave a penny in the seven eleven make you feel important?
Good.
Look here, buy this pin. 10% goes to Katrina victims

She's bleeding into thoughts painful and obtuse;
reclusive mysteries made apparent by violence
and forceful introspection.
Severing ties and reforming them
licking wounds and digging at them.
For once let the madness cease to be so vivid
that it erases me.

She was a gamine,
an urchin and a recluse.
Tattered and waifish,
scrounging for some small morsel underneath a city bus.
Tarnished,
a lot like brass that's been exposed to water;
she's splotched.
Even whilst disenfranchised,
she carries some valiance hidden beneath her turncoat.
There is beauty in the loose pages she's giving to the wind.
She is,
and will forever be,
floating in the updraft of a sidewalk vent.

Somehow I know you're not worried.
Because I'm busy enough to be filled up to the brim with socialite;
a veritable butterfly of connections.
Like little electric currents that I watch late at night when I asked for rain.
It's delicate though.

I'm watching it run-through
like tape in an old movie house;
Us on the big screen.
(one single tear runs down her face)
'Perfect shot... but this time look into the camera'

I counted the droplets on my windshield last night,
talking about being ethereal,
being someone's 'one'.
Having that simple girl call me a drunk,
watching Independence Day,
thinking about being '******' for life.

Every fifteen minutes I'm wondering if she's okay
and those that don't deserve worry are still calling me to fix them.
I've got the band-aid for everyone else's 'uh-ohs'.
Watching the Olympics,
thinking about death, then you, then death again.

Avenge me darling.
****** up lullabies,
and perfect vision,
cutting ties and *****.
Going it alone, without the team atmosphere *****.
We're so good at it, it's a shame.

Any week but this one.
But here is the run-through
so it's almost like you're there.

Everyone wants to get into those pants of yours;
get into those jeans.
They'd all say a lot of things
to get in between.
Keep in mind the bottom line
is beneath those clothes you cling to.
So strip yourself clean string-bean.
Let them play tambourine on your heart strings.
Let them lye next to you,
tell you sweet lies that mean nothing
till you take it off.
Take it all off.
Do a little dance
make a little something to be remembered for in the morning,
when they leave.

Remember when following twinkling lights down sparkling hallways that life is but a dream
and here is the essence and truth of the whole thing ripping at the seams,
spilling out through bell peels and peeking out from bows of holly.
Once a year reality shows a bit of leg.
So enjoy it thoroughly through rounds of eggnog and sugar comas,
through cellophane and paper napkins,
through pointless conversations omitting drug references and financial statuses.
Just put some snow down someones back,
and if it isn't available,
good ol' ice does fine.
Forget that in a few days and a few minutes the world will close up again and deny it's divine nature.
Add a bit more weight to show that it happened,
to prove that it happened for the next few months.

The last time I saw you,
was the last time we spoke;
and the two words I said to you,
got caught in my throat.
So I'm writing you a letter
and I hope you get it safe.
Because the words that I write here
are written on my face.

She looks at you,
feathers still protruding from her mouth.

She's handing you a ticket to her way of thinking.
If you take it, you're in.
You have access to her mind;
unadulterated access.

Just renounce your humanity.

She's looking for a partner,
another wolf to connect with.

Be it for her.

She looks at you teasingly.

Take it.

Be one of her,
and she will give you everything.
She wants to dine with you on the flesh of the living.
She wants you to play with her.

Take it.

She looks at you,
feathers still protruding from her mouth.

For once I'm letting myself entertain the concept.
I'm mulling it over.
Because, I'm the glass-half-empty type.
It's not that I don't want a refill,
it is simply that I cannot get the attention of my server.
In the meantime,
the soda goes flat and the ice melts into it.
But unlike most, I have realized that drinking it leaves you with less.
I can be glass-half-empty, knowing that there is still some lukewarm liquid souping in the glass.
The problem is that I simply refuse to experience even the watered-down aspects of life,
for fear that that **** waiter never does show up.