Guilty and hazy
Like I've got my hands on a colt
He made me feel crazy
He made me feel like everything was my fault
As if he were the lamb
And I were the slaughter

Another woman's beauty is not the absence of your own.

You sat bedside me and I forgot how to breathe.

1.) You had more spiders in your house than friends, and you liked it that way.
You said they taught you not to fear the dead, but rather the living.
Sometimes I wish you never embraced death so much.

2.) I've collected memories of you like fireflies in glass jars and I hid them beneath the floorboards because I'm scared the glass will break
and I'll have to watch you fly away again.

3.) You were six foot and three inches of religious metaphors deeply rooted in your veins
and I think that's why you injected so much sin.

4.) I wish I could show you that the world is twice as big as we had thought
but there's still a lack of soil fertile enough for bodies like ours to grow.
I would have cut holes in the ozone if it meant I could give you the rain.

5.) It would have been your twenty third birthday on Monday and I just hope I finally get the courage to visit your grave.

6.) I don't believe much in the idea of god, but I believe firmly in your ghost.
I don't believe in hell, I think the concept is too fragile and the principal too impressionable.
But for your sake, I sure do hope there's a heaven.

7.) Sometimes I wake up at midnight and call your old number just praying that it was all a dream. But the only dream is the one where you tell me it wasn't my fault and the awakening is knowing that it was.

8.) I still don't have it in me to say your name out loud.

9.) I don't think I've been happy since 2011 and I miss you every day,
but I miss you most in the month of September because that's when it all just slipped away.

She is a prayer made
by Gods when they have
lost their way. With words
leaking from her teeth,
and passion burning through
her throat, she spins my pain
between her fingers, like a
riot of thought. With blood
shot eyes, she watched the
world caress my darkest fears-
then with a slip of a limb-
embraced me and my shards
of bone. She is a mouth of silence
when you think you need speech.
Sheet music written on her
lower lip, she played the
tunes of my survival with a
quick flip of the tongue.
Words were spilt along a
bathroom floor, drowning us
in hope and tragedy.
Hands were sown together
by the fragments of
discarded scars. She swallowed
my fears and made me watch,
let them fester away on her lungs.
Told me that I will no longer
burn alone, that we are now one soul,
and we will die together. Now
my life rests comfortably
inside of her, warmed by
her veins and undying love.
She is a prayer made by Gods
when they have lost their way,
and she is my religion,
my savior, my friend.

I used to bring prescription pills
to parents day
because I didn't think anyone
could tell the difference

What'd you call Christmas
without heat
in a house without power?
2007

My father swore that he'd
teach me how to ride a bike but
instead he introduced me
to his new baby girl
And every time we drive
past the hospital
my mother remindes me how much it cost to save my life
that one year
She doesn't have
to say that she wished I'd left
instead of him
She spent twenty one years
tucking my brother into bed
but it took her nine just to touch me

And when I finally had the courage
to tell my mother I was too afraid
to eat - she told me it's a blessing
That she spent most of her twenties
regurgitating flesh into paper bags
and that's how she got daddy
to stay

I haven't seen him in close to three years
but he calls sometimes
and we talk about the weather
I still remember the day he said goodbye
He said he'd come back
and we'd clean up that old bike from the shed
*I still walk home

I have a nasty habit
of dropping pieces of
myself on other peoples
doorsteps, leaving
frigernails and stray
hair inside their
post box. I always
give a part of my skin
to strangers on the
street because maybe
someone else can love
it more than me.
And I rely on broken
teeth and bottomless pits
to decide how whole
I really am.

So I set up camp
inside their
bones because I've
never been one to
know what home feels
like and I thought
I could manifest inside
sink holes for hearts
but it only made me
fade to black.

I wanted
to make peace with
the torment in my
head, but then the
flood came and sailed
away the only bed
I could ever sleep in.
And I wanted to hold
onto the idea of
making bonfires in
the small confines of
their back but people
don't take kindly to
being shelter for a
storm that never dies.
I come with lightening
strikes and hurricanes
in a three pocket
backpack and knock
on the doors of those
whose mother never
held their hair back
when they cried.

People are tempory,
in every meaning
of the word. They crack
and they crumble
just like me but the
wreckage of them
always seems to land
right beside my
shacking knees and
I sift through the
rubble because I've never
been one to let go
of things too easily.
I burn alongside the
people that I love
and I let them spit
out their sparks
upon my neck and
I rub their ash into
my flesh and I scream
when I get burnt
because I forget that
they were burning
when we met *and I was
bound to get a little
****** in the end.

The mind of a tortured artist is
One we worship for its struggle
And judge for its suffering*

The mind of a tortured artist is
One we find necessary to understand
When it is simply necessary to love

You see god in bathroom stalls,
and many may call that grotesque,
but only you can see the metaphors
the walls posses. You bleed emotions
in the way you make your bed.
And you keep old lovers whispers in
your garden shed. You bleed paper
cuts instead of stubbed toes, and your
teeth are burnt from words unsaid instead of cigarettes. You probably take scolding hot showers instead of cold, because you already know what it's like to be frozen -
and all you want is to feel pain again.
But not the kind you spend sleepless
nights perfecting onto whiskey
stained napkins, because the girl across
the bar breathes similes. But rather
the kind that melt the blisters from
your knuckles, and remind you that you are decaying. It's okay that you
break your fingers instead of praying.
It's okay to see the fairytales between the tiles, and it's okay that you compare
rotting fruit to your own soul,
or a nine inch wide black hole.
It's okay that you see grace inside of illness,
and sonnets inside of fear. Because
you are a writer, and you have
already won.

She burnt the colour of poison to your teeth
and you've spent the last year brushing them with bleach
just trying to rid the taste of her name off your tongue.
She uprooted all the flowers you planted in her hair
and she threw you to the wolves
because she didn't think you could handle the puncture wounds,
but you crawled fifty miles just to bleed out on her doorstep
and she never came down stairs to see your blood dripping from the porch.
My baby,
I know she made you feel like wind was getting trapped between your ribs
and your organs were losing space to pump your heart back into place.
I know she turned your spit into bitter regret
and beat the screams out from your chest,
I know you're frightened of the gap between my thighs
and all the lovers they have held,
but darling non before you have ever felt so sweet.
We're both still exhaling the fumes past lovers poured down our throats
*but maybe if we kiss for long enough
the chemicals will react and we can disintegrate together.

Stumbling from the depths of Heroahima,
you came to find riptides in my hurricane,
only to learn that two storms can't build a home
And besides,
you've forgotten how to float

You are not defined by those who never loved you back.

You've been known to reside inside the pockets of our local ******,
more often in my mother's bedside draw.
You were my childhood kiss,
a silhouette of senses dancing on the street;
adolescently sweet.
You were his means to an end,
a partial paralysis of collapsed arteries,
swore only to be a friend.

"Step a little closer,
come take a clearer view."

But those to make it out alive are few.
You said you'd take away the pain,
you became the blood inside our veins.
I watched him rot straight down to the bone,
his agony poured out in moans.

"The shakes, the sweats, how can't you see?
They're all gifts from me."

They always warned us of your games,
I should have known it could only end in shame.
But you were here to stay,
and oh,
how we played.

i've watched him bleed emotions in the way he holds his beer;
like a lover too potent to choke down but not sweet enough to finish

he is the side effect of the phrase
"kids can be cruel"
and i've spent nights searching for a warning label tucked in between his ribs,
expecting to find her name under
"owners information,"
but he won't let me close enough to find it

he ***** like he wants to forget,
but I don't much mind because i'm just trying to remember,
remember what it's like to feel that the stars are something someone built for me in their garden shed
but i grew up believing nobody would ever fall in love with me,
and he's too busy dragging his feet across the bar to notice the way she looks at him

i can hear the faded tunes of children singing
"words will never hurt me,"
while we empty ourselves onto *** stained sheets
don't tell me that hurts less than a broken bone

i want to tell him that we are not stalled cars sitting abandoned on the highway,
and if in some way we are,
we only got out to walk and get gas
i want to tell him that this is just debris,
but he's already half way down the street,
substituting prayers for broken fingers and i can't run fast enough to put a cast around his broken wrists and sign it
*"THEY WERE WRONG"

Beer bottles empty fast

And before you know it
You're face down in a black hole
Of all the words she said
That dug twelve foot tunnels in your veins
And went there to die

Then you're suffocating in a puddle
Of ache and spilled liquor
Dangerously falling for the concept of death

But who knows
Someone might save you
*Or someone might not

And every selfish act of love
you bruised upon my skin will
be the outline of my coffin
They'll wrap my fragility in satin,
anything to soften the fall
They will burry me deep,
with postmortem marks of
your teeth
My organs will be gone,
dying out across your sheets,
waving flags of defeat
My blood will be on your hands
and you won't care to wash it off
You'll leave your handprints
on my thighs
and lick your fingers with pride
You will watch as they lower
me beneath the surface
and smile wide
*There is no greater revenge
than staying alive

Sometimes you are the gasoline to an already burnt building
Sometimes you are the anger of a child who broke his own toy
And sometimes you are a fist of rage,
Yelling at the television
A puff of smoke
You are the post apocalyptic chaos of a rip tide too far gone to break

See, racism is not the shark but it's the ocean
All teeth and no mouth,
No jaw and no muscle
Just the white rattle of hate
The sharp grip of an untrained dog

People talk about racism like ancestral land and confederate flags,
Knowing that you own these things,
And we don't 
As if we don't own this history too,
This system
Like we're tredding water

How many skin heads do you think were in the room when we signed off on immigration laws,
race legislations,
public school curriculums?
Or pushed policies like mandatory minimum sentencing,
benine neglect,
broken windows,
stop and frisk,
the race war?

Remember,
The eye of the hurricane is the least harmful part of the storm
You,
The eye of the chat room,
All poker face and no cards

So which individual Donald Trump bigot boogie man are we supposed to be mad at?
When do we stop pointing out the bad apples long enough to acknowledge the orchid was planted on a mass grave?
When do we stop slandering race and start slandering unsolicited rage?

Sharks **** about one person each year
Thousands drown

But of course this isn't really a poem for white supremacist
I don't know any white supremacist
But I do know the people in my neighbourhood,
And my family
And I know how white supremacy is upheld
Whether it is through action or inaction
How it isn't just the broken act of justice,
But the justice itself
How a white kid with a black face on Halloween and his friend who knew it was wrong but didn't say anything - start to blur together
Because let's be honest,
Some racists aren't even racist at all
So they say nothing
They're a silent chorus,
A dull underwater humming waiting to overflow
But when the songs of our cities break,
Will we choose to hear it?
Or will we keep looking for the shark,
Keep tredding water,
Not knowing that we're drowning?

You are the difference
between hell and home
and I'm still trying to
figure out how your arms
made me feel like
I was in both places at once -
like your hands could
wire my wings
but you'd prefer me to
rot in your flames.
You saw no shame in
swallowing my organs whole;
as if you needed me
to be empty enough
for the wind to pick up
and take me away.
Like you woke up in
the morning hoping to
find shreds of my
clothes stuck between
the trees
because it
wouldn't be leaving you
if I didn't leave parts
of myself too.
And I keep trying to
gather them up but
they're torn from your
words that stain like
bile and I just
can't seem to stitch
them back together
again.
It feels like you
put out the cigarettes
you never smoked
along my neck
because
they hurt more than
hickies
and you only
wanted me to remember
you by the scars you
left upon my body.
And even though I'm
framed from head to
toe in your pristine lies,
I could watch you
pull apart my flesh in
pure awe because I
swear every twitch
of your shameless fingers
defines the movement
of the cosmos and the planets.
Sometimes at night
I can feel your hands
burning through the
ventricles in my heart,
and I dont mean that poetically,
I mean I can feel you
degrading in my blood
and I can hear you
quiver every time I moan
because nothing gets
you going like a plea for
mercy can.
You are a monster engulfed
in a masterpiece of skin
with a black hole for a heart
and I don't know how
I could love you so much
when all the bruises
still show.
The only comfort I have
held is the one
resting in your chest
and sometimes
I can't sleep at night
without pretending you're
sleeping here too,
and it hurts -
*it  really  *******  hurts.

my body is not a debt to be paid.