am i sick of this or am i just sick of myself?

i turn over in bed
again, feeling flames
lick my stomach,
digging fingernails
in my palms
against the pain
on nights like these
i forget my name,
forget why
the sparks in my eyes
leave me dry
and burning.

it's that time of the year
again
full of dry skin and
dryer eyes
emotions feeling like
woollen sweaters
in the sunlight
feeling like regret, feeling
like very not right
feeling like the whole season
makes you sleepy, makes it night
darker mornings, darker times
and it's well known
we all feel a little more alone
at night.

i know what this is,
this is madness,
this is craving for a touch, for the
self-destructive nature
of his clutch, these are
soulmates who only
want it rough,
these are kisses
and we never get enough:
these are chances
and we only get them once.

your lover,
does he lie? does he
tell you that you're fine,
that you're wrong, that
you're losing your mind
does it all feel
like a sickly sweet song
written by someone
who doesn't know at all
what it is
to not want to go on?

your lover,
is he fine?
is he losing his mind
between your calls
and your wrongs
does he feel like a sickly sweet
song when you cry
and he dies
a little more inside
when he doesn't have anything more to do but lie.

a single daffodil
burns
in the shadows
of the earth
as it turns
and we
still
can't
speak.

(do the comets sing?
                                             do ten thousand asteroids whisper when        
                                             our kisses sting?)

flower petals fall into the sky
with all the righteous anger
they deserve
but they don't cry. they know
there are enough raindrops
in an autumn grey sky.

i have never been more full
or more empty
all at once
like this.
do
tears
swing like
pendulums in
your throat? do you
hide tears in empty boats?

loving burns,
but we can't get off it
lighting cigarettes and hearts
with the same matches
kissing, gasping
between the flames,
choking on smoke, ash
and asking each other's names
pretending they're not the next
candle, saying they're not the same;
everybody wants to feel loved,
everyone wants to feel sane
so between the kissing, the asking, and
lighting the same dead flames
we paint wildfires and suns
and pretend we're not mortal
we're not insane.

i love you like the polar bear loves the beach
wistfully, between a sigh
and early morning dreams,
scattered between autumn snowflakes
and flowered halloweens
with all the adoration of
a dying bride-to-be,
sowing kisses into letters,
tucking love into the seams.
darling, i love you
but it's not meant to be.

used to hate penning letters
to relieve my emotions
cliché,
like i'm walking around in
the same motions
as the rest
of the earth
spinning the same turns,
touching the same everlasting
burns
of love,
death,
and the oceans

but
if my letters spell
words only i
like breathing
there's no point in
writing,
as nobody's reading.

firelight flickers in her irises
as she takes another step away
from the candlelit corridors
she used to call home,
when she was comatose,
when she drifted
like ashes in the wind,
like dying sparks
floating dimly
in a darkening sea--
like he used to look
when he looked
at me.

toss your lackluster realities,
and the river will find you—
lost, wet and windswept
like autumn leaves
after rain,
like butterfly wings in
chlorine
like a hundred gossamer strings
on the sea.

sleeping on the sun
and dreaming about raindrops

do words float beneath your fingers like they for me, do you
hover above them, in awe of the rawness of freedom,

do you see freedom when you look at me?

do feelings and butterflies mix, rewind, do you feel
color-blind looking at anxiety and butterfly wings?

don't look at me--
between the fluttering in my lungs and my mind
there are ten thousand colors you couldn't see
if you looked at me.

It's another loveless Sunday Afternoon
and between the gray sky and the
responsibilities that pile up
faster than October's drooping leaves,
I'm lost,
wondering if I missed my exit
or if I'm just meant to feel this way.

grief is fingernails in your palm
when you're standing in a public restroom
wondering why everything feels wrong.

grief is not having worn mascara for four months
because streaked ink-black cheeks isn't a look
you want to be known for.

grief is dancing on the verge of tears
in a math class, because your mind wanders
too often and death looms too large to avoid.

they look so happy! look how happy they are!

sometimes i talk too much about wanting to die
i don't really and thats why it's too much really
but running out of the doctors office crying
was a lot for someone who talks a lot about dying

and talking gets stale like crackers do and
people don't like stale food or stale words
but i haven't been out in a while
and these words are pretty much
all that i've got. i'm sorry.

i feel TERRIFIED all the time i want to beat my head against my bedpost will i die will i will you cry? will the bedpost feel like he did when he used to try?
will the flowers bring me back or will i die?
SCARED SCARED SCARED
everyone sees me running out of air they see me breaking nails and pulling at my hair
nobody CARES
care care care

when you forget what healthy feels like
and blue veins rise up from your skin
do your lungs fight? does the heat bite?
do blue fingernails mirror your bruises
blue like a little lighter's light?

the little boy with hands like wrecking *****
laughed when he should've cried,
eating emotions like the words
he didn't understand,
turning instead to building blocks
and mixing sands
elementary anger is flicking rubber bands
when you're a little boy with wrecking ball hands.

tip tip tip toe
down the way to hell hole
stepping in the prints
left behind by the bell boy
waiting for a hint
that- ****
guess we all go
down.

the dark eyed girl holding the needle is confused. why
would anyone want her eyelids tattooed?
i get it, i do--but it's barely a bruise, barely
a sign that they've ever been used--
and yeah, it's new--it's even strange
it's even enough to think me deranged
but i'm almost done, almost out of pain
almost completed the list of flaws under
my name.
my name
my name my name
my flaws make a laundry list worthy of fame
and they all knock about behind walls behind name
and i can't get them out without playing the game
so i tattoo my flaws on my skin on my pain
desperate for saving of name and of fame
stretched, wretched, falling, lame
too many rhymes and i'll ruin the game
too many words and they're all the same,
too many people are calling my name,
and i
and i
and i
and i
drooping in places, veils on my eyes
is this a disguise? am i beyond lies?
with truths on my neck and my nape and my thighs?
look at the skies.

silence is riddled with death and with flies
look at her eyes.

when roses sip poisonous drinks
do they poison our minds?

do poisonous drinks tattoo their mistakes
on their eyes?

i dont like the dark i dont like the dark i dont like the dark i dont like the i dont like i dont i dont i

dont know how to not lie or
how to always do my work on time or
how to laugh like i'm trying to not die,
how to stop saying half the time i can't breathe
but sunday nights taste like stale anxiety and
i dont know how many more i have in me.

when you write and the words slip off your fingers like gloves
my hands are cold
and you're writing and fingertips fly like doves
feathers fall and lay with the gloves
do fallen flames grow old?
do growing icicles always do as they're told?

do you drink the blood like i do? do you feel the venom the veins
do you feel demonic birthing pains
is there madness to her? is she the motive? the moral?
insanity in the mind, (the mind) not oral because
morals aren't found in red lakes, only found where girlish girls and cheesy cheese are called fake
only found where love rides the sheep costume for hate
searching for shepherds and morals, but of late
the motive ran away when you looked in its face
asking why the boy drank madness on trains
asking why people let venom run through their veins.

when fear finds new homes to hide
fingertips, fire and cyanide
blazing trembles, roaring tide
quiet voices quietly abuse,
and silence blazes a fiery bruise
when you're left drinking
cyanide and month-old *****
no more tremblings left to choose
screaming like quiet voices do
when licking fire finds them
roaring too,
and ashes feel more like ice cubes
than his words do.

I AM SO TIRED OF BEING TERRIFIED

crumpled t-shirts pile up
like regrets
every empty cup
an inner mess
do your notebooks
feel like failures?
do you leave lost dreams
on broken hangers?

shallow breaths feel like punches
who is in this room
who is here who is
am i about to die?

blinking like the stars blink
frozen, burning,
here, lost between
the dark and what's sane

croaking, a deathbed whisper
whispers slip into the sheets
whispers feel like raindrops
in desert heat

i have never been
scared
of the dark before but
this dark is different
this dark is the dark
of a man, the dark of
fallen footsteps
groping hands
as i lay
in the dark
breathing words that stay
trapped between what i fear
and what i want to say

do you feel darkness like a man? is darkness
a groping hand?

sick!!!!!!!!!!!! shaky shaky
can you hear the paper in my lungs
like i can

i can hear it

i can hear it like i hear
the screaming of anonymous
mouths
in my obsessive
compulsive mind
i hear it like the
cries of a pummeled boy
who cries

do you peel skin off your fingers? do you rock back and forth
on the floor in the bathroom on the floor

why am i in the bathroom why did i lock the door????

you run from this i run from this
we all run from this like we run
from uncertainty even when we
make it pretty in our poetry it's
not pretty we're not pretty
there's paper in my lungs.

cut it up breathe it in
listen like paper breaths
sound like violins
what an orchestra these paper cuts
become when you listen
when you hum
and the paper sits in your lungs.

when my body bends
and breaks--
a flower stem
plucked from her
pretty face
i feel your fingers
pulling petals,
stealing smiles,
scattering pieces
of me on the asphalt.
is it my fault?

.

white noise. a fan.
the wind, curling around red sand.
clinging to your memories, your hands,
dripping like lost leaves in a lost land,
the scratching of time on mortal man,

can you feel it
in the back of your mind?
these are the sounds
we wash
and leave behind.

this sort of rattling,
battling
in my chest
i did not ask for it,
they did not say
the trembling would start
in my veins, would start
driving me insane, would leave me
begging for pain, begging
for any feeling that made
me feel the same,

the way i did
last year.

i can't live in my head
anymore, the clutter, the
cataclysmic canvas of my mind
all around me, pasting
red letters on my retinas,
leaving pomegranate ulcers
on my tongue,
                           demanding i put it
                                               to rest.

girl asked boy
what is your favorite sky?

boy replied
i only know one sky. how could i know another?

girl replied
does not the sky change face from morning to night?
do you mistake bloated stars for clouds?
does sunset's passion taste so similar to the hope of the morning's blue?

boy shrugged
if the colours of the sky change with or without my recognition, why should i waste my time?

.

and the Stars. looking down at this
boiling pit
smile softly,
wickedly,
murmuring to each other
do they know we see them? do they see us?

and the Earth, groaning
as she turns,
mutters
*do they see each other?

why do these men dance
as if they own themselves?
as if these dances make them gods--as if
they are not fleas, deliriously
basking in the flames
of mortality;
mayflies.

her eyes pluck him
like harp strings
sing for me, boy.
do you sell your voice
like you sell kisses?

she does not have strings.
he would not pluck them
if she did.

small protests,
a child's fist
in the air,
a comma
out of, place
a quiet and
simple
rebellion--
easy to
trace,

do these refusals fall into the void?
                                                                ­                               (does it mind?)