could my restlessness
just be little earthquakes
calling for tremulous gestures
like a flick of a string
attached to
the puppet's lifeless wrist
wherein lies the
constantly turning nebulae
satisfied only by the
empty obsidian space
a spattering of crystal
on midnight whisperings

my bed clings to me
a parting lover
or perhaps a parasitic twin
bound to me by flesh
our surgical silk bond
rope veins lashing us together
tied in perfect boy scout
honor badge knots
sharing my blood that is
now our own

why does the throbbing nothing
seated right between my temples
cry out in agony for
the stillness of a deep sleep
and yet rages against
my fluttering eyelids
hummingbirds on honeysuckle
scattering to dust
at the coming nuclear winter
that ever consuming fission reactor
at precise center
pointing true north
the exact point within me
where each other position is
equal distance

i write to you
somewhere out there
a beautiful part of that world
a string in the tapestry
that no theory could ever define
i write to you so you can know
that i straddle the brick wall
barricading this world
from the ever-present storm of chaos

half of me is woven to you
but half of me is still being pulled
by the unfathomable gravity
of a black hole

ripping paper and the
delicious sound of
detachment where there
was once a unity
screaming to the heavens
bleeding acid rain and
soaking me to my core
cold and wet watching you
watching me
at the window
mascara coursing down with
searing tears that
mix with rain and disappear
before you can see
the gaping hole
myself laid bare
bullet holes
and sink holes
collapsing in on themselves
and eating away
my body
silent screams escaping
the prison of my lips
praying
and praying
rending my garments
throwing myself prostrate
to be destroyed
consuming myself with
the pain of your absence
even when you are
sitting next to me and
i feel you slipping
along with my tenuous
sanity

you could have used a blade
a scalpel or razor
to leave clean cuts where
you extracted yourself from me
but you used a machete
a butter knife
rusted and dulled
hacking away to leave
jagged edges
screaming for relief
because i'd superglued you
into me
sutured your heart
where mine should have been
but yours burned brighter
than the stars in the universe
and i wanted to share
in that
and i wanted you closer
and closer
to absorb you into me
telling myself you wouldn't leave
but i'm bleeding on the ground
with only my pain
to keep me company

i must have let go too soon
the ride hadn't come to a full stop
though i felt as though
the ground beneath me was
hurdling at the speed of light
oscillating with such intense frequency
that it didn't move at all

like your face where typically
i can see the movements of
the corps of your features
and the play of the light
with the uncertainty dancing in your eyes
watching me watching myself
following the face that is mine
the razor sharp features
that not even time
can erode
and dull

spinning in fields
or a whirling dervish in my
bedroom by candlelight
when my grasp on reality
is at its weakest
and i relinquish any tie
that anchors me here
swimming with the school
of bait fish who inhabit this
geological prison

i let go too soon
and now i'm flying
my talons rip chunks of your skin
and my beak pecks at your
resolve and erases that
image in your head
of me
sane
grounded
real

blinded by my assault
that you welcomed home
like a weary war-torn soldier
deplaning onto the soil
of his homeland
there's something intoxicating
about watching a fire burn
cracks and whips
flames licking at my ankles
as they burn me at the stake
but the joke's on them
because i'm already on fire

and you can't burn what's already smoldering

maybe you never intended to love me
and i yearn with all of my being
to ask whether i was simply
some science experiment for you
why you led me on
why you stay with me when
it is obvious that
i am not the one
not the one who will melt your heart
the crystalline lattice of ice
that beats within you
behind a barbed wire fence
but i would shred my hands
trying to scale it
i would amputate any limb
if it might prove to you
that i love you
and it's killing me to
not be loved in return

i want you
no
now i've transcended want
i need you
i need you more than oxygen
i'd starve myself and i
wouldn't even feel the pangs of hunger
or my muscles consuming themselves
because the pain of
not being loved by you
when i love you so fiercely
eclipses all else and i
didn't even realize i was
bleeding on the pavement
the butchered wound in my belly
self inflicted
because i want to turn myself
inside out
to rip out my internal organs
and hand them to you on a silver platter

i would give you all of me

i have given you all of me

and yet it's not enough
perhaps it never will be
if you predetermined that you
would never love again
and i'm simply some sort of test
of your capacity to love
which you are slowly realizing
has disappeared

i would rather be tortured
physically ripped apart
i would throw myself upon the rack
the hangman would have no work
i would place the noose around my own neck
snap

but i realize my pain means nothing to you

because you are my judge and executioner
though what pleasure
can you derive from a condemned
dead woman walking
who welcomes physical pain
as glorious distraction
vacation from the
internal pain that no
medicine could touch
that scar tissue that is continuously
pulled apart again
when i see your face and
am reminded of the depth of my love
and your shallow eyes betray your cover
telling me the truth
that you'll never love me
because i am incapable of being loved

I know the world like no other
the centripetal force that
catapults me into the concrete wall
at my back which leaves
lashes of gravity
and welts and wounds that
remind me
the tides will turn and
I will careen towards
a blackness not even I can comprehend.

I know no middle ground
I live only in extremes
no gradations in my existence
leave me no steps
to descend the sheer cliff face
that I toe ever so recklessly
tempting that gravitational force
whose mere presence
fills me with righteous
distilled
rage.

There is no grey here
or is it gray?
-ey
-ay
I don't even know the orthography
well enough to describe
how the two sides of
me
the wraith and the goddess
could perhaps be intertwined
effervescent power
the cream swirling
in inexplicable patterns
until the coffee is a
calm
warm
and no longer bitter
on the tongue of those
whose life is not lived
only on the fringes
the afterthought
of a leather jacket
fallen out of style
decades ago
and yet still worn
as a reminder of the days when
I danced until my movements
fell in sync with the Earth's and
I stopped being able to
distinguish where
my root feet ended
and the moist midnight soil
began.

I know black
I know white
I know wintry obsidian nights
the darkness so thick
that even my sharpest blade
could never penetrate its
foreboding mass pressing in on me
I know truly endless summer days
when sleep is a forgotten virtue
and sunlight pouring through my window
warms me
and I photosynthesize joy
take all my nourishment from
the ambrosia of the sun.

In extremes there is no need
but want.

it's called falling in love
but it's more like
the sudden stop
at the bottom

the *****-jarring
slam into
frigid water turned concrete
turned freeway
leading to the purest pain
and immaculate agony
of vulnerable viscera
and exhumed faith

and aren't i still a believer
when i spout blasphemy
like gagging bile
choking out your breath
erudite acidity of alacrity
from verbose confession

and didn't you warn me
of your limited vocabulary
when words have always
been my companion

how can you take their place
if you've never wrestled
an angel like Jacob
to steal a word from beyond
this holy of holies
grasping and groping
mute in darkness
still wet behind the ears

i still don't have the words
to quell your fear
of that one that lingers
on the tip of my tongue
threatening to jump out
and betray my cover

but you always see right through me

surgically slicing
to the heart of the matter
how is it not written
all over my face
when i've tattooed it across
the back of my eyelids
so i never can escape your face

who needs a sun
when in my core you've ignited
my own fission reactor
whose critical mass
is a capacity to love
and be loved
that you found splattered on
a highway
emotional roadkill
carrion long left to rot in
the baking sun

but who else would feed the raven?

the loneliness that gnaws
at me persistently

he'll never love you like that
like a three day weekend

and i'll never be like them
changing costumes more
than a washed up
Vegas showgirl
as used as my bones
and as looked at as my
naked body

people don't change
though you'll never admit it
until there is already
spaghetti on the wall
a broken dinner plate
and a shatter that reverberates
into my past and future
they're all the same
after all

but i think if i hadn't met you
if i hadn't loved you
i'd never know the weight
of four letters
to grind me to dust.

you say it like it's my fault
like i shook you
goddess of earthquakes
and my fault lines
etched into my face don't
give you the answer you're looking for?

you look upon me like an alien
like some creature who crawled forth
from a darkened alleyway to
burn in front of you
and pull you
a moth to the flame
Icarus flying too close to the sun
you melt
when you're in my arms
and i in yours i can see
the beeswax of your eyes
slowly turning to a viscous liquid
a rain-shower of that infernal desire
emotions that ***** like needles
piercing veins to slam home
a neon poison
higher than ******
to know my power
and hold that pulsing dripping
heart of yours
within my secret place
my holy of holies and
all i want is to tear the veil
and expose the bare truth
no more hiding in the shadows
a divine face you cannot look upon
i imagine god gets lonely

what is the meaning of a beauty
that cannot be seen?
that will consume every part of you
with a single glance
burn your eyes to charcoal
the only smoking remnants of
those bottomless brown cups of coffee
that swirl in your irises

i consume the world around me
more more more more more more
if left alone i would eat your heart
a feral animal
the pure incarnation of natural rage
thunderstorms in my eyes
and lightning bolt curls
blood-stained lips still dripping
with your 98.6 degrees
that same fluid which rushes
to your cheeks when
i shock you yet again
though you shouldn't really be surprised
anymore

if you know what's good for you

don't look at me

will you still think of me
when the winter’s snow
like ****** needles sticking
and pricking me
slamming your smack
mainlining your masochism
melts to pastel pink mornings
and pregnant dewdrops
gravity propelling them
down flower petal water slides?
will my taste loiter on your lips
will the memory of my touch
my ghost fingers
still leave erupting goose-bumps
your hair standing on end
my unalloyed current
sparking into the night of kerosene.
will the fire bring me to mind?
my face engraved on your memory
like a holy icon
to which you run when the flames
rage as far as you can see
the orange haze of ******
and the hoard of children running
blistered skin
and their screams piercing
gouging
each wearing your face.

you call me *****
label me with broad brushstrokes
to paint onto the tableau of
my life a permanent stain where
you think i don't already see one.

the joke's on you.

trying to sully an already *****
contaminated crime scene
you won't wipe away fingerprints
seared into my skin
by those who also
saw me as that *****
were you disappointed when you saw
i already had ruby red marks
of hands wrapped around my neck?
because your flying shrapnel
accusations make me wonder
if you wish you had
gotten there first.

*****.

though the declaration stings
it certainly doesn't take me
by surprise when i
see that word stamped across my
forehead any time i look in the mirror
the syllable lives between my legs
and bleeds my secret shame
but i can't let you see me cry
i can't let you know it hurts
i can't let on that i would do
anything to purge this stain.

how could you understand
that i see my reflection in
***** in the toilet so i
shove my fingers farther down
my throat to recreate
that feeling of drowning
the gags that created me.

*****.

i want to blame that
violation
or even my erratic neurotransmitters
for morphing that flaxen-haired
nice girl
into the gnarled old
shame-riddled creature who sits
silently before you
being named *****.

but it was no one else who
led myself to this place
who traversed dimly-lit rooms
of iniquity
and was reborn as this contemptible creature
i take up my cross
my new mantle
my ******* scarlet letter.

you make me want
to run through the streets screaming
to stand on a street corner
preaching the gospel
of my culpability
have you heard the news
of our ****** executioner
the *****
the label feels even more
familiar than my own name.

i don't deserve a name.

take my clothing and dress me
in rags
strip me of my name and address me
only as *****
my life will now be only
passive acceptance and
those hands will explore my hidden places
though they are as unknown
as Disneyland on a gilded
summer day
but you can watch my searing shame
in the invisible white hot tears
only i know.

don't touch the *****
or you might fall victim to
my contagious disease
of optics and opinion
myself the lowest caste of society
relegated to empty halls
and abandoned structures
where i am abandoned as well.

you seem surprised that
the *****
would be fiercely independent
would be accustomed to
being alone
but who stays with a *****?
who takes her home to
meet the family
my independence was merely
an adaptation
Darwinian evolution ensuring
i would survive
to suffer another day
another trial
another sentence.

i understand now why
criminals are handed
multiple life sentences
because i'm punished daily
deservedly so
i would **** myself and if
i came back i would
cry out for more
more pain
more lashes
lay me bare and cut the skin from
my bones and call me *****
never stop
never let me forget
what is burned into the back of
my eyelids
a memory connected to
that word
my name.

i was given that name
by violating vandals
who spray painted my guilt
all over myself
and i can't escape that night
whenever i close my eyes and
pray i won't wake up
or pray i'll wake up in some other body
uncontaminated
a form that was never touched
virginal purity i wish i could
somehow repackage and
re-insert into my ****
to purify the orifice of all
those who branded me
*****
the mantle i took on myself
and made manifest.

you say it to me all the time
so quotidian
it simply falls off your
carefree laugh
and do i see the remnants
of a fear
clouded by memories of another
woman you loved
who brandished knives on your bed
carving the evidence of her inadequacy
into the skin your fingers caressed
the body whose every crevice you had
explored for eight years

you must see some of me
in her
a peppering of her in me
like the seasoning that the creator added
as a dash of spice
to the primordial broth from which
we both crawled
spoon to his lips and a
contented smile turning all his features
up up up

you blow it off
but she must come to mind
every time you hear
the diagnosis
the label

"Oh, she's bipolar?"

the explanation for every
single
*******
aberration in our behavior

but you know it's not just
a "Hello, My Name is _" badge
it is days without sleep
paranoia-fueled delusions as we
diverge from your reality
and exist on a plane that
you cannot access

we go to Away.

but you know
that somehow we are eerily present
at least to you
from your perspective
when inky black voices
scream terrifying bile
and a bloodlust builds in the center in our chest
and we can smell the metallic whiff
of every single knife
each nectar-sweet blade
in the entire world
and you want to be there

you want me to call you
so you can see me
writhing on the floor
unable to rise from bed even fueled
by that insatiable hunger for
my blood
to die
to not die
to not be

can you live with a ghost again