Am I putting myself first?

       Not enough?                      Too much?
i feel im going to burst .....

It took me long to learn to be selfish
                                and now those lessons

                know no bounds and in certain times
                 I’m found

Being petulant
  
                                                  And aggressive


         with my tongue.


I hate the feeling
         Fighting internal bleeding
                       of my very soul
        
      the one I finally told
                                               to stand up.

As she reveals herself from the pit of neglect
              she rears an ugly head

         is this something I can regret?

Let it go and let her out
                Learn to grow               but I find out

a horror in my capabilities


             Is this unlearning?
        
                                   or is this
                                                          Me­?

My first taste
              from a different place

                           came from a poison drip

cursed lips
                           and weapons cinched in hips


                  Sexualizing romance for others’ leering pleasure

       now, blanketed security

   I feel no inferiority
  
                   and pleasure is free

for romance is no longer sexualized but prized, and *** is now romanticized

                   and I can feel everything.

I miss New York

             And Think.

And other things
    

           that taste of coffee

A comforting sigh in a sickening night

                             the ink of your arms on the satin of my sides

where to begin?
                                                     not this **** again
            the constant deliberation
                                                    ­                 your harsh beration

is that even a word?


I wouldn't know, you're not here to correct me


But I'll still prostrate myself before you
Never imply, never implore you
to swallow the pride I so eminently taste
on the tip on your tongue in the flames of your space

for I articulated immensely and pure,
I've no pride left -- I've already tried to say

                                   that I Miss You

In the olive branch of thought, or concern, or encouragement


The snicker on your lips at the edge of the cord
Has snapped in my face, in a favored exchange
You say I don't owe you
But maybe I do?
I couldn't tell you why

                                                       I'll still say I Miss You

Chuckle in my face
                                            say I'm looking too hard
when half passed a year, and I saw that you star-        -ted
to write in the place I hold dear to my heart
You played where you meant and you knew these parts

I would puzzle together would puzzle my head
to ensure that your seed had been planted and fed

And I hate the feeling you put in this trough
                             I'll lap at the puddle, still claim that is

All Love.

                        You forget that I know you
From that you can't hide
                         You forget that I know the shake in your voice
When you lie

                                                         Despite your uncanny ability still,
This hostility doesn't suit you
                                         Not that I think that I will
change that as of late.


I just wish you could swallow that burdened mind
The one with the Pride?
The one you never tried

                                                     to combat or control
because control is a need


I see that , I know that ,              so control what you please


But no more, not me
It's me.
It is me.

Can you not at all, remember it's me?

Not a burden
A binding
An obligation "back home"

No pressure
No lectures
Just a box of our notes.

The snipping aversion proceeding the kind
Doesn't look good on you,

I've reached and I've tried.

So I'll favor this favor, because my heart's cured --

Unbandaged,
         I'll tell you I Miss You
                                                          once more.





                                 this time try to
Be honest with me.

Do my words
                               my existence
              
                   my breath
                                                          ­    my hardship

the thud of my feet upon the flesh of the earth

                                      my thoughts of us
                                                              ­                   or lack thereof..

Carry explosives
                                 unruly power
                      omnipotence
                         ­                               demolition
                       ­      daggers

into the satin, slick clamshell center of your chest


The way yours do

                                       To me?

Do you think of me


In New York City?

In the false spring, there was light

                                                               Epiphany

                               Eureka in technicolor

But blinders above centrifugal spokes
                     scattered through prisms
           a deflection of armor
And
                  
                                   The rain came.

                                                                                       Light remained.

But what previously perceived
                       as vibrancy
was shattered in repeat streams
                       of disbelief
over every evil stitch seamed
                       in the fabric of my clothes
                                                                     And Rose-

Colored glasses gave way
                                                without rest
                external tempest
                                                with self-inflicted misery
I could not leave.

                                                                    And now I see
that the foyer of this love
                                               was not chromatic
                                               was not prismatic
                    though gaudy, flashy this all-encompassing
Prison of color
                                  was nothing but
           mediated, alternating, monopolizing
                                  preoccupying
                                                                    Shades of Blue.

                And then there was you.

The false spring melted down
                    to fragments in cracked glass
Wiped my blood from broken mirrors
                    no longer asinine and crass
Still mentally impounded
                                                 in emblems au courrant
Took a sip from poisoned drips
                                                                   just one more scar to flaunt

But every day in smaller strides
                                 the forage cleared and scorched
The winter came with sleet and
                           Rain
                                                             another touch to tortured

And as the ice begins to melt
                       and false spring lays to rest
With you there are no problems except
                                                                         where to be happiest

You used to come to me
When you were happy

And now

From a corded line
At the end of the drive

I can’t say I need you


Because you’re happy
So you have to go


From a corded phone

Even when you know

But I’ll never tell you I’m alone
Or that it hurts
Or that I need you

Because you’re happy
And you have to go


So I’ll sit here.
Dead phone tone.

Because you’re happy now
So you have to go.

How is it that the way I feel
Doesn’t appeal
the next day

The next hour

The next second

The next instant?

Sickening green plagues the airways and my burdened mind rests firmly in the folds of my skull
Hewn from dirt and molded like metal—in insurmountable heat

Absent of the pressure which turns to precious stone

Plagued in an illness that my own cells created
Or rather manifested
That nobody can see

And you hear it
You see it
It burdens you the same way it carves holes in my chest
Of deprecation
And inadequacy
That has absolutely nothing to do with me

And you hear it
You see it

So how could I ask you to help me carry
When your shoulders are already weary and heavy

Dare I reach out for the again-th time
I’d rather hurt quietly, convulsed, and inside.

I wish you knew

How it felt to meet your lips
Pillows of bliss putting my soul to bed

And I wish you could feel

The tracing edge of your fingertips
Drifting currents through my skin
To the shivered ends of my hips

and I wish you could hear

In the silence between pleas
For pain
The craving stifled stream of intimacy
Against the way I never wanted to be touched again


I never wanted to need



And I wish you
As you

Pulled from the storms of clouded vision
And black edged screams
could feel
The difference as I lift
To delicacy
Over legions of lesions
I claim I need

The ties between isolation and liberation
Seem faulty
Unruly
Impossible

But in felt driven black
And blotted skies
I find myself in that between
Awry
From meaning of life and gentrified
Feelings where we are assumed to spend
Most of our time

I tried

I wish I could hammer pointed flathead nails
Into my harrowed chest
Without the screws of drivered nights

Rendering me blind

Though now I understand I’ve been that way my whole life

The comfort of what’s always there
Illusions of truths
Falsified by minds so accustomed to presume
That we are never alone

Absent of human nature

But as the faulty lines
And sharp riptides
And avalanches
Of hidden tries
Rectifies

Nothing

We are alone

I am alone

She doesn’t know me
Where the other won’t hold me

What a shame
Who’s to blame?


Me of course


For my heart is too tortured
To harbor
Any broken armor
I’m just softly
Bandaged and bruised
By life’s tumultues

And I’ll never be arounded
Always surrounded
By fire and demons and unwanted reasons

As to why my mind screams in drones
Of always
Always


Always




Always



Being alone

How to be alone
Is something you claim you don’t know

And I agree

You’ve buried your identity in the ***** of others
People with higher shelves and faces more likely
To recognize in a crowd

And then you polished and shined and rode and dived into endeavors
The others defined
As their lifeline

Including mine

And I stopped and padded and wrought lost savage
And dusted away each
Tribulation nestled in the waves of your skin

To find the you within
That you for so long failed to recognized

And I’m not sure how I thought this time
some frankenstein
Would stay with me
With scissors for hands
Or stitches in your neck
All cosmetic

But internally is where I sewed the thread
Fought to bring your heart to life
The fire in your eyes

So now you tread so easily
Upon the hands that used to feed

You

Day in and day out
Fighting
Defying lying

Compromising

Flashback Coddling and coaxing
Gently supporting each idea of independence

And maybe the mountain I climbed
With you astride
Reached a summit I didn’t want to see

Where you realized you were free

And I carried your dead weight
And led your legs

To stand on your own

Found the fire in your heart
Let it glow

Until it flowed

Into roaring flames

And that’s why text of black on lightened screens within my hands
Holds lists of names—
Demands

That I not forget the ones who stoked my fire
Lit my fuse
And watched me fly

I’ll call them out each and all by name
Because I hope I never gave them pain

The way you have
In bursts and blows
When I tugged you to that summit
On twisted rope
I tore from my body
Combined of my soul

Cared to see you fly

Now you want to be alone

I laid in my efforts and left to your heart
And you took these tools and found light in the dark

Long has since passed of small pathetic tremors
In uncommon bedrooms and soft down white covers

Your ceaseless tears and your face in my neck
Crying of all the things you didn’t have left

and I’d take back nothing to see you fly this high
To see your ascent
And how hard you’ve tried

I knew it was in you
I didn’t do this FOR you
I simply provided the foundation’s
Fortitude

So how to be alone is now what you ask
Maybe that’s how I should’ve let you conquer the task

But I’ll wrap up my pain in ribbons and parchment
Glued with intention and my small sins, repent

now it is freedom you claim to pursue
But if you, from me learned,

Maybe one day you’ll return

My god I really ****** up
How can I not have seen
His poison sinks into my lips as I lay
writing
I warned him of my vacant lies,
My tasteless, cryptic scars
I should've help my passions near
And loved him from afar

Now all I see through open eyes
Unfocused in the dark
Is his crooked smile I wish he knew
Reflected my crooked heart.

I said I wouldn't write about you
                                                            b­ut who am I
           to strip myself of what makes me live
in art I've surfaced my own sins

                                                           ­                      and some of yours.
                                                          ­                                         I suppose

I've taken space you've asked of me
                                                     needing to blockmyface
                                                     ­                    whenyouonceplaced
           my name into your skin

in a quiet champagne trip and
                                                    Gold
indente­d ribs

                                          Take a sip.

If it's "poison" that touches your lips

                                  THEN you could've skipped
                                                         ­              dipped
                                                          ­             flipped   me onto the piles of rubbled                   glass
torn from your walls
placed carelessly cornered or left simply to fall
                                                            ­                                       switched in
flip

some contorted reverse
                                            though my heart refuses to pin you as
                                      Perverse
     when these colors emerged


Two Years of swells i Chose to forget
                                                  each time that i stayed when I knew

i should've left.
When Everybody told me                      Better was Mine
                                       I wouldn't give in to believe that your heart was
                     Unkind.

From the moment I knew I'd clutched your stairway-ed arms
to
                 Ease My Ailing,
sweaty palms in driver-ed cars
Kermit Ruffins and philly beer bars
roller coasters, Christmas lights
                           endless pen-streamed journaled binds
An unopened book
                         pages still blank
                  more than a stitch to ease the pain of your name

   though i mustn't Complain
                                                        ­             ...and I still can't Rejoice

But I'll watch the sunrise through Uncommon windows
              trace folds of your fingers -- sweet struggled wake on your pillow
                            and dance foreign waltz in clipped black-wig nights
           plated sweet nourriture to watch your delight

Watch you dance decorated as I set in Pride
                                hold me to standards --yet bend when I'm Right

Speak to me softly in quiet teared nights
         tell me I'm beautiful when femininity cannot find
                                                            ­                                                 me
Drape me in curtains of love and Security
        Fit so Securely in the curves of my body

Smile in shyness--like absence of tongue
                as your cheeks lift to hide your eyes
                                                            ­                                  in thin rungs

Gold plates of your stomach and skin over hips
           saying my name through pleasurepursed lips
Pounding the pavement in carouseled times
  
not only Read, but Returned all my rhymes

The fortress is daunting
                     I'm brooding and swift
Sometimes the brick slips but the flips never Switch

So if russe folk dances and stealing lost tea
                     causes your coldness, just slightly, to bleed
                                       Remember what I did
                                                             ­                     --to, your troubles, ease
                               Don't say for this new year I didn't
Prioritize your Needs
                                       MARRY THEM, by all of all means
i never pushed you to choose, instead, me

I've learned my doors close,
       i woke to realize
                                             when those i thought open I faced and
                                                                ­  denied

because nothing matches the pulses and start
                  --the warmth in my chest when your palms
                                                                ­                                 press my heart

that's why with your Run i cannot understand
           feelings and highs
                                                           ­            unsustainable lands
I never demand     -       I never imply

                        but im also neverwrong
   and i can't shake  

                                                        ­                                         You and I.

If my body is a temple
I built it for you
Let you dwell in every room
And corner cribs of cobwebs
Because with sideways glances I’d swoon

I am all for you

I let you set chests and nests and hang pictures of us from the wood of my ribs
Snapping in northbound hotels
Bottles and swells of love
In upcoming absence
Never a doubt

I slipped and I fell and I didn’t do well for you
I know
I know

But before you gave me air to try
To prove that you and I were something good
No temporary high
You tore the shots from the splintering cage
You had recently laid
With me between

Now my bed is as empty as the halls of my body
This temple is nothing but rubble and sully
You said you would love me
You said you would stay
I patiently rode all the swells of your waves

And I’m sorry

I’m sorry the briars that join at my chest
Weren’t polished or silver
Or quite good enough

for you

I’m sorry you couldn’t make a home in me
I’ll curl to your voice and plead you won’t leave

Forever

If you weren’t us
You’d laugh at us

I wish I could believe it as I careful pried vessels from saved beating security
Reached into my chest
And gave you the very best
Of me

I wish I’d been enough

I wish you would stay

My hollowed out beatless heart
Reeks of decay

Of the chance I took on you
So sure
I was sure
I was sure
I am sure

You’ll come back to me

But I’ve always been good at lying to myself
False hope and future blows seem to
Silence the swells
As my life and my love drains in lines down my face

I never thought loving you meant you would break

Me

I’ll still think of Little girls lying in daffodils
Every lit candle, and egg white whiskey sours
And warmth overcoming
The sleek of your skin
I’ll still feel you running
From The weight of my sins

And I’ll be here in patience and kindness and wait
Even though when You ended me I couldn’t take
It

Please stay

But you’ll leave they all leave I’d said nothing to pay
The price of my toll causes none to delay
I’m sorry my head held shadows in corners
And doubted yourself
When facing my currents

I’d reach out and say I’d be better to you
I’d try with my might, all your mountains, to move

It’s you from the wreckage
The scars
And the war

It’s you who’s stayed standing at the stage of my fronts

I’ve seen you forever like none before
And that’s why, though I cried,
Please still know that our door


Is still open



                                 if you change your mind

What’s stopping you?
     howmanytimesareyougoingtoaskme

The reflection in the mirror talks back
a slap
in the face of my own draining placid fervor

      howamisupposedtodictatethroughthemuddled

Point central yet not centrifugal

   look like i always know what i’m doing what’s the next step what’s the higher trek the place the time the track the automation the rotation the pedestal

      constructed of sturdy insecurity

    ihavenofuckingclueihavenofuckingclue

     if energy cannot be lost where are my efforts left vested

     “if Any body, it would be you”

theyallsaytheyallsay so

        entering as my facade fabricated intricated interrogated berrated defiled demolished shredded left

     fordead

i’m working on it i’m working on it

More to come

asmileadrivealonelynight

         atemporaryhigh
            
                                     ­  capitalized.

I hate how I succumb to your every
incline
Subdued by the laugh that emits
through your eyes
The weight of your body pressed hard
on my chest
I know not now what I would do if you left.

But you leave.

You are leaving.

You leave me in ruins each time we exchange
For my wanting is higher than the price
you paid
How am I to know if your mind ever
swayed
Past the point of a one night you wish
I had saved

                                               For you.

There's two that'd give two on the bet
that we'd work
Though my fear-stricken mind paints these claims
as absurd

You're not what I want

You're not what I want.

Then why am I sitting here wondering what
                                                            ­                                 you taste like

I threw down the pen as I wrote these words
I wanted to Lie
But they wanted to be heard
What feelings of body from you
I could've learned

Would I have wanted to go there?

No.


NO.

Oh god no, I do.
To see if your colors held
new shades of Blue.
I couldn't to my own intentions stay true
I wanted to because
I thought
                                                       I couldn't love you.

so holding on to loose-knit limbs held only by the thought
That maybe one day your own gates

will not be iron wrought

Do you ever forget
That the sky is
Blue?

Do you ever spend days in foggy sun-streaked rays
Looking up but never at

or out

Only through?

Do you ever forget that the sky is blue?
When every day is clouded with premonition
fear
                          and feelings of feigned
                                                         ­                                solitude?

Amidst robotic promenades
Of errands, chores,
And soulful fraud
I sat on a bench backed concrete wall
And watched the viscous raindrops Fall
And remembered that the Sky was
          
Blue.

Not today or maybe even yesterday
the day before,
I'll never be sure
For fear has pained this green earth in shades of grey
And harmful lures
of Worry

                         Fear

                                           Ineptitude

                                                     ­               Loneliness

                                      ­                                                Harmfulness
     ­                                     Judgement

Pride
           ­                                                                 ­        Resentfulness

                         Self-Righteousness    

                                         ­                          Inadequacy    

                           Doubt          
      
         Despair

                                            Despair.


T­oday I remembered that the sky was

Blue.


I saw its reflection in my core
through Rain streaked Windows on
the hospital floor
When predetermined action broke
To a soft sound of clarity, pity roars

So quietly in the corners of my eyes

And quick flash movements of Demons
on the edges of my vision
Gave way to one epiphany of a lost
nameless Religion
Where I sat encompassed warmly
by the chilled slate concrete walls
Match my footprints to the tile
And gave into some strange call

I spent duration in this space
Though hardly past half five
And returned blurred grey slate edges
In the spare divide

I hold on to that shade of Blue that
faintly caught my eye
In times of strife and noire held
tears
Remembering to fight

On foggy days of rain and haze
The purpose in which art
I'll softly pound on hollow chests,
reminding them to start

The shades of grey that dominate
the lost lack luster living
Are highly favored in my fears
Of failure and Oblivion


Remember me
Remembering
The vision in the glass
Clear yet seared in steaks of Fear,
threatening to crack

Don't set up camp in aimless
stance
away from rationality
don't succumb to worldly moods
that are always
                           painted
                                               black.

Especially on rainy days in lightning thundered
views
Grasp firmly to what sparks your heart
And remember that



The sky is blue.