when i curled up at your touch,
there was no rearview mirror in your eyes
Your hand’s a gift-wrapped fantasy
Your face an apology
for a crime that was not yours.

rather, i feared
that if i yawned open (creaking)
the love trickling out would be yellow (and reeking)
my bones unstitched, you’d run away (shrieking)
                       (i’m slick with sickness on the floor)

can’t shake this (him), rancidly grasping
grinding (and swallowing) and caving, collapsing
my body a coffin lay innocence rasping
rotting and ruinous and wasted and worn

i love within a cage. Don’t open it;
i don’t want to see what’s inside

If I could write a new forever
I'd lie beneath the ceiling splashed with
the glow-in-the-dark stars that you sighed
before you ever knew me but
when I was poised to make you known
I'd fly forever in flames and soar set
in your fire to warm my cold hands
(so strange that you like my cold hands on your chest --
so strange that I used to
never like chest hair, but you laugh my
never used tos away into smoke)
I'd crack my glass heart
to stay beautifully fragile but you'd cut away
my fragiles from beautifuls
(so strange that you like my cold hands on your chest
so strange that you see me and like me at all

If you made my portrait, you
would piece construction paper scraps,
brightly colored bird's wings, flat
like flowers because
how else do you capture
a colorful personality?

but even you could not escape the
sunlit-glare cracks, fluttering in
the hot blast of its vacant truths
and pregnant lies and crystal
unclarity, sparkling like jewels
on the neck of a thanksgiving turkey.

Paint the emptiness with a mirror-- that's all it takes
Questions can fall up for all I care
because when darkness lights up your face
reality slides into place
the lock clicks, now let's embrace
and you're in love with a meaningless picture.

Long nights under a crescent moon
swollen and cool with sweet milk
that spills over the blended blue.
The stars twinkle with understanding
as, eyes swollen with tears,
you tremble in your recent past.
Back one revolution round the clock,
the sun was bleeding into purple
as I lay bleeding into white,
my hand curled softly like a flower,
ghost of the life it wrenched away,
pale as now the moon, so glorious.

I live now where the songbird sings
where morning, crisp as autumn leaves
provides its salve to soothe my pains
to wash away my yesterdays.

The wind, through open window, curves
a hand to touch your empty face
and whisper into wondering ear
sweet dreams that canter through the clear.
Forever shall I stand with you
In memory, in your loneliness
In memory, in your cursed state
In memory, I am free with you.

When I love you,
I rip your darkness open wide
and tumble to your timidness
I cloak myself in distant dreams
and dance within the dimness.
I hold your hand and fly, I soar
I sink in desperation
I hold your darkness in my hand
I love you all the more.

My heart is a desert, dust crashes through
cracks that gape trembling as my
breath howls through the caverns as my
mind jangles as I
                                  hush

My heart is a desert
dangled in the twisted tempo of longing as I
wait for the serendipitous storm of your smile as I
reach for the fancied fortitude of your arms

My heart is a desert, stripped and unfurled
timorous but spacious and eager to build and
poised to be painted and splattered with stars
My heart is a desert (but my heart is gold).

Your bittersweet sunrise
captivated me in dreams of madness
Your dulcet melodies
enveloped me in velvet clouds
Your crimson depth
warmed my bitter chills
And now you're just
an emptiness in my rearview mirror

The ice crystals clutch the fluid window
glittering in the jaundiced streetlamp
as behind their eyes the world slips by
swimming in the chaotic moon.
And where do I belong?
And where do I go from here?
Lost in an empty hope
that vanishes in the labored breaths of a dying girl.
And where do I belong?
And where do I go from here?

When I am lost,
they tell me to find God (up and down
and deeply shallow).

You love God like you loved that boy
your grave escape made careless and callow
The hands of my heart built your lonely home
But what is a home if it doesn’t love God? (up and down
and deeply shallow)

It seems to me that God
is a match
a warm light
crumbling
(ashes)
in your mouth.