Papa repeats bad jokes
like a broken record, an overplayed
and under paid radio station
that forgot how many times
we've heard the same
song.

Out to eat at a fine dining
Mexican restaurant, Papa orders
a hot dog. The waiter
doesn't get it. The joke, nor the
hot dog.

Who would guess so many
bad one-liners and puns lie behind
your dark leather skin and
tired jaw? The waiter cannot tell
that buried underneath pages of wrinkles and
stoic smiles, Papa
is only joking.

I will write myself to sleep.
I will write long, pathetic
poems instead of texts to my
ex. I will write
the novel of my life
instead of asking you
for attention.

I will write
the new bible
on isolation, chronological
volumes
on loneliness.

I will write ten million
haikus before I write
you again.

I will write love letters
to myself until my fingers
bleed, until I
believe them.

I will write the handbook
on neglect, the idiots guide
to dealing with it.

I will write vague
fortune cookies about
self-acceptance and
self-forgiveness.

By the time I'm finished,
I will have exhausted
my depression.

I will write Shakespearean
prose about this
rejection.

I will write suicide notes
on my shield and armor for
protection and I will
save myself with them.

I will write angry, violent speeches
to rally the voices
in my head.

I will write a pledge of allegiance
to myself and recite it daily,
after coffee.

I will pray to the Gods of
"move on," and "get over it."
I will baptize myself
in holy water
that makes me
stop caring
completely.

Holy water, oh well, whatever
move on. Hallelujah.

I will write the ten commandments
on how to be
abandoned.

She leads with sexuality.
She says "**** me," instead of
hello.
If she says, "I love you already."
don't run away, don't
worry, it only means,
"How was your day?"

It means something
normal.

If she doesn't say it, still, she isn't
normal.

Her eyes begin every sentence with,
"Will you love me?
Will you **** me?
Will you promise to never
leave me?"

And when you say, "Bend over,"
It will mean, "Love you, too."

You used to think *** was love, but
now you know, *** isn't love.
*** is medicine for
sick people.

Your body, naked, shaking, is more of
a multivitamin for sociopaths,
than it is your body.

She leads with sexuality, but
how else should it be felt?
And no, your **** is not big enough
to fill the hole
in her heart.

The moment I spoke
your name
for the last time,
you felt it.

You had to throw
the net again into the sea,
to trap me
in my pathetic
admiration of you.

You felt it when
I forgot you existed.
You had to weasel your way
back in to
my heart.

But the space reserved for you
has grown
so small.

How many years
do you plan
on pulling me along?

Dragging me behind your
reckless automobile, my face raw
from rubbing the asphalt. Skin chaffed from
repeated abuse. You are
the madman behind
the wheel.

I forgot about you
until you reminded me that
I'm simply not me
unless I feel
discarded, abandoned,
unloved by you.

I've handed you
every missed opportunity I have ever had with a beautiful,
intelligent man. You are now
the object of my affection, like
everyone who came before you wasn't real,
only practice, but the sting of their rejection
has lasted. It's still burned into my memory.
I am giving it all to you.
Please hold it, for a little while, don't let
my chaos burn your skin, juggle it
between fingers and let it wind around your arm
like a boa constrictor.
You have the weight of the world
on your shoulders, it's up to you to redeem
all mankind, in my mind.
Please, smoke out the bad memories
from the empty, needy cavern of my mind.
Please, replace them with good, with your
jokes, and smile, and kisses on the
small of my back.
******* Bukowski was right, you have
no knife, the knife is mine. But I gave
it to you. Sharp as hell.
Please, don't use it
yet.

Don't tell me what the weather will be,
I want to experience life myself. I need
that unknowable moment
when you step outside and
it hits you like a train.

Let's stop talking about the snow
and start rolling in it.

I want to know even less
about the future. I crave
shock and awe and
jaw-dropping reality.
I don't want to see the sun on the television.
I want it to slap me in the face
in person.

I don't care about the predicted
animated snowflake.
Let it surprise me.
Seeing is not believing,
I need to feel it.
I want to taste that snowflake
so raw, so real, so humanely cold
that it will be grateful
it landed
on my skin.

I am naked
every day.
Visible, fleshy
in every way.

I wear my ***
on my sleeve.
You can possess me
if you please.

Peel my skin off
under the first layer
of peachy crust
lies concrete.

Dig and dig
all you want
your shovel will hit
your arm will break.

Kind strangers cannot fill
the hole in your heart.
It doesn't matter how good they are,
how well they respond to your
match-lighting and
boundary-pushing.

Your bridge-burning
and soul desiring, unsatisfied
with the best of people.

You dont even know him.
How could you put him
through that, through you,
how could you try to
catch him in your web
and share your misery
with him. It
ain't right.

And it doesn't help
to have predicted how doomed you both were,
to have noticed right away how it
would end, before it began,
coldly. Without contact.

No hugs or kisses signing this
apology text. No x's and o's at the end
of this suicide note. It was
cold. You are cruel.

Don't ever take a kind stranger
by the hand and drag them into
your life. Don't ever hand
a sweet stranger a broken piece of yourself.
Don't tell them about that piece
of yourself.

You could have been anyone, you
could have been bold and confident
and beautiful and intelligent but
instead you talk like
a 12-year old girl
who is lonely and pathetic,
a human version of an
anxiety attack.

The next kind stranger that you meet,
don't introduce him to that girl.
She may exist, but you don't have to
force people to love her. Love
cannot be forced.

Introduce the next kind stranger to
the artist, the traveler, the linguist,
the lover and be so radiant and so positive
that even the little girl
will start to believe
it.

I am surrounded by remnants
of you. Every morning I wake
and drink my coffee with
your cup, your spoon,
your opinion that coffee
should be burnt and strong
and crude.

I even eat meals
among your fallen soldiers
of furniture, the ones
that got left behind. The
ottoman you never could say
goodbye to, the one
that you have nightmares about, you
wonder where
he is now.

I walk up the stairway
of your fibers, old hairs and
samples of your DNA
are mixed in with mine
in the layers of sediment
carpet. Your toe nail clippings
petrified into the
concrete.

I avoid mirrors because
my ghost image
reminds me of you,
something false, a reflection
that I will stare at
for the rest of my life
and still never
truly see.

Little accidents,
like the purple umbrella
on my bookshelf that
you bought me many months
ago, to keep me dry on
one of our many
rainy days. Now
you'll keep me
dry forever.

This is not a poem
about the weather.
This is a poem about the
ruins of you,
the staples
that hold me
together.

“When I am with you,
I am fully with you.”
Les promesses
Loosely translated as lies.

I came to study
The human body.
Course concentration in
The opposite ***.

“I will love you
Even if its not in
A conventional way,”

An American in Paris
Working on a degree
In ****** anatomy.

An American in Paris
Top of her class
In infidelity.

Meet me at the hotel
Teacher
For an afternoon of
Extra curricular activity.

To succeed like you
Is my goal.
Under my sheets
under my soul.

Have I ever had
an original thought?
I've been told
that, 'Everything we ever
write is just an accumulation
of all we've ever read,'
or something
like that.

I don't remember
by who, but I've cited him
Chicago Style
in my heart.

It started young, with my name.
Permanent ink on the soul,
a cliche. I hated
hearing it,
over used and
haphazardly
picked out of
a book.

If I have children,
they won't suffer from recycled
personality disorder. I'll
start them off right,
give them names
that don't
exist yet.

One in a sea
of Lindseys. My
post-modernism
lost-cause syndrome
in itself
is unoriginal.

How can I write
in stream of consciousness
with two decades of
songs stuck in
my head?

This isn't new, I've always
plagiarized while I dreamt
of you, hallucinated
my creativity, now I can't
even picture you without
sappy lyrics
sticking to your
clothes.

I am merely stealing like
an artist, another concept
I stole, brilliant,
but don't
thank me.

I wish I could write
something brilliant.
The pick-up line
to end all.

A perfect one-liner
utterly unique and so
refreshing, it sinks
into your
skull.

I wish I could say
something beautiful
to make you fall
in lust.

A euphemism or
anecdote to light the fire
that will burn
history.

I can write us out
of the ashes,
x's and o's
in cursive.

I can write around
your reluctance
to let anything good
happen.

I will write you into
a love letter, fold it like
a paper airplane
and throw it.

If you ever read it,
scribbled in the folds it says,
"I love you." Only one
of the many
phrases
that I did
not use
enough.

I rarely drink.
I am the responsible one
out of all of my friends, I don't smoke,
I seldom
give in. I avoid temptation.
Thirsty for experience.
Emotionally
sober.

I had a boyfriend, once, brown hair, blue
eyes, who bought me dinner, and spent
the night and
had a toothbrush awkwardly leaning
against mine, who may have
actually cared about me
but showed it by leaving
in the middle
of the night.

I never think about my father,
stopped allowing him to water
the weeds he planted in my brain, now we are
separated by five years like time
is a brick wall and somehow
I am safe.

I have repressed every single one
of my childhood memories, and I believe
if my life ever flashes before my eyes
before I die, I
wouldn't even
recognize it.

The intervention is a blur, I can hardly
make out who surrounded me,
I forgot which concerned expression
belonged to which person
and who it was that said
they just want
the best
for me.

There must be someone
in the infinite cosmos
who wants the best for me.
I love myself.
I am not lonely.

This is a poem for people
who have turned self-destruction
into an art form, who
rip through lives like
serrated knives,
people with
glass teeth and hearts
even more fragile.

This is a poem for the martyrs of
philosophy, who stir madness
like sugar into their tea,
who speak exclusively in
Kafka quotes and
fortune cookies.

This is a poem for lost travelers,
compassless and tired who
walk alone for a lifetime
cleverly disguised as
a single moment.

This is for the artists
who paint entire novels about
confused platonic heartache and
destroy relationships as often
as they destroy canvas,
who start crying if you ask them
about their future, not because
the concept frightens them, but because
it will only ever be
a concept.

This is a poem for the believers
whom I admire, the ones who cut out
bible verses like coupons,
buy-one-get-one-free morality,
the ones who will never
pull the nickel cross
off their necks no matter how
bad life gets.

This is a poem for the boys who always
come back, who never really left,
who sit below me in all kinds of weather,
who hold down my soul,
who are my anchor.

My collection of High-kus*

Dangerously late.
Nothing on TV I like
Watch reruns of Friends.


Walk into the room
there's something I really need
Forgot what it was.


Blazed in class again.
My teacher called on me, oh
****. I should have read.


Look like you're homeless
Complain about being broke
Spend paycheck on ****.


Open up the fridge
A beer, some ketchup, and cheese
Doesn't make a meal.


Super high at work.
Boss making eye contact. Thank
Jesus for eye drops.

Everyone's past is a tragedy.
Everyone's heart has
been broken.
That means
thousands of
reasons to feel
sorry for
yourself.

Hundreds of different
shades of pain, an
endless rainbow of
exes and
depressing
stories.

Relationships pile up,
as rotten and overwhelming
as a garbage dump.
I need to reduce
my interpersonal
carbon footprint.

There are too many
bones in the graveyard
of my heart. I am
almost out of
room, I will have
to start
cremating
soon.

I want to forget them all,
every failed attempt
at love.
Can you
wipe my slate clean?
Can your kiss
outweigh
a decade
of defeat?

Thank you for your time
and participation but
I'm sorry to say,
this was just a test.

A ******, social
and psychological
experiment on how
you handle insanity
in others.

You had impeccable defense
when I said, "I love you."
Immediate silence. Close your heart
like a steel door. The strongest
and most successful
response to
this behavior.

Some participants explode in the
test maze, can't handle any
mind games, loneliness,
suicide threats, pleas for
attention, among
other things.

You were my favorite
test subject. So much potential
I thought you might actually
get it. But, not quite
yet.

I'm sorry to put you through this,
my dear, my lab rat,
I just needed to push you
as far as you could possibly go
in order to maybe, one day,
feel you
push back.

If you don't like me
then why do you stare?
Are my eyes so captivating
that you need to catch them
every time?

Why is it impossible for you
to avoid me? Is my hair as dark and flowing
as your favorite Disney princess?

You are obsessed
with my attention.
I see the thirst, I speak
your body's language.

You flaunt illusion in
the way you walk
begging me to look up.

Each step is intentionally
slow as syrup. Why are you so
keen on my
wanting you?

I consider and meditate
and reconsider and finally
my moral fiber is weak,
I glance.

The moment-- I know
you feel it too.
The hot stuff in the air.
It makes your short blonde hairs
stand up.

Every time, you have always
been staring first. And once caught,
your eyes don't move
the air between
its a lockout.
You never smile.

I always assumed I was the one
stalking you, but lately
I don't know who is
following who.

My upper right hand
molar died today. Even
teeth abandon me.

I don't write poems, I write
concussions. Dangerously close
to blood coming out of your ears, straddling
life, don't fall asleep because
you may never
wake up.

I don't write haikus, I write
famous last words. The final exhale,
the precious breathe before
the light at the end of the
tunnel, a tongue deep kiss
with death.

I don't write stories, I write
tragedies like Romeo and Juliet
except a dozen more people are killed
in the cross-fire of
my affection.

I don't write, I ****
the English language.
I beat it into submission with
sweat and strife.
I destroy life.

Because my story is so
much more than the depressed one
I told you. It was, for
the most part, fiction.

I'm not unhappy,
I'm tall and brilliant.

My life is not simply pointless,
it is adventurous and
multi-colored. I am not boring,
I am mysterious.

I've swam across oceans
to get here.

I've learned that there is
a high probability that sadness
and extraordinary passion
come from
the same
place.

I am giving up this
inter-webbing
narcissism spreading
social networking
site.

And I’m dedicating time
to the lost art-
a pen and paper.
I will take pictures and post them
on the original wall-
an actual wall.
I will develop and wash and rinse
and size and mat
in the original Photoshop-
a dark room.

And if I like something of yours,
you will know it because
I will tell you,
I will smile,
the original thumbs up.

And when you search my name
and find that I do not have a Facebook
no, I am not dead-
I’m alive.

No, you cannot heal
if healing means leaving me here
alone. I won't allow it.

Stay close to me, hold
chaos's hand. Tie your ship
to mine and
we'll both
go down
together.

No, please don't heal, don't
get better if better means
away from me. Don't do it,
you should stay
and play with
my fire.

I started to heal once,
rehab for ghost hearts and
fragile bones, I patched myself up
with forgiveness and rope.

It came lose over time and the knots
were all frayed and life
undid the healing
I worked so hard for.
Time opens
all wounds.

So it's better to not try,
accept there is no bandaid that will fix you, you like
your broken parts and
grinding gears, you can't be
held together with sutures
or forgiveness or rope.

Don't heal.
Don't leave me here, broken.
Don't fall in love
as I'm walking away.

To My Father

I wish I had never met you
because then you'd be a mirage,
an illusion I created, more handsome,
still absent, but valiant.
Brilliant. The mysterious
dark figure who rode off
on a white horse, the epic hero
who gave me
my nose.

But, instead, you raised me
poorly, as if I were an extension of your
self-loathing. And it didn't work
and you left and I would rather
mourn your death than
eat dinner with you
ever again.

It hurts the soul to be conceived
in hate, veins coursing with accidental
heredity, like the daughter of
a serial killer, worried
I am half you and it's my fault
and I am doomed.

To Myself**

You have been handed lies
like family heirlumes
and they are not your
weight to carry, you have to
give them back.

You are not your father, you do
not have his nose, you are not doomed
and history does not repeat itself.
Unlearn your childhood and
clear the slate. You need to be
un-nurtured, my dear.

You are beautiful and brave
and you change your circumstances.
You run like hell away
from anyone who dims
your flame.
You protect yourself.
You change.

You have to lower your
expectations for life.

It probably didn't help
being fed clichés for breakfast
like strawberry pop-tarts
throughout your
adolescence.

Middle school only
made it worse, when you
discovered words could
describe sadness. You learned
about math and the
improbability,
statistically speaking,
of your dreams.

The sadness picked up speed
in high school, and the teacher
you loved who smoked,
who cursed and made jokes,
who taught you how meaningful
words can be, has already
forgotten your name.

The university did not help
at all. Your tall, lost professors and
brilliant lovers
only added to the distant,
dream-like ego
of the future. Piling hopes
one on top of the other
accumulating mass,
collecting nothing.

Your dream is a tidal wave
and we are nowhere near
the sea.

If you could, please,
lower your expectations
of me.

I have a two
track mind.
The first is for
disjointed
****** fantasies.
The fast kind that soak
the bed sheets.
Flirting with felony,
twice the speed limit,
flying downhill,
picking up
inappropriate
speed.

The other track
sends neural
suicide notes
from the attic of my brain
to the basement
of my heart, slowly,
in a school zone,
with the emergency
brake on, grinding
cold metal
on the pavement,
causing sparks.

I enjoy the first,
fleeting thought of you, your
cracked lips that I
can fix. This love
is gone, I was given only
a glimpse.

Suicide lulls
and moves too slow, and waits
at cross streets, out of gas
empty but moving
just fast enough
for me to remember
it exists.

The first sip is joy
caffeinated, herbal brewed
steaming happiness.

The second, gladness
hope, wide-eyed, penetrating
deep into your skull.

The third. serenity
light blue injected into
your veins. Numb and peace.

The fourth sip, madness
the kind that electro-shock
can't cure. You are crazed.

The fifth, ecstasy.
A green-tea ****** that
lingers on your tongue.

I can't stop
sinking about you.
Below myself, underneath
the warm water of existence
that I prefer, that serene six inches
pooled at the top,
heated by love and
the sun.

I can't stop
sinking about you.
Frigid layers of ocean are
suspended underneath me.
Cold water flirts with
my organs, seeps
into my hair, collects
tiny frozen membranes
between my toes.

I am not a girl, I am
a ship mid-wreck
unlikely
to be found.

You're not a man, you are
an anchor pulling my
already heavy heart
straight down.

I'm sorry for all the years of
misinterpreted body language.
Please excuse my hopeless
ideology of unrequited love
that I draped over you like
a tattered blanket.

Like a veil, a cloak
so bright and so romantic
I forgot you were underneath it.
I do not have permission
to get to know you.
There is no room in your life
for anyone else. You have
it all. Where did I
go wrong? Sitting alone in the
one bedroom apartment of my mind.
Staring at strangers.
Gawking at ghosts. Creating an
entire lifetime narrative
for someone who I'll
never know.

I will repress your rejection
I'll erase it from my work
of fiction.
Your picture will hang
on my lonely white wall
next to the other princes and
kings, all chivalrous, all beautiful
illusions who loved me.

Whatever you do, do not
threaten suicide in Arizona
ever again.

Why do you do this
to yourself, to your sister, what
is it about the decaying heat
of the desert that reminds you of
your soul?

Nothing can survive in either,
they will be suffocated by your rays.
You can love a thing to death.
The sun does it
every day.

You think you're saving them
but you're killing them, you've killed every
poor and lost soul that has wandered in
to this wasteland,
by accident.

Never
on purpose.

What is it about Arizona that makes you
feel so alone? People running from box to box
to escape the heat, lonely as hell.
But at least
they're comfortable.

What is it inside of you
that wants to die
wherever you are? On vacation, sitting
by the pool. Why do you buy sunscreen
if you're just going to
off yourself anyways?
It doesn't make any
******* sense.

You did this in Paris, made people
worry, notice, told them it was better for you
to die abroad, cheaper, somehow, than
cleaning up the mess at home. Maybe it's because
France has free health insurance.
They still pity
the sick.

Fountains and men and Towers of light.
It was your dream. It was perfect.
Some days you wanted to die. But the good days,
my God, you were beautiful.
You lit up entire rooms.
Life was worth living.

Now, you're in the desert.
You are sick. You are hot,
walking on the scolding black pavement
wherever you go. The desert burns
everyone you have ever known.
Don't threaten suicide
in Arizona.

My emotions crush me
and swallow me whole.
There is no rationalizing
in the belly of the whale.

I'm no mythic hero
I fear
that I was born
and will die in here.

Just let go
you're ******
give up.

Disintegrating
dissolved
tough luck.

Toward the end
you started handing
memories away.
Books, photo albums,
your favorite
ring.

In my back pocket
I carry
the last picture
you gave
me.

A metal framed
snapshot of
your beauty.
A moment
of youth.

Dark red lipstick
and hopeful
eyes, smooth
skin and
nostalgic
suit.

I imagine you
in New York City,
a small town girl
stepping into
a photo
booth.

A time period captured
in a flash. Now,
seventy years
have passed.

Your eyes have seen
more cities, more
faces, more
fantastical beauty
than a Polaroid
can hold.

In a metal frame,
in my back pocket,
I carry your life.
I carry your ghost.

Tell me all the horrible
things you think but
never say.

Tell me why I can't be loved,
why I am as lonely as a
desert, why I
deserve to be.

Tell me that I'm the reason
my parents divorced, dad left,
mom shut down, sister
shut me out.

Tell me why 22 years
of running in place,
contrary to popular belief,
is not good
for the heart.

Tell me about all the moments
you really saw me, saw me sneeze,
saw my flaws, my hips, my rolls and
you ignored them, kindly, holding
onto the illusion of me.

Tell me that you
never wanted to **** me,
you just felt bad for me, a sympathy
**** with extra tongue
to boost
my self-esteem.

Tell me you don't love
me while you're still inside of me,
the moment in between our
first kiss and last.

Tell me we should just
be friends even though
we never, ever were.

Tell me to chill, relax,
be buds, tell me not
to disappear again.

Please, don't let me
disappear
again.

Four years ago I left in attempt
to get on with my life, in hopes it would
appear to the other human beings
that I had gotten on with my life, out of
fear that you'd discover that I
never really could
get on with my life.

Tell me, in an alternate universe,
we would be perfect together,
a bizarro dream-land with a beach
and a hammock on which we could waste
away the beautiful
imaginary
day.

Tell me you don't want me
to die anymore
in my sleep.

Tell me that life, although
meaningless, is still
worth living.

do not
feed the negative ****.
tell your brain not to swallow it
into your frontal lobe, stop,
bite your lower lip, whatever
you do,
do not
let it in.

resist the old familiar siren song
of sabotage
in your
head.
deny the temptation
to lie in bed
for the rest
of your existence.
avoid the path
of least resistance,
self-loathing,
alone smoking
in your parents basement.

do not feed
the negative ****.
do not let
the darkness in.
don't water
that old, rotting
plant.

It all went very well,
it was a terrible disaster.

You looked so peaceful, lying
awake in the dark,
so hideous the morning after.

I didn't want to walk alone,
I didn't want to hold your hand.

I'm in love with you.
You, who I cannot stand.

Anywhere but here.
A wild, yea-saying
over-burst
of American
joy.

West or East or
to a coast.
To dark cement alley
ways crammed in
the back pockets of
the states.

To fluorescent city sky
profiles and bright
yellow-brick-road
side streets.

Let's race our dreams
and see who
crosses the finish
line first.

Let's drown this old
place, trade it for a new
space, one with
better people
and a longer
summer.

Forget the people
you ran from. Focus
on the hopeful,
mysterious
figures looming
in the future.

**** my love
problems
and ****
yours. Let's
go.

Let's ride a
train out west
and jump off at
the last second--
before it crashes
in a fiery dark blue
Pacific ocean
explosion.

Because her heart broke
like the thin stem of a wine glass
6 years ago, and there was
no glue in sight.

Because mending is more
than glue, it's sand in the eyes and
metal wires in teeth.
It's drilling,
cutting of perfect skin.
Self-sabotage & destruction.

Because compassion is not
hunt for sport, you can't
prey on it.

It is so post-modern
to feel so disconnected
from other humans
that it makes you want to
take your life, take your beauty off
this earth. Makes you want to
make them miss you more
than anyone can miss
anything.

Love you more than anyone
can love anything.

Because if no one has
ever loved you in your lifetime,
it might sound nice. No one ever
loves you more than that moment
when they realize they lost
you to yourself.

Be tragic & reckless. Make them lose you
over and over again
like car keys.

When she is in it that deep,
she doesn't see consequences. She won't
be here to pick the mess up.

If emotion is weakness,
my body is a stitching together
of Achilles heels.

Because the reason girls say
they are "fine" when they are not fine,
is that you will call them crazy
at the first sign
& the slightest semblance of an
emotion.

Because she is not yours. She is
barely her own.

Let's raise girls who don't have
a childhood to recover from.
The sadness will
not last forever.

Because she needs to write
her way through it.

Because she never had
her mind, so she can't
lose it.

I love you like
a bystander loves
watching a nuclear bomb
explode.

A euphoric flash, I strain
my eyes
and fall back
in part to take it all in,
and in part because
you pushed me.

The mushroom cloud
climbs toward the sky
like a million tiny hands,
one on top of the other,
piling upwards.

I let you
shove energy down my throat,
orange and pink.
Your radiation
penetrates.

Your poison
blanketing the world
in powerful, beautiful,
unforgiving
destruction.

This is the story of
the boys who loved you. The ones who
stole you and the ones who
disowned you.
Their paths diverge
like spider webs winding
away from you,
left in the center
alone, waiting for
your next meal.

This is the story of
your absent father.
The one who taught you
not to bother.
To love the ghosts and the
masked superheros.
To follow monsters
into the dark gap
under your bed.

This is the story of your
patchwork skin
sewn together by your
reckless abandon.
Each seem pulled tight to keep
the outside world
from coming in.
Skin that reminds you
of the mistakes that
cannot be forgotten.

This is the story of
the boys who loved you.
Some were kind and some
stole pieces of you.
Took your bones
and picked apart your brain.
Each walked away
with their favorite tooth
from your smile.

In the middle of a heavy
terrible storm
my mind wanders to the sun.

Beads of water drip
off my eyelash as I close it
and feel the warmth
of a hot august day.

The thunder is doing
what thunder does best
grows louder
gets closer, I would
give anything for
a red hot sunburn
that stings to the third degree.

The lightning drenched
natures rave
reflecting off
puddles only
makes me crave
the hardened
thirsty light
that dehydrated pavement absorbs
like a victim to
the days rays.

Finally- a break
in the clouds.
Silence.
Heat.
The sunlight is better
than my wildest dreams.
Glowing lines protrude
from all angles like
a crude childrens drawing.

My expectations
far succeeded.

The sun screams
my name.

And suddenly
I miss the rain.

I feel great
and the universe knows it.
A shock wave has
spread from my feet.

Now all the ghosts
are walking
toward me.

Long lost enemies and
sworn lovers are
swarming me.

Armies of old friends
are rebuilding
the bridges
I burnt.

Absent fathers and
distant relatives
are trying to
look underneath
my skirt.

My repressed memories
surface with
every touch.

The aftermath
is just
too much.

Our post-war love
will never last.

I let go of you
after the blast.

I never was any good at
letting go. Like the balloon
at the fair twenty-something
years ago.

I tried so hard to hold on
to it, red and bursting
with helium and love. The harder
my little hand grasped the string, the more
it slipped away until, regrettably,
it floated up. Slowly and then
all at once. But it's not the
red balloons fault, I hold
no grudge, nor do I blame
you.

The only direction you could go
was up. Into the atmosphere.
I was a weight holding you,
in all your firey-red glory, to the earth. A
water filled ball
and chain.

Watching you float further
and further away from me, turning
into a tiny spec, my eyes still trying to see
where you would go, where your destiny
and the wind
would take you.

The tiny red balloon
became a piece of my heart
that went missing. Landing
a random place, thousands of
miles away, maybe, existing to
remind me
of all
that I've lost.

The balloon that got away
is the only one
I remember. The only
color I saw fading
into the clouds. The only
one I ever
loved.

Lying in your arms listneing to
your exhales mixed with the
cracked window stereo
the sound of our busy city
and her calculated pedestrians,
cars, the occasional siren.

You taught me to appreciate the
sound of the street.
Listen to life more
and music less.
I'd lie and stare at your
profile, for hours if given the chance.

Your classic pouting
French lips
that always tasted cold and
fresh, as if you just got done
drinking a glass
of ice water.

The one, long, overgrown hair
that hung down to rest on your eyelid.
I asked if I could trim it,
but your wife wouldn't like it.
"A little salt in the pepper,"
was how you described it,
your thick, dark hair--
as if food analogies
could add comedy to
the situation.

Lucky for you, vieux monsieur,
I don't believe I deserve
any better.
But, my darling, you only
sound bad on paper.

To tell the truth, I loved
every combustible moment
spent with you.
In what universe
is a man like that
single?

Looking for it.
Where is it?
What is it?
Why can't I have it?

Chasing after it.
Shambling after it.
I want it.
I need it.
Why do I want it?

Do you have it?
Will you share it?

You took it from me.
You stole it.
You ******* stole it.
Give it back.
It's mine.

You can't have it.
I can almost reach it.
I can see it, and
I'm done asking.
I'm going to
take it.

I lunge for it.
I grasp for it.
I claw and scratch and
**** for it.

Nothing matters
anymore. It is me.
I'm talking to myself
again.

My loving commodity,
the persona that you wear
like a plaid sweater
is what I’ll miss.
Your store-bought smell,
the factory knit softness
of your skin
is what I’ll miss.

I loved the slow
and shy ticking
of your motor-
a lullaby made
of metal and plastic parts
uneven clicks, so genuine and
so common. For a second,
if I listened very closely
and shut my eyes,
it felt almost human.

We walked and smoked
an old, worn out joint
in between a school and church.
Inappropriately, how we did
most things.

We talked about life
and where we should be,
and why aren’t we there?
And why is there a chain
between us?

The wall is gone, but the chain?
It's strong, it weighed me down all day.
Running my hand along the metal
loops, my fingers dancing on our
disconnection.

Gliding over our separateness.

Back and forth we walked
chains and walls and years
separate us. We met in the
wrong lifetime.

We walked and smoked
the moment burnt and gone and the high, gone too.
And to him, I was one joint.
To me, he was a forest fire.

Everyone you meet
is broken glass, a
destroyed
pile of a
person.

Pieces of us lie all over the ground.
You have to be careful
where you step.
We have all been
dropped and cracked
and kicked.

We are all ******- some worse
than you. You at least tried to
pick up the mess
along the way. Most people
leave pieces
stranded. A fraction of
a soul as
road ****.

Everyone is stepped on and crushed
and dug into the ground,
soaked like red wine into the
off-white carpet.
There will never not
be a stain.

You handed me one of your
puzzle pieces,
a fragment of shell,
a souvenir.
I tried to glue you back
together, to carry you, to fix
you, my darling, because
we traded.

I tried to give you
my pain as well, heart shaped and
sharp like chipped bone. But
it didn't fit, and it was heavy,
and it was mine. So you
gave it back.

We used to smoke, we used to spend time
like it was as precious as your last paycheck.

I loved you because
you were present, you got every joke
and heard every sigh. The few, small times
you were there, my god, were
you there.

Like a child, presence comes at a cost.
You broke everything.
Peter pan complex, your complexion
was dark and light
like your mood.

Love me like
I'm not crazy. Pretend I'm not sad
nor desperate.
My self esteem is as high
as we are.

I don't exist to be beautiful enough
for you.
I will never be beautiful enough
for you.

I gave you my time, the most
valuable thing I have. All I have to give.
Besides my body, but
that stopped counting
years ago.

Part of me knows
you cannot love another
living, breathing being. You
hate yourself.

So you smoke my ****
while I fall in love with you.

You could have had me
when you had me
but now it's too late.

There isn't enough alcohol in this
beautiful world to make me
******* again.

If you need me, I'll be here
enjoying the present, listening
to our favorite song, smoking
all our memories.

if i ever came close
to belonging, this
must be the spot.
the place where
failures and friends collect
like the white cloudy residue on the bank
of a river, stuck, wanting
to escape, giving anything to flow
again down life's fast and
unforgiving current, being endlessly
turned and turned in one spot,
moving
but stuck.
accumulating next to
your white filmy comrads
who also got caught
in the whirlpool trap
going nowhere.
going home.

There is nothing
quite as sad as
a man who dies
a social death.

His heart still
moves blood through
his veins.

His yellow teeth still
tear through
the days.

He wastes oxygen
and drinks the air
in rooms where he is
unwanted.

He crashes parties
uninvited.
And dresses up so
unimportant.

He sits and waits
for a response
that will never
arrive.

He watches the hours
and years slip
slowly by
and calls it
life.