If I took off my skin
Maybe then I could feel beautiful.
I would change it every day
Like ***** laundry-
Hang it out to dry a while
And not fret for the neighbor's eyes.
I'd cut it into shapes
That don't fit quite so tightly
Or open up a window
And let a bit of air in
(I know me well enough-
I'd hold my breath.)

I wait for peace to find its way into my bones and hair ******* with bows
by the train tracks.

I throw stones
that skip over a river like
r-r-records;
Sublime,
Bradley Nowell, slurring out
the same line
over and over and over,
something about a corner store,
a collection of words that when I sing them,
taste like July.
1, 2, 3,
the rock disappears.

A train passes by,
engine huffing,
wheels churning out a steady rhythm of
"Please don't leave me, please don't leave me."
Dead reggae and dead love,
tangled in its underbelly,
rusted metal guts.

I look into the river to try to find the stone I skipped again.
I think I almost see it,
dead weight,
a speck under the surface.

(Do you believe in ghost trains? I hear something howl every night.)

a friend told me
"we're only bodies."

molecules sewn together just right to
make the meat stick to the bone
keep the blood inside
keep the thoughts from wandering outside the hard case
soft parts inside not to be damaged
there, but never seen
         (except in thought which happens to happen
         just behind the eyes)
carefully written blueprints hidden
deep inside so small but makes up everything
that makes me
         even the parts I wish I could delete
         except there's not a backspace button
         away from the internet.

my feet take me places but never far enough.
i always find the same places again
over and over
the same old ground
the same old fears same old
errors in the coding:
why do I think those things?
why do I say those things?
who made me this way?
the cells remember,
keeping score of every time i bled
tick marks like attendance slips
to prove i showed up

         i was there
         i don’t know why but i was there

who are you?

You
upon whose skin comedies are written
in bruises and scars like graffiti on your heart
scrawled upon the walls in the language of
maddening imperfection.

You
who exhumes the bones of demons
from the graveyard growing
inside of you
the cemetery where you bury your grief.

who are you?
who rebels at the crimes,
self-inflicted, yet
cannot bring yourself to bury the hatchet
(a hurricane that refuses to be named.)

You
who has learned (to your sorrow)
that the world has teeth
and homes cannot be made
out of human beings.

You
who cannot help but idle
on the question
"what parts of me still function
properly?"

here’s the damnedest thing about “hopeless romantics”:

they’ll splinter their own bones into kindling
to build the fire that warms you,
as if putting a match to their insides
might cauterize the wounds
left behind by the greedy lovers and too-rough hands
that set their hearts to bleeding in the first place

you see, the poets spared no pains when they dubbed
the especially romantic “the hopeless”

they are hopelessly betrothed to the warfare,
the burning insanity
of a soul madly in love with love—
the way the heart rages against the brain.