can see it now in a stuffy auditorium
half of those students don’t give a ****
it’s hotter than a crematorium
and everyone just wants to go out to lunch

i can see her now - the principal’s crying
she can hardly get the words out
nervous laughter and everyone’s trying
whatever it is, to figure it out

i can see me too, when she breaks the news
“i regret to inform you” but i already knew
grim curiosity, we’re all wondering who
and the world liquifies when she says it’s you

silence, something switches, day to night
last night you were found dead, abandoned
and i’m saying no god, it can’t be right
cause he would have called me beforehand

useless knowledge
reflective ceiling
guys who park their bikes here  
never feel anything
i wish that were me
and i wish that were on me
the bike shed stares back
he’s not looking at me

it shines like the city
and it breaks like the bridge
and we should be drunk
but this is a school trip
they’d find exhaust in my lungs
if they did my autopsy
i’m soaking up in puddles
wanna breathe gasoline

the heat is too sweaty
and the people don’t smile
and it’s not LA
But let’s stay for a while
and you hate LA
it’s all concrete and palm trees
so let’s go get burgers
let’s go get ice cream

glitter like winners
and it’s sticky out here
and somewhere it’s winter
but somewheres never here
this station’ all yellow
am i in a movie?
this is living, worth filming
i’m finally breathing

scream off the balcony
up 46 floors
suburbs in the sky
wanna break down the door
live like real people
leave our shoes on the floor
watching the sunrise
and still wanting more

look, it's a pyramid.
strangers
      aquaintances
                  friends
                          everything
                  friends
      aquaintances
strangers
once i have seen the world from the top, i don't wanna go back down.

when i was younger I would crawl into bed and try to stave off the gut-crush of guilt. i was guilty about everything. everything was small and somehow the biggest thing in the world. (please just make me clean. i only want to be clean. i am a good person, i promise.) it guilt came crushing in. usually i would cry. if i couldn't fight it off by myself, i'd roll in on myself like a dying bug. limbs a tangle. twitching slightly. sometimes i could catch myself. count myself into oblivion until i forgot whatever it was. (please just make me clean. i only want to be clean. i am a good person, i promise.) usually i'd holler for my mother, my god. quiet, at first. finally loud enough for her to hear me form down the hall. (god wanted to watch tv. god probably pretended not to hear me until i was screaming.)
"what's wrong?" she'd ask me.
"can you come in here, please?" my voice. small.
there she was, every time. a gray silhouette in a slice of golden light. and i would confess to her, like she was god. I was not raised religious. (i needed something to cling to.) she absolved me every night. scornful, reassuring. (i think i am lucky i was not raised catholic. because i had a god who loved me.) she taught me guilt and burned me free of it every night.
i don't confess anymore.
i have not seen god since i was twelve and my other became human. sometimes i think of writing letters and burning them, to purge the crushing feeling form my chest. sometimes i think of making myself throw up. most of the time i switch it off like she taught me, think about something else and fall asleep. (i sleep with the light off, now.) the dark does not stroke my hair. the dark does not tell me to apologise. the dark does not tell me i am good, that it isn't my fault. (i still need someone to tell me it isn't my fault.)

you said will you be there to catch me and I said okay
and i was there over and over again
I haven't been a kid since year seven
cause the ledge is always waiting to swallow all my friends

we don't talk anymore but i still think of you sometimes
because i held you tight, because i kept you alive
you asked me to catch you
and now I don't know how to let go

maybe it's just that I watched whiplash last weekend,
but i'm prepared to work for all the **** I want
but i want to be abused
but i want to come out the other side
but i want to take orders with the best
but i want never to be laughed at again
but i want to be wanted
but i want to be revered
but i want to be validated
but i wanna annihilate
but i wanna earn it
but i want and i want and i want
but i want the stage and the name
but i want the glory and the fame
but i want the sweat and the blood
but i want the heat and the breath
but i want to be remembered
but i want to be great
but i need to be great
and maybe it's just that i watched whiplash last weekend,
but i'm wiling to do anythinganythinganything for this to work out

before we grew apart
i dreamt of you dying
of your mother
clutching your voice, crying
in the chlorinated stands
where we met for the first time
she holds out the phone,
says “say goodbye”
and i’m running
railing flying by
reaching through thick air
to the mother who buries her boy
and i don’t know
if i made it in time
and i mustn’t have
cause we haven’t talked in a while
and i woke up smelling chlorine
and i never got a goodbye

that's just the way the body goes i guess
wanna mould my hands around his shoulders
through t-shirt and pyjama pants
wonder what the mirror shows him

that perfect mouth is smiling
do i wanna be him or ingest him
i wish that i could memorise it
wanna put my mouth around the reflection

kiss him everywhere until he sees red
hold his perfect imperfect face and
taste myself on his breath
take his arms or be held in them
i wanna feel and i wanna know
i guess that's just the way the body goes

it's highschool recess and my best friend and i watch the seventh-graders
from our perch as 'older boys' with minimum-wage jobs and harder homework. one is handing around a gleaming can of monster energy like the blood of christ himself and everyone wants some. they treat the factory-issue can with such tender care, flushed fingertips on cold metal.

"why are they so excited about a monster?" i ask.

("what does it taste like?" a wide-eyed friend's younger brother asks.)

"because it's novel. it's their first taste of freedom." my friend says, and
then suddenly i remember all the times we've done the same with our friends.  

first, in an airport because me and my shaking hands couldn't finish it ourselves. outside school, warm from the flesh of someone's school bag all day. under the table and the teacher's nose because i stayed up too late, comuning with other friends in the blue dark. no matter who buys it's always for all of us.  

("have a sip"-"i don't like this one"-"the juice one is my favourite")

like maybe the 58g of sugar and 600mL of caffeine is okay if it's split between us. like the sharing of spit is holy. i look out at the small crowd of seventh graders and realise they are just beginning to learn:

what is communion if not half backwash?
what is holier than ingesting your friends?
what is holier than killing your hearts together?

some nights i think i am cain without an abel
i hate my brother for never having been
i carry him, keep him, like he happened
he is heavy and i have never met him
i would hate him if he was flesh and i wish he were me
i killed him before he was alive, ruined eve's body by living
i am the first poisoned crop that made the field untillable
i killed him as he slept and i hadn't met him yet
some nights i hear him around the house
he lives in the gaps in my mother and father's conversation
some nights i think i am cain
missing an abel more for never having held him

i'm not sure what it is, but tonight i'm thinking about people i used to know.
my childhood best friend, i hear she's awful now but i still love her no matter what, even though i haven't seen her in years. the boy who told me he was in love with me and gave me a crescent-moon thumbnail scar that i still carry today, having not seen him in four years. I look at my left hand and think of our friendship. My grandmother, long past ashes now, with her secret candy drawer, teaching me how to knit and giving me incorrect interpretations of country music. the boy that moved briefly into my drama class, downloaded one of my favourite albums to my phone and took my heart with him when he left. i think of him when i hear those songs, still some of my favourites. ny third grade teacher who told me about idioms and made me write my ks a specific way. my handwriting still looks like your name, sir. the boy who would fix my hair when it got messy, who moved on to cooler friends, and acts like he never touched my face for the sake of it. i still have his number. the girl who i loved books with for years, until we began to read different things and ran out of things to talk about. The boy i dated that sat on the floor of the mall with me and talked to me about all his favourite tv shows and held my head in his lap and never read the book i got him for chirstmas and now only calls me by my last name. the boy who i bought hotwheels in an airport with. i haven't peeled the complementary sticker off my headphones yet, so i haven't stopped thinking of him. on nights like these i miss them. i remember them tenderly. i still feel their phantom arms around me, and it is emptier than a lack of sensation. my heart is a bus stop, more empty for having been full.

can we change the ending?
please please please i want to
place a halo over her ears
tell her she's been such a good girl
take her face in my hands because
she never bit the hand that fed her
even when it was fattening her
up an offering to the gods
her trust open to the world like a flower
even as her cages got smaller and smaller
first metal, then made of stars
i bet it's cold up there
please, i want to tell her we did her wrong
please, sainthood for Laika,
i want her to know we're sorry

gotta be god or play god
i wanna have control
something something perfect body
something something perfect soul schrodinger's stranger
behind my door
he's here until i prove that
he never was at all
there's leeches in my skin
i can ******* feel it
gotta check myself again
just to believe it
perfection is holy
and symmetry is perfect
never, ever stop
even though it isn't worth it

I'm trying not to stare cause you're built like heaven
you walk back in the door, flushed
strong, but all curves and lashes
keys in your hand and your jacket comes off

delivery boy, talk to me?
you look different up close
and I'm wondering if i kissed you
would you taste like pizza sauce?

talk while I'm falling apart
i'm looking you dead in the eyes
and i don't get paid enough for
the way your breath makes your chest rise

oh, you're clocking out?
well, I'm stopping mid order
you want pepperoni?
i made yours with extra

do you remember me? it's been four years. i look so different, but i think i might have seen a flicker of recognition in your eyes, maybe a smile. you look pretty different, too, with that half-baked teenage beard and that new school uniform. i remember how our old school uniform hung off your lily-white shoulders, not yet grown into. you've grown so much. I'm half-convinced i dreamed you, as you were years ago. i saw you and felt a tug in my gut, almost like stepping into a childhood home where someone else has set up a life. why am i am so stuck on seeing you, like it left a hook in my lungs, like a scratched-up CD? maybe because i knew you, but not anymore. maybe because we never really said goodbye. maybe because it was always, always complicated. maybe because we were friends. maybe because of the thumbnail car you left on my hand. maybe because i miss you. maybe because seeing you shot me right back to five summers ago when all that mattered was the melting heat of the oval grass and who we ate lunch with. i hope i see you again. maybe next time I'll say hi. maybe point out the scar and fit it to your thumbnail. maybe never tell you i picked at the scab over and over to have something to remember you by. maybe ask you about your favourite movie.

there we sit, waiting
for your dad to pick us up
bus stop pavement
spilling our guts

just like we did
when we used to talk
secrets glistening on the pavement
i don't know you anymore

opening like a mouth
the sun is bright and hot
like a tongue or a ribcage
that i used to know the shape of

spit blood at me and
ask me for advice
let me read the sequel
let me back into your life

sports kit - generic hair
i turn seven times in twenty minutes
to check if you're still there
we watch the play
you from outside
me from the back row
are you missing out on training?
you're alone and you must be cold
plastic shorts plastic shirt
standing in an alcove
where god isn't watching
hands pressed flush against cool glass
tall window
you look so small
hiding like a kid
wouldn't you rather be annihilating yourself on the court?
cold hands - dark window - unspecific sport
unspecific boy
has anyone else noticed you?
have you noticed me looking?
forgive me for assuming, but
i hope someday you allow yourself to come inside
there's a free seat next to me

i don't even like you.
(i want to be just like you.)
i don't want to participate in your humiliation ritual
(i'm sick of being the sacrifice. spread someone else's ribs on the gym floor.)
**** conformity.
(i study every movement and take it for myself.)
**** conformity.
(i want to be just like you.)
**** conformity.
(can i wear your skin?)
don't come near me.
(i want proximity and brotherhood like a sick second hunger.)
please go away.
(please hit me without being afraid of hurting me. with all the tender force of brotherhood.)
i don't talk to him.
(look at me, look at me, look at me, please.)
i'm not good at sports.
(i work so hard and still come up short.)
don't hurt me.
(hurt me like a brother would. i am sick of you walking blood through the hall from the eggshells you walk on. i am not so fragile.)
i can smell the axe body spray.
(hit me like you know i can take it.)
please, no.
(i wish.)

what else are you supposed to do in the suburbs?
find everything abandoned and go there at night?
thrift shop?
idle around the same mall and buy candles, journals, CDs (for your lack of cd player, except in your mom's car)?
see the same movie twice (the fire alarm goes off both times)?
throw wine bottles at pavement and watch the glass splinter?
run around empty ovals?
break into baseball fields?
go to the same public pool and open your eyes underwater?
burn lacy lingerie that you stole from the mall and watch as your femininity sticks, shrivelled, to the pavement?
go to school and get the bus home?
go to work and come home covered in pizza sauce?
hate it till you leave?
what else even is there?

i'm wasting my youth not throwing punches
i'm wasting away with every apology
i'm trying so hard to be scary
but I'm worried it'll make you scared of me

because teenagers are the meanest people on the planet
because i wanna be like richard silken
was richard silken a loser in highschool?
surely he was
no poet escapes ridicule and most of us deserve what we get
because i’m angry and no one except my parents beleive me
because man up man up man up
because i want to throw my guts up onto the pavement
because everything is so beautiful but none of it is real
because i wanna be like richard silken
and take this anger and make it meaningful

i confess you like a sin
my friends are getting sick of it
and i'm quoting you like Byron
and i’m just getting sick
like a song in my head
if god existed
like a bruise on my neck
we would have discussed it
so I just quote you again
and it's still obsolete
cause Byron's got nothing
and I'm doomed to repeat it

i’d describe the way the sun feels on my face if i knew i could do it justice. its late autumn and the bus came directly on the minute. i hate orange but i couldn’t look at the sun and then tell you that. bless the city and bless the trees but bless suburbia most of all. suburbia is like a teenage boy who doesn’t try, is effortless in hs perfect face (perfect teeth, perfect soul, perfect mouth). he’s my favourite and he smiles when i walk into class. his hair is orange this time of year. i’ve never told him i hate orange because i don’t hate it on him. autumn peels the hot wax of summer off and my skin sings with the fresh air.

spring in suburbia comes reeling around
with the circuit of movies I watch in my head
sun means 'stand by me'
sun means I feel alive again
spring slips its wings down my throat
and I'm outside and it's not raining
I want to go to parties
And I'm graduating sooner than I thought
I hope the younger years find the crawlspace
above the stage in the hall
I hope they find my graffiti
I hope they feel spring too
and all their favourite movies come circling back
something like new beginnings
yeah something like that

freakout. let’s all hide this from our parents together
i want so desperately to impress you, i want so hugely for you to like me
i love nirvana (as of this morning), but i’m not faking
i really do love Floyd the Barber (as of hearing it this morning)
Kurt Cobain died on the cross almost thirty years ago
he’d be fifty seven and I have a headache
this **** smells like that guy who gave me my guitar
my godfather (close enough), my childhood (ending rapidly)
and barbecues in the backyard
douse me in axe body spray and tell me it’s lynx
it is lynx, i’m the one who’s wrong
i feel real for the first time in years, and shorter than i thought
5”4 and sinking into the ground, so dance with me
let’s take our shoes off in the street
two songs, one movie, one podcast
all playing in the background, and we’re off every beat
I love nirvana (always have), I have a headache (always will)
I’m teetering between high and not
is this the kind of **** that makes you creative?
look at the little bag you brought, it has bats on it
it makes you so happy, look at you dancing
look at you on the driveway, in your Kurt Cobain sunnies
this is what he would have wanted