last night, when I dreamt I was a fish
slipping into the water to guide red, glossy trout upstream
who slid out of the water to back the subterfuge I’d designed to infiltrate and destroy not the lush
foliage walled house or the empty lawn with dining chairs and napkins all scattered, but rather the entity with no face
which made its home there and set up traps and laid in wait and yet, through any danger I felt there was also calm
and the air did not feel too thin or too heavy
but rather as if your warm breath was behind me, and you were behind me
standing with the fish women and their cool eyes gazing past me and hands upon my shoulders, and we were the strong, quiet water

You requested a ride with your phone
since you don't walk at night all alone.
You were tired and drunk
so in the back seat you sunk
dropping your coat with a groan.

I drive around town after work,
because bills pile up if i shirk.
Patriotic America
writes corporate erotica
and leaves me with nary a perk.

Since I can't drive for Uber or Lyft
I'm stuck working first and third shift.
The money's much needed,
but I wish fewer heeded
capitalist lies, so I'm miffed.

FAGSS really get me to ****
(fully automated gay space socialism)
But until then I roam,
only renting (no home).
Hurry up now and rise communism.

Lyft and Uber make me dough.
But only as long as drunks go
out and party all night
maybe run into a fight,
but please, by all means, take it slow.

Uber wants to prevent their drunk riders
from being real rowdy outsiders.
So they no longer sit
in the car that they picked.
Get ready for eggs and slashed tires.

Uber's CEO likes Trump.
On his face I'd like to dump
tons of gross ****
including his ****
before squashing him into a lump.

Hello, I'll be your Lyft driver.
Get in, and be a Lyft rider.
Please buckle, no whimper.
Go ahead, sulk and simper,
but please, can you tip me a fiver?

You're a warm sun in the cool of evening and I don't know how to tell you I love you except for in the small ways you keep me breathing.

I think constantly about whether I'm happy dating you, and it's not your fault I'm uncertain about loneliness, because you didn't make me question myself for a year and a bit.

You're not perfect, you leave your coffee mugs around and have odd habits I'm not used to.

But you don't make me feel bad for not being vegetarian and you are so gentle and you tell me you have butterflies for me and that's not something X did.

You welcome my mess of fabric and paint and uncertain touch and you make me think about accepting affection and I'm tearing up writing this.

I'm sorry I haven't figured myself out but I'm so glad you're along for the ride

I live my life in troughs and peaks
I write 2 papers and shoot off 6 emails in a freshly cleaned room
I let the dishes sit for a week and can’t get up til after noon

My period used to be like this before I started the pill
Sporadic and long (or short) and inconvenient and gut-wrenchingly guilty

I think about my 3 papers due next week and how I want to sketch up my traumas
Instead I open a new document and type this
I procrastinate productively sometimes I guess
This is a trough

i wake up.

the room around me is earth; red, radiating, crumbly.
i sift the bedcovers through my fingers next to my cheek.
an arm, heavy over my waist, shifts with the warmth behind me.
carrots sprout from between knuckles; purple, white, gold.

i wake up.

the piles of leather tomes as if dust was blown away just a moment ago.
warm skin behind me just a little more solid; the smell of carrots and earth a little less sharp.

i wake up.

the walls have receded and sun is pouring over my legs.
only a couple feathery green tops remain and the arm is held tighter to my body.
dusty rectangular outlines on the dresser and floor.

i wake up... and open my eyes

you pulled the tears from beneath my furrowed brow,
apologizing over and over again
promising to wipe them away and stop up the flow.

we used such primal passions to sew us together,
even as the same tore the fabric apart
til only threads remained, shredded.

then you handed me the rake and pointed towards our garden,
telling me to pull out all the nettles and dandelions,
but i set it aside and made my own place aside from yours.

The boy’s hand slips into mine. The cave tunnel is dark, and wet. Not cold, or musty, or anything other than dark and wet, and still. I look down at him, and smile softly, then turn forward as we stepped into the water. Large pebbles underfoot crunch roundly over each other.
Take a breath and everything is green and clear and open. Underwater, all the even lines of an empty public school hallway hauntingly echo the muffled silence. The stairwell opens easily, and strangely so.
The landing at the top is far enough away that I nearly choke looking for it. But we make it and there’s a few feet of air and this door is harder to open. Much harder. We pour out through it, onto the matted carpeting of a library where many eyes swivel to find the disruption.
A crisp lady with cat-eye-glasses ushers the boy into a side office while barring me from entering further. She and a round, stationery man snap back and forth at each other in distress.
The boy and I are in the wrong time, it’s not the right time. ****. ****. They’re sending him back to 200 BC. And me to 2017. No. No.
No, I’m supposed to take care of him, he wasn’t even supposed to be in the cave with me. Neither of us were supposed to be that far away from the group. He isn’t old enough! This was supposed to be quick and distracting and ******* hell what do we do?
The people in the library push us back into the stairwell and it’s cold. Not the water, the color. The light fades out of it as ceiling glow-stars would, and he’s so calm HOW IS HE SO CALM?
His hand is so small in mine and I’m afraid we’ll run out of air before I figure out what to do, but we can’t do anything. We can’t. There’s nothing here. We have to go. It’s the only direction; back into the water and hope they were wrong. I don’t understand how he can trust me this much, why is he still looking up to me? We might drown.
I need to make a move, and he hands me some glowsticks. Somehow he’s found light. I’m sure my hand is unpleasant and clammy and can he feel my heartbeat through my palm? We need to go.
Big breath, into the watery shadows of stairs. There’s sand at the bottom. My hand’s on the door, pushing out. I can hear my blood. It’s open. Oh god, ***-

I’m awake

I stood in front of the toaster oven to retrieve my slightly singed toast, and for a moment, I felt the warmth of the sun.

It's been so long since I've seen the sun. I suppose I've grown accustomed to the cruel skies of a bitter climate. Lately, all that can be seen of the world when I look out my bedroom window is the grey sky and the bare bones of a Japanese maple.

The waterlogged earth squelches underfoot, weeping the melted snow up through a sparse carpet of grass. The grass, also, is barely keeping it together.

The skin on my hands has grown dry and rough, and while I could blame this on my clumsiness or demanding pastimes, I know better. Occasionally I work up the motivation to fight this process with some lotion or other. But yet, the heat of my apartment and the chill winds persist.

Will my hands ever again have that soft tenderness? Will we ever again see the sun? Will we ever?

The croci are swelling,
pressing up towards chill winds,
straining the surface tension of the dampened earth.
Unfolding gentle lips of purple and white to taste the spring,
like the flick of a snake's tongue,
they sway, eyes closed and arms open.
They beckon you to stroke softly with your fingers,
and tremble when you inhale as yellow powder speckles your face,
and they giggle.

But unlike the trees and bushes,
they never age.
Thin, nubile, soft bodies will wither,
the fingers they've poked up through the leaves and twigs underfoot will pull away.
The croci swell and dance,
but they never throw their heads back and sing

Recipe for an All-Purpose Orifice
Makes one serving of patience

1 part nasal cavity
1 part ******* *****
1 part yonic *****
1 part oral cavity
1 part aural cavity

Blend gently in a hollow synthetic cylinder.
Envelope the spirit of the form.
Let it set.
Gently coax the form out, once you've assured the spirit of its safety.
Accept the tedium; love can be tedious.
Set it on your shelf for people to pick up and wonder at at dinner parties.
Carry it with you when you move.
Leave instructions in your will requiring your loved ones bring it to the cemetery yearly.

b.

Once the sage gaze of starlight fades,

the twinkle and flash of cosmological mineral death,

descending in a tumble through the atmosphere,

puncturing each layer like a pebble through cobwebs,

we wake to a frightening new wonder.

We rise to the growling of the center and the sun.

Shouldn’t talk about it,
But a thousand times,
A thousand singing stars from now,
You’ll hear the flip
Of my cards hit the table.


The kingfisher left the crown,
And a lantern in the storm
Scattered arrow shadows,
Pointing violent paths through
The blinding white.


We hope for the shining respect
Of yellow prints in the darkness.
Sharp stars between jungle leaves,
And the whisper of cosmic shifting.


Like the gods rolling over in their galactic sheets,
Sending waves of glittered gasses
And planetary matter,
flying.

You frighten me, in the way that a small bird or beautiful flower would frighten me.
The way a soft rabbit might rub against my ankle and and doze in my lap.
You are the clouds beneath my weary airplane, flung out across the atmosphere.
And you are the prickle of a heavy wool blanket in the thin chill of the night.
You are the the warm, green earth of the mountains, holding up the lightness of the blue sky.
The breeze kisses at the hem and collar of my shirt, and I hear you in it.
I lose you in my arms and find you, a fleeting creature in the forest.

Dear old lover,
You send me all these signs to remind me that you’re around.
You come again and again to **** me over in your bed of lies,
You give me cracked porcelain and glass expectations for me to mend with gold.
But you’re a topaz among yellow diamonds, a ******* rube.
But you’re Splenda, ******* Stevia.
You’re overpriced, second hand Ikea,
I’d push you into a swimming pool to ruin your silk tie.
Your hands white from the bleach and peroxide, and collar yellow from nervous sweats.
Yeah, you’ve got a library; dictionaries of medicine and candy sweet science,
but you must have burned everything on doing a person right.
You’re a double entendre pain-in-my-*******-*** with a Ken doll grin.
Give Mr. Freeze his heart, and buy your soul back from the devil.
As filthy as it is, you could do with a little in your life.
Dear former friend,
I want you like a salad of poison ivy,
I need you like I need a nap, and I’m the designated driver.
You’re chopped liver, and your humors are out of whack,
The crown you wear is turning your forehead green and doesn’t fit quite right.
I’m the beast and you’re the burden
You’re the straw and this camel is kicking you off
at last chance, last call, last stop Nowhereville
You bathe in the bubbles of champagne dreams and silver fantasies,
But I’m the cup of ambrosia gods long for, and you lost me.

Yesterday they lined up all the boys to give them a good talking to.
After all, when you're about to ask the head priest's daughter for her hand, you must do it the right way.

But of course, they'd only line up the boys, and not the girls who glance and flirt and trail the tips of their fingers along wet gowns when bathing.
It's known that Victoria will kiss anyone who can tame her curls, and Alice leaves violets for those she fancies.
Even a pig recognize that Jacob and Peter have been making eyes at each other for about two summers, and that Matti only longs for books.
Harold's true love is venison, and though he could be won over digestively, Emi is really trying to move towards vegetarianism.

So they told the boys how to carry themselves and some listened in desperate eagerness and earnest and a few planned pranks, and anyone worth their salt could tell it was a disaster.
This morning, the local girls dressed the boys in flowers, as is strange tradition, but then a few joined the line and fairly glowed in their blue linen and lemony cinnamon licorice hair, dripping with petals.

The king laughed and the head priest smirked in bemusement, as it is every year.
And Emi gazed, bored and silent to every proclamation, gift, and oath.
Yet a fourth year had passed without a chosen suitor.
Courtyard emptied, and I drew near her chair as well.

"I have no strange and beautiful art to exhibit or exotic sweet to taste. I do not seek what you will not eagerly give, and I will not ask you to be my wife, but I'd very much like to be your friend ifthatwouldbeokaywithyouthanks."

After all, who doesn't fall in love with Artemis.

I am an onion.
Peel me.
Cry, too, through the smiles and grief and tight resistance to vulnerability that are held out to you.
Wonder at the resilient fragility of each syn-propanethial-S-oxide drowning layer.
Let me **** forward and grab you, in my death.
Hold our faces close, inhale your breath and roughly slip back.
Gently husk away the dull layers of dermis and cradle the papery lairs that fall faster and faster as I relax
rigor-less, into your arm,
and fall
and fall
and fall
apart.

L--- is the thick, adrenaline-wrought catharsis of a summer rainstorm on the highway at night.
It's the ridiculously advantaged team in a game of dodgeball;
and the hail in March as you run from work to close your car's skylight;
and the wave that rakes your hair with the teeth of the sand and surf;
and the pebble on the downhill ***** that your bike trips over and you fly off, eyes wide and gracelessly flailing;
and L--- is the way you lose yourself in the cosmic threads of their eyes;
and the breath you forgot you were holding.

You've asked me why I love you
As if you couldn't believe I would love you
But how could I not love you?

For thousands of years we have found ways of writing on the wall
Much of it concerning bragadocious claims

I've grown weary of this road and the cyclical path I follow,
yet I know that to make this road my bed would be to make it my grave.
Too long I've slumped forward, like a satellite in low orbit; forever falling down but never quite reaching The Place Where Down Stops.
All I need is one flare, one burst of flame
away from the stale air of an old house and musty earth
and to propel what passes for a spaceship into fresh, verdant land.

I've outlined the necessities, which you'll find on page four of the agenda.
Our itinerary is scrawled somewhere between the receipt for my breakfast and my dry cleaning,
and don't worry if a leaf or two falls out.

You are the sea in my mouth and storm in my ears,
pushing the warm dark clouds of night around me and rasping, fairly dragging your winds along my throat.
I am the earth beneath you, letting you knead and wind around me.
Swallowed into the endless galaxies and dark holes of your eyes,
You devour me, and my hunger grows the more you give me.
You, the forces of nature, and I, the waiting earth.
Nothing alike, and yet each complements the other, and you fill my dreams with emotion and solidity and distance.

Mother nature has been flirting with Spring and Summer again, but I fear she'll give Winter one last parting kiss.

I'm using these tattoos,
floating above bone and flesh,
to remind myself of what once sunk.

I’ve been told that my tongue is flirty,
And not only that but it’s wordy.
But try to put on a yoke
And I’ll laugh at this joke,
For my tongue will always be *****.

My breath and yours are made of stardust,
And will someday mingle in another’s being,
Or the midnight sky.

They gave me the wrong address when I was sent to boarding school this year.
Maybe it was the receptionist’s scaly hands that shook a little when she wrote it out, or the skies pouring out their sorrows onto my head.
Nevertheless, I’ve definitely been at the wrong school.
The boy at the end of the hall is always playing with fire and smells of ash, dark cedar and benzene, but he’s never burnt himself once.
There’s a set of twins, upstairs in another dormitory, who always flood the bathrooms, and all their clothes smell vaguely of salt and mildew and pebbles, and I think I can almost see the ocean in their watery blue-green eyes.
On the rare occasion that I find myself wandering near the lake, I can’t help but feel watched, not from above or behind as would seem natural, but from below and ahead
All the first year students I know swear on their lives that the walls and stairs move to trick us, or bring us to our destination faster depending on one’s luck.
My rhetoric professor’s eyes droop and film over during lectures and he scarcely moves millimeter from his statuesque place at the podium; yet he never fails to catch the slightest indiscretion or misplaced gesture from a student.
Meanwhile, the choral director’s ears are said to be as pointed as her canines, and her hair to be of the deepest black and violet.
I’ve growing suspicions about the gardens in the back of the kitchen, all tangled over and wreathed in what seems to be an ancient species of briar, though I’ve never seen a rose bloom, nor the gardener cease from his endless pruning.
Sometimes, I’ll catch a glimpse of insect-and-birdlike creatures flitting around the windows, and the moths around here seem rather foreign, though I’m assured the difference in flora and clime requires differences in adaptations.
The older students oversee the halls with the kind of aloof confidence built from familiarity and practice, and laugh easily about missing articles of clothing or assignments, as though a mischievous spirit or creature had nicked it. They, too, seem to disappear around twelve o’clock, not to be seen again until tea time.
There’s a section of the library which seems to positively seethe with darkness and cold, and only the bravest and boldest dare ask for entry.
And oddly enough, after a rather jostling ride by rowboat to the gates at the beginning of the year, the headmaster greeted us all by name and only drew a blank once, at mine.

When you're a child, hotel rooms are magical, a place for pillow castles and blanket superheroes;
When you're a child, an empty paper towel roll is a telescope or sword, Excalibur in disguise;
When you're a child there's a man who runs on the telephone wires as you watch from behind car windows;
When you're a child you're told to act your age and grow up, to behave, sit nicely and mind your manners if you want special privileges.

So you do what you're told, and you grow up.

But when you grow up, hotel rooms become places for weary collapse in the stale cigarette burned blankets of a cheap road trip motel, or intimate rendevous with someone you can't take home.
When you grow up, an empty toilet paper roll is a reminder that you need to get groceries but you're running low on cash and payday is in a week and why don't we have any clean rags in this house?
When you grow up, you forget the telephone wire man because now you're driving and so help me I will turn this car around if you make one more sound back there!
When you grow up, you wish you didn't have to act your age or be grown up, you grumble at your boss and swear at the guy who cut in front of you because who the @#$% does he think he is?!

They don't tell you that when you grow up, you might lose your wonder.

Your fingers have dipped in starlight, and
My eyes glow like the moon
And what you've painted on me, your canvas,
Has made my every nerve end twitch
Trembling with anxious, drunk-love excitement.
Sandman's heavy seeds have been sown,
And weigh down eyelids with their tempting fruit.
My fingers are dimmer
And I softly worry your shirt between them
Staring at a space behind my eyes

you're the boxspring billionaire of feel-good
saving up your love for a rainy year,
scrounging and saving every fleeting smile and shallow kiss and
miserly, hunched over with the weight of your own suffering and despair,
each scrapped-together pile of crumpled-from-your-pockets shreds of I.O.U.s and featherlight touches.
too afraid to leap and risk, you'll never grow or invest your affections into the stocks of Lisa and George LLC, or Francis and Kelly Inc.
so your love is bound to crumble into fragile dust, the fruits of your labours withering into mouldy piles of seed, stem, and flesh.
the could-have-been and might-have-grown dying, before even living to flourish and erupt into glorious blooms of the strikingly ethereal and otherworldy.
but not for you, not ever for you.
you're the boxspring billionaire of feel-good
and you'll burn before planting your love.

I want to write good poetry again, but I cant seem to make it come.
I hardly have the energy to lift my arms or take a single step forward,
if only for the chains I wear
of lace, and tied down with heavy frocks.
The moment I reach for a pen
my dress begins to slip and I must grasp and fumble.
This masquerade is growing old
and my mask is wearing thin enough to see through.
I want to speak,
cry out and scream my soul
but the red they've painted across my mouth
is worse than any gag, and ribbons streaming
from my hair snag on the thorns and rocks of my path.
The weight which hangs, draping over my body is not of iron or steel,
Yet still I outgrow these bonds, and only now
realise they are bonds and weary of my restriction.
They are bonds I no longer wish to wear, as
with every moment I live weighted down
the sky in my eyes grows clouded with fire and smoke.
Any inspirations to paint are lost to the thread which hangs from my eyes.
Were I to try, the ability to sing would be choked away,
sounds stolen by the ever pressing knife.
But
my only chance to escape this seems to lie in the blade's threat, to sing
with all the fire and rage in my soul
and bow back before it catches my mind as prize.
I'm no doll to be toyed with
And I'm sick of playing make believe.
I think it's high time the clock struck midnight.
It's time to burn the dress.

I am a cold creature and cannot speak.
The words solidify before they reach my mouth
And I choke on my own breath.
I am a cold creature made of ice and bone,
Stiffened by harsh winds thrown against me
Yet fragile to a breeze’s grazing touch.
I am a cold creature with numbed feeling and a distant gaze
And cataracts chilled to cool perfection,
Floating on murky brown pools of exhaustion.
I am a cold creature whose heart and eyes once held flame and fire,
yet there is still an ember’s glow.

In a glade the size of a potted plant,
On a blanket the size of a napkin,
There sat a pair, the queerest of all,
Pieris and little Rotkaepptchen.

One was a goldfish,
But not just a goldfish.
The other was a plant,
But not just any plant.
(He was a fern, get it right.)

These two had a mission only they could complete,
The Quest for the glorious NumNums.

The legend of NumNums
Was told far and wide,
And all NumNum lovers
Wanted them inside.
(Their tummies that is, don’t be inappropriate)

ANYWAY,
The NumNums were glorious,
Such a yummy treat,
Until they were poisoned,
That wasn’t so neat.

Pieris and Rotkaepptchen,
The task now at hand,
Set off on their journey,
Through strange, distant lands.

They navigated bedrooms,
They slid down the halls,
They were chased by vacuums,
And trapped by LEGO® walls!

This impossible mission continued,
Until, at last, success!
They found the trail’s end!
What joy! What bliss!
(Huzzah)

Now all that was required
Was to figure out the poison.
So they, without the antidote,
Could eat NumNums again

What a task that would be,
What work, what a chore!
Yet near the store of NumNums,
Upon the ***** floor,

They found a scrap of parchment,
With clues inscribed in black,
To reverse the candy’s poison
And bring them NumNums back
(Hollah!)

Into the woods they ventured,
They searched day and night
To find the precious antidote
And to relieve their plight.

For days, the land they scoured,
For ingredients rare and odd
Until they finally saw it,
Held captive by the frog!

The gleam of silica crystals,
The shine of his mucus
His curious croak was answered
With a meek “Help us.”

“Why should I?” he croaked again,
Staring them down drearily.
“I know not your quest,
I’ve only hints at the best.”

“Then surely you can help,
Surely you can try!”
Little Pieris yelped,
Looking about to cry.

“Don’t worry my friend!”
Rotkaeppchen declared
“For I’m he cannot resist
our plea, and most surely will assist.”

“Then, my dears, I solemnly swear
To help you in your need.
For here, this little draught of pear,
Will help you to succeed!”

And then, procuring a vessel
of the clearest glass
The wise old toad
Cleared his throat,
And promptly passed some gas.

“Excuse me,” he rumbled.
“Excuse me for that faux pas.”
And then he amphibiously
Handed over the pear draught glass

“Egads!” the two exclaimed,
Taking the glass cautiously.
But at last! They had the pear
And thanked him graciously.

At long last they had the cure,
The pear to fix the poison.
They took it back to the glade,
Where their lips they proceeded to moisten.

And that, my friends, is the last of our tale,
The tale of Pieris and Rotkappchen
The daring elves of yore.
With NumNums three,
Under the TumTum tree
They lunched and brunched once more.
And now, we’ve reached the end.

some days

some days i wake up
feeling warm and lovely and happy
feeling whole and right in who i am and what i appear to be

some days i go to bed
barely holding my eyes open against the weight of dreams
barely staying in reality a moment longer

some days i want to create
a dream of imagines on paper
and spill the ink of my mind out onto the world,
eagerly showing the creations of my mind and what excites me as far as
what i can imagine and bring out of the ethereal into the only slightly more tangible inner chambers of my mind palace

other days
i want to destroy
to tear, end to end, the world i have created in my mind and every piece of it i have brought into existence
to shred myself to pieces to rid the universe of such and inadequate creature as myself who dares feel more comfortable as a fluid being, more free to explore and weave in and out of the norms set by society

and then i fall, weak and hollow, to my knees,
full of life and brightness that has been pressed to aside by the gaping holes of heaving singularities within my gut and soul
and i feel dark
and wrong
and numb

but then every so often i get a spark of light in the inky dark of me

and it flutters close

circling my form slowly and giving out the slightest bit of light and warmth

sometimes this first Good Thought or Good Feeling will be crushed
snatched from the air in the claws of a demonic and wild gargoyle

but even so, one by one the light spots will gently blanket the gargoyles,
forcing them to lie in wait once more

for who can fight the gentle persistence of a butterfly

the bass and horn and drums blare
all in a sudden wave of noise that ebbs
and flows
washing over the barbican center in resounding and quieting washes of color
and sound and music and flavor and passion and life
and reverberating through my bones
the geeks and nerds around me get up to retreat from the music or else head closer
the ones in front of the band whoop and shout
as the guy by the mike announces unintelligibly
perhaps the song and band
but will anyone remember once the passion and music is over?
no matter
all i care about right now is the faint sushi like taste in my mouth, of cucumbers and tuna, from my sandwich
and the disappearing,
fading buzz from the back of my plastic seat
as the music and the noise from the band
ever so slowly
quickly
dies

i grow bored and quite tired of
the same old routine that
i havent touched or really been involved in for a while because
i have invested my energies into such things as
drawing and illustrating and dreaming and wishing and
definitely not preparing for college or my senior year of high school which
starts this year but im so not ready for and not interested in and if you ask me
i really dont want to have a last year of high school at all but
just draw and illustrate and dream and wish

i feel so restless

What's this rush i feel when your skin touches mine?
When you hold me close and our fingers intertwine
to pull me behind you, as we run and laugh
through casino tables, guests and staff.
When we draw odd looks from curious faces
who stare and pretentiously wonder if places
like this are for people like us.
But really, sweetheart, if i had to guess
at how i feel and what magic this is,
then i could only try to describe my bliss
as the gentle tickle of your dress against mine
and the click of our heels, as we move in time
to a beat, that doesn't match that of the DJ
and the music he chose for us to dance the night away.
Then we dance to the Time Warp, and Thriller,
and then a slow dance, after establishing that C is killer
at dancing no matter how crazy. That we should kiss
though we awkwardly don't and maybe, it's my guess,
you don't feel the way i do,
and you don't feel this rush and want this affection for you
that i anxiously hold, and try to restrain from running wild.
Yet i feel as though it is a Great Dane and I a small child
trying very nervously not to be shy,
but to express through words or kiss and a sigh
the feelings i feel for you as you stand at my side
hands perfectly entwined
as your hair and dress
                             slide
                        around
                   your
             curves
          like
        wysteria
           or ivy
              and flare
               dramatically
and             splendidly
               as you spin                            
              and rush
       and laugh
and smile

I smile

Last night I reached my hand out to the monster under my bed whose eyes usually glow scarlet and whose teeth typically gnash and snap but this time had the same deep brown eyes and average teeth that I do

Last night I pulled my skeleton out of the closet and we danced to the blue jazz that floated through my window from the sax player below and then we played never-have-I-ever and watched SciFi TV on Netflix

Last night I asked the mermaid down the bathtub drain if she'd like to come up for a swim and we laughed and splashed and sat on my roof in the star light talking about love and sushi recipes and where to get a really good haircut

Last night I called out to the werewolf who roams these parts as he called out to the silver globe of a moon and I gave him some salad because he's a vegetarian and he showed me pictures of his pet bunnies Morningglory and Killer

Last night I covered the mirrors and opened the shades for my vampiric friend Velma, a quiet girl who volunteers at the animal shelter and soup kitchen

Last night I said good night to my nocturnal friends and went back inside to turn off the lights and make sure my dog was inside who I call Albertius Rex but was previously known just as Cerberus

There is a darkness that's unyielding
Standing  just this side of fright
But even shadows in their concealing
Need some form of light
There is a lightness which goes unbroken
Into the dark side full of hate
And despite the ghosts of midnight
It arrives before too late
Dripping from off the ceiling
Sliding down barren walls
Oozing from the basement
Filling up the halls
Falling off the table
Rolling across the floor
Scampering in the attic
Scratching at the door
There's a bitter taste inside the darkness
A slight twisting of the tongue
A secret held up to the shadows
Playing favorites to no one
There's sweet flavor in the lightness
Sugar coated, smooth and warm
Caressing those in sunlight
Who were and are to form
Pouring out into the darkness
Giving life to the reborn

As we step into tomorrow
Leaving behind our yesterdays
Taking it in with a slight touch of sorrow
And the feeling of come what may
We try to hold our heads high
Trying to keep on keeping on
Following a red thread of hope
Tied to our wrists and tugging at us blindly
But is it the blind leading the blind
That gives us inner sight
Taking us to another level
Pulling us back into the light
They say love is blind
But hope is not love, while it never stings a soul
It only guides us gently
Soothing wounds til we are whole
So as we step into tomorrow
Perhaps it won't be so dark after all
If we walk this walk together
We will never be left alone

One star two star
Little moon
Something dark and something blue
Something here something there
Something underneath the stairs
Trapped under pounding feet
It wakes to falling dust storms
Life of isolation, darkness, pain
It can only hope to be better reborn
For what it says and what it does
In the deep dark depths below
Are not made for human consumption
If you feel the need to know
You have been warned
All is as it appears
There is no light at the end of the tunnel and no hidden layer of love
With power in its presence
Luster in its lack
Stealing the breath from out of dreams
And never giving back
Your attempts to run are futile and his claws embrace you tightly
In space they cannot hear you scream
But this is not space; this is the space under the stairs where your darkest dream lives

Sometimes wonder if I have synesthesia
Or something like it
Cause for me I associate colors and animals with people
Cause I see time as a map in my head of memories and images of greenery and snow and memories of my life instead of seasons so that I can cycle through the hours of a day in class periods on weekdays viewed as memories of the class, and walk through the past which takes a sharp left at the year 2000 and from there on the flatness of the millenial years drops off into a sloping textbook
Cause sounds and words have textures on my tongue, notes tickling my taste buds as they spill out
Cause I can taste electricity which has a surprisingly dead flavor
Cause I can describe colors with texture and it makes perfect sense to me even though my friends say it cannot be done
Because if I don't, I don't know what the hell to call this

i sat in church one sunday
and in front of me stood a young mother
small baby cradled in arms
though the infant's skin was of a delicately golden caramel, her mothers was pale as milk cream
she turned to grin that sweet innocent grin only children possess and poke her tongue at me
it looked as a small petal held between her lips, moist with dew and velvety soft
she grinned so easily and lightly, it would have been unthinkable not to have an absolutely comic grin of one's own tugged from ****** muscles
her eyes sparked with that special flame only the innocent and childlike possess
and in that moment
i could not have loved a child more

I want you.
I want to snuggle between your arms and your chest, wrap my legs up with yours and feel you breathe.
I want to nuzzle into the curve where your neck meets your shoulder and feel your warmth against my skin.
I want you to kiss me and rub my hair softly like you do sometimes.
I want to mumble sleepily into you and somehow you understand.
I want to laugh and goof off together and curl up under blankets and feel safe and warm in your arms.
I want to lie a little bit away and watch your expressions and play with your hair.
I want to stroke the soft skin on your cheek and neck and kiss you.
I want to say I love you a thousand times and once more for luck.
I want to slip my hands under your shirt and press them against your back to pull myself towards you and nuzzle into you and breathe you in.
I want to press close and confuse your heart beat and the motion of your lungs.
Mostly as long as I'm close to you, I feel safe.

I got my hair cut
Again
Yesterday
In a small salon the filthy streets of Philadelphia's Chinatown;
The golden eagle
Appropriately named as I always feel wings lift me when I leave
Though the streets are grey and black with dirt and grime,
The salon is clean, chic, and welcoming
First one young lady with limited English swept me up to be dropped into the care of a second who washed my hair and luxuriously massaged my scalp with exquisitely long nails
Then I was led over to a swivel chair to ponder my reflection and bat my legs as a little child, waiting on Kelly for my grown up haircut
At last Kelly was free, and she too whisked me over to her mirror
In her most exceptional care she cut and thinned and cut and razored and thinned and cut some more
Her fingers flew, running through my hair and seeming to drop pieces of hair by magic
At last she styled and stepped back nervously asking if I liked it
Quickly scrutinising it, running my fingertips over the much-shortened hair, I looked up
And grinned
I love it
The bangs barely long enough to brush my eyebrows
The back as short as a boys, bristling when I rub it the wrong way
The front long and soft enough for tousling but short enough to stay out of my way
If I envelope my head in my hands I can easily trace the contours of my scalp
As though a couple silk scarves were draped over a barren skull
I was told I look like Emma Watson or Audrey Hepburn or a boy
But I love this
They're both stunning women
And I don't mind shocking a few old ladies with the surprise that this "strong young man" is I'm fact a girl

I made a 12 egg omelet for dinner
Not just for me, mind you,
But stuffed with milk, garlic, onion and two cheeses
Half as big as our whale sized pan and oh solo cheesy
It was such a delightfully delicious omelet
But of course, I couldn't make a beautiful thing without a dash of pain
Once, twice, thrice, four times I gripped that accursed handle
I burnt my fingers so the places where I grip my own are now slightly leathered
Sighing with exasperation, I lean across for the spatula and
ZING what do you know?
One more stripe of seared flesh on the forearm
Of course it hurt (when does fire not burn?)
But now I can't help but laugh, as the undersides of my fingers feel like a wallet
And my forearm a new splash of paint

Your hand fits in mine like it's made just for me,
But bear this in mind, it is meant to be
Since you've dreamed a vision of us together
And I'll love us, you and I, always and forever.
Cause when I'm with you, my world is so different from any hell I'm living
And when you're around me, your eyes light up like the stars have been spilled out along with all the suns of heaven into your eyes
You're the one who seems to love this wildflower so she feels as lovely as the sweetest camelias, and strong enough to push the planets out of orbit
As for you, I only know what you've said to me;
     That my kisses are oxygen when you can't breath, and that
     You feel such an intense desire to protect me from any potential harm
     That you plan to marry and live with me for years to come.
But I know with less certainty than you that we'll be together forever to come
All I know is you love me and you make me feel so loved
More loved than the moon is loved by the sun, chased endlessly and almost futilely for a mere glimpse of her silver face
And I know this is a scientifically proven-to-be-incorrect metaphor, but I still love you
And will love you, until the sun falls into the sea of milk, the knees of those arthritic elephants shake and kneel with feebleness, and the great sea turtle turns belly-up, drowning the world in the Milky Way
And even past then
Past the time where men and spirits fade into ghostly memories, forgotten because there's no one to remember them
Past the time that the sun is finally swallowed and held in the sea, past King Arthur's return, and when the giant serpent finally kills Ra
Past the time when the gods grow tired of their human games, and fall asleep at their chessboards, one hand dipped in the Adriatic and a finger spinning the galaxies ever slower as dust and cobwebs of invisible spiders come to blanket the universe
And even past then, past all these mythological improbabilities, past Death's abandonment of his duties and his scythe while sand no longer runs in glasses and he reaps himself
Past then will I love you and think of the spilled out flaming stars in your eyes and the velvety sparks in your fingertips and lips.

Machmal denke ich günstig für nicht sein,
Denn ich kann nicht zu viel sehr gut machen.
Ich bin zu klein, zu kurz, and nicht klug
Nicht friedlich genug, oder zu verrückt und komisch.
Meine Geschwister meinten das ich bin sehr ägerlich.
Aber meine Freunde hat etwas anderes sagen.
Sie denken ich bin nett and freundlich,
Lustig and vielleicht schon,
Und ein absolut Schlauberger.
Ich glaube sie fast nie,
Aber ich beginne zu sie glauben.

Sometimes I think I'm good for nothing
Because I cannot do too much well.
I am too small, too short, and not smart
Not peaceful enough or too crazy and weird.
My siblings think that I'm very annoying
But my friends have said something else.
They think I'm nice and friendly
Funny and maybe pretty
And an absolute smarty pants
I almost never believe them
But I am beginning to believe them.

I used to pull sharp metal across my legs
Rarely, only on occasion
Whenever I was so desperate to feel something and I couldn't feel happiness so I chose pain
I've not chosen this particular brand of pain in a while
But I have other alternatives
I've never brought an open flame to curl against my skin like the folds of a blanket
Nor have I beaten myself with my own fists or struck out against some hard surface to bloom purple and green flowers on my skin
No, I have other alternatives.
I take showers so hot my skin reddens like a boiled lobster
I dig my nails into my palms and arms and legs to leave armies of pale crescent impressions
I bite my lip, the inside so that no one can see the sore and near-torn flesh
I scrape my nails against my back, arms, legs, chest, stomach, leaving red lines like from the claws of a tiger
I sing sad songs, difficult songs, loud songs, songs to make my throat hurt from exertion and holding back tears
And that may seem to be the least harmful or all these but its not
It can't be when it reopens my old battle wounds and makes my throat so raw that the tears burn even more
And all of these alternatives don't mar my skin permanently
But I can't help but wonder if they're really all that much better
Because I still want to feel

You are the music while the music lasts,
If it can flow through your body
If you let it surge out of your mouth and fingertips
Then allow it to explode from your soul
Or coax it to whisper from your lips
The music will dance for you like a charmed snake
Caress the ears and minds of your audience
And open the eyes of their hearts.
For music is emotion put into sound,
Inducing tears and laughter, smiles and sympathy
And you know, no matter how you sing,
Even if you hit a few sour notes,
It only matters that you feel the music.
So long a as you feel it, enjoy it, let it overcome you
The music will make itself great.
And after you fall from the trance, back into the real world,
After the last notes and chords leave your instrument,
If your audience silently pauses before suddenly exploding in applause and cheers,
You know you have done well.
Just let it fill your bones.

Hold tight to me golden butterflies
Don't let me slip
Because even though your namesake element is as heavy as lead
I'm trusting you to carry me out of this pit
So my own wings have room enough to soar

Wrap your arms around me silver angels
Don't let me break
Because even though your name will tarnish and weaken like an old necklace
I need you to hold my pieces together
To fit my jigsaw back into a whole
So I can walk on my own again