i'm a house you barged into without knocking.

i wasn't ready to roll out my welcome mat, but i still let you in.

you stepped on my creaky floors,
and walked passed dusty doors.
you ran your fingers along chipped off paint
and every cracked window pane.

i watched you take down everything you didn't want to stay.
when you were finished, i was left with little trace of who i was before you came.

you forced open every locked drawer and vault for you to figure out that nothing you wanted could be found within the confines of my skeleton.

i was a house you didn't intend to turn into a home, a place to drop by whenever you needed to feel less alone.

i want you to know that ever since you abandoned me, i learned to locked my gates and keep my doors shut.

i know eventually, i'll be ready to let somebody new in. maybe one day, he'll fall in love with my skin and fix all the holes you never tried to fill in.

we spent every morning
together,
sitting cross-legged
on her bedroom floor, watching
our trembling hands cradle,
and weep, and
try to learn how
to cut each other
complements
from our jagged edges.

I walk out to the bottom of the lake
whispers and snaps under my more worn feet
and high over my head huge cumulus creatures
look down on me in their reflections
as they creep by echoing the atmospheric wails
so I smile facing heaven
along the edge the wind blows an impatience into the heads of fall- budding trees
a worried crowd

I am impatient too
to open my lungs in a worldwide gasp
to be then overpowered and brought to meekness neath a wave
of the form
of all things

The meaning of leaves in
a refreshing cool wind
He chose to live
for friendship
Not for that
other thing

heavy lines intersecting
beneath the prisms of light
that flicker under
iris veins
the sound of rain,
god am i stuck on the sound of rain
slow long drizzle
dragging a limp body across the ground
snaking beneath apple orchards
man's first sin was my last breath
dilating pupils finger nails
itching the skin,
an addiction i was born into
he spilled the last
words of loss
coming to crack along the ground
plastic communities tiny boxes
and fissures in the family
chipped tooth, your grin
is beautiful

A room.
Need to displace to move.
Arrangement of places you’ve been
******* you in like some Kansas twister that swept you off your porch
just after you open the door for the first time today.
I awake from a dream.
I don’t remember what was said.
Clumsily laying letters over felt footsteps.
A semblance of something too big to tell you.
I cannot move it but I’ll say whatever to mean it.
A body subject to the wind
ringing against the world, accenting the edges in sharp cries
like a dinner bell that never rests.
How’s the sky taste Major?
You think Bowie really cared for karate?
Only superficially because in some perverse way it was a form of art.
A Darwinian heyday exhibition for the human condition.
I’m alive *******, let’s keep it that way.
In every way.
Don’t want to be too narrow.
Need some space to move.
The past that comes to us now,
first came from our future.
Even the ones that wilted under the shadow of satisfaction.
Even the objects flowing through this wicked light show of so much contained in three tiny axis’
Please chart your love according to x y and z without dimensionally reducing the picture.
Don’t worry darling I’ll wait, remember it’s there we first met.

103rd Street / Watts Towers

Suicide help lines posted
on signs above the train tracks
make her wonder where the
stars went make her wonder
what she’d do if
someone near her jumped

Decided she ain’t tryna
save a life, she just tryna
stay alive

Vernon

Little girl with big bright eyes,
do your troubles have a name?
Little girl your kicks are sticking
to the pavement. Do you ever watch
the planes at night?

They’ll try to tell you otherwise but
you don’t gotta unstick yourself.
In the City of Angels someone’s bound
to get caught in the smog layer.

7th Street / Metro Center

She looks for you in ****-soaked
alleys, on rusted fire escapes, behind
buildings flashing neon green crosses,
a sort of salvation — together you’re
the most perfect covenant.

Does she tell you that enough?

Pershing Square*

There’s no such thing as dreaming
here, and you get used to that.
You get used to everything.
When you’re flying over Angel’s Knoll
it’s easy to forget how far you are
from Hollywood, same city same jungle,
the only place with hundreds of stars
on the sidewalk but hardly any
in the sky.

Here it is
the poem on survival, the one you've all been waiting for
where I learned to untie the noose from my smile,
my smile from the trigger warning.
Here's your trigger warning:

I shivered when you kissed me.
I had a hard time believing my heartbeat was a good thing; had a hard time
believing the front door was still an option.
I wake up some days and remember when I used to sing bruises onto my skin,
fill up large towels with my blood,
watch it go black,
watch everything go black.
Still remained smiling;
still stood with the scars; with the ink between my teeth baring
a warning sign for whoever comes next,
for whoever wants my body without wanting my mind.
here it is
here is how i survived:

I hurt myself

I still do it just doesn't show
the scarring.
here it is baby boy come inside its about to get ugly,
you're about to see me cry,
you're about to see me shake,
you're about to find out what im really made of,
I'm about to find out if you break.

are you scared yet
this is a challenge you never step down from,
you brave boy!
you with your sword and white horse;
shining at the darkness inside of me; shining at the stench inside me ; come here,
make me feel whole.