You seem bubbly today- it’s just a chemical imbalance- soon my dopamine levels will stoop below the norm and I’ll be crawling back upwards with tiny fingers gripping the brain that I have probably taken advantage of. You seem bubbly today- it’s just a chemical imbalance. Went out last night and let my mind balloon outward, the lip-smacking tang of pilsner washing out the smoke on my molars that I silently savor.
It’s just a chemical imbalance when I bounce on my toes and
Feel my heart part the sea of space before me-
Suddenly people are presents that I am eager to open
And I want to look around the corner
But it’s just a chemical imbalance
Could I do the same thing tomorrow, or the next day
When everything has leveled out
And I feel the grassy plain surging before me,
Vast,
Void,
Vacuum pulling me inside my mind-
A claustrophobic cavern-
The space where I reconsider
The way I move my lips
And direct my eyes.
I will murmur to the end of the tunnel.
Until I can escape,
See the green unfurling before me-
Billowing,
Beckoning,
Breath bringing me back to myself-
And run
Run until I forget why I ever wanted to look back,
Until I don’t know how I could have ever fallen down
There…

Within some experiences I am “there,” within others, I am “not there.” In the latter sort, it is either anxiety-laden hyper-awareness or sardonic dissociation from minutia-made-material. In the former, it is effortlessness, freedom, gliding bones through sea, the waves pushing me down its throat and breathing me back out, moistened and changed. In both forms of existence I find myself; this is not something to reconcile, but to accept. I have realized myself as one contradiction—a noose round the neck of a flower, a gardener of thistle and thorn. The blue sky stretches across the horizon, and my mind removes itself to a distant branch. I find myself both here and not here. This space between body and mind is the closest I have to freedom. And so I add a layer to myself, or uncover one. And this, always, is where I find purity, where I comprehend the contradiction, where I taste the essence of that which I cannot otherwise know.

I wait for the winter like a wind-up bird, chattering its chipped porcelain wing—the music box croaks on for my finger still trembling, an intermittent sweet note gliding away like a fugitive tear. I crane my neck in vain against the days growing shorter, the nights deceptively embryonic—I swim in them. Eventually the water and I become one languid body, a vinaigrette left to sweat, a sad salad. We do alright, we do with the flies. One wing tip-dipped inward, this one never thought he’d come too close, that one never thought, head fully submerged in a bowl of subtle acid soup.

And then the ladle-eclipse, its gorge swooping beneath me, engulfing me in its inverted belly, my limbs gangly-dangling like lifeless antennae. Soon I am spooned onto a saucer and served to the Universe’s most pretentious dinner guests. Old Man Winter is the first to **** his pongs about my tender torso, and I am reminded of last season’s stinging and stabbing, though I manage to escape unscathed, however canned and stored in the crowded freezer. There I forget the Sun. I forget how to liberate my emotion, how energy can become a circuit of temperament. I am released when the Old Man retreats. I remember the post-circuit-breaking fear of being thought crazy, of the accuracy of those perceptions. I re-experience the cackling pleasure of moving against the grain. I learn how to harness and channel high frequency vibrations.

Flattened and sealed in the sardine can I healed. I grew in the dead of winter, I grew even when the goblin would meet my gaze in the mirror. I hear the ticking of the bird but now only in my left ear. I peer into the future and watch the bird fly away.

Effortlessness is what empties a room- a mind also being a room- and extends a willowy collection of bones that you hope you can touch in your attempt to communicate the context of the rooms, so that the enigmatic hand might grasp at least a flicker of recognition that the moment has passed, and now She must be going, receding ever sublimely into the airiness of a nascent week’s end- how contradictory- and so am I, begging for peace and quiet and crawling instead into the raucous night, like a blind centipede that is expected to scare away the house, making the true Resident Rodents their rightful place at the throne- the bejeweled Rat Regent rules the underworld, but She has ignored the portal and it has vanished- perhaps never there in the first place- perhaps She and the Rat King both made of smoke. A vestige of a vapor. A room within a room- windowless, wall-less, and wafting in and out of seeming existence like a flame- could it have been the same flame as was before? Could ever a flame be reborn, revived, said to have previously existed? Can one say this flame could not have already been? And is this room, this space, new or old? Perhaps recycled? Is it a fluctuation, regeneration, or is it a continuation- like infinite space? And when considering infinity, what to make of repetition? Pattern, even? What is to be said about consistencies? What can the ants see that we cannot? What is this perspective that we are given? And by whom? And our language- where does it bring us? To the next essentially empty room? Or do you feel the life pulsing right under your very nose, in the hidden eye of the void- do you sense the deaf-dumb omniscience of consciousness? And is it growing or dying? Is an ice-age approaching, or truly, is this a momentary lapse of reason- a period of time where reason (matter and the mind) take shape in the disembodied womb of consciousness? And how can one ever measure a moment?

The woman in the waiting room
In disembodied space,
She dug a hole,
Pale,
And fell into it.

She digs holes and dances ‘round them.
She dug a hole and danced around it.
(She…
…She…
She uses gendered language)
In the next room they try to fill holes by digging them.
She tells them this is backwards.
You will just make a larger hole.
In the farthest room someone sits across from you, telling you how to feel.
But all things become lost in the hole

All things but the pale

Underside of a leaf floating atop an unnatural calm
Wind
Or water
And the pale face
Standing atop the bridge
Drinking in the cold,
dark,
space
reserved for the unborn.
She cannot enter it;
The hole will not go deep enough
This time.

I regret
That I have yet
To barrel down a bannister
Take charge of the floorboard
And command a room,
Silent and full or
Symphonic and fractured
My perceptions
The hungry trees
Of a hungry forest
I do not regret
Having entered,
So I cannot regret
Not having done so.
Some places I imagine
Feel like
Orpheus Looking Back
Feel like
The preference
Of Pleasant Death.
You ask me why
I will not go,
I say
Because,
I Will Not.
You ask me why
I am afraid,
I say
I am a flame
Entombed
Who still feels the wind.
You ask me
What is it most
You fear?
I answer,
The flowers
In my head
Not sick,
But dead.

I am waiting for the moment where I pivot and all that I can envision now is a blacktop and white dotted lines, maybe lanes of rolling white whipped green churning pinwheels going long down the road with a stalk of cud in my mouth can I ever go and unthink like the caramel burnt stained car chair that I rest in as a finger comprised of ash that will collapse in any second and Im telling you its beautiful to let go and see the small blue insects mixed up in a whirlwind of gray flecking flickers that you may capture with a white plastic bag it reads “shoprite” you remember times at the a&p; that was ay-em-*** to toddlers who were smarter to not distinguish between what seems and what is according to the strangers who walk the street, seem foreboding, and yet retreat indoors to steak dinners and why weren’t the tater’s in the oven at half passed six? Maryellen. I told you. I told you patriarchal. I sing from my molehill. My mother always fixed me a cherry pie told me I had the nose of a rodent and so I found my fathers gun, JOhny, white America, puh, would you think I’m on drugs because twenty-one and throw up when looking like chalk smeared on top of cheeks, these bones are feeling a bit decayed wont you examine what you’ve done to…who are you? And nowhere it goes. Nowhere it goes. I sit here im ****** you think it’s a joke but this blurb is worth
Less
Bag of blue sanddollars
Dipped in wax
With a wick
And a pick
A guitar string
And a tick-
Tock
Tick
Tock
Tick


Give it a lick
Peanut butter off a stick
I dunno whats to do or did
But theres a whole lot of mess out there
And we all are using it to smear messages in the listless purple filaments that cloud the sky

I’ve heard admonishments and thin mints in girl scout boxes ive eaten around glass patio tables with blue waters squarely pooled im sure your hair gel is swelling the heart of some hungry shewolf who will nibble or bite or swallow you, I do not know which one is which. But ive heard laments about nations and ignorance and I’m not sure who is more to blame or what could be a solution but to speak largely and loudly id need a microphone and a lot of ears or no a telescope and a broadcaster or better yet digital tools and the internet. Communication is the sopping soggy wet piece of bread that floats in my milk bowl and by the time my orange kitty paws move at it, the loose and expanded bits disintegrate and sink. A sink has a drain that gets clogged and we all must stare at it until it is cleaned and if I’m not the one cleaning my drain then who is the one cleaning my waste?

Where is the darkness in eyes in alleyways in downtown in weather
I feel my cheeks coated in fall air
And wonder
Where is the brightness in eyes in leaves in spontaneity around the corner
Could be a void or a spiral stair or a man you’re sure you’ve met somewhere
And maybe he has not a care
But the cup of coffee in his hand
And so you make a toast
To good mornings
And change
Found under the carpet where our newborn lies
With joie de vivre and a gurgle
That makes you want to kiss the world
But you can’t
Which is why you have the man
And the newborn
In your living room
With change under the carpet
One day your world will crumble
And again
Again
Until you contemplate the multiverse
Or perhaps it will expand
Or inflate
Or burst
Until you contemplate the infinite
Raise discontent within your cycle
Raise discontent within your cycle
Where are the fire-brimmed eyes
The gulf that scorches
Unquenchable
I will either live
Or drown in you
Where are my companions
In sin in question in masks and equations
My brothers the trees

How you’ve always reminded me
Of molasses
And honey
And water

Do you see?
How love and unrest and the illusion of depth
All lay down and die at your doorstep?
And you’re stuck moving backward trying to
Remember when you all first met-
And you unconvince yourself-
And the next time love greets you, you are
Surprised and gentle,
And then it all comes back to you:
Philosophy class, *****, solace at the ocean-
You panic-
And your lover is now shapeshifting so close beside
You that you can feel his breath
Derive your cycle
Derive your cycle
The Balance is surging beneath the surface.
To Stillness Life Travels.
And love, and unrest, and the illusion of depth
All lift the chests of rodents in garbage bins
Who then crawl out from under lids
This is all done in secret
At midnight
With the yellow toothed man under the yellowy moon
As witness
Only he knows
How life persists
And why
And not for you or I
But for each all the same
Indistinct
I will not shrink
Or wait
Or vie
But, beckoning from the mount
I will challenge the cycle
Let it believe it has killed me
And rise
And, beckoning once more,
Instantaneously, it will face me.
But stone I will be.
And before me the cycle collapsing
And behind me the vortex opening
Bestowing the gift of surrender.

Thank you
For the flashbacks
The recurring theme
The cursed motif
I hailed into the closet
From behind the sheets
I could not comprehend
The depression
Though I knew its extents
The contents
Of its origin
I could not mend
You lengthened the bend
Thank you
For setting fire to my heart
The ultimate pyre
I’ve been reborn
And forever shall your
Essence lift to the tops of trees
And, looking for breeze,
Sink instead to the dirt
And sweating leaves
Of parchment you shall never read
The scripture that strengthens
My soul-
The harmonies that have turned me
Inside out
And allowed me to see
My heart deformed
Reformed
You will rest in rot
Yellow
And
Decay
Thank you for
Dangling the wrench
Challenging me to endure
The extraction of teeth
I am removing
I am re
Moving
My love
And loyalty
And sensuousness
From the snares
Placed in vain
My veins run clean
I am recreating
A scene
A feature
A fissure
Between life
And death
I am
Fire
Rain
The original
Spring
I am swelling forth
And catching flies
I am making prints
On earth and sky
I am giving birth
To myself
I am here
Hear me,
Thank you
For throwing me down
The stairwell
And creating the echo
That woke me
And burned me
And washed me
Clean.

If I wanted to be exquisite,
I would be.
Hormones were not kind to me,
But I survived.
And here I sit,
Cross-legged and with nothing to fit
Into.
My black shoes were a choice,
And I am responsible for the death
Of an overworked, underpaid
Laborer
With red raw fingers.
But I do not see her.
No, I see only the luminescence of a store window,
Years ago.
I feel only the faint yearning to be known
As sleek-vicious-jaded,
Gone now.
But the shoes still fitting,
Lined with gold.
When I grow old I will
Break my bones
Building her casket,
Lined with silver
As are my ashes.

I miss you every day, and some things can make me feel like there is nothing besides the moment, or that my blanket is still at home neatly folded and on the foot of my bed- unexpected ruby red gum drops, or gold chains in water drains- but then I awake, and I’m thinking- where am I? What is it that I am doing here? And I tell you I feel my heart reaching endlessly towards a destination that I cannot get close enough to- not now, not when I need it. And I tell you I feel you close to me somewhere in the vast ocean of my mind, but on land I am sinking and the pebbles are slowly falling down the sides of my throat- soon you can poke me and through the hole sand will steadily flow. Won’t you come to me at the far back of this coffee shop that I have taken a small piece of- the ****-end of this dining chair, or the scratch on the wall- but won’t you glide past the glass door and let me catch your eyes peering into mine, knowing that I am yours and telling me that everything’s fine; everything’s fine.

What did I pause about the other day- was it at the kitchen table? I think so- I was sitting down next to my fluorite crystal- something occurred to me- it was a pleasant thought, I remember, something a bit marvelous, I winked at my pretty little stone and she winked back. Oh! I think it was sparked from Arundhati Roy’s novel God of Small Things. Or no, I think it was the smell of spring wafting through the window that transported me to sweet grass-stained jeans at six. (How Consciousness can subvert Time! Making past present, making present eternal and infinite- undermining order imposed and idealized- tirelessly trying to give itself, but faltering before the closed fist of human conquest). Or perhaps it was the language and sensation simultaneous that lifted from within me this deep affection- for what, I do not know. For everything and nothing, I suppose. For all that is and all that be—and all that must cease to be.

You get to a point where, swimming and spinning you land in the nearest-p-universe, and you’re laughing your chair back, inhaling comforting scents of flaky pastries in some outdoor café on another continent where it’s summer and the sun is making love to the water. Your toes are polished red and your cigarette head buzzes like the bees harmless-floating above the flowerpot adjacent, your conversation is lovely and the sky is endless. Urging your conscious mind upward, you lift yourself out of the quaint wrought-iron patio chair and evaporate into one million whizzing molecules, finally weightless.

I remember the smell of air conditioning as a child
shocking cucumber skin with rolled up children
in sleeping bags on bear cave floor
I could giggle and even pretend
And now I sit here indifferent
teeth drying
cactus smile
I resign my eyes
lick my listless lips
re-
focus
Try to force a gleam up through
cochleas
into tear ducts-
a genuine sheen
land me on the same plane
But behind my water-melon rind
is plastered strain
a painting you can't look at-
Look away-
Look at me-
You were good- real good-
You had heart.
I just can't feel it anymore
and the bubbles-
I put a lid on them in my sleep.

with salt sprinkled so that she could take it-
he never asks questions-
she always unsure-
“mustard?”
“yes”- a practiced-egg-flipping ****
spurs a continuance of motion,
an un-thought,
a silent presentation-
then swallowing:
an un-thank you,
quick like horse pill one-hundred,
a you-got-it-pre-made,
articulate, deliberate, unimpeded,
like the supreme court.
They go home and sleep in the same bed-
under same blankets-
wrapped in same blackness-
you swallow- on average- eight spiders in your lifetime-
sixty-four funny feelings
under-impressing a supposed truth.

Breath slipping gratefully away I slip out of the day my pen glides like I have some swaggering tail ends to my means figured out I'm sand box plotting the little league games- vindictive and victorious, a competitive brute. Bruised daisies sniffing underneath nose tips like itching dresses in white floral lace I wait for myself to pass into a new realm of closed mouths and legs. I snake sneer at the bedside table adorned with rose book red and green, yellow print, fatigued and sweating answers out of my palms fingernails claw at the truth- I’ll stay twirling inside teacups for days, then peer out realizing nuts bolts soldered plates, a small world contained thank you orange vest like yellow jacket concerto under some candy man who shocks me out of my hole. I’ll run through the **** stained grass like an ungrateful child to the white fence caging the Ferris wheel another attraction buttery and cotton soft I lie down under stars feel something unfamiliar and incommunicable open mouth push out a short breath- wuh- feels like bathing in invisible truth certain for mystery and then it dissipates and I jump back into the prize box widening and shrinking at the semi-conscious crane. Place my cavernous eye against the glass and everyone hides. Maybe one day I’ll taste the rain acid-less in a dream and awake in damp grass our hair intermingling and find some constancy in the crease of your eyelid, eyelashes brushing I want to believe we can make love sparks that never die pierce the belly of Cetus exploding Zeta and dusting the Earthlings tingling necklines pull us all gently inward into each other into ourselves into a new plane of existing where we don’t long for slumber and sweet plum trees because we taste the spirit’s tongue in every waking hour.

A morning distilled into solemnity
I sit here waiting for something
a bird of ether
to remind me:
quintessentially
I am Asterope
a rock
one of the
Magellanic Clouds
I am eating my dust
everythingandnothing

Rockskipping
lipstickingnothing

To think is to pretend

Fantasizing being
shall we
waltz in whimsy?
Methinks ‘twould be lovely
cradling stars
for a moment
fickle and breathless
(see how easy it is...
and then death comes

and

death is
( )

I tried to act confidently,
but it came up like a faux bouquet,
presented steadily with bowtie fixed,
yet shoving,
“here!”
“take them- what are you waiting for?”
And no reply.
(And no reply).
And-
Why is it so difficult to be myself?
Do I not love myself?
Is this some sort of congenital disease-
some inertly cyclopean phenomenon-
where I am victim to my own constant surveillance?
Hyper vigilance- or vanity?
Which is worse?
Would that I could break all of the mirrors hanging on all of the walls-
all of the windows with all of their reflecting-
Would that I could kiss myself, feel myself, touch myself, know myself,
then maybe I could know you how to love me.
How to love me?
With that inquiry left unsatisfied,
am I left flitting from void to void?
Though in some spaces I stare into the Quantum Sea and say,
It is but the stuff of me!
And,
I shall never die!
But that is not the same-
it is not the same
to know thyself in a flower
as to know thy hand-
one is weightless,
the other is responsible.

I fear the mirrors.
I want to fluctuate invisible.

Prompted to speak,
I part my lips,
Open like treasure
Melting in white sands
That are yet silk
To glide you o'er.
Cloaked vibrantly you dance;
Undo the ties
And I will slip in between
Old things and new.
Surprised though you may be,
Do not gasp,
Lest I'll fill you.
Is that what you wish,
Sweet laden stranger,
To taste the droplets dewing?
Oh, wouldst thou say yes,
And me in turn
Would open my chest.
Golden tongued and sanguine,
We intermingling, outpouring-
That is, if you'd let me
With my fever infect you.
Curling toes, I do believe,
Soon to match thy head.
Through bushels shall I weave
My fingers to thread
Our patchwork of passion,
Our mark on the sands.

I would like to think of myself as an intellectual, but really I’m just a regurgitation of the adolescent caste system with academic anxiety and a learned fear. Well, I suppose that is a bit harsh. I used to be social *****; now I am a lowly intrapersonal custodian (let us never mind my inter-personal mess-managing, please?), though I am far from clean. __ I have found myself flitting back to this page from time to time and mentally inserting here a terse, self-degrading statement that could re-catalyze my pitiful little verse, but never actually writing it. I hold it heavy in my head where it shall remain, apparently. Apparently I don’t feel the need to read my flaws, transgressions, and fallibilities back to me. Perhaps I haven’t yet articulated them, and they’re just skulking around—hunched apparitions haunting my subconscious. (Death smells like dog treats: perplexing, but you want to touch your tongue to it so long as no one will know). I must slay them all, eventually, or else perish. But! It is not the transgression itself that I fear—my behaviors are observable, even tangible, I can stare at them for hours. It is the dark implication of the transgression—the churning matter only detectable for its outline of illumination—that gives me trepidation. How will I move-on? How will I grow-here? Like an impossible little spur that nestles between resistant skin and unknowing fabric? Can I penetrate the protection? My security is maniacal; it is evidence of crazed disillusion. I am the raven clawing through infinite veneers; I am tangled…

Out ****** spot! Out, I say!

I must regress to becoming the white blanket.
I must know nothing but God.
A simple cloth.
A towelette.
Rags!
Rags!
Rags!

…

….

…God?

…Hello?

         …Is it too late to become

…plain?

I wonder what I would have looked like to myself- exhaling- like parting seas, like ancient catacombs creaking open, awakening the dead, like I hadn’t spoken in weeks. It was all rubble…piled over me in the front seat so that I could barely see on the drive home. I tried to hold it together, tried to breathe as deeply as possible, harness the moment, the space between us, let it cohere, let him see the skulls opened, pouring into one another, let him see my lips and skin, naked and timeless, ten- fifteen years from now- he is wearing a beard and soft green- but she, she is beautiful and lovely and far more appealing, and him and I, we sit on opposing sides of the room ten years from now when the walls come crumbling beneath us, and I struggle through the heart of the rubble pile, exiting from the space that used to be a door, quickening my stride and throwing up my hands, strutting now like some swaggering *****, bellowing, “take me universe! I am yours to command, yours to call, I am yours only and yours forever,” with a voice like an inevitable whipping. "I surrender. I give in."

It is a brown morning turned white.

I wondered if the muddy gray would endure
and was burdened promptly with bellowing blizzard.

Well, all right. Today will be white, then.
Today will be white.

I will ponder the idea of going,
and where.

I will know the eyes of those who drank the murky morn

-my breakfast table brothers
and silvery spoon sisters,
stirring,
breathing inside houses-

and those who woke instead to shards of light

-white slipper strangers
idling above staircases,
slowly descending,
feathery,
stubborn behind the day-

I will recognize even those who unfurled into stillness

hours later
blissful children pushing toes and fingers,
easing into the right place
next to sibling and syrup, already present.

I will forget my love
and try to lift myself;
but, falling ever faster
into the bleach waters
the white day will take me.

I romantically excused myself for not writing much of anything anymore while on a walk the other day. I was slinking through the wood—if you could call it that (truthfully, I felt as if I was clad with only a meager shroud of pine against the bare commanding sky) when I stumbled over the difference between capturing something and letting it go- captivity and freedom? Or do the connotations become too bristly to bear? Mere semantics, you say- and yet perhaps the crux of my dilemma- or the key! “To capture” (rooted in the Latin “capere”) in addition to its standard use, can be placed in the creative context: to capture the essence of something—a far more palatable choice, but rooted all the same. Though- when speaking of art- is ‘capturing’ not analogous to ‘expressing,’ insofar as I “capture” and “express” a mood? Perhaps one is used more with visual as opposed to verbal art, but interchangeable nonetheless. Is this an oxymoron, and so a truth—a beautiful phenomenon- where only in the act of creation can you let something out by reining it in? Where “capture” itself dries up and flakes off its last layer of meaning, revealing its new skin of freedom, pinkish and pruned? Or is it a transference (transcendence?), transformation from non-stuff to stuff, a metamorphosis in which some external intangible item is snatched, internalized and then processed, attributed to or assimilated with some known feeling- given meaning- and then released back into the social cytoplasm, portrayed in some metaphorical way? Or is it a coalescence, where captivity and freedom intermingle and create something wholly new…it would be nice, wouldn’t it- to reconcile the shackles in art?

And it was this meddling that let me forgive myself for forgetting the metallic shock of briny sea that interrupted the mellowed sand. It was this train of thought that allowed me to dismiss the arching boughs that cradled the air above my head. I watched content as their essences swirled about my conscience, even prattled against the back walls of my brain, and I gleefully danced amidst the potent smoke, knowing that within every crevice of the universe lurked the very same wonderment, for what would the possibility of this life be without it? And to capture that or express it was no matter, for ‘it’ is given, ‘it’ is necessary. Even when you find yourself at a moment where ‘it’ culminates to become the true fabric of magnificence might you accept the normalcy and absoluteness of the instance, realizing that your attunement and alignment is natural and undeniable- it need not be bottled up and contained like pretty sands- though a reminder at times is welcomed. Much like the way we do not- sometimes cannot- grasp the fibers of dreams, but yet can feel their energies gliding between our fingers, does the life force vibrate continually about all things, regardless of our interpretation.

No one is innocent,
save for the child,
resplendent,
laughing at the sea.

Throw your bones in the garden
and redden as rain raises a finger,
calcium white,

it is sharp and cold
on this day of recollection,
you’re striding through the garden

plucking corpses.
Place the cradle on the table,
the flowers need no water.

Forever their bodies limp,
yet quivering in you a survival
that mocks your spoiled soul.

What’s done is done.
The plight of realization
has halted the burgeoning summer.

Years fuse to responsibility,
and you do not shine,
but collapse.

Nights lighting lavender,
as the smoke slices
the back of my throat
I exhale and tell myself
I’m relaxed.
I exhale a million times
and I don’t have to tell myself
anymore-
insomniacs who I could call
that wont end up telling me
I’m nothing
or asking me
‘who is you?’
I’m sorry that I don’t love you,
but I need a friend, too,
one who understands
self-hatred
and can hold
a conversation.
I’m sorry.

What is one second on a Monday morning following a night of no sleep in a Dunkin Donuts on some Main Street where I’ll walk with a cigarette for the third time; I think second-hand smoke has been cajoling me, and now I’m awake with nicotine. But what is the difference between a smothered Marlboro light and some nervous lecture on a sad scholarly venture? I cannot pull the smoke vicious into my lungs any more than I can break the vicious stammering circle. And what is one hour of discourse-accompanied indigestion, pacing, and anxiety, if not thirty-six-thousand possible seconds spent in a Dunkin Donuts on Monday mornings with no sleeping? When time is finite and eternal then there is no escaping the monotonous chaos, and we’re thrown about aimlessly, like dice in dimension infinity.

Tonight I'll wait.
I'll wait for exhaustion's tendrils
to curl about my temples
and assist my head
onto to the bed.
I'll wait until your reddened face
blurs and then pixilates
(subtle eyes, you ask me to stay,
I turn and walk away)
Tonight I'll wait.
I'll wait because I have to.
Do you listen to the knives, too?
sharpening and sparking,
igniting the monsters away?
Do you want to play, too?
and not give a ****?
and ****?

I hate
as I
meta-
cognate:
you-
are al-
ways there-
you-
profes-
sor- draw-
ing squares-
why-
can't I
dare
to e-
rase the
lines you've
daily
traced?

I’ve spent my days spiraling,
or branching,
triangulating,
and running in circles,
with time always
for counting petals,
or coloring.
My cerebral bouquet,
farewell,
I resign myself
to stems and
straight edges,
at risk, with
tenuous grip,
of an imminent
scalpel-slip,
and the ultimatum
in severed-sphere-
reconstruction.

My brain is a nuisance serpent, a Penelope polyp that recoils, recedes when it is most needed, hides behind itself, shoots into the cavities that have become cannabinoid landmines. I am not sure which parts are mine or whether there has been growth along with the debilitation, and would those ever balance as equalization? Can I discredit myself, credit myself—or I am I one big excuse? I excuse myself as I down one more glass, the neurons glaze, my myelins quieting the electricity; chemically, can I be held responsible for any change in chemistry? Can I qualify the distance between me and who I used to be?—and I’m tired of the Zen critics denying the difference; I try to focus presently, and, oh, I find myself in eternal flowered fields, transitory serenity—servant only to my misery; and so I beg to know: why can’t I stay there? They say we’re shared in suffering, but I’m not asking for consolation! I’m asking for hope—for possibility, that one day I—we—will be consciousness, and not some drifting broken barge atop her ever-swelling sea.

Breathe sweet
tiger lilies,
let their aroma
cling to skin spots
like summer-
fruit you’ll soften,
and we’ll throw you
in the garden
to decompose.

I hope the rain sinks deep into the blackened cracks of the street
Outside my house there stands alone a naked ghost—
No flesh or bone.
It flies up to my window’s screen
And through its fickle mesh
Façades are no more,
Yet they are everything:
A story drags at the corners of your eyes
And the truth looms like the shadow under your
Chin up,
Chin. Up.
Positivity ephemeral as the fierce electricity in the night sky—
May I become a lightning rod: “The Light Catcher.”
May I keep what’s left of you,
The rest of you…?
And, m-might you burn forever?

Nothing will taste as sweet
With you
Gone.

The tulip phase,
The daisy haze,
Where daffodils sway
The wind is grey—
The light so white,
Shadowless May.

Life is…competition.
Everything starts with “She’s a good person, but…”
And what does that even mean—‘good’?
It’s such a tricky word…
It trudges and collects, rolling and sticking and melting into a mess.
It covers and confuses.
It oozes…
‘Good.’
It is cavernous and claustrophobic all at once.
Because what do you tack onto that word and what do you leave out?
And how much is too much before good is no longer good?
Before it turns to flaws and flossing teeth—
Revealing surprising grime on white napkins.
Now she’s “‘Mary,’ the kind soul with an eating disorder.”
Life is disorder.
***** fingers constantly filing and misfiling,
sealing cases closed with oversized labels that undermine the contents inside and the very boxes that hold them.
And what does it mean then?
When you are a rectangle and I am a square,
When Mary is placed on the shelf over there?
I am not scared
of the brown—not ***** blonde—roots creeping up from the top of my hair,
of the pimple on my chin.
But what makes me cringe is your satisfied grin when you notice that her daughter
is not quite as thin…
not quite as thin;
It is a sliver of a win,
Like the sliver of cake that you take to your plate
for fear that your trousers might break—
and then—
gasp you’ll belong with them,
cardboard congregated in the corner,
stacked and packed together,
the ones with jean-zippers torn asunder.
I cannot help but wonder
what life is…

Poking and pinching our skin like birds plucking feathers—pulling out their identity. Constantly criticizing, comparing, implementing tyrannical tactics, self-inflicted derision—we are own authoritarians. We are desperately squeezing, writhing, wriggling into the holes and molds constructed by a warped society who views beauty through superficiality. Society who designs and confines and creates its own lines that, if crossed, break the connection, forever shattering our identification with the majority, popularity—the thing we are taught to seek without chance to question the foundation of these seemingly inherent beliefs. And we are pink and tender like birds broiled, presented, stripped bear and embellished with glazes and dressings, carved to perfection. Perfection, in lipstick—on bathroom floors—we stare, at scales, forever our eyes are cast down, on curling toes, shying away from the numbers and standards and “where do I fit?”—on this number line, through this length of time, where I wander and adhere to the brick wall—a mantle piece, a mantle piece. Steadfast and granite for you to pause and stare at me, but the eyes are too many, too cold and stinging, the scorching the shaking the rage and the breaking—the breaking, a sudden release. A fall to the wooden floor with the age spots and the scuff marks, the cracks and the creaks—the beauty in pieces that nip the wrist and ***** the blood, and the air is surprising and clean against the wound that leads to the truth.