i have three best friends.
one is Thomas.
they asked me to sing at his funeral
but i couldn't because i was crying too much.
he left his hat
and it smells of nothing but him.
two is Aly.
we carved boundless into a river bridge before
she moved to Liverpool. an actress with more *****
than anyone claiming masculinity.
it costs eight stamps to write her but i do
because i believe in handwritten letters the way most people
believe in church.
three is a read leather journal
with graph paper pages
crawling with the inked version of my
trainwreck brain
the words that i can bury myself under
and call it art.

under the dark of covers
promise me
promise me
promise me,whisper it
that leavings are not endings
and that if you love something

you tell it goodbye.

My generation has never felt the heart of real work or effort,
tasted the rust of the heated sun sewing up their lips,
or have become acquainted with calluses on their hands,
because they have high expectations for everyone else to do their work for them.

It’s unsettling,
knowing that there is a disconnection in these minds and it only reconnects when these children,
hardly adults are searching for the next sip of poison to get to the next **** that even they know won’t satisfy their hunger for some kind of act of love,
the kind that could tie you up at gunpoint and you still wouldn’t give in because you know that there’s nothing stronger than that.

But how would I know?

(I have only seen it in movies.)

And I see the mothers and fathers that strive to better their children but feel like failures because they only thought it was a stage,
that they were experimenting with fire,
but that’s just them turning the other cheek until it follows them to the ends of their nerves,
biting and tugging and burning.  

Loose ends never knotted up again.

They always knew better than that,
and I’ve seen too many beautiful people do ugly things because they knew they were beautiful and didn’t know the difference.

So I’ve concluded that I don’t want to be a part of whatever this world might become,
I don’t want that kind of blood on my hands.

maybe, i think too much.
maybe, you are

                                     twisted
                                            like twist ties and twisting balloons.
                                      i always thought
                                           you'd be the star of the carnival.