Every tick is a countdown
for as long as we live
We are all waiting for time to pass
so we can get to that one moment
and that one moment after that
It's all time is and ever will be
a countdown

Twinkling lights
Signs painted with gold
Screams fleeing from carnival rides
Secrets to behold

Wandering around, see the sideshow freaks
Stay away from Envy, Pride, and Greed
Children run by carrying goods and candy
Run to their mothers
Saying they're fine, they're dandy

Moving to the large striped tent
Inside to the music I went
Splendor danced which made magical eyes
Stay away from the edges
that's where torment lies

The lights are dimming, it's time to go
Vile perceptions are coming, it's the end of the show
I'll be back soon, I know I will
*Remember, stay in the light of the carousel

"I went to the hospital"
        I remember
"I wanted to stop breathing so you'd come back"
        Don't say that
"I whispered your name when I was asleep"
        You did?
"That's what I was told when I woke up"
       You always have talked in your sleep
"I wanted you to come back"
        *I never wanted to leave

Eyes, my eyes
Wavering in the murky water
Move and my doppelganger follows
I stare and I stare back
Although, I know what I can't feel out loud
I stare thrashing in the cold water
Rage filling me and causing unseen waves
The water is still, unmoving
I keep watching
I become stone, dread filling my watery eyes
I watch as my hands cover my face
I blink
I watch and I watch back
Nothing
I smile and I smile back
On the edge of the shore I know
that I am collected
I am peaceful
The water knows who I am and understands
I am unwavering.

Your fingers

are inside

         my

                 wet

                          warm

throat

pulling out

                        sighs

of desperation

and cries

that thunder down like rain

Here I go again
Looking in the mirror makes my own  heart shutter
It's like being porcelain but without the doll
Without the war paint, without the lip stain
I just look sick, just bones after all.
I glide on the tar black lines
With a flick of the wrist I become awake
I become focused, I become defined
But this is something I have to make.
Even then I look away
Not satisfied with my lacking appearance
Lacking brightness, lacking confidence.
Clearly having no brilliance.
I sigh
I leave
I tried.

I sit, I wait, I watch
I sit here wondering when you'll pull into my driveway that's a thousand miles away
See you pay your fair to the man that ended up bringing you to me
I wait for you to walk up to me and crush your red lips to my aching ones
Feeling your hair between my fingers and the grasp of your rough hands
I watch out my window waiting for you to return home to me while I sit on my bed
Just longing for the moment when I first see you again

Humidity in theory
harbors images
of nights lit up
by bioluminescent flying jewels
that you catch in between your fingers
like a cage too large
and they fly away
into the sky.
The evenings are thick
with sweltering droplets
that hang beneath
the orange street lights
that cast a muted glow
onto your salty lips
and hazy eyes.
The day's steam.
And as the water fills your lungs
And as your clammy hands run through sweaty hair,
summer is alive.

Humidity in practice
invents beads running down your back
that pool in your shirt
and matted hair that sticks
to the nape of your tender neck
while you claw at your throat,
suffocated breathing
in between the condensation.
The days are layered with
mirages on the bubbling asphalt
like a sea that only burns you
and the yellow lines are
the only safe haven
when crossing the street
with just your soles.
The summer's plastic bag.
And as the sun blisters your skin
And as your hands only long for arctic rain from a calcium faucet,
summer is alive.

You don't know
just how you've
destroyed it

Just how you've
created spaces
replaced it all with air

Just how you've
let the dust settle
in between the floorboards
and our fingers

Just how you've taken
all the thunder
and left
nothing
but the rain

Show me the array of lights in black
Show me rolling green ribbons
Show me lighted, artificial trees that touch the sky
Show me the Guatemalan northern lights at dusk  
Show me Italian pathways

Show me sweet nothings
Show me secrets with just the touch of your lips
Show me how to feel your heart beating
Show me how to breathe in your love

Just show me.

I stand on the edge
of the obsidian water
that has pooled together
Touching the tips
of my bare toes
of my bare bones

I am curious
to see what lies
on the other side
of the water
and my reflection
beckons me
but it is different than I

I am strong
I am the swell of the ocean
I am natural
I am a petal refusing to bow to the rain
I am exposed
I am content in my nakedness

But my reflection is inviting
as she waves to me
to come over to the other side

I am falling head first
into the pool
and I feel every hair
being ripped and laid
perfectly in place
and I feel my face
become malleable wax

And as I emerge
from the pool
on the other side
I am gasping
My skin is red and smooth
My hair is shiny and long
My face is smiling and demure

But my ocean is a puddle to be stepped in
But my petals are to be plucked at any given moment
But my nakedness is to be shamed and clothed

And as I look around
a myriad of pools
surround me
with people
who are just as horrified
as I am

because we are not who we are.

It's coming.
"It'll be okay."
Everything is going to disappear.
                    I look upwards and mentally start the countdown
                                                       10...9...8...
"Don't look at it. Look at me. You look at me."
Everything is going to end.
                                            I feel it getting closer
                                                        7...6...5...
"We'll be alright, I promise."
I'm still scared.*
                                                  It's almost near
                                                        4...3...2...
"Don't be."
                     We are crying as I leave him to get on my flight
                                                             1
               Like a nuclear bomb, the 8 am left devastation in its wake
                                           and we are torn apart.

It creeps up on the land like a cloudless sunrise
Spreading its tendrils of ice ridden air
Gracing the leaves like a wisp, finer than smoke
The leaves turn to red, brown, and gold
As if kissed by the sun itself
They fall from their life
Settling upon the ground, waiting
For someone to walk by but yet
Turn around, giving a second glance
To pounce on the foliage
To relish in the satisfying crunch
Autumn is here, autumn has come
Named rightly after the Fallen, the flung

I'm just soaking
in it
Just counting the
minutes
Blood stained water
             in
                 the
                      tub
It's hardly the time now
is it
When you're breaking a
little bit
Shoving purple fists
                into
                       walls
I just can't help
it now
You'll have to show
me how
Not to cut myself into
          internal
                        scars
I'm so sorry
that I
Can't keep my ****
face dry
But the water is above
               my
                   head
You could do so much
better
Instead you chose to keep getting
wetter
This tub has been keeping
                 you
                        in
I can't seem get out of
my skin
And I kept thinking where
have you been
It has started to fill up
              my
                    lungs
But you have decided to
stay afloat
While I begin to sink beneath
the boat
At least I can see you
          breathing
                           still

People aren't beautiful
We're ugly
With hideous intentions
Like insidious black monsters hiding our skin
Some monsters want to take that little girl
Others want to see ripples of carnage laid out in front of them
Some simply want to steal away things that don't belong to them
There are a few that are free from that murky black hole
They are like prey sensing predators
But always aware of the disease that some of us are.

What do you do
sunflower
when your petals
wilt

When the heat of the
day
comes down in
sheets
and the humidity
withers your
spine

When will you
turn
your face away
from the
sun

When I was young grass was a calm sea
The wind was a melody sung from breathless trees
The trees were like ballerinas, bowing and swaying

When I was young I'd travel by foot
Hidden dirt paths were roads to hidden places
Leaves were like a canopy of small wings

When I was young I climb wonky stairs
The inside of a rustic pine tree was a home
The branches were like seats and tables

When I was young the gravel driveway was a river
Tire swing was the only way across the flux brook
Rope was like a tether to magic, effervescent and luminous

When I was young everything was not what it seemed

Slam me into that unforgiving wall
Take handfuls of my hair and pull
while I cry out into the home of dark
Drag your rough fingers up my hips
to my naked ribs while I fight you
Let your lips find their way to my broken ones
Sore from having done this before
Bruised because I asked you to
Pick me up and let me wrap my shaking legs
around your bare waist
Push me onto cloud nine
So beyond lust or love
we collide like light against dark
Constant
Oh, how good it feels to have your presence
touch mine
We're gone but together

Trailer park, white washed homes
Spouting about god and his power
when your god has no power to me
So take it to the Pit
where it might do some good
or swallow you in you entirety, burning

School yard, miniature "angels"
Regurgitating your ignorant tar
from parents of the rural
You love to mimic the words of god, don't you?
But your god apparently has no power to change you
Irony

Public spaces, wireless platforms
You believe he will make a cleansing
of race, of gender, of sexuality, of place
Such a sickening person, aren't you?
Impressive hate, from god

Let me kiss lips that are like ember
Let them smother me like smoke
Let them fill me like air

Let me wrap my arms around you like a ribbon
Let them hold you like clouds
Let them bind you like string

Let me love you like infinite stars
Let it intertwine us like lace
Let it shower us like pouring rain

They're coming
The onyx hands out of the suffocating dark
They want to wrap their bony, jagged fingers around my mind
They want to pull forth
every floating word, every idle
malevolent
thought
about the impending future
I pull back
I pull away from them
I hide and forget

They're here
The onyx hands lurch out and pluck every stagnated
putrid
thought
about the cracked future
and compound them into the front of my mind
I'm struggling as the thoughts cut into me and
snake around me and
cover my body and
crush my throat and
fill my nose and

They're gone
The onyx hands have receded to the hole they live in
I am bruised blue and purple
I am bleeding
everywhere
My lungs are raw and rubbing together like sandpaper
My broken eyes spill over
My mind sees nothing
I am not breathing
I am not moving

I am

                             Fine

The gray is fading into black
Clouds smudging into night
Like tar snuffing out the light

I walk in balmy weather
as I see my breath turn to wisps

The snow has begun

I feel the heft of a flake
brush, then land definitely on my skin
As I wipe it away
pastel black stains my frame

And I walk along the grid of roads
My path made, there is none
Just the cinder
The snow of bodies
Cremate

The smell of chaos lingers
here
petrified in the outlines
of ghosts on the walls
Silhouette

The air is sludge
draped in wool
stuffing my body
in between
the drifting specks
Burnt

I'm so aware it's silent
like the brief moment after eradication
A pulsing sound that
blacks out
Gasping

Shuttering eyes, I look up
Noticing the giants of the city
Steel bone, firebrick skin, glass eyes
Empty as these transparent mirrors reflect my
frozen, sweaty hands
touch the soot suffocating the street
Wondering whose footsteps are these?

They are all around us
The vibrations of a radiation
that allows us to touch one another
like ripples across a pond
Those radio waves
are floating, dancing
across every surface
like delicate dancers
But they fly like shrapnel
Colliding with antennas
that beg for the wave
the rush

And I
wait for these invisible wavelengths
like those little antennas
Wishing I could feel the
emitting particles as they
pass through me
so I can feel your message
before the specks cram themselves
into my phone's receiver
like lost souls fleeing from the dark

But I am grateful for these radio waves
for they allow me a chance
to talk to you
everyday until
we no longer need them

The trees were alive but dead
colorful but dull
Flourishing but rotting
during the fall.

Cradling life in my heart
isn't my breath
isn't my need
I have clutched in my piano fingers
prism colors, shaped, circle square circle circle
Taking one like being doused in rain
I'm swaying
I  s  m  e  a  r  the rest into
my hungry release
I whisper my loss of feeling
Finally fading

That sound
that tinge of an uplifting note
the fluctuating frequency of a Hello
Unkempt time with every beat
Spindles outward like a sheet
of fog, covering and filling your head
Wavelengths of pitch can be a lovely song
or stabbing knives in burnt flesh before long
Words laced with nightshade **** the soul
Words filled with nectar can make you whole
Each inflection of the same word means something else
Each inflection of different words mean the same thing.

Oh, how they love the silence
They thrive in the dark
Those voices without bodies.
Poisonous, sharp
Spreading through rusted canals
Into that chamber, that artificial mind
They pull, they squeeze, suffocate
Wither and die.
They stick like tar, tastes sickly sweet
Those voices
They turn into words
Infectious

Why are you so
familiar to me

You can't know the waves
until you have experienced their roar
that comes out of the bubbled seafoam
or their intensity
that uprushes your legs
and lures you towards the setting horizon

You can't know music
until you have been pulled in
by the thrum of a guitar that echoes
into your heart
or the emotion that overflows through
your fingertips and your eyes
when the chord has struck

You can't know the sun
until you have encountered
its sweltering heat in midsummer
that fills your lungs to the brim
and draws out every piece of energy
through your skin
or the softness of the glow
that is filtered lighted through
the red and orange leaves
on a brisk autumn day

So why are you
so familiar to me

Laying outside on a spring loaded blanket
Underneath a dark sky that laid like a cover
With embedded jewels of white
Laying next to someone who shares the same thoughts
Like shocking each other with the same electrical current
Jolting alive memories, preferences, feelings
Laying under a moon set alight by the sun
It radiating beams of cold light
Yet we're both so warm

     Even though the time is gone
     The trampoline is empty
     The moon still remains the same
     Never changing, eternity

Sitting in a house made up of debt
causes me to recall times like bullets colliding
All those times I ignored the nagging feeling
of another episode ending, a memory forming
And then you were here, right here
next to me where I could physically touch you
But in that moment it was like watching something die right in front of me
because I would never be able to get it back
Because that moment is now a memory
And I can't touch a memory

I remember
when
I was little
I
was oblivious to the
monster
that lived in his
shoes
I didn't notice
or
care to remember what you
did
But every emotion went
black
when you merely wiped it all away with a flick of your
hand
like you had back
then
And suddenly everything was thrown into
hysteria
like how that F5 should have hit you, but didn't
And
now you are too far gone to ever realize what you've
done

Sliding down drywall
my body is heaving
my hands are sweating
my vision is leaving
The creaking of aching widows
slam shut around, around, around
until all have fallen down
                                              down
                                                         down
I dig my fingernails in between the floorboards
uprooting them as I concave
and as my throat become desert shores
I inhale rust and sand
as my nails rip away from my hand
My eyes shutter up to the ceiling
where the blood begins to seep
in between the hairline fractures
caused by incoherent weeping
I let go of the floor
and out stretch my macabre hand
as the rubies fall from wooden sky
and into the canyons that my body withstands
I let the red iron slip off my fingertips
and onto the saw dust floor
where it lands softly
unlike I had done before
And my salt water fell to meet it
as it slid off my chin
plummeting towards the crimson
where my nails are pounded into the timber
now soaked with tears and blood so I remember
Every time I look at myself
I see my own personal hell
as my face glitches in contortion
because all I see is distortion.

My mother once told me that spontaneous love dies with age
that boys who set up those tea light candles
let the romance dim along with the wick
And the girls who marvel over the fact that that shirt smells like him
let his love fade like the now unnoticeable scent
After awhile realistic love is what pumps through the heart
It's more Hi, how was your day from across the kitchen
and less Hey, what are you thinking about whispered sweetly into the ear
My mother once told me that realistic love is better
but really every girl, no matter the age, wants to have musicless dances in the living room
Or unexpected embraces, with his arms wrapping around her waist just because
No girl wants realistic love even if that's what she accepts

I know the angel of obscurity is long in the future
But I'm already there
I'm already there
You **** me everyday
and everyday I can't wait to die
Your gentle moving fingers skim my sun withered skin
like the pages of an archaic atlas of stars
Tracing me like I lead to the brightest quasar
Folding me up and leaving me on the bed
While I wait for the time you need to search
for your way home again
And I'm already there
I'm already there
Swaying and drooping under your presence
Like a flower drinking in the cascading rain
I dance in the downpour of you
Concrete is this
A thousand myriads of infinities
could not define you
and me
us.

I wait for
the golden hour to strike
and flood my room
with gilded lethargic light
but it does not come

I wait for
the stark bright white
of the many-faced moon
to fill
the onyx heavy night
but it does not come

I wait for
the sky to be set alight
by the glittered stars
falling and stationary alike
but it does not come

It's been so long

I wait

Wish it would stop raining
Stop humming
Stop thrumming
The crystals of the clouds
collide like kaleidoscope colors
as they melt into each other
on the rugged roof of a
dark home
Wish it would stop raining
Stop silence
Stop distance
The house is deafening empty
emitting the hollowing
like carving out a heart
Wish it would stop raining
Stop thinking
Stop blanking
The relay station is skipping
and skidding cycles like
the record player isn't live
Stop raining

Let's make like smoke and float away
Ride underneath the marbled sky
I want to see the twinkling lights of the city
Like crushed gold and silver they'll glow
Let's go to a sandy beach that's like powered sugar
And dance in the water while the waves brush our feet
Let's make like birds and follow the stars
I want to hide away in a foreign bed
Tucked away underneath cotton sheets with you
In a city that locked with love
Let's just go and be done with the present

She looked like death
Skin broken, bare bones showing
With her stringy long black hair
She felt like a cyclone
Pulling debris, flinging emotions out to sea
With her dark circled eyes
She moved like still air
Suffocating life, putting to throats a knife
With her cold, slender fingers
She smelled like chaos
Burnt and acidic tears, rancid midnight fears
With her cool breath
But she sounded like colors
Bright with sharps, dark with resonating harps
With her stagnant laugh

I lay on your chest and listen to your heart pitter-patter like the falling of rain
That sound resonates within my ears and pulls me
Pulls me into a chaotic silence because all I hear is you
Like darkness you cover me
Like light you free me
I lay on your chest and feel your heart stuttering like a boy in love
But you are in love
And what's more, you're in love with a girl who's in love with you

Time is a dandelion sprouting up between jagged cracks in the sidewalk
It is a child ripping that dandelion from the ground
Time is standing at a truck stop between here and nowhere at midnight
It is the empty dark and the smell of gasoline
Time is fingers playing a black grand piano effortlessly
It is the splintering of the piano string
Time is a fluorescent, sterile doctor's office after a collapse
It is the "I'm so sorry"
Time is the green tiled bathroom with the broken shower curtain
It is the positive and it needs to be the negative
But time is not the ticking of the clock
But it is the sound that softly ricochets off the walls as you lie awake

As if a pearl and diamond necklace was pulled from a neck
and spattered and scattered and thrown into black pitch
Filling a void so dark that it is in fact pitch black
The stars litter the sky with their ghostly light
For their light is a ghost of their forgotten life
They shined for no other
For no other was near
They shined for themselves to make the dark less dark than it appeared
They had danced in a grand waltz for millions of years
but they danced alone, in a cosmic working of gears
And when they die their essence is released
Their make up, their matter
Spewing their energy upon waves and waves
And then those vaporous waves become solids
creating life of its own, something rife for all time
We are a collection a energy
Merely essence made of light
We come from the stars, from the infinite night
And remember how stars could never touch, were utterly alone
Now in their reincarnated state they can hug, kiss
Be statically sewn

"Let's go somewhere."
Where should we go?
"Anywhere. Europe, perhaps?"
That sounds wonderful.
"Though, you don't belong in Europe."
I don't?
"No, you belong among the stars."
The stars?
"Yes, so you can float among the pure light of galaxies. So you can be among the string of the universe's jewels that shine so bright."
I do not belong out there.
"You're too good and too pure for anything this world has to offer. You belong where evil can't touch you. Where you can have serenity. Where you can walk in starlight. Forever."

I hope you're alone now
and feel the weight of loss beneath your eyes
Why did you have to turn into an executioner
and put our lives on the tip of the knife
Like a spyglass I see into you
and your tar pit glazed gold
You weren't what you should have been

When you painted galaxies on him
you didn't realize the gravity
When you nearly let me convulse from the heat inside
you didn't realize the pressure
I hope you're alone now
to feel the absence of what you could have had

There is something
heartbreaking
about watching snow fall
There is something
that twists inside
as the snowflakes glint in the lights,
as millions of them
land heavenly on bitter earth
The softness of the silence,
like every sound is suspended delicately
in time,
should have a deafening scream rip through it all
as if a slow-motion car crash just might
take place at any moment
because
there is something
heartbreaking
about watching snow fall

Inhaling cigarette smoke is like inhaling the sun entirely
It is like solar flares are shooting down your throat into to your heavy chest
But it is worth the pain that it gives when you quickly exhale the curling smoke into the streetlamp lit night as your fingers tremble and you breathe in crystal clear air
It is a sense of comfort
It is like love
Because love can burn your being and consume your flesh and your eyes
But love can calm your soul and revive your sore lungs
from that time you sobbed because of when he...
When she...
When they...
When life...
Love is like cigarette smoke
It can float and wisp around you and bring you peace
but it can suffocate you until you can no longer breathe.

I might as well
have no
concept
of object permanence
Because every time
I turn around
things keep shifting
One moment things
are falling to the ground
and then
every thing has settled
A tree
loses it's leaves
but next spring
they will have appeared again
A house catches alight
flames licking the wood
But turning a back to it
for a year
the house is no more
on fire
An ever altering
world
has no concept of
object permanence
because permanent is
is a figment of our imagination