Don't knock what you've never tried
Lock box with a heart inside
Six shots from a forty five
Punk rock makes you come alive

Black-hawks in the clear blue sky
It's ad hoc but you can just get by
On Poprocks and cyanide
Tick-tock time to decide

What made you think that you could take me down?
The method's flawed, but the strategies sound.
What made you try to hold me back?
I hope you're ready for the counter-attack.

Backhand and you feel the heat
Grandstand 'till you take a seat
Kickstand just to keep your feet
Firsthand watch you admit defeat

hung over
hung up
hanging on
left                          

                                    hanging

done and undone by
loving to hate to love
i can't do this
anymore
i am too weak to carry us

That day, I remember the sun
And dancing shadows beneath
The blue water in which we swam.
But tonight, there is none.
I do not bother with a light
As I fill the bath in darkness,
Knowing that it withholds your reflection.
I submerge,
Hoping to feel you in the ripples of the water,
Hoping to fall into your warmth,
Hoping to enter the world we constructed;
The one where a sated moon hung
Over that bridge, like an unrequited lover
from a tree.
It was there that I crammed each lung
With every passing second,
In order to prevent our last.
I am still holding my breath -
Though my chest cries out in pain
As time gnaws at each rib, starving
For ruin.

I am somewhere, maybe everywhere, but mostly nowhere.
Home is fictional; I am drifting in this city of strangers. Another night without rest, a candle burning, a boy crying, blood on the kitchen floor. I tried to buy cigarettes but my account decided it was empty. From the window on the fourth floor across the street, it might seem that I live a lavish life. I stay in Tribeca- I  even have an elevator. When I go out, I dress well. Beautiful people surround me and usually drinks are free. Sometimes they buy me breakfast or coffee or give me a place to stay. My weekends are often spent in East Hampton, in a three house lot that serves as a sanctuary. I go to nice places for dinner. I am not the one paying. I buy this with my silence, a silver tongue that keeps quiet when food and water are scarce. It's okay, it has to be, that's what I tell everyone who asks for help. How can I ease their wounds when mine are gaping, when I feel sick and weak and lost? I pay them with compassion-I give them kindness. I am exhausted.
I don't remember the last time I had money in my pocket or an answer I can stand behind.
This is what I wanted.
I kiss the man next door goodnight. I listen when he is sad. I carry the guilt of the woman I stay with in exchange for a corner to sleep in. My eyes are heavy with concealed bruises. My heart is heavy with the pain of others. My body is light with the heaviness of hunger.
This is what I wanted.
Will someone tell me what to do? Can I dream about a studio with a bookshelf full of my favorite authors and a man beside me each night? Am I weak if I walk away? Do I go back to school after a summer of travel and pretend that I am the same? Can I look love in the eyes and promise purity?
I am somewhere, maybe everywhere, mostly nowhere.
I am suffering quietly. I am proud.
I am absolutely terrified. I am alive.
This is what I wanted.

My beloved,
        The night is orange with the oppression of city against cloud.  I sit outside, staring blankly at the exposed brick of another building as mosquitos prey upon my distraction.  My heart cries out for you as I do - we ache together in the solitude of our nights.  I do not know of the future, for all I feel is the cold knife of your absence.  All I own is hope, hope in the anguish I hold, the longing that serves as proof of the intensity of our love.  Though I know we will be together soon, I hold our nightly funeral, guarding our ashes and awaiting our ressurection.  This death that is worse than death consumes me, yet day forces my face to change into one of complicity.  If those who surround me could only feel how much I yearn for you, they would leave me silently by our tomb. However, I stand alone, a woman with her eyes upon the horizon, searching always for her sailor.  I touch the Atlantic with the knowledge that it is the only obstacle that stands between us, and embrace it as a friend rather than a rival to be conquered.  Soon, this sea will deliver me into your arms, and soon I will no longer serve as sentinel to our funeral pyre.  Your hand will touch my shoulder, awakening me from this reverie, a long-forgotten dream of the past.