Killing myself on carrot flesh as I lie sickly
in a cloud bed of pollution and distaste.
Man-made things.
All man-made things.

I don't know which was worse:
the hook jammed into my dad's eyelid
or that the suffering of other beings,
of fish
is a respectable pastime.
It's entertainment.
Our parents may as well still be kids
but even some kids can understand the significance
of compassion and respect.
But nothing ever comes out of that
out of them,
out of it.
No one chooses to understand.

You've got a lot of heart, kid
It's just on the wrong side of the line
You've got a bit of soul too,
It's just hanging by your side
In a basket you rejected at 13
Hoping no one would ever see it
Under the 6 wool blankets
you believed into existence
You stole them from the supermarket
Down the street
Threw them in a bag
of rocks and switchblades
You collected with your friends
And with your hate
It all leads down a sunlit trail
To a point on the clock
where the second hand determines your death,
and if it stops, so do you.
But can you tell me,
Is it worth it?

Listen to the whispers of the A/C unit
Humming out a D,
Or a headache
Just solid enough to hear from across the room.
But I don't listen to you.
Or any of your costly fabricated words
Telling me I've got something wrong
Behind the bridge of my nose,
bent and too deep.

I'm a perfect human being.
My heart's in the center of my chest.
I breathe in bad circumstances and exhale gold,
I make the patterns in the wind.
My hands reach inside a sad glob
Of green and brown
mud and roots
Shoveling through with fingertips
I pull minerals from my insides
And show them off.

But there's a hole in the wall there,
Somewhere
Brain-sized with rosy cheeks
Screaming at me to think my way through
The hole isn't round, and neither am I.
My palms aren't symmetrical,
My feet, no direction
And sometimes I catch myself in lies.

Often, I catch myself in lies.

I think all doors start out closed.
I think we're all gonna starve to death.
I think people only truly hate themselves.
I think worshipping the world is ok.
I think people see more than they think,
    more than they ever want to believe,
         and I think God lives within me.

A heart is a palm reaching out from the slots of a weathered man's ribcage, begging for the quarters in the hearts of strangers. "Do you have 49 cents so I can get a soda?" Walk by. Head down. Heart closed. Pale veins clenched tightly.