Sometimes
when you repot a plant,
no matter how healthy the new location
   it curls up into itself and dies.
Even though there's
just as much water and
just as much sunlight
   hell, maybe even more
the plant can't grow anymore.
It's shocked,
it's stressed,
   it's already weak.
A move can do a plant good,
   but sometimes it's too much, too fast.

Except

Sometimes
when you repot a plant
it does just fine.
It hardly takes notice,
   or maybe it thrives
   even more.
The plant grows taller
looks brighter
smells sweeter
stretches its roots deep into the soil
and leans into the warm sun on its leaves.

being
somewhere else
is not the same
as being nowhere
at all

just like

being
loved differently
is not the same
as being loved
less

Words,
*******,
I still don't know how to use them,
How to use words to do my bidding,
Or something like that, you know, whatever,
So that I can tell everyone,
Or anyone,
Or no one, I guess,
At least so I can tell myself, remind myself
That I know who I am.
Or at least what I am.
To some extent.
Sometimes.
Maybe.
****.

Sometimes I feel like I'm in hell.
I'm not.
But I'm not in heaven either,
Whatever that is anyway.
I've been stuck in purgatory for eras,
Driving on and on but going nowhere
While the radio plays music I almost almost enjoy,
Cue twenty more by Styx!
******* get me out of here,
I keep stretching and stretching and feeling the burn,
But it never gets better.
But it never gets worse.
Most of the time.

Your ring tone was the only one that was different,
And every time it rang I jumped, and my stomach twisted, and my heart pounded
All at once, and my fingers twitched,
Stretching to the phone as I rolled my eyes,
Pretending like I didn't care, like dude, whatever, bug off.
I cared. Obviously. Or I mean, maybe it was obvious. I don't know.
I picked out the song for your ring tone because I liked it,
And I liked you, so it fit, that's all.
But now when the tune plays, over and over,
Recognized, familiar,
Formidable,
I feel sick.
**** you.

There's a boy I know who's smart,
Really smart, as smart as some people believe I am,
Which is apparently pretty ******* scholarly sometimes.
He's smart in the softest and most modest of ways,
With a wide, goofy, middle-of-nowhere smile.
It would make anyone else look stupid.
It makes him look like the biggest **** genius I've ever seen.
**** Einstein, this dude trumps all.
And we talk, small talk, loud laughs,
Exchanging witty puns and pop culture references.
Well, he does most of the exchanging.
I just smile and nod and agree,
And maybe I've never felt more stupid in my life.

My friends and I all went to this party last night.
We did some crazy ****, man, you should have been there.
Yeah? That's nice. Sounds really ******* cool. Thanks for the invite.
I do this to myself, though.
No car, no license, no social skills.
All I've got for company is a television and a basket of ***** clothes.
What a party, I'm telling you.
Well, sorry I couldn't make it, I guess.
All this technology and still I don't communicate.
Or when I do, it's the wrong time, wrong person, wrong thing to say.
So instead, I sink into my bed,
Laptop slowly burning a hole through the sheets,
Soon the heat will reach my thighs, but who needs legs anyway?
Sometimes the phone rings and it's not you, halleloo.
Sometimes it's my own hero with an offering,
A movie, a party, just a chat on the phone, anything, anything,
Anything to save me from drowning in my own, self-constructed pity party.
He's really my best friend. Thank god for him.

This was going to be about my sexuality.
Or lack there of, anyway, hardeeharhar.
Just one of those ******, whiny, common exploratory things,
Or whatever.
So here's something, still not about my nonexistent, and unwanted, thanks, *** life,
But on topic now, I think. Or not, maybe. Whatever.
My life is like solitaire. Everyone's is, I'm sure,
Or at least I hope, so I'm not the only one frustrated as hell with
Living. Or just existing.
Solitaire is dull and simple but keeps me busy enough, distracted enough,
But sometimes, even though I line up all the cards right,
There's some I still can't get to,
And as I get down to the last few cards,
I realize that there's no way I can win,
Because sometimes winning was never an option in the first place.
Sometimes you just find yourself stuck,
Sometimes you just lose.

This was supposed to help me vent,
Help me let out all the same old frustration, you know -
Why can't I just be a normal guy
Who gets a normal boyfriend
And then ***** said normal boyfriend into a mattress and has a **** good time?
Well all that flew out the window a long time ago,
If it was ever in the building in the first place,
And not just sprawled out dead on the toilet seat. *******.

Needles and spoons and white powders,
Among other things I've never seen or touched or smelled -
Such things seem not meant for dabblers, or at least
Not for me.

Those things are meant for stars, who see stars,
Whose fame reaches the stars,
Whose face is broadcast through the stars and back again,
Echoing their brains and bodies and all that white powder.
They're not meant for schoolchildren,
Who climb up ladders and jump off cliffs,
Who grow tall only with scissor lifts securely under their feet,
Who stand at the top of water slides and sit at the top of roller coasters,
Who're only as close to the stars as the school roof will let them be.

Those things are not for them,
Not for me.

But there is something,
Something softer, lighter, easier, greener,
Something familiar to most.
Called a gateway for some, certainly for the famed,
A gateway to the stars even before the needles and spoons and white powders.
There are books about famed faces and the way they wrinkle over the years,
About their cultivations, their migrations, their explorations.
Books of things they've done, that I've done, that we've done,
Smoke billowing from our lips, our nostrils, from every pore,
And books about how, with the same ritual I've taken a part in,
They somehow manage to climb so high - mimicking their fame,
they soar up and up, to the stars and past,
Through religious experiences, baffling adventures, new and brilliant insight.

Not me.

I reach that roof or lift or water slide,
Stretch my hands as far as they can reach,
Point my toes for that extra barely inch,
And, after such heavy straining,
Fingertips atoms away from the clouds,
at least the clouds,
give me the clouds,
I collapse,
Breath short,
Heart racing,
In exhaustion.

raise the glass high high high and press hard high,
a blue and cherry ring round rosy thigh,
snapped red sting of infected eye and tooth strung on string.
broken wing crunches, candid cries let tears fly
in desperate persecution.
red
sticky red and beautiful
flesh-fly's food becomes a diamond wing,
flying in swirling skies of glitter.
The world looks better through a kaleidoscope.

claw the eyes out out out and spit stress out,
a crooked view on nose and cheeks and pout
deep blue rows on distended snout as swollen skin grows.
drunken woes crunch and broken knuckles shout
in hasty intemperance.
blue
puffy blue and beautiful
deep stout bruises becomes a diamond glow
spinning in burst vein's woes of glitter.
The world looks better through a kaleidoscope.

dump the body down down down and pat dirt down,
a stealthy sin of spite and muddy frown,
**** green sight of a ***** crown hidden in the night.
swirls of light break thoughts up to run around
in crude decomposition.
green
sickly green and beautiful
dirt-drowned flesh becomes diamond sprites,
dancing in wormy gowns of glitter.
The world looks better through a kaleidoscope.

Honest to god,
there's no one here – no one I can think of –
no one at the table, in the chair, in the house,
no one that will listen to me.

And honest to god that is all I can think about.
That and my foolishness.
And all this thinking has made it so i can't stand to stand up anymore.
I'll fall, I'll make that mistake.
I'll receive that punishment, the beating, the harm.

All of that is just something to take
like a man.
But I'm not a man.
Honest to god.

I can fake it.

Faking is the best way –
lying through your teeth while praising the lord's name
in vain.

I do it every day because there is no honest to god to shout to.
But you just cannot believe, can you?

Such naivety just will not stop and so you'll stay,
eyes to the sky,
relentlessly pleading
*honest to god.