de facto fabrication just after the fact
the king mackeral always
dealing the blade to the sword fish
in a hasty attempt at drawing blanks
all confusion no feeling
the cowboys from those western films would have hated you
you could never tell who the good guy was
there's no duality only extreme alienation
and the tenuous fabric that exists between
man and everything else
something is always measured by the difference
it has in relation to another
the charisma from the hero
turned out only to be a severe drinking problem

a man of conversation
like a typical neurosis that's linked to

la machina de mi corazon
como la manzana de mi ojo

i'm a bug and the magnifying glass
is my mother and the hand that holds it is god
and as he picks me up from the pebbled ground
he gazes
but i'm too busy feeling the inadvertent heat
emanating from a palm that glistens
and carries me into a nightmarish comfort
of both unknown and like I have always been there
there is no start or finish
and i'm happy
and i need it to last forever

you took me to the natural history museum
the one next to the flower garden
you didn't hold my hand
or you might have
my hair locked in an abrasive ponytail pulling at my ears everytime
the ceilings were like giants
making me feel meek and important
in a forgetful way
the way you don't think about the leaves coming back
in early March
one day they're just there and you're opening the windows again
the way you're meant to
you walked the spotless corridors and I trailed behind
always fearing the immense T-Rex at the front of the room
that followed you with its' eyes
one blink and the head could swivel
the knees would buckle and the colossus
could devour you in a dignified gulp
ending at the bottom of a salacious belly
full of tender body parts and terrifying things
like men pretending to be gods
trapped at the bottom of a well
no invention of fire could extinguish that darkness
reaching into my pocket for binoculars
when I finally look up you're gone past the ancient artifacts
there's a grin and a woman attached to it
and I can see that you're nervous because your feet are dancing back and forth
from their heels to their toes
and the laughter echoes through all the rooms
poignant and full
each room has a theme and I swim from
one diorama to the next alone
I can feel myself melting
with history sticking to my clothes like gum
cotton candy falling into a puddle
gone before you can even taste it

a sink with broken eggshells at the bottom
skin turning flush red from the inside goo
always making you itch
because everything is so nervous
if it wasn't there would be no purpose
no jackknifing or tossing
no thrashing or abrasive arm wrestling
to feel a stillness inside your stomach
like an eye of a storm
patiently smug
because  the turbulence is never
in
only around

the debris will never hit your cornea
no splintered pupil
always wanna be tender
but I think brave is best

a plastic duck in the middle
of a fiberglass and resin expanse
there's still a swarm of water
dripping lethargically
down, down, down
as if they have nowhere to go
sinking but never completely disappearing

the tile is cold under my feet
no steady movement this early at dawn
the window outside equally
tells of a deluge
frightening even the pebbles that make up a gravel road
but the birds are frantic with delight
a screaming song that could electrify
a sizzle more than whistling
almost burns my ears

domestic life under a wooden roof
my eyes always half closed
in contentment or excessive worry
i can never tell the difference

a pattern of small footsteps approaches me
a mop of hair and dreamy eyes
always reminding me that this is me
a grounding technique personified

scattered clothes grazing
that curious part between ankle and sole
reminding me that i am here
everything has paused
there's no reason to look at the clock
what once was midnight could be noon

the plants croon as i brush
their dusty leaves with neem oil
drooling over all the attention
a freckle in my arm spends an eternity
prancing around the fact
that I've had the same repetitive thought
for an hour now
but we are alive
that's all I can know for sure

I dream that the frogs in my backyard have wings
and they fly up to the trees
in the dewy light of dawn
to meet their maker
and kiss under the canopied shade of listless leaves
grazing their backs
and reminding them of simpler times
down from the watery swamp they came from
their webbed feet leave prints on the bark
muddy and cumbersome
but innocent in their doings
a flash flood of lightning  awakens me
i'm laying in damp earth again
time to go back inside

my shirt barely fits over my stomach
my belly is a bag of granny smith apples
**** and plump
misleading in their sweetness
underneath growing ten-fold each week
all the different fruits for growth
leave me anemic for heartier things
tenderloin heart, blood steak
there's a biting pain on the side of my hip
that feels like what I imagine a dog nipping at your heel
could feel like
and I hear it
the small squeak at the bottom of a storm drain
a miniature kitten trapped in the middle of concrete and hot cement
it hasn't rained in months
and my mouth starts to water imagining
the dehydrated lungs of an animal
that's destiny has been sealed

i met you in the middle of august
during the death of summer
but the birth of my life
the leaves were just beginning to turn
the shade of mustard
of my favorite yellow
the specks of gold inside the dog of my childhood
and you were a melancholy prince
a monsoon of everything I was always too busy looking elsewhere for
always on the cusp
now before my eyes it was terrifying  
I was too busy in my own sadness
always teetering on the verge of the roof
more mosquito bite than girl
when they asked why I was always writing
what could I write about if I wasn't ever talking to people
no sensory experiences but the ones I imagined
a shyness of a body
a flushing fever of a person
how could I explain
spill onto the kitchen sink gripping strangers' shoulders
crying I was in love with everything
and could that be such a bad thing
I didn't want to be a wound
but there we were
stealing groceries from the store and never sleeping
inside a romantic cocoon
I would go anywhere with you
be your favorite friend
a favored nervousness inside the pit of your amygdala
if you wanted me to

a spit pact by the cul-de-sac
of your old house
the yard was always perfect
but the shingles trembled
and the roof always felt like it might fall
you told me not to worry
that saliva is thicker than blood
and once the home is ruined
you'll still remember me
as one of the good girls
as one of the good girls

you wore acrylic nails that scratched the back of my neck
because you said it made you feel older
and your green poppy dress always blended
in with the backyard trees
while you smoked foreign substances
from an old lipstick case you carved out
and it was all so feminine
and all so beautiful
but I could never get high enough  
so I had to pretend that everything
felt as far away as climbing the skyscrapers in downtown

your laugh always bordered on cackling
and you promised that when our paths diverted
and they would
to remember
that hotel rooms should never feel like people
and that some men are strange
under different lighting
and to always close my eyes when crossing the street
and maybe I would survive
and I said
yes yes yes
I understand I say like I understood

when you got a scrape on your knee
you told me sometimes you wished
you could be as weightless
to never disrupt any floorboards
or understand the gravity
of heaviness
you look at me
and I'm envious of your curls
and I can tell by the way you straighten them
to the point of abuse
that you envy mine

there is a moth that resides on my bedside table
inside the warm lamp like a womb
like an endearing cozy hand
reaching for your face in the middle of a frozen hysteria
he rises from his bed of light every night
a bottom floor full of mirth and fuzz
ready to relay the songs of his memories
slow dancing in the small space of my room like he's memorized where the floor slants and what parts creak
his mouth moves in a jagged frenzy and I am devoured inside the falsetto of a pregnant hum so constant my breathing loops in significant O's
he waits for my eyes to close so that his wings open up
moving the dust to gather itself and move to another part of the house
the fluttering in sync with the wavering of the hypnotic sound waves
the antennae sighing along with the mist outside slowly forming on the windowsill
my head becomes a hot sun and as the beads of sweat trickle he moves closer until he reaches with spindly legs
drying the perspiration from my forehead with a tongue that shushes me to sleep until I am still in a cocoon of silk
telling me that want and need are always the same things
always the same things

i cut the envelopes that come in through my mailbox with the jagged edges of my front teeth
women used to chew their umbilical cord after birth
and my mother tied my hair in the same ponytail the entirety of my girlhood
the elastic snapping a couple times a day
because the girth of hair was always too thick
and I envied the women with thin, silky hair
the kind that didn't snap or break
split in two like my lip in the winter
or when hitting the pavement

years later when I became bored with everything
everyone I knew was in love with
I became queen of abandoning all in a jiffy
sobering up and growing up
the more I went up
the easier it became to be simple and dumb

so cut my tongue-tie
leave me in the dark
i'll never be middle class
as you explain poverty to me in your fake squalor
I understand that one day you'll eventually
move back to your parents' wealth
and my sun will be hotter

I'll quit my job and live in between different parks
with similar names and the birds that always remember your
face but they have so many
your head becomes a scrambled egg
you'll listen to my songs
but that's only because
you want to believe they're about you

it's liquid gold
when everyone is defined by what kind of milk they drink

I'm sitting under a canopy of dark green leaves
I don't recognize the breed
You come forward and tell me that a new law has already been discovered
What goes up must eventually come down
The first time I recited one of my poems aloud I drove through the page leaving skid marks shaped like tongue twisters
No one paid attention and when I stepped off to catch my breath I threw up a mouthful of apple seeds that I later dug into the backyard
I moved out before i saw any growth but I promise something rose from the dirt, crooked and shy at first
A medley of anxious nail-biting and approval-seeking
I once knew the secret, the all note worthy testimonial to a meaningful life
But the soup has grown timid and uncertain of where it will go when it no longer holds anything
A toothbrush is born from underneath my skirt
is this cleaning the slate?

An artist too lazy to make any art
So what am I?
The sleepy commitment holding your hand in public places
An enormous gratitude lounging in between spaces with a stain on her shirt
Always seeking to be the next big thing

A stoic
Unable to process any other philosophy
that doesn't kiss me when I'm nervous
Lights turning on in the afternoon
And the warm glow of knowing people are inside
There
Ready to open up the door and invite you into the individual smells that occupy their reality

I am I-don't-remember-the-city-anymore girl
Sterile buildings and antiseptic coast
Are both memory and fiction
I am everything's-sort-of-familiar and yet exactly obscure
A contrarian careful to never admit that everything
Will make sense with enough persuasion
In the corners of my mind sits a woman
Smoothing out creases of my brain like the folds on bed sheets
Or the wrinkles in a shirt
And I allow her to because I love her
And I believe that what she does is affection
And maybe I'm right
Or maybe I'm wrong and I was never an artist
But something else entirely because that's so much easier

the sun rises out of your pocket
that's how I've always known it
you empty the lint along with the golden threads
and weave them gently into my sleep addled eyes
when I wake, you're gone
but I know you've been there
I can tell by the way the chair is facing the opposite wall
the shoes on the floor have taken the shape of the last step you took
and your ghostly perfume still lingers as a full figure of air
dashing through the vents just to come out the other side
full-fledged and yet fleeting as I make my breakfast
you rattle the walls and that's how I know it's time to take out the trash
the black vinyl plastic bags seem to melt under the heat
just as I do when you tell me that love is problematic
but you've always been resourceful

where do mattresses go when they leave your home?
do they hitch a ride back to Oregon
that place that you only pitched as an idea for a funny road trip
but never actualized
instead the map with all the pins of the places you've visited
has become the places you'll go and now it's slanting askew  
because your sense of perception is always a little crooked
do they sit by the curb of a dilapidated 7-11 and watch everyone
give them bedroom eyes
is there such a thing as pining or are we naturally drawn to the new?
something foreign that can be learned with time and patience
but the patience runs out like the water in the bag where that fish you won at the fair came in
and when you got home there was only plastic and the rubbery upside down belly of fish scales in an airless vacuum

do they enter through the window and shimmy under the
other dusty things in the attic?
Do they make themselves at home telling you stories of
everything they've seen and don't you wish that
the guests always stayed longer than you could hope for
but forever is not in your cards, it's not even in the receipts
you horde in the kitchen drawer
forever is stuck under the couch but you never check
because it's easier to just sit and think about it

the callous on my fourth finger has disappeared
when I attempt a semblance of a sentence my
hands fist fight with each other and i'm left feeling wiped out
like I should probably put the words back into my mouth
but the fluttering movement of my bones working with joint
leaves me feeling exasperated to see what comes of it
the knuckles turn a peach white and I can suddenly see
that my scrawl on the paper is running around in loopy circles
sometimes they embrace to create something entirely new  
they grab their bodies like they're nothing without the other
foreign nonsense in between spaces
but there's always space
you need that distance to make sure there's room for the empty
and I have come to establish a rhythmic
nodding of head
bobbling of body
lulling of mind when I interact with the dialogue
my hands jump off my table and lament that the writer has become too conceptual this time

watching the same collage video on a loop of
leaves drying up
snow melting under the surface of a sweating floor
you leap up to grab me but there's only a cloud of moonlight coming through your window
you feel the arresting tackle of all the butterflies leaping out of your chest with rapid eye movement like the eyelash kisses you would give the mirror
the fluttering turning their wings into  heavy blades that leave a pinkish glow on your chest

my name was worn out that spring and you never learned to turn the light on at night

i was born on a Monday
all other details have been omitted for their irrelevance
unimportant in the way the morning dew could have clung to the humid trees crying impossibly from the heat
or that on that side of the world everything was brand new but ostensibly old to someone else
my nature doesn't allow me to believe in the mystical and even fate is a faraway dream that I only let myself cradle when I'm feeling particularly whimsical
like right after eating a suspiciously delicious fruit or the fizz from my carbonated drink still remaining even after two hours of sitting forgotten on my kitchen table
the stars do not dizzy me and the twirl that you tried so hard to perfect while spinning me did not sweep me off my feet
but it did garner a sort of appreciation for the way things are
the way they have always been and in that there are little instances of magic gone unnoticed
I was born on a Monday
a casual work day for anybody
routine and abundant
auspicious and careful even in the way I first opened my eyes to see those rays of sunlight I can't remember but know were there
behind a curtain or shrouded past a family of trees
permanent

the magnitude of that enormous church bell tower swinging forever
under feverish sunsets
the mass of an empty stadium with all the lights on flickering waiting for you to break in after midnight
listening to the deafening of crickets come to a sudden hush as you walk the grass with ***** shoes and grimy fingernails
walking to an empty parking lot with only a couple of stray cars and stray cats
like lonesome entities
stranded in the same desert of hot concrete like you
under the moon you can be anybody
feeling the blanketed weight of a starry night drunk off little bottles of alcohol
when you come to reasoning the logic of why you were in such places bewilders you

there's mud on the front steps
the pools in other people's houses always seem much cleaner than yours to you
when you dip your toes into the chlorine water you think that only the extremely lucky can be devoid of dirt
the thought lurches away from you with each tide your body makes
and you forget what you're really arguing about in the first place
like a band-aid that unsticks when you're not looking
leaving an exposed scab and an embarrassing gravity when you think of whoever will find it next
when driving through houses that all look alike and the expanse is nothing but dry look-alike lawns in the middle of lush trees you can
imagine if you really try that at the end of one of those roads it will eventually lead you to the beginning of the ocean you admire so much
the gravel road kissing sand for miles until you can feel the salty breeze lick your eyes
and once again nothing can hurt you
and once again you're pure in your actions

i once saw on television a man taking a bath while a woman drew nearer and nearer with a hair dryer that she dropped into the water
there were wisps of lightning bolts and my fear of electrical sockets found footing
flourishing in the air pockets of a hypersensitivity that harbored phobias as I deemed fitting
that summer the thunderstorms seemed heavier than usual and when the power went out your nose instantly gained sweat and my stomach tightened at the idea of a tornado coming to sweep us away
into uncertainty
towards another state that didn't seem so heckled by natural disasters but those don't exist and the barren landscape can almost eat you until you disappear
you're afraid of aging and I'm afraid of not aging gracefully
everyone talks about how time is eternal but as I declutter my apartment I realize time can be found and that the ending comes when things leave a space

eating fast food as I watch you wear your old Hawaiian t shirt you adopted from the bottom of a bin at the local thrift shop because everything has always been comfort over style and you can't change now
a fry falls onto the lap of my thighs and you ask me when the last time was I used my kitchen floor for dancing instead of pacing around but my mind falls short into the drops of condensation sweating into a couch that I hate sometimes and admire for the sturdy way it always manages to **** up my back
I'm already what I want to be but I pretend that I throw around my identity like a knick-knack hacky sack and I'll always blame you for the aftershock effect of feeling like I've been spun in a tumbler and left to be drunk by the gnats you breed by never throwing old fruit away

the ivy grows upwards
clawing at a ceiling fan  
looking to catch a glimpse of movement
the dust collecting on the blades is only proof of it's constant use
propelling a back and forth lasso of breath and exhale

my body has grown since last summer
the color of my eye mimicking jars of honey on your favorite shelf
I used to seek out momentum, the tumult of a sweaty night or the ongoing pulse of crowded people in small houses laughing about the spilled wine on hardwood floors
I can't tell if I was ever that person or if she was a catalyst of boredom swamping my every decision-making unable to make one properly for myself

I want noise and quiet
gritting teeth but a perfect mouth
I can't help but think of all my bones when walking outside
keeping me upright and unbreakable if only a shadowy and milky illusion
those places in my mind keep collecting freckles of dust and the people I've left behind now have blurry faces and unrecognizable personalities
but where there was once melancholy for different times
there's only a dog pulling me forward as the ivy grows up

my mouth dries from too much caffeine and my head becomes dehydrated
a beetle the size of a thimble slips into my coffee and makes his way into my throat
floating into a tunnel where there's only flooded acid at the bottom waiting for you
all the music is beginning to sound the same and I can't tell them apart at parties
when they ask my opinion my feet vibrate and I try to calibrate all the laughing boys in the back of my head to what I think I know
but the noise tosses my sentences into word salads
unwavering in your methods the song never ends and the candy never dissolves in your mouth completely
you can measure the distance and the dissonance of the people you've met under your belt like a buckle tightening inside a car when it stops

catalina island
by the sea
philandering squid
my two front teeth chipping
on a rock out in the ocean
my mouth constantly feeling like a mussel
tongue wrestling
by the sea

the sky slides like a napkin falling from the dinner table
slanting like a wayward line that you drew with a shaky hand
the pills kiss you deeply and suddenly the double doors the color of luminescent moss turn into the double dutch jump ropes that whip your heels if you aren't careful but you're always too careful and you jump with the intention of never feeling the sole of your foot smacking the pavement but then the sound hits and your eyes open
your friend next door has greasy bangs and a mole that covers the top of her cheek and you're always catching yourself staring at it too long and you have to stare at the stains on the hallway carpet instead
but if you let yourself they all become old blood stains
there's a little baby in her home
a baby that has lungs like tattered tissue paper
a heart like a deflated balloon that hiccups too much
but the mother cradles it like perfection, like it can all be helped with enough arms and bottles of medicine each individually labeled with his name
her eyes are tired around the corners but you don't understand why and your brow sweats every time you think to look at him and you feel clammy around the edges
there's a night when you're woken up to screaming and ambulance siren lights
the dizzying red and white make their way into your veins and stay tucked in for years in a different city you can still taste the smell of antiseptic
when you come out to greet her days later there's no baby anymore and there's a suffocating silence
weeks later there's a small tattoo on your friends mothers' chest with his name on it
sloppily inked and looking permanently temperamental and you understand it as a kind of reminder or shrine or apology
you wonder if there's a funeral
you ask your father if babies go to hell
the television is talking about the beneficial antioxidants of wine
as he drink his coffee looking at the morning newspaper and never replies
the sirens can be heard in the distance and the morning feels like closure

i'm standing pale legged at the video store
the Friday's all coming to meet at this exact location
like a montage ready to collect and gather information
and then parting ways, moving into the local subways
crossing the veins of the city in vain waiting for an optimal stop
that allows them to step off into the sunlight
and greet fate standing under the crowded street light
ushering an invitation with sweaty hands as they collapse fully drenched

I can feel the air conditioning escaping the room
can tell from the way people are passing by, that this pause won't keep and I inch towards the old case that holds the movie Thirteen  
the girls with the studded tongues stare back at me and I am a mutant, unrecognizable in that gaze but still there's something that makes me bite my fingernails like trying to de-understand
the floor is gum stained and the lights are so neon I think I can fall in love forever
my shoelace is untied and the man behind the restricted area with the dark curtains coughs twice and I think
that the aisles continue even after you leave

clear gloss lipstick, sweet and see through
like you are, like you could be
like being in that 99 cent store for the first time all over again
and you can smell sour watermelon and plastic
all about the glitter packaging and all the different flavors could be the paths you decide to take one day
in seafoam t-shirts and tattered sneakers that bite at your heel
until it's the color of pink taffy but when you touch it something
bursts and you decide that skin is your favorite ***** afterall
you pass by the glitter and the fake flowers but waste your cents
instead in aspirins for your mother
but you steal those chips and that drink too and call it benevolence that you don't get caught
and you never will because you get what you give

In my mind there's a power that I keep by the shelf of books I once accumulated in an attempt to own everything
to keep something that would always stay, permanent to years
I never use it and at times the dim light from overhead makes me forget what it is i'm looking at
I don't touch it in case I've forgotten how to handle it and I think I may have
it might leave room for discussion or leave the room altogether
I was never good at piecing puzzles, the truth lying somewhere in the invariability of the same outcome
some call it probability or fate and fortune
it may even be unlucky
I used to be a woman who knew exactly what to say however poorly timed it could be
but now my mouth can't cooperate and I've forgotten all my favorite words

the thought comes all at once or not at all
a memory of something I couldn't name if you asked me
I'm in the zoo, California
my nose is sunburned
I'm walking through corridors of land-marked heavy handed people
as I coast through all the exhibits of animals
I spend too much time looking at the barefoot lion in his melancholic stare and I recognize something in it
he knows me through the crowd, there's a link there that I cannot grasp
not then, not right away but it comes years later in a bad acid trip I spend my whole life trying to forget
I can tell there's fear in his cage and the flies won't stop pestering
I feel sick and keep walking never looking back as the screams of awe and amazement come from behind me
I was once in terra firma too
the boy with the long jaw and the empty library after school that had only the sound of books waiting to be opened
collecting dust among with them, but also gathering knowledge that I was unable to use because I wasn't smart enough
there's a bubble in my brain where it has shoveled all the facts I am able to keep unlike friends or attention
i was always losing everyone in grocery aisles, amusement park parking lots and train stations
the unbearable part was how easy it was
how gently things shifted and sank
there was a dog in our neighborhood that was always tied to a leash never leaving the front yard as if it was part of the lawn decoration
it was always angry and the sign above the fence said beware
until one day it wasn't outside anymore, the noise had stopped and settled leaving it's owner to pack it's things and go
when I asked what had happened he said it had bit him when untying him from his post, shock and in pain he was unable to chase after him
years later in a different city with a different name, I swore I saw that same dog in the street with a woman walking beside him but he wasn't angry, the eyes were soft and the growl had turned into a delicate yip
I'd like to think he was happy
I'd like to think that there are always ways out of the leash

a decimal of time
wedged between a tile
of a room - unknown
it could have been a kitchen or the delirious floor of a bustling shop
down to the tedium of banter and the slow trickle of something like
a cultural shift
inside a downtrodden window she stared too long until she was
unrecognizable by her and those around her
disappearing from picture frames and unable to remember
what it was like to say something of importance
her tongue now a foreign agent unsure if it still served a purpose
other than being in someone else's mouth
her shirt pocket always containing something of a thrill
like pearls or cigarettes
but now there was nothing in those pockets
tea bags were now placed in jars and her nails never veneer various colors but the same **** that had enthralled her years earlier
now blending in with the canvas outfits she wore to be reminded of a hobby that could have meant something
if only she believed in anything

can you hold it in your palm? I can't stop talking about hands.
I don't remember the last time any other body part was that important but the one that slept next to you out of necessity instead of loneliness.
There's a problem, like a rock skipping into my neighbor's pool but it's not my neighborhood and none of the houses remind me of home. A solitary moment shrinking in shrubs when you know that the cars are passing by and you have no idea what direction anyone's going. Where's the destination and will they get there like you?
Muddy lawns and soaking sidewalks is everywhere you've ever been but you don't talk much about that anymore. Some kind of selective mutism that gripped you when you were too young to make decisions, just a bad joke played well on yourself. Drifting from window to window to see if my fingerprints stay there, if the future will break down the door and trip me with shoelaces that were worn by me or my best friend or by nobody and I think I'll understand then the most significant rule, you can't be in two places at once.

you're not alone
touch the ransom note
i have learned to become un-lost
the art of demystifying the weird ways that you can become kidnapped by yourself
you peel your layers
leave the doors open as if this world is not cruel
danger is a middle name that your 3rd grade friend once gave himself
things are different now, the stars
                                                        don't
                                                                ­sink
                                                            ­          in
                                                    ­                    a pool of
                                                              ­    d  a  r   k               
                      it was once so terrifying to imagine
what lays underneath and above
but you sleep inside of it, always have

The walls are slipping, in your mind that apartment is ever a reconciliation of forced adulthood and early realizations with the faux french ceilings and the off white walls, everything from the closet you trapped that cat in because it dug it's claws too deep into your skin and where's the line between affection and possession. The Cortez Apartments, like the last name you will never be able to claim because it doesn't show up on your birth certificate, not that you ever much cared about birth. Would-be apartments once hotels, now stripped at the turn of the century, my mid-century nightmare. But it never loses the gusto to haunt you in its corridors and I think I could have learned to love that but now things are less glamorous and I only wear dirt-stained jeans.
I should have used that fire escape, I should have climbed to the rooftop and absorbed the city into a jar that I could look at when I felt empty of blood cells. A defiant permanence, I can still taste the lead paint chipping and the exposed pipe but you aren't supposed to know that and why would you.

The breakfast chaos theory comes quickly and with no aforementioned warning. A hell in your stomach like an ulcer with hands now kneading your internal organs into bread or maybe as a precursor for the causalities of a lonely afternoon or boisterous night, no one ever knows. Suddenly the birds make eye contact with you and you are not the center of your gravity, your universe; your mouth is a beat off to your voice as if buffering, but why would it slow down? No physics to that but it's intangible.
Just a school of thought, food for thought. Sipping your stale coffee from the same mug you use every day because sometimes he say " I lose you in between conversations, as if you're not there. Where do you go? what are you thinking? why do you never visit? why is everything a plea? why is it always getting further with you instead of closer. closer. closer." and i can't answer that because I learned from the best and besides I wasn't listening. But I was, I am.
The breakfast chaos theory comes too soon; always hovering, asking of you to stop being that deserted home department store. Aisles of the same fun-house colors: green and yellow or red and white. It's a worldly thing, I think. An anomaly you weren't supposed to expect but now you have and everything has gone moldy.

the sun is my king and sometimes it asks me
what i'm doing down here on earth
i can't help but explain that everything has it's place and there are certain rules you cannot bend
i consistently want to have a ****** job wherein it slowly melts my spirits but not really
what i really want is nothing by the sea
doesn't matter which one
where i can pray into the sand
where someone asks
who are you? what are you doing?
and i can tell them
at ease, at ease
like that cowboy i remember from my childhood
this is me at my most degenerate
at my most free
but you wouldn't know
except the sun king and I

drive from the west coast and then follow yourself down into the south where the cactus mock trees out of their leaves and this is love
memories unglued and being put away into a box for the next move
and there's always a next move
a bluish shadow in the morning gripping the frozen wheel and it won't will to your commands and as you get out your shoe becomes untied with the motion of gravity? you can't say anymore nor that you could before
every day slips into your back pocket so when you lie down you have something to fall back into, so you can look at all you've done and smile "i love repetition" you cry
you repeat it so much you believe it as your eyes close
no one's there when you wake up but you didn't expect anyone to be
they say you should've been a songwriter they say you should've shoved all your hurt into the bottom of a well because it's no use inside yourself they say a lot of things
one day you're going to drive back up the coast and retrace where things went missing, where things went out like a broken taillight or a lost conscience
you're gonna find it and then the writing will stop

i feel like a tight string stretching or pulling
at times just going
into a single direction but the horizon isn't clear because
i'm watching everything from my peripheral (turn around)
days when i stay awake too long and my head begins to move around shakily, unsure and always unassuming
inside my head the dazed knife seizures into little misfires that guide my hands (hold them)
like in those Saturday cartoons when a finger is pinched between an electrical socket and the entire body turns into static, like a lightning bolt personified
but this is real life and what seems so pleasant sometimes leaves my tongue blue, like too much color
too much starch, saturated until your eyes water
and you have to walk away
your back was always the most beautiful to me
but i follow because this is what you do
because this is what i do
because i know you'll always turn around

sometimes i can smell gasoline
i can be familiar with the routine, an everyday
i could be here every day

my lips stick together
i step out but i'm back inside
there's an uncanny i'm waiting for
but i think we're the aliens we're waiting for
yeah, i think we're the aliens we keep waiting for

can it last forever?
life hasn't been the same since i found out that bees have threesomes and there are two kinds of males but only one kind of female
all the light from stars that we can see are probably dead
floating to make the next big thing
like the small of your back
or the twitch on that someone you're so in love with

everything is under the dirt
cosmic divorce
i'm afraid that we don't know what god looks like
and that he's haunting me in my sleep
waiting in every half-open door to jump out and say
this is it
come
back
to
me

former selves in the scribble of some crooked writing
middle of reformed books, evolved journals
i was in them and now i'm not
look
into the mirror
but when i point at you
its me that walks away feeling
at

ease

i don't know you anymore
but maybe i never did

there's a paradise in the way you say my name
   or she says my name or he says my name
syllables crashing like head on car collision or train wheels wrestling with the tracks
one time i brought back a starfish from the ocean
hiding it in my sweater pocket
it soaked all the way onto my pants into the upholstery of my father's old car and everyone pretended they didn't see
maybe it wasn't even there, maybe i wasn't there
sometimes ghosts would follow me i would end up breathing on the glass and leaving impressions as proof
of existing, of understanding what it meant to live with the living

getting home, unearthing my discovery in the bathtub
but there was only a thud, an ugly crash on the resin
the fiberglass making the death inhabitable
i wanted you so much you turned to stone
a hard shell of what i found so beautiful i could cry but there wasn't even a yell
ignore me and ill love you forever
i picked you up, cradled on both my palms but the keepsake was in the lesson
a memento of solitary moments waiting
shrivel up

my father found me or maybe it was my mother or maybe it was nobody and i picked myself up silent  
into the backyard where i dug until my fingers hurt, until my hands knew the brittleness of rhythm
i might have never stopped until i reached some kind of closure or maybe magma, a molten crust of hell i had missed before
my jeans dirt-stained and my face red from scratching bugs that weren't really there
maybe we met at the wrong time, maybe there's never a right time for anything
you reach certain points and then head back in the other direction
you bleed until it's time to reach for the band-aids in the medicine cabinet and call it healing
maybe i'll never know some things
never figure out questions that still tap on my windowsill demanding to be answered or asked in the first place
and i think i can fit comfortably in that, in this

i often think about the people that go hit by meteorites
how space shrapnel invited itself into their homes
took its' shoes off and shimmied into the floor
asteroid junk, hold me closer
tell them they're not alone
that one day they'll burst, or be swept
all just soot in the end
this dust, this sand
can fill up a city
i can be that city

how likely is it to be struck by lightning?
and will i be the lucky one
tell me, will it shake the truths out of me
will it burn my hair like it did when someone got too close and their cigarette got even closer
the way it sizzled and made the air hard to breathe
will my veins line up with the electric as if i were part of something greater than a body of earth?
in times like these i hear the word aha!
Geronimo calling from the light-bulb, brazenly jumping to enlightenment
a tiny revolution starting in every little thing that can line up with the other
a thousand circuits jump starting and brashly telling me to
step out of the dark
i could use a little time

when i was ten i discovered these books about summer
it seemed all the chapterbooks were filled with strange stories of girls finding their destiny by the sea as their whole life changed between boardwalk adventures and family urgency, like melodrama in small increments with too much sunscreen
something about one of them specifically stayed with me for years
the cover was of the shore and the sand dollars lined in a row as if waiting to be picked up or maybe had just been put down
something about them gave me the impression that this could be my life
an eternal summer that i didn't have to abandon, the book i didn't have to close, look into the sun and not have to pick my body up from the water
it seemed agreed upon that i could live in a continuous day
nighttime didn't exist and the moon was a name given to my mother's friend
everything was promised warm, my feet would touch pavement while my hair was permanently bleached
but the sunset came and shook my shoulders

2.
i stand in my bathroom
cold and harmless
the window is fragmented so no one can look at your naked body but it makes everything outside look like when you didn't realize you needed glasses and once you did every memory was post foggy
i could be a dying star or a sun brushing its' rays and you'd never know
sometimes my hands are so clean my nails taste like soap and there's no way to go about it but accepting that

3.
there used to be a fire
and if i had to give it a name it would be Frederick
i don't know when it disappeared or how it even started existing
one day someone asked me if i knew how much wholesale toothpaste cost and my feet curled, i bit my lip so hard in fear i would scream until my throat bled
but that didn't happen instead something burst, not a vein but a sentiment
there were theories i used to develop while i went on dinner dates
i remember thinking of what i now reference as the sangria theory
while we sat and ate pasta and i could feel my head drifting while his eyes sank into the bottom of my shirt
i thought maybe all the people that you meet have no chance but a say
all circumstantial until you find something that harvests your attention
until you slip past the underwear and then nothing feels important anymore
was it ever?
you go separate ways, separate directions
as if in fear of finding something too close to whatever it is you're trying to find because then what would be the point of looking?
there was a fire and now there's a glow and i can't tell which one i like more

a swollen finger rising to the occasion
rising to the size of a grape, purple
bloated like a stuffed pocket or pregnant chicken
green oozing out like the slime i got from the museum and the smell of rubber and plastic following me in my sleep

a ghost by the window slipping into my thumb and biting pain
the numb pressure of muscle tissue ripping
the phantom claws out and shouts that women are debris
swamps with lost metal buried at the bottom if you dig long enough the days become one and their hair consumes you whole

i argue with the shadow, threaten that this bruise will burst and blood with meet alcohol, an antibiotic fever dream
it stares at me defiant, like a giant pulverizing a village
my fingers wrestle and before the abscess can pop
the fingerprints unravel until i am nothing but thread
a coil at the bottom of the floor
a dress to be sewn in a bedroom
the shadow stand up and fits her bones into the fibers, a bride in white
the thumb hurts no more

an army of men
ransacked into a ******
part existential cut
part juvenile clawing
to reach
into an empty bag
where coins resided
taste the metal it left on the lining
i wonder if it will lead back
to that ****** lip on the 4th of july
a firecracker brain
hot-headed ready to explode into the night sky
just to impress you
i could impress you

a kingdom of rotten tomatoes
they spit their seeds for the harvest of tomorrow
one over the other they topple
waiting for instructions
"i'm waiting for the day to live"
one says over the other
one over the other

a red pool of friends
everything's my favorite
in between the cumbersome vines they hear
of the escape
the hand that reaches up into nothingness and picks the chosen one
ripe for plucking, into a palm if you're lucky
a unexplained romance to be devoured
don't leave us here to fall, they cry
berry of the nightshade come closer
their potassium-deficient king
is lifted from his ill-ridden bed and fed
feast into the sweet juice of a fruit ready to die
'a milky embrace between the tomato queen and i'

brittle bones
osteoporosis heart
pain slipping into the marrow that sips
the endless routine of motion
those clumsy hands blistering
into the open spaces of hollow ventricles
blood is where you last lay your skeletons to rest
but the closet is where i could lay down
listen to all the hangers falling into seismic harmony
until my chest aligns with yours  
like any other bruise by any other name i would have you
gently misplaced on the side of a skinned knee or
clenched knuckle
i am your god and you are mine
if i could breathe like a king i would as
the romantic exhale is caught in your skin
when the fickle violence leaves the lipstick of my mouth
you talk about the emperor mole in the middle of your back
touching your spine and how i retrace it every night with my finger
and it's almost like the heavens are here
in a small bed on a mundane apartment
that could be anybody's

the girl with the cupid's bow lips whispering into your ear that forever is in the drink that you weigh on the heaviness of your palm when you feel nervous and you think no one can notice
but i notice
don't look back or you'll trip into the things you were supposed to be falling in love with
tell me to rely on blind faith and i'll make sure to keep my eyes open during your family's prayer circle during Christmas
i want to open all the fruits you accidentally let rot in your kitchen with my bare hands and tell you that things die so there's something to feel afterwards
i wish i could explain myself in the same way a hand that twitches might also tremble and the reason is never very important
i want to package all the poems and give them to you as forgiveness
as an apology on too many amphetamines
like the ones we took one night and ended up at a desolate gas station and feeling that in that moment
all time was spinning in a wheel waiting for me to reach out and disrupt the movement going on since i could speak
but i was too distracted on all the candied wrappers with my name written on them
so i spoke too soon and the cigarettes fell out of my purse and you said that life was in all the lines in our skin like that of a tree
spinning
spinning
spinning

girlworm, you grab a wrist like you've known modesty in the shyness of a bare feeling gripped tight on the one offering it
tightrope fingers falling into the spaces of unspoken territory, slipping into familiar qualms like the worn lipsticks that fits the grooves of my lips like an object of my affection
knowing the contour of what i'm never aware of
anxieties creep like an overgrown lawn
these fears personifying into antsy women invading my kitchen telling me that there's not enough ventilation and the stove is on leaking gas into the baby lungs of a young smoker
and when i begin to argue they give both a look of sympathy and disgust as they say "oh child you drown so easily"
so i sit chewing my nails as i count the birds outside flying back and forth from their post as if they can't remember where they're going towards or if there's something that could possibly pull them elsewhere
my mind swirls in the smoothie of a plastic cup that sticks to the coffee table, the rings of different bottles painting circles for me to memorize again
my paradise sits with the roughness of his knuckles and the ambiguity of eyes that could know everything and i would set fire to the stars inside because of the jealousy that grows from pretty things being smoldered under skin
when i begin to lose my person, pale and shivering i go towards it
empty stomached and ready to be buried in the clothes of her
that i can imagine becoming the consistency of yogurt in my lap
kissing back my tremors as i lift up her hair from curious shoulders
dry-heaving the importance of the cheeks that feel warmer as they settle on hands that are brought together as if in deep prayer and i know i will collect myself again one day
girlworm, you're a swarm in my chest and i am me

under the algae
beneath the sedimentary substance of a sentimental
there resides the need to put everything into categories
organizing it by numbers on the top corner of crisp sun yellow manila folders with the messy scrawl of someone punctual but seldom in time for things

in the absence of sunlight i took to you like a lamp
the one with a warm glow and dust collecting on the folds of your body of ceramic
the more i got close the more i could feel myself burning from the inside like a watermelon containing meat fruit or the inside of a pumpkin spilling out onto your counter with audaciousness
sticking your finger in the warm gooey center only to dispose of the carcass without indulging

sometimes the left side of my chest hurts and i immediately think of heart attacks and a blue face

sometimes it's flood season and i see the bottom of bridges puffy with overflowing water and i immediately think of five years ago when i thought that if i laid down i could sleep forever and never wake up
my body slowly un-recognizing how to be the human condition

but then my lungs still move in my rib cage rhythmically
my chest expanding and contracting
the repetition of comfort inside my abdomen
and i know it's not heart disease but the fluttering of panic slowly dancing on the bottom of my collarbones

but then i get up from my bed and fix my hair into a braid
my hands remembering a pattern i don't have to think about
fingers nimbly trembling beneath handfuls of hair
and i know that despite everything

i would continue through and through
i would continue