pressing the tight muscles of my shoulders
hard against the stillness of the air

leaning into the melody and out of it again

my fingers not unlike grasping claws
trying to pull music from
a dead thing
that does not love me
the way
it used to.

you have robbed me of my music,
of the words that would
flow in elegant waves from my willing fingers,
refreshing as water but not nearly as
cliche.

the melodies
that raised the veins in my neck
when i spoke them to the mirror
and the windshield,
that left me breathless
heart pounded
half-smiling
into the beautiful vortex of my
spired mind.


they're gone now.


and i'm left with a dead horse slung across both shoulders
and an albatross
around my neck.

the sound of your laugh is the sound
of me not wanting to die anymore
the last day of this month could quite possibly be
the saddest day of this entire year
this has been the best month of my life and i don't want
it to end.

how
can time be both a curse
and a blessing
all at once?
i suppose it's similar to the life of someone
who is trying to die but keeps
on existing
someone who keeps the door for second chances
closed but never
locked.

one thing i've learned recently
is the difference between someone
who will love me always despite anything and everything
and someone who says they love me
because they're weak with word withdrawal and need
to hear it back.

i used to trust everyone, anyone
who would show a little bit of affection, attention
toward me. i'm glad
that phase is over.

a forest grows roots in my scalp
a baby touches the soft short bits and laughs
like there is no greater delight in her world
my spirit swells in her beams
i walk shoulders forward
collar popped
half-sneer that says “yeah that’s right
i’m a badass”
nobody sits next to me on the bus
once this bleach-blonde spent half an hour worrying
nail-biting, foot-tapping worry
before setting the clippers to my head
like she might hurt me
i intimidate the thing in me that is vulnerable
staple a wig to it, put it in a dress
build it safe bridges out of my body
so that on the street
the people who do manage to worm their grubby fingers
through the cracks
are ******* psychos
and i can imagine driving their nose up through their brain
without feeling guilty
or shameful
even though that is scientifically impossible
due to the density of bone
and this charred twisted gargoyle on my shoulder
who tells lies as long as the mississippi
like “you deserve this ****”
on really bad days my hair turns and shouts
“back the **** up gargoyle! you make no ******* sense!”
even when i decide to trim it
when i’m ****** out of my tree on sudafed
and haven’t eaten solids in five days
and it looks like, well, this
i am a magnificent peacock
swanning down the street
and everyone is a little bit better
for having walked through my glow
now if only i could make eye contact with the cute **** on the bus

i'll make mixtapes we can lay down rubber in parking lots call out our joy and anger which are almost the same thing anyway i will cry at night but you will lick the salt like a wild deer pepper me with small bruises drive in our underwear just to feel skin sticking to something make contact with your hair as it billows in and out of the car in and out of sight make contact with the only part of your body that is not warm stop only in small towns that keep their stories close in those towns press silky moonlight to the warm parts of your body like poems like slits of light to let the light in through smoke and eat hanging out of the windows pretend we are leaving crumbs to find our way home with but never come back anyways anyways

my body
has rejected me

too quickly ripened
in the scorch
i am twisted off at the stem

bursting
running streaked against the ground
skin broken by the first hesitant
scrape of teeth

the state flower is the dandelion
a persistent ******* who pushes out of concrete
lifts the earth up over her head
as if to say "look at me too"
i have driven down too many roads
where rich people build fountains but are never in
and have felt that i am about to be murdered

i walk to the top of mountains to pray
and cleanse my lungs
i give my jealousy and greed
and shame away freely
to the tiny alien flowers
and the ferns
and the cities of moss
and i ask them to keep the damp rotten bits
safe until i might need them again

an old woman in the city
gives three pounds of breadcrumbs
to five thousand pigeons
and coos as if she is protecting something
the essence here is grey
and hits the back of your throat like an ember
like your first cigarette

the state faith is loss
we bury our lovers in the mud
and wait until the rain grinds us to bits
drives us into the soil to decay
and become new life again

i threw the stone and it went however far
and my arm grew tired; puckered at the rotary cuff
like a cannon ball in a poached egg of oak sap...
i threw the stone and saw my breath thread
through the placid brilliance of immovable calm.
i watched how the aphids were gone
and kept a journal in braille and short-hand
in Kubla Khan's Garden.
i longed for the valleys i had never swept away
by descending from such heights
as i pondered the yonder god
of a misplaced
dream. so exhausted,
i stood in the damp muck
legs apart, straddling -
odd rocks and thin grass.
i wavered in the stillness
of ceased motion
and tarried in the Calliope
of throbbing in the Sun.
a fawn in the furnace
of a loving
lost.