Go ahead
Chastise those who ask questions
Hang those who find answers
In time the chastised will tie the noose themselves

Go ahead
Leave us ignorant
**** us slowly, but surely

Human beings are a peculiar tragedy
We are only truly beautiful for our souls
But we hide them away
For fear that ours is a little too
Something
A little too
Anything

Rip me up
Break me down

Slit my skin open
Punch my eyes closed

Spit in my face
Bite at my heels

Leave my soul
It lies dead on the floor

For My Sister*

Doll face, what does it matter
if you're ugly as hell?
If you’re short or you’re fat
Or your face is full of pimples?
Why the hell should it matter?

Sweetness, who gives a ****
If you tie your laces upside down?
And your left hand smudges the words on the page?
If you break down crying at the sight of rotting road ****?
Who is anyone to laugh at you?
Who is anyone to tell you who you are?

I am sick and tired of seeing your red-rimmed eyes
I am sick and tired of seeing what they do to you
I hate to see you hurt and I crave the very best for you
I want you to be happy in all the ways you can
Let go of it all and crawl on the ceiling, weightless

Darling, people are messed right up
And we've all got cuts and stitches and oozing wounds
But don't let the bruised and beaten up punks
the privileged warriors, the wait-listed mental patients,
the scummy lost wanderers, the vengeful aching souls,
Tell you it matters if you're ugly as hell
Please please please
Understand you are so much more than a shell
than an exoskeleton of a soul
You are a glorious, bruised and beaten up,
Ugly, pimpled masterpiece,
And it's a shame that they don't see it

I remember when you were mine
Ha.

And I used to call you "sunshine"
Need I even explain why?
In clichés and metaphors?
Darling, you lit up my whole life

And now I take every chance
To call anyone I see
"sunshine, my only sunshine"
To cheapen out what it was you meant to me

Now I filter my own low light through anyone else
To disguise my ever present darkness
While you shine over anyone but me

And maybe I'll don dark glasses
To hide you from me and me from you
Baby, I'll dilute your natural shine
Or maybe I'll make you look into my eyes
And see just what it was your lightness did to me

I posted another ****** poem in haste
Because when everyone
                                           f
                                           a
                                           l
                                           l
                                           s
                                             asleep
I am left alone thinking of
                      THE GREAT SLEEP
And I needed someone to tell
And I needed someone to feel the hurt
Like I did

But it was a ****** poem
So it sat, unread as me
and I read Bukowski's work
Because I needed someone to feel the hurt
As the sheets itched and my eyes stung
So I leeched off his rotted heartache

Four years ago I started dying,
not of terminal illness nor poetic expression
about how we were all born to slowly die,
I died the first day of his last six months
and I died every single day for the next ten

This is four years later and Dad comes home
at 11:50 saying “She’s going to go tonight”
and I don’t cry
but I calmly allow myself to die a little more
and I glance at his own oxygen tank

At 11:55 we pull up to the home
and it is exactly what I expected:
oxygen masks and morphine
clinical and impersonal
next to her pale, familiar frame

And I kiss her softly and tell her I’m here
and she tries to open her eyes

This makes everyone exceedingly happy

The nurse shuffles in with explanations, condolences,
Make her comfortable's, There's nothing you can do's,
expecting heartbroken surprise
but the words are less than foreign
to this family they are home enough
familiar as an old dog’s bark
       all we can do is to hold her hand



Eventually we say our goodbyes
and I walk away waiting to feel eighteen
waiting to feel alive