"You have fifteen minutes,"
he says,
"fifteen minutes to write a poem."

As if it's that easy

As if the rhythm and the cadence
are moments away

As if poetry is a sudoku puzzle,
logic and reason

When in reality,
there is nothing rational
about poetry

"Five minutes"

I miss those days
The days you were so pure and divine
Not because no one had touched you
But because you'd only been touched by someone who loved you

You were so lighthearted and
You never said things like, "Its fine, I'm numb to it now"

You were so pure and divine
That's the kind of beautiful you were
Before those men broke your heart

And now they call you "tragically beautiful"
Because they don't want to break you any further
But they do
They do

Immerse me in your misery,
let your scars become mine,
and make my soul decay

Once every year,
We cry, "Lest we forget"
But more often than not
I believe it to be "Lest we remember"
Because intentions can only cry so loudly
Like bluebirds can only fly so high
And like thankfulness becomes forgetfulness
Like a paper flutters in the wind and disappears

We cry, "Lest we forget"
But what we seem to forget is to remember
We must chose to hold on and hold our breath
A shock to our system to prevent choice by inaction
A choice to forget

Once every year,
We cry, "Lest we forget"
But more often than not
I believe it to be "Lest we remember"
Bluebirds can only fly so high,
But they will soar with nostalgic wing beats
So long as they remember the way home

"Inside she writes a side of herself
She won't let me see
Such a hateful little girl
Her little book is her whole world
It's all there in her little book
And I can't help but wonder"
-The Descendents

*I was finally going to show you a poem today

I'm a young kind of broken
I don't break easily, but I break consistently

I haven't devoted half my life to a love
Only to watch it flicker and dissolve

I haven't drowned in bills I can't pay
Handing my dinner off to my better bits of DNA

I'm a young kind of broken

I break at the sight of documentaries
Hosting hate, disease and inhumanities

I break at hurting Grandmothers
Euthanized dogs and dead Grandfathers

I break consistently, a young kind of broken
Holding in my arms love, hope and humanity
But I can't handle it all, so I may let a piece drop out
Every once in a while
And when I bend to pick it up
They all come crashing down

I'm a young kind of broken
Broken all the same

All my broken elders:
Would you let me break with you?
Will you be there to help collect what remains?

I remember the significance of scraped knees and ripped jeans
the feeling of running, running, running, falling and bleeding
Scrapes on my knees were a tomboy signature of mine
The pavement, the gravel, the untrimmed grass, my home

Each time a scabby joint was replaced with a healthy little girl's knee,
I would take off running, running, falling and bleeding

At the time, I didn't know the significance of all this running, falling and bleeding

Then, the other day, on a trip to the garage for some bottles of beer,
I slipped on a patch of ice that sent me reeling and left me face first on the pavement
Knee bleeding through my trousers, I collected my beers and left

I spent the rest of the night drinking beers and taking tequila shots through thick layers of smoke
All while my knee bled through my trousers, stinging, scratching

I woke up to a sensation of pain
My leg refused to straighten itself out without stretching a scab, scratching and stinging, struggling to keep itself together

As the week passes, I cannot stand or sit for too long without my knee struggling to repair lost skin, tightening scars around a bony joint

There is a sensation of pain
And suddenly, I remember the significance of all that running, running, falling and bleeding

When the night breaks you down,
and the demons screech and scratch,
hungry for the darkest parts of you

When you can't help but imagine
a world without your broken mind,
blistered soul and shaking hands

Just remember,
a million miles away,
so am I

Imagining an infinite blackness,
while shaking in the deepest darkness

Together and alone,
we will lay awake tonight
and sleep the day away

He had memorized the shape of her *** roughly 6 months before he knew the colour of her eyes

Because you see, he likes her principally for her ***, naturally
And the logical thought process here would be that: this is because he likes himself so much
and he's such a perfect *** himself (the poster-boy for narcissism)
or maybe, he's just thinking with the wrong head
presumably, both

Because what are friends for?

so that one day


I'll be inadequate in fourteen different languages

I'm sorry
and simple
and stupid

These philosophies and novels and metaphysical equations dance over me and I reach up to grab them, and they smile and let me hold them for a while
Until their heat becomes too hot and I must let them go
Until next time

And personally, I have a lack of fantastical words and beautifully stringed stanzas
to express these infinitely genius ideas and expressions and equations
that I like to watch dance, starry and complex in the simplest of ways

Personally, I am simple and stupid
And I will write entire trash heaps and garbage dumps
In the passing time
Until my burns have healed and I can once again play
With the worthwhile legions of the dead, still greater than I

Did you know that these sun rays on your skin are thirty-thousand years old?
Nor did I

I want you to hate me

I want you to abhor me, detest me, loathe me
I want you to reel at the thought of me
I want you to think of me   the way I think of myself when I can't bring myself to love you anymore

***** and fallen, see me graceless

Baby, you don't need a stethoscope to see that I'm heartless
All you need are those baby blue eyes
They'll tell you the secret
I don't want you anymore
I can't love you anymore
I can't even meet those baby blue eyes to mine

She was sitting there in her grey cardigan and self-satisfaction
And she said, "They're going to be putting a cap and gown on a chair for him."
And I said, "That makes me so sad. It makes me think of our 8th grade graduation.
Oh god. That makes me so sad." picturing a freshly ironed gown for a dead graduate

It was a few minutes later and the kettle began to whistle
And someone made some smart remark about some stupid topic
And I sighed and I said, "I just can't do it"
And she said, "Jeez, you’re just lacking emotional maturity today”
I excused myself and avoided her for the remainder of the day

I found myself a few people I might consider my friends (if anyone)
I sat down for a minute and said, "I just can't do it"
And the one turned his cigarette-yellowed teeth to me and said,
"They just aren't as cynical as you, huh?"
And I looked him in the eye and he smiled, meant nothing by it
Maybe just, "Shut up, will you? Just breathe for a minute"
And the other, with his slicked back hair and Tom Waits voice
Said, "Not everybody can be a female Louis C.K."
And I smiled and said, "***** you"
Then I excused myself

And I found myself a quiet corner where I could collect the pieces enough
To hold myself together for two hours of calculated performance
Until I could go home
And quietly fall apart again

Tall, with chestnut hair and a native face
Tiny, with white blonde strands and Polish features

From the same womb,
down different paths

Their voices hoarse with cries of anger,
Yells, screams and miscommunications

"Go home!" she shrieks
"And you wonder why I'd rather be alone!" she yells

Everyone screams,
"Don't you know about compassion?!"

I am weary and old,
In an untraditional sense

Sweet sixteen has closed its doors on me
Yet adult eighteen is not ready to greet me

Either way, I am old
And have always been

Old does not mean wise,
But weary

I am just seventeen,
But the questions are ceaseless

Life scares me to death,
Time pulls me closer

It scares me to think,
"These questions wont leave me"

Year after year,
I'll be clueless and lonely

In an untraditional sense
It is lonely within me

Questions, which **** me softly,
A cancer of my mind

Needing no one,
Because lonely is greater
Than human interaction

And "lonely" is "seventeen"
That goes on forever.

The gods gave you these feet to run, run, run. Walk, stumble, fall. Stand.
The gods gave you these feet to break, to heal, to wander all your days

When your pretty face holds those bright eyes to the ground,
Walk, walk, walk
They can't take that from you

This dirt road has been travelled
But these grass roots are waiting for you

When these feet can take no more, the gods will call you home
Still but ever-moving,
You are the wanderer
The gods wait to meet the hands that match those feet

you knew I loved that song
because it was all about ******* up
******* up repeatedly
which was all either of us ever did
so you played that song
you played it loudly
and you taunted me

but we both ****** up
we both ****** up repeatedly

and you walked around in that black shirt
the one I bought you for your birthday
when things were good
and you still called me "sweetheart"

you wore it because you knew
just how much I loved the way it looked on you

you had more birthdays
and more gifts
and more loves
but you let that black shirt tumble dry
and you wore it all the time

and I wore my hair the way you liked it
and I wore your favourite clothes
and sang your favourite songs

and you hated me like I hated you
while that song played in the background

and you wore that black shirt, fading grey
and I grew my hair long
and you hated me like I hated you
while we picked at our scabs like school kids

I had a dream
A nightmare
A premonition of another dimension

I was in front of a one-way mirror
With my life's mistakes lined up against the wall
Dressed up like personified Envy or Sloth in a preaching play
And I had to chose which one I thought had been my killer
I had to chose which one I thought had placed me in the morgue

And the warden, the sheriff, the detective
The shadow in my dream said:
     "It doesn't matter much. It all ends the same way."

I had a premonition of another dimension
I had always feared it would end this way

He is King,
of The ******* of the World,
Hermon

His palace
sits nobly on Klatt Road,
a trailer

He is a husband of one,
a father of two,
and a lover of three

One is a Tabby, fierce
Two is a bottle, undeniable
Three is a snort, a quick fix

I guess I was mistaken, I'll admit, I was shaken
Quipping, quoting, "Is this all you know of me?
Living in a see-through box, you call these building blocks?"

Laughing stock, we're all the same.

"That's it? All we've learned? Trying to live the life?
We say we've learned all we can. How ignorant of us.
Stuck in a lame routine, living day to day, all boxed up,
We're playing a losing game."


I called for a help card,
To take me away

You stood,
Waiting for me to grab your hand.


Seems to me I was daft, I was drawn,
I called you out, called you wrong.
Never once thought of what you used to be,
My everything, my solid base

In searching, I got lost.
A ruckus, a mess.


Smash the clear box that held me apart
Was it all in my mind? A crumpled design?
I thought, "maybe just a saran-wrap reality"
Yet here I am
Treading on broken glass
All I've got is you

In this ruckus of a life

I wonder
do they not think
about these things
these things which
haunt my nights
broil my days

Conformity
Excess
Consumption
Purpose
Death
The whys
and the why nots

I wonder
do they not think
about what else
this world holds

About how what
we knew yesterday
we scoff at today

I wonder
what don't we know

I wonder
what does tomorrow hold

It haunts my nights
It broils my days

I see you there,
See-through Girl, barely there

you think you must be yelling

nothing but a whisper

See-through Girl, you live amongst monsters
and the real people question if you or they are even there

See-through Girl,
your world is whispers and monsters
and second bests and blind eyes
last resorts and second rate sins

See-through girl,
see it through the night
and we'll do it all again

If it pleases you, lock me up
Connect my hands with chains
But you don’t know
Chains are within
Prison is in your mind

I’m more free than you’ll ever be
I’m more alive than you can even dream
I’ll be just fine
Chains and all
Prison is in your mind

Just because I don’t belong,
I do things backwards, upside down,
I smoke, I drink, I do what I please,
And you say I’m to blame,
Because I paint my prison walls

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

One for the pain
two for the madness
one for the grief
one to sleep

It adds up
as it breaks you down
but it means well
it means to stand in place for all the missing pieces of you
but the truth is it can't

this cracked foundation
is patched up
with crumpled newspapers bathed in toxic ink

they mean well
the one for the pain
the two for the madness
the one for the grief
and the one to sleep

but the truth is
the ground is breaking
I was founded in swamp

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

Here lies the bottom line of your existence:

Chemicals
Organs
Nerve endings
Fluids

Dust dust dust
An eventual nothing

Darling, the way I see it,
what makes you worth my while
is what makes me worth yours:
at one point in time,
we will have both have had a pulse

My dear, I know you don't want to hear it,
but we're all merely specks of something
in the only everything that ever was
And eventually,
                  Nothing

Then, love, I must inquire:
Why do we fear time lost,
when time is only given?

Why do we cling to moments far behind us,
like sweat-dripping polyester,
enveloping ourselves entirely
in the absence of what once was?

Won't you tell me,
my darling, my dear, my love:
What's the difference, in dust and us?
Isn't it all just oh-so-inconsequential?

But what's so bad about eventual nothings?

We can’t hold a moment in our hands
a tangible something
But we can simply hold hands
a beautiful nothing

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

Ha ha ha
I laugh in the night, lonely and hollow
while the wind ******* at my back
"ugly, stupid little girl"
"simple, horrid little *****"

ha ha ha
please keep the ghosts away
they cackle behind my back,
but they won't laugh with me,
my horrid nighttime symphony

ha ha ha
darkness fills my bones

You want me in your lustful way
You want me in my playful debate

But I wanted you to not just want me
     I wanted you to need me

You need me in the sense that I put up with the *******
You need me in the way that I can offer you retreat
You need me to calm your soul when it hurts to breathe

But you don't crave my soul so much

I wanted you to need me
But then I realized

     I never needed you

She is looking to her lap
While he gets up with hesitation
She is pulling at a run in her floral skirt
His eyes wander to those daisies for a moment
Then he turns,     & takes each step   further        further        FURTHER

"Wait! Will you please just wait?" she screams

"What do you want from me?" his voice screams... shakes.    with confusion,    betrayal,       exhaustion?    

"Please, just wait" she pleads through tears that feel so foreign on her skin

His eyes meet hers, trace her face, continue down to that run in that floral skirt
He has a nature to love, but a right to hate, to hurt, to avenge

"No." he says

And he is gone
And there is no door that leads back into that room, it seems
That room was a moment, and it passed
And it is gone
And he is gone
AND IT DIDN'T WORK
It didn't work
That floral skirt

You are a tiger
You crouch and wait to pounce

Hungry for a moment
Hungry to taste it on your tongue
To let it fill your insides

But the moment sees an idea dancing behind your eyes
and breaks out in great, thundering strides
The moment breaks away from you
Crouching there

So pounce
Don't starve yourself

The moment is here to feast upon
So feast

Take off running and clamp your teeth in now

Don't let the moment bleed out
**** it quickly, with gratitude
Let its pure grace soak in to your skin

Taste it
Feast

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

I have the world
I have touched God
felt his breath on the back of my neck while I dove in and out of the clearest night skies known to any man, living or dead
I have drank euphoria down with certain privilege

and here I stand in the middle of this hot room,
sweat marks lining a ***** and greyed night shirt
legs wrapped in clinging and cheap black fabric
covered in dog hairs, cat fur and spilt milk
I can smell it souring with my negligence

I stand here sweating, shaking
I repeat
over and over and over
"I need a doctor"
"I need a doctor"
"I need a doctor"
"I need a doctor"
"I need a doctor"

I cannot stop

and my chest will not do me the the honour
to heave with tears and gasps
draining itself of sickness

it is wound like an overcompensating clock
around itself
and collapsing into me
surely
and too quickly

I stand here
I watch my oily, reddening face bring swollen eyes that modest salted water drips from,
slowly
like an unkept tap

I need a doctor
my mind has collapsed onto itself
a Victorian home with roaches climbing in and out of softened floorboards
a feast on what remains

Sing me pretty words
I know you can

Sing me pretty words that close my eyes
Sing me pretty words that shut me up
Pretty words which stitch my cuts

I want to hear your easy voice
I want to feel the world fall asleep

Sing me pretty words

Sing of Saturdays slept away
Sing of patient ocean tides
Sing of... baby blue and lavender

Please, please, please

Sing about the little things
Sing me simple songs

Please, please, please

Just sing me pretty words

Some nights I drown in poetry
Its watery depths fill me whole
It sloshes around inside of me
Cleaning me up for tomorrow

Some nights I'm not ready for poetry
I am a helpless child sobbing alone
Gasping for the air I crave to make me whole
Drawing breaths to fill me for a cleaner dawn

Feed me your lines, about darkness and despair
And the tragedy you claim, that your heart still pumps and your chest still heaves and your eyes still flutter

Oh, give me dark, raw poetry and tell me that my blood is beautiful on bedsheets


Are you sure you want to do that?
The way you lace those black words together puppeteers my hands, tying nooses with the romance of it all

Keep going, tell your fellow crying souls that one dance with the Reaper is greater than what comes without the knife

Hear me just this once:
There are fine lines in life, like fine lines on our wrists, so dance along them carefully, thoughtfully
There is nothing tragically beautiful about my mother finding my cold, dead corpse
Will you romanticize my mother's tears in the moments after she finds me?
Tell me that it's all so beautiful, then?
Are you sure you want to do that?
Do you feel like a literary genius now?

Don't hold my deepest horrors in your hands and fold them into stories

I am not so much scared of the dark
even the light
tis the shadows

Stretched
and contorted
and never true

The sun decides how big
or how small
the shadow will be

The sun decides
what I see

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

Late tonight in this room's dark corner
a mosquito buzzes and hums desperately
frantically looking for light      for precious escape,
the buzzing noise slowly unhinging my own sanity,
and I contemplate standing on the tips of my toes,
balancing myself on cream coloured bedsheets,
and closing my fist around its last vital moments


and suddenly I realize    I couldn't bare to end it all
to do the one thing which could leave me to rest      so,
I'll leave it to fall to solitary madness in the corner

When will you learn
to stop giving pieces of your heart away

To girls who want the whole thing

When will you learn
there have been two girls
who should have, could have
would have saved you from yourself

Had you not hated them for seeing through you
you and the *******

When will you learn
that you’re angry because you don’t know what else to be
and you’re alone because you hold the hands of the wrong girls
while you’re thinking of the right ones

I don't have a tragedy
merely a mind that's gone to hell
far before its time

And then I think,
"maybe that's why Bukowski drank"
because he had a quick tongue
but all poets need a story

I write ****** poems
& I think ****** things
I float around half-dead
& sometimes I wish I was
(full-throttle ashes, that is)
But if you're looking
For someone so sad
So so sad, sad as you
I think it's me
If you're looking
For a reason
To stay a while longer
Let it be me

This is it,
Don't you see?
Someone who thinks
You're so so sad
Sad as me
But I want to hold your heart
Feel it beat and race
I want to let you know
Dearest stranger, dearest strangers,
Hoping to see you smile
Is my reason
To stay a while longer

I took a sleeping pill with a glass of wine.
I shut my eyes; it's a quarter past nine.
And in these four walls I hear the whispers of a ghostly queen.
She wants me dead, she wants my head, she'd even take my spleen.

Nobody wants me around. I'm a drag, I'm a bore, I'm just empty.
But even then, the Ghostly Queen can't have me.

And the devil's sneaking up on me, as the sun slides away.
I just want to close my eyes, and rest for a little while.
It seems the devil don't care, he can play this game all night.
Even when I do sleep, he runs through my dreams.
And all night, I toss and turn,
Yes, all night, I swear the devil's in my dreams.

Between Lucifer and the Queen, I lay silent; it's 10:15.

God, you've got those eyes
I ******* hate those eyes
The way they hold mine
The way they know me
Trace me

You've got those eyes
That see more than I want them to
You've got eyes that know me
You've got eyes that scare me
Light up when they see me
I ******* hate those eyes

I'm in love with the way the world keeps turning,
and letting me fumble over and over again, back into your arms

I kind of like the way you stumble as you catch me
it's familiar, and it's you
and it's your trembling hands I love

I feel as if the gin is never really the culprit with you and I,
we're ocean waves, meant to crash into each other endlessly

and these four left feet stumble back to dance this silly dance
but I like this silly dance, and it's your trembling hands I love

Poetry terrifies me
Oh god it scares me to death
Because when I read my own
I see how I never knew I saw myself

Pardon me in my attempts to shovel through the ******* alone
if only I could read enough books to become the great Athena,
listen to enough Patti Smith so that I could slowly slip into her shadow,
or walk enough paths so as to become so rugged yet feminine as Mother Earth herself

if only I could know all, be all, see all
if only I could accept happiness like I accept sweet kisses,
each always turning sour, anyhow

Ignorant, clueless, helpless, I stand with feet on coals

I want to set off running
preferably before these volcanos erupt
and I'm cloaked in this archaic ash forevermore
Stuck holding fast to a pose so foreign to my own heartbeat

I want to set off running
Arms open to the greenest of leaves
and coolest of falling raindrops
Like a tigress on a mission,
Leaping into certain life

I want to take off running
I want these two feet to carry me somewhere that I don't feel so huge and clumsy, but small, with fingertips cradling grinning vibrations that travel with a touch

I want to take off running
into the pages of science fiction books
onto strange and foreign planets
have their creatures pick apart my stagnant brain
I want to be turned, insides out, by aliens

I plan to run until my legs give out,
until there are no planets, no stars, no more books to host me
until my arms are full with words and wisdoms,
and my lungs collapse, exalted

……..

I always saw a beauty in dried roses
They know they are lifeless, yet they hold
darkening and toughening, beautiful in death
with reds darker still, and romance tangible