The muse is a vassal,
she pours herself out with a smile
when all she wants is to take herself back
and pull the words, the inspiration she has procured
with her body back out of those artists' mouths.
the muse is an empty shell ,
rocked and torn, picked up and down,
thrown on the canvas by hasty hands,
sparks painted into her eyes.
The muse desires to be seen and understood
for more than what she has been used for.

buried, muffled, telephone voice

it's time to go to the doctor and get "serious" this time
now

i don't know how i got to work, and then i didn't realize i called you,
and i ate half a jar of peanut butter without stopping
,
    i started crying because no one will help me and my mind is telling me no one will ever help me.
one day it's going to be fine, but right now my room is on fire
and my throat is itching

what matters is that planes exist
and drugs can blip blip your brain
and machines w/ blue screens
make it easy to explain how youre feeling

what matters is that someone else will
find your pain and swaddle it in a blanket of
well-meaning words and youll still end up feeling
a little choked

the vice that sets into my blood stream,
the sin that allows me to sin some more and
comfortably sits just below my skin

to let me know i can do this,
and i can say anything, be
anyone. the bottle knows my body the way
fingers do, the way lovers know their
person's ugly marks and

softens their cruel words. it is my lips that rest
on a gentle edge, a glass edge,
and tips my chin to meet the encouraging kiss.

Picking a wound,
knowing you the way I did.
It was like,
I can't get my words right. It was like, knowing I
wouldn't be able to open the doors to the house
I used to live in,
like wine rings on the hardwood never disappearing,
ringing in my ears after standing next to the speaker
bump, bump, bump, bump, bump
I'll dance on you, make it look like I'm doing you a favor.
I'll kiss you at the corner again,
and leave your hand on my face
for one last time.
Pull away, knowing I will think about this fuckery
a month later.

He could lick my neck and
I would feel like a Rothko,
a colored, controlled canvas

waiting to be understood.

There are orange canyons
against a crystal sky that I would like
to return to someday.

Fat cacti sit amongst the
landscape of Mars, of
one hundred and seventeen degree
heat,

oppressive weather, like God left us in
his car while he went to do some
errands, and forgot to crack the windows.

I would still like to feel that once
more before I go on to some greener
pasture. Some Colorado spring where
I could believe in miracles
all wrapped in
gold, trapped in the bottom of a blue river.
Where I could start my life
over.

here, i offered a small thing,
a weak thing. a thing that doesn't speak
or move, but briefly feels warm to a palm's touch.
i offered it so slowly, without realizing consciously what i'd done,
but when i do notice...

when i do notice,
my palms shake as i watch it spill to the floor,
regret twinges all over and i
made such a huge mistake. such a huge mistake.
i took a chance. i risked, i risked because
life tells you

reach, reach, reach
whispers
don't think, do
paints a possibility portrait, makes you fall in love with ideas
and then you stumble through
you trip.
you offer it,
and you can't take it back.

Do you know what love is?
*love is red-rimmed eyes, bass line,
cosmic soda pop in your blood,
unabashed shame

She is a wet newspaper that you can't just leave on the sidewalk, because the headline caught your attention.
I wish this bottle could talk, too. I wish it could tell your secrets.
It's over and over again, the same dark haired man who loves good music,
straight smiling and gentle expressions,
I dip my hand in, smooth as a bowl of marbles.
I love the feeling of the eyes on me, so I make a disgusted face.

holy, your body
secular, your mind.

sweetness, salt. I am
so in love with your bite.

taste, tears, eyelashes
lifting to the sky.

my prayer, my book,
my legs, my lips, time.

forever, nothing, fever
dreams, endless climb.

you, the writing, the
records, the cries.

O sister, and young wife and her groom.
the anguish, hot candle wax spills like tears.
the older brother. he is the strong one, the family
knows they have won,
"he beat me in everything, he got married first,
he found his calling first, and he left life first"

guilt will peel you back
and expose your motivations,
your inner self.
the altitude on a high horse
will pinch your lungs,
it's a long way down
to humbleness

how did i get here? outside of the fishbowl
in the dark trees
in the scary place where no one can understand me
so it feels like soap bubbles are coming out of my throat instead of words
and my tears are making them angry
and my anger makes it worse.
too poor and
too attached to the feelings of lonesomeness
to run away

where do i put this un-used love?
i ran out of reasons to call you, i fought against it for years,
and now you know.
where do i put all of these tender touches?
my pockets aren't deep, my hands are full.

calls from dark cars, the fear that grips my stomach when I walk the shortcut, the movements behind me always
throw my heart around rough and sandpapery. I am tired of being

embarrassed, having to explain myself, having to ask for forgiveness from others because my body warrants these men’s shark bites, these fins in the water

circling, making everyone around me feel uncomfortable. If I could take a knife and cut out pieces of me to hand to every menace in the night who slowed down to stare at my moving body,

I would give those pieces to them, blooded, dripping, raw with human soul and expression because I am
not his “girl” and I am not “babe” and I am not “****” and I am not whistles from the alley
and I am not drunken breath on lips,
I am afraid

to bear a girl one day, and have her carry the weight of undoubted beauty, of sparkling eyes, of lips that sing and announce and scream. but I know her shoulders will be strong
and her middle fingers will grow to be made of steel

i'm imagining a hike in the Appalachian
next to pine trees and waterfalls.
my heart is a dali painting, dripping
goo for you

every conscious wave of breath
i'm wondering how you feel about it all
and i'm crossing myself mentally

because in 30 days i'll be in the City
and i won't be your wife in the forest
and i won't be here to notice how empty you are

Me: a tiger pacing back
and forth in a cage,
but the bars to the cage are made of bull
**** called "your twenties"

Not pictured: Me, waiting for the bus,
checking my watch,
caught between being on time and being
too late.

I stutter-stop, I choke back some choice words
through my small, off white teeth. It's 808s as
my heart beats, it's anxiety as a normal thing.
This is only half of the power of the Big City Atmosphere
and I'm already feeling tired of it.

i'm completely devoted to falling asleep slowly,
those 3 pm's, laundry mountain on my bed,
dreaming/thinking possibilities and plans
and too tired to have anxiety about to-morrow's
and to-do's.
i drift in and out of consciousness,
the upstair's neighbors' crisp footsteps
thieve me from dreams
but i always settle, and still,
and drift back to my dewy and downy snooze.

I have made a flight
to the shining lights
subway cars rattling and rolling
shouldering groceries with raw red hands
rooftop champagne sunsets

I have been carried by winds
and currents who
tell me to try in the face of failure
and debt and loneliness and heartache

I have grown and wrapped my
hands around the sizzling iron
held ashes and dust and let it fall through,
crushed the doubt

you sitting on the edge of the bed
polishing your shoes with boot black,
and I loved you then, so wise from the shower,
and I loved you many other times
and I have been, for months,
trying to drown it,
to push it under,
to keep its great red tongue
under like a fish
-anne sexton*

the smell of you, my long island ice tea breath, a single exchange
reaching over several feet
of club space.
i haven't seen you in years,
but in front of me is a young man who dove too deep in a concrete pit,
who needed too much,
who drove his mother to depression again,
and now he's smoking with his brothers
because his own isn't there,
because his own flesh ****** up and
has a baby now.  i wait for the red to reach my face,
the embarrassment of the reminder that i loved someone who wasn't ready
for my body out of the shower, or my  2 am binge,
or my breath

let's talk about alternate universes
a shattered mirror, shards scattered into possibilities
karmic, cosmic, inevitable results

one planet:
i'm an old dog who rests her head down with a sigh

another:
watching you making toast with an oven, it's raining outside, i'm a dying plant on your porch

one more:
we're together finally and i want you so much still but you somehow never satisfy me enough with your words, like bad lyrics

you know i'm in trouble
everyone does

but i'm not going to stop now,
i weave you into my mind's tapestries

i make up stories about us, i choose
you to star as the lead

i miss you when i'm with you, the parts
you choose to hide
you remind me to be calm and
accept what i can't see

but i want you to be mine
in all capacities

I'm a woman.
it means I am
crushed between a boot that smells of cologne and

asphalt, hot from an unrelenting summer. I live
in a body that

some cannot handle. I live in a body like italics, like windy wheat
fields, swaying laundry lines, like white caps on waves

The only thing I hate more than a boy
who doesn't know what's good for him (which is me)
is a boy who doesn't realize what's better for him
(which is not me)

I’m sorry, can we go back?
I think I’ve left my head at the door
I think I let myself get lost
I let myself forget myself
I meant to let myself out earlier
I met you to meet myself
I’ve left myself to meet you
I think
I’m sorry, can we go back?

Little bones,
covered by the tissue paper white skin,
is going to hospice,
is going home.

He is thirteen, with the body of an old man
and a frail voice that is beginning to
float away,
and no one can stop it from happening.

under the pretense of sleep
i lay down to be kissed and constricted

your fingers, the rolling docked boats
my mouth, the harbor

it's too easy, us,

and i want to keep it that way

Oh God, again? This unrelenting ache
for your hands and your wrongness.

Scraping my heart out with a spoon,

I've felt the under currents.

Looking in the wrong places for you, in strangers
in confiding my secrets, giving away my affection to
an ocean, an ocean, an ocean

What could I do, resist? Stop the tide of a past going on 10 years?

I hate you for drying out my bones, shell shocking me with a wave of nostalgia

I love you for washing me clean

for the next twelve months, i will become an open flame. i will spread my body, i will raise my voice, become a wildfire,
from the inside out.
i promise this to myself,
each tear that swims and spills is never again a sign of weakness
but an expression of my heart, that my mask has burned away to show my new skin, my scar skin, my healing.

when am i going to be
enough