on the eve of the night
when white people in this country
pretend to give a **** about the oppressed,
we watched puppets put a show on
for all of the fools too ignorant
to really open their eyes and see
the strings that pull at their sleeves

hillary took her sharp stick
and jabbed bernie again and again,
who smiled with graciousness
at each poke because his road
is the high one and people like hillary
need to be half villain in order
to fulfill their desperate attempts
for the young people's vote

o'malley was like dust under
six layers of worn out carpets
hidden under newly installed
hardwoods making the carpet's
entire existence completely void
to the outside world

ah, oh right - o'malley tried,
but that's all i can tell you about him

at some point we smoked a
baseball shaped spliff rolled with
three joint papers and i couldn't
help but watch them all and feel
the bile in my stomach wish for
escape, the idea that an old
jewish dude probably knows
what's best for my future is
an interesting one

lately there is a storm brewing
beneath my skin, deeper than
my bones, right in the very pit
of my soul, and i can feel within
it a great and forceful change

i think my body mirrors this earth,
this universe, this time, and i'm
waiting with baited breath for
the next great shift

misplaced keys end up
in the space between
dusty floorboards
under forgotten childhood beds
squeezed into far away nooks
in attics filled with
hundreds of burnt out lightbulbs
in houses with endless doors
and not one single doorknob

i find myself within them
when i drift off under the universe
i wake with aching legs for
i can't stop hunting, though
i fear i'll never find the
secret passageway i'm sure
lurks beneath a stairway or
perhaps beyond a fireplace

there is a certain key that i
seek and although i can't recall
it's shape, or color, or size,
once it is in the palm of my hand
i will know it because it will fit
within my fist, which just so happens
to be the size of my beating vessel

i'll take that old, rusting key
and ever so delicately
stick it in the depths of my chest
i'll hear the creaking and cracking
and feel the sensation of a
sleeping beast awakened
and i will rise knowing
that i no longer have to wander
this wild world alone

we are nothing but specks of dirt
blowing in the wind, father and
farther apart.

and if somehow by the grace of
the current that carries this air
we are brought back together,
i'm not sure i'll recognize you.

stuck between heart break
and a deep sigh of relief,
i wish either felt easier.

sobriety is fleeting, a bird that flies in and out of my life
sometimes it lingers, but most of the time it only stops to say hello
much like the drinking, snorting, dropping, tripping, that calls to me
and for so long now i've been on this path
the one that everyone seems to see as righteousness
and yes, i'm doing right, i can see that with my own eyes,
but does happiness linger? no more than usual
and have i lost the urges that call to me, deep, dark, and loud in the night? no
they are louder than ever and i am compromised
because i am human
and as long as i have this heart beating within me
as long as the blood beneath the surface calls
to have some kind of cocktail poured directly into it
so that the brain within my skull can escape, or travel, or trip,
whatever the ******* want to call it,
i will always want for something
i will always itch
i will always ask for just one more
i will always desire escape
and i will always grant my wish to disappear
even if the moments are only fleeting, like a bird come to say hello

the stench of onions buries itself
underneath my finger nails
and no matter how hard i scrub
it lingers

earlier i chopped vegetables
haphazardly,
these days i do nothing with care,
hoping that one wrong stroke
will rip open an artery
and when they ask how i died
someone will say,
"she lost the fight with a bell pepper,"
as they try to fight the smirk
off of their quivering lips

and i'll be nothing but ashes
blowing with the wind
laughing at the fact
that my awkward ways are still
making others uncomfortable

funny how it ends so quickly
when the beginning seems
to last an eterinity and then some

all it takes is one missed foot step
or perhaps a mispoken word
or maybe just one text read out of
context to send the inevitable spiral
down the ******* drain

i wish that i cared more, that i cried
more than just three stupid, simple,
stunned tears, not because i have lost you
but because you have lost me and i
can't quite understand what makes you
think that i am deserving of being lost

i will stay awake and stare at the spot
where you told me you wanted to spend
a life time staring at the universe with me,
i will stay awake and wish that my phone
would vibrate with your name on the screen,
i will stay awake and i will do absolutely nothing
because the ball has been in your court
for so long that it's deflated and brittle and
all it does is land with a thud on the ground

i will stare at stamp ridden hands and remember
how you stared at me and saw nothing worth
saving or having and i will cut the strings between us
and wait for the wind to whisk me away

sometimes the cathartic ways of my slumber
invade the way that i walk this earth,
this morning i felt a cold trigger sit on
my warm *** as i moved 400 ks of coke in two hours

you said we should ban guns in dreams,
i said psyches deserve safe rest

the truth is that i liked being a boss
the feeling of that pistol in my hand was strange,
but the weight of a life seemed even more stagnant
as i laid there and lost myself in the life of a dealer

rest will never truly be rest for me,
but i have the luxury of dreams that will never die

to say my heart has been misplaced
could not be further from the truth.
i know exactly where it hides,
because it was i who put it there.
deep beneath the dirt
that crawls with worms and centipedes -
underneath the rock
that's laid for years and years and years -
layer after layer
telling stories of earth's youth -
down into the molten fire
that burns forever more -
to the center
where a chunk of ice sits heavy.

won't it melt?
you ask yourself,
but this answer i do not have.

in the ice right at the center,
that's where my heart does lie.
and only the greatest of adventurers
even entertain the thought
of poking into the earth's entrails,
where man should never go.
but most don't believe that ice can exist
where molten fire roars.
so they arrive there and are disappointed,
their souls deceive their eyes.
for they cannot believe in things
that don't add up like math.
they sit and ponder
and then give up, their journey gone to ****.

i myself, chuckle under my breath,
until my sides do hurt.
what did they expect?

my brain tricks me into thinking
that i'm the only woman
who's turned out jaded
after watching a man eat
chunks of my still beating heart

it's easy to place myself upon
this island, silent and sorry
while i sob under pine trees
and curse the planets for
making me endlessly desire love

i see you approach the shore,
the boat wasn't built with
your own hands, but you're
still a better man than all
of the ones that proceeded you

i speculate that you're here
to hunt weak and easy prey,
truth is that doubt and not loving
myself will be the only misfortunes
that bleed me dry

i'm the girl
who lives
for the moment
when inspiration
strikes
who writes
more than
she speaks
because it
just feels
right

i'm the girl
who's loyalty
is all she
can see
with very
few humans
who truly
get me
(yes, i know
i sound trite
and ******
as can be)

i'm the girl
who speaks
volumes without
saying a word
the girl who's
thoughts are
often seen, but
not often
heard

i'm the girl
who falls down
and picks
herself up
without anyone's
hand to
give me a shove

i recognize
truth and
i believe in honor
i know myself
well and i
am always a
scholar

my brain likes
to eat
new knowledge
with fervor
when put
on the spot
i always
deliver

i'm the girl
who's guilt
often consumes her
who feels
more deeply
than most
could want
for

i'm the girl
who sees past
surface and lights
i can see who
you are even
on the
darkest of
nights

i live with passion
and stand by
what i do
you may not
know me, but
i probably know
you

i'm the girl
who is constantly
evolving
who's brain
is used for
magic and
solving

the girl
who won't sleep
because the
minutes are
never enough
who refuses
to let the
game
make her
too rough

i am who
i am and
i'll be who
i'll be
and chances
are you've had
some effect
on me

for humans
i let in
through my gates
most
definitely have
helped me
to decide
my fate

i'm afraid that i've forgotten what it means to be alone

i keep imagining a tattoo on the length of my back
a girl, ethereal, asleep on the forest floor, her long
hair flowing out amongst the ferns, over the moss,
spilling into the nearby pool, and then it begins, the
twisting and gnarling of locks turned to roots, from her
cerebral crown grows a giant of the forest, which
shelters her and creates a branch shadowed world as she
slumbers and drifts off to dream of her own deep, dark fairytales

we stood by the doors of the train
in the sticky heat that kept
me from wanting to sit
because i hate when my thighs
hold onto the plastic seats
like it's life or death

i stared into your irises
and noticed that they weren't
what i had always thought they were
in times when we were miles apart and
i had closed my lids tight and imagined
you staring back at me

a drunk man stumbled onto the train
and as we stood stagnant for
10, 15, 30, 45 minutes
he slammed and slurred about
public transportation and the *******
that just don't know how to do their jobs

you and i stood silently laughing,
and the happiness in our eyes
was all we needed

i hold onto pieces of time
like this and it's what keeps me breathing,
knowing that one day, i'll add to the archive

perhaps that's the hardest part,
the inability to make new memories together,
because in the end that's all a relationship truly is
and that's everything a relationship truly is

pen, paper, phones, computers, smoke signals, homing pigeons, bike messengers, telegrams, postcards,
none of them are you

i go into my workshop
and surround myself
with teeny tiny tools
and put on goggles
that magnify my hand
until it looks like it belongs
on a giant, not a tiny girl

i turn on bright lights
that illuminate a blank
surface, that i've imagined
is covered in things that
must be fixed,
and i pick and i ****
and i poke and i position
until there's nothing left,
though i can't be too sad
since i started out with
nothing in the first place

i wish i could figure out
whether i've thought this
up or if it's real, but the fact
remains, that i am being
haunted by something i can't
grasp or understand

i wish your lips would move
when i see you in my sleep

my life, mired by tragedy,
defined by triumph, lived
as best as i can muster,
which is pretty good lately

i feel myself unfolding into
who i want to be, but still
there are points where the
transformation is nearly
unbearable, the height of
the discomfort that comes
hand-in-hand with change

i find myself proud, exhausted,
lost, sure, alone, but the
point is that i find myself,
a gentle reminder that i'm
doing alright simply by being

sweat poured down my back,
pooled in my crack
in the seven am Arizona swelter

I waited for the gods to
break open the sky, or the earth
heaven or hell,
it didn't matter

one friend, four legs
though he sealed our fate
we dared not deny him

I wondered if I'd survive ten hits
while you went to take a ****
and the hills, with their eyes,
came alive
to surround me

I lost myself that day,
in the same instant that I threw you away
because betrayal
doesn't taste any better
locked in a six by six cell

Hawaiian prints lifted
numb lips into the closest thing
to a smile
as I recounted a gift from
my island girl,
with eyes gone blue on trial

I thought it poetic that we stood
in this sinking ship
hand in hand,
but now I know
we had been chained to the mast
by fate itself
long ago

our love was flushed down
with your chewed up and **** out
enchiladas

I hope to every god
in this universe
that you still taste
the acid
crawling up your esophagus

call me blind, call me bitter, call me *****,
call me insane

I am all of these things

but I will die knowing
that I have never been disloyal

when i hit the send button it means nothing,
not to you anyways, i keep sending the insides
of my soul, once a week, but i know
that the only response i'll get is silence

i could cry about it, but i'd rather laugh when i see you

i know, i will always see you, whether we
meet in my hometown at a gas station after
you've walked new york state, or if you
land on my couch for half a year because you
just can't get the gumption to get to chicago,
or maybe you'll be laying on my floor singing
dream girls and petting my buttery walls,
either way, i know you'll appear and it will
seem like magic, but really, that's just the
cloud of smoke you've decided to live in

i know you because i know me, the geminis,
the four weeks, we bared too much for our
hands to hold, and instead we scooped up
bits of each other as night claimed us

i will always love you despite everything that
could possibly follow despite, i just will,
because you're the imaginary friend
that somehow became a part of my reality