Naive, I was not. I grew up
on tattered books and nihilistic ideals
while the other children read
books about stuffed bears and trees.

They warned me about the addicts:
The fiends with black capes and red eyes,
the ones who wander the night, searching
for new corners and new highs.

They warned me about the *** offenders:
The neighborhood sweethearts with soft eyes
and cold hands, who are more often than not,
but not restricted to the body, of middle-aged men.

They warned me about the murderers:
The ones with ice for pupils and books of spells.
Who drank smoke and whose hearts reside
in the far off corner somewhere in east hell.

These are the people my parents forgot to warn me about:
The lovers with a knack for spoon feeding me lies, whose
wings were black and who were blessed
with golden eyes.

They didn't warn me about the pretty boys.
About the ones who cup your heart
in their hands, and play around with it like putty.
Somehow, they forgot to mention that part.

But, then again, you can't teach a child about heartache,
and the only way a child will know what you mean when you
tell them that the stove is hot is if they burn themselves
on the warm, steel door that is life.

I.
I am confined behind the walls of my very own life.
The echoing of cluttered freight trains and the laughter
of invisible clowns fill what's left of my conscience, and

the voices of old God's and hushed Devil's are my only form
of a lullaby. I'm not crazy, I'm just conscious of the overlooked.

II.
I can feel snakes when there are none. Consider this a sixth sense.
Literature clattered in the back of my throat and the top of my head,
I tried to explain this to my lover, who became increasingly

bothered by the fact that all I knew was Shakespeare, and all I spoke
of was Caesar, and the stars...to which we are underlings.

III.
A threat, they consider me. 'Not to others, but yourself.'
Fools, all of them. I was not granted a gift to have it locked away
and drowned at sea. Listen! Act! Forewarnings are scarce, and if

the Gods and the Devils have chosen me to speak, then I shall speak.
My only question: why didn't they choose someone to listen? To understand?

In my spare time, I put out his fires, and I cut
the bottoms of my feet on broken glass while
traversing across the muggy, jagged scape of his mind.

He calls my name between pulls of cigarettes and the
striking of cheap matches, and it's worth noting that I never liked
my name much until I heard the fires scream it.

I'd stand at his side and watch the flames cause his heart to implode,
and I'd fidget with his *****, shaking fingers while I listened to him
whisper something about 'I love yous'

A man's art is a reflection of self. I take note of this,
while I watch the flames dance and swing in the browns of his eyes
and warm the cavern that, moments before, had been a heart.

I've begun to spot patterns
more clearly,
the brick homes that
set around this suburbia
have begun to resemble
the lovely spots of a
giraffe perhaps
because I have
become so used to ogling
their grace, I couldn't be sure,
but I've begun to spot patterns on me,
bold, odd, rectangular blocks
honey-ed to my thin skin:
People. They are all around me.
Yet all I see are those blocks
thatching to me,
I think they're in search of a
shorter neck.

he left me resting
crooked
on the pith of his
lemon-split lips
and I just keep
sleeping
through its rind
like the sleep
won't leave me.

send a search party to find
reasoning for my existence.