my body, the hand grenade
ugly crawls inside, makes a nest.
an animal chained in a cage,
my insect in a jar.

i spit out my ugly. it wasn't supposed to be this way.

life is a simple arrangement
of numbers and measures.
the bathroom mirror under florescent lights
is my sacred altar.
never mind that nothing else is sacred.

my broken body, the hungry child
i give her food, i take it away. i make her cry.
i bleed for her.

she swallows my ache and comes back for more.

blood or strawberry syrup,
i feast on my gore, my waste,
my crime. i swallowed God
and purged him up.
i starved myself to heaven’s gates
but couldn't fit through the bars,
thick with sin, putrid and heavy.
i fell to the earth.

aspartame heartbeat,
cardiac arrested, imprisoned,
no way out.
i became the wound i created,
let it grow, let it fester and rot
with a coat of sugar and cinnamon.
my pain is full of calories,
so i purged that too.

true love is an execution,
a sacrifice, careful and divine.
my candied crucifixion,
holy libation to a lonely tyrant.
i made a mess, binged
into oblivion, emptiness.
it is not romantic,
but it is something.

i’m not naive enough to compare myself to a rose,
whose soft petals and curves prevail beyond its thorns.

i’m not a flower.
i’m not sweetness,
or supple colors,
or life.

i am a mess of stems and spines, sharp angles and twisted roots,
and i will damage those who get close enough to touch.

i am senselessly cruel,
and sabotaging.
an aimless collection of failures and secrets,
****** towels and bruised knees.

i am four in the morning,
thrashing and screaming and weeping.
i am waking up still drunk,
i am an ache that never passes.

i am love, but not the wonderful kind.

i am selfish vices,
i am indulgence and self-denial.
and sometimes,
as the light of morning appears,
i can’t imagine what i’ve done
or where i’ve been.

beat me up on the playground,
make me bleed like first grade
knees to the sidewalk, flower girl
selfish little prayer,
white socks, cyclops god
why have you abandoned me?

i believe he loves me because i am an ashtray;
every bone in my body is begging to be broken.
helpless lamb, fairy tears
i bruise, shiver,
and melt with the snow.

it plagues every corner of my life, hangs on me like soaking wet clothes, every morning and every night. i’m a dead flower pressed between the pages of an ancient book. my eyes can’t focus. i can’t stand, i can’t move, i’m trapped at the bottom of the ocean. i feel it beneath my skin like a disease and i don’t look before i cross the street, i don’t take caution, i swallow the chemicals, i drink in the poison like a cure. i’m gripping the hands of a clock madly pushing and pulling, i’m impatient, i’m sick. i’m deaf, blind, mute, and numb. it’s been too long. somewhere along the line every tender word became infested with guilt, i love you. i love you. it’s too late for me. i’ve wasted everybody’s time, i’ve done everything wrong, i’m shooting blanks. i think i was poised for some imaginary greatness, i had every opportunity, i was good enough. i ruined my own life in a simple chain of selfish vices.

evening, the cold breaks apart
each injured breath,
a sequence of senselessness
alive within a dreadful body

evening, lullaby scrapes at the skin
a whisper which expires
by daybreak, something trapped
beneath liquid dark

the shepard dragged me to the pasture
and i grazed until my teeth were stained
he made a bed for me to lie in
swaddled in the dirt and chains

he makes me bleed and pray for mercy
i am good, i stay on my knees
i need guidance and discipline,
a hole in my stomach, a sliver of release

he comes to beat me and set me free
forgotten, forgiven, for penance, for shame
at stake and trembling in an endless need
a swollen paper doll, needle in the hay

panic,
held me down underwater
breathe in the shame, i cannot feel unless it hurts
***** goddess, porcelain queen
swallow the cure, puke it up for that doctor

i am aware that i am incomplete
i am numb within her, without her
the wasps in my stomach do not sleep,
so i opened up the wound

panic,
break my neck beneath the ocean
death wrapped up in my favorite colors
dirt angel, child of worms  
bury that need like a corpse

the shadow people told me one thing-
they know that i'm no good
creeping away,  make me anything else
something was under my skin
so i'm naked and bleeding out
in your bathroom,  again

all these fumes could make me choke
blue and twisted up like the day i was born
wake up covered in it,
another failed attempt at reasoning
i know that i'm no good

if i could absolve all of my desires,
exhale my longing like smoke,
i would cast off every guilty thought  
with the ashes, and rise celestial
as a pale morning star, glimmer
and disappear.

i could not wash her from my skin,
my nest of thorns, my memory
lies trapped beneath her mortal sin
and grasping for her remedy.
i turned her face up to the sun,
buried my light under the ground
******* with reason, and undone
the end hangs heavy with the sound.
gentle serpent, fill up these veins
infect sublime serenity
between the comfort and the shame
i still hold on so cowardly.
for in that liturgy of dirt,
i hold my life, and all it’s worth.

poker face, deadpan
hemoglobin lips, body
gore, angel cake
(tastes just fine coming back up)
sins of the flesh, why
can’t i scour below the skin?

call me baby girl, make me
cry, i’m afraid to say it,
hit me, i want your attention,
harder, excoriated
before you, glimmering
*****, cherry scented and
bleeding.

bile, tabula rasa,
i know better, but
i’ve got a cavity to fill, sweet
heart, rotting
on the tile floor,
i leaned over, retched,
and trespassed
god’s will to be clean
again.

i must have found god in the crusty tiled floor
i must have bathed in absolution as bile ran from my lips.

i surrendered to his mercy, wrote prayers in my skin
and drank the blood of the everlasting covenant.

under fluorescent lights,
i decorated my skull with thorns.

i dug the nails into my palms and pleaded to be saved.

allow the burn,
i must not look back to that slave, that delusion, swallowing dust,
mockingbird knife song,
i'm nestled in her wings
until I plummet to the earth

candy poison, ashes
limping, i kissed her, i buried her
the stardust and the bars
and the rust, my carmen,
in a haze of her sick murmurs

a heartbroken child will never let go.

here i remain:
i am a ghost more often than a human being. i am aspartame: a sickly sweet substitute for the real thing, i am a make-believe fictional character crafted out of delusion and vice.

and i wish i could say,
i am numb.

i cradle my sadness against my chest like a broken doll
and i am ten years old, kicking and screaming and crying

baby girl grew up like a firework,
spinning, exploding in blinding lights,
floating through months and years like a plastic bag in a storm.

(i have not let go)

in her garden i am empty,
bloodless,
yet very much alive
in the silent swell,
harm’s embrace.

her cruelty knows no limits,
in her light i am blind,
forsaken,
guarding my waste land
like a filthy, frightened thing.

hyacinth girl,
beloved:
the seasons fall apart
in grievous harmony.

(i am certain death knows salvation.
why do the shadows dispel beneath me,
faced with my earthly pain?
where is my mercy?)

i’m trying to twist my terror into something that can hold me,
a cradle for my baby heart, my suckling soul.
i want my crown, i want my safe place to bleed,
laid out like a snow angel, ****** queen.

my body is a cemetery and i cannot sleep here,
i’m a china doll, the earth cracked my skull.
every sound makes me wail like an infant ghost,
nameless and buried in the morning.

dolores haze, barefoot in the garden,
singing lullabies for my childish grief,
******* in silk ribbons and dripping in pearls,
swallowed by heaven with nothing to keep.

the fear emerges in an instant,
comes as skeletal fingers
digging into flesh;
one thousand needles surging beneath the skin.

the crushing weight of terror,
tunnel vision, nightmare scheme,
heart pumping acid, drowning,
collapse of the senses.

time is a failure, a quiet assault
bleeding the day into night.
fragile soul, a fly trapped in amber,  
the dreadful eternity of a moment.

violent delights, violent ends
i torture my love,
a weak rose locked behind glass

faint of heart, cowardice
i drank in the poison and lived

i cut stars out of my skin,
cast them into the face of heaven,
hindered the darkness

contamination, purification
i kicked over the chair and lived

i’m going to lay down on the shoreline
and fill my insides up with sand
until i’m full and indisposed when morning strikes again

i’ll sleep up on the rocks
anesthetized, but freezing cold
and i’ll cut my insides open, rotten guts and wasted bone

the stars weaken and lapse away
daylight is needles in my skin
i tried to alter time and space but never found the end

they are beneath the darkness of the ocean, they see me, i can't see them, they are in the pit of my stomach, screeching, should we do it? should we do it? they are blood clots, scissors, wake up covered in sweat, wake up covered in *****, they are trapped between my mother's teeth and she was screaming she was screaming. no reflection, evil little girl, shaking, scratching, i can't get below the skin. not here.

i thought i would be broken forever
but i am learning to exist in the spaces
between light and dark, strength and need
i think you shot me up with a tender poison
double dose, you are in my veins, still
and i can't talk about it
i can't talk about it

if i could i would drain all my blood
erase the disease from my skin
but you will linger in the emptiness left,
just as always.

i am frail
you grabbed hold of my bones and left me
wreckage

i am not broken forever
i am learning to exist

i am not broken forever
i am learning to exist

my longing is suffocating,
concrete poured over my living corpse,
heavy and hollow, that faithless cry
falls mute. i do not need.

these grisly limbs ache, vacant as
the mirror, no reflection,
i chased my love to the edge of the ocean
and watched the waves steal it away.
i’ve swallowed my curse. i’ve covered my tracks.
i do not need.

my heart stops. i’m spinning around the words and phrases, the letters of his name. i'm gouging the surface, searching for him drunk in the dark. why am i still bleeding?
i left my humanity somewhere as my body hit the pavement,
never mind, never,
i can shove my hands down my throat as much as i want
but i’ll never purge the memory, clear and pure
the way my name sounds leaving his mouth, pouring over me
warm, salty water.
special.

and despite all my longings, i exist in this space,
my skin and my flesh
and my flesh
and my flesh

i am not special.