i’ve been dancing on the clouds again,
whispering all my secrets into a dollar bill every night
because i’m too cheap for a twenty
and i know i’m not worth the extra,
but there’s a storm inside
and the clouds keep turning to mist
before i can ever finish a song;

the thunder is an earthquake in my bones
and i can feel them crumbling
every time the snow melts,
turning to ash until i’m too limp to dance anymore,
and the rain is a tsunami in my chest
that keeps tearing through the cage around my heart
every time i remember the flavor of the month
coursing through my veins
and dripping out my nose;
i’ll tell you a secret:
sometimes i even lick my lips.

but the lightning only comes
when i’m thinking of
the way the golden rays of sunlight
peek out from behind the clouds,
and the way the salty tide brushes up
against my fingers in the sand,
and the way the heartbeat of the ocean
engulfs my whole body
while the water clings to the thirst in my skin;

sometimes i bathe my throat
in a harsh bolt of white lightning
before taking a dive in that musky swamp
just to see if it’s the same,
but the bruises on my thighs
still make me wash my hands
until my knuckles bleed;

i finally realized pandora’s box
is the place where hope dies;

so bury me in the graveyard of
all the moans that died those nights,
carve out the epitaph with my own fingernails,
don’t give me a funeral unless it’s storming outside
and the lightning finally strikes me;

maybe one day i’ll stick my fingers
in a power outlet just to know the feeling,
since i know i’ll never be good enough
for the real thing

the sun is too bright
and the ocean is too vast
and the blood in my veins is thicker than it was on the day i still thought the thunder was an echo of god's laugh

i heard a whisper last night that a gallon of bleach will **** the knots in my stomach,
all tangled up in wild passion
and hopeless despair
and a numbing fear of the void
outside of my boxed up world

i'm sick of all the washed up smirks
from mindless teenagers who think their white smiles and slim waists
will open the world at their feet
and aphrodite herself will bow at their reflection in the river
where the narcissus flower finally leans toward
an image of somebody else

the swing sets in the park are aching
for a child's warming touch
and mothers are bringing bouquets of
flowers to their baby's tombstone instead of wedding,
and families are reading suicide obituaries
instead of making a toast to
love and hope and passion;

boys are in a coma for saying
'i love you'
to a man
and nine year old girls are afraid
to walk through the front door because
of the men who stole their world,
and pieces of green paper hold more
value now than integrity and happiness
ever have;
  
and somehow we still think we're evolving

maybe the clash in the sky reminds us all that we're only human,
that hearts break and lives end
and there's nobody on the moon
filled with the magic of eternity,
and maybe that's the only beautiful
thing about this tragic world:
we're all alone together.

i made a deal with the devil last night:
he'll **** the butterflies in my stomach if i surrender my soul,
but what's the harm in that
when god is no more than
an imaginary friend
and people are made of
more evil than good;  
  i know the fluttering will cease eventually
but how much longer can anybody
expect me to keep breathing
when i'm coughing up broken wings
every time i hit a cigarette

there's a raspy voice in my bed late at night
that whispers into my neck
after the fifth or sixth shot
reminding me of the reasons
we'd all be better off  if
nobody woke up tomorrow morning

i guess that's what happens when
we **** the grass beneath our feet
and still expect it to grow all winter long

this place is bleak and colorless
and life is vacant space
and everything is meaningless  
in this washed out
bleached
world

home is where the heart is,
so maybe if i click this glass to my lips
another three times,
i'll find it

*m.k.

i'm drowning in the  waves
splashing my heart with
the ache that comes with missing you

was i nothing to you all along?

you played me like that favorite song
you could never get enough of;
one day i was the only thing on your mind,
the only murmur to escape  your lips,
until you got bored of the same old tune
and turned the stereo off for good

now it's just white noise
fading with the rainy day sunset,
like apollo left his lyre in the sun to rot
and the music never sang again

my heart never did

even the air can taste the thrall
of dionysus in my breath;
it reeks of  jack these days

did you grow bored of me,
like theseus grew bored of ariadne?

maybe she could tie her string into a noose
and escort me to asphodel

...but i already feel like i'm
the walking epitome of death

a ghost
a whisper    
a shadow in the darkness;          
there but never there

the music has been silent on
this lonely island of ogygia
where you wouldn't stay with me
and i couldn't seem to leave

i spend every night watching you
float back to another world
while i'm stranded on the outside looking in

i know you'll never come back
but i spend every night with my feet in the water
and i pray that poseidon will  carry
your boat back to my shore

*false hope is all i have left

maybe, i'll tattoo your lies across my skin just to say
'*******'
to everything i've ever believed in;
and with the boiling rage my heart pumps into my chest,
i'll force the blood of truth down your throat
until you ***** up reality,
but i've never had the heart to rip yours to shreds.

so maybe instead, i'll scratch your eyes out with my own ****** fingernails to shield you from the bruises painted up and down my battered body in all the colors you whispered in my ear while he touched your porcelain frame with the same hands that pulled apart the cage around my heart as you listened to it beat the rhythm of your name.

your broken promises added fuel to the flame rising up in my chest
until the wildfire burned me from the inside out,
and even then you held onto him as i writhed in pain,
just to keep yourself from tending the fire you ignited.

your hands pieced my broken heart into a home,
but you dragged him inside and ****** him in the room i first said
"i love you"
until the walls came crashing down
and my own veins turned in on themselves to keep from smothering the abyss of emphysema you call lungs.

i saved the butts from your last pack to burn my name into your arm,
but why waste a perfectly clean wrist
when i could instead burn off my scars into something empty,
                                 raw,        
                                              and vulnerable,                  
like you and i were before he brainwashed you with his eyes
                                                            ­                    and lips            
                                                ­                 and smile.                  

you built me off an empty promise where your hands were on me
instead of with him,
where your lips left a road map of untraceable patterns along my skin instead of kissing lies into every crevice of my body,
where you whispered that you loved me
instead of screaming his name into my tears.

you warned me you were trouble,
but before you, trouble never meant drunken breath slapping my cheeks until even my own lungs gave up on me,
or blue and purple thumb prints dancing on my throat.

somehow i still believed you when you screamed "i'm sorry" over the sirens carrying me off to a white room where they pumped so many drugs into me that i couldn't count my own fingers and men dressed in blue asked too many questions about bruises i didn't know i even had,
and i lied so well they let you take me home the next day;
i guess i learned from the best.

so maybe, i'll smash that glass doll you can't keep your fingers off of,
and choke you with the filters of an addiction i never asked for,
or drown you in the tears soaked into my pillow from the nights you never came home
and i didn't know if you were dead
or alive
or strung out behind that old club on bourbon street
or wrapped in the sheets with that ***** who fed you everything you thought you wanted until you forgot everything you had.

maybe, i'll kiss you until it hurts,
until you that *** toy you found in the street means nothing to you,
and you remember all the times
i forgave your hands around my throat
and your knuckles on my skin.

i could remind you what love feels like.

maybe, i'll force feed you the pills in my jewelry box all prescribed to cure your lies until i need a whole new round of medication that makes me forget my own name,
but all the drugs in this world couldn't save me from myself,
and even your needles in my veins won't take me back to the first touch the night you brought me home.

i'm not that girl you met under the light of the full moon anymore,
all smiles
               and laughs          
and dancing to music only i could hear,                      
                        now i'm just a reflection of your darkest days,
no wonder you threw me out.

but you can't run from yourself forever.

so maybe, just maybe,
i'll wrap my hands around your throat for a change,
and watch the light leave the most beautiful eyes the sun has ever seen.

maybe i'll bury you alone,
with nothing but the wilting petals of a decaying,
once-red        
                rose.                      

          
     *m.k.

i'm tripping over these old ghosts
trying to run from past licking my heels,
but i just can't seem to get away from
the bloodshot eyes in the mirror.

i've been playing these old records again,
looking for the voice i once had;
but i'm running out of words
and i don't know if i can find them again;
i'm not sure i want to.

the monsters under my bed
have all come out to play,
but i'm afraid of the emptiness
that comes with the silence
much more than i am of the dark;
i've made a home in the abyss of oblivion,
and i think the eternal chasm
just may be the shelter
i've been craving:

shelter from the perpetual vacancy that has
lived in my chest since you decided
i wasn't good enough,
shelter from the painful echo
of the right choices i never made,
shelter from the memories of the innocent eyes
that used to look back at me in my reflection
once upon a time ago.

that girl is nothing more than
a whisper in the dark now,
the outline of a shadow i lost long ago,
and not the kind i can ever sew back on.

sometimes lost things stay lost,
and even when the memory is long since forgotten,
pieces of us search forever,
search everywhere and search nowhere,
and we never do find what we're looking for.

i never did find you again,
nobody else tastes like the heaven in your breath,
nobody else takes me to paradise,
nobody else had my future in their eyes.

these nirvana cds are all played out
but i still search for you in every song

my papers are all blank
my guitars are all untuned
and these sylvia plath poems don't hurt
the way they used to.

i think i'm in love with the idea of you,
or with the beautiful way you
broke my heart,
or maybe i need someone to blame
for the mountain of bad decisions
that all began with you

i keep having the same dream every night:
you kiss all the monsters away,
but they're still lurking in my head
when my alarm buzzes,
and i know you'd never
dream about me too.

i once heard a fairy tale
where you gave me a home
every time you smiled;

i don't know how much longer i can
live there alone,

i don't know how much longer i can
hold onto you,

i don't know how much longer i can
hold on at all.

i surrender.


*m.k.

i’m choking on the sunlight washing over this world like it’s
trying to bleach out the blood stains soaking into the soil
from all the times humanity has proven to the universe
that we’re too ignorant to notice
that we’ve desecrated the land we call home,
even though ‘home’ is a feeling i buried a long time ago

when the earth is stripped inside out,
all you’ll find is a graveyard of broken promises
from every parent in the world who swore to a pair of infant eyes
i’ll always protect you
and instead found themselves in a hurricane of despair
cursing their own breath for letting whatever god they worship
make them into liars

if there is a god with the existential powers that be,
why won’t he make the angels wait?

closing your eyes to the universe makes it easy to ignore
the pointless wars fought over a petty man’s pride,
and the way children in some countries are no more
than expendable pawns on a chess board,
and how cultural individuality is perceived as a degeneracy
instead of one of the few naturally beautiful aspects of humanity;
but blind ignorance has been the root of most of the societal plagues
since the beginning of time;
when are we going to learn that
you can’t fight blindness by closing your eyes?

the blood painting our history hasn’t even dried yet
and we’re already abandoning our morality like
the last 200,000 years hasn’t taught us anything
about the souls giving themselves to the face of evil
or the lives we’re tossing into the wind without cause

i can feel their shadows clawing at my skin

and until we can own up to our flaws and our mistakes
and accept the guilt behind our actions
and fight to make a change in the way the world spins,
we really are no better than animals

our evolution is moving in reverse;
we're paving the way for our own armageddon

take a stand~
fight for the sake of your morality


~*m.k.

i close my eyes every night
and pray to a god i don’t believe in
that these dormant volcanoes will finally erupt,
that they'll finally burn away
the ashes under my finger nails
from every touch i can't ever give back,
that they'll finally drown me
in a scorching pang of apathy
so i can stop holding my breath;

I close my eyes every night
and take the hands of
a devil I don't believe in
while he leads me down to the fountain
and holds my head under the water
just so I'll stop begging him to do it for me,
just so I can  wash down
the bile rising up in my throat
with a poison i’m beginning to reek of,
a poison swimming in my veins
and washing me away to a beach shore somewhere
with the salty tide tickling my tongue in the mist;

i can almost taste it.

but when the sun goes down
and the sky turns black
and the whisper of a
sea breeze behind my lips
fades back to broken mountains,
when i finally open my eyes
and i’m wading in the same swamp again
with that familiar sweaty scent
of musky resolution clinging to me,
i can't help but remember that it’s all real,
and yet none of it is;
i can’t help but scrub at the regret in my bones
until my skin turns red;
i can’t help but try to wash away this empty memory;

it chatters in my teeth
until my gums are raw and ******.

there’s a volcano stuck inside me
while i’m praying for a hurricane
to come and set me free

nobody ever taught me
it wasn't supposed to be like this.

it's late and it's dark
and even this old bottle of jack daniels is missing you again
i can still taste the rain from the day you walked away
and never came back
and the gray clouds kidnapped the rays of light from your eyes
so that the world was colder and darker and emptier
than it ever should have been
and the sun just keeps setting every night
but forgetting to come back up in the morning

my hands bleed whiskey and nicotine
and my dyed fingernails just can't seem to dig any deeper
but i keep trying to claw out the part of me that chased you away
even though it's still beating in my chest

were you afraid you'd love me back?

you promised me always,
did you lose sight of forever
or just get swept up in lust?

he could touch you in ways i never knew how,
but i swore to love you better than he ever could
and i forgive you for all the tears and all the scars
and all the hangovers that made me wish i'd never woken back up
into this bleak world where nobody matters to anybody
and life is just a game with only one winner

i broke down in third period on the first day of school
when the teacher asked 'whats your favorite thing to write?'
and i scribbled your name into the 'other' column
because heartbreak and suicide and adolescent alcoholism
weren't listed as options

you used to be my friday nights and my saturday mornings
and just your voice put my mind and body back in sync
when the world was just too loud and busy to handle
and your eyes lifted me higher than this cheap ******* ever did
and when you looked at me i had an answer
to every question i'd ever asked
because the only thing in the world that mattered was that moment of forever
where you made time itself meaningless

it feels like a lifetime ago when the entire solar system revolved around you
and even Sirius was weak in comparison
to the the way your eyes lit up when you laughed
but now the earth doesn't orbit and the stars have all burned out
and the night sky is as dark and empty as my heart

there was a time where you were bigger than the universe in my eyes,
but now it's just me and these strands of smoke sewn into my clothes and this harsh bite from jack tickling the back of my throat

..but at least that empty bottle never gave up on me


*m.k.

infinity

i stare at the walls for hours on end
and dream about a time when
this box felt like home
and this chipped paint looked like something
other than a reflection of the fist-shaped
holes in my heart from nights
where ****** knuckles were the only
security blankets familiar enough to cradle
against me all night long

the clock keeps ticking,
all day and all night,
like the hands on the glass
that measure the feeble idea of some
meaningless notion from a corpse now
rotting in the same earth he dared to
test the limits of
actually means something
in the big picture

but in the aerial view,
the hands on the clock are all
snapped in two

because *time can't save anybody
from vituperative parents;
from profligate neighbors;
from the entire volatile essence of humanity

time does not, in fact,
heal a broken heart,
or toss aside the muddy rug
with footprints of those who whispered
"i love you"
into the pillow case but never
came back in the morning

time can't protect anyone
from even the most unholy
truth of all:
there is no rapture on the brink
of delivery,
there is no antichrist plotting
a resurrection of hell,
there is no divinity coming
to save you from the darkness
inevitably forcing its way
into this world

people are destroying each other
because humanity is flawed
and no amount of time can
ever find the piece of the puzzle
that would sync us all together in
a symphony of lives untouched by the
execrable blood pumping in the veins
of this earth like a poison

time can't save you from yourself

and so maybe, the hands
on this clock are better off
broken.


*m.k.