You cannot miss
What does not exist

Never born
Never breathing

Highways to the west
Cherishing a map

Frame the photographs
December in the morning

The way you wake
Defines your days

Black and grey
Old and rusted

This charade
Open casket

Ignore the empty echo
In your chest

The morning after
The ground was broken

Drowned and dressed
In childishness

Alive not for me
But for him

Dragging down whim
There's enough alcohol

The old medicines
Are filed away

The tire swing
Asphyxiated and frayed

The fibers of my insides
Manipulated sound waves

You're losing your mind
You're losing your mind

The longer the sunrise
The less I can stand

My load is heavy
Where are you, Jesus

My back is breaking
What have I done

Lost sight of the horizon
Planning the painted flowers

Sign in, tell a lie
Cry like the family does

No one learned a lesson
You're losing your mind

there always comes an empty dawn
when sorry doesn't matter
will not save you from the knife
or from all of the inkblot splatter

on the inside you are whole
and on the inside i'm a shell
and when it comes to caves and houses they don't
get along too well

and you said medicate or suffer was the only
ultimatum
all the simple things you said
strangled bruised it all verbatim

you inscribed it in your hatchet
put it there in chicken scratch
stuck in in the oak tree in the yard and said
you will come back

for it
i feel the time dissolving eating through the floor
as quickly
as my hands can pick up jacks, i cannot
throw them anymore

this is not a game to win
this is not another war
this is all my organs in a jar
for sale beside the door

and you were too afraid to tell me
you were too afraid to see
that the demons clawing at your back
were all brought here by me

and yet i never drew the circle
didn't call them up from hell
i was born with all these chemicals
and drowned inside the well

so put your orphans up for sale
pack up your house and leave this town
for if the dog is sick and dying, it's just
best to put her down

it's just best to put her down.

after all the time spent teeming
in the closets and the cupboards
i have finally accepted
that the rats are really gone

the scratching in the ceiling
is just my lucid dreaming
i'm pining for a creature
that's never done me good

i wonder if i drank the cleaner
would my mind be shining too
i cannot take another evening
the ants are in my skin

you always did smell like home
i've lived in caves all my life
there will never be an ocean
bigger than this one

if i crack this one mirror
so will my every capillary
my tissues will erupt with
hydrofluoric acid

i'm itching from beneath my skin
i swear it's just the rats again
it's not the whispers that i hear
it's just the house settling

it's all the windows screaming
it's the walls constant staring
it's the floorboards ***** sneering
and the bathtub's overflow

mother always said
i should never leave the light on
yet i've been sitting in the dark
and blinded for four years

the chemicals are in my skin
i swear its just the rats again
the walls are singing of my sin
i swear its just the rats again

my veins are asking for a drink
my muscles scream for me to leave
i hear your footsteps in the hall
shotgun ringing in my ears
you were never even here
you were never
even here
you were
never
even
here

and here i am again
at the intersection
of pedestrian language
& old wives tales
swallowing gum
like 7 year memories
opening umbrellas inside
cause i can't seem get away
from all of this rain
i ******* with my left hand
cause i was told
back in highschool that
"it feels like someone else is doing it"
it gets me wondering
about the difference between
losing you and finding out
that some one else found you
or my sleep
or lack thereof
its starting to tear me apart
i keep having this dream
where you are in
an unfamiliar body of water
trying to wash my poetry
off of your hands
or the one where
something happens in my chest
every time you sit
on someone else's bed
i'm tired of feeling like something you've misplaced
but don't have the heart
to look for anymore
tired of you saying my name
like you're trying to bury it
i'm tired of wondering
if you can tell the difference
between the absence
of my voice & silence
the other day
i almost started sobbing
at work when a woman
asked me about
our equipment
i was explaining how
things come apart
and almost mentioned your name
it made me think
of how you used to say
things like "what would you do
if i showed up on your doorstep
one day?" now, i haunt
the windows in my house
i don't leave for weeks at a time
i sit on the porch like the dog
you didn't shoot behind the shed
the one that refuses to die
until you come home again
i told somebody once, that
you didn't even know
what my voicemail sounded like
i wonder if they thought
it was because you
are so important that i never
let it ring that many times
before picking up
or if you dont know
what it sounds like
because you've never called
you can't be the ****** weapon
and the search party
i'm tired of all the seats
to the ferris wheel in my chest
being empty
tired of your voice
being the one i look for
in abandoned places
that one sound i beg
to bounce back
down vacant hallways
i just seem to stand there
in all of that quiet
like someone looking for a mistake
on an eviction notice
so i guess the hardest part
isn't letting go
it's forgetting
you ever had a grip
in the first place
and since you've been gone
i wonder if when
you pushed yourself away from me
you used your left hand
so it felt like someone else did it

all the days bleed together
long nights and longer mornings
crooked fingers
cog in a mechanism

the balloons in my chest burst
filled with water
popped in the grass
despondent

i don't know how i learned the words
but i heard a princess say
life was whatever i wanted
and i grew up with fairy tales

i want to know
how do birds learn to fly
and what happens
when you die in your sleep

what's the point in a horizon
and why is the air so
*******
toxic

distant planets know my secrets
laments to Saturn
i hoped you would
find your way back home

even the breath to pray
was a ship on my ribs
titanic
drowning in the ice water

we were all told
that the sun had stopped shining
to find our melancholy
stained into the wallpaper

and finally
the heartbeat of the clock
rang out a solid B, Bb
and the second hand stopped

now all the days bleed together
lost nights and no more mornings
crooked fingers
cog in the mechanism.

vinegar on your hands
you can't drown the filth
like the cracks in the floor

but nothing is as personal
as paper
and your skin on mine

maybe sometime they'll learn to see
the horizon we are
and the sunrise i've been painting

silver over gold
clay over granite
everything will perish, too

or maybe i'm wrong
the hunger eats my soft insides
i grow plants in the afternoons

maybe someday things will fall into place
just like all the shiny pennies
at the bottom of the fountain

but there will always be thieves
they come in all packages
and your eyes must be wide

to trust is to die
why give the glass to shaky hands
that hold no value in your trinkets

"day three
still no compliance
end note"

"day four
suspect found dead
no foul play suspected."

"Lessen the exposure"
Living under pressure, I'm a child inside
And with playground advice
The battery acid ran into my veins
It bled out in a fit
And I'm bending beneath all the weight of it
I questioned the wiring
And became the monster from the myths
I am a polar opposite
Destructive in the face of blamelessness
Thorough with an exit wound that was never planned
Guilt is in the medicine bottles
Nature is a fickle thing
I am a wild thing
It was all a wild scheme
To pit us all against our instincts
An arena built on etched old bones
And Gorgon's limestone

It was all a straight line up ahead
A straight play I had just misread
I bludgeoned it upon head
And now it's in the backyard, dead.

I am a crooked silhouette
Never arc of the covenant
Sorry for my generator mind
And then a hundred thousand times.