He is the morning and I have turned into a walking cliché machine.
The sun could sap the day out of my skin and I wouldn’t feel it,
wouldn’t mind if I did.
I want to crack him open and curl up in his chest cavity,
exploring the dark corners with my headlamp and uncovering hidden majesties in geodes, making road maps.
~
Sometimes, I look at their hands,
moving in time to the beat or
engaging in some twisted alchemy,
making circles out of straight lines, or
coaxing the music out of guitar strings, or
painting the unknown like clockwork in due time,
and I wonder what they could do to me in bed.
~
And I still let him touch me when I'm drunk and he's drunk or when I'm sober and he's drunk-he doesn't want to touch me when he's not drinking-because he's like a cigarette and I've made a habit of inhaling deeply, to remind me that he’s cancer in my bones and I’m getting too old for this.
He treats me like the used tissues I crumple in my purse and pull out when my nose gets runny, there when he needs me, stroking my rib cage and covering me in a viscous slime.
He feels like a stubbed toe or a paper cut and mostly I'm a mouth to *** into.
His hands find the parts of my body that people have always told me to keep secret, but it's been a while since I started sending them out on postcards to strangers.
He can grab me with his eyes like a hand grabs the nape of a kittens neck, and I falter.
~
How can I unlove someone I used to love so much?
Mother may I-help me-stop loving all of them at once.

Pressure puckers &
a migraine blooms
parachute leaves looming
from my mind,
moonscapes of bare rock.
I've been waking up in a tomb again,
mouth mummified &
crusted over with drool as
my body jolts up at 6
6:45
finally 7:
I rise from the dead once more.
Yeats spoke to the Beats & he speaks to me,
feet creaking old floorboards
in a house with no internet.
"Pensive they paced along the faded leaves,
While slowly he whose hand held hers replied:
'Passion has often worn our wandering hearts.'"
I ate artichokes for lunch on pizza &
lost a piece of my soul down
the toilet of the coffee shop bathroom.
I came out of the womb once & I think that was enough.
I cough up brown mucus
& I'm glad I quit smoking.
One of my ribs pokes out
& picks my lunch for me,
pointing rudely,
leaving blood on the gleaming glass.
People around me discuss
the value of places they've never lived
& a homeless man sleeps with his mouth open.
I drink an infinite iced tea
that refills itself whenever I get thirsty &
a prehistoric potted plant
belches dinosaurs back into existence.
I clean my teeth to become
the princess of the salad greens,
eating olives with the tips of my fingers
the way monsters eat eyeballs
in the nightmares of children.
Everyone shakes,
terrified to look at each other
mouths bleeding confetti & glitter.
A remedy to bitterness: simple syrup.
I want to write love letters
to the boy who broke my heart &
still has all the shards.
I found out yesterday
that I'm a woman of hard angles,
that my moon might always be fighting
to whole its halves.
My calves are sore
& I'm glad I quit smoking.
I'm afraid of empty bird cages &
waking up without a tongue.
My lungs do a dance under my rib cage
& shake my skeleton out of my body.
Hot toddy & we drink on Tuesdays.
Any available body will do.
Picasso's blue period never seemed more lifelike
than when I try to jump
head first into the nightlife.
Nothing can be proven true
but I think my respiratory system
is at least not false.
If I believe hard enough,
I can feel my pulse.

With brain bashing into head cavity,
the gelatinous mass of neurons screams out
to white blood cells swimming in eyeballs
to evacuate before drowning.
"Quit clowning around in there and
save yourselves!"
The moody mistress creates her own hells:
congratulations!
Sleeping alone in a sweat covered bed,
she spins saccharine thoughts and pollutes her head
with taffy, thick like molasses,
cooking sugar in the kitchen with
the wrong end of a spoon in her mouth.
Dried up *** stains litter her couch
as she wakes up to turn the cushions
and search for loose change
to fill up her coin pouch.
"Ouch! Ouch!"
She calls out, clean
sheets on a new day,
his fingers firing in a frenzy
and introducing the fusion of
pleasure and pain.
He smells of benzene and
she's afraid of burning,
stomach churning and
using gasoline as lubricant.
He hit her, she said, and it felt like a kiss.
She misses him at her day job
when she runs around town
robbing banks and
picking up handkerchiefs
that grandmothers drop on the ground.
He would pound
his manhood into a brick wall
if it moved like her,
but the skin-and-bones combo
woos him to coo at her
as swarms of sparrows
nest in her ***** hair.
Spit shined shoes and
riding leaves blown on the air,
she dreams of him awake,
listless eyes alive and pulsing
behind a film of glassy, viscous mucus.
She makes magic potions out of the scents
left over on one of her
mismatching pillow cases.
He tastes like roasted red peppers
and lingering mace:
her eyes water as she
chokes back ***** daintily,
like a queen.
His eyes gleam mean as
he steals her breath to
add it to his bursting bank account,
releasing her to give her back only gasps,
the 2% interest.
She crafts road maps of his back bone while he sleeps,
but he sees her as a phantom,
creeping through the floorboards,
a faceless specter with an ace up her sleeve.

An uneasy knowing:
Hand on the doorknob,
Intuition hinting at what's
Through the keyhole.

Excuse me, while I
Make my way back to the womb
And coalesce into an egg once more.

I must relearn everything I was ever taught.

I must rethink everything I ever thought.

"My soul shall not be bought,"
Is a declaration not an "Oh, I ought to."
Tangled in some narrative, stuck like glue;
Convention is convention
Regardless of where it's acted out,
Chugging a cheap beer or slinging back a stout.

Let the wild eyed lemurs out!

Femurs shriek ****** ******,
Shin splits from sprinting to get coffee creamer.

Benz,
Bentley,
or
Beamer?

Out of place in small town USA,
But the monster makes itself the new normal.
Wear jeans to the semi-formal, but
The after party is her call.

To make the future or **** it all?
Is life an experiment or a free for all?
Is it neither? Is it nothing at all?

Squeezing the eyes out of a stress ball,
Touch pleasing thighs as the curtains draw...

Ka-caw! Ka-caw!
I am, I am a triumphant toucan!
Flapping wings flowing fluttery alchemy,
Making circles out of straight lines,
Crafting stories out of blank mind.

It comes in time, I guess,
The mess of me cleaning itself up gradually
Only to regress under sea level again
And again, becoming a canyon,
The slow deposition, the bearer of men.

Redheaded and clucking mother hen
Drinking hot water, honey, and lemon,
Patronizing old explorers like Magellan.

Tune into the past, oh sugar sweet one,
Inflicting beatings with flagellum,
Stealing treats and eating them,
Mountain peaks and chewing gum.

Puh-*** puh-***-***!
Our heads make good drums,
And our bleating makes good melodies.

Can you teach me the song of the trees?
Can we at least save the bees?

Nectarine mornings and small, knobby knees..
Mommy, please, put my hair in pig tails!
Pick up the worms off the sidewalk,
Watch out for the snails.

Lay me down into a hay bale;
I'll send you snail mail from
My heavenly little hell.

What's that smell;
My baby blanket or an ex-boyfriend
Lingering underneath my nose hairs?
In smoking scents do memories construct their lairs.

Do I have a care?
Do I have to care?
Is it a curse to be aware?
Is it a curse to think that, to dare?

Something fragile hangs in the air.

Teeth grind, sweaty night mares,
Water and oil, oh! What a pair.

Fingers uncoil from around your neck:
Slender ghostly feelers beckoning,

"Come destroy yourself with me."

Cast my body out to sea,
Playing saccharine melodies, but
Send my soul out separately.