I mailed you a letter because you said
the art of writing is dead but I know
how to twist words into sculptures still small
enough to fit in the post box. I hope
you read what I wrote. I opened my heart
and sent you a poem. Someday when you’re old
you will show your grand kids the written art
some hopeless romantic girl undersold,
prefaced with ‘it isn't anything great but
maybe it will lead you to understand.’
I never claimed to be the best but my
head is full of cosmos and volcanoes
begging to explode black holes on paper as
relics pressed between pages like a dried rose.

Nights lighting lavender,
as the smoke slices
the back of my throat
I exhale and tell myself
I’m relaxed.
I exhale a million times
and I don’t have to tell myself
anymore-
insomniacs who I could call
that wont end up telling me
I’m nothing
or asking me
‘who is you?’
I’m sorry that I don’t love you,
but I need a friend, too,
one who understands
self-hatred
and can hold
a conversation.
I’m sorry.

Fear drew me,
devoured me, and
vigorously erased me.
Xe's an *******, but xe's just like me.
I'm xer ****** drawing xe
doesn't want to see.

I'm a pile of rolled up pink rubber bits tainted with grey.
I'm brushed off its desk with a frantically manic flick of the wrist.
I'll get ****** off the ground and thrown away some other day.

and I'll sit in the garbage for a while.
and I'll still be here, but I'll be useless.

Courage sticks xer calloused hands in the grimy wastebin.
Courage picks out all all my bits and pieces.
Courage gives me a squeeze and sticks me back together.
Xe didn't have to do it, but xe's as kind as xe is calloused.

and I'm still a handful of used.
I'm still a pile of pink and grey.
I've just been packed into a ball of passé.
and I smell like **** now that I've been sitting there so long.

Courage SLAPS me in the face.
Thank you, courage.
You're so right.

I will ******* erase you, Fear!
Just like you erased me!
You turned me into humdrum,
so I'll chew you up like bubblegum!
I'll spit you out like poisonous lead
and I'll make you mine instead.
I am not your ****** ******* doodle.
I am a ******* masterpiece, you ******!

What is one second on a Monday morning following a night of no sleep in a Dunkin Donuts on some Main Street where I’ll walk with a cigarette for the third time; I think second-hand smoke has been cajoling me, and now I’m awake with nicotine. But what is the difference between a smothered Marlboro light and some nervous lecture on a sad scholarly venture? I cannot pull the smoke vicious into my lungs any more than I can break the vicious stammering circle. And what is one hour of discourse-accompanied indigestion, pacing, and anxiety, if not thirty-six-thousand possible seconds spent in a Dunkin Donuts on Monday mornings with no sleeping? When time is finite and eternal then there is no escaping the monotonous chaos, and we’re thrown about aimlessly, like dice in dimension infinity.

12:30 AM.
I am a ghost drifting through the midnight-quiet,
haunting flower beds and grasses
Undisturbed in their slumber. My body floats
Through my neighborhood, stealing the
Secrets of the dark.

1 AM.
Ghoulish eyes peer out from Mrs. Butler’s bushes and
Become miniature 3-eyed deer with antlers sharpened to
Daggers. They roam about her dewy lawn,
Feasting on worms and blinking,
Slowly, one eye at a time.

3:30 AM
Arrives, and they return to their hideaway home,
Disappearing with one final b l i n k
Into the rhododendrons.

5 AM.
I never knew that morning tasted like
Strawberries and honeysuckle and smelled
Like freshly-cut-grass-mixed-with-bonfire-smoke.
My Tongue is heavy with its sickly-sharp odor
And my ears buzz from the tangy sweetness.

7 AM.
Corporeal reality coats my body, connecting my mind
to my soul, my
Soles to the soil and I am incarnate, whole,
A body amid the sunlit specters surrounding me.

9 AM.
A mumbo-jumbo grin slides onto my face,
Synthetic in every aspect of the word,
My mouth is cotton-dry as I slink into the bogusness of a weary day.

10 AM.
Crowds of people smoosh together, their words co-mingling
And I crash my bike into strung-together sentences,
Scraping my knees on the voracity of barbed words.

11. “She’s a constant damsel-in-distress, but she doesn’t work in a strip joint!” I step around the shards of her fallen tiara as I climb the ivory-tower’s steps.
12. My wide eyes view futility as a type of texture, and I imagine it feels like sandpaper. My first class feels like sandpaper-futile in this struggle to stay awake.
13. Bicycling to la clase de Español se siente como moviéndose a través de melaza.
Mis pies cansados empujar los pedales pero I can’t escape the quicksand around me.
14. Reading the thoughts of my classmates helps to pass the time, and
I can see clearer through closed-eyelids than open eyes.
15. Red walks among their peers, watching for passing dogs and smiling at them. Red is
Hyperaware of people they knew from past school and recalls names and faces in seconds. Red is
A zombie trudging on shaky legs, lumbering down the bricked path.
16. Murky sunlight streams through tired clouds and blinking is a visceral kind of pain.
17. My poetry stews in my brain, rotting and fermenting until it becomes a fine wine.
18. Trees wish me good luck, waving their branches affirmatively as I pass by. Their comforting
Footsteps warm my soul.
19. Darkness steals the sun’s warmth but I’ve hours more to be awake.
20. I am a ghost floating through this sea of people. I drift through them, haunting their conversations
Haunting my own quiet mind.

I’ve spent my days spiraling,
or branching,
triangulating,
and running in circles,
with time always
for counting petals,
or coloring.
My cerebral bouquet,
farewell,
I resign myself
to stems and
straight edges,
at risk, with
tenuous grip,
of an imminent
scalpel-slip,
and the ultimatum
in severed-sphere-
reconstruction.

Darlin Ophelia come a little closer
There is witchcraft in your hips, let me into your bubble, I don't care what trouble you boiled baby I need to be spoiled
Find your way back into my bed, cough that water up and let's jump into the dark
You leave me stumblin for a step stttutterin for a word, and the shape of your legs makes me slur