I guess I'll write until the words
fall off this page.
Until the white noise in
this living room sounds
like friends.
Until this uneasy feeling in
my gut satiates like a
favorite meal.

I'll write until the world
makes sense again.
Or at least until this
cup of coffee needs refilling.

Don’t you want to know how salt tastes
and hollow sounds?
How the alchemy of sweat
and soot erases mistakes?
Or the ways conceit and heartache
can be served together at once
and still be palatable?

This mouth is quicksand.
Teeth nothing but distraction
from destruction.

I can hold the words steady
on my tongue
but everyone knows the end
to these kind of matters.

The words will sink deep and
rot in my gut.
Do you have something to feel Samantha?
Good Luck. Good Luck. Good Luck.

Fingers walk those piano keys
cementing sentiment to song.

You couldn’t keep her like
those old keys can;
Wrapped in melody
you sing a graveyard.

Reptile skin, thick and watertight.
Nothing penetrates.
But you are warm.
Weak and porous.
and everything sinks in like
gasoline penetrating wood.

words like hot ash
and the smell of scorched skin

leave the room
leave the wound
You like to win.

Do you feel the air still?
The silence that kisses the
room before the roof blows.
‘duck and cover’
‘duck and cover’
the instructions you recite as the alarm
bells sound.

Dip your head into her well,
but be careful not to fall too deep.
For her water is quenching,
and you will sink yourself
swimming.

Ensnared, tangled and captured
I swam into your fishing web
knowing good and well
You'd use my life to feed yours.

You say I can't be trusted.
Pointing fingers hammer firmly the hurt into place.

I watch the tears puddle and collect as you
choke out the tale of the green-eyed storyteller
who painted your world with words of
"I will
I won't
I love
I don't..."

and that she said them until they consumed you.

And I couldn't argue.

Let’s make up
in the messiest of ways
and have a battle rage between our
tongues and finger tips as we claw the
forgiveness out of each other.

Lingering lips whisper secrets in my ear
of what you want and what you need.
Pinch yourself, you must be dreaming
I am not here to please.

Beautiful bird bring your broken wing;
Sit on my sill and sing to me your secrets.

Truthfully, I could use the company.

Her body moved towards me
with grace and fury.
The gusts of her legs
and fingertips swirled
dangerously around my
hips and heart as I sat
breathlessly watching her squall
destroy all the walls
I have built.

It's a risky game to be a storm chaser,
but it's a devastating liaison to
love a tornado.

I am not simple.
I am fierce and fragile.
I know how to break over and over
and I know how to rebuild.

I am your whiskey
and your water.
I am the wolf and the
warrior.
I am...

Bedroom eyes
tell lies of salvation
found between sheets.

Come, come...
We both know
you won't be saved here.

Her poems littered your wall like trophies;
I was close to being one but my words just couldn't contend
with hers
in those perfectly picked frames filled with  the hollow
strings of letters she likely lent to others
before you.

Ghosts of feelings you clung to.
Ghosts you ran from.
Ghosts you worshiped.

I imagine your trophy wall is feeling pretty empty right now,
and you probably don’t want to hang the words I have for you.
But in the likelihood you are curious here’s just two:
Your Loss.

Sorry I didn’t frame them.

Jealousy tastes like her on your lips.
I want you so bad I’m willing to **** and
savor them clean just to find you underneath.

I feel like song lyrics could write our story;
Three words forming the world’s shortest synopsis-

*You should’ve stayed.

Not in some tower, somewhere
locked tight is she, but here
under blood and bone.

She rages like ocean tides
on the chiseled edges of me
that poorly attempt to contain her.

Be still, I plead
I’m trying to be logical,
yet still she storms.

It’s candid to say that
even I am afraid
her force will conquer me.

Cold tile, legs Indian style,
Two hands holding one head
as I reflect on all the ways I
wish I could change myself.

Thick thighs that have always touched;
Stretch marks that extend longer than
my ambition;
An Italian *** that threatens to take over
my five foot of frame.

And then one night she calls me and says "Sis, I wish I could be a model like you…"
And stomach twists and falls in my gut,
as I struggle to find the words to tell her she's perfect just as she is.

Stumbling speech
matched with an unfiltered tongue.
A laugh that will break eardrums and hard hearts.
She says "Sis, maybe one day you can teach me
to read so I can go to college,"
while she tightens the Velcro that holds her
21 year old feet still,
because she never quite understood
where the bunny went.

See she’s what the doctors calls mentally *******;
genetically martyred to die in a society that tells her
she's imperfect.

And now here she is,
my sister, my reflection on
cold tile with legs Indian style;
Her two hands holding one head,
Reflecting on all the ways
she wishes could change herself
to be pretty normal like me...

And I ask myself,  what have I taught her?

She was an artist that painted on different sheets;
Not of parchment or pen, but an art of when two meet.
Of lips and tongues
Of fingernails and sighs;
She painted the most beautiful art between my thighs.

I feel like I have lost my ability to create images;
Those truly magical ones that can be read in a year or two when I feel this way again.
A sentence or a word that will usher up in me some spark to light fire in my pen
and take to the pages like some ravish creature.
Some days, the not so bad but oh so normal ones,
I stare at this notebook and pray divine intervention again, as if I know He bores of me too.
“Good morning, help me find my escape from my own head or else I may truly lose my mind”
Most days, like today, I sit in solitude and wait;
Sipping through my teeth the brisk morning air and hot sour coffee,
perfectly made by my perfectly placed Keurig
and doodle line for line-
Life has become some mediocre muse at best.

Lips and tongue of
burgundy wine red,
I part my lips to sip you in.
I’m insatiable in love,
with all intentions of
getting drunk on you-
time and time
again.

The ground trembles a slow
and ever-present roar,
growing into a growl.
The delicates of the earth
panic and claw at the cracks and edges
searching for a way to hold on.

In the unbounded bottom,
I see the end of all
and the beginning of new.
So I loosen my grip
and let the endless earth
swallow me whole.

Deep below the surface,
in dark and muddy waters,
she was raised.
Never looking for the surface.
Never knowing there was land.
Until one day,
the winds started to change
and the deep rolling waves
washed her ashore and far
from the mud her roots were
planted in.
The sun warmed her face,
Her fins grew to feet
and with a walk turned sprint,
she paved her own path-
so very far from mud she called home.
She knew her contentment was temporary,
as the rains always come.
And when the water crashes from
clouds to land,
the dirt will swallow the rains
and the mud will anchor into her shoes.

Hold your breath silly girl,
down you'll go again.

With curled lips and a growling hiss, he walks among us;
Yet you say you only see beautiful things now.
With a needle tip you shoot the Devil in
and say he takes you closer to feeling God.
One “e” short of the story you were born to finish.
A young heroine turned ******.

I was never made with wings,
so I hadn't known a life other than
the one made of dirt.
I wanted a companion,
but I fell in love with a bird,
whom would never be happy
with the ground.

I’m not preoccupied with skin you see,
just what’s beneath it.
And it would be nothing more than a lie to deny
just how much I crave to be the blood
that courses through your veins.
Not to give you life or be it,
but to search and discover every inch of you
the very sun may not have kissed.

Strike me as you would a match,
against the surfaces of your skin.
Not once, but many times
Until we catch fire.

I remember those three words
twisting knots in my gut
Billowing over my self-proclaimed walls
of self-loathing. I didn't want to say it, but
the closer I got to you, the closer I became
to binding the rope of my social noose.

Those words festered at me like an infection and
I knew this truth would overtake me.
My heart ripped through flesh and fibers
until love was no longer in the closet,
but staring back at me through brown eyes.

I wanted you to admire the
bare bones and brush strokes
that painted me woman

So I disrobed.

But more than wanted,
I desired you to seize me
as a victor does his spoils

So I withdrew my weapons.

But more than seize me,
I craved that you’d relish me
as the chef savors his dish

So I lied and said I didn't love you.

And that’s all you needed
to eat your fill of me
Until gluttony left
nothing but skeletons in your bed.

I found myself begging to fall further
into this reoccurring dream and in it,
our secret love affair.
Days last too long and nights too short.

Echoes of your voice swim through
me like the sun through linen;
Your kiss answering questions
I hadn't dare mention.

The anticipation I feel waiting
for our dreaming meet,
I suppose is the same that a match would,
when it finds itself longing to be lit.

Come to me sweet vision, I plea.
Tonight or any...
Strike yourself against me-
through my crowded mind.
Let's catch fire again.

I can’t tell you how often I yearned to be her cigarette.
Clasped between her fingers,
delicately placed and savored;
******* all that I had into her.

And as much as I wanted to fall into the creases
that parted each lip,
I wanted to be the first thing she tasted
when she drew her morning breath
And her every exhale to cover me like skin

“Everything in the world is about ***, except ***…” –Oscar Wilde

Delicately but with pursuit,
I guided my lips from her collarbone
to her insecurities;
planning to kiss her until
she would come
out of her hiding place and into us.

my pen crawls on this page
like fingertips on skin
as I image us feverishly chasing each other
from the outside, in

She had holes of hurt she tried to hide me in,
asking me to love on only the parts of her
she could easily separate.

The sin of skin is that I willingly let her guide me in;
Foolishly falling through thighs
searching for the heart of the matter

Child of God
He put her on her knees
likely her penance imparted
for the sin she committed with others.

Her momma said this was the  only
love she was made for-
Not love of spirit, but love of flesh
And so the god she worshiped
smeared her face with
his holy water

Is this the absolution she has
been begging for?

it’s frightening  to reach with trembling hands
beyond the dark places within
to venture where we meet with the enemy and
realize he is more us
than him.
that serpent slides between two rows of teeth
and plants a kiss of Judas on those we call friend.
If you want a glimpse of hell, just look within.

To me she was the river
and I but a boat picked up and
carried by her

Her hurried current moved me
into deeper waters I wasn’t ready for-
If ever you can truly prepare for a sinking

Just as the water does
she dumped me into her and asked me
not to fight it as it would only make it worse

As much as I struggled to restrain her waves
She rushed into me until
I was content drowning in her

I don’t know where this shadow found me,
I am not sure that even matters,
all I know is that it followed me home.

step in step, it mirrored my pace
if I skipped, it skipped
There was no use in diggin' my heels in

it covered the dips in the sidewalks ahead
never warning before I fell
and when I stumbled, it’s black would kiss the pavement as I did
as in reassurance that we were a team

and it held onto me like a keepsake
but never keeping me
safe

I fell in love with its darkness
and it became close to me as a lover may
in a sensual hiss it called me by name

and soon it became that there was no
beginning nor end to us.

*The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going. John 12:35

Sacrifice- the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim.*


And perhaps He knows how bruised a set of knees
can get when you are constantly kneeling.
constantly feeling
constantly sealing up the pieces

and that fire you can't help but play in is burning your skin
'cuz you're dwindling in the silence of yearning
but is it really for the next drug, next love, next sigh and deep rub
or could it possibly be that you are addicted to searching?

And the only words that claim any feeling left is a mystery because you can't seem to:
Stop.
Just Breathe.
And Open your eyes.

Perhaps the quickest way to be found is declare that you are no longer lost
to hold together your hands not in pleading but in complete surrender
reach deep inside yourself and place your beating heart on the altar
with faith alone that He will mend her.

I could balance these thoughts with saccharine words,
held carefully in prose just to impress, but would they speak?
Or just be heard?
Can my heart be bold enough to articulate something my speech fails?

A force within my chest is pushing this hollow sound higher.
Its rising and I can almost taste the words being shaped.

You smile and the syllables are forming.
I am afraid that if I smile back those words will just slip between my
teeth and kiss the space that separates us.

And am I ready to leave the comfort of this vacancy?

What if I told you, you were beautiful? Truly beautiful.
Would you release the hold your stare has on me?
What if I told you, you radiate light through the opaque?
Would you let that shine warm these lonely fingers?

No imposter.
Only imposing on the walls built up by others.
Brick by brick and cemented firmly in place with mistrust and infidelity.
Although argued, my persistence will not waiver. Even in storm.

It is said that love is the only thing worth hurting for--
And when love is pure, you shouldn't have to hurt.
In friendship or in passion, let me be your reminder--
Some people leave their hearts open as to be someone's safe harbor.
And so I beckon...Come. Rest in me.

-----
For those who forget there is always someone willing to fight for you. We are His Beloved.

It's one of these feelings where I know if I could just hear your voice
a sweeter honey, smoothing out my rough edges
that I could settle these raging tides in my heart
long enough to sit still and just be.

And if I could just feel your touch for a moment
a softer satin, soothing my tattered spirit
I could actually spread wide my arms and
welcome another in.

Yet as I feel him sink his teeth in to the
vein leading directly from my heart to
my feet, I am stepping out  from this
routine and reaching to the unknown.

because this fear dislocates the numb's hold

and although the thorns draw blood to the surface
it's almost comforting to know I can still bleed

because without your sweet whispers,
reminding me that there is beauty in the
breakdown, I am scared I will never resurface
as a refined portrait of the woman I started

and instead I will be proof that loving and
losing has it's sweeter revenge.

In the vastness detained within blades of damp grass and the gusto
of stars’ light, she let the nectar pour between her thighs;
bathing in the sweet fantasy that promised to reach deep to the assurances
of the Sleepless in Seattle love, one which would stifle that portion of her
that perpetually burned.
She forgot she carried Holy, not between her insecurities but in the
river of red that beat her heart to partake in this mutual, empty dance.
Sweet girl, you are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its flavor,
with what will it be salted again?

The hand of Lust led us to lay
with expectations of the typical friction-filled
dance two strangers make after wine's brave whispers.

In the darkened room where vulnerabilities hide,
your silhouette danced in mirrored
rhythm of the sighs of ***'s lullaby.

And as true to a violin's rod on strings,
our thighs played each other
methodically.