I want to write a poem but
Poetry isn't something that you can just
Whip out lightningfast in the space of a minute-
which feels like a lifetime-
Poetry takes time has to
Tiptoe on the tongue of the Teller
Has to
Lie in wait in the bushes in the alleyways has to be
CALLED INTO EXISTENCE BY A HOLY LIGHT
Poetry isn't easy, baby
You needn't worry if it hurts

Din of voices crowding out thoughts
Thoughts constructed of safety pins and toothpicks held together with spit
Spit dribbling out of the hungry mouth that yearns for companionship
Companionship which is desired but not truly felt
Felt people saunter past, their fabric feet barely touching the ground
Ground into a pulp are the vicious spiders of memory
Memory is a tactile thing that turns in contemporary web
Web of truths spinning and spinning beneath agile fingers
Fingers dug into temples' throbbing ache of words words words
Words are not enough to describe this mortal dullness
Dullness like the din of voices crowding out
**Thoughts

She
Is just like me
She
Is my age, smiles at the same jokes, cries at the same sad stories
She
Walks past me and in my mind I say
She
Is getting fatter why do I feel that I have a need to comment on what
She
Deems beautiful why does my mind run to the way her shirt fits tighter
She(ltering) me from my misperceptions of pretty
She
Is a human being filled with flaws filled with bones and viscera and
She(ll) fragments and so am I
She
Is
Me

Why don't you leave a trail of ashes where my body once lay
Scorch straight through until I return to the dust I was born in
Set me aflame with your words alone until I am writhing in a beautiful
Agony that only you could create

Why don't I stare at the sun until I dissolve into the atmosphere
Leaving particles of light in my place

there was surgical steel in my lungs
the day you told me how you felt how you really felt
and when i took a breath
it was hollow and swollen and metallic so
i thought i'd bitten my tongue too hard
when i kept my words behind my closed lips
i didn't understand what you were saying not really
but your eyes looked cold
like you'd been living in a freezer
your whole life and as your mouth moved your eyes bored into the wall behind me
i knew there was a hole there made by your icy stare and i felt another cutting into my own skin
as the cigarette smoke curled around you
i thought you'd never looked more beautiful
at the same moment i realized
you'd never been so
ugly
let's just be friends bears the weight of
so many unspoken feelings like
i still love my exgirlfriend and
you were just a warm body and
i've forgotten how to feel anything for anyone anymore and
it scares me
maybe i thought that last one
you were precision and tact
in its purest form
a single element designed to break my heart
and i think you knew
so when i asked you for a cigarette to melt the
steel in my lungs and justletmebreathegoddamnit
your retreating footsteps told me all i ever needed
to hear
and my sobs were hollow and swollen and metallic
like the blood pooling in my mouth from my
bitten-off tongue

I miss the earlymorning quiet when teverything the world is
Waiting to take her first
Breath. When I can walk into the justbarely night sky
With my toes touching dewycold grass and
Lift my head to feel the breezy dawn,
When the moon fades to daylight and the
Sunrays breach the clouds they hide behind, that
Inbetween duskdawn state where
I am the only living soul.
There is nothing more beautiful than This quiet but summer trades the soft cascade of leaves for
Cacophonous daybreaks with birds chirping
Tirelessly
Awareness of being settles in well
Before 4 AM.
I want the tiptoefeeling back, when I step outside and
inhale the dawn.

I am waiting there, on my
Porchstep, promising to take my first
Breath.