Even after you ruined me for any other,
I cannot regret you. Even as I cleave
the flesh of wanting from the bone,
I hope the night sky is pretty
wherever you are.

Punk Rock John introduced himself to me at my first show. He said, “kid.. protect your teeth, do NOT lick the walls, and don’t ******* the crusty’s. If you get cut, let it bleed– you’ll be fine.”
I was 15 years old, thinking about unzipping my veins. And while most 15 year olds would have done drugs or written a ******* poem, I went to ****** bars and basements and gave my best friends black eyes.

For the first time in my life, I knew that when I fell, someone was gonna pick me up. That first mosh pit was not a quiet conversation about suicide, it was Punk Rock John telling me, “Hey *******! Don’t **** yourself! Don’t waste your unscarred knuckles.” My rage bloomed. Why hate myself when I can hate parents, high school, the radio, record stores, magazines, corporations, yuppies, my parents, cops, rain, sunshine, beach days, phone books, and tiny ******* cupcakes? *******, if that first day of punk didn’t sound like Buddy Holly played back, double time, distorted, compressed into four chords.

The first time I saw Punk Rock John, he was halfway through a frontflip stage dive, and he landed directly on me. He picked me up, dusted me off, and threw me back in the pit. Punk Rock John was 6’4, had hands the size a kick drum, and he smelled like a 20-year rain. He was Noah. He was our shepherd. One time, I was getting ready to dropkick some metal kid when John got me in a headlock and said, “quit ******* around, Neil! You don’t know who this kid’s friends are, and I ain’t putting you out if they set you on fire.”

John told us, “the church of punk rock was always open. If you wanna pray, just crank up the stereo until your ears bleed. If you wanna pray, just grab your brothers and sing! Sing out of tune, sing the wrong words- just sing! Loud!”

But then some out-of-town skin dropped a guillotine knifeblade into John’s skull. The blood was pouring from his ears. He was dead before he hit the ground. John brought me into a world where I felt loved, and that world took him away. I buried my leather jacket, patched the holes in my jeans, and tried to pluck the chords like stitches from my chest.. but John still speaks to me. When the world is larger than I am, when my chest is a vice.. I put that needle on the record, I turn it up until I can’t hear ****, and I tell myself: as long as I have hands, I can break something. As long as we can breathe, we can sing. As long as I can remember, I will hear him– he says, “kid, you’ll be fine.”

Sweetheart, come to bed.
the demons that you hoard are bending the curves of your spin;
I can see them pulling at every muscle tucked beneath your skin.
You pop and you crack and it vibrates against the walls.
I shutter at the sound
the sickening, awful sound.

Sometimes I wonder if you believe in the miracles
that fall between my pelvis,
or the heavy breath I breathe between parted lips.
Are my bones strong enough to save you?

Sweetheart, come to bed.
Your cautious footsteps are creeping back and forth,
up and down,
heavy footed across the ragged carpet.
I hear them every night aching so unholy,
from underneath my bed sheets.
You swear you're next to me asleep.
I hear them though you swear you've been asleep.

Most times I want to believe in the miracles,
I have promised you between night and day
and the soft lipstick stains I've left lingering lightly on every inch of skin
you've left so vulnerable to my kiss.
I wonder if its saving that you need.
Sweetheart, come to bed.

Do not let him tell you that your mouth is made for kissing.
Your mouth is made for the articulate frenzy of revolution, for the
crisp shape of kindness, for lurching picket lines and your
solitary war cry in a law school classroom. It is made
for the brutal pucker of dreaming. Do not let him
cradle your jaw in his audacious hands and
tell you that your mouth is anything
less than the soft and violent
devastation of water, stirring.
The next sentence you begin with "I" -
don't you dare let it end in "love you."

You insisted you were not one for violence
but every kiss was a knuckled fist.
Its been years, but my teeth
are still reeling from
the knockout.
At night, they vibrate
in their white skins- a little
earthquake of you in my mouth.

The germs of you snuck in
Through my skin
They just came and came
Not even caring about what
It would do to me
They made a city in me
Every street light was the
Light in your eyes
And the national anthem
Was your laugh
Every billboard was your smile
The stars were the little
Freckles on your nose and cheeks
One day they decided
To take a swim
In my bloodstream
I was having the time of my life
Because you said
"Forever"
But then I found out about
All the other girls cities
You broke my heart
The city inside me did not
Have a reason to be there
I decided to let them go
So I opened up my veins
And all that came out
Was you.

"Don't you ache from all you carry? It could be light, easy."
A little kiss on the spine. A fractured sigh in the blue dark.
"Its become my whole body. Where on earth could I set it down?"
Thunder rolls up her silk stockings.
Rain lets down the fringe of her hair.
Somewhere, a reptile is unwinding,
its old skin left in the long grass.
"Love, let it loose. Give it to me."

I've been searching for you
at the bottom of cigarette cartons
trying to remember
if your touch was ever hot
as the ashes falling from my fingertips
I've been searching for you
between the breaths charring my insides
taking my time to wonder
if the warmth between your thighs has faded.

I found my muse
in your cold heart
and soaking sheets.
I hope you find
the love I buried
in between.

I've been thinking a lot about
cherry coated kisses, and
the sunlight in the evening.
I've been dreaming about
the scar on your eyebrow,
how I'd always brush my fingertips across it.
I won't step into parks without nostalgia's
fleeting ghost, and
I can't taste a lovers lips
without your impulse running in.
I guess I could forget even the smallest
parts of you, but
my body knows your ghost and
just can't seem to let it go,
or how I pulled you in so feverishly
and slammed my lips to swap the spit
with yours and,
you smiled like a little boy.

Because regardless if you ever loved me
we both know you still feel my mouth
on the very edges of your skin,
and is it not news that she can ******* name
on the pieces of your exposed flesh
you haphazardly place so heavily beneath her.
I am burned so inescapably apparent
like silver scars that beg for invisibility.
I have kissed you deep with these malicious lips,
and left your blood tinged with toxic venoms
that you are so desperate to water-down,
to erase, to pretend as if they never seared
the guarded walls of your insecurity;
but don't let me brandish my own wounds
as though they somehow belong to you.
And I might not have ever meant I loved you,
but I can still feel the exact moment
it could have possibly been conceived
and the way the currents kept back
the aching light of truth that lay so calmly over
you and I, you and I,
you and I were never meant to be;
we just happened.

I loved a boy with a rather small heart,
sometimes he'd let me in and I'd roam through,
running my fingers along the scratches the walls held
and cautiously stepping over the loose floorboards.
He told me love once lived
in this dark and brooding place.
He told me he'd have married her,
but she damaged all the rooms,
so he forced the doors shut.
I loved a boy who put off cold distance
and placed a "keep out" sign on his front door.
Sometimes he'd let me in
to paint the grey walls vibrantly,
or put down new flooring;
to replace the glass windows she'd shattered,
and open the curtains.
He told me love once thrived there
and that every day the sun would shine through.
"It was Love." he would say,
who kept him warm in the winter,
but she dismembered the foundation,
and flooded the basement,
so he locked himself away.
I loved a boy who couldn't love me back.
Sometimes he'd let me in
to fill the cracks in the molding,
or plant flowers in the garden.
Sometimes he let me start a fire in the fireplace,
and turn the bed over.
He told me love once belonged there,
and that my renovating was comforting,
but futile nonetheless.
The old creaky staircase
would never forget the imprints of her feet
and the gates in the yard
were not strong enough to keep her out.
I loved a boy once who chose to remain haunted
despite every attempt I made
to set his soul free.
I loved a boy once who couldn't let go of a ghost.

oh he’s giving me reasons
to write desperate love songs
to fill my notebooks with paragraphs
two and a half pages long
that don't shy away
from my hearts fickled tune.
oh baby, oh baby
you're making me swoon.

I wear father's
  disappointment
  like a dark dress.
  I look smaller in it
  than anything else.

I have buried your name like a stinking
carcass in the soil of my throat and
teeth and tongue. I wonder
how far down the roots
have travelled, how
you claw and
cleave into
the bone
and marrow,
whether one day
they will find our remains-
a rotting body within a rotting body,
a curled hand trailing from the mouth.

God really should have
made women's skin venomous
so that no meant no.

I see the structure
of all these lonely buildings.
Are they empty too?

he had hearts for eyes
and his lips were
love letters I never opened.

Come a little closer.
    There is a halo in your mouth
     and I like the way it burns.