i haven't slept as early as
ten
since when i was small, afraid of the
blinding, groping that would come to life
in the darker parts of night;
unless you count times i've been too intoxicated to stand,
too empty to breathe,
too ****** to speak,
that i close my eyes the second i hit
third base sheets,
hoping oblivion would
take me.
swallow me like one of those pills.

the fog swallowed the dawn,
the sky is left hungry.

all i ever do
is crave cigarettes and crave you

i need a pack of Marbs, stat.

my stepfather told me to stop smoking so much or I'd get a hole in my throat and I wouldn't be able to sing with my pretty little voice anymore.

i said *******.

can we go swimming in
Argentina already,
and fill our hair with knots and ocean salt?

can we walk swaying like the tide,
along the damp, moon-lit breast of the beach
and fill the empty bottles in our clenched fingers
with lavender and red ocher,
a pallet of dawn
reflecting off glass?

can we drink coconut water in
beer bottles,
and drape ourselves in hanging hammocks under a
wide eyed sky?

i only want to listen to the distant roar
of water attacking sand,
like soft, silk whispers in a
salt canopied bed,
crickets chirping through the night time
warmth,

and tropical, sleeping
breath
slowly unleashed.

please do not say "i love you"
to me, if you desire to be my lover

i wont be impressed,
and my heart wont flutter.
it's cliche, and overused, and the phrase honestly bores me.

you could lay your kisses on top of me
like dominoes,
and call me the rising sun that tinges the clouds
with peach and crimson.
you could say that i am the fear in your stomach
when you're about to jump off something high,
you could say i was dead roses in the cold of
Marches early snow.
but jesus christ.

please do not say "i love you"
to me, if you desire to be my lover*

cant you be more ******* creative than that?
can anyone be more ******* creative than that?

Sometimes I am so sick of this town.
I am tired of the way the young people twist and pull time to make it seem that they are years older than what their life conveys, and use large words that they only know half the meaning of,
and oh, "darling" "lovely"
we'll maybe I want to be called *******
"Wild" "untouchable" "agressive"
         "Manipulative" "weird"
                "Fire filled crazy eyed brown haired ***** footed mess of a girl"
          I don't want to be "lovely"
I want you to tell me I am insane, and say it to my face.
I am bored of everyone buying so many large books that they will never read, only look at with some false, faraway nostalgia when their friend comes over with their favorite vinyl.
I don't want to be "sunny"
I am not "happy"
Or "a nice girl"
I am a confusing like a labyrinth of contradiction,
And my emotions move inside me like a hurricane.
I have no time for big words anymore, or long poetic musings.
I want you to scream profanities at the top of your voice, filling your lungs with every bad word in the book.
I want you to etch bold letters in illegal places, I want your words to be direct, quick like fire. Tell me exactly how you feel.
I want you to be clear, straightforward, I have no ******* time to be called "lovely" and asked if I want a cup of tea.
I want *****.
and I want it now.
I don't want to be asked if I am awake at two a.m.,
I want to be asked if I am alive.
If I'm being rude, I want somebody to hold my face still and talk to me while looking at my eyes and say
"You're being a real ******* *****, quit it."
Instead of some *****, with hurt rotting inside of them, digging an early grave due to the inner decay of unspoken words.
I'm tired of people feeling obliged to say Bukowsi was an ***, but a good writer, "but oooh Nerudas good"
I'm sure Neruda could have been a **** too.
Stop pretending to like Shakespeare and really strong coffee and stop trying to force yourself to read really long confusing poetry.
Life isn't supposed to be a metaphor,
It's a ******* moment,
So seize it,
You don't have time to be complicated and fake.
Be raw and real. Be vulnerable and strong.

You are young,
                       You are at the prime of your life,
                      So yell off the ******* rooftops,
And scrape your knees a little bit,
And rebel a little bit,
And get a black eye sometimes,
And get angry a little,
And kiss people with soft lips sometimes,
And tell people exactly what you feel when you feel it,
And make mistakes,
And get drunk,
And do weird things sometimes,
               You are ******* young,
            Stop pretending.

can't you find any metaphors
that are original?
or do you like the ones
used,
holy and worn so your skin shows
through?

"Is it bad that I never made love, no I never did it
But I sure know how to ****"

god i might not know how to
say those three words,
but i'll kiss you against your soft
cotton sheets
and sprawl bare against them,
and make you think it all the same.

"Cause I had some issues, I won't commit
No, not having it"

i'll slink my body
and move my hips around the atmosphere
we'll both be drunk,
slurring on the beat
that my tongue moves to.

"I'll be your bad girl, I'll prove it to you
I can't promise that I'll be good to you"

my mouth is like
nicotine,
you'll never get enough of it.
but baby,
its so self destructive.

"i bet you're loud in bed."

**** right i am,
i'll make the plaster shake down on your
quaking body
and scream my pleasure so it fills every
empty space in our skin.

i'm not afraid to be a *****
because the only thing
quite as firm and unforgiving as my heart
are my legs.

please take me into the
forest, deep
with tall redwoods and let me feel the rocks like
swords under my callous feet.
where we can watch the sunset from
up above the tilting world, sitting on our thrones
made of Marlboro filters and sticks
on a mountain cliff.
we'd be cliffhangers
and thieves and vagabonds, painting ourselves
with the blue tinted night
like the deepest parts of
the
sea
far from the wandering grasp of
reality.
watch the stars with eyes like
flickering lightbulbs,
shining yellow in empty, echoing rooms.
bring along four bottles
of wine,
one for each of us.

we'll drink until theres wine slipping past our cheeks
like some kind of blood-orange sob,
leaking out our hollowed belly-buttons
rivers running swift through the lines of our
palms.
wounded from every pore with the blood of
our intoxication;
magenta tongue stained skin.

would you let me take your hand and lead you
through the empty, knocking dark
and sing to you in the soft moments of
before morning?
would you trust me enough to
close your eyes
and let me lead you in a bruised,
tumbling
drunken journey to the top of the
highest mountain?
we could lay in the summer blanketed wind
made of dancing sky and
burning earth.
close our eyes and stop the earthquake in
our minds,
wake up with the sunshine seeping through
every corner of our aching
bodies,
roses growing out of our jigsaw jaws and puzzle piece
crumbling ribs and lungs;
see through our sober fingers and
wandering eyes
a different world than it was at
midnight.

i wrote my first poem
when i was somewhere around the age of two or three,
singing out the words,
and having my mother write them down.

something about a rose,
and its devotion to the light.
i have it scribbled down somewhere.

then, the words took form in shaky
childs writing,
small words and sentences describing fantastical worlds
swirling vividly in my mind,
and then in elementary school drawl,
across colored construction paper,
then on my arms and legs in middle school,
in black ink scrawling across
golden skin,
sinking in.

then, books full
of endless pages filled with
flowing and burning inspiration piled on my desk
and by my bed
the most ferocious of inspiration finding me in all my
highschool classes.
a sketchbook,
or at least a pen always held close at hand,
i even had inspiration in the shower,
and sometimes ran out naked
if i forgot a pad and pencil.

my love of words started when my mother
used to read me poetry in the womb,
and play tapes of Native American
flute music as she fell asleep
to the small, but constant feeling of
my unborn lips inside her growing stomach
forming the outline of
words to be written and said.

i started writing,
and it became my addiction;
and i've never felt the urge to stop.

our souls we're much too big for our bodies,
it was bursting out the seams of our small limbs.

maybe everything started that one day
in seventh grade when we lied about what movie we were
going to see,
and we put up our hair in brown piles on top of our heads
and squeezed into pants so small we could feel our bones pressing against
the fabric.

when we walked into town,
miles from your house in the dusty summer,
with me dragging my skateboard along,
with the skull on the bottom
and you walking with you long legs slightly in front of me;
drunkards with
swiveling eyes whistled at us from
a green jeep and tried to cajole us into the car,
my small ******* was ****** high into
the sweltering air
"******* YOU MISOGYNISTIC *******,"

we couldn't get into the movie we wanted to,
so we snuck into a different one
filled with snow and dark
and twirling tendrils that reached toward us and
made our stomach crawl.

sometimes i miss the times desperately
when we would pack things into a small cloth
sack
food, knives
we'd trek in the forest for hours and
this one time we broke into somebodies pool, dipped our feet in
then got chased away by their livid dog.

we had left the gun we brought there,
you had two and we liked feeling it cold against our
empty fingers,
so i had to run back and get it.

sometimes i think about how if i had never met you,
my life would be so different.
i would have never smoked my first joint
with you on your trampoline
encased in large, fluffy blankets
under millions of stars that couldn't quite fit in our
eyes all at the same time.

we would have never pranced in
yellow drying grass,
and almost fell into your creek, with
your brother laughing behind.

i'm glad we wrote songs
together even if they were about
blood dripping slowly from our open carcasses;
we weren't the most optimistic kinds of
girls.

we had wills as hard as
hitting iron,
metallic in spurting bloodshed.

we were rebellious,
like other girls we're pretty,

and we fought like warriors should
in small, bland classrooms
with teachers who knew nothing of being hurt.

our voices were strong,
unwavering like something found in the depths of a morning sky.

we raised ourselves well, darling.

there are pens,
they leave words, on paper,
they dance with the language of art.

there are paintbrushes,
they glide upon canvases
magenta
violet
and sometimes you can make that empty sort of grey-ish blue,
like the one that's reflected upon pale skin when it's just before dawn.

and then there are mouths,
and they paint with warm, slick tongues,
on cold freckled flesh,
and they move up and down spines,
and they adorn throats,
and make marks,
disguised love letters on skin,
like the
purple you see in freezing toes,
and lilacs peeking up from spring snow.

it's sort of funny how i can bang you like
a frying pan to the head
and *** all your cigarettes
until your pockets are empty
and so is the bed
because

i'll want to know what kissing the
boy who lives next door
with the green eyes
feels like too

i lose everything.
i take naps on winding roads
above mountains
and i even lose my dreams.

sometimes in the shower i pull
violently on
my face,
seeing if i'm real enough,
assuming that it will crumble in my hands
turn into a brown puddle
and drip down the drain.

my mouth feels dry and i
feel aching
where my shoulder meets my arm
and my clavicle is nothing but a stick
covered with a
man of flesh;
my body is making love
and layered upon one another in a
fiery bed of red.

the odd thing,
is i want to smoke
and sleep
and lose some things in my memory.

papa remember when you used to spin stories out of gold thread
the thread that came from your teeth
it wove me a blanket so i could fall soundly asleep
papa remember when late on a summer night
we danced to music that was alive and wafted in the warm breeze like night blooming jasmine
sweet, and crawling up your nose and infecting your head
papa remember when you said you’d call
that was last year
and that same song came back on and I was surprised to find tears sneaking up
on me
burning canals into my cheeks
because you told me goodnight
and never said good morning again
because you left in my god ******
sleep

i feel

naked

but vulnerably so;

i don't want to let you in,
show you the deepest crevices of my soul
not for fear of embarrassment,

i'm just not going to let you break me in half
like that.

"leave before getting left,"

a motto for girls like me.
                                                             you don't know the frustration
                                                           when things don't go as planned.
stop saying
                  g
                    o
                      o
                        d
                          night.

this night was different;
there were more moments spent looking back then forward,
panic always pulsating in the crook of our throat
like some giant, out of breath beast
waiting in the hollow sweat, and gnarled tree branches
reflecting black against the slightly purple sky.

it was too quiet to mask our
echoing footsteps;
boot on pavement
no rain to soften the blow.

we made it in thirty minutes to the gas station,
where we unzipped our jackets
and let the lace show out of our drooping shirts
blinking like a warning sign
to the drugged up cashier,
words mumbling over his body,
strings mixed up.

men entered and i saw that look
that i always see
in men who look at me;
its hungry, a type of lusting mouth with no
feeling,
**** trusted more than his heart.

the kind of look that says,
“i want you feeling my biceps in the back of
my truck,
and i want to feel your tightness all over me,”
the only problem is i play along,
pretending to be seductive
and then leaving with an agonizingly frozen stare, and
a quickened pace
just to show them who's actually in control.

a pack of Newports exchanged over the counter,
another lighter;
this time with a green and red flower on it;
dahlias of the night.
exoskeletons of black jackets and tights
like some shadow riding vagabonds,
inside guts made out of
swallowed cigarette smoke
and bravery.

we smoked and walked,
watching as headlights flickered toward our slim frames,
and men leaned out from trucks
with salivating mouths like dogs,
inviting us to their burning desire
in the cold, shrinking night.

under the layer of skin
that tells the girl beside me that it would be stupid
to heed to their invitations,
i admit to myself
that all i want is for a stranger to wrap around me
and kiss my smoke stained lips
with a different fury,
so i can whisper a fake name in the depths of their ears,
and show them that i will kiss
better than all the women that have
wrapped themselves in
their limp bedsheets,
and leave them wanting more as i disappear into the night,
leaving nothing but a longing burn
on the tips of their tongues.

but i don't give into my fierce desires,
and we simply turn around,
smoke five more cigarettes,
and climb up the fence
to **** her hand,
and run across the raging freeway
like the Klamath itself.

"i'm Rookie"

maybe i'll say it someday when I'm driving
naked skin burning on a sun kissed motorcycle seat
past old fruit stands,
toward some shadowed, dehydrated strangers arms,
in the texas heat.
i'll show them my homemade tattoos,
and recite some poetry to them.

i'll be wearing nothing but a feather headband,
and thigh high socks,
with a flask of throat burning
fire
trapped to the side of my leg.
i'll have nothing, and i'll need nothing,

but the open road,
and strangers hands caressing my candlelit skin,
when you can softly hear the rain at night,
like warm sweat of the
desert sky.

take me to the desert
lie me down on the burning shifting sand
dry my skin into creaking sheets
of golden leather
feed my guts to the wolves
bury my bones with the snakes under the land
where no man will ever touch them again.
stretch me out under the heat
hang my intestines
like party streamers
on the spikes of cacti

i wonder what would grow out of my flesh
if you buried me alive.

grey clouds bursting stark,
volcano
ash exploding
crawling
drowning
amber measures of coal black
lungs
back aching,
carrying newborn mornings.

we used to never hold hands like that,
with mine on top and yours on the bottom,
i was too small
you were towering like some office building calculations running through your mind,
yet art on the tips of your fingertips,
and I was short like the stack of books by my bed,
and it was like a mix of night and day when my hair spilled down your golden skin,
golden hair,
tousled blonde like some kind of lion lying on the bed,
veiled in a dark slumber.
you stroked my skin and it sent shivers down my back,
and kissing you was like lying in summer sun,
pleasant,
and you’re so different from what I have now,
because now I have fall kisses,
on a bed of crimson leaves,
with another blonde haired boy but this time he’s a wolf,
and this time he holds me while we are skin on skin in a forest of cattails underfoot,
the stubbed filter of a cigarette to my left,
our clothing to my right.
he’s full of fire,
it’s all over him, on his skin, branded across his face,
but I don’t love him,
i just like the way he says he loves me when he’s looking at me like sunlight filtering through leaves,
with his crystalline blues,
biting my lips with passionate ferocity

i wrapped myself in twirling circles
inside a redwood tree,
tall, burned and cascading all around
our shaking bodies,
a bundle of sage drifting through
patterns of golden
rain.

naked bodies swam in dark
water that slept under a drifting fog;
Newport filters made for tired fires,
driftwood instead.

emptied packs and emptied stomachs
threw themselves into
a waiting bed of blackberry brambles
scratched skin burned in
2 a.m. drifting shower steam.

now,
i am tired,
because i fed the fire within me
too much
and something is slightly missing,
left along with the charred remains of my
forgotten shirt,
on a riverbed that was once brutal,
but now held bare golden limbs.
it's probably lying somewhere
carefully disguised in
light and blowing leaves on
a dark forest floor,
but i haven't the energy to take it back.

bruised necks never swallow well.

****
i wish we could drop acid
on a rolling hill like earthly ocean
waves,
summer breeze swiftly rocking
us back and forth in the
twisting realities, and
folding, condensing, expanding
visions, exploding in our
open, wide eyes.

i wish i could kiss you
and feel flowers grow from
your lips,
my ******* turning into
opening roses
soft and voluptuous under your
persistent hands.

get grass in my hair,
and count each and every one of the
angrily pulsating stars above us
as we lay naked somewhere
where reality can't breach.

let me comfortably say after
that i have lost my virginity;

because it'll be the first time i've ever
made love to a god.

some kind of nostalgia
in place of marrow
and every time I crack my bones
im shot up with
all kinds of memories

running in my rushing
canals of burgundy blood,
I see everything thats held
within the hands of this passing year
as clear and sharp as jangling
kaleidoscope shapes

I take a deep,
deep
breath.

the isle of cut-throat
key janglers, the ones with 20s crumpled in their *******
and stale smoke as the aftertaste

i will wrangle your body
for an oil pastel set
so **** me drier than the Moab
and smear the colors around like a soft serve

chocolate and peaches

i watch rugged pirates like the deep colors
of winter
black and tarnished
they sail off with
barrels of slick dreams and human liquid fantasies
getting tipsy off my honey sweet whiskey

whisk me away

the horizon leaks, the color crawls like
gold drool
dripping of a godly
dog

my morning dreams,
are scattered and
faint,
like dust in the lazy sunlight,
drifting through the window.

if "heavy" smokers are defined as smoking 5 cigarettes
a day,
then i will be the heavyweight
champion.

i remember when my mama took me up the mountain,
she told me,
"now, you are ready."
and pine and oak softly fluttered their leaves at my arrival.
there were yellow flowers,
growing wildly,
strangling the delicate blue blossoms,
made of flimsy roots and spindly bosoms.

i was the youngest in a tribe of
golden skinned people;
dreadlocks, tattoos,
moon cycles on the sides of their eyes,
and hair like cattails whispering in the dark.

with my stomach churning,
i entered the tall, dimly lit tepee.
the medicine man sat churning the ashes
in an empty fire-pit,
and women stood around me scattering
flower petals like
soft skin
all over the red-dirt earth.

his eyes twinkled,
and told me things that he would only let the
dusk unfold.
i took my seat on a white sheep-skin,
settling myself.

as the night grew older,
the fire grew larger,
shapes elongated on the fair skin of the stretched
tepee,
the flames dancing wildly,
smoke drifting up into the
starry dark.

the fire keeper stoked the raging
yellow and orange tongues,
and the medicine man sat with a bandanna on,
his waterfall nose moving,
and his leather brown skin creaking,
as he told us stories of the sacred medicine.

and we sat,
somebody started singing.
my mothers warm frame was close to mine,
and my step-father next to her,
shoulders touching in the close proximity,
intimate, smoky air.

they beat the deer-skin drum,
badum badum *** badum badum ***
in native languages like
roaring rivers,
they sang songs to the medicine,
for the opening of the heart;
their swift and strong voices
rising like smoke and flame.

when the drum was passed to me,
i didn't know any songs,
wasn't aware that i had to know any.
i started to hit the drum with the padded
stick, and
closed my eyes,
feeling the sticky sweat of my perspiring forehead
drip down upon my licked lips,
tasting of wood and dirt.
i sang something lilting
sounds coming from the deepest
crevices of my throat,
being gently pulled from the grasp of my ribs.

the medicine man put pine on the fire,
it sizzled and breath was filled with
sweet and sharp.

when the air was right, and
the night was thick with song,
he uncovered baskets of small,
green and ridged fruit-like shapes.
"buttons,"

the medicine was taking her form, and was cradled
as a native man took it around the circle,
along with oranges.
i'd find out soon why.

i took two, small and light in my fingers.
i closed my eyes and took the first bite.

my mouth was struck, eroding teeth
and erupting tongue
my face contorted from the bitter juices the small fruit
held within its delicate skin,
my stomach churned and i swallowed it down
biting into the orange, skin and all
begging for a shock of zest to take
down the intense flesh of the medicine.

i looked around,
some people were on their third, fourth.
the beat of the drums was constant,
along with the quiet,
restful crackle of the sighing fire.

the second bite was less of a surprise,
and i finished my first one.

it was only at the third bite of the second button
that my stomach refused to go any more without
heaving,
the astringent juices of the
small fruit working its magic on my stomach.

i closed my eyes and embraced what was around me;
slowly swaying in the deep voices of my
family,
mi familia,
'ohana,
and the heartbeat of the
mountain drums.

soon, i felt weary.
my mother rested her hand like falling rain on my shoulder,
and i lay in the warm arms of her
shawls,
twisting around me like snakes.

a traditional rollie was passed around,
made of corn husk and hand grown tobacco.
my eyes grew slow and drooping,
and i fell into the waiting arms of sleep
while listening to the music of
tobacco and wood smoke, hushed voices,
wilting night,
dancing fire, and alive laughter.

my sleep was deep and dreamless,
my body carried to other places by the medicine,
leaving my mind behind.

i woke to rough feet on the red dirt,
and my mother and father intertwined like red roses,
sleeping below the tepee's watch,
my mothers white skirt fanning out like
soft sheets in the summer
walls.

there were goodmorning smiles,
light spreading from one set of a skin to another,
as my family embraced me,
told me they were proud and grateful to me
for sitting with them.

a bowl of chocolate was passed around, along with a crate
of juicy, pink, dawn touched strawberries.
i dipped them in the dark, sweet and rich paste
and one after another,
felt myself expand into the universe even more.
only when my mother awoke,
to sprinkling flowers,
and lifted sky,
she told me that the chocolate held the medicine too.

i made my way across swaying, long grass,
and sat in the sun, sipping tea with a sliced lemon,
making art with twists and curls of my pencils and pens,
listening to the experiences of last night,
the enlightenment,
the sense of overwhelming love,
that was not quite drowning.

i basked in everything,
let the heat soak into my flesh,
the lilting laugh.
somebody handed me a guitar,
and i sang with my chocolate tinted lips,
and let my voice float within and around the mountain,
filling the tepee and the empty fire pit
once more,
with the sweet and bitter tastes of
the medicine
*peyote.

i want to learn french,
but i suppose i've learned enough because
cigarette
is a french word isn't it?

Lovely, lets go drive somewhere.
Lets go on a roadtrip to nowhere.
Forget all our worries, and our past, and our future, and disappear in the beckoning call of the stars, and the waning moon.
To old tapes that our parents liked, and our mother cried to one thousand times before our own tears hit the brown leather interior of this big vast van.
Far too big for both of our egos, yet too small for this beauty… Rumbling along with a feisty engine, and the scent shadows of cigarette smoke, love, and a ladies expensive Sauvé perfume encased in the seats. Memoirs of a distant past.
The Rolling Stones. Bob Dylan. Chubby Checker. Motley Crue. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Nirvana. Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam. The Doors. Frank Sinatra. Aretha Franklin. Simon and Garfunkel. Bobbie Gentry. Too many to name.
They filled the night to the top.
And trailed behind us, weaving its way in the corners of traffic, and windows of hot personalities, sweating their worries in the dark heat of the summer night.
We stop at some roadside diner; one o’clock in the morning drab slumped over all the tables. Questioning the road we take, we order coffee from the wrinkly lady named Susie, and leave it on Johns tab. We don’t even know him, but if we emptied out our pockets here and now, all we would find is lint.
We can roll down the windows, and unbuckle our seat belts on some abandoned road, racing to infinity, and only visible for this moment. We can stick out our pretty little heads, and yell into the night, cursing everything that doomed us, and everyone that doubted the freedom, the spirit that we have. It will just all just disappear in the wind.
Slipping past cornfields, alleys, coffee shops, and tiny towns, where every single one of those people have a life and a story that we could never imagine. Either that, or they have nothing at all…
Then we can stop on the side of the road, overlooking the sea, moonlight reflected upon its crashing face, and we can put something mellow on, in that ancient tape player. A tape which the label has long since warn off. But three words remain.
1967. For Marline.
A mix that was passed on from your old boyfriend, from his father’s grave… Who knows what his name was. Who knows where, or who he is now. He could be a man forgotten of all memories but you, and strives upon the image of that pretty face, but you forgot him already.
Now you can’t remember.
But we can LIVE, here and now, and we can look back upon this moment forever, while we drive back to our lives, and know, without saying anything, that we are all that any of us will ever need, and we didn’t need anybody to tell us anything because of that.

you delve deep into the naked sunset,
only to emerge with the small
dying embers
of the sun
in the weak scarlet of your
palms.

i am carrying two stomachs
two hearts
and two minds to control it all
perhaps my mother was right.
perhaps theres a **** good gemini
ripping all my organs into pairs.

i feel a raging world within
the confines of my burnt skin,
split into two:
one suppressed and raw
one orderly and profited

i make bank, i solicit myself on my own
put togetherness

and sometimes, i want to delve deeply
and watch as everything collapses around
the sturdy bones that hold it all up
and the facade slowly melts around
the fact that i am something else,
writhing and squirming to be seen
just under the skin

the funny thing is,
you think i'm still interested.

i don't fall in love with people who leave me
alone,
frigid, frozen
covered in a 9 o'clock night rain
with a piping cup of peppermint tea in my shaking fingers and
nowhere to walk except home.

you only ever touched me once
and that was centuries ago
when my lungs were new and fresh,
and i didn't come home smelling like ashtrays and stolen lilac
perfume.

i'm not a little girl anymore,
and i dont cry when red lights shine down
and people scream into microphones
with sweat sliding of the sides of their faces
cheeks shiny like stainless steel coffee pots.

i'm not attracted to you,
just like i'm not interested in your friend
that i ******
who tasted like american spirits and greed
because it's not worth looking at boys
who will never, ever satisfy you
or understand even the tips
of your fingernails
and golden brown split ends.

you know? i'll stop being so empty sometimes. i'll fill myself with words, so they will be dripping down the carefully creased seams of my lips and dents in my cheeks. i am tired of margins and paragraphs to box in what i have to say. i'm ready to let things out like a destroyed dam barricading a swift, roaring feline river; distorted reflections of the day racing past.  i am a goddess with dripping hair and naked skin, you can't stop me from feeling. i feel with my soul i feel i feel I FEEL and i am alive. i am the start of morning, i am red tinged and purple, i am the end of the afternoon, dark skinned and starry. i am everything that this universe is made up of, and i intend to be that way till the very earth splits my bones and drills my skull, and my skin droops tiredly to the ground. i am whole, and i am divine. i am eternal, like the dust scattered across the milkyway, and *you can't stifle me.

once
my daddy took me to a clearing,
a shrouded cedar and pine
hideaway,
overlooking the distant mountain range,
sticking up like morning hair.
it was sunny,
flowers sprung out of the ground at our feet and
fought their way through the
grass.
he led me to a stump,
"this is where i write when i cant think."
i nodded and took it all in
with open eyes and a
wide mouth, hanging like a trapdoor.
it was beautiful;
the mountains in the distance creating in my
wild imagination
castles like the ones where giants lived,
in the stories that spilled from his lips.
he opened his arms wide like wings
at the highest part of the arching hill,
he closed his eyes and the breeze tousled
his wheat hair, flowers softly caressing his
ankles.
the scruff above his lip and laying on his chin
shined gold in the drifting daylight sun.
he took a deep breath
a humongous breath;
deeper than any i could ever take.  
"this is where i go when i cant
breathe."
you could hear the echoes of swift trains,
screaming past in the valley
from
Truckee,
carrying chills along with it
every time i heard them.
i never liked that sound.
it was a cacophony of shrieks.
he held my hand
with fingers ten thousand oceans larger than
mine,
and took me into the thickest, deepest part of the woods
where it was dark
and the smell of pine viciously attacked your nostrils,
like a rabid dog.
he let go of my hand,
i let it fall dejectedly to my side.
he slumped down into a pile near the roots of the tree,
a different man:
tired and trying.
he sighed.
*"this is where i go to sleep,
when your mother has had enough of
me."

i put my fingers in my mouth
salty
honey soap tasting
i can feel the pulse in my upper lip
desperately beating

i can feel my pulse uneven
when i jab my fingers into my neck,
like a dancer slightly falling offbeat,
distracted with the smoke

or maybe that's just my imagination,
my father had arrhythmia,
so did my grandfather.

both of them abused substances
and drank irish ***
and black coffee with sugar,
both of them wrote about things
like "passion" and "sunset",
both of them had troubles with commitment,
uneven smiles
and
bad teeth.
both of them ate too much sugar,
and laughed really loudly,
both of them liked arguing
and letting stories fall from the caves of their mouth,
leading armies with their teeth
their tongue a home for dragons.

it only takes a skip of a beat,
the dancer to fall completely
for me to become
another carbon copy.

i want a messy eyed boy to
drag his tongue upon my sun filtered skin
and lay me out in a field of wildflowers with
wide fingers and veined arms
wandering all over my aching body.

i want him to whisper things to me
in a light voice as wavering and deep
as trickling water
and windblown leaves.

i want him to feed me vines and fungi,
psychedelic plants,
and watch me trip into the
winking sky,
a wandering abyss.

i want him to growl all over me,
holding my bare body in his arms,
fitting his skin in every crevice that is possible
in these mundane bodies.

i want sweat sliding off me,
and the feel of bodies in motion. i want
him to
stroke my skin and paint it lavender
with crushed flowers and
put soil in my hair, while i
wiggle my naked feet
in the air.

i want him to swallow me
like i am overfilling liquor
in a crystal bottle,
desperate and excited.
i want him to leave
pink bite marks on the waiting flesh of
my collar bones,
and breathe into me;

i want him to write on my skin
in the fire of the dwelling night,
my soul is enigmatic and
it draws him in
like art.

i crave hands around my waist,
colors on my tongue,
the earth in between my toes,
and somebody to kiss me under
the lightning storms.

finally you came back to me;
for good we thought.

we'd walk out in the dark, and sprawling streets in
the empty mornings
and smoke packs of our favorite kinds, we had thought.

and there was one glorious weekend when we wore
long skirts and smoked
rollies on
the white painted balcony.
we stole six bottles of wine from
an unlocked cellar,
fully clothed in our
indian dresses,
underneath were our lacy bras
and silky underwear.

we walked the path barefoot
to the Nest, and we tattooed the dead and dying branches
with the sharp art of our burn marks,
and under the bridge where we
jumped into the frigid creek,
and let the sun shine through our hair while
a blond boy played his guitar.

we stayed up late,
jumping on the soft pink carpet of my room,
making small earthquakes in the quiet town,
screaming the songs
that beat to our own heart.

we crawled onto the red shingled roof
and inhaled the
thorn filled
atmosphere of
November,
smoking newports and marlboros faster than
Olympic champions.

we were naked but for our limp hair, hanging at our sides and
shivering skin,
“smoke me like a cigarette”
we softly sang, with the light of my room
slowly slinking into the night.

we took a drunken shower afterwards,
a bottle of chardonnay
reflecting the red light overhead,
the water rolling off our bodies,
ash falling from our hair.

we woke up in the light of one another's
morning eyes,
with splitting heads and cracked grins,
we had more plans.

we laughed on the secret
flower hotel porch,
bringing out more of our wine bottles,
playing our music loudly,
unfiltered spirits
was slowly writing their tragedy on our
wilting lungs.

that night we stuffed our beds
and created sleeping bodies out of ***** clothing and
small pillows.
we ran into the fresh night,
trouble as a steel edge on our
summer filled laughter.

we danced to the music that filled our
murky brain,
stumbled into a smoke filled room and burned
our throats
*****.

we walked in the deserted hours
of four in the morning,
and stamped on the counters,
of some boys house,
voice hoarse from
singing Neutral Milk Hotel at the top of our
brimming lungs
and banging on guitars.

we broke ashtrays,
and hearts,
and we snuck back in
with orange-chai hookah fresh on our
dry lips,
when the sun was threatening to
rise.

we wandered around the sunken down
town
the next day,
unfilters again.

we smoked three packs in two days.
sixty cigarettes,
for the sixty days we've been apart.

my mother told me later that she could smell it on me
riding on my breath,
she could tell by our dry eyes
and bed made hair,
we were hungover.
we smelled like ashtrays,

Hydrocodone is no excuse for you to be
torn so violently apart from me,
everything is falling out of
place.

b.h.
parched lips tinged with
sunset,
you knew i was escaping before
you even held
me
and said goodnight;
look me in the face next time.

a.d.
maybe if you were
the sun, i'd be the moon
floating on a little boat,
miles beneath you, melting through
the wooden splinters and rusted nails
bathing in whiskey seeping from leaks
and late night tiptoed desires.

r.m.
you barely moved, still but shaking in
ecstasy like a fallen leaf
balancing on a current.
i wanted your hands all over me;
i'm not sorry i made you angry and livid
like a rabid dog,
but i regret crying over you because
you were
never worth it.

b.b.
*** and **** stain
the memories like an old carpet
they're so far back in my head,
we were such different people
that i wonder if it really counts.
it doesn't,
but i'm glad you we're there.

c.m.
i only recently noticed
we have the same initials,
and that probably explains
the way i kissed you.
your touch started after my birthday,
your hands sculpted my bones as my cells
we're replaced,
like they will be every other 7 years.
it feels so far away and vacant
and i guess you always really were the
Nowhere Man.

m.g.
your lip bites were like the ravenous cold,
on top of spanning roofs
when the moon was heavy and ripe amidst
the cotton field clouds
my long skirt draped like curtains over
our secrets.

a.f.
*** in a leafless forest
trunks naked and bare,
dwindling at the tops, skinny and clueless.
you whispered the lyrics into my
cascading hair
and i sang along.
chocolate skin
against golden,
i could smell the burnt wood
embedded in your pores.

j.r.
you should have expected me to lead you on,
get bored and flee before you ask anything else from me,
even though i've taken all of you.

a tip: never again trust girls with equally brown hair and eyes
because they use both
to strangle and drown you

you have a kind heart,
and i hope you got the mud stains out of your clothing.

j.w.
nicotine bitten tongues
wet and slippery
your fingers dug deep
and you held my hair as i spilled
my lust all over you.
i fell asleep to your soft, drunk snores
and woke up to a fresh cup of piping hostility,
i wish i spilled it on your leg.

n.o.
you have nice eyebrows,
but maybe i should have read your initials.
i'd never let you touch me again;
too frantic, and you we're panicked because you
didn't know how to touch
a woman.
i could feel it on your breath,
like you we're afraid i'd dissolve right there
on the bed.
i'm sorry you wasted two mixtapes and a
broken cigarette
on a girl who doesn't want to be anybodies.

d.
you tasted faintly of bread
and ***** chaser.
i still don't know
what you look like
exactly,
i only know you we're twenty four
and liked when i spoke Spanish
because i have a very skilled tongue.

s.a.
a bathroom floor
tiles dimly illuminated,
skin soft, whispering
it probably would cave in
and leave us falling
under all our temper and temperature;
we'd crumble like a house of cards
in the plumbing and winding pipes
below.

no cliche flowers,
petals ripped off and stuffed
under our naked bodies.
no sweet nothings whispered
into the deepest crevices of my ears.
no, nothing but
ratty floral couch
under freezing toes,
and silent breathing
-we didnt want to wake up his friends parents-

it didnt hurt,
he moved my body like i was the ocean
tide
pulling in and out
it felt like a mixture of cold
disbelief and riveting
ecstasy.

he didnt even know it was my first time,
and when i told him later, poison almost
visibly dripped down his lips,
but he was quick to **** it back in and sugarcoat
it with honey flavored chapstick.

and i'm not saying i regret it
because it was nice.
but "nice" is not enough for Chandra Lunah Moore.

and afterwards, when he tried to lock me to the small
foam and spring innards
couch
with his soft legs glowing golden with the help of an
off-kilter lamp in the corner,
when my muscles strained against his,
i knew the frightening power of human
desire.
how when he didnt offer a drag from his
cigarette
at all afterwards, just ****** at it needily,
all for himself,
didnt drape his jacket around my
treacherously shivering shoulders
like he had on the walk there,
didnt carry me the rest of the way,
stomping through the snow,
lips bitter after two long drags
off a joint,
he didnt hold me like he did so many times before,
(almost like he believed he was heavier with the weight of my
saved up childhood, like some kind of bank account. life savings,
dragging on his shoulders, making them, sag. skin heavy with my touch.
and i was lighter, without it.
i could walk.
he was obviously carrying the real burden.)
i knew, when he kissed me goodbye and it tasted like
a
wasted night
spent on not getting what he
wanted

i knew he was meaningless and i would
never again settle for
                                     just
                                            nice.

its morning,
not even purple yet,
like a bruise on the snow, blue and pink and black
reflected from the sky and the tempest within
i lie covered in his voice
singing in the sharp winter dawn air, slicing my cheeks with knife-like metaphors,
his words like honey,
how can something be so sweet and yet so
lethal?

sometimes its easier for somebody to see what's wrong
when they can't hear you sob like
a hyperventilating storm
--------
i know you want to tear out your organs with your nails,
but please hold onto your insides for me,
because you are enough.
you are whole without needing love from people
who don't matter.
and you can't forget it, because you don't need approval from anybody but yourself.
and i want you to know
i'll never forget that time when we we're drunk and stumbling
and i saw that you had white scars slashed on your legs too,
and knew that I wasn't alone
because we knew one another's pain and we loved eachother for it anyway.
you are kind,
remember it. you are strong like a steel whip in the cold icy
morning of a december winter, but you are soft and kind and you are warm
like strawberry vanilla popsicles dripping and summer heat sweltering,
and please
never forget to be kind
to yourself
especially.

--------
please try to stop ******* everything up.
you make things ******* yourself, and maybe if you just learned to let go
and accept that your problems are no more important than every other single living being on this earth, maybe you'd smile a little more. your smile is beautiful, and i don't think you know that. life treats you so well, you just have to open your eyes and
WAKE UP.
you have to escape your little world sometimes,
and admit that we're all breathing in the same atmosphere into our lungs.
you can get better so easily,
you just have to let yourself.
because i know,
you aren't letting yourself heal.
let that small peach tree grow it's roots.

--------
giving yourself away to boys who only care about your body, won't make them care about your feelings. drinking until you fall asleep wont make the world disappear, it'll just make your memories sink to the bottom; you need to filter them out.
don't be afraid anymore, be real. be who you are under those layers of flesh and bones,
be the soul that screams and hammers to be let out. you are so real.
and worthwhile.
so many people care about you,
you are something magnificent and
it's not your fault. to be free, you need to stop blaming things on yourself.
let it go from your clenched palms, because things are getting better just as long as you make them that way.
i feel like you forget how strong you are, how you have so much power in those long, pale fingers. how you can create and destroy with the mere movements of your tongue.
i don't want you to forget that what you hide inside you is something gleaming and vast, and you should pull away the blinds
and let the sun shine through.

--------
i feel horrible because i was the girl who taught you that feeling was a horrible thing to do.

that because you let yourself
get too emotional over the fact that
i was too unattached to love you in the way you wanted me to,
and every time we tried, i would runaway from your waiting lips
and laugh like venom dripping behind closed doors to hide
from your confrontation about why i never wanted to let people love me
and return it.
now, you walk with a metal shield up
i remember you said a long time ago
“now i know every girl will be like you,
and i don't want to try ever again.”
i wish you would still tear up to really good music,
and let your barriers down.
because it's not true, there are women
who will treat you right,
and love your bad jokes,
and not lead you treacherously into their traps of poison and bones.
be true to the boy you harbor so reluctantly in your tough exterior
because i can still see him in your eyes when you smile,
and he's beautiful.

--------
you think that the words you write have nothing to do with what you hold inside.
you're wrong about that.
you are the things you imagine yourself to be, but you have to release them from the fear tight in your chest.
you aren't damaged, but people will see yourself that way if you hold your body like that. straighten your spine, darling, and pierce their eyes with the knowledge that you are
beautiful like vines crawling up gracefully over a window
you are smart like the cinnamon colored pages of old books,
you are mysterious like the deepest parts of the ocean,
and alluring like the soft, midnight tide.
nobody forgets about you, you aren't small in anybody's mind.
nobody thinks that your ordinary, they think you're fantastic,
and you need to break all your mirrors
and with scarlet dripping from your knuckles like rivers
on ice
you need to admit that you don't need them.
it makes me so happy to see you slowly blossoming
into the wild rose i know you are.
take care of yourself,
because that is the only way anybody else will be able to care for
you.
your soul is huge like the
morning sky
let yourself feel it.

--------
find your voice, and speak clearly to people who are shaking your boundaries, and tell them to BACK OFF.
yell it if you have to,
stop letting them invade you and squeeze your insides like they even have
any right to.
scream into their faces that you are not weak,
and let loose your mean side a little bit.
never let yourself be taken advantage of.
look into peoples eyes,
and search desperately for their truths.
if they don't hold their vulnerability raw and beating in their palms,
then they're not worth it.
never expend your energy to make somebody else feel better.
you can share with them your happiness, but never give it away;
because you are not an empty girl.
you are a fulfilled girl bursting at the seams with things it means
to be completely alive
and laughing
and feeling.
don't hide that.
people think its nice to be hurt
and it's so mature and creative and artsy to be damaged.
they think its romantic when you can be
“saved”
by a stupid prince who wont give you **** but a plastic crown and sore hips.
DO NOT GIVE INTO THAT *******.

your eyes crinkle when you smile,
and you have small teeth that are like
waxing moons.

nobody wants to be happy
because they think it wont last,
because they think its not beautiful
but you my dear are living proof.

i wanna write

write write write

right until its dripping for more,
until the paper is aching and begging and my burgundy guts
are folded and mangled across that pristine page

i want to be raw and obvious
the world a witness to my pungent feeling,
every wide eye dripping like my letters
are chopped onions
stinging

i want to make the world drone
with the mumblings of my soul

i am bleeding recklessly onto these pages
unable to stop:
punctured and petrified
with this passion, as the ocean recedes
in fear that it will simply steam away.

and then i walk,
naked, wet and bear ***** under
flickering fluorescent streetlamps that have seen
more ***** deeds than my own hands
i am merely a skeleton rattling down moaning alleyways
breath white and stark like skin freshly slapped
against the midnight of my mind.

i will write till i am disrobed, till it has rocked me raw
until the needle just plays static, until i am all shriveled like
dried mango and a lone sun baked chili pepper,
until it has eaten every piece of me, until the giantess of
my words
finds herself picking my own remains out of her teeth,
until i am consumed by this burning
                                                           this desire
                                                                          this raging
                                                                                        WILD FIRE

why the hell does a naked body primarily represent some ****** nature?
a bare body has no ******* thing to do with ***. it is the beauty of freedom. of the lack of care it takes to be one with yourself. it is a bare canvas, ready to be painted upon by a lover, a friend, it is your life,
and every action you do paints something upon that beautiful bare canvas. a body is not meant to be hid, or be shameful of.
for, if you cannot live in your own skin,
how can you ******* live at all?