i'd never thought that I would lose my virginity on a small couch in my friends living room.
but then again.
i'm not one to think about things, just rush into them like a stubborn headed hammer, breaking things along the way.
id never thought that I would run out of the house with purple, naked feet crushing the ice underneath me like small bones, in the middle of a black December silence.
and it was nice seeing a 2 am silhouette at the end of my road, cigarette in hand like always, your breath a steady stream of white, drowning me in an ocean of nicotine.
and I was high and you were drunk,
and I slipped and kissed your wine tinted lips,
and our skin made a forest fire, as we tangled ourselves in the crackle of a wood burning stove,
and the silent tread of snow on the sleeping town.

you want real ****** poetry
well cut me open

but all thats dripping out is coagulated procrastination
and I wonder

does the man living in the building across
see me naken from time to time?
what is his fascination with glass jars
I hear drunkards and bottles smash
from the windows downstairs
I wonder if he breathes smoke
and I wonder what he coughs up at night

my days last until 3 a.m.
my eyelashes carry designer hand bags
catching all that skin that
spills over

I listen to Claire de lune and feel like
scraping the itches off my scalp,
tiny thoughts trying to escape.

they'll never get far

i crave you
i crave you like a cigarette, to press my lips softly upon you and **** out your insides with one flick of my tongue,
to breathe you in and watch you dance about lazily in the sunlight,
i crave you like whiskey,
the kind that when you sip it, in a large bed with soft blankets, next to a girl that’s like an angel compared to myself
the devil,
it burns your throat and lights you on fire,
blowing up your stomach in one thousand different explosions of flames,
but i’d rather be on fire with you.
i crave you like i crave paper,
the soft, porcelain face, the dark dance of my pen gliding upon its silky body,
words twisting and twirling,
i crave you like midnight writing when the moon is out
and the air is soft and thick,
and the neighborhood is asleep and everything is white noise
but the scratching of pens and crickets singing in the east,
quiet under the rising sun.
i crave your skin on mine
friction and fire,
your lips on mine
smoky, drunk,
i crave you like freedom on a summer night.

"you're a little bit of a chameleon
you never quite dress the same
you always look a little bit different"

that's because I shift my skin every hour or so
I live on the constant brink of what I could be
French music at 5 a.m.
and tom waits at midnight
Rodriguez in the shower
and silence in the dead
quiet of an October snow fall

I gave up smoking and took up
chocolate pancakes at 2 p.m.
I live naked in my room made of
red fire and velvet

someday if I squeeze into
that domestic skin with a floral dress
and bulging *******
with instant coffee breath
you have to promise to build me a sun roof
the kind that I can watch the mountains turn purple as
the morning shreds itself onto the hills
and

if I squeeze into the skin
that I have already known
one with pressurized headaches
and a complex for falling for
strange men on the roadside
and an obsession for the occult
and cinnamon flavored, spine tingling
gum
a hint of violence
promise that you'll leave right away

if I want to push myself in that shrunken skin
of a small brown
tornado
tell me you won't try to run after as the
debris collects

every day I decide which skin to wrap around my spine
trying in the meantime
to scrub anonymous fingerprints off the majority of them

I write what I want because
****
what I write doesn't have to be
right

my parents drove, and took me away
from school
my mother bore heavy words on her chest,
weighing her down with every wheezing breath she took.
my step-father had something a little vacant in his eye,
barely there but i noticed.

they sat me down and spoke
small, soft, strong words to me
and then

your

grandfather

has

cancer

i sat still, unmoving,
"if it spreads to his lungs, he will have two more
months
to live."

slipping, slipping like mudslides in a rainy season,
air in my throat was stagnant
bones
weren't holding my body properly, what was happening to my
skeletal system?
dripping like
cold rain.

then, i crashed.
speeding, so fast down a freeway,
sliding down the highway,
slippery ice under
and here was the crash.

wet anger tore into my mothers shoulders
as i clenched them
i
screamed  
why do such horrible things
happen to such
kind people

and my mother said
i dont know
with tears of her
own.

we'd walk with our noses up,
sovereign against the grey, moving sky.

we'd pay skinny women with wrinkles like canals
on their sagging faces,
with yellow teeth of ash and smoke,
and flitting eyes, buzzed off coke,
to buy us brandy and cigarettes
in the small gas-stations littered like filters
around town.

i'd convince you,
and a girl with silky hair like frozen rivers,
to run down in the safe enclosure of night
in suffocating fields, choking in ice
and reduce our clothing to dark shadows
scattered around the moon-reflecting snow,
and to run bare and naked,
with our ******* taut and heavy
against the bitter winds.

we'd be wearing heels
like deadly cliffs, thorns like
biting roses,
stealing little gulps from each bottle in a tall girls
liquor cabinet,
a tiny mouthful of
butterscotch ***,
bombay sapphire sliding down
achingly painful, dry gin exploding
our tongues.
a little bit of Tennessee whiskey,
it was always my favorite.

we'd crawl out looming windows
like dark, slanted mouths,
into the night
on top of a shrouded mountain,
silky underwear,
goosebump legs, and
celebrating her first real shot.

we'd be laying on mattresses under the
breathless stars,
eyes heavy, cement filled
and hazy with hash.

we'd be on my bed, listening to brand new,
because it reminds us of words unsaid,
and kisses that
wont be taken back.

smoke a cigarette for me darling, wont you?

when i die,
i will not be buried,
i will be burned and my body will become
smoke in the vacant skies.

ma vie a vivre.*
scream it into the empty night
with your roaring voice
clawing at your throat
ma vie a vivre.
yell it loud into the
black abyss
with the silent sounds of white
noise as a backdrop;
crickets,
4 a.m. freeway trucks,
your feet pattering, slashing the pavement.
ma vie a vivre.
yell it when you're drunk
with lips that taste like
spirits
summer
and orange cream popsicles,
whisper it in the roiling
and plotting storms,
bags under eyes hanging heavy with rain.
ma vie a vivre.
say it softly with
moist lips,
into the ears of a
boy with
hands like the husks of coconuts.
ma vie a vivre.
say it in a hushed
strangled
voice
at a mothers twisted face,
in the air that echoes with a
rageful slap.
ma vie a vivre.

this is my life to live.

the thing is,
we've all waged war on ourselves.

we've all been warriors against our
own body,
our own mind,
thoughts.

we've all told ourselves
that the things we create are not good enough,
that our hearts are not strong enough,
that we are so small compared to this sinking earth,
and we could never do anything about it except
scream and scream
from someplace high
until someone hears us,
saves us.

we've all torn
our bodies apart
whether it be with our fingers,
guiding razors, scratches,
adorning our precious skin with
purple bruises,
red slashes.
whether it be with our state of
mind,
shrinking ourselves,
pitying ourselves.
whether it be the
acceptance of heartbreak,
and the un-willingness to let it go.
we try to find salvation
in tiny, bitter pills,
try to find love in our medication.

the thing is,
we've all held battlegrounds within ourselves
and we're still so unkind.

we've been a shelter for ****** genocides
of creativity, and
we've held car crashes
of broken trains of thought,
in our screaming and thrumming mind.

we've held bombs within us,
exploding, shattering inside,
lodging us with
painful reminders of what it is
to be human,
alive.

the thing is,
we're all war veterans,
with both hidden and violent scars
from fighting
the lethal battle that is
raging within.

and that's okay.

just know
that you will win someday.

in the shower,
i pretend that the burning hot
water
raining down on my body
are your soft and callous fingers
warm and wet
july heat;
seep through
my skin.

i arch my back, push my ******* toward the
low hanging ceiling
and i pretend that the water
hitting my throat
are your lips
kissing my neck
carefully.
i pretend that the steam is your breath
escaping,
but then i open my eyes and i am
alone
and it is cold winter not the summer *****
of July.

"let me use the shower!"
someone yells.
i pull the water to a stop, and it trickles
as the feel of your kisses dwindle
in January
chill.

love is eminent.

and if you look at this miniscule existence of yours, you will see that it is stuffed in the cracks of old and memory-ridden sidewalks,
which have had to bare the deepest of weights,
of peoples feet which have been into their lovers homes smiling,
and out of them shredding their skin with their nails.
it is carved into the ancient trees, barren of leaves,
and grown from your old sweethearts seeds,
the one with torn jeans, and an addiction to tea,
and who was too much of a spirit to chain down. you had to let him free.
and of the woman, who owned a small, unheard of bookstore,
with books that smelled like cinnamon, about byzantine subjects,
and she let people take one and leave one and tip as they please.

love is there in the unsure drip of the faucet,
disturbing the silence,
in the morning eyed sun,
when the day has just begun,
and you can feel a sticky tightness on your cheek, where the tears used to run,
and the burn in your mouth, is it from your lover
or your two bottles of ***?

it’s in the old pictures from years ago,
where you cant quite recapture the moment, but the vague feeling is still there.
the film is dark and smoky. just exactly like it is supposed to be,
and all of our faces hold this resonant feeling of whole.

and there’s love in the way you jump off something high, ready to fall, and fall, and fall,
and how you focus on the moment of the fall, and not the crash landing.
the moment of all surrender, underwater, floating, meaningless bliss.

there’s love in your daily cup of coffee, or two, or three,
and there’s a special art in the way you mix your sugar, and pour your crème.
theres love in how you smoke your cigarettes,
and how the smoke creates complex, fleeting shapes,
a new one every drag you take,
twirling, and running, and breathing into space, condensing itself,
in a matter of moments it sinks back again,
and makes your couch smell of ash and sin.

theres love in lots of things.
even still
in the way the hopeless strike the clock,
back to work, over the dock,
into their houses,
cut out of dough,
to presume their tasks, and label themselves,
thoughtless in a row.  
and mindless words,
the dinner table sets,
dry dinner time small talk.
they breed for the numbers,
not the pleasure of ***.

love is there in the cold ridden hearts,
of people who don’t believe in passion or art,
its in the escapees of our generation,
in old trucks, singing oldies, crying of separation,
in the numb of the brain-washed,
without their minds, wandering endlessly to and fro,
but they just have to struggle and dig deeper,
and into their own world of drunken, honest, chain-smoking, dancing love
                                                  They will go.

i am a girl of storm, ash, thorns, sunset and fire.

let me kiss you with my lightning tongue,
flickering and fast, shocking.
i'll char you into oblivion with the very wandering fingers of my soul,
like creeping fog.

i'm like the lingering ozone before thunder,
waiting,
i am the churning in your stomach.
i am the very pounding downpour, ripping your skin
like eagerly torn paper envelopes,
searching for something like a soul, an essence.
drowning your small bones in my
watery hands;
is this ***** or rain?
it all burns
almost the same,
to someone skinless and raw.

i am grey-lipped,
like some elaborate Persian ashtray,
sitting on a magenta carpet
stained with innocence and old perfume spills.
i am a
steel rose,
with a red, drunken face
growing within the small torments of
a plastic vase.

i am the thorns that sit uncomfortably in your skin,
i dig deep, scratching at your marrow
with my very own teeth,
trying desperately to find substance in your
emptiness
and vacant human flesh.

i am sunset,
drowning the horizon in one million different
kinds of wine.
my soul lays down sprawling on top of the sighing ocean,
and it disappears as dwindling light for the
thick,
forest trees
strong and rooted like
womens legs.

i am fire,
burning like pine-wood embers,
creating dark holes out of off-white cotton bedsheets,
dotting them like black and sienna burnt constellations.
i am scorching,
dancing,
i am vivid,
flaming.
i am soft.
i am raining.

i am a girl of storm, ash, thorns, sunset and fire.

like  skin  want  lips  night  words  love  soft  just  time  say  sun  hair  summer  know  eyes  morning  crave   burning   tick   way   life   long   old   smoke   moment   body   kiss   people   dark   small   voice   black   cigarette   face   hold   fingers  
ocean   little   breath   mouth   red   need   girl   sky   town   feet   new   stop   cigarettes    make    naked    things    feel   hands  fall  past  bed  tired  cold  filled  *******  softly  vie­  vivre  we'd  walk  dawn  left  air    
look    white   yell    good    thought    head    art    bodies    boy    rain  ­  wine     took    dry    drunk    road    snow    bottles    poetry   untitled  
you'd    light    nice    maybe    tongue    secret    kisses    ­warm    supposed    kissed    remember    touch  future   leaves    leave    music    ice    strong    wild    bones    sin­ging    couch    throat    sleeping    young    scream    
lovely­   mountains    eyed    coffee    golden    purple   inside    cheeks    world    taste    used    came  lungs  day  alive   room   sunlight   different  end  heart  letters  think  kind  open    distant    dancing    hearts    sweet high    knew   tears    blue    mother    water    freedom    wonder    painted    wind  ­  makes    read    told    heat   happy    
afraid    grass   brown  half  late  exactly  raw  large  hanging  whiskey   clothing  flowers  drunken  palms stuffed  there's   tiny    silent    moments    hot    dreams    bit    speak     dance    desire    dust    ready    arms    moon    run   drink    fast    trying    longer    slowly    darkness  
  real

maybe it's because you're older,
older men draw me in like some sort of musk
a scent, a magnet that i follow
craving more every step i take closer.

it's your eyes that really tell me
-green and lazy, almost dreamy without the fantasy-
they follow and i watch,
and sometimes i imagine they're directed my way
but it's like trying to make out truck headlights from
miles off
i can't tell if their coming or going.

you have lips that i imagine are soft
gentle enough to balance
a tobacco rollie on their shoulders perfectly
yet strong enough to form around words,
singing into a night already full with
your strums.

i ache to be strings
to have your fingers spread over me,
plucking my edges and
making a lullaby out of my limbs--

you speak foreign things
arabic and soft,
and i want you to explain what you mean
into my mouth with your hands
gentle around my waist.