"—he took my wallet but i'd much rather he have taken my soul"

once red, once blue,
once faded through to you and then white.

and now

i'm black—
only black.
and even i
can't see
through
these
shadows.

sleeping not dreaming

of dreams when awake


it doesn't fit—
no,
it never has

stop writing me novels (because
i have never read them—and i
am not about to start)

the only thing university taught me was that you can get away with anything if you say it the right way

i still have trouble
trying to teach myself
to touch something that
i never even thought existed
in the first place


my fingers go right through you

but given the change in time
and the frequency of which
you came back into my life
so often
doesn't change the fact that
it ******* hertz

I still smell like you
And your Irish springs body wash
At 5:03
On a Sunday morning

you called me liquid because my language is fluid
i didn't call you fire because between water—there is a winner
and with us there is no loser and also
no champion.
you are oil
so close, so close—
but we will never be the same.

they want your first words—your last words
but nothing in between

do not read between the lines

there is nothing written there

I was sent to Heaven when I realized
I am not Jesus
and I cannot walk across the ocean for you
—but I can sure as Hell drown

I've tried to die seven times and succeeded in all but this one.

filling holes in your heart by filling holes in your skin
dry walling your body and painting over the scar tissue

i wanna love you by the ocean but
you're not as beautiful as the skyline

tell me i'm a ****** up being for ******* with your feelings
while playing with your flesh
body origami, oh
you said you wanted it then

you only regret regretting it

halfof   the appeal   isthe f o r m a t    !
         ((cold blood doesn't bleed
         if your
         heart doesnt beat))

when
the    snow
is falling—

(my blood runs black_)

oh—when
the snow is
f a l l  i   n     g

bite my nails and blow my nose
forget my name while forgetting yours
all for you
oh, all for you.

i      have      lines—      i      have     a     title,
i      had     a     head—      i       have     a    body,
but            i     have    no   structure  and   no common themes    to   me
no    hook  and    no  conclusion
i    am    a mess  of      l e t t e r s     and   run   on  sentences and  no       commas      and       no     periods        and       no       pauses
people       like    purpose  and       i       am  a    waste  of    your       i  n  k

they are ashamed when i am finally happy
"but it is the only thing i look forward to"
they are happy for me when i am at my saddest
"you're better than that.
have some self respect"

"how can you take away my happiness
because it differs from yours"

"why do you do this to the ones you love"

your face was familiar when i first met you
we traded words until noon the next day and never touched anything more than our fingertips as we passed a plate of ******* between us
i guess i've known you forever if i were born this morning

You said your favorite weekend was *** and coke
I should have known then, what you meant
when you said you also only drank
hard bar straight

we are both blind and sometimes we forget that
there is nothing written between the lines

with fingers of sin i had touched your core, unzipped your jeans like locked church doors and swore i would marry you one day.
they say i shouldn't love you anymore, that poems are only for those you adore—but when you left i was naked on the floor, sold my soul to the convenience store, and
to forget a ****** i kissed a *****
kissed my lips and cried no more

this sickness isn't just a word better expressed in latin, this
coldness isn't something you can wash off of your hands

You called yourself a philosopher—but
The only depth you cared about
was intravenous.



*The boy who loved God too much,
he tried to find Him

in his head.

if i could
i'd spend the world
with you.
i would
if you wanted
to—
but they say
that's a pretty **** big
part of my plan—
your yes or
your no—
and i haven't yet
figured it all
out yet
if you
say
no

she had eyes like diamond


i kissed her lips
and she sighed

it echoed in
the coalmine

One day you will bleed

everything felt a little bit closer
when it was farther away
*(because it was farther away)

I want to find you at three in the morning again

I want to know if you've kissed another girl's skin

*I want to know that I taste better

"but you're so beautiful"
we kissed in the alley off burrard
"shut the **** up"
by the bush where i hid my *****
"touch me"
it was raining when you told me
"i love you"

what's made of gold, is made of crystal—
sold for steel in the streets of Bristol.
pulled the trigger before you cocked the pistol.
what's made of gold, is made of crystal—

there's no one true love—there's five of them
there's fifteen of them. there's zero,
and that's the hard thing to figure out—is if you only
love one person for four years, you could miss out on meeting the person you could have loved for forty. but you'll never know how long you'll last with a person until you've reach the end of the forty.
there's no one true love—there's only ever standards reached
only ever standards lived up to, only ever standards broken. new chances taken and old flames you wish you still had
(but only to light a cigarette with)

don't you ******* touch my skin
with your tainted fingertips
i'm a painter but even i
won't touch my lips
to hands that once held her
hips during *** and sin

don't you ******* touch my skin

in the middle of the road,
you said you wanted to be a canary—
"because God doesn't have eyes
in the coalmines"

You said you used to love writing when we were young
but now you sit here in your sadness
putting God under your tongue—
rubbing those prayers into your gums

I couldn't uphold a job and I couldn't afford gold so
I sold my soul to buy you a chalkboard

and with one hand under tongue
in the same writing from when we were young
chalk on your thumb, you wrote—

Salvation never comes
Salvation never comes

I have always had demons in my dreams
but I never knew I would see them out of sleep

I have always had demons under my eyelids
but I never knew I would feel them between my ribs

I have always had demons under my skin
but I never knew I would try to befriend them

it's been a year and twenty two days and twenty three hours and fifty minutes and nineteen seconds and
i still can't tell if it was lust or loneliness
mean or meaning
all i ever really know is that
all i every really wanted was to sleep with you
in every sense of the saying

seven candles
look a lot like seventeen lines
you never thought you'd be doing
a year ago

your lips were the softest thing about you
swapping stories, passing lines—
i would rather talk to you than close my eyes.
we waited for the sun to come up
sitting naked wrapped in red velvet curtains
i told you i loved you.

*SHUT YOUR MOUTH YOU LITTLE ******* ****
FULL OF HIS *** I BET YOU ****** HIM WHILE I CALLED YOU
IF NO EYES WERE WATCHING I WOULD ******* HIT YOU
YOU WERE THE WORST THING IN MY LIFE
AND I WANT TO BE THE WORST IN YOURS
TAKE YOUR WORDS AND SWALLOW THEM LIKE A *****

drawing parallels between perpendiculars—
every love i've ever had was born under the sun
but never lived to see the light
drawing parallels between perpendiculars—
stuck in the september,
we only existed in the fall
i only wanted to erase you

i didn't want to watch the opportunities turn onto the highway
i wanted to experience the world running down the I90


you were in the way of all my couldhavebeens,
but looking back i think you're the only thing that shouldhavebeen

maybe the grass is just greener on the other side of the city
maybe i'm just lonely.

catching buses to try to catch you
seven second view through a window
know that i was always blind, but

365 days you've been on my mind
365 days you've been on my mind

we took no pictures and shared no public words—
the most noticeable love:
the one that almost never even existed.

all you left on me was fingerprints
and even those have started to fade

We were sitting on your bathroom floor when you told me there was nothing worse than seeing people in the shadows—
you caught yourself because we both knew
that wasn't true.
we looked at our hands and thought of the times
we saw shadows in the people.

We didn't meet in the summer or the winter—
but I took off your clothes in the fall
and you first kissed me in the spring,
under a tree while we were smoking.


My heart doesn't beat anymore,
but if it did
it would for you.

you said you wanted my lips
and i laughed at the way you worded it
and the way you thought
you didn't have them already.
almost as if
we haven't been speaking
our entire lives.
almost as if
you weren't even listening
to every word i gave to you

You yelled for me to
get the **** up off the floor
and smell something other than white powder roses.
I looked up and you had an 80-Watt halo—

*"All I wanted was to breath you in"

slowly breathing,
slowly fading—
into something that
never even really
existed
in the first place

Fight me on the curb—
I'll hit you
right across
your sanity:
just like the way
your boyfriend never
mentioned me

life is cycles and so is death
addiction is the quickest form of slow suicide.
you never quit—
you only take breaks
and i will always come back home