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

i saw you one last time
before you crawled
under the couch—
back into all those photos
that i took of 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—

i wish i could close my eyes to the ghosts that haunt me
whose sting feels like sleeping with contacts in
and having nightmares about the words she said

both of which make me wake up
with red eyes—and
pupils made of
ghost.

Amanda,

Do not become the spying rat,
Do not invade their habitat.
    Do not become a ****.

Do not do the scientist's evil deed.

He does not care for his fake plant,
You are simply a decoration,
He is using you.
Bought for beauty, thrown on the shelf.

Do not overestimate yourself,
fake a strong back,
and bluff about the things,
    you are lost in.

You will not win.

Amanda,
Chop off your synthetic stem,
before you grow into something so unknowingly fake.

Amanda,
Do not make people up,
and drop them like impostor petals.
Do not make excuses up,
or blame your actions on substances,
to salvage your pride,
    and save your lies.

Do not fake life amongst the butterflies.

Accept defeat.
Burn from it,
    Learn from it.
Regrow from your ashes,
    Like an organic phoenix.

Fall with the seasons,
    Nutritional blue.
We're living, we heal.
    We always do.

Amanda,
Save scars as reminders,
And only open the wounds,
When you are too.

Remember the things that we once knew,
put past us as we said we grew,
and lied to ourselves,
as we sprouted plastic leaves.

    Turned into information thieves.

Repeat this course, like a failed grade.
    Re-burn from it.
    Yearn for a different ending.
Like a request that is pending,
Flashing yellow, like the neighbor stoplight,
And it maybe, maybe, might,

      Change,
          Amanda.

Lovers in Florence,
Red hair like matches.
I hope she lights you on fire like you did to the bridge between us.

I am watching the smoke from my kitchen window.
The smoke is green like your eyes.

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

If gravity is 9.8m/s², I must have been .294km in the +z direction because it only took 60 seconds for me to fall into you

—and then I hit the ground.

I remember when my pulse slowed
in its comfort.
How strange it is
to feel my heart
beat in rhythm
once again.

we see angels in forklifts fixing our powerlines but we never see the snake in the river handing out our medication. it's mediation that keeps us mellow.
monday's blues.
tuesday's yellows.

german cologne still lingers
on the buttons of my collar.
funny, i don't remember
wearing my shirt when we embraced.

i didn't wash you for
five days. i didn't wash
you for five days.

Feather pen with a
needle tip
dripping ink into your vein.
It's insane how
quickly we came

i have lived under a thousand suns
each day a different combination of powders and palliatives
each day a different way to substitute people and painkillers
i have found the meaning of life and it is such—
the only way to forget your name
is to also forget mine

You are the bullet.
I do not see, I only hear,
We connect, we cohere.
A split-second moment, we are kin,
As you skip across my skin.
You leave a mark, a life-delay.
You are a scar,
A ricochet.

Your heart is an empty semi-circle
Half-filled by wet sand bags
Jagged edges because I am concrete
and concrete does not leave smoothly.

Concrete cracks but cannot slip between your fingers.

"Originality is dead."
Said the boy with life inside his head.
Lead to spread the word,
needle and thread it into the verb.
The unsaid is misread.
You're not ahead of your time.
You're behind.

Monopoly.

Playing both
red and blue.

If you own all the railroads is there really any point in travelling?
You'll just stay in your own hotel.

we never found god.
we never found god.

the only shining light we see
is alarm clock blue,
refracted from the glass of your
empty ***** bottle eyes/

the last drop of this substance soul
finding it's way into (y)our body.

For my 10th birthday,
You got me an earring.
Not a set,
only one.
A little white plastic wing.

I didn't even
have my ears pierced,
no.
I was afraid of that.

I threw them in the dark.
Bottom-left drawer.
The rickety brown desk
beside my bedroom door.

I called you 'icky,'
and cheap.
Very very cheap.

A fight is a lifetime,
when it lasts for a week.

I got one ear pierced.

Not because I am brave.

I wore
that little white plastic wing

to your grave.

I had a dream where I purged you of technology
(There was a beach at our feet)

I had  dream where I     met you\
you dissolved away in the surf—
pixel by pixel

You are the child of
Wine and the Giza Pyramids—
Slanted intoxication.

You are the sibling of
Your grand;
Golden as he sings melodies
made of cheap whiskey.

You are the uncle of
The reborn generation,
"I accept everyone except those who do not,"
They said.
Pretentious, yes.

But worry not, for
This is not a talk show
You are not sitting in a plush chair,
An audience at your eyes.
You are not the father.

Einstein was right:
Imagination may take you everywhere
But right now I am destination-based
And the road to the pharmacy can take me
From A to Plan B.

I act, I react—
I did not impact your life the exact way you did mine.
You attract me.

I act, I react—
You were the one fact
I could never forget
and I was abstract.
I know I was only there to distract you
from your other lover
who did not love you
as much as I.

I act, I react
and I follow the path
that subtracts
you
from
me.

A lover like my lungs—
     That partly provide
     with smoked-out abuse
and the air inside.

A lover like my viens—
     That tear open wide
     When your mouth does
and the blood inside.

A lover like my spine—
     crouched over snapping
     as I write this.
I hope it breaks like this rhyme scheme.

I love you like my lungs, my viens, and single spine
All were yours
And never mine.

You've crossed my mind five-hundred times since you've told me—
Wanting to be a functional person, wanting to be a decent daughter, I am cut up and stitched together with threads made of perpendicular thoughts on parallel timelines.

The only way you know is the only way home, but you can cross the street if you need to.

"Greedy, selfish
street fiend."

I long for the day
when happiness is intravenous.
When people don't find you so
sidewalk sadness.

The atoms of which the sun consists
lays upon the land
who can only resist.

No, indeed, I must insist!
The story is etched into murky water and mist:

Oh, the sinking sun—with a twist—
setting on someone
who did never exist.

I lead truth like a thread
through the eye of my
needle, stitched into your iris
and sewed up the virus.
Took bets on bids.
Two kids walking train tracks under your eyelids.

I sprinkle the salt of sadness over the steak of my life
because salt brings out the flavor
salt brings out the flavor

So unclear, some find it
Nuclear!

Stop comparing tragedy—
We all know this already—that
Everything hurts.

Thank you for your purchase.*

I recently bought a computer,
complete with:

Poorly labeled documents, (Untitled53.jpg).
Terms and conditions; a ten-second scroll-through, mind you.
Pre-accepted, pre-agreed.
A clutter of programs I (supposedly) need,
and a firewall,
to keep your virus
out of my heart.

Sadly, however,
this model lacks a *restart.

I wish I found you before your first rolled 5 dollar bill
your vertebrae goes viral into a double helical spiral.
acid dripping from your spinal— tap.
tap. tap. tap.
i am knocking on your door.
"must i never see your youth again?
just live this age still useless."


you're calm but

your mind is ruthless.

Poet, live melancholically as
A man with one eye and full vision.
Ambition but no depth
Perception.

Poet, live longingly as
A child in the corner.
Watching mother's wrist.

Poet, live remiscingly as
A bird crossing the street
Via sidewalk as a ghost.

Poet, live unconsciously as
A murderer, staring down at
A floorboard. Not blood but—ink
On your hands.

My fingers are just
a concept.
My mind,
a theory.



(my skin:
papyrus)

I
saw the stars move in circles last
night. Bright sight with thoughts like no
other. My mother did not
exist. The grass kissed my lips but the only words I could
recite—*I saw the stars move in circles last night.

She called from the hospital payphone.
The little genius girl who wanted to be a marine biologist
Now wanting to die?

I stood by the reciever,
My legs snapping like elastics to the ground
In an awkward embrace with the wall.
That was the last time I cried.
We were thirteen, then.
That was four years ago.

My best friend who I could have helped,
She is breathing right now
but I am not with her.
The death of my childhood.

I dedicate this to
The uncle I never knew
Who moved into town
after molesting half of my cousins.

The grandfather I didn't even know was alive
Until a week after he died.
******* and **** stains
Dredged into the carpet.

I don't know they look like.
No photo album kept.
No photo album kept.

I'd give up used bookstores, libraries,
old love, and free chai tea lattes
to be alone with you.


All of the things I once believe caused feeling—
Just moments and memories

in a great spectrum of
*"I forgot—just being happy. being happy.

So I prioritize
and keep going,
close my eyes.
close your eyes."

Amidst the foggy graveyard stones,
a boy walks over buried bones.
He finally stops at a young girl's grave.
He gave her the drugs that she did crave.

His batch is what had stopped her thoughts.
--A noise breaks out where her body rots.
When it sounds, the boy falls,
for he has heard the Siren's calls.

Angelic voices, so sweetly shrill,
pull him over against his will.
Figures appear, grotesque things,
burned skeletons with bony wings.

Its long white finger reaches out,
the boy does not have time to shout.
Instant contact, sends him down.
Swallowed by earth yet he does not drown.

In seconds he has broken through,
to the land where Hell does brew.
The Devil stands before him, but is not fiery red.
A dark-haired figure, sheathed in cloaks, has eyes of blackened lead.

Handsome would have been his face, if not for the evil smile.
He glares down upon his prey, look nothing but hostle.
The boy quivers and sheds open tears,
for the voice of Lucifer appears.

The voice is coming, not from lips, but from the boy's own mind.
It tells him of damnation, the contract that was signed.
He pauses to let it sink in,
as the boy's face shows chagrin.

"Seek out miscarriage mothers, tell them of this deal.
If they happen to sign it, their child I will heal.
A mother will do anything, especially in rage.
They get to keep their child—until he comes of age."

The boy knows why he is here now, on his eighteenth birthday.
He will persuade the mothers, to sell their child like pay.
They'll do it in the spur of the moment, simply on a whim.
Just like his mother did to him.

A slate cannot
be wiped clean
if sins are
written with a
chisel.

I had a home
and I hid a
secret in the floor
boards. I would
like to say I was
bored but I know I
was only lonely and
tired of drinking. If
you can hide a
body in a closet—
you can hide a
memory under the
bed. I like to think
I did not mean for it
to be this way.
But now, his
skin has fallen and
he is a skeleton in
my closet and his mem-
ories have spawned a
monster under my bed.
I like to think I
did not mean for it
to be this way.
I am hoping my
husband never
taps on the walls.
They will
tap back.

I love you.
I love you like oxygen, like my lungs.
Pulmonary. Coronary.
And although it may make me dizzy,
I love you like my blood.
My veins, venules, arteries, arterioles.
Blood epidemic. Systemic.

Proximity gets tighter and tighter. I walk by twice so your eyes can catch me. They do, but they don't match mine. "I wonder what he's thinking of—"
"Probably nothing."
Probably something, but nothing of me.
I go home and listen to a sad song that I'll probably end up showing you.

So pleasure twists to grief—
Sweet Eve looks for just relief.
We were looking only for release.
Because Adam died.


Adam died.