Terror shreds through several of my skins
and I let it
No use for combat
Killing oneself takes more than one killer other than oneself
Punching holes into the artery
Somehow speeding up the process
Slow the life, quicken the death, upset the cycle, complete the task

-cj

run your finger across my teeth,
you wicked child
call me in the morning,
call me in the evening
probably making the same mistakes
again and again and again
mistakes are making us
again and again and again
we're the cards nobody wants
take us out of the stack
so we can have that playdate

-c.j.

I'm not one to give up
and you tell me you can live with that
You guess that I haven't given up my crusade
The one that makes you all the more alluring
I believe that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all
You shouldn't treat us like we are time bombs
Though it appears all is fair in love and war
Something within keeps me knocking on your door, over and over
You tell me you will always deal with my madness
You believe I would do the same for you
I already have been, I say
And you reply, that's why I believe that you would

-c.j.

Who would have known
A simple staircase climb, requesting you, shivering in wait
Then the rehearsed truth wills itself out
Now we are here, in the other's presence, a different kind of music
A wish, perhaps, or a hunch
From one minute, all gutsy and free, to the next
When we see the clock and mutter some hopeful somethings
It was October eighteenth, I remember; eleven days later I turned seventeen
And then a bit after I glimpsed an 11:11 (and smiled)
(We speak and we smiled)

-cj

bliss of this magnitude occupies minarets to
unseen depths
facets of me you will always remain perplexed
over
hues spill supreme, sketch an image blinding
you've turned me insomniac, cipher love
twist the frequency of my speech
they do not satisfy, I know
twist, sound the bell
I can envision you still here
vivid strides in silhouette, fate's definition
now squandering

-c.j.

When it comes to mistakes, I am fluent
I wanted you to plunge a knife into my chest
while kissing my lips with such fervour
I couldn't divide time from space

And envy crept in, by no surprise, taking its time
Eating everything worth smiling for
With the pillows as isles, my hands disrupted
their place in their floating between us

There I was, jumping to conclusions like
the edges don't exist
It hurts still to see it-
The sun swallowed the night in one gulp,
And I was jealous

-c.j.

I want to get drunk
It sounds marvelous
I'm tired of straitlaced conservatism
I'll inhale some smoke too and run down an unfamiliar street
Forget about the formulas and
begin to leave it up to fate

-cj

the idea
that it would never end
scared me immensely
but the idea
that it would
also catalysed a fear in me

-cj

The rich fled from their churches,
their faces flushed
The poor remained in the parks
with the birds squawking at their feet

Blood, fabric, hymns- clashes of humanity with art
When asked about the past, the bravest would utter,
Holy water couldn't save me, all the priests saw me in the flood

So the wind prompted,
Whisper to the deities of troubles, the paradises, the wars;
hear them shiver

When the authorities passed by
the laity revealed,
They told us to confess that we were wicked in nature, sinners from birth but we always liked the thought of innate good

-c.j.

Blue messages in white envelopes
Disguised as blackmail, gorgeous letters
I fret over the foolish parts
You attack the rest

-cj

if you close your eyes it's just like
being in the midst of war
the fireworks puncture the sky
and follow each other without pause,
our final kisses
hurrying to make something beautiful
before we have to go

-c.j.

Apparently I've learned nothing
Falling down the rabbit hole
Becomes even more enticing
The temptation pierces and nags
And I want to forget, but it won't leave from under my skin
This boy, his eyes
His beautiful mind
The circumstances of my dreams
"Nothing is as it seems, " a lure to my own gallows
But smile harder, love
The best is yet to come

-cj

this melody screws itself
an unlikely candidate
supposed this was the start
of another debate

-cj

Clouds descend on the berth that you fled
Both our brains are vexed by the hollowness
Wreck the centre, it's futile
From the flawless rise to the end
If you're inhaling purely yet, you are blessed
Nearly all of us are strangled by ill air
Igniting flames to our souls in leisure
Gathering labels of *******-over paramours
We are the exposed ones, the age of ignorance
Hunting dreams of our fates
Someday we'll unveil what is real
That the lone will vanish before arriving
If your blood is still flowing, you are blessed
Much of our dreams, they are scorched and they have faded
It was the sea that drowned us
You didn't rescue me
Well, I've sent it all into disarray
I'm a breathless visage slipping from your memory
My vision's blurred from the echoes from your lips
Pealing through my mind
When you pierced my heart
If you're drawn close, you are blessed
The rest of us are sleeping alone
Igniting flames to our souls in leisure
To break the knot tied to their name
But I am never without that thread

-cj

Can anyone live as freely as lady madonna?
she gave birth to the lord, the saviour
and if she happened to deceive or insult or covet
could god really say she was guilty?

-cj

Sordid promises keep me
coming back
These columns see me
in my submission
If only they could
hear me sing or
laugh when something
happy involves itself
with me

-cj

did I ever think I could get past this
without a relentless spinning of
nostalgia records playing in my head
as we disconnect
admit the nauseous narcissism
that foments within
**** this
should we rebegin?

-c.j.

Trying to be brave
collecting these crystals
of nerve to act
with pure adrenaline
twisting my lungs into braids
and when you are
loosened, laughter cycles out
a tension in the knees,
followed by weakness
maps couldn't lead me to you,
but my core knows where
you are, an intuition I
swallow with ice cold water
attempts to defy fear
that fuses within
sputter into the rain you
drive in,
a wasted blue hot firelight
at least I tried

-cj

Rebellion never tasted so good
These are the things I thought I knew, I sing
Plagiarising the familiar, sewing it on my tongue
We crept, locked doors, did the unwriteable

Did I really know before
When we're on the phone you playfully tell me
It was all a ploy, a clever ruse, me saying I had
so much to say
You stay on the line anyway

It gets better, they told us, and you pinned your
dream to your body
I told you, now you can relax with snowcapped
mountains on your chest
And you said, I will, but I would prefer you

Do you like staring at the back of my head
While everyone talks about law and confusing
things I typically ignore
Glancing back to you is my favourite part
We study the statue and then I leave to
read sonnets, you depart with the others to the water
The library feels empty without you

Remember when we were looking through old
cassette tapes and CDs and I put my hand on top
of yours for the first time?
That was rebellion, too
After lonely, after relapse after relapse
I found a light
and I held onto it

-c.j.

I knew I was not the only one with a problem, if that is what it is called
In fact, knowing that gave me an eerie connection to these other ghosts of girls who go without, who hurt
Overwhelming addiction to the ideal
Ignorance from the people who were supposed to care, or even pretend they did
In the end, or very near it, I felt as if I owed something to the others, dead, living, verging on another episode
My story
Even a few lines would suffice
Silence would mock them and me and all the helk we had been through
So with my voice are the pieces of my darker days I rest here to show that survival is possible, that life is a choice, that endings don't have to be ceasing heartbeats
They can be beginnings

-cj

grin in this gap, it's a terrible noise
noise that the nest recreates
why am I encircled by it?
beneath the sheets the shapes prepare for winter,
to **** me in
it's clear that nothing is right
let's spend tonight in peace as you fix yourself
it's obvious
I've wrung out the final tear
bits gather in, gravitate the wind like spindles
battling for the chance when
we can wax as shadows

-c.j.

"the roots of love come tumbling down" when the winter exits and spring takes over, melting the snow and whispering to the sproutlings
transforming the ice into a river, the cold into warmth, the deadness into newness

no intelligence decides the weather- if clouds thicken, rain abounds, if impressions ****** the soil to the worms
a single thorn mutilates our trust, staining any emblems worn that winter day, but
the crumbling love outside rests tonight

-c.j.

everyone you know calls you the tame one
like you were lost and found and were always sleeping
lessons learned: don't fake sick, muse often, ask "how soon? is now ok? am I used up?"
we go for those who could be real heroes, they say
so you cough up nothing to clear your brain and go back to sleep,
the same as before

-c.j.

Being confused is a big part of this adolescent thing
Knowing something is different from
believing it
Each word that forms in our minds and
escapes our mouths are the faults and
stars we were born to claim like our
last name

-cj

don't bring me downtown with those cool kids
I'm sick of your habits and calling him charming when he isn't
it's over, I don't want to be a pretty body on fire
I'm leaving this self-entitled empire

-c.j.

Enough of the amourous, February's far
Speak of the little bells instead
Ringing then clanging around in my head
Because it is said that when one writes
of the trouble, it can dissipate, be silenced
If only that were true of love, our blood,
and dew
Whose images forever stay and turn us blue

-c.j.

Dramatic- reacting to the little noises and imperceptible infractions of the loveless law

-cj

Why was I about to cry?
Because I had fumbled
with my senses
in a masochistic ruse
Played god in this
grotesquer game?
All I felt was
the sweet tears come
but not fall

-cj

capricious pixie, you
your pert spritely self
has the candle blown out,
leaving you in the dark?
dancing to imitate yonder lark
on blue cerulean trees
how sagebrush spies, protecting
you from predators, catharsis
prey, you are, to them
you play safe seldom
has no one taught you
to close your world?

-c.j.

her name was anastasia and she was born under a dark star
the royal family fled from the fire, but for her it was too late
princess of russia, whose fate was so bad, girls everywhere
still claim to be her, take her identity
(how can this be? mine is empty)

-c.j.

If I stopped writing I'm pretty sure
my cells would shrivel up and the notions
aforementioned in wishy-washy stanzas
pertaining to the deceptive romantics
would become gold poison seeking to
destroy their maker

-cj

you and I walk
I don't want to leave this, not yet
stepping in sync with you
is the one thing I have done right
in a long time

-c.j.

Intimidated? Don't be, we're all mad here, it's manifest through the tree's tattoo
Camera slung around the neck, stealing angles to devise a plan of beauty, of green and blue and all happiness

-cj

It was this unfleeting curiousity that reeled me in
Photographs, scribbled addresses and phone numbers, envied columns
Pencils behind the ear, in between teeth while thinking, concentrating on the enigma
The details of the most puzzling parts of the seeming whole that I set my heart on finding out
Complete
It's not research, it's searching
It's knowledge and pressure to be right but confidence in being in the right place at the right time, studying the right thing, the rush within fueling me to keep going

-cj

The picture of mediocrity is not me and you
We thrive in our honours and shake hands too often
The places the others hide to escape, making something good happen, while they resonate with dull reverberation, like the past in accord with dust and lampshade
Tomorrow's price lunges in acrobatic ways to upset the utopia I've begun

-cj

once God just tries, you'll get your wish
keep jumping nearer on your weak legs
dive just under the sky, close enough to
nip nicely at your shins
keep even chase with the quiet casts
you only reach quaint everests when nothing juts under
change everything
you, yourself
just try

-c.j.

hide, bury, mask
the covers a cloak for the skin
reach out to clutch the inverted silhouette
no sounds to send through the space
columns in the shallows, an absence of light

-cj

Would you prefer me if I tilt my head
at a fallacious angle
Would you rather I abandon my
peculiar nothings
(Would becoming a statue
unblinking and
without impetus
satisfy you)

-cj

Luxuries and treacheries
disguise themselves
as the other
It's an egregious cycle
A mundane ellipsis
My head spins
in time with
wherever it originated
I don't know
if it will
have a grave
though I hope
and pray

-cj

he made me feel like an extra
love wasn't in the cards- it was a possible
by-product because people always wish it
could thicken while lust engages all limbic
faculties
maybe my head held much more freedom than
he was used to
luckily an egregious loop wound me in its corral,
intimidating with what awful perhapses could
transpire
black paint all washed into covers, t-shirts,
white lingerie
even a list fixed of my mother's heaviest hues;
muddled, mindless file, to have with unsolicited taking-
like anyone ever looked anyway!
I am superfluous

-c.j.

The simple truths can pierce nonetheless
How, in morning's wake, the clock buzzes and screams, a mournful cry
And as your legs gather stamina and oxygen infiltrates your brain
Your heart begs to stay in bed, safe, undercovers,
Where there is no one to pretend with, none to breathe with then break from

-cj

We were told to read a book about a mustached murderer
and most of us were put to sleep
by the architect's chapters
but I read them anyway
maybe just to say I did
or to more enjoy the blood and
wicked victories of the killer's story

-cj

It's not quite morning yet
The night is fading, its plum and dark fruit watercolours are drunken by the sun
like a rewinding cassette tape

-cj

I used to know a boy who would mumble the answers
in science class when the teacher talked about outerspace
the rest of us were mind over matter, paper airplanes in our heads, but we'd say we listen- we do
parties later in high school, he was never at
he moved a couple hours west, and as I sit on the couch watching my peers dancing, their steps lusting
love for physics and chemistry and the knowledge in between came to mind, the love the boy had for them
I wonder if he could tell me or show me
anything interesting, anything of worth,
anything unlike the empty chatter and exhausted gossip currently around me
I should have listened harder when he would mumble

-c.j.

tales of the mountains' sound, scandinavian girls dancing, happy
together they sing
this too shall pass, this is not everlasting
light is their hair and twisted is their logic
they confuse the seasons, an iceberg for the sun
still they spin, blissfully unaware of the brewing storm

-c.j.

His face in sunlight
It's become a paradigm
This is in no way a genesis
We've seen too many days
But, you, my dear, are
the reason for the paradigm shift
And you have no idea

-c.j.

is that the strange strung-out end?
that is the precise one, the one you'll rend
snip at the hips, you snip from the east coast
it's all spent

you decide, so decide tonight
you crack the code, so crack it in sunlight
this part is ceasing, I'm subject to expirations
stand under your streetlight and configure me

in comes the snow, in comes the avalanche
if we're supposed to go, we're supposed to go happier
but it hurts and surges and pushes the thorn inside
we don't stray from what we always do, we don't stray
we did before, and tasted the sweet foray
1219, you are in my brain

-c.j.

until you kissed me
I had always thought home was a place
home is a feeling
and it might not be cozy and warm all
the time, but the clocks don't tick and
our bodies fail to feel foreign-
we are safe

-c.j.

break the seal of the envelope
to view the sender's pity on paper
but please rush to open the letter
because I want to talk to you
for a while, if only one-sidedly

-c.j.

Neither Babylon's ***** nor Mother Mary
No, not the one who is quite contrary
For in her grows not a garden but a king
But who am I to say that divine thing
Sins, scarlet, red as blood
Turned white as snow, as wool
Yet still remains that poison-seed
Which reminds me and reminds me of my wicked deed
Pure, I am, but not have I always been-
"The devil finds work for idle hands to do"
Neither downtrodden in dirt nor radiant as sun
These tryings, becoming fruitful, turn me to the One

-c.j.