Tell me to go home again, tell me that I look tired one more time. Maybe that will be the push I need. Ask me what’s wrong again. Maybe this time I’ll tell you that I’m tired of the sun rising in the northwest instead of the east. This time I’ll tell you that I so badly want to detox from the drug that is your name. Because every time I hear it, smell it, and taste it I fall deeper down the rabbit hole. Spinning and swirling down the spiral to get to your home. How can you be friends with someone when all you crave is the sound of your name on their lips. When all you want is their hands on your hips and in your hair one more time. Drink in my thoughts the same way you sip that cheap beer. Tired of those eyes that watch you like the preview of their favorite movie only to decide to save it for another rainy day. Pause, rewind, play. Repeat.

"Do you like me?"
I asked the blue blazer.
No answer.
Silence bounced out of his books.
Silence fell off his tongue
and sat between us
and clogged my throat.
It slaughtered my trust.
It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.
We exchanged blind words,
and I did not cry,
and I did not beg,
blackness lunged in my heart,
and something that had been good,
a sort of kindly oxygen,
turned into a gas oven.
Do you like me?
How absurd!
What's a question like that?
What's a silence like that?
And what am I hanging around for,
riddled with what his silence said?

Why dwell on the comfort
Of dusting off the adversity
That profane the corners
Of our compartments

When we can
Call upon courage
And write for those
Without the strength to crawl out
Of the hollow caves
They live in?

               You
                  And
                    I
Are blessed with the curse of
Seeing beyond the masquerades
Of others
That it becomes haunting not
To tap into their souls

And wander in the
Caves of their minds
To find the reason behind
The warped interior,

The vague, and sometimes
Vivid Answers to
           Why
They're sinking in
Self imposed darkness,
      
          
They feel they're slaves
To and in liberation,

        
They feel they can't be forgiven
For the sins they
Unintentionally created,

      
They feel so empty and hollow
And dead within that there's
Nothing, but dead spaces
Between heart beats,
  
        
They're engulfed in
Flames that they're turning
Everything they caress to ash

With every bit of
                 Taste,
                 Touch,
                 Smell
                
Lulling us into euphorias
Where fragments of
             Sound,
               Images,
                 Fragrances,
                  Thoughts,
Compound to a jungle of words
That we lose ourselves in,
Perhaps then,
We become a tad bit closer
To finding
Ourselves,
Perhaps.

have you ever felt a home in your bones?
safety in the way it cushions the weight of your moaning head
upon falling at it's thresholds
you want to know what tender feelings
you hold in safe places
but they
never question the way your severed vessel
still toes the shoreline,
roaming the foam licking at the crests
of crescent moons left in the remnants of crab shells
pressed into particle upon particle of scruples
unspoken in the weeks that forgot you

they rush ahead

and you stand stock stuck, still mustering
the guts of every animal they left on the beach
in the road, and you too leave them
for fear of that lethal touch
mistaking broken shards of beer bottles
for sea glass, some days you tried to remember
and forgot

they are savages
the agile hunger pains
gnaw at the bandages

but you still love, in nausea,
ad naseam, you study them, reverential
try to reference their satiation with fondness
still sunken in repugnance for your own likeness

you collect them like passengers
pieces of you and worlds unto their own kind
he says you are two of a kind
you think not, because he is one

each thrown to the riverbed below
becoming rocks filling up the moat
cranking down the drawbridge
over a river filled with sea glass
the true form of whom you have settled with
knowing you may never know

and in forgiveness you live with
the sickness of knowing nothing
and the sentience of understanding everything
and when you stand by the water
they tell you that your eyes have a brilliant glow
and you let them find you stunning
in a memory upon a time ago
you conceal yourself in the
minds of many

while the solecism in his praise
still rings heavy in your throat
two thousand
nine hundred
and sixty eight
miles away
from home

no,

i don't feel beautiful
but i feel dangerously effective

Butterflies are white and blue
In this field we wander through.
Suffer me to take your hand.
Death comes in a day or two.

All the things we ever knew
Will be ashes in that hour,
Mark the transient butterfly,
How he hangs upon the flower.

Suffer me to take your hand.
Suffer me to cherish you
Till the dawn is in the sky.
Whether I be false or true,
Death comes in a day or two.

Be to her, Persephone,
All the things I might not be;
Take her head upon your knee.
She that was so proud and wild,
Flippant, arrogant and free,
She that had no need of me,
Is a little lonely child
Lost in Hell,—Persephone,
Take her head upon your knee;
Say to her, “My dear, my dear,
It is not so dreadful here.”

The trees along this city street,
  Save for the traffic and the trains,
Would make a sound as thin and sweet
  As trees in country lanes.

And people standing in their shade
  Out of a shower, undoubtedly
Would hear such music as is made
  Upon a country tree.

Oh, little leaves that are so dumb
  Against the shrieking city air,
I watch you when the wind has come,—
  I know what sound is there.