Your tongues all taste like cardboard...
Mostly because you are all cardboard,
But that's besides the point.
Even though your kisses can never give me warmth,
I'm still hung up over each and every one of you.

To you, fear kept me from loving you.
As for you, we eventually drifted apart
Across of the sea of remembrance.
Then for you, I had to drop any notion
When you asked "are you gay?"
With a skeptical gaze.
You made it clear that
You yourself were not.

However, I keep dusting you all off
To pull you out of my closet.
Standing on the ***** of my feet,
I'm hanging little beaded necklaces
Around all your necks again.

Do you remember the sweetness long ago
The sweet sweet Ambrosia that used to flow
Way back in the beginning, in the very early years of your life
Sweeter than the sweetest Honey off the comb
That used radiate like living colours inside of you
That used fill your mind and all your senses
Giving you a huge natural high
Leaving you in awe and in Wonderland.
Can you remember...can you remember back that far ?

Do you remember your parents trying to coax you to eat
Your carrots and your greens, saying
"Eat up now, they'll make you big and strong"
And do you remember you resisting, thinking
"I don't want to eat this stuff, it has no taste, it's like eating cardboard"
There was only one thing the very young child wanted to eat
Yeah! Sugar and other sugary things, sweets, chocolate and ice cream...
Anything to remind him of that sweet Ambrosia inside
Of that wondrous world within, where he came from.

Do you remember being out all day playing
And then being called in for your dinner
And how you felt - Dinner, huh! it was nothing but a tiresome chore
You felt you didn't even need it
That you could easily do without it
That you had something else inside that was worth much much more.

A lady I knew died, she used feel very empty inside
She used eat sugary things all the time
But sadly she learned to her cost
The sugar of this world is no Ambrosia.

I want a cardboard world
Where desks sag and break in the rain
And people look at me in disdain

All the temporary creations I see
I didn't build for you, I built for me

Cardboard seats and cars
Cardboard hotels and bars
Cardboard rockets for Mars

All temporary cardboard builds to try
All cardboard inners to fry

There's nothing quite as temporary
As a new age cardboard century

Cardboard box
Small and simple
Needs no rhyme
Needs no reason

Decorate
My cardboard box
Fill it with
Sweet memories

Cardboard box
My only friend
Goodbye
Someday, we’ll meet again

ii.
You are in the living room at dusk
Haphazard towers of moving boxes rise around you
The furniture has been dismantled and
You divert your gaze to the underwhelming formation
Of cardboard and tape
As your mother screams and throws the cat across the room

In retrospect, it reminds you of an album cover
For some emo basement band
A collage of childhood in hues of brown
Or a glimpse of red flannel
Cardboard castles, a little boy
Holding a paper sword
Taken on a disposable camera in 2004
And reappropriated for it’s nostalgia in 2014

The boy you caught is not amongst your rescue party
You veil your disappointment poorly as you climb into the passenger seat
And it filters through the holes in the cloth like grey light
You blame the fatigue on your mother alone
Though it isn’t entirely her own

I held scissors between my hands yesterday's night,
I cut a heart out of cardboard,
gave it a shower,
tucked it to bed,
sang to it a couple beats
and buried it in my chest.

I live
In a cardboard cutout house
Our plates and silverware
Are plastic
The food adorning them
Plastic as well
Glossy and vibrant
But poisonous if consumed

No water will pour
From the sink or tub
If you try to turn
The handle

The plants are fake
The dog is fake
The microwave won't turn on
The floor looks wooden
                           (which may be the case)
For there is no carpet
                           in sight
No decor to behold

I try to pull back
The sheets on the bed
Only to find
That they're entwined--
Attached to the mattress
That feels more like
Pottery
I lean down to see
                           "Made in China"
Etched on the side
Of the frame

My footsteps echo
Down the hall
On the wooden floor
Of the cardboard cutout house
Until I finally see
Something living
Something real

Until I get close.

Her skin is matte
Her eyes are dull
Her teeth are chalk white
Her hair (maybe made from silk?)
                           sits perfectly in place
She is positioned with a smile--
                           Her vinyl arm bent at the elbow
                           Masquerading a friendly wave

She is merely a sculpture
                           A doll of a human being
Filled with wax instead of tissue
Factory made, not a product of Love(TM)

I escape
Away from the figurine Mother
The clay bed
Hard floors
Prop kitchenware and
Plastic food

Because a cardboard cutout house
                           is not a home.