to be the person of your dreams
to be less a body and more an idea
to be an unlit cigarette kissing your lips
the lavender in your coffee and the aftertaste in your mouth
your Malibu sunsets in a 70’s Mercedes
what if love is trying to break apart the barrier between what you see and what you feel
what if you close your eyes and you find yourself reaching out for me
I dream of what you’d see in me if you couldn’t see me at all

I lit my cigarette with a candle
And I kept on smoking
Didn’t mean to
I was thinking to much

The last of my self-poisoning Burns away,
and as the cigarette shortens
so does the noose from which I swing

leaving a locked door for an open window
on the second storey floor
Im in a free-fall while smiling
because I don't care anymore.

So if I hit the ground half as hard
as the harmful thoughts in my head
I know I'd be better off dead

but instead

here I stand over a buried body
reading a eulogy for the memory
of the part of me I let die
before a newborn Phoenix learns to fly

The clown keeps a journal filled with his suicidal thoughts;
His face wet with paint and his hair soaked in dye,
he laughs to himself as he reads the words scribbled across the pages.
They crescendo like the build up of a joke -
splashes of ink blots suggest that his pen blew up before the punch-line.

He remembers a time when the earth was grey;
the morning dew seeped into everyone’s socks
and they walked around with heavy feet,
indifferent to the man beside him
walking on the bare flesh of his toes.
Then a stream of water dribbled out from the prank flower on his chest.

In a world so addicted to tragedy,
comedy is sublime,
like the nicotine rush from a cigarette.

Yet laughter is a bond so easily broken.
The white on his face can wipe away,
the lipstick can smear,
and the dye can fade.
But beneath all of that is a smile,
a smile that persists
because nothing is wrong
when the clowns come out.

There's a cigarette between my lips.
I taste the flavor, inhale the familiar scent
even before I flick the lighter to life.
There's something to be said about the difference
between the thought of smoking, and actually seeing it through.
I'd be the one to say it, but my mouth is currently preoccupied.

The first inhale is like a breath of fresh air,
which is ironic, given the nature of the vice.
But there it is -- a sweet escape, a brief release from the world that I've been in and decided that I've stayed for one second too long.
A dark, smoky finger invading my senses
as a cat grazes against your leg,
soft, but heavy; intending to make its presence known
with the gentlest touch, the murmurs of a purr.
It fills my lungs, and in a moment of hesitation
I feel peace as though, at any moment,
I could decide that I wouldn't want to breathe again.

The exhale is slow, the puff slowly escaping,
ascending to the heavens, dissipating like
dew on the grass on some mornings,
the fog that covers the skyline.
All that's left is the ghost of what was,
for a fleeting moment, an affair from the reality I've known.

And when the fire dies down
and the **** gets extinguished,
there is only what remains on my lips.
Nicotine, your name, whatever the hell it is --
I just know that it's intoxicating, addicting;
every time I run my tongue over chapped skin,
it's as if I'm chasing the very last time I've ever tasted you;
And every swig at the cold, hard rim of a bottle
makes me think of sloppy kisses on a cold winter night,
hands fumbling, nervous giggling;
of promises pieced together through incoherent moans breathed onto flushed skin;
Of empty sheets and ***** clothes,
no phone numbers to call, no names to tattoo,
nothing that can tie me to the possibility of a 'next time';
"Because there won't be a 'next time';
there can be no 'next times'."
But I guess --
I chose the wrong day to quit.

The cycle repeats, the toxicity stays,
and yet I revel in the concept of
not thinking, not planning,
just -- being.
In that moment, under the stars:
As if Time had stopped, and the sky was alight,
and I felt like I had the whole world
fit in the palms of my hands.

Because for someone that tastes so, so wrong,
you feel so, so right.