I lost a friend last night
because my poems are too dark.
She said they scare her,
and make her cry.
She said she can feel me slipping
with each verse,
and that she'd enjoy them
if they were written by a stranger
she never loved.

She said she feels her heart going out to me
but she had to pull it back
because she needs to keep it
for herself,
so she can see though her own issues.

No one ever stays
because once they see me naked
of my walls
they stare into my sheltered world
and see things that would make even the Earth
cringe.

It's too late to destroy it,
because my thoughts have evolved
into a race of beings
far more powerful than myself.
They'll be the death of me,
but their empires will stand
long after I'm gone, before my time.

But every once and a while
I can hear one or two of them praying
to me,
begging for me to bring peace to this world inside my head
that I have no control over.
They don't realize
that I'm not a god,
and that their whole existence is nothing
but the product of years of abuse
from a universe they cant comprehend,
that I can't comprehend.

So I sit nailed to the couch, suffering for their sins
while pointlessly checking my phone
for a text from that friend that says
“I'm sorry”

I took a walk today
and listened to the birds
choking on the smog,
broke my mother's back
with every step
and outran a stray dog.
I picked you a bouquet
of dandelions from the field
because flowers can't grow
when the sun's always concealed.
I put them in a vase
and filled it with water from the tap
they died within an hour,
now I know for sure you won't come back.
I always swore
I'd never own a broken home
but it's hard not to when the only one's who stay
are the garden gnomes —
but someone's been smashing them
in the middle of the night,
or maybe they're blowing out their brains
to escape my company
and the blight.
There's no magic left
in this city, so chronically gray
storms are always passing though
and the rainbows are too scared to stay...
I wanted to run away with you
from the hood and past the burbs
to somewhere where the air is clean
and filled with singing birds.
But instead I'm stuck here on this couch,
microwaving Ramen
while I search for words.

Hieroglyphs on my ancient soul
foretell the end of me,
they say I'll die by my own hand
when I’ve reached god status
and every knee has knelt
before me
and I have nothing left
to achieve.
This prophecy has been written
on me for many lives
each ended by a pill,
bullet, or brilliance  —
I can feel it.  
My fingers are my slaves
who type a pyramid of words
that'll hide my body
in a maze of *****-trapped metaphors
that no thief
would ever dare explore.
So shut me away
with my mummified poetry
so the gods in the next life
will worship me.
Let me hold the empty orange bottle
like a rosary in chalky hands
folded stiff
into forced prayer.
Let me rot away
and be forgotten
while my poetic pyramids
stand for thousands of years
in the sun.
Let tourists stand under their shadows
in awe
while my bones turn slowly
to dust
somewhere deep in the chambers
of their brilliance.

I was detached
so I could wander
hand in hand with the wind.
Who am I now?
I feel so frail
and my flowers are long gone.
“Look what I've become”
I say to no one
as the buzzards cry.
Their shadows circle me
like dark moons in a galaxy
starving for life —
am I not alive?

I've never seen flesh
that was still carrying a soul,
but the wind tells me stories
of slinking through their hair
when the world was young —
I can smell their skin on its breath,
its breath that’s carried me
to the edge of the earth a thousand times
to find only stars
that those ancient, mysterious people worshiped
before I was even a seed.

Am I qualified to pray
to those stars that have lead us
to a thousand sunrises?
Will they even hear me
with this voice that is only a rustle
across rocks and dirt,
this voice that is literally nothing but a ...

my soul who shapes the clouds
who possess my dry body, and countless others all at once
interrupts me
and whispers yes.

I smell the gods in its voice now.

While running my hand
across your casket,
I leave fingerprints
on the polished wood
that will be lowered with you
into six feet of obscurity,
telling no one, only the darkness,
that I cared enough for you
to watch your unbearable decent
in to peace
while the January wind
further numbed my core.
I have nothing
so these are the only things
I was able to leave you with,
but at least I know
no one will ever wipe them
from the cherry oak surface
that even my tears slid from
so easily when I cried...
But my hand
the hand that felt the last twitches of life
in your fingers
and squeezed them until the warmth escaped
has left such delicate mementos
that will never wither
with the expensive bouquets
and flowery wreaths.

Inhaling your breath against my lips gets me high. Love this potent should be illegal, it feels so bad... like someone sold me your heart in a little plastic bag from the pocket of their hoodie in the cover of night. I lit it on fire and breathed in every panted wisp of smoke pushed up from your burning core. I bet distant cities can see our flames on the horizon, and the citizens are rushing to church to kneel before God and pray to be spared from the glowing apocalypse crawling towards them. What a beautiful way to die... but the world has already ended to me, because nothing matters in this moment but you. I think I can hear their screams beneath yours, as the ****** of Armageddon firestorms falls from the angry heavens that generously matched our souls.

Then silence... the beautiful silence that drapes the earth once everyone and everything is dead except for us, at least until the sun returns, and the alarm clock rings and resurrects the world from its hallucinated grave, and I head out to work hungover with love.

lying together
in the last of the darkness...
I awake
to the hiss of flames
and plumes of candle-smoke

You're my stillborn butterfly
afraid of your new beauty
with limp wings,
pried from the safety of your cocoon
by my old hands
in a forest where everything
is charred.
Only the skeletal trees
once lush with life and birdsong
can admire your strange elegance
as you lay listless on their roots
that thirst for a storm of passing love
and thunder.

I want to carry you away
to my field of wildflowers
and resurrect you with the unmasked glow
of the shy moon, who only shows its face
in this meadow of lies.
I'll watch the breeze wake you on my fingertips
then let you fly away, carelessly
into a world of color
I'll never compare to.