freakout. let’s all hide this from our parents together
i want so desperately to impress you, i want so hugely for you to like me
i love nirvana (as of this morning), but i’m not faking
i really do love Floyd the Barber (as of hearing it this morning)
Kurt Cobain died on the cross almost thirty years ago
he’d be fifty seven and I have a headache
this **** smells like that guy who gave me my guitar
my godfather (close enough), my childhood (ending rapidly)
and barbecues in the backyard
douse me in axe body spray and tell me it’s lynx
it is lynx, i’m the one who’s wrong
i feel real for the first time in years, and shorter than i thought
5”4 and sinking into the ground, so dance with me
let’s take our shoes off in the street
two songs, one movie, one podcast
all playing in the background, and we’re off every beat
I love nirvana (always have), I have a headache (always will)
I’m teetering between high and not
is this the kind of **** that makes you creative?
look at the little bag you brought, it has bats on it
it makes you so happy, look at you dancing
look at you on the driveway, in your Kurt Cobain sunnies
this is what he would have wanted

I have danced the dance of this flame
Been lit in my own despair,
But my shadow put me to shame
A beacon that found me in a darkness,
I thought no light could penetrate
Shared my anguished heart,
Then stole my love away.

I have read the story of a life
Lived on the edge of existence,
Let down so much by those
Professing only love and acceptance;
I know that the end is the end
For history tells me so,
This is the end, my beautiful friend

And the darkness envelopes you.

Kurt Cobain has died again
Whoever reads must live this pain,
The truth has helped to shed some light
But Curt Cobain must die tonight.
Last chapter by my bedside lamp
And I live again with the consequence.

You found me
stuck staring
at rearview mirror reflections
of wintry, dusk intersections
of everything leaving me
all at once.
A forced exhale
of asphyxia caged
in collapsing lungs;
my mouth,
a fountain spring,
that coughed out
pools of blood.

I wish I saw myself
the way you saw me;
not a red traffic light
wounding speeding cars
on winding streets,
but an antique heirloom
priceless enough
you'd only wish
you could keep
in a heart-shaped box
you saw in dreams.

But, I'd cut my tongue,
paint my lips cherry shades
to blend with cells that'd stain
handkerchiefs you'd offer.
Make you believe
this isn't going to foster
because you are indecision,
unfinished watercolor landscapes
of summer forest fire skies,
a sun-kissed Pacific wanderer.
And I am true crime
untouched evidence of break-ins,
remains of faulty locks and lights.
I am mosaics misaligned;
static, seabed cracks
from forgotten fault lines.
Gaping fissures of sand,
and salt that won't let me stitch
frayed skin-deep fibres
barely holding me in.

Oceans would have to empty themselves
into whirring cyclones and high tides
for our selfish sense of touch to collide.
Ice caps would have to sink
deep enough to even bruise my skin.
And I wouldn't want to watch
more Shakespeare end
before it begins.

See, I am the one
with sharp edges,
but why
did you have to be the one
to clip my wings?

There is only an abyss
without a trampoline,
a safety net,
a bed of waterlilies,
I could fall in.
And I am so tired
of paradoxes
and ironies;
of always being wanted
by someone who doesn't even
want to be kept,
of always being mended
and then left
with more dislocations,
and fractures,
one after another
each taking longer to fix.

Now, in shapeless parcels,
without return addresses
sent out into the void
these words will echo
of love
I never intended to borrow,
and shadows
of false hope
you never thought yourself
capable of
giving away.