one with the rust,
trickling into the soils--
one more sip i just
gotta watch the smoke coil...

I find myself angry with life.
A low, simmering rage
only too close to a boil.
Once, my mind was
the sharpest of blades,
nothing could stand before me.
Now, it is but a vestigial sort of thing,
a relic of times better remembered.
I am rusted by the monotone
my life has become.
The repetition of every day
comes on as a flood;
I will succumb.

i take shelter in your grooves
growing stronger in the curves
like whetstones smoothing and sharpening me down
to make a fine point

i wanted you to build with me
to push
me
up gently.

see if this rust
can turn into something beautiful
to see if rust
can be turned to gold

did you know
1 in 5 women
will be ***** during her lifetime
but every 1 has a name
and every name has a story
and no one story
is ever the same
mine isn’t any exception

it didn’t happen at all
like u think it did
there were no shadowy figures
reaching out rough hands
to pull me into an empty alley
as i walked the streets alone at night
8 out of 10 rapes are by someone you know

my body wasn’t a rag doll
to be thrown against a brick wall
while ****** objections flew
from my mouth like cannonballs

it was just us
in a space that was ours
a hushed no living and dying on my lips
the scary sweet nothings
whispered in my ear
must have drowned out the tides
rolling in and streaming
down my cheeks
because your hand never once left my throat
and you didn’t stop

i was nothing more than a shiny object
laid out on a dingy sheet
for you to devour
made to please

but when i rusted
i was abandoned
right where u took me
a corpse to rot
amongst the flowers
but if u squint hard
i may be pretty enough
to use again
3/28/2018

Welcome back from the break.
Last time I checked, I was a social outcast,
now I'm a godless heathen by margins
too expansive to measure.
You expect me to do what?
Break down, scrape my face with a muzzle?
No, I think for my sake,
I will embrace disdain,
disgrace, displacement, as if my blood is
dependent on it, just less than water.
Welcome back to
the decadent disaster,
robotic masterpiece of emulation,
emulating emotion it once contained.
It was exposed to Alexithymia,
undiagnosed for too long,
and can't grasp that anyone might return
feelings of love, lust, or interest,
with any sincerity.

Please, touch my face.
Draw me out, as if your hands were the pens
bringing life to still frames.
Please, touch my skin.
Make promises that my rusted metal
must hold more than debris.

The crumbling, earthen stones,
over which I clamber entrap the ghosts
of those who left before their time.
The cool, glassy tunnels through which I crawl
threaten to give, and bury my corpse
beneath the boulders and rubble.
The creaking catwalk to which I cling
sways ever slightly in the absence of wind,
teasing my toppling doom.
The mammoth steel drums
loom heads over mine, their rattling
and rumbling ceased decades ago.
The rotting apricot timbers
wedged into the endless darkness,
no longer support the tonnage of slabs
hoisted higher than my eyes will find.
The wrought-iron machinery
long stopped in time,
lies warped by the weight of gravity.
The soaring windows
spider-webbed and shattered,
litter the floor with their fractured bones.
And the walls and floors
and ceilings and doors
that once bustled with the liveliness of labor
lie silent.