Every day
Waking up in the same place
Same path
Same endless repetitions
A life I never wanted
Or dreamed of

But if I can hold on
Scrounge for meaning
Give myself a reason to drag my body to the end

I'll wake in the winter
Find the world's hard edges
Softened by a fresh blanket of snow

And live again

large panel windows with a view of brick beyond
white (pristine, pure)
untouched fantasies
and
compromised realities


draped in sunlight it tastes bitter like
unaged marble, freshly cut and hung
(on a languid pointe you advance
    — a graceless ballonné)


there’s a peace to be found
in quiescent words dripping in honey   sounding across an empty room
sinking to the soles of your feet
as you dip your toes into discarded symphonies
painting them across my heart.

Madness moves me
That curtain is
  T  O  R  N
I scattered it
in purple shatters
on the shadow
across the sidewalk.
  from the  moon.
The whippoorwill
   S I N G S
out of tune
to match
a bad
    harmonica and
a rusty piccolo.
The box
that held it all
was auctioned off
    There was no
highest bidder.
The city
        trembles
from the
urgency of need
And none will make
    an offer.
Madness falls in
   L O V E
with unrequited horror
and gives birth
to pandemonium
  which is
marked down eighty-five
    percent
But only if
the flags are      flying.
Outside
comes in from
the cold
through windows
   with no     curtains
stepping over
purple stains
on badly
threadbare carpets
while
    the loom
goes right on
weaving
               *ljm

Make me *** and I'll come for you, until they pull me down and make me cough out loud. I'm a street named Chance and I'm awful loud, I read right to left. I hear colors not sounds. I'm a maniac, maniac, for Empire Carpet. I've been hospitalized for being honest, and condescended to for living life on the edge, with a knife in my bed, a pillow under my head. Where I've pollinated my sheets with the easements of sleep, and circumvented my best friends just to shake up the news. I've been used, I've been lied to, I've been amused, I've survived abuse, I've been bruised, I've leaned toward the obtuse, I've leant forward for truth, and I've written down my upsides and foretold my mishaps, I'm a backwards commando for import and export of hazmat, and especially bath mats, CB2 or IKEA, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, or just farther beyond. I remain calm, while the adverbs stack in my palms, it's the trick of word pimping to work verbs into adjectives, articles attached to their nouns, an ellipsis or eroteme, a period or comma. I said I am *******, so now won't you come. I've evolved what I've said into parts of a song. So push back on me and I'll push back in you, I'll take your words and re-dedicate them into consonants and vowels. Hang up your heraldry, and never put down your ***. Keep your habits to bedrooms, and your words to never forget.

hey, ma. it's been a while.
i don't know if you remember
the sound of my chirpy voice
anymore.
it still comes up, every now and again;
when i'm baked beyond my brains
when i had just cracked the rankest pun
when i'm tangled in a boy's arms, lost -
lost. just like you ma.

i wonder where your mind takes you
when the ringing in your ears doesn't seem to go.
when you dissociate into the otherworld, and
the lashes of your
third eye sweep me away from your vision.

i thought the power of the universe was
supposed to be
abundant.
yet i have lost you to the vortex of your gods -
the same ones that leave
only the wind
to rock me to sleep.

ma,
i am pockmarked with your bad habits.
i lose touch with reality
myself, looking for the warmth of your
recognition.

i guess space is too large
for me to find your meditative corner.
or perhaps
i'm just looking in the wrong spaces.

space is nice because you have
no weight on your shoulders.
i miss the feeling of having
no weight on my shoulders.

when i grow up, ma
i want to be just like you.
lost.

Have I been forgotten more than I’ve been remembered?
I’m afraid to ask but feel the gentle nudge of my overthinking little demon telling me I need to know. I want to preserve. That is my goal ultimately. Preserve my life, preserve my memories. If only I had done it sooner, maybe I could remember my own Mother’s voice. Maybe I could remember who I am. What I want to be. I am built of choices and principles that I am not entirely sure I agree with, but have I ever been entirely sure about anything? Uncertainty is my main anxiety, uncertainty is my most well established feeling, for there is no doubt in my mind that I am uncertain when I’m uncertain. Or maybe there is. I want to see color on my cheeks, happiness on my lips that shows with every word I say, a body I feel blessed to have no matter my weight. I want to taste happy. I want to taste it in all of its mellow waves of sweet fruit and darting sunsets. I want to taste the Caribbean Sea mixed with sweaty hands and palm trees. I want to be happy. That’s who I want to be. I know there’s no ending that ends with “Well kids, she did it! She found happiness and became nothing but an overflowing beam of light flooding those she loved with warmth and growth and the support she always wished she could give. She found happy.” But if I could just get a taste, a whiff of happiness, maybe that would be enough. Maybe then I could move on and pursue my next dream. Maybe if I caught a glance of happy I would gain the strength to fix our economy. I don’t want happy to be my “The End,” I want happy to be my “Sorry for the technical difficulties, now ladies and gentlemen, on with the show.” I want it to be what gives me the strength to do everything else. Maybe it’s nonsense, only a dream with no bearing to reality. Or maybe I am simply overlooking, overthinking, everything over, look down, look down! Stop being “Over,” things, you are over nothing, you are not the sky nor the clouds in it, you are not the highest branches nor the leaves that remain on it. You are the ground. The very definition of grounded. People walk on you because you let them, it makes you happy. People often see you as *****. You are the ground, which means you are necessary, you are what holds us together, quite literally. You are the ground, and that's makes you beautiful. You’re not intimidated by the footsteps of a thousand warriors for you are under them. And for once, that means you have the advantage. You are the ground. It is short and sweet, so why do you still manage to find misery? You are the ground from which happiness grows. I am happiness. You found me.

i have this nasty
habit of leaving
day-old sweat
in my pores
and scraping out
years of
hair follicles in
mere minutes.

have you ever gotten
to thinking about
inadequacy?
or the way a
thursday morning is
so busy but you
just feel
fogged over?

not breathing is
really gross
meaning i must be
exceptionally disgusting

and i cried when
i told you about
the fresh scars
and you gave me a
hug like i needed and
i rubbed the back of
my neck where the
humidity clung.

you see i feel
guilty keeping secrets
but even more
guilty when you worry
because nobody
should worry about me

it's not
worth it.

i'm seventeen
days clean now
seventeen
days closer to

closer
closer

**** it hurts
to be a failure

once in awhile i think too hard
about the graduation parties
inserted into forced friendships
and i wonder if any of my
darkest moments had
been felt by the other girls, too.

there are dark moments
that stand out to me
too bright on the
canvass of life.

i was seven years old
and some boys shouted at me
and told me that my pink bicycle
(obtained secondhand from some
nice church family)
was actually theirs
(it wasn't but i can
still see the scene in my mind
and don't know why it still
bothers me sometimes.)

i was a little older
and somebody was slamming doors
running up and down stairs
and i was sitting on my assistant
pastor's couch with some
eighth-grade girls i didn't know
who were crying their eyes out
and i was feeling very bitter and afraid.

somebody was screaming
****** threats and my heart
was pushed into my throat like
pony beads between marbles
inside paisley print just like that
necklace from that one funeral

was it papa's funeral?
i can't even remember.

all i knew was that
there had been a car accident
and i knew that just hours before
he had won one of
barb's stuffed giraffes in a raffle
and christmas had been coming up
i think i cried in the shower
but i know i sat in the living room
stared at the wall and jared said
"you could go downstairs and
talk to somebody"
i didn't.

that was the first christmas
that ever felt truly wrong.

i have never felt so
alone as i sat cross-legged on
a hospital bed in the blue
paper scrubs they put you in
when they think you're a loaded gun
and listened to the world run by
tears barely dried and pen
scratching away

i never would have ended up there
if i had known how to manipulate
the system like i do now
but i wasn't smart enough to know
that saying you have
suicidal thoughts is as
good as saying you've got a plan and
a knife in your back pocket.

i think my arms were still
bleeding under my sleeves
when you looked me in the
eye and slapped me in the face.

literally
i mean that you
literally
hit me in the face
oh but mom
was ******.

i still think about that sometimes
while we're at the dinner table
all eating together and i'll move
my chair over two inches
because you're right next to me
and i know that it only
ever happened once and you
would never do it again but then
again it seems safer closer
to the wall
and sometimes when you're
standing by the cupboard
i walk all the way around the
stove to avoid getting too close.

i was fifteen years old
and crumpled on the bathroom floor
probably had something to do
with exhaustion and blood loss
i was seventeen years old
passed out the wrong way on my bed
brand-new laptop facedown on the floor
a byproduct of the education system

(seventeen year olds should not
have to experience going into a store
and spending the last of their
birthday money on shapewear so
they can feel almost okay about
their body at the dance
but that's just a footnote or a deep
gray addition to my blackest moments)

i remember that time a couple
months ago when you threw
me into a relaxing bath and i was
afraid you'd see my legs

and i was afraid of who
i kept finding myself to be
on sunday mornings at ten
when i was still at home
lying in bed and listening to
ambient instrumental music

(ripping myself away
is the worst feeling
i think i've ever felt
especially when the
questions start coming
sealed signed and delivered.)

hanging on by a thread
watching all the worst parts
of my memories flash over
and over again late at night
when the music hits that tiny
little crack above my heart.

but i've been thinking about
being a failure and wondering
if every girl has had her own
bathroom floor moment

and does the
difference lie in
how late at night she
lets it keep her awake?

summer
makes me sick.

It's been too long since I've thought of anything like this. I've gotten trapped between the sections of keyboard, tried to fit into those endless spaces between the lines from the enter key. I'm shifting every dozen words and my eyes have gone the same route. But worst of all I'm afraid of glasses of water and the times when it's too early or too late to be alive -- maybe just the time I've always spent being someone else.

Spring, and all my old items are hitting my bed springs and bouncing off as fast as I can throw them out. Clothing and bits of string and papers that I never wrote on or that I wish I hadn't written on are falling on the floor around a pair of feet that are always being questioned as to their intentions. Sometimes I wonder if my feet are real, or maybe I'm just wishing that I could pull them off at the ankles and switch them out with a person who is very unfortunate but who has lovely toes and a predisposition to a higher immune system. That same predisposition to a higher immune system would come in handy a lot of places this time of year.

You had better believe that I would get out of here if I could.

I was standing in a bathroom that I've hardly known but I know it all too well because it's just like every other bathroom nowadays. And it was halfway okay that I was trying not to gag over the toilet because there was a jazzy pop song that sounded about five years old playing. I had never heard it but every word and corner of the brass section ran down my spine and I recognized the voice from somewhere else and I felt that he had written it just for me.

It's not blue and linear at this point, but it's not so much a black ink blot, either. It's somewhere between the two, a piece of old paper from under my bookshelf covered in black and blue circles. Every outline as empty as you could imagine.

The lawnmower is running again and I'm wishing I were still the kind of girl that could wear flowers made of sunshine and sky and feel alive when she ran through the oceany grass. Depression is a *****, wouldn't you say? You probably wouldn't say that unless you knew firsthand, because she's the kind of thing that nobody believes in until you meet her for yourself. I've met her too many times to count and I finally gave up trying to knock her down because she always comes back up. There are people like that, too, but at least people give you a reaction if you scream at them long enough. She never does.

I stopped trying to tell the truth when I realized that nobody believed me.

the person who decided
to put their old
movie theater seats
in front of the
swimming pool
was a gosh **** genius.

and i often think
about streetlights
harmonizing with
brick walls.

(don't you hate
travel, though?)

yes, i do
but to get out
of my mind i'd
go straight to anywhere.

(i've missed this
but now i know
that straight lines
aren't static.)

THE SOLUTION
(you see)
IS PAIN
(fully obvious)

I DON'T KNOW WHY
WE'RE STILL SUFFERING

are we hurting
or are we back
to where pain is
felt as strength?

when you see
blood
do you see
regret?

you should
i should.

STOP PLAYING
THAT **** PIANO
I CAN HEAR HOW
OUT-OF-TUNE YOUR
FINGERS ARE WHEN
YOUR EARS DON'T LISTEN.

(and don't you know
that when you lay your
voice flat on the sidewalk
it sinks in the cracks?)

there's nothing like putting
poetry in a music notation
book to make you
realize how useless you are.

i have my reasons
all written in
hieroglyphics that
i can't read
and i have more
reasons
all written in
shades of lonely and
ceiling tiles.

so sue me
for the truth
i'm just afraid
of being hurt.

there are five
and a half
blankets
piled on the end
of my bed
and if you're wondering
how i can have
half of a blanket

(well
it's a long story
but rest assured
it's not complete.)

in any case
i've tried all
of them
and none of them
are managing
to make me
feel
any better.

tomorrow
i will turn on
the printer and
attempt to salvage
what's left
of the collective
innocence of this
thwarted generation.

doubt i'll get
very far
but i can claim
what most can't
and that
my dear friends is
a little thing called
courage.

(scratch that
i'm still afraid.)

in fact
i could write
a long and
boring list
of all of my
typical
and irrational
fears.

(but i won't bother
because i trust
that you
have enough imagination
to cook up a few
for yourself.)

i'm trying
to tie up
every hanging thread
but i've been
trying for so long
that i might give up.

i remember this one time
a long time ago
when you yelled
you really yelled
over some stupid
frying pan
that i hadn't washed
or something.

no
it was definitely
a frying pan
i remember that
and i will die by the
fact it was a frying pan.

once in awhile
when someone's
mad
i stand there
woodenly
and feel disturbingly
unsafe
and i think about how
i didn't wash
that frying pan
and maybe
if i had washed that
frying pan
when you asked
neither one of us
would have a few
thousand pounds of
suppressed anger inside.

i know
i just know
you're mad
and i know
you know
that i'm mad
whether or not
i'm willing to admit
that i'm really mad
which i'm not.

(but i am
by the way.)

i'm hitting the
breaking away
but i'm hitting it
late
and i'm hitting it
hard.

like an
overly confident
concrete
wall.

back to the printer
and tomorrow
i would
hope

(and i would also
pray
if i happened to be
the praying type)

(but i am not
the praying type)

that you all know
that the very
stubborn
streak in me that
could turn out to be
my most valuable asset
is also the thing
that will
promptly
and rather
unceremoniously
deploy a
bomb.

*(just thought i should
remind you that
in every strength lies
the ***** in the armor.)