Why don't you want her?
She's everything you ever wanted when you were sixteen;
her lips drawn, eyes heavy,
ready to fall into your arms
drunk, gasping for air

Kiss her, you idiot

She's so ill, so sick, so tired of boys like you
who sit and stare at her from across the room
She's not made of porcelain, though her skin may tell you otherwise
She's not made of glass
She's made of living, breathing, flesh and blood,
all soft skin and rough kisses

She wants to hear you say her name,
voice strained from the pressure of her body on yours
But you'll just sit there
Maybe buy her a drink
Maybe tell her coyly that she's 'one of the prettiest girls...'
Maybe walk her home
And watch as she dissapears through her front door,
black space forming a vignette

Why didn't you just kiss her?

You fall in love with everyone when they are talking about their favorite things
You fall in love with voices that rumble like the earth whispering all its darkest secrets
You fall in love with people who carry the moon in their chests
You fall in love with people’s scars, you dive into their stories, you memorize the maps of memories on their skin
You fall in love with the sorrow people cater to in their hearts, you wait to see how much of it spills out and where it goes afterward
You fall in love with a song you’ve heard since you were born but you never remember, you hear it humming in the blood of everyone around you
You fall in love with anyone who quotes Vonnegut and makes eye contact for so long it makes you feel uncomfortable
You fall in love with the way another person’s presence can begin to feel so much like home
You fall in love with the bits of cosmic dust connecting your veins to those of every living thing
You fall in love with the night sky and all its musings
You fall in love with absolutely everything
You surrender yourself
You shed your skin
You fall into love and let it swallow you whole

THE RED DIGITAL CLOCK REMINDS ME I AM at 21,112 feet,
a palindrome at 6.06 in the morning,
drifting from sleep to wake,
back to dreams of reality.
The man in my dreams.
The man of my dreams.
Somewhere over the rainbow,
crows scream ****** at each other and the world turns.
Men at work.
6:16 says the flashing clock,
flashing to remind me,
flashing to forget.
The man in my dreams
The man of my dreams.
Pilots fly me onwards
to a knowing destination,
a truly murky crystal of logic and stupidity.
The Chelsea hotel reminds me
that love is not dead,
that it lives on in the hearts of the workers of song,
at least for those of them left.
Mountains of things,
rings,
wedding bells chime and time,
time slowly marches by,
races,
paces,
one way streets.
Time.
Castles the colour of ink,
landscapes of pink mountains.
Snap back to reality.
The sun kisses the distant horizon,
as planes tear holes in the sky below
and the old women weep for the days that will never shine again.
But the children laugh for the days that are yet to be born,
the days of promise and peace,
war and understanding.
A new era?
A new beginning?
A twist in time to take us to where it all began
and the beautiful moon watches raucously from above,
smiling on his children,
sending kisses to his cheating lover, who still wrestles with the horizon.
Colour floods.
Grey, grey, grey.
A dulux of colour.
Man made.
Your body searches for me.
My mind wanders to other things.
The heat of your stare envelopes every pore of my being
and I freeze,
immersed in a mountain stream,
drenched in the sweat of love.
Doors open,
archways scream
and silence is our only food.
And yet reality still twists you from me.
The man of my dreams.
The man in my dreams.
Crows cry and children sing.
Happy nightmares, wearing thin.

My mania tells me things and I accept them as truths
Like:
If you stay awake long enough,
everything will make sense
Like:
If you starve your body,
your mind will expand
Like:
If you drink another *** of coffee you will be calm
Like:
If you smoke another cigarette your hands will stop shaking
Like:
If you feel like you are going in the right direction,
turn around and run the other way
Like:
If you feel like you are alone,
stay where you are and never leave
Like:
If you stop speaking to everyone
for long enough
they will forget you exist
Like:
If you stop writing things down
it's like they never even happened
Like:
If you let another person stay near you for too long,
their aura will eventually leak out
and seep into you
and it will make your insides melt
Like:
If you try to figure out what someone else is thinking,
you will either only pick up static
or you will hear awful noise
Like:
If you love someone,
you will make them wish
you'd never met
Like:
If you try to forget,
the memory will only get stronger,
it will plant roots in your chest
while you sleep

I never want to go anywhere without pressed flowers in my notebooks and I always want to have turquoise in my pockets and I never want to stop writing poetry and I will let it bleed me dry if that’s what it wants and I never want to stop staying up at night contemplating the stars and I never want to stop feeling every little thing like an anvil on my chest and I never want to stop agonizing over every little detail of absolutely everything and I never want to treat love like it is some big secret and I never want to stop filling up everyone I know with the same light they have poured into me and I want to keep growing stronger until I can swallow the sky and the sun and open my arms up and wrap myself around the Void until we become one with one another, until we can finally sleep.
Rest easy, sweet dreams.

When I am seventeen I go a bit insane and I discover that the whole world is connected to me by strings and I don’t know if I control them or if they control me but I do know that I feel very enlightened and aware when I have not eaten for five days and I drink two pots of coffee a day to stay awake because the nights are still whispering all their darkest secrets and I know that there is a grid of cosmic light keeping everything in tact but why? I see God in the golden dust that exists within each and every one of us and it makes me want to tear out my hair and scream at the top of my lungs when you tell me you can’t find salvation, just look at yourself, look inward, look back, look ahead, look anywhere

I am at the party I did not want to attend

I am at the party although I would rather be at home in bed

I am at the party and I cannot find the girl who invited me

I am at the party and oh my god where should I stand

I am at the party and I am feeling grateful for the pack of cigarettes I bought before I came, now I have something to do with my hands

I am at the party and everyone seems to be speaking a foreign language I can't understand

I am at the party and no thank you I don't want a drink

I am at the party and I already said no, please leave me alone

I am at the party and I'm sorry I'm not trying to be rude

I am at the party and why am I sorry I haven't done anything wrong

I am at the party and I am trying hard to blend in with the patterns on the wallpaper

I am at the party and I am focusing on seeping into the furniture and into the floor and into the soil

I am at the party and it's been 30 minutes is it okay for me to leave yet

I am at the party and why don't these people have any pets

I am at the party and the line for the bathroom is way too long where am I going to hide now

I am at the party and I am texting myself would-be poems that will gather dust as drafts

I am at the party and I should really learn how to dance

I am at the party and I look across the room and I see you

I am at the party and she is biting your lip, her fingers in your hair

I am at the party and you look happier with her than you ever did with me

I am leaving the party as quickly and calmly as my legs will carry me

I am leaving the party and it's okay I'm okay everything is going to be okay

I have this fantasy where I am driving on the interstate and I am not daydreaming about crashing my car and being killed on impact

I have this fantasy where I have never spent a whole summer covering up my scars

I have this fantasy where I know my body and I am at peace with it

I have this fantasy where I never stopped making art because of what a teacher said to me when I was seventeen

I have this fantasy where I know how to write good poetry

I have this fantasy where I have never fallen in love with too many drug addicts

I have this fantasy where I am sleeping with a stranger for fun and not because I hurt

I have this fantasy where someone knows all the best parts of me

I have this fantasy where someone knows all the worst parts of me

I have this fantasy where I can say “I love you” out loud instead of just writing it down

I have this fantasy where I am giving my whole self to somebody else and they are not asking me for more

You and I will devour each other like there is a fire inside burning up every bit of poetry scribbled down on the backs of napkins, every line you have ever spilled into me, pushed past my lips and scraped along my teeth with your tongue. We become wild things with sharp claws that rip and tear and bite, there are monsters in your voice when you moan into me and I am falling quickly in love with each and every one of them. And to be honest touching you touching me has provided me with enough material to last through years of loneliness, there is a quiet storm behind my eyelids when I am alone in bed with my hands between my thighs, there is a tidal wave screaming your name that only escapes in satisfied sighs.