We lay on our backs, looking up to the sky, watching the clouds drift and dance across the indescribable expanse of summer blue. Shameless, we shout the first things that come to mind, whatever we think see floating above us.
Turtle. Sailboat. Dragon. Elephant. Chair. Fire truck.
And we laugh, because we know they’re just amorphous masses of water vapor, floating without reason or destination.
And the clouds, they lay on their stomachs. They look down with wonder, pointing and giggling. They tumble and roll across the sky, watching our lives below. Shameless, they whisper to each other the first thing that comes to mind, whatever they think they see below them.
Mother. Leader. Writer. Musician. Son. Lover.
And their laughter thunders across the sky, echoing raucously through the air because they know we’re just amorphous masses of water vapor, wandering across the earth without emotion or purpose.
Who do we think we are?

I was sure that this feeling was gone for good,
but trial and error has yielded more error than it should
and I’m beginning to think that I can’t do all the things
I’ve so resolutely sworn that I would.
I can’t blame inadequacy on those little pink pills,
Doc prescribed my anxiety for three years and still
to this day I wonder where I’d be
if side-effects hadn’t brought out the demons in me.
But now, dearest reader, I’m finally free.
But freedom, well, it’s a bitter pill to swallow,
because now, who’s to blame when that eerily hollow,
haunting feeling creeps up behind me?
When the only thing in the room is the mirror beside me,
and I’m watching me stare back at me
and I’m seeing what I’ve always seen
and I swore, christ, I swore on everything
that this would be my awakening.
But. It wasn’t.
Yeah, I swore that this feeling was gone for good,
but winter’s brought it back like part of me always knew it would.
So I’ll hide blame under the furniture, in dark the corners of this room
and hope I’ll learn what it means to let go sometime soon.

I tire
Of the perfect:
Of the flawless,
The azure,
The quiet,
The pastoral.
I tire of sunsets
And of flowers
I tire of perfect skin
And perfect lungs
I tire of politeness
And I tire of patience.

I am bored
by golden sunrays,
Reflected brightly
from golden hair
Trailing behind a sundress
Weaving, careless,
through golden wheat.
I no longer want to be her.

I tire of fluffy pillows
And warm blankets.
I am bored of hot tea
And of books about things
That are not real,
Only beautiful figments of the mind,
Only as real as the pages, the cover,
Only as real as we can pretend them to be -
And I am bored of pretending.

I am bored with cities
And with mountains
And with fields
And rivers
And the ocean.
I grow impatient with the trees
And the clouds
And the birds.


I am bored by the beautiful.
Because beautiful is beautiful, so,
But it is only beautiful.
And Beauty, though held fast,
Esteemed above all other qualities
Sought tirelessly
Worshipped and envied
Revered, praised
Beauty is only beauty.
It is not deserved.
It is not earned.
It cannot speak, it cannot give
It cannot love.
Beauty is nothing.
Beauty is boring.
I am bored by beauty.
I do not seek what is beautiful.
I will never be beautiful.
But that is a very small thing
To never be.
I can be far, far more
Than beautiful.

I can be real.
You are real.
And I am real.
And us, we
We are real.
What we are
What we have
Is real.
I am not yet tired
Of you.

And I will never be tired
of us.

Singing birds are often better off caged, and maybe I’m no different. Maybe it’s safer, biting my tongue and shoving my hands deep in my pockets when the urge to delineate my woes shivers its way up my spine, shaking the rust from the back of my teeth and loosening the hinges on my jaw. I’m constantly reminded that the world outside my mind is far too dangerous, too brutal for my fragile thoughts, for my feeble words. But every now and then those words get the better of me. They convince me that their songs are worth hearing, that they’ll survive the hell that awaits them. Then, eager and  hopeful, they jump off my teeth like a diving board, spreading their wings and gliding out into the world of the unknown, the world of wars waged to divide and battles fought to conquer. I watch as they hang suspended in the air, wings spread, small and beautiful against the ominous background, innocent if only for a fleeting moment. But, of course, beauty has no place here.
I cringe as the shots ring out from all directions, as everyone around me opens fire upon my winged thoughts. I shut my eyes tightly against the firing of guns, arrows, cannons: delivering the message loud and clear that the airspace between me and the world is better left unclouded by my superfluous banter. I try not to watch as they drop from the sky, my unsuspecting words, but my eyes force themselves open. Wings broken, hearts still, they crash to the ground, silenced.
I want to gather them one by one, my feathered thoughts, gently in my hands; I would take them somewhere safe and give them a proper burial, for they were once so near and dear to me. But I’m afraid of what lies in the battlefield. I’m afraid of the landmines and the barbed wire and the trenches. So I bow my head, refasten the locks on my sore, stiffened jaw, and turn my back on the carnage, on the dirt and grass and the haze and smoke. I turn from my defeated birds, form the bodies of my barely spoken words, and I leave them.

I don’t understand how you could me mine.
(What does the proud oak want with the pine?)
I can’t imagine how my long, skeletal hands
are the ones yours long to hold.
I am tough and coarse, like a pine,
Ever-green, constant, covered in spines
and needles, unpleasant and sharp to the touch.
While you, my love, are an oak.
You are strong and beautiful. Your leaves change colors,
fiery or verdant, you are loud when all others
shrink from speech. You, love, are dynamic, intriguing,
a tree that inspires poetry.
Your roots hold you fast, they run deep and true,
while mine fan out, shallow. I fear with no roots
to hold me, the wind could take me away.
(The wind will tear me apart.)
You are the one tree that grows tall and straight
in a place where the wind, fed by anger and hate
forces others to bend, to grow crooked, they’re lost
and confused, with nothing to reach for.
My branches are short – I offer no comfort
(from lack of ability or knowledge, I’m not sure).
Your branches stretch wide, embracing with smooth bark,
But an oak cannot love a pine.

I want to write something to fix me.
I want to write something to heal my wounds, to hide my scars.
I want to write something to wear that will make me beautiful. I want to sew something from words that will fit me perfectly, something that flows like linen, curves of S's fitting curves of hips, legs like L's and F's soft like lips.
I want to write something to wear like new skin, something to make me interesting to look at, to make me a poem worth reading. I want to be the one you tuck into your notebook and read in class. When you're tired of listening, tired of focusing, tired of everything, you can read a few lines off my shoulder blades, from my palms or knees, and maybe you'll feel better.
I want to write something that will make you laugh. God, I love your laugh, I'd write myself into a joke just to see you smile like that, my shoulders to set it up, collar bone to draw you in, my stomach could be the punch line and I'd have you cracked up for sure. I don't need to be taken seriously, as long as I can see you laugh.
I want to write something strong and heavy. I'll melt the letters together, weld T's to G's and K's to X's until I've written us an anchor. It'll be just light enough for us to carry, just heavy enough to weigh us down. I'll weave J's into ropes, we'll tie ourselves together, and toss our anchor overboard. No matter how the ocean writhes and tosses my words will be heavier, my ropes stronger. The anchor will hold us fast, words weighted by promises, fighting angry seas around us. No matter what, we will always be close enough to read each others' poetry.
I want to write something that will last forever. I want to set words in stone to be discovered long after I'm gone, to paint hieroglyphics on the walls of my house to be interpreted by future civilizations. "This is where I ate cereal." "This is where I showered." (Did I make you laugh? You know how I love your laugh.)
I want to write razor-sharp, white-hot points of infinite logic, and I want to write children's books. I want to write something that means anything but God, all I want is to write anything that means something.
I want to write something to fill pages, to break silence.
I want to write something to fix me.

Suncatcher.
Looking straight past your actions, I find your intentions. I read them in dark pupils like Webster’s definitions. Despite glass eyes staring as you let me go, your iron curtain countenance was a stained glass window. I see your thoughts cross your mind like I might see tired old man crossing his living room, just before he draws the curtains in the evening. I watched through painted panes as you held yourself still, watched through unblinking windows as you fought your own will. And so I walked to my car, in the dark, alone, breathing clouds of grey vapor in the direction of home. And you stood across the street in the amber street lights that attract the moths whose wing beats my heart finds rhythm with as it flutters from rib to lung to throat, never holding still for fear of permanence. You thought you’d gotten your heart off your sleeves but it will always be a sun catcher, hanging from fishing line, casting cold colored shadows on the actions of a nervous mind, once thought invisible, the windows you hide behind let in just enough light for me see what I knew I’d find.
Honey, I can read your smoke signals.

I head outside for cold air and quiet, escaping too-loud laughter and the filth of drunkenness. As the porch door closes behind me the silence explodes, cacophonous, both ears simultaneously bursting with the high pitched squeal of the sudden nothingness. It surrounds me, vibrating my bones, frothing the marrow within, pressing my temples, heart quickening to steady the body against the assault of the stillness, the stagnation of the world around me. I don't know who I am. I am not -- not anyone. I am alone. I am what they want me to be. Seated cross-legged on cold concrete, the alcohol plays the stars across my eyes like a projector: they move this way and that across my field of vision, swaying, dancing. I feel myself floating, getting lost in my own mind again. I hate that feeling.
I put a cigarette out on my hand, pressing orange  embers into soft flesh. I grit my teeth as the world rushes back. The voices bring me down. The clink of glass bottles brings me down. The searing smell of my skin brings me down. I light it again, pull a few deep drags, then stub it out again, this time inside my forearm. My eyes squeezed shut, I feel myself fall back into reality, like a soft bed, like my skin loosens just enough to let me breathe again. I land on both feet, quietly, softly. I stand up, bush myself off, and walk back inside.
I'll burn the whole pack tonight.
I kissed him on the cheek, secretly hoping he'd wake from his stupor and keep my company, but he was too far gone, lost hours ago to two or three too many shots taken in bad faith, but with good intentions. I left him on his couch. He'd be safe there. He needed his sleep.
Why couldn't I get as drunk as them, drunk enough to numb away the emotions, the longing? I was disappointed, but I wasn't surprised. I curled up on the couch alone, pulling my sleeves down to cover the blisters, already rising. If I could just sleep, I could forget. Everyone slept but me. I went out for another cigarette.

You don't make me happy. You are my happiness. The difference between the two is simple, but important: You see, if you only made me happy, just the thought of you would be enough. A picture of you would suffice to keep me content. But it isn't. You are my happiness, embodied. So when you're away, my happiness is gone as well. Thoughts are not enough. I don't feel complete when I'm not with you. I need you. All of you. I can only hope that you need me, too.  
I always thought of love like puzzle pieces. I know that metaphor's been done a hundred times over, but this is a little more specific. You see, everyone is built in a certain way. We are all pieces. Some people are whole pieces unto themselves - an entire picture, clear and beautiful. They don't need another puzzle piece. They're complete as they are, which is fine. Most people, however, are parts of a whole. They need other pieces to help them make sense, to see the whole picture. Some people have a lot of spaces and gaps, and it takes a lot of other puzzle pieces working together to keep them happy and to make them feel whole. Most people are halves. They are half of a picture, searching for the other half of themselves. However, these are puzzle pieces, meaning not every piece will fit with another. The pieces have to be the right size, the right shape, the right color. Puzzle pieces are complex and dynamic. Each one is special. Even if a piece is shaped really weird or has odd edges and angles, it fits perfectly with another piece somewhere. They just have to find each other. No one is wrong, and no one is unlovable. They just have to find the piece that complements them.
Somewhere, there is another puzzle piece out there that will help you make sense of yourself and see the whole picture of who you are. I always liked to think of it like that. I like to think that someday, someone as unique as I am will help me create a beautiful picture, a whole picture of myself, that we can both understand and be happy with. And I will do the same for them. Just like a puzzle.

I used to never cry.
I was so proud of myself then.

I used to make everyone happy,
and I mean everyone.

But I placed too much faith in my fair-weather fans,
because it has begun to rain
slowly
drop
drop
drop
and people are leaving
one
less
friend.

If it helps at all, I hate who I've become, too.
I am every kind of ****** up a person can be.

I've been high at least once a day for the past who knows how long.
I have stopped working out.
I stopped singing,
I stopped making art.
I stopped writing.
I stopped taking those stupid pills,
because some part of me thought it would help
like I'd remember what it felt like
to feel alive
once all the chemicals flushed themselves out of my system.
(Nope.)

These days, I simply have to choose between failing
and suffering through it
or failing
and being totally fine with it.
Whatever.


I have no idea who the **** I am anymore.
Neither do my friends, or my family.
I am here in form, but not in spirit.
So, quickly, while I've no memories to leave behind
shall I quietly take my leave?

It was always just there, undoubted, unmoving.
It was the ground beneath my feet, it was the air in my lungs.
I had no reason to worry that I should be proving
That I was worth waiting around for with the songs that I sung.
Then one day I looked down and the ground moved below me,
I walked right off the edge of the earth into the thin air below.  
I had always assumed you and I would be trophies
Hanging around each other’s necks, we were the best thing we had to show.
Then the cold crept in and the trees died in fire,
Each branch was a vibrant torch, flames fighting cold autumn wind.
I still think the cold that Eighteenth Winter inspired
My heart to freeze solid when the truth wouldn’t bend.
See I’ve got shallow friendships tied around both wrists like anchors
They’re all that keeps me from drifting out to even lonelier seas.
One day I’ll work up the courage to thank her
For saving you from my complacency.
Paper butterflies are not enough to save me
For the words forming mobs at the back of my tongue.
I’ve got myself muzzled, forcing myself to behave, see,
Who knows where a thought can go once it’s begun.

I want to break it open.
I would show you what's inside -
It would repulse you,
it would scar you.
I am sorry
for tricking you.
It's much worse than it looks.
I make it seem as easy as it should be,
but it won't be.
It isn't.

Maybe I've been lying to myself.
Maybe I harbor no pearl of redemption beneath this ugly shell.
The rot is bone-deep,
soul-deep, carved out and heaped in a stinking pile on the kitchen table,
like when my father taught me how to clean fish, slice long and clean up the soft white belly, sever the gills and pull, pull, pull, until you've a handful of guts and blood and organs. Toss the innards aside, into the creek. They are useless.

A thick flood of thought clogs
lemon teeth and pools, crude
and salty behind lost red eyes.
Gouge them hollow! Darken the moon.
Brittle moans like a swollen beehive
loom tall, fifty miles behind the lost craters.

Hugs from pigs in blue,
they dance and loll around the flames,
a funky dark against their luminous fire.
Proud and bogus (and probably ******),
bitter about foul books they never read,
statues made of fear in the groins of men.

Ruined: hurled into a crag,
torn and singing, trapped in loops -
No elbow room in black hole falls.
Snoring next to wives wrapped in shawls,
hugging her leather Buick seat,
praying to wake up gaunt and lithe.

They rise, mornings, clutching onto dreams
in which they fly through the cold gloom.
They scratch desperate screeds onto napkins,
bite squirming, disobedient tongues,
souls raw, chafing in their dank enclosures.
Animals! Bred to elect ourselves for slaughter.

I dove headlong into the sea two weeks ago.
Grey clouds
grey skies
reflected gray waters.
Rain fell, ambivalent,
hiding the sun, obscuring the soul
if soul there was. I don’t know what the rain believes,
but I knew it meant well.

I kicked off my shoes; shed my sweater, draping it across a rock
beaten smooth by crashing saltwater assaults,
misery endured silently for millennia
solid, solitary, solemn.

I walked, barefoot, across the stones.
I listened to the ringing of the silence
to the roar of the ocean.
Rain-soaked and reverent,
I willed myself to the edge of the rocks,
where I watched the waves seething below,
calling, inviting
nagging, inciting
persisting, requesting
insisting, infesting.

Turning my face to the absent sun,
I closed my eyes
felt the sting of the icy wind
felt the hairs on my arms begin to stand,
the frigid air aching in my lungs.
My breath caught, shivers interrupting a sigh of submission,
and I told myself
Peace.
You are not afraid. Not anymore.
And I smiled. And I felt warm.
And I was happy.
I counted one, two, three,
and I fell.

You see beauty every day,
but tell me,
do you ever feel it?

I harbor a gentle whiskered beast
made of quiet sighs, all knees and elbows
jabbing my ribs while I sleep,
a weight shifting among the sheets
in the long shadows of earliness.

Suddenly, unprovoked, he is startled
as if threatened by an electric presence.
He listens intently to the silence and bristles
as though a ghost in the corner has spoken
in a tongue meant for beings higher than myself.

When the spirits have gone he sighs again,
his paws turn circles and he lays himself down
curled neatly behind my knees,
quietly pondering primal truths
that I was never meant to understand.

Outside he chases skittering leaves
and imagines he is wild
in the great wooded taiga,
flushing fowl from the brush,
scattering them like gasps of color,
with fluttering hearts beating warm in their *******
among pines capped white with snow.

Things have never been easy,
and I have never been one to talk about that.
But I can flip the switch,
a few sparks and a puff of smoke,
and shut down everything
from the inside out.
I can refuse to feel.
And it’s easier that way.

Things have never been painless,
and I have always liked it that way.
(Or so I thought.)
I have four scars to show,
all that’s left from four years
of cutting
and burning
forcing adrenaline to replace
whatever shutdown couldn’t delete.
And it’s less painful that way.

But I am painfully sorry.

Please believe me when I say that I never meant to hurt anyone.
You, especially.
You were the only thing I would miss.
I can’t believe I almost gave you up.
I am selfish. I am cynical.
I am hateful. I am unpleasant.
I am busted, broken, bleeding,
bold and brazen and burned and belligerent
medicated and molded and morphed
and Christ, does anyone know ******* how hard it is
to keep going
to pick up where you left off
when you told yourself
told everyone,
that you were quitting?
When you'd finally dug a hole deep enough to bury yourself in
and they tell you you have to dust yourself off
and climb out
and keep marching?
Does anyone see how ******* difficult it is to smile at them
when you had already accepted the fact
that you’d never see them again?
I chose it for myself
for a ******* reason. And now I’m back
and they think something’s changed?
The solution to my problems
is not as simple as 100 milligrams
of a white pill called happiness.
Maybe this is a chemical imbalance,
maybe my mind is dysfunctional,
or maybe it was meant to be.
But nobody let me choose.

I am sorry. I’m being selfish again.

If you still want me,
after everything I’ve done
to my parents
to my friends
to myself
to you
Whatever is left of me
is yours.
If you still want me.

Warm lungs hide soft words, say it fast, faster.
Poetic dark room, grow teeth and watch closely because
believe me, life was, at one time, meant to be worth living.
Broken means finally perfect, wings heavy, sinking,
Iron-sure anchor felt like smoke,
looking from tree to tree as the leaves flutter down like pages,
mirrored birds watching, walking the covered ground, actions set in silence,
golden and grey, tell me you understand because someone has to.

Blame the glass oaks that swore not to bend,
blame loud smiles and blame body and tongue,
eyes held leftward, downward.
Different years feel shorter, the farther they get behind us
the harder they are to see.
Feet fell flat on rough asphalt, try to work no matter how you feel,
new talk brings new futures,
forced laughter leaves curves smooth
between silences.
I’m sorry.

Hard head made of clay from the ground he learned to walk on,
Dad told him when he was young, "Son,
there is a whole world past these city walls, but you will never see it."
"The wind is made of hardship, dad.
Everyone knows that."
He remembers the grit of his father's palms, rough on the back of his neck.
Righteousness is not always painless but it gets the job done.
He figured if he wore his roots simple and strong,
slung them over his shoulder, they’d hold him to the ground.
And he would bite through his own tongue,
for what else do his roots do but hold him to the ground
when all he really wants is to float away?
He wonders, singing out of open windows,
is any of it worth fixing?

Bring the winter, the shallow dove
writing bitter songs beneath the edges of her sleeves.
She caught happiness in her butterfly net when she was a kid,
but she packed that away long ago.

Raising a match to his cigarette, fighting tremors in his jaw,
he sees Satan across the street but he doesn’t wave.
Hell is a short walk from here in every direction,
any direction,
and despite what she’s read she decides hanging
is the best way to get there.
After ten Hail Mary’s and five Our Fathers,
she ties her best sash around her delicate throat
and makes the short jump
to forever and ever, amen.

Pressing intentions found in old books, fighting flames,
unpleasant conversations,
"Christ man, can’t we talk about something else?"
But she reminded him of satisfaction, of branches perfectly bent,
frozen, refracted and solid, fitting.
Shivers run rivers of liquid metal down his spine, amorphous.

The eighteenth time unfounded family found him
he blew the fire out in one quick breath
closed sleepless eyes tight
and wished with all his strength for death.  

Whispers grow, stone walls grey concrete,
rocks, trenches, I’ll be home tonight, he lies.
Paint burning skin with red lips, heavy breathing,
they could have danced forever.
They could still dance forever.

Sharp, empty sky is a dread blue eye
looking at everything but you.
You feel like the only thing that exists, but really,
your'e the only thing here that doesn't.
The wind would rather talk to itself
than speak your breathless name.

You set out to build a fence
to prove to the dead sky that you exist
and oh, the building felt so good
that only once you'd finished the work
did you realize where you stood.

It is quiet on your side, a soundless expanse;
Are you proud, you languageless savage?
Does your silence feel like vindication?
Or does your heart start to tremble,
do your lungs start to burn,
when you look across the fenced and quartered plains
and see you've strung barbed wire across the only passage home?
There it broods familiar on the horizon, and must you stand removed
until it collapses, or will you ****** your pride to save it?
What's worse, being fenced in, or fenced out?

Terrified of both, terrified of it all, of the certainty and the uncertain,
of the loneliness and the companionship,
you set fire to the prairie, flee to the high mountains,
and hope that the sky sees you there.

I'm supposed to spend my whole life waiting
for love's embrace to come and save me.
Who can tell me what love looks like,
so I will know him when he comes?
Because if love is perfect, if love is the only thing that can save me,
love has to be able
to withstand me.
And so far nothing can.
I imagine love to be made of iron.
I imagine love is tall, a stack of metal and bolts,
made all of hinges and corners and welding seams.
I imagine one day I will find love,
hidden somewhere,
and I will climb inside its heavy doors.
I will clank them shut behind me, letting the latch close.
Love will hide me, protect me.
I will be alone in love, but I will be safe.
That must be love, then.
To be alone but not to feel. This is how I imagine love.
I hope I find it soon.

There are trap doors everywhere,
under the rugs
covered by the mossy earth,
there was one in your bathroom, did you know?
One day I used your expensive shampoo,
the one that smells like lavender, you fop,
rinsed off, stepped out, and
fell,
thought, oh, this again.

There is a trap door at the coffee shop
in the alleyway between the buildings
where there are murals and bad graffiti,
where the university students come
to smoke and talk about Marxism,
but they still haven't noticed it. It's covered
in dead leaves and beer bottles and cigarette butts and
yesterday you stood right on top of it,
I saw you, and you talked about the nuclear potential of Boron
and you'd sweated through your checkered shirt
but the door let you stand, the door
didn't want you yesterday, because...

Because last week I let it take me instead.
Recognized it right off; I've fallen through so many
they call to me now, and I stubbed out my cigarette
stood on the door and I
jumped up and down, rattled its hinges until
it yawned wide open and I felt the cold,
and the winter was howling for blood down below and I
set my hands free to grasp frantically at time,
let my hair whip my face, falling body resigned to
the dark dankness of another misstep
I took willingly.

If the world caught fire tomorrow leaving we two the only survivors,
I think that things could be alright, because I think that you and I could 
Sift through the ashes, make morbid jokes and talk about the rain 
and the things that we missed and the things we did not and thing things we wished hadn't changed. 
And if, when the flames subsided our living hell were to freeze over,
you and I could keep each other warm, sleeping close, each other's cover. 

Because you are all I need in the world.  It is that simple.

Darling, if only you would pour your heavy heart into my hands 
I'd let the coals slip through my fingers until gold was all we had. 
If you and I were the last on earth, well, that would be alright,
Because no one else has ever loved me, ever proved that they would fight
For me the way that you did the night I dove into the sea
and you braved the waves and rising tides and swam out after me. 
I don't know what I was looking for, out there in the ocean.
Maybe it was a trick of the moon, a spell cast from perfection.
I was convinced that once I'd hit the bottom, I'd never again look the direction
of the surface.
But. You reminded me to come up for air.

I have everything I need in you. My terra firma, my everything. And I promise, on my love for you, I won't go back out to sea.

It feels like I am breaking again.
(That is a lie.)
It's just that I'd forgotten that I was broken, but I'm rousing from the sleep now, and the details are coming back to me. I am falling back out of the dreamspace.
It feels like it is raining everywhere I go. It feels like there are rocks in my shoes and  nothing I do will get them out. It feels like I have shattered the gift I meant to give you, and no matter how hard I try, the cracks in the glass still show. It is ruined, do you hear me? It is worthless, and with every attempt I make to fix it I destroy another aspect of its purity. It is a paradox like everything else. I wanted it to be perfect, god ******, I knew what I was capable of and I knew what you deserved, but now hindsight's got me thinking that maybe it was broken all along, maybe I was broken all along, maybe I was wrong, all wrong.
I'm dry heaving again.
I'm trying to find a mirror out there that will return a reflection I recognize, but I keep creating fictitious images. There is no real, is there? You are not real. I was never real.
I keep wondering what's going on in all the caves I didn't get lost in. I keep wondering what it was that pushed me into this one. I have memories of falling, nothing else. I landed here. I was an explorer before that, I think, or at least I think I thought I was, wait, who am I again? Who are. . .
we?
When I was fifteen someone told me it was okay, that I just didn't know what I wanted. And I guess I believed them, because I've accepted it as a part of me, the not-knowing. I know less and less each day.
I think I'm looking for a reader, maybe, one who's forgiving and bored, one who's willing to overlook the dullness of the style and forget the (lack of) artistic merit and read this **** like letters to a lover.
They are all letters to lovers, future and past and present,
begging pardon, apologizing. That all it's ever been. I'm just trying to make myself understood, and wouldn't you know it, all I've achieved is obfuscation. Once it is broken, it cannot be fixed. I should have known that I've always known. The cracks will always show. The rain will never stop. There is no such thing as perfect.
I am sorry.

Corralled at the ceiling,
a garden of flowers
tied with delicate, colorful stems.
Helium petals bob softly above and
I pluck a blue stem of my own.

At home, out of sight
my small clumsy fingers
knot the blue string proudly around my neck,
like a trophy. I giggle with delight -
the orb floats just above me,
a faithful bird, a pet.

Then, down the hall come the quickness and shuffles
of house-shoed feet feeling possible threats.
Mother’s face blossoms red, breaks open
exposing her white bear teeth.
Her green eyes **** and twitch.

A black ballpoint pen meets my flower, and slowly
it wilts, crinkles, shrinks
beneath her feminine fists.
The severed blue stem bleeds nothing but silence
and momma's eyes bleed tears
of what?

My cat's name is Zachary Binx, and I know for a fact he could kick my *** in a fight. His claws are daggers. They are needle sharp and feather light and designed to ensnare and then shred anything his long, quick arms can ******. He is fast; he is a predator.
But he has no idea, because his environment suggests otherwise. He's artificially coerced by domestication to assume that his survival is dependent on me. He is designed to survive on his own, but his cage suggests otherwise.
So he contents himself to the role of the housecat, sitting on the windowsill, feeling dull pangs of inexplicable deja vu as he watches the sparrows bathe in the dirt outside.

Do Thee Wed

“As the wedding day approached - June 14, 1938, Gertrude continued to confess her reluctance. Delmore’s apprehension expressed itself in fits of nausea and vomiting, and his mother announced that she wished she was dead.”

“When is the when is the --
(I’m going to be sick.)
“Now what is the how how how soon?”
(I’m going to be sick.)

Gertrude’s in her mumu, blonde hair in a mat,
setting flame to glossy pages of her bridal magazine.
Ashes fall to the carpet like distress flares, burning
mascara clumps on the pink **** rug.
She mumbles how soon,
how soon, how soon?

And my mom, she’s climbed up on roof
and begun to pace from end to end,
moaning like a *****, fanning herself with her hands.
Dad’s in the yard making a spectacle and -
Oh, I’m feeling sick again.

The beams bend like matchsticks
under mom’s panicked corpulence
as she nears the edge of the roof.
At the sight of her my father
slaps his hand over his heart
and sings, “Here comes the bride,
big, fat, and wide..”

I leave Gertrude babbling and rocking on the couch
(“I just don’t know now, darling, how how how soon?”)
and I slink in silence out the door.
Beyond my mother and father,
down the sidewalk out of sight,
I finally ***** on my shoes.

Keeping Time

Since you left the faucet’s started dripping.
I asked it to stop; It would not.

The lithe silver neck wilts as it cries,
Watching me make the coffee
Nodding out tears that go plunk all morning,
Like it understands why two cups is too many
And the extra stagnates all day in the carafe
Staining the glass the sick color of burnt chocolate.

I catch myself swaying along with the ticking
In idle evenings spent staring at a blank TV screen.
It wastes water, keeps time, my immutable metronome
while I burn down slowly like someone left in a hurry
and forgot to shut off the oven.

In fitful dreams the dripping is a knock at the door
gone unanswered, for I am distracted in the kitchen
trembling with fury, strangling to death
that mercurial throat that drummed a lonely racket
in the stainless steel basin, counting out mocking measures
of this new silence.

I wish I could skip across time like a stone over water, skimming across the surface until I settled gracefully into the future, into a distant tomorrow where I’ve forgotten what it felt like to lose you.

I wish I could close my eyes and dream until this sadness has run its course through my body, like a disease, like a breaking fever.  I wish I could wake up one morning drenched in the sweat of a fading sickness, knowing the worst was over and that I would soon feel okay again. Every time I lay my head down, I hope to wake up feeling okay again.

I wish I could sink below the surface of time and swim through yesterday like a clear, still pool. I would float into the past, to the place where you told me “I could never be with her. I want you.” I would tread water there, lazily, believing every word, drinking in the feeling of being yours, of being your only. I would not come to the surface until my chest caved in and my body grew weak, until the line between living and dead blurred like ink clouding a full glass. Maybe not even then – maybe there, in the slow stillness of the past, I could close my eyes and allow myself to sink, to lie quietly in the happiest place I've ever been, in the place where you told me “You are the only one I love” and I believed you. I could have died then.

I will stay afloat until calmer currents come. I can see stillness somewhere on the horizon, brewing and boiling like the catharsis of cracking thunder just beyond tomorrow, just there, out at sea. Please let it come soon.

I have been
literally
thousands of miles.
I have made the west coast
from San Francisco to San Diego
my *****
for a month and a half.

I have hitch hiked with a gentleman
who shot a cop in the face
at 15.

and every time I looked
at that ******* water,
that tainted, sickening blue-green
the most gorgeous part of the planet
the only thing that makes California
******* California
every time
I saw your eyes.

We are all chewing on the same hunk of fat
so when I noticed that I have my father's ears
and my little brother does too,
I sighed out, *******,
I said, where am I?

But I think you were lost too,
because your father was a giant like mine, but
he will never meet your sons.
He will never know you,
and I have known him too late.

How does it feel to watch him fade away?
I shiver for you, the fourth iteration,
a pillar in the pantheon.
They should have told you
they were mortal.

Be a good storyteller, darling,
so that he may live for them.
Keep with you his memory,
and speak of him often. You will
teach them what he taught you,
I know this,
you know this,
he will die
knowing this.

It is the role of the earthworm
to speed the decay. Do not dwell
on what giants leave behind.

Fight twice,
it's even harder the second time.
And you win nothing
either time.
It just hurts.
Both times.
Fight twice,
just so you can finally know
what it feels like to lose
everything.

Parched, thirsting for steel -
to be cleft wholly in twain
from scalp to guts,
dissolving the tension,
silencing the pull between the sides.

Fork the tongue that it may speak
at once both dialects of the soul,
that it may sing of lust and hunger
and yet pray to the divine;

Let one pupil be misplaced,
sunk like a star in inky night
to observe the cosmos and to feed
the side of the mind that wanders,
the half that deals in watery maybe,
so that the other lot of divvied brain
may savor the grit of the earth
with the remaining eye that beholds, here,
the freckles and the needles.

I am so much! Take but half.
Two of everything is one too many.
Name me once and for all an animal
or disentangle thought from flesh
and let the vapors in my lungs
mix their mists among the clouds.

he puts concentrated, constant effort into every day.
he has no choice, and you can see it in his face.
it looks rough. it looks like work and worry.
it looks like inexplicable failure.
it looks like mine.
I look away.

Sometimes I open my eyes to find my room darker than I remember,
and sometimes I dream that I have murdered,
I dream that I am careless.
Sometimes I open my eyes to find my room emptier than I remember.

Weird girl, weird girl. She is sorry she opened her eyes.

I have seen blood drying in the sun
somewhere on the streets of Oakland, California.
I have slept underneath the stars in Berkeley
Right alongside Origami Tony.
(He shared his blankets, but was not kind about it.)
I saw from above and beyond,
to either side and in all directions
with three eyes open, wide
I have watched the fabric of the universe dance across the clouds.
They bent, folding in sharp creases,
squares and triangles,
Origami Tony, were you playing God all along?
25 cents to see your future, 50 cents to watch a star unfold.
He slept in the woods,
where he buried his things.
Safer, there, than on the streets.

The problem with people is that we are trapped.
We are boundless in our imagination and curiosity, and yet we may only conduct ourselves within the tiny window of our own perception of the world. We wonder about what is behind, beneath, beyond what we can see. We need to know why, why, why, what accident or plan or catastrophe forged the human consciousness? What carpenter, what architect, what tools built these bodymindsoul creatures that stir and writhe in their own confusion? We are like caterpillars who have inched their way to the end of the stem, stretching ourselves out into terrifying oblivion in hopes of finding something new to hold on to. We push ever so slowly at the boundaries of life, expanding it, nudging at the walls of the absolute. We have grown too big to fit inside the thin shell of reality which perception traps us in.
Sometimes the imagination takes over, forces itself to crack through the frail, eggshell layer of reality and look oblivion in the eyes, to know once and for all whether dead and alive are any different at all, and what came before, and what will come after. Reality pales in comparison to the infinity of the human consciousness. In the mind, there is no before or after- only whether or not.

Once you shatter reality, you will see the universe unfold before you like a blanket. Its secrets will form lines and shapes, rivers and mountains across a map, showing what is, what has always been, and what will always be. You will know infinity. But no one will ever believe you.

Hush, you fools! We sleep today,
dumb as locks and deaf as clay.
Does friction make you grit your teeth
or have you burned the fuse away?

I knocked upon your ribs one time -
how pure the echoes rang inside!
The brain has left to greet a guest
but will the mindless body thrive?

Do you know you moan at night?
Ghosts wear sheets over their eyes
against their skin, between their thighs -
In fits of white, be sanctified!

It's been said that happiness is just a chemical equation,
so if Socrates says it's it golden, are you calling his assertions fallacious?
Our youth has let adulthood clip our wings and force us into burning light
from the sheltered, softened world where our innocence used to hide.
Age brings darkness. It sneaks in slowly, stealing bliss, sinister serpent,
we let him replace our carelessness with solemn seriousness and self-observance.
Sunshine became an energy source, a burning star, and nothing more.
The tides, the mountains, the freckles on your chest hold no mysteries anymore,
because we know what they are. We're smart - we finally know better.
We have broken beauty and enchantment into particles of matter.

We're much too old and smart now to fall for nature's silly tricks.
For each secret hidden deep in the world, we build a tool to **** it with.

We've explained away the smiles and laughter
and we've beaten meaning out of every chapter
of every book that ever made us wonder.
We murdered innocence, a sordid blunder.
Because we have to know. We crave a meaning, a purpose, something solid,
and so for centuries we've dug our way down, and soon we'll reach the bottom.
I mean, do you really want to hear that everything is nothing?
What will you gain when you demand that nature stops her bluffing
and see the clearest truth about existence as we know it?
When you've solved the final mystery, what will you have to show for it?
We, the clumsy people, are emptying the world of all its luster.
We have polished and picked at our precious, gleaming life until it rusted.
We, in our greed and hunger,
have spoiled the secrets of the wonder
we were trusted with, whether by divinity or blind ******* luck.
We behold beauty, bursting forth with bold abandon, but only question it's chemical makeup.

In some abandoned shard of time
in Oregon, on a day soaked by slow mists
I’m in line to get into a punk show
when I meet Charlotte Ann.
With a fluttery tap on my shoulder
she grins, “Look, we've worn the same shoes!”

From the way her eyes lit when she spoke
I thought she’d stolen those plump bits of blue,
plucked them straight from the branches of heaven
and laughed when the gods shook their fists at the earth.
I knew I was right when they focused on me,
she said, “Have we met somewhere before?

We leave lipstick prints on her last cigarette
and blow milky-grey smoke from our noses.
She’d just dropped out of high school
and was learning to fly a plane, told me
“The only way to see the world
is from every direction at once.”

Her body and soul were the shifting wind
brimming with a red-blooded need for right now.
She tapped her foot and tugged her skirt,
and when we talked about music
she clapped and smiled, sighing
“Oh, to have ever seen Elvis!”

She calls the guard a chicken ****
when he asks to search her bag,
and by the time I make it inside
she’s a plume of smoke, wafting among the crowd
trailing behind her notes of apricot
and cotton after a rain.

the **** am I
and where
the **** am I going?
Begone, get out, run until
your legs give out
Any direction, pick one,
all directions lead back home
if you're willing to run
forever.
I am, I am not.
All I know is that when I look in the mirror,
I see my mother more and more each day
and I wonder what it feels like
to never leave home, never leave home, never
find home, where am I, where?
I am gone! I am leaving! And perhaps I'll return,
if I run fast enough, if I never look up,
maybe the last face I see will
be yours.

Out of the frying pan
into the fire.
From one prying hand,
to another entire.
The whole of the universe, chanting together,
*burn it down,
burn it down.

Juniper trees cup the cemetery gate with
their verdant blue-speckled palms.
Grasshopper sentries chirp in the weeds
and the brush sends a whisper: disturbance.

A gravel path forks between rows of stone scripture
erected by heavy hands who beg me, remember
these dates and names, this last desperate breath
between a beating heart and a naked soul,
fumbling and frantic in the face of eternity.

***** plastic flowers shed their petals in the wind,
reassuring bones below that they have not been lost to time.
(Is it really for the dead that we leave the bouquet?
Why speak to the body when the soul has flown?)

I read the name of a man who died before I was born,
someone I could never know, and yet here I stood
pondering his legacy, studying its lines
like a cave-painted ancient code.

which came first,
the atom
or the adam?

Am I 6 thousand years
young?
Am I
a dinosaur?

9th grade philosophy.
Venn Diagrams
and the eggman.
There is no good,
nor bad,
there only is
what is.

Empty days with hours to think
and I still haven't decided yet,
because remembering burns from the inside out
but it's impossible to forget.

Body heat cannot un-thaw,
so I am stilled in frosted glass.
I am waiting for you to save me again,
to tell me, softly, "this will pass".

Sores behind my teeth from biting my tongue
because 56 and 3 and 4 never really added up.
You changed the math behind the whole equation
so I could keep my composure without remaining untainted.

I drew a picture of us, all teeth and anger
the hand that fed me, spurned.
You will be a chapter all your own
in the book of things I've learned.

Wading knee-deep through the past
feeling the muddy bottom with my toes,
the hills and holes and oh god what was that?

The water may be shallow,
but it is deep enough to drown myself in
and murky enough to hide what lies at the bottom.

I could rest, languid
listening to the babbling of the past
pouring over itself
playing you and I
on repeat
indefinitely.

I used to keep track of the stories, used to carry them around with me, because forgetting was scary, it was terrifying to imagine having lived and having forgotten,
"we only have what we remember", yeah, and all that
but (the shift)
at some point I wanted to forget,
and I forgot
how to remember,
and I set the stories down on a bench somewhere
like a canvas bag full of old books, they were so heavy,
and I willed myself to forget them.
I left them.
We only have what we remember,
and I want to hold nothing.
I want to open my eyes, one time,
one day, and find myself naked
and empty handed.
I want to remember again, and the first thing I'll go looking for
is the feeling of waking, weightless,
without the comedown crash of consciousness,
that 'oh yeah', that 'oh, that'.
I am afraid the canvas will never be clean again.
I am afraid that the damage has been done.
I can't remember where I left my books.
I may never find them.

I spent years looking for ways
to shut the voice up
and now that it's worked
I'm more alone,
more empty
than I've ever been.
I thought I would know myself
when I quieted myself
and now the silence  inside
is driving me insane.


Will she ever come back?

Idle, idle, idle
All time is free time.
Empty, empty, empty
I spilled my life by accident.
Vacant, vacant, vacant
My stare is full of wasps.
Zero, zero, zero
Heartbeat echoes, open chambers
Closed.

The energy is back, do I
The energy is back, do I
follow, follow, fight? Do I
frightened, frantic, flee?

There are flurries in my chest again,
there's a storm between my ribs,
do I raise my flag and charge,
or am I just a snow drift?

It's hot and cold like everything
its silver, gold like wedding rings
its an ache like endlessness
that follows me sleep, I am

dying out like autumn leaves and
springing forth like summer trees and
God refused to answer me so
I will go to meet him.

Leave my cabin, burn it down
build a new one out of town,
open up my veins and let the
wind come rushing in, and then

I built a fire in the dark and
dove into the middle, knowing
smoke would choke me, flames would burn
but I'd be glad for going.

The consciousness and the being are two separate entities. When the consciousness falls in love with its being, then the two will both find true satisfaction, contentment, and happiness. That is the only way to true peace.

The person in the mirror is a whole new person. They embody who you are in reality. All the failures, the sadness - they are only your body wrestling with the will of is consciousness. If your consciousness can look into the mirror and understand that the image is its one true equal, the only person who can truly understand every part of their being and make them happy, then can the entity find true satisfaction and contentment.
TL;DR - You are your own best friend.

Will I always wish I were dead?
When I am dead, what will I wish then? Will I still dream?
Will I remain unsatisfied, forever on the cusp of whatever,
that grand "else" I seek?
There are no answers. There is
nothing left to seek.
I shove a pen down my throat and ***** the trash,
rearrange it like alphabet soup and read it
like the entrails of the beast that I slaughtered
when I first opened my eyes. It reads,
"Get up. Grow up. Give up."

Let the blade
hover
above my throat
lover
Tell me again
dear
you wish you could stay
here
Tell me about the foreign
hands
setting fire to the promised
land
The last thing I will ever
feel
your punishment, your cold
steel
I can feel you there
close
Drop the blade, so that
snow
will cover the grave of the thing I
killed
leave a clean start for the spring you'll
build