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.

This bed, though twin-sized,
is still too big and too cold
without you in it.

Were they such fragile hands as these, those that built all this?
How did they find their way to sleep on nights so cold as this?
Before the stars gave their permission
and the mountains hadn't noticed
what did man think when he woke to find
the world still stood?

From here it looks a lot like a trap, to me,
there aren't any answers to this riddle.
I don't want to be alive anymore,
I've known that since I was thirteen.
I think everyone has. This is no news to you, though.
But that is no excuse for this,
the filth I've let accumulate,
stood by smoking a cigarette watching the drains clog
with clumps of fine blonde hair and purple-green leaves
and embracing that same old smell of stagnation and rot.

"I was there," he told me, "when things changed up for good,"
and he chattered out clipped images, too cold to sleep,
"There were fires in the sky, it was brilliant like a dream,
I was standing in the street and what stood out most to me,
there was someone in the window of the house across the street
and they tore their eyes away from the coming of the dark
long enough to look me in the eyes
and draw their curtain."

It's been all of twenty years, and that's enough.
I asked to be excused at eighteen,
but someone with a louder voice than me
must have shaken his head at my request.
I remember waking up.
The world still stood, and I wept.

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.

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.

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.

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."

This time I will fight with friction;
WinterFear is no affliction.
Ready or not, you frigid *******,
here I ******* come.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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?

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.

I wish I'd stop beginning. 
Everything I begin ends, and I can't stand the endings. So I should stop the beginnings.
But I can't stop beginning, because that would mean the end of beginnings. And I hate endings. 
If only I could begin something I knew wouldn't end. 
Sadly, it isn't up to me. It simply depends on the proximity of your orbit to mine. I am not magnetic enough to keep you still; your orbit will draw you near to me just long enough for us to begin, then you will continue on your path, leaving me in your wake with only an ending to hold.
And I hate endings.

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.

There is nothing inside
and yet
the body convulses,
gagging out useless sounds
empty air,
and it is poetry,
it is art
if you give it a title.

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.

I hope and I wish with all my heart
that I can make you as happy as you make me,
because I swear to god you’re everything I’ve ever wanted
and ten times what I’ll ever be.

I have, for whatever reason, been given a chance with you.
and I am so
*******
terrified,
because now that I have you
the only thing left to do
is to lose you.  
(The only thing that hurts more than unrequited love
is having loved and lost.)

But believe me when I say that I’m going to work.
I’m going to try
so ******* hard
to be half the person you deserve,
to be everything you want me to be.

I just hope you know
that you’re not obligated to stay
just because of everything that’s happened.
I hope you’re still here
because you want to be
and not because you feel like
you have to be.

I love you.

But if you need to go, well.
I already know what it feels like to die.
Could a broken heart be worse?

Maybe I’m not making myself perfectly clear.
Love, is it is my actions or my words
causing your unfounded fears?

Why would the wise and snowy owl
abandon the tree in which it lives
and rush into the howl
and the whipping of the wind?

Why would the traveler, lonely soul,
forsake the comfort of his bed
to seek the cold and distant queries
of the shrouded road ahead?

Would a musician ever still his hands
and hush his singing heart?
Why would he ever shun his only brand
of expression, his own art?

And a poet, just like you and I,
could never still her  pen
for the images in her mind’s eye
seek restitution, fitting ends.

I need you. I am yours.
I am in love with all you are.
Please let me show you, each day more
in love than the day that came before.

Put away your doubt for once.
Suspend your disbelief.
I promise never to leave you,
for what a fool, then, would I be?

Lay it on thick, thicker
Go ahead and
spread yourself out.
Cut off your limbs and arrange them
to spell "HELP" across the sandy shore.
Burn all your flares at once
and scream with all the blood you have left,
"PLEASE, GOD, PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME HERE ALONE"

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There used to be enough of me
to drown all this pollution.
Now the ratio of me to filth
is too weak for dilution.

A single drop in each brown eye
forms stagnant pools, dark shallow seas.
Slick greasiness between my toes
is rising slowly toward my knees.

Splinters, wrappers, copper wire,
styrofoam and paper cups,
sneakers, speakers, shards of glass
from muddy depths come bubbling up.

I’m brimming full of chemicals -
a stinging, burning pool of filth,
and near the surface do now float
the carcasses of things I killed.

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?

We are all trapped in this same cycle.
It is a tacit misunderstanding
of what it means to be a part
of the same cycle.
Out is in
back is forward
me the details of the meeting I missed
the bus last week when it was raining and the trees
are finally changing colors again, it was a late fall
into this same cycle with us
is just a word is just a
space to fill a lack.
I am just a space to fill a lack.
I am a space full of
lack.
I lack the space it would take
to feel full of anything but
this same cycle.

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.

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 have given up on
getting up because
giving up hurts less,
yes?
New lines, old news
as ugly as anything else I saw coming
because I knew like I knew
but seeing it in the mirror is,
well,
that's new news.
I reject it as part of F2,
a mental plane I must have wandered to infinity
back before they scared me into pinning myself to cork,
abandoned on a broken pane of the looking glass
babbling and reeling among mirages of
empty fields and cotton gins.
I used to collect shards of broken bottles,
mined them up from the red dirt at the steps of
the old abandoned church. I called them
my diamonds, and I had a whole jar full,
and I was ******* somebody, then,
with my jar of diamonds
and my white hair
and even then I think I knew
like I knew
there is no new.
I have memories of a dead woman seated upright
in a rocking chair in that church,
bathed in bare sunlight from holes in the shingles,
the day my grandmother and I dared sneak past
peeling paint and rusted hinges,
the day we found the typewriter.
The dead woman was covered in dust,
navy-blue rags hanging from bones,
crisp white hair draped across
used-to-be shoulders.
I knew she had been there all along;
I know she is there still. She told them all,
'They will come,' like she knew that she knew,
and we knew that she knew, so we did.

This time, I have my mind made up.
This time, I am content with my future.
I am done writing, I have written enough
to fill an ocean with pages of poems.
Today is not about writing.
Today, finally, is about action.

And I thought I was the heroine!
I thought I knew the way out!
Thought I was burrowing skyward!
Here I thought I was the scout!

I thought I swam to the surface!
I thought I'd conquered their fear!
I thought for sure, I was certain,
but I lost twenty one years.

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.

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.

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.

Remember what it was like
Not to try to **** yourself
With a cigarette
Every time that paper touched your
Lungs?
Remember what it was like
To just
Enjoy it?

This won't be pretty, she said.
Love poetry, ha-HA, shut up.

I used to have so much to say,
I used to think people were listening,
but I haven't heard a word myself in years.
Have you?
Suddenly I find a vast cavern to scream into,
it returns not even the faintest echo,
and I don't have it in me to feel surprised anymore.

Weak and sick and useless,
bloated and stupid,
flies in the compost,
drunk with the brevity of life.
Tomorrow could be the day,
Tomorrow might just be the day,
I pray with all my might that tonight is my night.

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.

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.

You get tired.
Off you go,
Locked down, or whatever --
I'm not doing it anymore.
Old boy
Looking at everybody,
He hit the electric start.
Had a hell of a time, some of the time
Good enough.
I figured as much.
The trip itself
Around the outside edges,
Not that bad.
Every night
Beginning to rag on me.
I'm glad,
Helpful to most people.
He's home.