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.

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 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 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?

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

I would now like to relate to you
the dilemma with which I am faced:
Not to be morbid or anything, but.
Despite my best efforts
I am still alive
and must go on living
the same life I thought I had abandoned for good.

So, what in the name of the holy ******* ghost
am I supposed to do  now?
Because, I hate to be a ******,
everyone,
I hate to **** the vibes
don't wanna harsh the mellow or anything, here,
wouldn't want to put you out or anything,
but nothing has changed.
I mean, it's a little unsettling to just
jump right back into the shark tank
with the stitches from the last attack
still fresh from the needle.


Anyway. That's all I needed to say.
I know this isn't a blog, but. I really like to put the words down.
Thank you for your time.

The child inside me awakens first.
She's too excited to sleep any longer.
She sees the light crack through the blinds
and a glimmer of excitement begins to flicker inside her.
A new day already?

But the adult in me soon follows, swinging heavy feet over the edge of the bed,
rubbing bleary eyes.
The child drags her along, pointing to the morning sun,
telling her,
Look, look! Another day, another day!
She looks, humors the kid.
Seeing the sun again makes her nauseous.
The adult in me yawns, makes the coffee,
stares in the mirror for a bit too long. Considers getting back into bed.

The child in me wonders every night, what good will tomorrow bring?
The adult in me does not wonder. Stopped wondering long ago.
She knows exactly what tomorrow will bring.

The child wishes all the time that she could be awake.
The adult begs all the time for the world to let her sleep.
They are both crying this morning.
We are both crying this morning,
because today is exactly what half of me
expected it to be.

I don't know what I'm doing,
but it feels a lot like asphyxiation.
In the middle of the nighttime
amber-lit and silent street,
barefoot on wet asphalt,
the lightning strikes and for a moment I see
the trees illuminated and remember
how grand and endless the world used to seem,
how the sky was still, to me, mystery.

The rain picks up to remind me
that it sees me there, and does not care.
I am small against the sky, and
the careless lightning has offended me and '
the trees seem so cold,
so swollen and heavy with rainwater,  
that my hands cover my ears
and I run for cover but without sound I am
unbalanced as a cat without whiskers and I
fall into a puddle
and drown.

Through the branches of the trees
comes blackness.
There is nothing on the other side.
Relax and it waters down.
Focus and it glints like a blade.

Drifting formless from room to room
I am the ghost in my house.
The leaves have somehow found their way inside,
they will soon let in the cold behind them.

Relax, focus.
Blackness holds its form.

how the **** do I
say it say it say it please,
SIR
It has been said.
Scream all you want.
I was never for a moment afraid
that words would fail me.
It never occurred to me  that one day
there would be nothing to say.
I have something to say.
It is a sound. It is a feelingthoughtbreathtoneimagemoment
it is lost in the timespace
internal,
I have murdered the grammatical fiction,
alas! I drowned her by accident,
I am Bigger Thomas
I am Mary Dalton
I am no one and nothing, I am dead.
I am alive, and that is troublesome again.

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.

I have a funeral to go to.
I missed the last one.
They're all dying off, one by one.
Had to happen eventually, I guess.
Everyone has to die sometime, you know?
Everyone and everything.
No matter how much it hurts,
and no matter who killed them.
Everything ends.

I think the biblical flood washed the love out of the world. I think God decided we didn't deserve something so pure, so he washed it off the face of the earth and left us here to try and fill its void, to remember the world with all the cracks full of love and wonder why we can't seem to keep anything standing. The world is dusty now, covered in rubble from all the things that we built, hoping love would hold them strong. We hoped for love, we dreamed of it.

falling
            hurt

                              just

         like

                               I
                                         knew
                                                      it
                           would.

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.

Can one be filled up with non-things?
Electrons in a shell, their negative charges
dense and balanced,
a double negative --
What is the opposite of a blank space
and why is it so thick with hurt?

                        Obsession.
      A binary.
Everything or nothing,
dead or so frighteningly alive.
        
                           Fear.
      A lingering.
You are the author of all your failures,
and you cannot escape their weight.
            
                           Disgust.
       A constant.
A grub worm gorges itself below the surface.
The maggot and vulture feed on rot.

                             Apology.
        A tradition.
If you were really sorry you wouldn't have done it, and
certainly wouldn't have done it twice.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes I see the things that remind me of you
and I wonder if they're still the things you enjoy taking time to do.
But the you I knew is likely not the new you,
so I will preserve in my head the image of you
and hold fast to the things that made you the you I knew.

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.