I could never be colder
Than the ice in your bones
That you try so hard to disguise
With the fire in your eyes.

But there's no fear for you in my shaking hands,
But there's love for you
In my shaking knees.
But there's a brightness in my eyes,
That matches the fire you hold in yours.

And you're the light,
You're the color of the crackle of a fire.
You're colder than bone,
You're colder than what i know.
But you're warmer than snow,
And warmer than the fear I have,
The fear the I know.
You're the scent of snow,
You're the feeling of spring and summer.

My wrist hurts
Occasionally
From where he pushed me
And i tried to catch myself.
It has ached on and off
For three years.

My ankle twists
Occassionally
If i step on it wrong
From where he grabbed me and pulled
When i tried to run
The fourth time.

My shoulders still hunch
Into a flinching form
From people whose quick and too close movements
Were intended to hurt.

And I'm ashamed
And embarassed
But i know you get it,
But there's more that's left me
Less than before,
Than what i've told you.

Sometimes,
And by sometimes i mean usually,
My skin is colder
Than my heart.

And i'm cold and missing you
And it's not like you're far away,
Or won't be here for long,
But i'm tired and shaky
And freezing
And thinking
Much too much.

they said you can only love someone
if you first love yourself
but i loved you
long before i ever
loved myself

There are no right answers.
The sky rejects the birds, turns them
over to gravity,
embedding them in the concrete and dirt.
The grit refuses to become a pearl,
just as the wound refuses to heal
and the flesh eats itself.
The market sees a sudden spike in
sales of Champagne and cyanide.
Coordinated efforts seek and fail
to curtail the rising tide of violence
in the nation's dreaming.
You realise that this crude, barbaric language
that you can't understand
is your own.
Beauty glitches and pixelates.
Frightened, furtive confessions of love
are unheard over proud, visceral
proclamations of hate.
Tongues divorce mouths.
Every now and then, a voice
inside your head says,
'Thud.'
The measures of sanity become
more quantifiable and
totally arbitrary.
The horizon
tightens
like
a noose.

It doesn't matter if this is wrong.
There are no right answers.

My body is not beautiful -
it shows every row of dirt plowed,
every callous axe handle held
irreverently between the hands
that are swollen and cold;
my fingers, the puffy soldiers who smoked
one too many cigars in the
valleys of their webbed hills.

My body is not beautiful -
it is pitted with dirt entrenched in my pores
and craters of microorganisms
embedded in my flesh,
sending red fires into neutral skin,
a war beneath the surface
with smoothness being a casualty.

My body is not beautiful -
it has hair growing in places I hate,
thick layers of clinging calories
and expanded fat cells that
refuse to expire no matter how many
suicides I run or deaths I die
daily in an attempt to flatten them.

My body is not beautiful -
it is strong as hell.

My shoulders, firm and balanced,
tauntingly mock Atlas for complaining
of holding the world on his -
what he calls a tragedy, they call Monday.
My back has always carried whatever
burden I laid on it,
and though it's strained and torn
has yet to break beneath the weight
of the sorrow and the memories
living has given to me.

My legs, short and wide,
have lunged with mountains
by their sides,
moving forward through infernos
I can only describe as
"liquid fire as heavy as lead,"
traversing continents
and rushing rivers
knowing they were not going to give.

My arms are atlases,
traversed for countless miles
by vein-y highways
that lead to the ghost towns
I've gotten tattooed on my skin
to remind me that my
vagabond blood is pure
and my bones are made
of wanderlust.

No, my body is not beautiful,
but it is strong;
it has been places,
seen and done things.
It allows the universe
to make its home in my spinal
chord,
midnight to seep into my pores
and sing my heart to sleep
with starry melodies,
to leave behind the cement parking lot
I was born and raised in
and chase the horizon
no matter where it leads.

My body is not beautiful,
but it still deserves respect
for all it's done,
and all it holds,
regardless of my cellulite
or fat rolls.

may you learn to be brave
and may you always run carefree,
certain of your worth and the power inside you.
may your song be your own,
and when your song is different from the rest,
sing louder.
may you never forget that you’ve always had wings,
and may they carry you far.

Some people wear a wolf's smile
Grinning while stalking you all the while
Some watch the world with cats eyes
Keeping their views locked under a guise
Some listen like a deer in the fog
Timidly hearing all through the smog
Some hearts take flight like a turtle dove
Plain to the outside, but soaring above

There’s this list:
an almost perfect year-ender,
a chord that didn’t fit so
you had to play it broken,
drafts written for the purpose
of being great poems
but remained as is because
they were missing powerful
words.

The deafening silence.
The feelings you tried to ****.
The misunderstood hints.

Or tropical countries waiting for snow
and insightful books selling poorly.

Somewhere, a boy caught up
in a scenery and bright sunlight.
He wants to be a photographer
but fails to capture passing moments.

“They were too fast”, he said.