It's a special time of year when the squirrels land and crunch the leaves beneath them in the next yard over and your dog races towards the fence through a garden of fallen foliage to try to protect his fence.
My thoughts run together like a train when you're stuck at the light and it never seems like it'll be over as the train cars pass slowly in the funeral procession of wasted time just sitting at that god ****** light.
It's a special time of year where you want to be alive, where the minerals inside are finally in stride and no longer collide to invoke another suicide praise the saints and praise the Angels for failed suicide inside my mothers home she cried for nights miles away uncertain of whether or not id finally get it right, my god, I never got it right, I've never gotten anything right, the scars on my wrist tell a story but they don't sing in reverie.

I miss you the way Christmas used to make me feel. In that old, painful longing. There was so much more beyond the tinsel and presents. There was a warmth inside that filled you up with golden apple cider served from a ladle by your mother. I miss you the way you miss your mother. Your brother. I miss you the way that the moon misses the stars, absolutely clueless of what they do, it rises and falls in that same dance routine it's practiced for centuries. I miss you in the way you miss an old sweater. You could bury your nose in to my sweater. I miss you in my sweater, God. And New Years' when you woke me up just in time to kiss. You took pictures of me in your arms in your sleep. Where did those pictures go? I miss you the way you miss the photos on your old computer that you will never get back. You hold on in your head the memory, and you can try to describe it possibly beautifully but never the less you can not experience the original again.
I miss you in the way that a captured whale misses the sea.
How I loved to swim in your seas, you said you loved to roll in my tidal waves, remember the tidal waves, the breathtaking moments of whirling emotion.
I miss you the way my lungs miss smoke. The smoke of the fire in Tennessee late at night surrounded by an open sky of stars. Those same stars, that lonely moon, bury your head in my sweater, I'm sorry, lord, I'm sorry. I miss you the way that my head would miss my body.
A chorus of I'm sorry's
And my aching body
From falling from trees
Trying to get closer to the moon
Because I'm lonely too
I'm sorry we're not cosmonauts
But maybe one day soon
Spilling
Apologies, I'm spilling
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry

Fall in texas and the air was bittersweet
And the wind tried as much as it could
To alleviate the stale,
Hot air
It's October and in the 90s
I used to think the sun was my ally
Until this summer charred my outsides
Until the river that I loved ran dry
They say never give a name to a pet on a farm in case it dies
Well I named that river and I named it love
And I swam in it and drank it up.

Mutinied from my own ship
Thank goodness I can steer my own life raft
And after all those years of sailing alone
It feels good to have the open sea back
An endless expanse beacons me
No more sirens left in this sea
Just blissful cruising
Away from the lies that were left of me
I am the captain of this wobbly tiny ship
I am the maker of my destiny
I grip the compass that my father made for me
As I float
Aimlessly
As I float
At peace

I used to think you could find love at the bottom of a bottle
So night after night I swam the sea of spirits
So deranged by the last drop that I couldn't remember my own name
The emptiness lived on
It grew like texas wild flowers
Soaked nightly by the miracle of rain, the plight of tears, the taste of blood in my mouth
As my teeth slowly fell out
Morbid decorations for the garden
We once made with our love

I used to think you could find love at the bottom of a bottle
So night after night I swam the sea of spirits
So deranged by the last drop that I couldn't remember my own name
The emptiness lived on
It grew like texas wild flowers
Soaked nightly by the miracle of rain, the plight of tears, the hint of blood
As night after night I lost all my teeth in my dreams

Your jewelry now cast
Set in stasis by wax
In a candle I named "love,"
Where I threw dead flowers
And other sacred artifacts
Just to let the white wax dry
After I blew out its flame
It sits on my dresser
Unlit, but the jewels sparkle just the same
I put all of my Love in to a candle
Just to avoid feeling this pain
This current, this undertow
Of memories of you
By a shore

Some nights I dream so much
That it feels that I get no rest
Just five hours of shut eyes
A five hour revival of my chest
And how it still aches for an exorcist
To pray away this holy nightmare that I live daily
To take away the past that plagues me
To undo what that demon did
To the battered ***** in my chest
I close my eyes and hope for rest
But the only rest from this is death

Depression can be all-consuming. A thundercloud over your head that no one else can see.






I'm tired of being soaked.

Mystic oracle,
What happens when two poets fall madly for each other?
Shall we ask Sylvia Plath?
Shall we ask Ted Hughes?

I've not been writing lately
I fear I lost my edge
As I dwindled along the ledge
Of being vehement or being vacant
Of being troubled or being innocent
As I slowly become the Hermit
Holding a lamp, unlit
Hiding in the darkness behind it
Won't let a soul nearby it

Some days I just want to walk in to the sunrise
Just to follow it back to the beginning
Just to get the glimpse of the Big Bang
The universe refrains
Endlessly rearranged
By particles of human skin floating through space
Maybe a fleck of my skin can fly away in to the horizon
Go to all the places I have never been
Just so that I can say
That I've kissed the stars with these aging lips
That I've tasted the planets and I've taken a glimpse
Of what lies at the end of this universe, the human terrarium where we float around like goldfish
Unaffected by the glass that surrounds us
We simply swim
Like stardust
We float with the current
Endlessly skim the surface
Like the driftwood that gets beaten by the waves
We simply
Exist

Sometimes I do turn signals in sign language
Then feel a drop in my stomach
Because what we had has been voided
By a disastrous end
Of biblical proportions
At the age of 25 for my birthday
I say in jest
I received a mid life crisis, a nose ring, and my ****** heart returned in a mason jar
And I lost myself
As the words still echo in my head "you can't love someone unless they love themselves"
Sometimes I miss you
But I think that You is in a grave
Skeletal hands folded
Wrapped around another carcass
6 feet under the soil
Accompanied by the bones of who I used to be
That's where the you and I of memory lie
Resting in peace as the worms eat away at our insides
As our bones turn to soil
For the gardens to come

for 3 days ive been in a bad place
waiting for the company of some lonely savior
to erase these tears and draw a smile on my face
or at least someone to replace her
i look into the mirror of desire
wish on my lucky stars find her
tonight i’ll light myself on fire
douse myself in gasoline
turn to ash
crawl into her dreams
wonderous sleep so it seems
a ghost to haunt your waking life
maybe next time you’ll think twice
before you play cat and mouse
with someone’s insides

Let's move to a city where no one knows our names
Where we can be masked in anonymity by the crowds
In a sea of people drowning in the summer city heat
The asphalt kingdom filled with worker bees

I feel as if I've lost something
The word is on the tip of my tongue
Sleepless nights staring at the clock
Wondering what could make my brain stop
Toss and turn until my alarm goes off
5am once again feeling like I can't get up
And face this Groundhog Day that I'm living
Where my heart feels half there and my eyes feel heavy
I try to mutter the words to my favorite song
But the lyrics just spill out wrong
What did I lose in that black desert hue
Sleepless nights still thinking of you
What did I lose in that psychiatric ward
A feeling of being needed that my insurance can't afford
So I toss and I turn and I lose all my sleep
I'll admit I've even prayed to god on my knees in defeat
Because we all know that I'm a practicing witch
But all the spells that I've cast just can't stall this
I'm feeling alert and I'm feeling mindless
As I swipe credit cards and remain lifeless
Because love is a battle; I swung and I missed
Give up the ghost and remain breathless
As I exhale clouds of smoke through my cigarettes
I'm reminded of where time has went
Pack after pack and I'm losing track
Of these past 6 years of addiction to the smoke
I choke
The words won't come out of my throat
And I choke

And I choke
The world spins along
As I try to aspirate my closed throat

Your photos once strewn the walls
Of moments I would never take back
The adhesive grows old these days
And they fall like leaves from an autumn tree
The float down to my sheets
Like sad rose petals
A lament for the romance that never happened.
From bulb to blossom,
Now just flowers pressed in an old book.

The ghost of a good thing
Still clings to my back attached to my winter coat and it follows me like a black cloud only this one can speak and it reminds me of all the beautiful things that were once here before we both drastically changed rearranged the terms and conditions of our relationship to null as we burned the document that bound us as it turns to ash we didnt even have the time to rust we just suddenly weren't us

Burn the old bridges
So you can build newer ones
These wooden planks are haunted by the ghost of a good time
In which I held your heart close to mine

So I reach for the gasoline and let it go by the liter
Covering the porous surface where our feet once stood
Together
Looking out at the water
And contemplating the beauty of how everything in life comes from it

It only takes a small spark to ignite
Mistook your arms for suspension cords
Mistook your words for face value honesty
I throw the match where we notched each other's names in the wood
It seems fitting at best to start where we did
In a poetic fashion
Destroying the connection

I got out just in time to watch it fall in to the muddy river
A single tear fell down my cheek in mourning for the loss
More water to sustain more life
But there will be a new bridge built here
Made of steel, much like my heart now
And new lovers will write their name in sharpie
Something much less permanent than the destroying of wood
It seems fitting because love is gone
Love is fleeting
And that's the reason for this bridge I'm building

Find someone who helps you appreciate the fine granules of sand
One whom glorifies the tint, the hue, the way the light hits the tiniest of rocks
Which,
like you,
have been eroded to a small speck,
A reflection in anothers' eye
with time
Appreciate the oceans current
For even the sand was just a blank bust once
To the sea as an artist,
Starving

The two week long sunburn
The smell of cucumber and melon
The warmth of your sheets
As we cocooned
For two whole weeks
As grasshoppers bloomed
I felt as if your room
Was the start of something magnificent
Your mattress a holy monument
To the rebirth of the desert flowers
Blooming
After the two week long miracle texas rain

Her smile was like a dandelion but her tongue was like bukowski
How she lied in my sheets next to me
And told me that I was something
A treasured muse

To think that we almost got matching tattoos together
Your name is on the tip of my tongue
Now where your lips once rested
A holy statement to the lord god of heaven and how he's left us vacant
Forsaken forgotten as the ******* son
Sleeping on your couch for months in my dreams
Echoing this valiant defeat in which I put all of me in to hourglass of sand for you
To remind you of happier times that we once knew
When the clouds were bright and the sky was blue
And we were just building a sand castle of memories built for two
At the end it was washed away by the tides moonlit and drunken stride
How it echoed the way you once walked by my side
You no longer wade in the sea of my dreams
You no longer are my guiding current
You are a lighthouse,
Deserted

We drive through the golden hour
Through Texas, south of Austin
We passed the denture store
Of a small rocky town
And I saw the lives of two
A farmer and his wife
Who worked this same land
That we simply pass through.
All of their lives
Their hands turned hard
From being weathered by the soil
From the taste of dirt on their brow

Such a simple life
They had a porch swing
But recently changed them for
Rocking chairs
And they watch with us
That same sunset
As the sky turns to rust

My hands are deep in the soil
As the dawn breaks
I remember surreal sunset days
When you would wake me up by work
By calling me pet names
I remember better days.

I'm burying your pictures, sacred artifacts.
Blips of moments tied to memory that I can't take back.
I saw you in my sleep last night, you are as haunting as a heart attack
No longer do I wish to see your face in my dreams so abstract
In which you smile
As the world burns around us
In which you take my hand
And say that you never stopped loving me
My hands are deep in the soil
I've stained my knees
Burying these memories
6 feet deep

You were a holy word on the tip of my tongue
Forgotten somehow in the dusty library of my thoughts
A fever dream that set my books aflame
And kindled the fire in my heart
Keeping me warm for the long summer days and endless starry nights
I became entangled in you
I became entangled in your sheets
The words on the tip of your tongue
Were "you never have to leave,"
But as lovers do, we both remain afraid
Haunted by the ghost of past mistakes
I promise that when I kiss you I am not slowly digging a grave
I'm sowing seeds in our garden
Where we can bask in the sun for years to come

She had that sleepy dreamy-eyed glow to her
And I fell as Icarus
She was my Daedalus
My parachute catalyst
As I fell from the light of sun
With my melted wax wings
I fell and and I fell deep
In to her quiet seas
The sense of a sneeze or incoming flash back brought you to your knees
Murky deeps in which I found myself so enthralled with you
That I saw our story as a definite artifact
More precious than the pearls at the bottom of your seas
I found comfort in between your smile lipped teeth
( as I made a nest in between the nook of your face and neck)

I wonder when the day will come
Where I don't stop for a moment
And wonder why you haven't texted me yet
Or wonder when you're coming by
With a memory as rough as mine,
I often get lost in time.

You once brought only light to my eyes
Now you only bring the rain
A changing of the seasons
A wish for better days
You can't undo what's been broken
Like when you stomped on these flowers with your boots
Wilted away on my front porch
I never said don't go
As I shut the door behind you
I never said a ******* word
As I watched your rear lights fade from street
Shell shocked
Heart stopped
There's no use for my words these days

Only to watch as I caught fire
Turn to Phoenix
And be reborn
Made anew
Without you

You are the sun and stars
And I am just bits of you
Organic matter re-construed
And you are unstoppable
A black hole
A wormhole that leads from
The beginning of our story
To the end of our galaxy
And I am in awe
For I am simply stardust
As old as the Big Bang
As naive as the first cosmonauts
Who thought it was safe
To tread the highway of the constellations
To leave the safety of gravity in exchange for heart palpitations
For the excitement of exploring the grand new frontier
Back to the mission
I am made simply of stardust
And you are part of the sun,
My dear

Take your broken heart
From the cavern in your chest
Pull it out, and don't get queasy
Put it in a jar
Hide it under your bed
Never tell a soul
That you walk around without it
That you no longer walk around with it perforating on your sleeve
Until you hear a familiar melody
From underneath the bed frame
Your caged bird of a heart
As it whistles a happy song
Ready to go again
But for now
It's in a mason jar
Because
She once said my smile looked like a mason jar
And I love poetic endings

I have visited this grave every day for a week
In hopes of stirring up what lies beneath
In hopes of bringing to life what once was my daydream
But all the magic in the world, darling
Can't bring it back to me.

Being single is really cool because I can do whatever the **** I want. I can tell a girl she's beautiful. I can disappear for a few hours without anyone freaking out. I can dance with strangers. I don't have to worry about my text messages. I don't even have to worry about my phone.
There's just this one thing,
The crippling absence of you
Specifically
And unbelievably you.

There's an expiration date on our relationship, tastes like sour milk I begin to curdle and cradle myself in the fetal position for the upcoming letdown
Though your curses are in cursive the words still wound
When you write that you'll leave one day soon
My hypothesis was right all along
Why bother
Like that one Weezer song

Day two of the coldest winter
Even the defrost cycle on my long car rides to clear my mind will not make these bones anything else than frigid
We were a blizzard, our love affair, cooped up in my room for 5 days
We didn't leave bed except for the necessities, we didn't leave bed except for coffee and cigarettes
I'm not ready to admit it's over yet
My room strewn with artifacts that once belonged to you
The ring you gave me now a holy and sacred treasure
That sits in my teacup altar to the gods I may or may not believe in
I don't believe in many concrete ideas
But I believe in the idea of you
I love the idea of you
The creases in your smile
As you kissed my neck in the night
Now I wake up alone and reach for you
Only to find the dogs have taken your place
Don't get me wrong, I love them so much
But the sanctity of your skin could never compare
To the warmth provided by the mongrels I share my bed with
I'm rambling
I'm not making any sense
Like our love affair
Too fast to fall
But it made so much sense

I'm not looking at anyone
As I pass through these crowded streets
I am looking past them
And searching for the meaning
Behind this altruistic feeling
The longing and the knowing
That there is a separation in our people;
The stagnant and the growing
And then those who are on the fence
I was once there too, paralyzed by duress, I understand you
But there's beauty in the growing
When you firmly plant your feet in the soil
And declare that I am a tree and I am not just here to **** up your used air but I'm here to recycle it reimagine it provide it
I have a place where I'm rooted and I delight in it
And my branches grow further every day
As I'm reaching out to help the growth
To give that much needed oxygen to those grown stagnant
To give them a purpose or help reimagine it

Some people are sun showers and others are hurricanes. I would rather be a sun shower. I would rather encompass a small part of your day and bring warmth and refreshment rather than take up too much of your time. I don't want to flood you with emotion. I just want you to feel the essence of my heart, the warmth of my love. If only for a moment. You grow to appreciate it. Grinning and looking towards the sky. As little rain drops fall down your face but the sun is still in your eyes.
I want to be the few moments of your day that brighten your heart
That make you remember that this is what life is truly about
Appreciating the little moments
Appreciating the raindrops
And even if our time together is short I know that it is precious and I know that it is loved
As the sun shines from up above
And the rain drops fall softly
I know it is enough,
My love.

"I hope you feel especially weak in the knees
In the future when you come across these memories of me
A leftover shirt may be just bits of string
Sewn together by some other little things
But when you put my old clothes to your nose
And inhale deeply
I know you'll remember the way we kissed so sweetly"

Night after night in my mess of a room
Curled up entwined with my dogs and cat
I began to let my imagination take control
I dreamt so blissfully of our flat
With the walls covered with your friends spray paint graffiti
When I'd grown up a little more and became a little less needy
I dreamt of being content
With just the satisfaction of your heart belonging to me
My god, help me find the strength
To let go of these past hurts and be
Instead of being
strung up by old strings

Bury me in a light blue casket
Wrapped up in my fathers navy jacket
The tiny turquoise coffin that I hold in my pocket
Addiction grown like tobacco; rampant and thoughtless
With the thought of
I'll quit after college
Well I quit college
But I didn't stop these bad habits
These twenty jagged teeth
That stay the madness
I inhale and think oh how tragic
And think of the words a friend once said;
He said this generation is going to die
Due to cigarettes
And I agree
I am apart of it
Spending an hours worth of pay for a single days fix
I am trapped in it
But I am David
And this addiction is Goliath
But I've thrown all my stones
And I've missed the giant
This is no great battle
This is the corporation Jericho
Taking my hard earned money as a peasant
In return to **** me slow
I want to make a raucous
A cacophony in this city
To bring to light the Winston Salem corporate scheme
And the destruction of all the dreams
As my grandfather lies dying in bed of COPD
The legal addiction
These coffin nails
Make me bleed as the Eucharist
So please think of my grandfathers oxygen tank
Before you allow someone you love to light that next cigarette

My splintered heart
The very same ***** that once set me apart
Now plays along its swan song
After much misuse and lack of truth
The wooden keys have been lost throughout the states
So there is major malfunction
Pieces missing cause song disruption
But when you give the gift of a wooden heart
And it is depreciated and not treated like art
The widdling continues along lazily
Leaving splinters in every finger, in every hand that it's touched
I need your sandpaper to undo this rough
Because this Hearty old wood that proved to never be strong enough
To play the tune long enough
To capture and ensnare those
Blessed by my organs siren song

The music stops playing
And I am done

April is the cruelest month,
My friend Eliot once said
I can feel him rolling in his grave
As I borrow the words that came from his head;
But never have I ever despised any other month,
The ides of March is incomparably easy compared to April
Where the world can't determine if it's alive or dead
When the sun is shining one moment and then it's gone as an old friend
And I, the weakest of the bunch
I make the most mistakes
In the month of April
I tend to lose my head
I tend to lose myself
In a binge
Of one or the other
Whiskey or thighs
To keep up with the weather
And it all is toxic
As it all is fleeting
Once May comes around
It will be leaving
If I only make it through this month
This month I deem the plague
If I only make it with my chin up
And unafraid
And just say OK
As the water hits my knees
And just smile
As it creeps to to my neck
As I dive in to the month
That once held your death
To survive 30 days of malevolence
I've made up in my head
To celebrate the anniversary
Or the loss of a dear friend

Writhe

Everything seems more poetic
When you're caught in the silence of a thunderstorm
No longer do your words roll off the tongue like lightning towards me
No longer do I depend on that lightning fire to stay warm
And as the rain drops fall
I remember when I once wrote
That "some people kiss in the rain
While others just get ******* soaked."

Press play.
18 weeks ago. We met for coffee today. I've never met anyone like you, you showered me with half-smirks and we drove through the night looking for a place for me to rest my head in the future.
You stayed the night. I remember the awkward moment where we both didn't want to leave each other yet. I asked you nonchalantly if you wanted to get breakfast because I wasn't bored with you. I had my air of self defense up back then, I was a calloused shell and you were the diver looking for pearls who plucked me up from the sea.
You told me you couldn't believe you were holding hands with the most beautiful girl in the room.
Every word that slipped through your lips was poetry. We ignited the flames in our hearts together and wrote and sent voice notes of spoken word pieces about each other or maybe about our exes or the grand scheme pictures that we wanted to dissect in to something beautiful.
Saying goodbye at the airport I felt as if our movie was ending. I mentioned it in passing, and you said there's always sequels.
Two weeks later I held your heart near mine again. Thank god for small favors and cheap flights and clustered days off of work. You had started to crack my exterior, with your frank honesty, quick witted haikus and the way your skin felt against mine at night. I never told you this but I did watch you sleep, sometimes, just to know that I wasn't dreaming, that you were really there in my bed and I had not made you up in my head (like Sylvia Plath once said...)
It took the waters of Florida to finally wash the remainder of the sand off of me. Callous was something I no longer had to be. The way you entertained my little brother, helped my grandparents, calmed me down during bits of madness. I told you drunkenly that I was falling in love with you. Every day I'm falling in love with you. Whether it's a new freckle that I notice or a new idiom you come up with I am dazzled, awestruck by you.
Pause.
Fast forward through the scary parts. (Cover your eyes)
The other night I wished upon every bit of magick every single star in the sky that somehow I could make this right and we could go back to being poets, in love, madly
There are still moments where you spontaneously tell me that you love me and my heart skips a beat out of hope that maybe we have a chance of continuing our movie
You've taught me so many things
Don't stop teaching me

Like when I once said you taste like my toothpaste,
Don't stop tasting me.

She was the rain on a spring day, how she tickled my nose as she fell from the sky, from the heavens to my arms
Underneath my soaked boots I sloshed in her wake, grinning as every drop hit my cheeks, my eyelashes
I always found something beautiful about the rain
As if the world needs a bath
And the plants need their water
To provide us with our breath
She was the droplets of spring rain
Staining my makeup across my face
In the most natural of makeovers
Mascara raccoon eyes, drip down my cheeks, yet
I can't stop smiling
With her sweet caress
Evaporating
Falling off my chin
In to the ground
Through the soil
Up through the tree trunks
Out through the green leaves
As dew;
To once more take her part in the water cycle
To another person
And another place

When I feel especially weak
When my knees turn concave
I see a flash of darkness beneath my eyes
In that space where imagination usually lies
I see the friend that I ripped off in the shower
Using my grandmothers old magic I said depart from me
It's coming back
The darkness is thriving
In this cold silent winter
I am barely surviving
Skin and bones
And so much time spent alone
I was not built to be a hermit
Yet I am the living definition of it
Occasionally I reach out for the sun
Send a note to a loved one
But from all the days I've chosen bed over them
They grow distant
They grew concerned
And then they grew numb
Because you can't care for anyone who doesn't care for themselves
Pry me from the ground
Dig me up from this shallow grave
Spoon feed me hope and optimism
Because I feel as an old woman
At the end of her days
When I should be a thriving spirit
Golden, glowing, and unafraid

You've always wanted the things you cannot have
To plunder foreign soil
But unfortunately for you, dear, the smell of your perfume doesn't even make me turn my head anymore
It's clear to me now that you've got your mind on distant shores
Scent may be the closest sense tied to memory
But when I close my eyes and think of how you once made me feel alive
I shake my head
For the wasted time
For the hours spent
Trying to capture an "I love you,"
From a siren across the sea.

It's like someone took the last 10 pages from Our book and ripped them to shreds
I was reading intently, eager to know, I was on the couch ledge
Now I'll never know how the story ends
Another book half-read, another tangling of hearts
How many times now have I searched this library, torn it apart
Looking for a copy of the same old book
With the last 10 pages complete...
And still, I look.

I want to go back to not feeling anything but
Pandora's box has been opened and it's spilling from my chest
I tried to find sanctuary in other arms but there is no comfort left
Through the sleepless nights
And the distress
The imprint of your fingertips on my arms and neck
Now feel as volatile of the burning of your cigarettes against my paper wrists
There's a reason why this box should never be open
There's a reason why these locks exist
Though the sands of time and the ticking of the clock keep moving
I am stuck;