I told myself
Reinforced and believed
That I was not enough
To suit anyones needs

Outside the battle
Not one could recognize
That I was any different
When it came to my insides

Raging, the war fought on
And my mind almost won
At least a good 20 times
Before any break in the fight

Restrained by cement
At the bottom of seas
I struggled to break chains
And find strength
To resurface as me

Few are the ways, to weaken chains
But razors seem enough
Dealing with incurable pain
At least until one day

Sparks flew down
Under this sea
Brittling constraints
And I broke free

The first year of blood  was drowned in the ocean
matted steel lined the straw chaff's brittling downs
the cracks in the pavement enveloped the world,
and the call centres melted to sand
\
    you      speak
             through a hole in your chest
                      ah, no , not missing,
        more
                just
                             estranged from itself
           (don't worry mines bigger)
\
the second was garrotted on the sinews of cloth
its body dumped by the bay
the opaque gloss in its eyes shattered to dust,
as the blue and red lights echoed away
\
      your smile's apodeictic,
                  dressed in your stretcher of red
        the world   tumbles
         round your kneecaps swollen kisses
                        dripped out of glistening thread
      \

the third took seventeen bottles of pills
and breathed heaven through a canal of rolled mortgage bills.
It swallowed its repayments through a rusted spray-can
  and  swam
                              in bleached birch trees by the sea
             \


   i had a theory that day;
                     “it's all a false dichotomy,
                       one side to two coins:
                       eat the apple, be banished from heaven;
                       eat the pomegranate, be imprisoned in hell.”
   you made fake retching sounds
   and we laughed at the esoteric stupidity,
     but when the bus arrived at the gas station early
       we found we'd left the tickets in the hotel lobby.
                      \

                           \
the forth died in conception
never to know the carress of the real
while    the fifth
                          was born a billowing desert
                          but died a still field of glass.

          /                  
  

     my lungs are chocking on empty air
          they just want to fly,
           but I keep them trapped here.

/

I saw her put a strange face on
same tint as her old skin
but so much harder
made to display fake affections
guarding her against
false friends
and dangerous heart intruders.

Her skin became plaster.
With each betrayal her heart hardened
as did her skin, flaking and brittling.
Till, angry and trembling
I saw it splinter and splatter
sprinkling sparkly brain matter
on the floor all around her.

Thus, the face that remained
was left disfigured and stained
a permanent portrait of the pain
she had been struggling against.

As she drips down into her fluorescent mess,
She acquires these thoughts she's always addressed.
Full of love, hate, and distress,
Ninety to nothing,
she bleeds out her chest,
Wiping off the carnage from her hurtful gown,
The sailine  trickling into her paralyzed frown,
Shes looked up too much to be this far down,
The powder on the brim of her hand,
Left her in dispear to regret her unsettling hidden hand.
What's up her sleeve,
What's down her gown,
The scars of today floating around.

Her bones so brittle,
Petite to the touch,
Crumble in her body,
And back into her crutch.
She takes the sand brittling away,
Engulfs it in her belittling tray.

One,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Her nails are dug into the mildewed floor,
Hardening into the stained pain,
To sustain and embroider into this hardwood groove,
She's an fein for love and a harp for sloon,
A foreign word seeps to her room.

Spinning around spurting words across the walls,
The dead words she's spoken begin to echo down the halls,
A dark passenger aboard this drip,
In a gown with revenge in her pick,
She slides the mirror into her deathly grip.

Cutting into her callused  hands,
She inhales the pain into her nasal stands,
So apprehend and pretend it's all in a dream,
Because nothing is ever what it used to seem.

Uproar into a standing ovation,
The death of herself is her dismayed creation,
In this bitter distraught heart is her ****** salvation,
Dampened into her picklines calbration,
The fifty round shot of morphines  delayed sin,
Unto her face and into her impermeable grin.

When I met you,
I never knew how hard it was to not laugh
The way we cracked up
The way your face wrinkled up when you laughed,
Like creasess on a paper
Frantically straightened
Only to find the light fold still there.

We laughed like old trees,
So close for so long
Roots like Memories
Leaves like words we knew we'd say
But you were hiding something,
Something worse than just
The insects under your bark.

Deeper than the sap in your limbs
Deeper than the growth-rings that measure character
You had The 94
Now, all but our worry remains
You see, it's not a blight,
This 94, not a disease,
It's the whispers in your roots,
The deathly cadence of the wind
The indescribable,
Overpowering,
Trickle of twisted sunsets
And deformed seasons,
Winter sprouting buds--
Boils upon your branches,
Sickening grey around your trunk

But not one visible sign
Only the molting of your smile,
So folded and creased,
Only the fade in your eyes
While Spring at its peak
An unseen sulk in your boughs
Brittling your laugh
To crackling sighs
All this, why 94?
Now the story ends where it began
So full a number 94, but only the
Measure of how overcome
A surplus of spite
A great harvest of sorrow,
Your greatest and happiest
But never, 94

While Spring states, "Alive!"
Only 6% so,
While Autumn brings cloaking frost,
94, brings the snow
Your Headress of Sorrow
Your blood-gleaming boil,
Your invisible meanace.

"The tree was never good enough,"
A passing being once said
'It's leaves don't fall right'
'Why was it planted here?'
'Why is there no fruit'
'Why'
'How'
'What'
And so, your 94:
Never Good Enough

But I ask: redemption?
Regrowth?
Another Harvest?
Another Season?
Another,
andanotherandanotherandanotherandanotherandanoth­er

Now we're back,
No leaves on your brow,
Roots not flowing for now,
But,
     barely awake for the sun.
Its smile is warm,
Rays of life.
Golden, gleaming--
Breathe!
You're still here
Breathe!
It's only you
Breathe!
But how-- Alive?
Breathe?
Where's 94?

Only husks remain
No more shadows
No oily Rain,
No more grey
Or bloodened boughs

Just you,
  and Me,
  and the sun.

it creeps
under your skin
sinking in to the depths of your weary pores
and shrinking
under layers of itchy fabric is the way
your mind believes it will survive

that empty
numbing
cold
has made home in aching bones
and running noses
and brittling skin
and drying lips