i miss you
the way Obama misses his intelligence briefings

i finally cleaned out my bedroom
threw out
all the legos i always accidentally stepped on
all of the crusty pieces of Argentine food i wasn't ready to let go of

you are a jedi
or perhaps just my best friend

some people hurt your eyes like neon when you see them

but you don't

you are nutella
and i am a butterknife

This act
Just keeps
Wearing me out
Like I’m an evening
Dress and
Each day is a
Different dinner
So I guess I’ll
Keep watching
My patience
Grow thinner
Along with your
Waist.

It’s a short walk,
But still I dread
The trek
Each time
I make it
I expect
I’ll keep following
These same tracks
Until my feet
Wear away
And the tips
Of my tibias
Are concrete
Splinters,
But I don’t mind
Finding out
How many winters
This doubt can last,
It’s all a game,
Just catch and pass
You’re thrown
A bone

Or driven past
As you wave your thumb
Under the overpass
Trying to get home
For the birth of your child
At Woman and Infants
But RIPTA has ******
Service, so you might
Miss it,
But that’s ok,
We all miss things
We never had
And we all wish
To never be sad
But the reality is
Reality’s a fad,
A passing craze
Of the human brain
That hasn’t evolved
To see past the rain
And realize that it
Isn’t falling
Every time we get wet,
The future is calling
But we will always forget
To pick up the phone,
Cuz we’d rather forfeit
Nirvana to sit alone
Playing with an app
That makes a cartoon cat
Play the trombone,

Technology can lead us
Out of the realm of the blind
If only we could find
A way to slow
Our swift decline
Into the self assigned
Ceasing
Of
Creativity
And
Assanine
Overabundance
Of avoidable
Stupidity.
Iphone 4s.
Cop that ****.

These words are a sock, soft and warm from the dryer
butterknife
palpable
lullabye
maroon

These words are bits of glass, attacking my ears:
Yaw
Ketch
Blurt
Epizeuxis
Jactation and
Mauve

These words are brass-knuckled fists to the face
Mogadishu
Rwanda
Desert One
My Lai
And
Nine One One

These words are a sneaky cat, slithering here and there
Mystery
Secretive
Lurking
Sly
Shadowy

These words are unknown to everyone but me. Private words for private thoughts.
Uiyak
Jackassdom
Nothingofanyvalue

come back to familiar couches and concerned words that run like bugs across your skin,
back to a sliver of window and never-any-snow-days,
not a ******* one.
nor summers that mean anything but uncomfortable skin,
but what else is there to do but check the weather report?
i’ve got it carved into my palm, butterknife wounds and burned
kisses, your name hurts the best.
(sit with me on a greyhound bus while i drink blue apartment buildings and handicaps)

the clowns are getting crowded in here, little
multicolored car, painted blue eyes and i will never stop dancing in big shoes, but
compromising is the most useful major i could choose. learn how to;
stop saying i, stop saying no, stop consuming the eyes of boys
very far out of my reach, forget your very special language of misunderstood gestures and
keep getting older

the orange-bleached days in the company of my 24-hour loves were worth it, worth
every salty confession shed off the side of the Belle,
worth losing faith in everything else. maybe, someday,

we can share headphones.

Overflew from the sewers into the chalice
and they drank it because
it's soaked in
jewels.

Toxic.

Wagging a finger like it's a dense singularity
being hammered into by juggernaut.
No. No. No. No. No.
Smiling because futility,
chuckling because we're so ******* stupid,
blowhards, tryhards, beggars, dancers,
corp. embezzlers, poets with loose morals
and empty wallets.

F is for ****;
like I'm gonna ******* till you **** me over,
waiting for someone to give me a lobotomy in
metaphor or metaphysics, or spiritually,
or actually take a butterknife
to a soft spot in the skull and
drain the fluids with mosquito bites.

I.E; I walked home in the dark alone
and broke down in a cereal aisle
and asked the cashier if I could get
help with the self checkout while
tears in my eyes.

**** whose watching over me now,
white people **** white people just for fun sometimes.
I really don't care how low the human soul falls
even as I investigate accidentally.

Bedlam in the parking lots and Babylon
is burning, burning, burning,
hair held high up by olympian comic book super heroes
[Clark Kent is an ancient egyptian]
tossing egg salad and burnt coffee into
the sphinx's gaping swirling pampered flushing mouth.

We lose ourselves when we follow our moral compass.

In the dream i run toward dead ends
that resemble concrete fists;
and we know that ghosts can only walk through walls
because they’re empty
but you’ll find creases on your bed sheets
just as vacant.
And the impression people leave behind
is something you will always take to bed
when the little yellow-lit squares in
those tall city boxes meant more than just
“other”.
and so what if we feel too much?
they say one word can stand a chance
in changing an entire meaning
and so what if we feel too much, despite
— the coffee that had gotten cold
or the pillow-stitched manifestos
that were only ever meant for display
or the flimsy dots in the sky
we’ve yet to make sense of.
Your vulnerability is no one else’s
needle felt ball.
Do not hide it like baby teeth,
do not trim your sharp edges
for their butterknife.
Do not pick out
the quiet statice petals
just because you’ll never have to
worry about seeing the fracture
when you’re gazing down
at an entire field.
"why has empathy become a relic?", she asks.
"i guess that's just how it is now."
it shouldn't.
it shouldn't.
it shouldn't.

“Mija, you’re doing it wrong.”
“Mija, why can’t you just listen?”
“Por favor! Ay help me, dios mio.”

Words of disappointment from the most admired woman in my 5 year old eyes.
She’d yell and hit.
“Quita la mano! Move your hand!”

After a while I stopped crying and she’d stand there with the belt, now useless.
Just another accessory, I guess.

But when she would yell
That’s where the real tears threatened to spill.
Shameful flames on my cheeks.
These were not reflexive tears, mementos from the belt, but tears so hard to hold back, you’d think I’d never breathe the same again.

I would keep my long lived streak of disappointment.
I would not show her tears.

She became my first heartbreak.
The reason I stood silently reaching for the butterknife I believed I could end my life with.

At the ripe age of 5, I held this butterknife out with the dull point aimed at my stomach because I thought, “She screams so much and it’s because of me. Why would I want to burden her so much so that these violent words come bursting out?”

I was too cowardly to do a thing.
A decade later, I finally found the courage.

The courage to end my pain and suffering ..
with the kind words of a friend.
I sliced at my skin ..
With silky blades of grass.
I cried ..
Tears of joy as I watched the most beautiful sunrise I would’ve never experienced if I’d been courageous enough of make one very important decision at age 5.

My first heartbreak let to my eventual mental repair.
I thank my mom for the verbal bullets she shot at me.
I can no longer feel them,
For the scars are too deep.

But my cowardice saved me
Whether I admit it happily or not.

Perhaps it was that champagne five-o’clock light slanting through our glass walls,
golden-warm like honey we licked straight from hive

Yes, perhaps it was those low, sun-softened shadows,
that silky honey-light dribbling lazily through our window
glazing my corneas  
blurring my vision
and the lines I drew between us

Our honey-dipped conversation flowed smoothly,
the summer bleached hairs on the back of my neck swayed in tandem to our words
and your fingers
as they worked loose the knots in the sinew
cocooning my spine

Perhaps that is why those words –
so viscous in the twelve o’clock light
that they almost choke me
as I try to regurgitate them –
flowed up my windpipe
Smoothly
as warm honey drips
from the edge of a
butterknife

Or

Perhaps it was the rosé
painted across your cheeks
like sincerity
Or the way those crushed velvet fingertips
painted my cheeks to match yours
and pressed my eyelids
shut

Do not blame me
for the honey pooling at the corners of my lips
for the wine stains on my cheeks

Do not forget it was you
who fed me honey
who intoxicated me with colours of the eight o’clock sunset
who wrapped me in velvet
who bid the sun linger awhile longer
in my sky

Do not forget
the words I said
were words you gave me
Do not blame me
when they spill from the edges of my mouth

butterknife seppuku
is my fav way to go

lottsa little deaths
to spread thin

till the last edit
of these things
swims
upstream

away from me