Sitting here in class I am today, minding my business as they would say. I’m listening to the teacher teach but hearing only things left beyond my reach. Another whole day in this **** school so I can come out each night 'more-of-a-fool,' and would it behoove them all to know, I ain’t no dummy, no 'coffee-Joe'?

  …but then I’d have to get the chance, the opportunity provided to advance and the equal treatment they all receive that somehow has been lost on me. Why do I even come here? Why does my Mom insist on this? They don’t call on me, care about me, acknowledge me, it’s ridiculous. At lunch each day I gotta use my fists and even my own kind acts wicked, cause for the rest of them fighting is all that exists.

  Exists; having objective reality or being.

  I exist alright; exist if you call this a life, defined by ******, **** and monkey, or related to some stupid-actin’ ****** or some dumb brawler or that dude good at running but never ever seen as intelligent and cunning. The girls ignore me, teachers too, white guys hate me, what did I do? What did I ever do to them? I’m just like you, I just want some friends, want the chance in life to succeed, man shut up about being freed that **** happened a hundred and fifty ******* years ago, I’m just as sick of hearing about it as you are 'Bro.'

  They say I have rights, they say that it’s fair, they say there’s a chance for me everywhere, but everywhere I look that’s not what I see, I’m put-down and degraded cons-tant-ly, told that I should join the team, or passed over in conversations about some thing. Forced to be friends with thugs that hate but to them at least I can relate, for just like me they was excluded or marginalized when told that they are deluded; they’ll never make it anyway, never achieve their dreams, never have their say so why even bother when no one cares how you feel, when your dreams in life won’t ever be real, when you end up in the streets and all you got left is to steal, when its still,

“Go back to Africa ******!”

...they say with zeal and the vitriol an violence comport surreal, Helen didn’t hold this secret to reveal nor does rap, truthfully, with these problems deal? Cocooned by stares and ****-sure glares, because your own sports brothers hate your *** and make you just wanna ditch that class, so here I ended up on the streets, hangin' round on my crew’s beats, acting tough, street-cred and clout and there your 'momma-an-sister' out n’ about, while here I am a fresh drop-out and can you guess what?

Here we come to take her purse, I clock your mom’s mouth and shove down your sister but ***** you boy I could’ve done much worse, she could’ve lost her life and come home in a hearse!

  Is this the ****** ya’ll wanted to see? All filled up inside with hatred, cause I was told that I would never make it, from day one got no attention, spent half of high school in afternoon detention, training me for my future as a prison convict yet another sign our society is depraved and sick. Given no chance or help or just some praise, no moments to shine and no Happy Days, he’s just a gang-banger, a **** they say? My actions may be worse than your words assail, and well, that may be me and I may be in jail but here’s something from my Grand Momma, a little encouragement goes a long way to change this drama...

You see me on the street you better ******* run cause you already know what’s in my jacket son and my hoodie will be up so you can’t see my face since I already know what you think of my race.

I.
And my hair became too much

It overtook the walls
made its way into the office on the sixth floor
and then hung
like a dripping willow’s branches
over the desks

By the time they thought to find me
I’d already been wrapped up in a cocoon of brown hair  
indistinguishable from the walls
that was now
also covered in the thick strands of undulated hair

II.
everything and everyone became consumed.


III.
In hairy chrysalis, the scissors uselessly
hung on some poor frantic pair of hands
forced into pupa

IV.
It was on the third day that the streets surrounding the corporate buildings were once again
populated with people, that a young woman in heels swore she heard a
faint choral singing coming from the 5th or 6th floor of a dreary grey building.


V.
everything cocooned
everyone consumed
all in pupa

VI.
During metamorphosis, a caterpillar digests itself leaving only behind imaginal discs
that shape it’s adult body.  

everything becomes consumed.

Someday, someday far away
when all the pain has passed
beyond the sea, the sun the stars
I'll find you...love...at last

Though raging storm
or cosmic ray
may tear my limbs apart
my love for you they cannot sway
for you possess my heart

Our Earthly lives hold many fears
remorseless in their quest
to break apart the bonding years
for which we've stood the test

Those precious times together
cocooned in love's embrace
a breathless bead upon my brow
that falls upon your face

Remember me my Angel's dream
as soon my life is through
for every sinew of my soul
belongs alone to you.

The radio alarm is a bit too strong
for his afternoon hangover taste.
He goes downstairs, sets the coffee to brewing,
rubs his hands through the hair on his face.
As he sits and he smokes, he can't quite think of the joke
she once told him about wooden eyes.

The coffee is ready, his hands are unsteady
as he pours his first cup of cure.
He tries to be happy he woke up today,
but whether being awake's good, he's not sure.
Outside it's raining, but he's gallantly straining
to keep his head and his spirits held high.

As soft as the flower bending out in its shower,
fiercer than hornets defending their hives,
the memories of sharing her secrets and sheets
run him through like sharp rusty knives.
He decides that his cup isn't quite strong enough,
takes the ***** from the shelf, gives a sigh.

He goes to the porch to put words to the torch
he still carries and knows whiskey just fuels.
Thunder puts a voice to his hammering heart.
Through ink, his knotted mind unspools,
writing of butterflies and of how his love lies
cocooned under unreachable skies.

From teardrops to streams to winter moonbeams
to a peach, firm and sweet, in the spring,
he writes of pilgrims and language and soft dew-damp grass
and how he sees her in everything.
He rambles and grieves, and he just can't believe
how much he has bottled inside.

He writes how the leaves, when they whisper in the breeze,
bring to mind her warm breath in his mouth,
how when walking through woods he loves the birdsong
when they fly back in the summer from the south
because she would sing too and he always knew
he wanted that sound in his ears when he died.

He writes even the streetlights, fluorescent and bright,
make him miss the diamond chips in her eyes,
how the fountain in the park plays watersongs in the dark
when he goes to make wishes on pennies
and while he's there he gets hoping
there will be some spare wishes
but so far there haven't been any.

He writes that the cold makes him think of the old
hotel where they spent most of a week,
lazing and gazing quite lovingly,
and how he brushed an eyelash off her cheek.
The crickets and frogs and all of the dogs
sound as mournful as he feels each night.

He writes about chocolate and fun in arcades,
he writes about stairwells and butchers' blades,
and closed-casket funerals, and Christmas parades,
then sad flightless birds and tiny brigades
of ants taking crumbs from the toast he had made,
and political goons with their soulless tirades,
old-timey duels and terrible grades,
strangers on  buses, harp music, maids,
the weird afterimages when all the light fades,
the pleasure of dinnertime serenades,
sidewalk chalk, wine, and hand grenades.

He writes of how much fun it would be to fly,
and saltwater taffy and ferryboat rides,

sitting on couches, scratched CD's,
pets gone too soon and overdraft fees,

the beach, the lake, the mountains, the fog,
David Bowie's funny, ill-smelling bog,

jewelry, perfume, sushi, and swans,
the smell of the pavement when the rain's come and gone,

and shots and opera, and Oprah and ***,
and tiny bikinis with yellow dots,

stained glass lamps, and gum and stamps,
her dancing shoes on wheelchair ramps,
that overstrange feeling of déjà vu,
filet mignon and cordon bleu,

bad haircuts at county fairs,
honey and clover, stockmarket shares,
the comfort of nestling in overstuffed chairs,
and her poking fun at the clothes that he wears,
and giraffes and hippos and polar bears,
cumbersome car consoles, monsters' lairs,
singing in public and ignoring the stares,
botching it badly while making éclairs,
misspelled tattoos, socks not in pairs,
people who take something that isn't theirs,
the future of man, and man's future cares,

why people so frequently lie
and bury themselves so deep in the mire
of monetary profits when money won't buy
a single next second because time's not for hire,
and that he sees her in everything.

Then unexpectedly, unbidden from where it was hidden
comes the punchline to the joke she had told him.
He laughs -- it's too much and his heart finally tears
as a blackness rolls in to enfold him.
The last thing he hears is birdsong in his ears --
the sound brings hope and is sweet as he dies.

Silver winged of steel
Buckled up
Cocooned in a cabin
No phones, no emails, no Internet
Racing down the runway
Soaring high above the ground
Distant specks of life
Winged of steel climbs though the skies
Clouds below, clouds above
Seat reclines, put in my earphones, close my eyes
I lose myself, soothed by the motion of the flight
Just a seat, a window, sky, music
Suspended, moving above the earth
Windswept heights
Countries, oceans, mountains, forests
Dawn to dusk
Smooth and turbulent
Dancing through life’s path in the skies
My breath of Serenity

I'm a Barbie Girl,
in a Barbie World.
Life's fantastic: I
feel like plastic,
aiming for an eighteen-inch waist because I can afford to throw my internal organs away.
I feel like plastic,
having to choose
between eating and breathing with not enough space for two tubes.
I feel like plastic,
a thirty-nine inch bust and three times the forehead.
I feel like plastic,
a size nine squeezed to a three, spending
three to nine avoiding mealtime because my weight loss book says
'Don't eat.'
I'm a Barbie Girl,
in a Barbie World.
Life's fantastic, but...
I'm not plastic.
I've sat here listening while you complain about society but I don't think you realize that
society is made by you.
You complain about masks but you're masked by your poetry and
trust me,
it's trendy:
Psychiatry.
A bottle of capsules captures your soul and your dreams,
fading
reality.
I cannot be defined because a definition leaves no room for change and I
am a flame,
ready to burn the cardboard box of priority you put over me.
All the cool kids are lesbians and thespians on about repressions
and I care,
I do,
I mean... I'm standing here among you.
But words are just air.
You can stand on this stage and tell me I'm beautiful, but
I am more than my face so
disregard my mild distaste for your
inspirational speech.
Now, this...
This isn't a call for help.
This is a call to arms.
This
is a battle cry because
I
am sick of waiting for a future that should've happened yesterday.
So use this air to live the words you say and
rally.
Do not soothe, because we've already been cocooned by soothed reality in
Shawnee,
Johnson County.
I'm a real girl,
in a real world.
Life's fantastic, and I
refuse to be plastic,
aiming for generic weight range based on content, not scale number.
I refuse to be plastic,
a neck moulded perfectly for both eating and breathing so I don't have to choose.
I refuse to be plastic,
a bust that you don't need to be sizing
when I've got eyes
a green not of romanticized meadows but of drunken
puke.
I refuse to be plastic,
a size nine foot in a size nine shoe,
spending three to nine
enjoying my meal times,
because my weight loss book is
chucked down the chute.
I'm a living girl
in a beautiful world.
Life's fantastic,
because I'm not plastic.

In tunnelled darks, pastes of reminisce
Outward disjoint points to irrelevance
Spooned and coned in cold mountaintops
The darks of sorrows and trails of struggles

Persistence patterns of self satire in gloom
Sunken in identity crisis of broad oceans
Stormy seas spotlighted by beatific stars
Trajectory of spilled ice in recurrent motions

A mere past cocooned by fears and tears
Clouded in thoughts that cruise and decline
Greyed white imprinted by sudden sadness
Madness echoes on arched ancient bricks

Checkered maniacs of fulfilled passions
Filed and iced in cased prolific memories
Cascades of sunshine tickles to warmth
Orchards of glow that bloom and grow

Picked, ticked and unpacked from boxes
Attacked, nurtured and stored in bliss
Eventful lessons unfolds in untold augury
A mission as the known permeates and fade

Windowed eyes all line up in parade
Mirrored lights digest the haunted haste
A stranger to self, an ally to another
A dance of bright entwine a twist of blur

you're not going to read this, and why would you?*

it would be either
naive
or
stupid
of me to expect even so much as a text;
as if our separation implies the ******* of a proverbial
Berlin Wall* between us,
where less than a week ago we were the same *country,
our landscapes of rolling hills,
city skylines,
and forests
so overgrown
that only
slices
of sunlight
could parse the ever-greened canopy,
phasing into one another seamlessly.

We may have been our own provinces,
but aside from small street signs declaring
Welcome to Jen
and
Welcome to Kyran...
aside from separate cognitive centers of self-government
between
your shock-blue eyes and fleek eyebrows,
between
my navy-blue irises and grey,
sunken sockets,
we were a willing confederation of persons,
impulses,
                dreams,
                             ambitions,
                                              anxieties,
                                                              lo­ves,
                                                                ­        and betrayals---

In our past, and provisional separations,
it was your betrayal that pushed us both
into the doldrums of love-lost confusions
and self-hatred;
not that there would be much value
in assigning a blame
with hurt still attached,
because the point,
it seems to me,
was that we somehow made it through everything together.

There wasn't a personal adversity we didn't learn to conquer
---until I began to fade away from you--
lanky, thin, often broke, and depressed,
I retreated.

I cocooned myself in studies of the past and the present;
for some reason, despite my overwhelming love for you,
despite the unspoken commitment I had made
to you
in my head
so long after your second infidelity
when I realized I was finally over it
and that I loved you more than I'd ever loved anyone before
--and in ways I never could have foreseen--

I backed-off,
I fell back,
I disengaged,

and

I essentially abandoned you.

After your impulsive infidelities,
when you admitted you hadn't been
nor were you in your
"right mind,"
you promised you'd get better.

You saw councilors, therapists, psychiatrists,
and psychologists... and you did.

You really did get better.

You overcame all that had been pulling you so low and so far into the darker vicissitudes of irrationality.

And yet, when it came to my own faults,
inadequacies, and disengagement,
I lacked your courage.

I didn't even try to overcome them.
In my self-imposed screen-gazed solitude,
I often thought of how much I loved you;
of how I hoped you might just wait out my confused disengagement
like I forgave you for your betrayals which had,
in their times,
hollowed me out emotionally for months on end.

The thing is, you wouldn't have blamed me if I'd left you then.
You would have understood, and let me go,
regardless of the heavy pain in your solar plexus
and the hollow feeling in your heart.

Though it never came to that,
I now have the chance to do for you what you'd have done for me.

I don't blame you for leaving.

I understand,
and regardless of this heavy pain in my solar plexus
and the perceptive hollowing of my heart,
I will watch you as you go,
        I will wave,
I will live with the weight of regret and memory,
and remember what you wrote in a poem once
when we parted ways after your first infidelity.

Sitting in the university library, reading on Moses,
what went thru your head was

"closure feels more like i can go on without you, i’m glad i met you, however an emptiness drenched in self-regret will always remain."

Maybe I’m just weird
But it seems rather
Strange to me

That it is only I
The gay atheist
Will say the pledge

All the others around me
Cocooned in warm ignorance
Refuse to address rights only they have

Knowledge is butterflies in flight.
A doubting caterpillar needs
His faith in metamorphosis.
Without it his future: horror.

Mother gone this way before him.
Father gone before his time here.
The only hope: whispered instinct.
A still sound in the face of fear.

"Those who've gone before me", says he
"Loved me and wanted good for me."
"They willed me to believe in life
Beyond: the metamorphosis."

Every day, eat of leaf. Chew. Rest.
Do not wander ye from safety.
Heed ye these rules, follow the way.
Know ye that our decree's from love.

Brother tells tall tales, adventure
Excitement, a world of wonder
To have now! No waiting, no need
To wait, fear, hope. Enjoy it now!

Brother says: "metamorphosis
Is a tale made by those who want
To control and manipulate.
To keep us from pleasures in life."

Brother says: "The dark chrysalis
Is a grave, death, ending, final.
Now is time to discover.
What tastes good is the true good.

Only now do we have the chance
To learn, explore, see and enjoy."
He's eaten leaves outside the path.
Brother says: "they are juicy good!

Come all, leave this way mapped by those
Who want to keep you from juicy
Leaves and the whole wide world to see"
Brother says. "Don't hope, enjoy now."

Sister left the barque, left the safe
Path to the leaves mapped out by some
Unknown cartographer. Unknown!
She's not back. He hopes for her best.

But our caterpillar here, friend,
Has chosen the old dreams and hope.
To follow the path mapped to leaves
That nourish the body and heart.

He has chosen to believe that
The wisdom of age and instinct
Is more trustworthy than the word
Of youthful brother's juicy world.

His doubts he's cocooned in faith's silk.
These bland leaves he eats for promise
Of sweet flower's nectar beyond.
Today's toil for tomorrow's joy.

Doubt frightens. The chrysalis looms.
No control, nature compels it.
Unfair, afraid, the silk spins tight.
In pain, the world grows dark and still.

He faces his end. He must choose
To listen to the still, small sound.
Have faith he's not schizophrenic.
Believe in more passed the cocoon.

His ancestral council and creed
He chooses to embrace and trust
To face his end with dream and hope.
His doubts cocooned by faith in Love.

Butterflies are knowledge in flight.
For at their end, faith is fulfilled.
These butterflies their joy have reached,
Through faith in metamorphosis.

I feel my warmth,
slick and ready,
Wanton and soft
I love myself.

Trim and smooth,
Tempo slow to begin,
My nerve endings electric,
I love myself.

Eyes closed, I can picture your body,
feel your hands all over mine,
Wet now, dripping.
I love myself.

My kitty is purring now,
faster and steady,
With each caress and stroke.
I love myself.

******* now cupped,
Cocooned in bliss,
Rubbing my ******,
I love myself.

Eyes rolled, toes clenched,
Fireworks dancing, I BLAST OFF
Writhing, moaning, releasing
I love myself.

Weakened bliss flows down
Worries and cares removed,
Smile on face
I love myself.

Laying on a bed of sand
Soft as feather downing
You take hold of my hand
I am floating, drowning
Feeling the blue salt fill me
Your breath kisses my eye
Taking me down to see
Where the turtles fly
Amongst rainbow coral
And fish, timid and shy
Hide amongst a skeletons hull

Gossamer clouds waft over
Driven by a sun tanned breeze
As we lay, cocooned in our ardour
Surrounded by quiet seas
I can feel the blue salt fill me
As your breath kisses my eye
And it’s taking me down to see
Where the turtles fly
Amongst the rainbow coral
And see the fish so shy
Hiding in a shipwrecked hull

Fall surrendered, snow fell, and Ruth’s mother bought a blanket for her daughter’s seventeenth Christmas. It wasn’t a very expensive or spectacular blanket; it was extraordinary only in the fact that it hadn’t been picked mindlessly from a Christmas list but had instead been chosen lovingly and thoughtfully. She knew her daughter was forever chilly and would love the blanket’s fleece side, and she laughed to see that it had snaps just like the blanket she herself had spent her evenings cocooned in when she was Ruth’s age. So she wrapped the blanket more beautifully than the other gifts and set it gently under the tree.

The sun stretched, adults yawned, and Ruth opened her mother’s gift on Christmas morning. At the sight of the blanket, her grandmother’s eyes welled with memories of Ruth’s mother, looking almost identical to how Ruth looked now, wrapped up in her own blanket with the snaps. Ruth admired the gentle color of the blanket’s slick side and stroked the fleece side against her check before setting it on top of the rest of her gifts. She thanked her mother enthusiastically (she’d always been acutely aware of her reaction to gifts in front of their givers) and laughed good-naturedly at her grandmother’s hovering tears before hugging them down her face.

Naked trees shivered, frost iced the landscape, and at her mother’s suggestion Ruth spent the winter with the blanket layered beneath her covers. She nestled beneath it every night, but felt guilty when she couldn’t love it any more than anything else she had in her room, and she never snapped it around herself as her mother had done. She’d tried to wear it like that the day she was given the blanket, but it had made her feel uncomfortable and constrained. So instead she slept with the blanket spread flat beneath her sheets through that winter and into the spring.

Spring sprung, flowers bloomed and Ruth bounced for a moment on her toes before diving headfirst into his eyes. The weeks passed for her not in hours and days but in giggles and kisses, and she was surprised when her usually analytical, suspicious mind released her heart and allowed it to love recklessly and entirely. Making her bed one giddy morning, Ruth stroked the soft, fleece side of her blanket and then the slick, smooth side, and she thought of sweet picnics and stargazing from quiet hilltops. She folded the blanket and kept it in her car in preparation for any such spontaneity.

The moon beamed loudly, prom streamers fluttered, and Ruth danced with him wildly. Her classmates all felt just as immortal, and everyone laughed and spun and anticipated together. When they finally left the dance, Ruth’s body was still coursing with the night’s excitement, intoxicated with young love and the bright eternity that stretched before her. He brought her to a small hilltop where she spread the slick side of the blanket against the grass, and the two lay trembling there beneath the stars. Finally, he wrapped his mouth and his heart and his body around hers, and her innocence leaked slowly onto the fleece.

The moon slid drunkenly behind the hills, birds began to wake, and Ruth flew home on her own audacity, leading the dawn behind her. In the dim light, she noticed the garbage can her father had brought to the curb the night before, and she decided to spare her mother the pain of discovering the once soft fleece now stained with rebellion. Quietly, she lifted the lid and dropped the blanket inside. Its snaps scraped loudly against the can for an instant, but then the morning quickly swallowed the noise. By the time the lid banged back down, Ruth was rushing back to the house, her blanket already forgotten.

Several miles beyond, the dark mountain
looms threateningly - mirroring my mood
as we both brood coldly. Snow clouds hold
grip of its peaks and melt in an icy drizzle to the
umber, wind-swept valley below.

Inside this dank motel room with its peeling
walls, my addiction is both hidden and enhanced.
The room's grimy window is closed to the world
by a threadbare curtain which hangs
askew, sealing me inside my drunken cocoon.
I can now lift bottles to my mouth with abandon,
gratefully lacking the contempt of others.

A tinny television mutters a string of profanities
from a corner, and a faucet drips incessantly into
the filthy sink. It all seems to echo into what I
have evolved. I have become as this dead fly,
scraping back and forth along the window sill,  
manipulated by currents of stale air.

_

You're a flower-child,
spread on the bed with
flowers stuck to your little
head,

with Ginsberg & Whitman on
the shelf & feminine mystique
dripping from the
ceiling.

Moon-lady,
Venus,
tides rising & crushing
the shore,

while I snuggle
my flannel for warmth,
trying
not to be a bore.

Framed pictures as you
reminisce on when we
were younger &
untamed.

"We can still be untamed,
we've been framed
for uninsanity!"

But you call me a fool
& put your
porcelain head in my neck
& I feel foolish.

In the damp light of a cloudy day,
muscles aching, waves
crashing,
uncontrollable urges.

Stranded in the pregnant
belly of a ***** secret city
drawing
the red rose of secret union

& we are sheltered
in the ****** warmth of the
blankets,
cocooned like little monsters.

The calming ocean
& the calming whispers
& the tiny kisses
surround me, blot out my thoughts.

You sing me to
sleep &  run little
fingers
through my knotted hair.

Your tiny dollar store
Buddhas belch incense
over
the backdrop of your perfume.

The wind chimes
twinkle & whimper on the
porch where the swingset
rocks in the rain.

"I wish you weren't
engaged but I don't mind
breaking a few taboos."

You laugh like a soft mad fairy
& look down
at your phone & I turn over
on my naked side.

You laugh a funeral
giggle & I know I should have
worshipped you sooner
at the pillow-altar.

Show me Heaven without
death &
the Garden of Earthly Delights
devoid of sin,

show me your sharpened fox
grin &
the way sunset ripples
at your breath,

I will show you sacrifice
& the hidden light
of our lives
in the damp of the night.

You                                                              ­                                       have
 
  always                                                ­                                          been 
 
    a butterfly;                                                       ­              waiting for
        your day to                                                       break from that
          cocoon. At least                                       cocoons are warm
              and cozy, they                 say.         Cozy, until someone
                walks by, piercing holes,      creating a draft. Though
                    it’s easier to breathe and much clearer to see.
            May it be better to pierce        holes in the cocoon than
           in those completed wings?        Creating more flexibility,
               it is much easier to                     expand, though it
                  raises the risk                          of being shattered                    
                   before those                                 wings have
                         fully                                          matured.

To all music morons
Glued to their earphones
The look-alike clones
Sunk in the dune of tunes
In the crowded buses
In public places
With drooping eyes like a yogi
Cracking heads and bursting ears
Thinking it the only escape
Salvation’s gateway
Balm for boredom
Pleasure’s pinnacle,
Don’t just fritter away
The one chance to be here
For a brief while
And leave with a blind existence
And a blasted hearing,
And before it’s late
Redraw your fate
Take off the headset
Open the yogic eyes
And in the yogi’s spirit
Give the world a good look
Recreate in her beauties
Make her melody your pastime
Her rhythm your heart’s rhyme,
So you don’t regret
When your time comes along
That you never could tell a bird from her song!

Here in the heart of my dreams
I’m cocooned in your embrace,
And the moon’s romantic beams
Shine softly on your face
As I relish and enjoy
Every memorable minute
Where nothing can destroy
Our love so infinite.
No one can interfere while
We’re as close as a heartbeat;
Chasing darkness away with a smile,
Loves’ sunshine does it defeat!
As long as I’m nestled here with you
It’s like all my dreams have come true.

Images extracted from
the tapestry of my dreams.
Sewn intricate...
Into a patchwork.

A quilt,
embroidered with lavish sequins and ornate beads.
Bringing forth fantastical motifs...
A dazzling display
upon the backdrop of my dreamscape.

Yet...
This mosaic of dreams
does not warm me so.
It never lasts.

They fall away like autumn leaves
come the dawning sun.
They get washed out and pulled into the tide,
as the waves beat upon the shore of wakefulness.
They fade into fragmented memories
that make no sense...
Incoherent and disjointed.

Eventually, they disappear...
For they do not belong
in a world of worldly things
and ticking clocks.
Their intangible and mismatched nature
render them inconsequential...
Naturally...
They get misplaced.

But I am stubborn.

I will fashion such a blanket.
One that skirts the boundary
of this realm and the other.

I will tailor it so...

So that...
I will sleep tonight,
swaddled tight and cocooned within its
glorious seams.
Tucked within the safety and warmth of
this blanket...
Woven immaculate...
Out of
worldly things and breathtaking dreams.

Leave us in a bedroom
a locked room
both bound by a fleeting veneration
but no tangible definition
and windows will fog up
with excess anxious laughter
and phlegmmed throats
til the glass transforms
transparent to translucent
so the outside world becomes
an informed guess about
which coloured shape is going
                   where.
The door handle will twist into the room’s
home grown central nervous system
backed by rising voices
rising pulses
assuring ourselves it is
everybody outside
who is trapped and not us
because ‘cosy’ has scribbled over
‘cramped’ between the sheets of peeling
wallpaper and bodies upon bodies upon
bodies only excites.
We will stay in bed
cocooned around this single duvet
and distracted into its folds because this
is how we choose to spend
free will. Don't
murmur about the locked door
and even when it opens for
lack of air or food
so we tentatively tread through into the
open, or perhaps closed,
I beg you to
grab my wrist and pull me back and whisper
tear yourself up
decrease with me
because this will always be the one place we’ll happily suffocate.

My mouth is full of moths
My words are not pretty
They do not flutter out with grace and ease
Instead
Twitching as they find their exit from my lips
They are not butterfly
With a name so smooth that it rolls off the tongue
I am not monarch
But
The decaying flesh it preys upon
The contrast between beauty and reality
I do not know why
Why
People like me are attracted to light
I guess it makes since
To swim towards brightness
When you've spent so much of your life in the darkness
Cocooned in between empty spaces
Nesting in silk spun from my own silence
I have spent months inside my shell
Learning how to find my own voice
Learning how to speak my own language
Hearing myself talk for 18 years but for the first time actually listening
Like moth
Touch sends me fleeting
Like moth
Attention back into hiding
I am not conspicous
Nor do I crave to be
Like caterpillar
We
Are all given blind hope
Told that someday
We will be noticed
Visible
Beautiful
But some spend so much time
Preparing for glory
That they forget storybooks lie
That in real life
The very hungry caterpillar
Who was promised butterfly
Becomes moth
Moth
What most see as ugly
And intrusive
Chewing holes in your finest clothing
Making home unwanted places
Moth is undesired
Butterfly is welcomed
Tell me why
One is invited in and the other shut out
Moth is not pretty
Moths lack ofbeauty
Is enough
To disregard it
All at once
Different is enough
To disregard all at once
Do not disregard me
Because I am not ideal
Because i am not fully painted winged beauty
We as a society only stop to see what catches the eye
Unable to notice the intricisies
Of darkness
So look a little closer
Try a little harder
Because if anything is to be known
It is that beauty
Is not
In the obvious.

The lizard king came alive in the walls of prophets,
A shrine to help follow the subjects of the topic.
I lost my mind, but found it inside the tombs of those left behind.

I left a part of my soul on La Ciegna Boulevard.
The looking glass had the last laugh,
Some smiled.
The sun dials told the time accurately.

The shadows followed me from one side of the city to the other.
All the way to the coast of the continent.
It was here I found the confidence that was lost in the dominance of you.

We broke on through to the other side,
but it was too soon,
and the other side was the same like butterflies.

Cocooned in symmetrical thoughts of the stars in your eyes.
It’s no surprise we both knew it all at that moment.
Our toes exposed naked in the sand and lost in emotion.

Muck bit her ivory nightgown, as if earth hungering
after her...the delicate collapse of a napkin,she.
Hours poured atop her head, her shaggy, silvery
mane suspended--its reluctant bounce captured
at midpoint...as a spiderweb under ultraviolet light.
Desert sands lost in contemplation, reminiscent of
her flesh--divulge her core as she sleeps in a
fetal position.
Her body spasms awkwardly...its will visibly slowed
from initial motion.
As the paralysis experienced by prey amid the astral
annals of nightmares.
She'll rise into that shine, wonder at the nightmare's
symbology...talk to her garden--whilst thinking of her
time to come.


Silkworm breached the parcel
of time, its cocooned inertia
coarsed through the opalescent
eye of God to Godhood.
Of time's ruination redeemed
in a solitary work...cupped
airless the unbridled form of
a trapezist spent itself.
Opened and closed somersaults
atripped a piece of said space...
nothingness regenerated to
move, to take step of itself.
A self-argumentative abstraction
glowed...undid its silken flag--
firmly planted in an undiscovered
region...her time come.

what i said:
"you sound rough this morning."


what i meant:
"your voice is lavender and honey and tea time and supernovas colliding with gentle breezes and if i could wake up to it, just once, cocooned in a tangle of your arms and couch cushions and that blanket you keep in the back of your car, i swear by the stars in my eyes no one on this godforsaken planet would be out of earshot of my singing

i hope that tonight when i dream of you--it is no longer a matter of uncertainty, but anticipation--you speak like you've just overslept your alarm and frantically motored yourself to where i am, like is the case today.

i wish you had chosen me but if i could only listen to you speak to me, about anything--rivers or math homework or football or belonging or music or even your girlfriend--i promise i would listen with the beating urgency of a swimmer in a frozen stream, i would savor each word from your lips, like they were the spring and i was the underground daisy waiting for your kiss.

and in precisely three days i will have an essay to compose about a beautiful topic that would consume me thoroughly were it not for the memory of your groggy morning voice, so full of raspy complacency i can't breathe but instead of fulfilling my obligations i will be hashing out halfway comprehensible poetry about you and crying about how i cannot recreate the sound of your voice with any combination of hollowly clicking keys.

you are so beautiful that i could spend the remainder of my life with a five-subject notebook, scrawling 'your eyes. your smile. your hands. your voice' over and over endlessly and die feeling as though i had lived a thousand years of quiet adventure.

you are so much and too much for me and i have no idea why you see as much in me as you do but i will not question it, for fear that if i were to come too close to you, to run my fingers along the marvel of your face you would shrivel and unfurl into nonexistence, like the leaf in the fire."


and also:
"why can't your voice always sound like this?"

and finally:
"******* you're attractive"

Some people think that they have the right
To go throughout life pointing out imperfections
Everyone has their own flaws,
But people need to think and realize: I am the perfect me

I might not be a Barbie doll
I might not have perfect hair
I know my body is not ideal
Sometimes it just isn’t fair

I might not be the brightest girl
Sometimes I struggle in school
I might not be Valedictorian
But I’m sure not a fool
I know I am the Perfect Me

I might not be the most athletic
Sports might just not be my thing
I won’t always get first place
But in a competition, the best is all I bring

I might not be the perfect daughter
Sometimes I speak my mind
Some days I’ll admit I’m a little lazy
But I have never gotten behind
I am the perfect me


I am not the most organized girl
Some days it’s a balancing act to get everything done
Some days it would be so easy to give up
But I know sticking to it will pay off in the long run

I am not the most valued girl
Some days it’s as if I weren’t there
I am not always the one they go to
But nevertheless they still care

I am not the most popular girl in the school
Nor do I have the favored styles
I might not have the best ideas
But with individuality by my side, I can go miles
I am the perfect me

I might not have the best self esteem
I don’t walk with my nose in the air
I will admit, your words do hurt
But I try my hardest to realize, I shouldn’t care

As you can see I have my flaws
I am not afraid to be one from the crowd
Some days I feel a bit insecure
But I have every right to be proud

Shoot me down
But I will only stand higher
Tell me I am wrong
And that I don’t belong
And I have one thing to say, I am the perfect me

Tell me? Is anyone perfect?
Does anyone have the right to judge?
I know I am far from perfect
But I will continue to stay strong

We have all either been on one side of the story
Being bullied or the bullier
And I want to ask you, what made you feel good?
About telling someone their not good enough?
-=
All of us have fought our own battles
And some of them have been lost
We have all had our bad times and struggles
But still we only stand stronger

Be a hand when someone has fallen
Be a shoulder to cry on when someone’s upset
You never know how much it can help them
Or how much they need it in the end.

I only stand stronger when you say those things
My scars only seal open wounds
They are within my sheet of armor
One that I’ll never undo



White, black, Hispanic
Blue, brown, green or hazel
Short, tall, thin, thick
We are all beautiful

Love me or hate me
Judge me or criticize
Blinded by seeing
Only what’s on the outside

Everyone in this world is imperfect,
Everyone is a shining star cocooned, ready to fly
Everyone has their own flaws, even though some want to deny,
The next time someone tries to point out your flaws, tell them, bold and strong
I am no less than the perfect me!

I'm a little drunk and it's as if my head is being pounded against a brick wall
But I know the sound if your voice is my favorite song and I can't stop singing the melody

I'm a little depressed and yet I can't stop running around this boring town
But I know I love the way your body strides and I'd like to dance next to you

I'm a little tired and I wish I was asleep, safely cocooned under your dark grey sheets
But I know that the past can never be relived, so I will have to sing myself to sleep tonight.

I envy the cool darkness, now we're apart
And the warmth which wrapped your body:
Cocooned by your breathing,
The secret shadows and angles
Which gradually changed every hour
Like a dark sundial recording
All your limbs tiniest convolutions.

I know there was a sort of
Kabalistic synchronicity
Some algebraic function
And if only I'd studied more;
If only I'd applied myself better
I wouldn't have gotten all the equations wrong
Lost the notes, failed the exam.

I remember those once acute angles
How they fit so perfectly my body's contours
Our seams vanished together, smooth soldered
In the same molten dream; mouth to mouth
Torso upon torso, moving wave unfurled
Water of twin oceans, mingled-
Now it's only the moonlight that burns.