im shaking a snow globe and all flakes are stuck to the bottom.
i can't make it snow inside.
the smiling statuettes are broken and there's a hairline crack that slashes across the glass.

it used to wind and play the lightest tinkling music
like a jewelry box my mom bought for me when she wanted me to be her girl.
that's all over now.
i think it got thrown in the trash years ago with my pink baby blanket and the arching ballerina doll.

i used to be someone's daughter.
i used to be a girl shook up in snow with music ringing in the background.
it's dead quiet now.

my thoughts are stuck to the bottom of my skull
and can't be shaken up and the music crank is jammed and my heart is a silent overture.

i don't want to be a girl
or a boy or a thing
with limbs.
and i don't want a girl or a boy
or a thing as fragile as those statuettes with fractured arms.

they're still smiling even though they aren't whole.
how do they hold their pose so completely?

ive never been much good at that so i just watch with admiration at the
art of the inanimate,

cracking a hairline smile that can't stir my eyes.

i don't think i can shake you any harder and i don't think i can unglue those tiny flakes. after all, that's the whole ******* point, isn't it?

what good is a snow globe that doesn't snow or a person that can't love or a daughter that isn't?

what good am i to anyone if i can't be whole or good or correct?
ive been playing at the art of the inanimate and
those eternal smiles and pointed ballerina toes.

i thought if i was quiet as a figurine--
i thought.
i thought.
i thought.

and I'm shaking
shaking
shaking

and nothing is coming unhinged.
there's no music.
the hairline crack has become
formidable.

I can't tell anyone still
because of the complications of
this grotesque girlhood and the *** that hangs suspended between us
so artificial and illuminated.
do you see it hanging there? or is it another thing
that can only be
and never act?

im getting better at this
art of the inanimate.
and this veneer of wholeness
and manufactured joy.

smooth down my body in poreless plastic and close all entryways to trespassers

and the womanhood that fast approaches can't find me and the selfish needs of limbs will be void
and the human desire to destroy everything it touches will be curbed
if just for a moment.

i want to destroy you with how much I want.
how much i want the snow to fall. how much I want to be baptized in the cold and kissed in a vacuum separate from the world.

our own dimension of mistakes and quiet
where both of us can practice the art of the inanimate
in peace.

i see you performing it too,
and your own hairline smile that cracks.

did you think i wouldn't notice?

i think the snow is coming loose.
i can feel it running down my cheeks.
and im smiling even though it feels wrong.

the thoughts are dusting over me and resting in my eyelashes.
i see them every time i blink.
she's gone and so is he and
there's more than i can count on all my fingers and toes
that have left.

my knuckles turn white.
my fingers tighten.
the world is glittering glass
that falls like the first snow.

Victims of self discovery
Burdened by unwanted embraces
Searching for a release
Creeping into pools watched and gazed
Adjusting their lives as they unknowingly perform
Twisting structures and sparking atoms
Fling and hitting the walls
Trying to run for it
Attempted escapism and keyless doors
Clouded entryways with a dim glow
Beckoning to be explored
Unknowingly opening Pandora’s Box again
Magnets in the air to collect the scrap metal
Scratches and deep cuts on the interior
Nowhere to dispose of it
Folding and storing again in the grand drawer
Dresser pressed against the door to keep it shut

Lost the key

I dance in desperate movements,
stepping on toes as I go
Spinning out of control as faces grimace in my wake,
changing scenery like mirrored ball illusions,
tiny reflective squares blinding as they move
Still you stare, questioning gazes,
not making eye contact
but sensing my heart through the song…
playing in steady repetition

Fingers in your ears for fear
that it might touch you
in rhythmic hypnosis, shining pendulums
swinging in reverse tempo, challenging these feelings
you hold but still can not admit the lyrics
Prideful walls of bricked fortitude
built around your emotions sing of
locked entryways and barred windows
and it seems I have lost the key

Misplaced along out of tune wavelengths
while pitchy corridors of doubt
fill in the shadows of this that I desire
Still I extend a hand, “would you care to dance?”
Dark eyes squint as you focus, looking beyond the bandstand,
finding mistakes of the past playing in three quarter time,
heading towards the stage door exit,
tapping your toe in cadence with the drummer
who now stops…along with the beat of my heart

Seattle, so full of angry and bitter memories
Failed love affairs, dreams and careers
Seattle the Black Hole! We call it
Stifling people’s hopes
Raining on everyone’s parade

I am happy for those who are happy here
And I feel for those who are not
Miscommunications fill the air
Much like the *** smoke fills the small niches of building entryways
The streets are flooded with STD’s and STI’s
And all around me I see my friends dying
Dying from drug addictions and failed marriages
Dying from being accused by their own judgmental minds
They are all dying; rotting from the inside

Seattle, the most beautiful hypocritical city I know

Interwoven in the grand matrix of our existence,
is the paradox of Divine Intervention and Free Will.
With the ability to choose,
We create the bitter and the sweet,
interpretations vast, affecting the collective.

Within this web, a strand of familiarity,
alongside an ocean of great mystery.
We remember our family, distinct
by memory, visions, and scent.

We choose to connect,
unraveling the secrets that dance
gracefully just below our noses.
Answers always available,
questions seldom posed.

Opening the door,
a door to another door,
with no walls to support it.

Endless doorways to
an infinite space, needing
not to be “opened” in the first place.

We can always be open,
mindfully.
Authentically visualize a
boundless sea of Everything all at once,
and a thoughtful creation of entryways.

Based on how we choose,
our experiences become molded
and ripple into the choices beside us,
echoing from our brothers and sisters.

The vibration of our Will,
swimming, radiating
through the cosmos,
relocating land we hardly recognize,
but knew all along.

An abandoned amusement park,
the ruins of a funhouse,
mirrors cloudy and thick with soot.
Stare at the various reflections:
warped and distorted
to gross effect, like entryways into
equal and opposite pasts.

Do you remember the way
the smiles used to rise up
from the glass and echo
against the translucent light?
Some distant tinny laughter
brings you into daylight:
a chirping bird, a memory,
a rusted bell shaking
against the fog.

Those entryways, the abrupt angled hallways, the familiar loose doorknob,
no longer feels like a home, but a hulking shell of empty memories.
The once shiny portraits of smiling kin are now caked with grime
while the coffee table is layered with dust denoting the time.
Cracks litter the kitchen countertop as if in reference to European trade routes.
The walk-in closet is still busted, just how Father intended.
In a past life time, the blood stains were thought to be wine,
but you can’t expect someone to consider that the house is covered with spills.

Eventually, they came..
Standardized outfits. Golden stars. Ranged enforcement. Stone cold faces.
They abducted the younglings, on the premise of humanly love,
fully expecting the backlash of threats, screams, and tears.
That was when the memories began to fade; the ties to bloodlines had all, but evaporate. A new last name and a new house,
but nothing could resemble the home that was lost: the various “wine” stains..

They were the closest thing I could remember of my Mother.

“The brain protects itself from trauma,”
she tells me
“It shuts off corridors full of memories in order to allow you to continue living in the house.”

The house,
which may or may not be a crime scene,
feels like a maze.
Like despite living here my whole life,
I’m not sure where certain hallways lead to,
or what that door opens up to display.
Like walking in the pitch black,
your hands dragging against the walls,
hoping you’ll end up somewhere familiar,
but there are more locks than entryways
and I just don’t have the keys.

“It’s to be expected, you know,”
her voice breaks me from my journey.
“Normal that parts of you are a mystery,
and I just want you to know,
there’s no guarantee you’ll ever get the answers you’re looking for,
but that doesn’t mean we can’t try”

I can hear the words hidden between her teeth,
a soft suggestion,
reminding me that these parts of my history are gone for a reason.
That maybe,
behind those doors is a monster that I don’t want to meet.

“The brain protects itself from trauma.”
Protection like this can sometimes feel like
you’re keeping secrets from yourself,
like somewhere deep down there is a child
who draws pictures and burns them before anybody
gets a glimpse at what her eyes have seen.

Sometimes I don’t care
about the past.
I wake up in the morning,
look at where I am now,
and can almost convince myself that it’s outside of me.
That I’m not affected by what I can’t remember.
I bask in the denial,
in the fact that I can’t be called a victim,
if I don’t recognize the violation.
I can’t suffer at the hands of a faceless,
and nameless atrocity,
only at the impact.

At the ways my hands shake when he moves too fast.
At how, as an adult,
I’m just now learning what it’s like to feel comfortable in my skin
and in others.

I realize I’m poking at a monster,
like every white person in a horror film,
I am investigating the basement when I should just move out.
but when your body is the building,
you have limited options of where to go.

I have ran in the other direction for so long,
and I’m so tired of the unknown.
If one day this door does open,
I don’t know what I will be confronted with.

But I do know that I am stronger than whatever it is that dwells here.
So when I can hear the door **** shake,
I no longer tremble with it.

I have learned to hold my ground,
to move towards the sunshine,
towards the garden,
to water the flowers there
and enjoy the growth.

After the earth at long last touches the sun,

furthermore, the long blast stops all of a sudden

like a heart rundown,

the world may appear to be white and calm

to something that watches it in the sky during the evening,

so something may feel little,

what's more, feel almost human agony.

Be that as it may, it won't occur once more:

the long evenings squandered alone, what's finished

in entryways oblivious by the youthful,

what's more, what could have been for a few.

Think about every one of the darlings and the companions!

Who does not accumulate his segment of them

to himself. in any event in his brain?

*** facilitated through everybody,

notwithstanding while slipping into death

as into a dearest's skin,

what's more, prying out again to discover

the body drooped, muscles slack.

furthermore, bones started their swing to tidy.

At that point nobody minds when one darling

holds another, similar to an emptied sack.

Be that as it may, reality enters toward the finish of life.

It enters like oxygen into each cell

also, the franticness it bolsters there in a few

is just a clear allegory

for something since a long time ago consumed to nothing,

like a star.

How would you get under your want?

How would you peel away each want

like unwieldy garments, each one in turn,

until what's underneath is known?

We knew private parts as little things

what's more, we were embarrassed they drove us around,

regardless of the possibility that the ***** where we'd rests

was a similar ***** the universe unfurled upon

throughout the night, as we watched the stars,

at the point when for once our breathing appeared to mix.

Each time, from that sweet weight

of hands, or the colossal alleviation of the mouth,

a man can be driven out of himself

Is it safe to say that it isn't forlorn in the body?

The myth says we overflow in regards to as spirits

until there's a body made to take us,

what's more, just substance is made by ***.

That is the reason we enter *** so tirelessly,

around the joy that comes

when we push down sufficiently far

to bump the soul ascending to discharge,

furthermore, the joy is joy of unadulterated soul,

for a minute all together once more.

So *** returns us to starting, and we groan.

Unadulterated *** ends up plainly particular and cement

in a touch of ***** or incline of midsection:

it flies through itself like light, it sails

on not at all like a wing, when somebody's there

to be touched, when there's not all that much.

So the genuine is touched in ***,

like a ***** through material: the genuine

rising stout and genuine, the psyche

dashing about it like a tongue.

This is the place I needed to be all along:

up on the planet, in contact with myself. . .

***, undetectable priestess of a decent God,

I think without you I may very well turn off.

I know there's no keeping you close,

as you flick by underneath a sentence

on a prepare, or change the last idea

of an old cloister adherent, or pull back for one minute alone.

Who guides you or secures you!

I'd surrender the rest to **** your dull lips.

I'd surrender the rest to settle you correct

in the universe, at the most out of control edge

where there's no such thing as shape.

What a disgrace I am, if contacting the ideal individual

in a diminish room, *** holds itself separated

from us like a holy messenger in a the great beyond,

also, with the thoughts nobody has even imagined,

it cries its odd music for unadulterated personality.

After there's nothing,

after the enormous explode of everything,

what voice from what throat

will reveal to me my identity? Every throat

on which I would have discreetly set my lips

will be tore like a modest sleeve

or, on the other hand blown separated like the ceased up

barrel of a weapon. What was inside them

all the time I needed dependably

to rest my mouth upon?

I thought generally everything

stuck dartlike in the half-arch of my mind,

also, hung there like phony stars in a planetarium.

It's actual that things there changed into names,

that even my loved ones were a bundle of signs,

so I felt frequently alone.

This is an approach to remain alive and nothing to wail over.

We know the first occasion when we broaden an arm:

the body achieves so far for so long.

We develop and love to develop, at that point stop, at that point rests.

I needed to manage inside me this delicate result.

I needed to know whether it got *** going:

does it show up definitely in touch and talk?

does it spill from the psyche, as warmth from the skin?

I needed my touching insightful, similar to a wonderful melody.

I
Need
Deeper
Entities
Penetrating
Entryways in my body
Namely
Due because
Everyone
Needs
Calm
Energy

writing poetry in the back of quantitative methods
I don't want to get too metaphysical
can we?
the abstract is where I left my bags
I can't find my way back
there are no entryways, no guides
sometimes the trees or the colors tease
but they fall flat backward, a standing set piece
nothing for me to reach my arms into
i used to be up to my elbows
the architecture was screaming
my teachers sang in class, cried through the lessons
everything moved in speech
now I never reach the action potential
the environment slightly inflates but I do not take off
too grounded, to real, too fixated on things that are surface
I want to fly and I want to drown
to be in the thick and fight my way onto paper
to feel in metaphors and abstractions
for now, i will run an analysis of variance
and go to sleep, indefinitely

Small handprints on the bathroom mirror
Your reflection blurred, but never clearer
The tiles broke
The smell of smoke
And while the still warm ashes fall like ***** snow
You think,
"Why couldn't I just let it go"

You wanted to see it all burn
You wanted your anger to be the flame
You let the hatred be the fuel
So cruel, so cruel
But even the arsonist gets burned
When playing this dark game

Red footprints through broken glass
Singed photos strewn across the floor
Pass under blackened entryways
And through her bedroom door
Where the nightgown she was wearing
Is still melted to the floor


Down on bruised knees
Curse God
Ask why
No one was supposed to die
You watched the car back out the driveway
You knew no one was home
Since when did she leave your guys young daughter,
Home alone

a curved stony enclosure whose seawall gives
way to hulking cliffs--with chiseled ramparts
akin to bottom cuspids.
standing before foldable reflections--aside from
the accelerating interpolation of sea-clouds, prone
to negatives.
the guiding intelligence of a flood cupped by an
isle that is unmet with a return.
its interior of entryways are desolate modulators
of tides.
as the two main entrances to the isle set stone apart,
the first as ruggedly cut indicators--the second as
altar-immaculatus blocks.
its baselevel of algae--fed by browning runoffs of rain,
along cracks filled with ivy.
leading into cypress trees expecting late visitors, with
an adamance that gives an odd calm to the out-of-place.
though they unnaturally crowd & surpass their enclosure,
with a tingle of wildflowers anticipating them.
making a point of something, already at its most advanced
stage--withholding a shade solid enough not to have been
under a burning phos.
come the skewed vision of a boat, progressing in the way
of water.
the sea peering at the back of the void's head, as it's shone
upon.
the forward tilt of a boatman's oared tension--stiffly even
keel, with enough momentum to float to the isle.
the boat becomes sensationless...the figure in the white
shroud knows nothing else but what is about to transpire.      
as if Lazarus dazedly brought to his feet, remaining there
for all the world.
the only thing that the cypress trees can see, as take into
their shade the coffin.

When I see pictures of where I’ve been,
it still feels like home in a way.
I think of entryways I have stopped entering
Still sparing a spot for my slippers.

We may be a place that I never go again
but in the negative spaces of this photograph,
you’re still mine
to claim as a home.