Manic Pixie Dream Girl
fingerpainted rainbow
on a flat canvass, you are
cardboard pretty.

Like this pastel-colored cupcake
you once saw on television
with sprinkles and little marshmallows on top
something you know
you can never taste
but still thought
“That must be delicious.”

One-sided postcard
With a beautiful scenery at the front
and empty surface at the back
No words to tell
No stories to give
Just a vacant lot.

Manic Pixie Dream Girl
I’ve always thought you were beautiful.
with your colors spilling out of your being and your smiles
that could light up anybody’s world
I’ve always thought it was like peering through a kaleidoscope
And you were a perfect symmetry
of everything a little boy could ever dream of.
So as I grew up
I dreamed to be something like you.
And for a while,
Without really meaning to
I was something like you.
People often told me,
“You are so pretty.”
“You are nice and funny.”
“You have a great smile.”
“You are fun to be with.”
“You are different.”
and guys liked me.
They adored me.
most especially when I exist
only for them.
When I am there to pick up the pieces
and make them whole again.

But manic pixie dream girl
I realized I am no dream girl
I am just—

me.

I feel ugly most of the time.
I eat a lot when I’m sad.
I am very impulsive.
I give irrational comments.
I have temper tantrums when I don’t get what I want.
I get scared of the dark.
I cut when I am hurt.
And there are days when I just want to sleep
and disappear forever.

I am no dream girl.
I am just a real girl.
Trying to make it out alive
in the real world.

I am not a navigator
meant to save lost boys.
I am not
a box of crayons
meant to grow smaller
as I color this blank page of a guy
I am not
a white glue
meant to disappear
once I am dry
I am not
a bandage
meant to heal wounds
on careless little children.

I am not supposed to be a fantasy
I am flesh and bones
I am human
with ribcages that are meant to crush
with the weight of a broken heart
I have lungs
I can breathe on my own.
I don’t need a broken boy
to feel that I have a purpose in life.

I am my own destruction.
I am my own salvation.
I am no dream girl.

Please
wake
up.

I live
  dream
  die
to create
    complete
each letter
         word
         turning phrase and
         thought-out straightaway

You read
        breathe
        digest
every syllable
letters strung
like a popcorn necklace
fingerpainted fragment sentences
authoritatively artistic and
defended in brazen resolve



my keeper of the slight,
the nuanced, softly sung,
down-quilted gerunds:
holding, brushing, sweeping
tasting, loving

There is no sound in space.
No quiet nothings whispered.
The sunlight on my face
now scorching, cracking, blistered,


Starvation
comes quickly
when the cook's not around;
so when the words stop
if need be,
feast on me.

I want to have dipped my fingertips into eternity and fingerpainted my heart with it.
2. I want to have shoved my fingers down my throat enough times to rid myself of self-hatred.
3. I want to nail the palms of my hands to the Big Dipper. I want to sleep among the stars, and allow their light to cover me like thick blankets. I'd like to learn the simplicity of the galaxy's effortless beauty.
4. I would like to create a vaccination to save children from the growing plague we call "adulthood."
5. I would like to create a vaccination to save adults from it, too.
6. I want to fill syringe after syringe with glitterglue and stab them so far into my veins that my heart becomes a disco ball.
7. I want to become the temple that you come to to pray.
8. I want to become what I will be without fighting to the finish line, and I want a canopy of fireflies hanging from the bone of my skull.
9. I want you to tell me that you are in love with my ears, so I can cut one off, become Vincent Van Gogh and make you miss my ear like I miss the twinkle in your eyes when you tell me you love me.
10. I want every freckle on my skin to become small islands you can lose yourself on.
11. I want to change the views on "skinny" and "fat" and remind the girl made of only bone that once upon a time I was made of only bone too. Then, I found cupcakes.
12. I want to spin the world upside down and yell "Look ma! No happiness!"
13. I want to pass on my DNA and create something that I am actually proud of for once.
14. I want to make my life worth more than just a poem, or a picture, or a forgotten memory.
15. I want to stop the hands on a clock from ticking past midnight to preserve the saying "There's always tomorrow!", because once that clock strikes twelve another tomorrow will be gone.
16. Most importantly, I want to have filled the hole in me with something other than ***.

And I want to fill the hole in you with something other than half-fulfilled broken dreams.

cloaked in a black cave
my fingerpainted strokes
make the silence
pregnant with
care
&
disregard
&
those feelings submerged
inside somewhere.
if a ravenous bear appeared
i'd be happy for the company.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
and that of the hurricane.
Tumult whispered white,
both Aeolian and corporeal,
strummed on strings of solemnity;
the ugly undertaker of buried roses
labeled as wary victims of feel-good graverobbers.
All bled emotions are this.
The Louvre's flashbulbed flecks;
the notes woven within coke lines of symphony;
fingerpainted twig-men crafted by bright-eyed smilers;
this juxtaposed disgrace.
All Beau Sancy in the roughest granite jewelry box
with graffiti scribbled laughing like urban Sanskrit .
"I am become death" dripped in blood through the keyhole
so it now mimics a cherry popped in microwaves
unlocking discomfort, yes,
and crimsoning the cocoon of the diamond.
Peep, Tom, at the glittering Godiva within
and watch her grow in the sacrifice of poetry,
for only in the presence of forsaking and death
and anguish and discomfort
and pain
can she grow to break the eggshell walls.
Tears cut canals in Time's beard
because he consigned the memory of the shattered horrendousness
to oblivion
instead of honoring their homage
and paying respect by dropping tulips and gunships
into their graves at noon's meridian.
Opal eyed reader,
you do not understand.
My eggshells conceal themselves
within individual hells
of purple prose,
more of a lavender in my eyes.
But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

beyond a sun-warmed parapet

with a dot-eyed wondering smile
fingerpainted in storm-lit dust,

purple bougainvillea spill into a fresh grey sky,
fluttering in sweet lightning wind
like painted wings of a sunbird.

This is the funeral dress that was stapled into my shoulders
And crucified
On the huge hill cross, where clowns once emerged from cotton smog -
Where bricks smashed foreheads, and we fingerpainted the sidewalk with each other's unruly blood
Where the Summer sleeps off a failed suicide attempt
Two years ago you put a hole in my head
But this is not the hole in my head (present and aching)
This is the black funeral dress I stapled into my own shoulders
The one that was worn too many days too soon
We are all infinitely bound between her death and a single desire for a boy with destructive ghosts living beneath his fingernails

I keep telling strangers about the way your jaw shakes after midnight
I keep telling strangers about the night I scattered glass shards in between my box spring mattress and the trundle bed
I keep telling strangers about your porcelain knuckles - the way you kiss each one individually before punching me in the throat
There's a rage inside my head
Disease spreads like forrest fire and floral secrets
Dead girls dance in October, rest in November
Goodnight

The night sky stumbled, lost in thought
And caught up under slippered foot
By the scattered playthings of the dusk--
Pillows, tinsel, drifts of cotton wool, and
Brightly coloured sheets of fingerpainted
Foolscap paper. Gathering her haughty skirts,
Embroidered at the hem with silver coins
And lined with lightly patterned silk of
Deeply pleated royal blue, she turned an
Elegant and stately pirouette and flung her
Arms toward the bashful moon.