This is my Shoebox of Poems.
You know, the poems you didn’t wanna write.
The poems that you wish you never thought of but, if you didn’t put them down on paper they would end up staying in your head all night, they would end up keeping you from sleeping at night.
The poems that revel your scars that you didn’t even know you had.
The poems that remind you its okay that you’ve been hurt.
The poems that if your house was burning down you would go back in for.
The poems that belong in the shoebox in the back of the closet behind every other box.
This is my Shoebox of Poems.

It was a shoebox of poems written over the years
Of joyous moments, heart aches and tears
The fond memories of her life, of being a mother and a wife.
Poems of her child bearing years, and all the joys that she shared.
A poem of the moment that she had dread
Of the day that she wed.
With butterflies in her stomach and tears in her eyes
And being strong so she would not cry.
Poems of when her children reached school age
And each year was a different phase.
Poems of family times, vacation times
And even of the nursery rhymes.
Waiting till the time was right, and to have
Quality time with her husband at night.
Her entire life was in a shoebox of poetry
Left to read by you and me.

I approach most desires
like a competition; can I
**** better than him;
can I be famous at twenty-
-three since he was famous at
twenty-four -- I must be able
to sink better than him.

God, it is exhausting. I
feel like I'm dancing with
a machine; a phantom that
I can never catch, for it runs
on my blood; my insecurities;
my passion -- and, boy, oh boy,
can I attest to having plenty of
  that stuff, ladies and germs.

I think, truly, that I am
encompassing the American Dream
I think is utterly flawed; that I think
is futile in nature; that I am sure of
is the closest thing to Hell, in this
Godless, spiritually motherless
dark shoebox of sudden collisions;
this space of useful and useless
results, splayed onto and into
our hearts, asking for reverence.

There is nothing  I want more
than to be sure that my importance
is not illusory. I am not sure if
I am real.

It was like the time our cat died
And we buried it in a shoebox
And made a wind chime out of the bell
Carved her name in the tree we buried her under
Just says Beans

I imagine this confuses the family who now lives there

Coffins shouldn't exist for things that small

I asked a friend to sew you a quilt out of her clothes
So you still might know her warmth

Babies grow fast
So much clothes from the shower
It will be a big quilt

Your belly still a bulb of life bursting
But hollow
In thick black sharpie you wrote
                MORGUE
Just above your belly button

You maker of life
Giver of the good stuff
Holder of the second heartbeat

You can only make good things
Your body is a mess
Genuinely ugly on the inside
But it creates good things

Remind it of that
When it rebukes its purpose
And lets go

The next one will stay

Because there shouldn’t be coffins
For things that small

You said I could be Uncle Jon
I have never been given that
I’m not allowed to see my own nephews
Because of how the past eats us

The past is a morgue
Of heartbreak festering

And forgiveness is not a time machine
Set to 10 minutes before regret kicked in

When my own children bury me
I hope they do something with what I leave behind
So I know that I actually have something worth
Leaving behind

You did not leave her behind
Even though you named her
Ellie
Elizabeth
But we knew it would be Ellie
She is not how you will be remembered

You do not make mistakes
You make life
In everything you do
As long as you are living

You make life

So when your body forgets this

Remind it

With breath
And tears
And sleepless nights
And anger
And happiness

Make life

I spotted the box
out of the corner of my eye
There in the closet
stuffed into a corner
covered in cloth

At first it mattered not
I had other priorities
I had to meet

But then a memory
knocked upon the wall
of my curosity

So I took the box out
and sat upon the bed
And I started to take
the photographs out

So many faces , so many places
lost in time's goodbye
So much found
and so much lost
so , so very much

After all the you and me's
After all the summers
and winters too
Life has boiled down
to a box of photographs
made for a shoe

I live in a shoebox all alone
It's the size of a nutshell I call it home
Here just me and my white walls talk
if they get too close I take a walk

A bed, a table, a chair, a sink
makes me happier than you would think
I took a chance on a crooked floor and  an un-open-able door
how could I ever ask for more.
  
So here I sit and write and to whoever that might read it
I hope you have a place just as magical as mine
and that you never want to leave it.

i want to write you the perfect poem
i want to string words together so spectacularly that you tattoo them on the inside of your eyelids
i want to write you the world, wrap these lines in a bow and leave the package on your doorstep
i want to write you the perfect poem,
but i'm an imperfect person and love,
so are you

you are the bags under my eyes
i carry you with me wherever i go
and you draw the most attention to the brightest parts of me
my under eye bags are the only cosmetics i wear daily;
you are the result of late nights of laughter and 1 AM drives home

you sopped up the spilled cherry coke in the back of my car with napkins from my glove box
i braked too hard and it spilled all over your feet
it was a quiet ride home
my knuckles were white on the steering wheel and my head a blur of apology
my favorite mop;
my messes are yours and yours will be mine and i've never been one for tidiness but i'd scrub the world clean for your smile

you are
the dent in my passenger side door,
the soreness in my muscles,
the paint stains in all of my jeans;
i can’t get rid of it, i’ll never get rid of it;
the dent gives my car character
the soreness makes my body feel real
the stains make me feel free and the jeans fit me like a glove

i like routine and you are a part of mine
text you tease you love you
wash rinse repeat

i could send you a thousand love letters
i’ll keep them in a shoebox instead

i'll write your name into the stars,
i'll carve my love for you in the moon,
print it on postcards,
press it into my skin
but i cannot write you the perfect poem

La Ratita Presumida
“... y sentia muy feliz. Pero al terminar, el gato se lanzo sobre ella para comer se la. La Ratita lorgo escaper y aprendio a no fiarse de la aparencias”

Generally speaking, the most romantic matters take place beneath the moonlight. It shone down on the city of Barcelona that night with a certain intention, a mysterious plan. She went out for a cigarette, or a “thought” as she liked to think of it, her soul already marinating in a bottle of cheap, red wine.  She let the moonlight pour its possibilities upon her skin as she exhaled into the night.

It was this recipe:
¾ bottle of red wine,
1 pack of Marlboro Lights,
a pinch of red lipstick and
a dash of moony-mist  

on the dimly lit terrace that started it all.

Just then, a tall, blondish, smart looking guy walked into the room. She felt as though she could see the weight of his brain sitting in his head. Almost visible were the synapses firing within.

He spoke so smoothly, in a comforting, southern accent.
His words cast visions of sunsets,
surrounding her
in an unfamiliar, yet soothing
warmth.
She drew closer.
His southern spark lit her cigarette and
with that flick of the match,
an immediate magic ignited between them.

They spoke of Matthew Macconaughy, death and anxiety... death by anxiety, art and music and love and lust.

lovelustlovelustlovelustlostlove

“Just come with me,” he said,  “I’m not expecting anything... we’ll get brunch!” , he said. Ooooooh that’s a mighty word there, “BRUNCH”.

“Brunch”,
A word capable of bringing this girl,
to her knees
~the birds and the bees~
she left with him.
                                                              ..­.

“You had me at ‘brunch’.”
They took a cab to his shoebox-sized flat in Gracia, “the best neighbourhood of Barcelona by far”. They linked lips, caressed, clutched each other’s flesh and faded into one as the sun began to rise.
                                                           ­   ...
The sun came beating through the dungeon –like windows of the shoebox-shaped room. The laundry hanging outside-as it must in this city- cast shadows across their naked skin. It appeared to be dancing quite joyfully, despite the intensely hung-over state of the two strangers that lay entangled amongst the sheets.
As promised, BRUNCH ensued.  They chatted, and laughed and flirted. They shared secrets that no one else knew.

“I like your brain”, he said.
                                                               ...
In the weeks to come they spent every waking moment of each weekend in each other’s company. The rest of the time was spent as the charismatic protagonist in the day dreams of the other one’s mind.  

Hospital General, Sant Cugat Del Valles, Valldoreix, La Floresta, Las Planes, Baixador de Vallvidrera, Peu del Funicular, Reina Elisenda, Sarria, Les Tres Torres,  La Bonanova, Muntaner, Sant Gervasi, Gracia, Provenca,  Passeig de Gracia, Placa Catalunya.

The Trains chugged on
And on
And just remember it’s hard to stop a train...

Gracia -the best neighbourhood in Barcelona- sang like a bird in her ear and a sore thumb pressing its weight into her aching heart.  

Take me Spanish Caravan, yes I know you can...
...I know where treasure is waiting for me
Silver and gold in the mountains in Spain
I have to see you again and again.

Take me Spanish Caravan, yes I know you can.
                                                           ­        ...
That dreaded, dreary morning, the rain beat down. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plane -Or all over, really.

She helped him stuff his damp laundry
into his star-spangled suitcase,
himself into her...




He came,
she left, and so did he.




*I'd like to see you again
and again.

Should have never been born at all
Not born at all is way
With this face
And this name
Don't cry inside your paper house or
Your paper hours comes crashing down
More than what my mother said
More than just a doll to dress
More than just an empty head
That couldn't ammount to less
Am I

What little I know about myself
Is piled high upon a shelf
Waiting for my mind to realign
And find that I've been
Starving my ego
Having conversations
With the skeletons in my closet
Making fun of their
Feeble spines But realizing
So is mine

Still too proud to apologize
I tried to write a poem
But ended up with a full waste bin
And a dull safety pin
Yet I don't mean to jeopardize
The precision of your perfect lies
Oh humanity I've tried
To define myself with a dictionary

Leaving fingerprints on the obituary
The fabric scraps in my closet still
Send me guilt from my grandmother
In patterns from the sixties

Oh one day when day when I'm dead and gone
And know that life is much too long
To spend as someone else
My poems and my fabric will become
Vintage pessimism in a shoebox
Glowering down from someone else's shelf

They lie in a shoebox in my room:
Faded dahlias, dried peonies, and dwindling marigolds.
Souvenirs
Of the dead and dear,
They rest within my garden morgue.

I see
The grape hyacinth
And recall the dream that I gave up on,
And remember the picnic with my dad
From the dandelion.

And from a frail and rusted rose
The words you said to me;
I like to watch dust dull its color
And time
Eat apart the leaves.

Hat pulled low over my face, I pull the lever of the pump,
getting back in my car,
hands placed on the steering wheel as if I'm going to drive away while the gas is going,
I just sit.
Alone.
Trying to clear my mind before the day.
That's when I see them.
A pixie-like little girl in denim and cotton,
tennis shoes untied and scuffed,
long hair trailing unkempt,
summer hair,
barely brushed,
she skips beside a man who is undoubtedly her father,
a serious-looking man dressed for a day of adventure,
the same nose as the sprite hopping along beside him.
At once,
I spiral into an invisible shoe box of photos...
then it's me with my hair down and my shoes untied and a big smile on my face as I accompany my father in the most mundane tasks.
Everything is an adventure with daddy,
everything is a game,
a brand-new experience ******* in shiny ribbons,
even if it's just going to the gas station.
They reappear from the store,
and the little girl excitedly pulls a bottle of chocolate milk from the plastic bag.
The colorful snacks look silly in the father's large, rough hands,
but he opens each package carefully,
handing her napkins,
and in her unrelenting grin,
anyone can see that she owns him heart and soul.
I shift uncomfortably in my mental shoe box,
and I see myself again,
overalls and a small bag of donuts,
licking the glaze from my fingers,
my father reaching over with a towel to wipe my face clean of chocolate glaze.
He chastises me, but he's smiling,
and he pops a donut into his mouth, too,
two best friends on a summer adventure,
nothing can stop our fun.
The father starts their rickety old suburban, and the little girl bounces excitedly in her seat, eager for their next stop. The mode of transportation could be a rusted row boat in the middle of a swamp,
but to her,
it's all a part of a beautiful memory that she'll never let go of.
And one day,
when her daddy is gone,
she'll drive up to the gas station in her own car
and sit in the driver's seat to take a breath,
and she'll see herself, fifteen years younger, prancing happily along her father's steady gait,
and she'll fall backwards into an unexpected
invisible
shoebox.

Once I would've filled my shoebox with tangible memories
Materialistic items
But movie tickets, receipts, newspaper clippings, they all have something in common
They all fade
Cease to be anything but scraps of recycled material
I have long since moved on from
Temporary importance
I fill my shoeboxes with abstract now.
What's in your box?

Bedsunk, hair in eyes, coughing the haunt of a 9 o'clock cigarette, she resigns to sleep.
I'm edges -- rough and looking to let the blood out.
Handful of skirt. I just want to cuddle. But her lips smell like her crotch tastes. Bubbling salt bog water. I'm doing the math. It's basic.
Under the shirt and pulling back the bra, lapping at her sunken breast, ouch.
Red. Smarting. And I never bit it.
"What did you do after work today?"

BEHIND HER HAZEL EYES                    
Somebody once told me that you could fit your life in a shoebox and I laughed at the thought of it.  
I was the youngest of six kids and I was favored by all of my siblings beside Natalie but she is a different story.
I grew up in a abusive home I would come home to see my dad beating my Mom until she couldn’t breath or get up.
I always watched it happen wishing that I did something about it but I was about ten and what could I do. There was a time my mom came home really late. I was asleep on the couch and Natalie was on the other one.
I heard my dad get up and come down stairs; I heard the front door open and close.
Then I heard my sister Melissa yelling at my Dad to leave our mom alone but He wouldn’t. My two sisters Melissa and Felicity were with my mom when she hit the deer and that is what my dad was so mad about. I got up ran to the door and I saw him and my mom. He had my mom up against the car, choking her out. I grabbed a stick and hit him on the back hard enough to make him let go of my mom.
He and I battled for whom had control of the stick he grabbed it out of my hands and pushed me on the ground and it knocked the wind out of me. It hurt but I got used to it over the years. I got up and I saw him looking from my mom to me. He wacked me across the face hard, I tasted blood and spit it out. I looked at him and said “ you are nothing but a coward, taking your anger out on your own children. You’re pathetic and dumb. Do you not see none of us want you here, Get lost I don’t want to see your face anymore”.
He had a hurt look on his face and looked at my mom. She was cowering in a corner.
She just said “You heard her Will just don’t come back”!
From that moment on I turned from an innocent little girl to a young woman who took care of her family and became the protector.  I have been in many struggles on my life path. I had to grown up and learn to face the life that shouldn’t have been put on anyone. I protected my best friend from being rapped. I told her to run and don’t look back and she did what I said. I remember the hands around my throat and getting slammed against the walls and the blood spewing from my nose. I fought hard knowing my life was at stake. I got quite a few punches and what not at the man. He let me go after a while and I ran I found Caddie at the park, waiting for me and she was bawling her eyes out when she look and saw me. She said, “Oh My God I thought you weren’t coming back, Jaylyn and you look like hell got a hold of you”.
I hugged her and started crying she knew she couldn’t ever repay me for what happened but she took me to the bathroom and cleaned up the blood that was smeared on my face. I knew she was thankful for me.
Caddie said to me “Jaylyn, you are a fighter”
When I heard this I thought it was funny at first but as I grew older. The message became clearer. On March 13, 2008 my sisters and I went in to foster care. I was scared and I was close to my mom. I lost her then. But Natalie and I were went to our 1st foster care home together and we were there for six months but the thing was they didn’t like me but they liked Natalie. I was scared and lonely. I wanted to leave cause they treated me like I was nothing and Natalie wanted to go with me and then she had wanted to stay with our first foster parents but to then she didn’t so we left and went in to another foster home and we were there for three years and I hated them and they treated me liked dirt and they did the same with Natalie but Natalie left before I did. They treated me more like crap and I hated them even more to the point to where I started cutting, drinking, and smoking. Anything that would harm my body.  It worked for a while but then it got worst and the drinking got a lot worse. I knew I had lost my way but I finally told my old school counselor. She and my friends became the only one I could trust. Ms. Lopez helped me get out of Bert and Anne’s House. I met this crazy black girl named Tanah and her foster mom.
She was excited to have me come there. I decided her and foster Mom would do.
From the First day I moved in Tanah and I were inseparable and still are a points she and take breaks but you can’t see one of us with out the other. Tanah helped me grow in a lot of ways it’s been six months since we have known each other but it feels like years.
But that is some of my story I don’t want to keep you reading forever
For all my life I knew I was a Fighter and always will be.
I guess you can fit your life in a shoebox if you want to try I say go for it there isn’t anyone trying to stop you from trying.

I hid the photographs
under my bed
so I have token to look at
when I want to hear your laughter
again.

For Katharine R. Cole

If gormless is as gormless does unite
That past of him and present me, I’ll turn
His other cheek against his waning sight;
I’ll **** his Hamlet soul to cringe and burn.

But dripping cannot thick or think in depth.
Blobs like blackened bulbous beads of eyes
Persist on shrinking into transits swept,
And down through dullard pools of choking fire.
Yet treacle binds my bole wood vocal chords
In rapture from such silence to withdraw
From sand that quickens, thickens, and distorts.
Can earth and water’s union mask my flaws?
The answer dares to dream but I refrain.
My name is Mud. Dear God, that is my name.

The foot: an endlessly dull point
Breathing technique, perfected by Roman Bill,
And a tall, sinewy, fine china ***** heel,
Cheap to most and worthless when submerged, submerges.
The tough Elephant hide surface
Of a swamp-like state and state.

Q. How does one become embroiled in such a located province of mind?
A. Alcohol’s venomous beauty and cheap living costs.
     The South.
    
An Elephant on a scooter stares blindly
At its own reflection circling the limb,
Shrugging dew drop eyes at what man had forgotten.
Not once, but twice.
    
The foot becomes a divulging calf of information
Sputtering in this bubbling torment of beige,
And pulsating around like an African tunnel
Waiting to be filled – fulfilled – ******.

    
The knee complies,
                      Sinking,
                                 Slowly,
                                          Not painlessly,
                                                             Not quick.

     The mercy of a lethal injection’s lie becomes
Absurd when one’s limb is the needle;
One’s brain the plunger of acceptance.
His gasp, a roar of silent fruit ripening in a
Mode too fast, cutting life and laundering
Expectancy whilst hanged from a
Whined whimper of Penance.
Purgatory’s whistle blows for time.  

II

A small red car clenched tightly
In the hands of a tightly tiny black boy,
His eyes huge and deep, but white; untouched by
Time’s clock or the weight of granite black that
He leans upon. Plastic tires screech horizontally along the
Structure of a Library’s historic insight.
Below, the ground is dry.
Beneath him, the ground is solid.
    
        Meanwhile, molten muck pulsates around
Our swirling antipathy of soul crushing
Nullness, with a lack of guilt unimaginable.
It bubbles, it bubbles: it toils in boiling rubbles
Of the past’s present and All I Could Have Been.
And I have never, could never
Sink lower in reality;
Blow harder against punishment’s wind;
Cry for this other as a **** filled wound weeps down her face.
    
The swirl of liquefied dirt and sand bags me,
Drags me, as if some *** lover of Hades is not done
With what is left of me. Disease to spread: just a little, just
A little more, like the detrimental bottle that
Knew me.
    

      As the hip is engulfed, an angle of almost perfect
Ninety creates  itself against the horizontal extremity
And puny ballsacksquash entails. Useless yet overused;
Timeless yet impressionable, pensionable. Gone.
Nothing knows me but this thickness’ quickness.
          That wants too much
From nothing               but existence
And the scab that fastens with time.

III

Turn the bottle back and find strength to
Outpour the clock and grant eternity.
Non compliant strength paid a fiver
For a soul worth two at the most.
A penny for the worthless: For the sickened lame.
Empty time feeds rays of golden from the sun fuelled
Encrusted *******, mudfast on heat.
This somehow seems like action.
Firm firmness but cracked with ease and
Non-returnable once inflated;
Non-negotiable on the bloodorgans of salt.
Weakness and powerlessness: *****.
*** for tat, for ***, ***, ***. For tat.
    
     The Elephant rises.
You brought this upon yourself, this rain of mud;
This treacle that will dry when you are dirt.
You would not let it ******* lie.
All of your ******* life: this strife, that wife.
     Your second leg (the grasper) tries,
     At length, to shield your heart:
     The only thing that cries.
     That does not want to die.
     Cartoonish bubbles of brown pop to the tune
     Of Loonies; of your shoebox brain that screams in vain.
What is your name? What is your want?
There is no blame you ******* maniac.
Everyone knows. Sink awake. Sink.
     Rest: do not sleep. Freezetimeframe.
     There is one more timeless point to make.


The sun and moon meet brief: the seconds count,
But die shy of one minute. Clear the road.
‘Tis dusk, I fear they named it. Raise the mount
And sacrifice another drowned sot load.
The moment thence: Anonymous descent.
The digger meets the dead in buried time.
The wish is washed in mud, the liver spent.
The blood-stained hands of Glasgow dodge the crime.
Make speed my sick sad Miller, grind the grain
Of Galloway, Gibb, Neave, Dunlop and Cole.
Your ghost will haunt your tag if not your brain.
Your heart should part this city river’s soul.
The sunjoke frozen, captured, stumped, and framed.
My name is Mud. Dear God, that is my name.

you, my love, are the light of my life, and you - are ruining my writing. lately, when i sit down and try to write, all i can seem to come up with are grossly overused analogies and tired metaphors that have been recycled a thousand different times. all that flows from the end of my pen are flowers and stars and the creases that form in your forehead when you smile and how much i'd like to lose myself in the galaxies of your irises - and it's disgusting. this twilight-esque prose, this juvenile symbolism and puppy-love poetry that pours from me - is not me. i'm no Poe, no Plath, no Kerouac, but i like to think that i'm okay. however, recently the caliber of my writing has been reduced to nothing more than rainy-day romance and child's play. and god, everything rhymes. i feel like i'm sixteen again in the best way. it's because you've stayed, that you are changing everything i thought i knew about love. i catch myself absentmindedly drifting to visions of a shoebox apartment in a city somewhere and furniture shopping and even the B word (babies). that's so unlike me, that is so - amazing because nobody has ever been so serious about me and i think that maybe, baby,  someday i'd like to be 80 with you - oh god. you - you are too many poems that all sound the same, but each time i read through them i somehow manage to find something i haven't read before. you are open doors and patient arms with a voice like a lullaby that resonates in the darkest corners of my mind. you are saving grace without condition and a love so deep i could go for a swim in it - and maybe that's why i'm drowning, because all i ever really learned how to do is doggy-paddle. but you are so patient. anyone else would have quit on me by now. the idea of forever has always terrified me, but the promises you make sound so real that i'm beginning to think maybe they are. baby, you, are eyes like soil and words made of rain drops, and every day we grow a little more. i adore you. i am so sorry that my meager words can't do you justice. my ineptitude is criminal, but i'm trying. and i think that i would rather be vomiting these clichés than return to the world of gray i lived in before i met you. i love you. i love you. i love you to the moon and back and every planet in between. you are the sweet to my tea and the leaves to my tree. and every song i've yet to hear but somehow i manage to follow along with. i wanna scream it from the top of a mountain or the middle of a grocery store, about this love that leaves me with butterflies in my belly and fireworks in my heart. baby, i've never been so happy to embrace mediocrity. my prose may be suffering, but my heart is soaring. writer's block has never been more welcome than when it bears your name. so wipe your feet at the door, take off your coat, and please, make yourself at home.

- m.f.

Love on my toes, love in the cabinet, love jumps off balconies
it is an eighteen year old succubus offering spinal taps.
Bring the gentlemen their evening numbness before next
morning’s nightmare and ******* are scheduled on God’s map –
he just steps out for a moment, settles his sleeping mask on.

God is so unhappy: he understands nothing of love.
Get this recipe recited so we shall feed them pink and blue pills
which knobs can sting boys in the ***, a fleabite or bow
soon our leather heels chime through their ears like hooves.

The master may question their nutrition so hold out a paper cup
sloshing in female nectar, our vaguely cerise saliva
sustenance that comes from between slits carved for such –
these acids are love, love, love. Love from cavities, love pearls
knotted in the roots of a mother clam, fallopian love tubes.

Every shoebox offers warmth, complementary wakeup calls
a petite blonde to peel him out of his pajamas, too –
lay your husbands down into the doll-case if he has no love
as God is not watching here. Oh, how happy our gentlemen are.

They sit it a box
Under the bed,
Waiting to be opened,
Waiting to be fed.
And to their dismay,
Well, I hope they understand
I can never see them
Or hold them in my hand.
Oh, I left them there on purpose
With a hope but to disguise
The real pull within me
The truth to realize.
I wish I could explain
Just tell them oh but once
I shoved them there in earnest
And it must stay as such.
They cannot hope to comprehend,
Those broken memories,
That everything they now hold
Was once you and me.
                                           tsk

Encased in enough tape,
I struggle,
peeling off the layers
as slowly as you would peel an onion.
The pile cascades to the floor.
Each fragmented piece of tape,
blending into the coffee colored carpet.
Sticking to the soles of my shoes,
Each movement becomes progressively harder.
I open the box.

We, the invisible reasons for your problems, blind ourselves to the
dismal inevitability that we will
suffocate because you refuse to stop
the pillaging of the future for the sake of your own ******* lineage being able to further itself and potentially give you a chance to again close your mind and scream as loud as you can when confronted with your own toxicity

We, the ones who humbly take the bludgeoning from your self-proclaimed pious hand, know these chains are only on your bleeding wrists and ankles.

We, the silent and the broken, know Santa Muerta by the nicknames she had in college and all accompanying wildness she brought in her wake.
We still will stroke your hair while you
throw your tantrums and wail about what is and isn't fair on your deathbeds.

We will burn the mattress and all while cheering you on on your flight into the night sky you ignored for a lifetime.

We, the servants of streaming digits and stewards of bottled stardust, will create stories about how it wasn't your fault and how you shouldn't be hated for bringing the world crashing into the excrement of wasted potential so our children know there was a choice to be made.

We, the overly polite pariahs pry laughs and love and lust and learning from looming catastrophe like Burroughs writing Naked Lunch with a glassy eyed stare that burned holes in the veil hiding the tide of partially coagulated blood and ******* that YOUR world preached as milk and honey.

We, the proof in the moldy pudding still finding time to rot, will burn tobacco fields in your honor just to dance while getting drunk on the breaths you'll never waste.

We, the lovers of questions and haters of creeds, let tears stream in the hope that they are not considered part of our body's 75 percent while fantasizing about your ghosts seeing them and the dehydration they may be in spite of and quiet your tired old yelling and shaking of fists at the clouds when overcome by the slight sadness that whispers "its too late" lovingly into your ear.

We, the lovers, the thieves, the reviled, the *******, the witches, the junkies, the ******, the reptiles and worms under the rocks society deems unusable and misshapen, will be the ones lifting the crowns off your corpses and throwing them high as graduates do when full of a hope only ever dashed by themselves.

We, the drooling monsters you vehemently deny anything besides the cramped closets or the space between bed and floor in childhood bedrooms, will be the Valkyries to descend onto the blood-choked battlefield you set aside for your souls to suffer on and offer you respite in the form of soggy bread and wildflower honey while  ravens and jackdaws bicker over the eyes and fingers of those that once showed us how to ride a bike or drunkenly beat us beneath our favorite trees or touched us in dark rooms in ways that would chase Love away from the shadow of our hearts until we finally climbed high enough to see it all as someone screaming of war and bravery while running from the sound of steel biting steal because their protectors talked so highly of honor and duty that it seemed as if it were God and Adam touching fingertips on the arched ceilings of youth. that, then was painted on the crumbling walls of abandoned houses they would secretly indulge on the forbidden fruit soaking pages of a faded **** magazines or up skirts of blushing  girls who put on their mother's prudishness until fingers pushed past
cotton and virtue alike to the warm center they both melted in.

We, the unsung and numb, walk in spirals while the complexity you rebuked as devil-born becomes the sigils of yet-to-be kingdoms bringing about golden age after golden age in the distant mists rolling over hills and valleys of memories of moments yet to coalesce into rigid experience.

We, the eyes weeping blood atop crumbling pyramids, have seen the walls you want to build in futures dissolved in the winds blowing dust over the dream-roads we skip down and how it resembles the one you built to keep your heart from breaking from the pressing mass of what you can't file away as noise or heresy or communist propaganda;
We drew throbbing ***** and dripping ***** on all the blueprints we came across and tucked them back into the secret compartments of wardrobes and roll-tops passed down through generations.

We, the keepers of the singing stones you traded for cheap concrete, will embrace the tiny souls you neglected out of ignorance to the existential snake oil pitch you broke every tooth biting down on all because the salesman reminded you of your drunk father or mother imposing their wills like you make shadow puppets dance on peeling wallpaper in the silence that ensued after they had passed out on creaky couches reeking of Lucky Strikes and spilled ***** while the shine of the staticky T.V. set covered them like the blanket no one ever put over their slumbering forms because of those infinite lists of excuses used to skirt the skirmishes of showing any kind compassion even if they alone were sole witness to it.

We, the pieces of self the deathbed "you" sent hurtling backwards through time to shine lights on the siege seething at the gates of what you stand for, are only holding those lanterns to show you that fleeing is futile and your death is just a hallway with a door that leads to the knowledge that life is not a cell to watch time morph into tally lines scratched into cold stone as if they were epitaphs for the seconds bet and lost at the roulette table crafted from any slave ship the ocean never swallowed.

We, the flames mimicking those dancing girls you longed to have squeal under the idea of your thrusting masculinity amidst the graffiti on the bathroom stalls in seedy dive-bars or the paupers playing prince you follow giggling with hope in hand like a bouquet of baby's breath and daisies for that one day they would stop and turn and smile so handsomely that your knees would shatter against one another and wedding chapels would bend down to tie tin cans to bumpers of beat up Buicks and Oldsmobiles your fathers give dowry and the crowd could watch "just married" poorly written in shaving cream on the back window grow small until it disappeared over the horizon.

We, the dreamers, are tired of sleeping and are in need of a old tree to swing from, to bury our dreams like beloved pets under, and watch as it lets its leaves fall to the hungry earth that is more patient then anyone closed eyed and humming ancient syllables beneath crooked branches could ever be.

All the trees you climbed and kicked and fell in love under have died from too many hearts around intials being carved into them or were used to make fascist pamphlets you yourself passed out at churchs mistaking the mask with bone structure or the river for the people it swept to sea.

We are laughing;
like a loving mother at her clumsiness on display in her cackling child and not like the crowds gazing at the sideshow stage as the curtains pull back and stage lights illuminating John Merrick's flesh and the intricate dissonance it lent to minds.
Minds that afforded only sips of bliss as monotonous stints on factory floors but were preached about like they were some heaven-sent golden cobblestones laid lovingly all the way
to the beach where Heimdall will one day sound his horn, one foot feeling the grit of the edge of the world and the other washed clean for the grave we will all step in.

So, all these words, all these images, all of it is intended to be a moon so all the stagnate tide pools that have forgotten their origin and the freedom they used to give form to lesser forms they forage forgetfulness from.

We, the ones beneath you on the climb to the summit of our collective potential, beg you to think of something beside yourself when taking a ****.

It is not just ******* in the wind if there isnt wind and we are right below you and dying of thirst.

It is not an inalienable right if someone else is deprived of the same.

It is not Heaven's gate if the brilliant gild has a melting point or if it remains latched to any soul's approach.

It is not "liberal *******" or a myth if whole flocks of birds fall from the sky or schools of fish wash up on beaches while people snap photographs for their feed.

It is not "god" if love dispels it like smoke hanging in the kitchens your great grandmother sat in and told you about a witch shapeshifting into dogs without heads to scare drunks stumbling home because she was a ******* racist.

It is not just food if someone's organs fail from starvation that even the worms and flies are free from.

You wave your banners and let your war-horns echo and you wear your ignorance as armor.

We, the eaters of life and death, will chisel a name into stone and pick your bones clean if you think we should march to the sounds of drums and trumpets just because you were stupid enough to think it was anything other than your masters convincing you to whip yourselves ****** because "at least God hath been kind enough to give you a purpose" or "he works in mysterious ways".

**** that.

Look at what it has brought out of the swirling sea of " all that could be" while you write the same song about how shiny and numerous the scales of the prize are.

We are not responsible for pillaging God's bounty.

We are the bounty and our emptiness and lack of foresight are in jeweled bowls at your feet, but in your hubris you believe it to be the slaves that come to wash the dirt from between your toes.

We are Death and She is the wet-nurse that will give us intimacy to fertilize our hearts by refusing us her breast but turning our heads to your silhouettes shambling off the edge of existence far off in the distance only a decade or less could be confused for.

[AS ONE VOICE WE SING/SANG/HOWL:
Lux amor potentia restituant propositum dei in terris.]

As if it were as easy as holding the hand of a dying tyrant afraid they cannot the luminous terminus while wearing your father's face as a mask to trick radiant angels or the contortions of gods reeking of struck matches by those trembling and their swirling black hearts closed to the breeze carrying leaves celebrating their liberation and caressing a cheek they were too ashamed to kiss when opportunity was their ally.

We shouldn't hate these piles of skulls all parroting the same axioms to those who only show up to add another or leave an empty bottle turned into a candle holder, wax dripped down the neck and froze before any trace of tallow could finally unite with the dirt it longs to become one with;
icicles hanging from the eaves of abandoned asylums.

This place was supposed to be alot of things but that is what lead THEM to drown in the sound of buzzing bees, birdsong, and abundance in all directions.

I suggest we stop trying to squeeze it into a shoebox we scribbled Promised Land on and just let it be the open armed paradise it inherently is.
Let it be the heart and home as well as the hostile territory because it is only ever that and what we wont find in any Oracle's Prophecy.

I'll end my rambling with a question and it's answer.

How do you turn a police station into a hospital and a schoolhouse?

Burn it to the ******* ground.

I pulled that dusty shoebox
From underneath the bed ,
Letters we had written
On the day that we had wed.

We talked about forever
And promised to be true,
Youd be good to me
And id be good to you.

I read and re read those letters
Trembling , clamy hands
I was not this women,
And you are not this man.

Why does time make change ok,
Stop simple things we used to do.
The way youd show your love for me or
How id show my love for you.

You should always hold
My hand, and make me feel my best,
I  should always be your rock,
We both just want respect.

Mabye we just need reminding
Of how it all began, to pick our battles better, and offer steady hands.

I tucked those letters safely
Into a book beside the bed ,
In that dusty shoebox
theyre not getting read .

I found a baby doll
3 days later
I cradled her in my arms
Careful not to wake her

She was but one head bigger
Than my own perfect doll

When she was alive

I buried her in a shoebox
And said my goodbyes
I said my sorries
And dried my eyes

But they never stopped leaking
And she never stopped sleeping

No more is she alive.

In the same strong blanket
I wore as a babe
She'll rest in peace in pieces
Inside that grave
For I am weak
But she is brave
And I'll never know
The love I never gave

We are America.
We are the coffin fillers.
We are the grocers of death.
We pack them in crates like cauliflowers.

The bomb opens like a shoebox.
And the child?
The child is certainly not yawning.
And the woman?
The woman is bathing her heart.
It has been torn out of her
and as a last act
she is rinsing it off in the river.
This is the death market.

America,
where are your credentials?

the azalea grew there
twenty years,
its grey body now
but scratchy bones,
browned blossoms
to ponder
until someone with courage
pronounces it over

cuts barren spines down,
and mulches the ground
with faded smiles
aged between pages
found saved in a shoebox
string-tied tight in darkness

will we still want spring
when we remember
our missing fuchsia
or discover
a new color to admire,
forget it ever was,
as we’ve manged
to forget laughter
in passionless winter

My Shoes

Someone once said, “Walk a mile in my shoes”
If you asked me to indeed I’d refuse
They protect me from bruise, respect me to choose
Which pair to prepare me to win or to lose
If footprints are clues, mine would be *****
Some shoes leave tracks, some shoes are flirty
If my shoes could talk, you be they’d be wordy
And here is what they would say:

“we protect you from weather, we’re always together
You cannot survive with just one
We provide you with style and last for a while
Until our job is done

Some of us new, but most of us old
We’re essential to everyday life
We’re there on the stairs, the court, in the car,
And even to marry your wife

We’re red, or tan, we’re **** and span
And proud ‘til the day we retire
‘til we say our goodbyes in the shoebox in the sky
Or perhaps the ol’ telephone wire”

Someone once said “walk a mile in my shoes”
If you asked me to indeed I’d refuse
For my shoes are unique, with every lace and squeak
They speak, oh yes they speak
Until they sing the telephone wire blues

Today I had an abortion.
I held the foetus in my hands, still hot, covered in blood, so tiny, yet so recognisable in its incomplete finishedness.
I was at a loss, it hit me slowly at first, then all at once, I started to cry.

It wasn't unexpected, I've been having this weird feeling lately, as if I knew that I wasn't going to see it live.
I felt like that from the start, to be honest, my stupid paranoid head couldn't avoid the thought, but why worry? Everything was going fine.

I don't know what caused it, if you ripped it out, if my body rejected it, or if it just wasn't the right time; maybe all these things together, in the end it takes two.

And so there I was, looking at this unborn being, staring back at me with your eyes, finally ending the dying life we put on it from the first moment.
The organs and the limbs all at the right place: I could see what they could have been, if they hadn't been so weak. It looked like that undeveloped Polaroid I took of you that still lies at the bottom of the drawer: I know what it is, but no one else can see it.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to let it go, I couldn't throw the remains away, not yet.
I put them in a shoebox, under my bed. I'll have a beer, sleep on it, tomorrow I'll see.
I have to get used to the emptiness first, I have to untangle myself from around your fingers, get some paracetamol for this ******* headache.

Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health.

Surely I will be disquieted
by the hospital, that body zone--
bodies wrapped in elastic bands,
bodies cased in wood or used like telephones,
bodies crucified up onto their crutches,
bodies wearing rubber bags between their legs,
bodies vomiting up their juice like detergent, Here in this house
there are other bodies.
Whenever I see a six-year-old
swimming in our aqua pool
a voice inside me says what can't be told...
Ha, someday you'll be old and withered
and tubes will be in your nose
drinking up your dinner.
Someday you'll go backward. You'll close
up like a shoebox and you'll be cursed
as you push into death feet first.

Here in the hospital, I say,
that is not my body, not my body.
I am not here for the doctors
to read like a recipe.
No. I am a daisy girl
blowing in the wind like a piece of sun.
On ward 7 there are daisies, all butter and pearl
but beside a blind man who can only
eat up the petals and count to ten.
The nurses skip rope around him and shiver
as his eyes wiggle like mercury and then
they dance from patient to patient to patient
throwing up little paper medicine cups and playing
catch with vials of dope as they wait for new accidents.
Bodies made of synthetics. Bodies swaddled like dolls
whom I visit and cajole and all they do is hum
like computers doing up our taxes, dollar by dollar.
Each body is in its bunker. The surgeon applies his gum.
Each body is fitted quickly into its ice-cream pack
and then stitched up again for the long voyage
back.