I once thought there wasn't any life outside of this town,
but I was okay with that because it had everything I needed.
But what do I know?
We are all so young,
running through parks,
climbing up mountaintops.
Strolling past all the shops
and driving around this town going nowhere in particular,
I thought that it simply could not get better than this.

We loved each other like the stars
I thought that nothing could separate us.
We were sure to last,
but little did we know
that all these days will belong to the past,
and everything that we always did
now live on pages on thousands of papers
and in pictures tucked away in a box of old things.

Happiness was in the air that day
when we all were together once again.
The moon shined bright that night,
lighting the path that we once drove down every day.
This city just seems so small now that I have broken all its walls.

I drive past all the places we left marks on in this city.
The now vacant houses that once held so many memories,
the lunch table where our love blossomed,
the midnight drives to the movies,
getting excited over slushies,
and the lakes we learned to float.
I look back on all these places
and think about all the things we ever did,
I simply thought that it could not get any better than this.

Setting the new year on fire.
Dancing to the sounds of Grease.
Picking peaches in celebration of spring.
Watching all the bands we ever loved.
I would forget all my stress and worries thinking about it all.
Can it get any better than this?
                                                                  
I want to thank this town for all the stories I wrote.
All the times we felt like children.
All the times we rose with the sun.
All the times I felt loved by all the people that were my stars.

As I'm driving through this town and watch it grow smaller in my eyes,
I imagine a time when I was not alone.
I know getting older can seem quite strange at times,
but what do I know?
All I know is that there is just so much to see,
and sometimes the grass isn't always green as it used to be.
But as long as I have these memories,
it couldn't get any better than this.

I still talk about you,
And how you encompassed my soul.
And honestly, that feeling will never go away.
It will always be like the first day.
Your lips on mine,
In my father's hallway.
Can you honestly say
You don't remember?
I will always be passionately enthralled with you.
The push and pull of exotic enticement.
The deftones will always bring me back to your bed.
In catasaqua,
With the slushies ballroom dancing
And the old dude watching us **** in the back seat of my Plymouth acclaim.
Of tripping endlessly,
And the saying "beauty is free"
From staring at dead trees.
The bench,
And the roof.
Those feelings will always lead back to you.
I can honestly say,
I will ways love you.
It was so easy for you to say you don't love me,
But yet you instilled the fact that you'd be the only one who would.
I know now,
No matter what you say,
That I will love you more than anyone
Who will ever come your way.
I will love you,
Forever and always.

chaste pecks from the super-sonic youth
numb lips flutter to the hollowed cheeks of normality
no longer the hand-prints on the guide book to hostility
a pamphlet of rudimentary teachings;
the principles of tolerance and rebellion and acceptance of human beings
a concoction of suppressed psychotic behavior, quick wit, and center of satirical tease
constantly moving with heavy footsteps and heavier hearts
their minds and bodies plagued with actions from a deserted youth
soul lusting over the naivety of people before self-actualization; how crude
do they call it an existential crisis or the daily life of a agoraphobic nobody
shouts from the depths of caged fears that scrape the oblivious flesh in their brain; a bit gaudy
mother, sister, brother, father how your words crush the knots of comfort that line my internal organs
bleeding from the pores of my screams; streams of moon-beams shooting out my eyes; oh, not again!
stomping our metaphorically spiked toenails against the idealism of pop culture
oh, my, how adolescence is the worst kind of torture
cherry slushies lined with cigarettes to create a whirl-pool of nostalgia
recreational drugs and ironic situations to ease our instinctual sense of proverbial nausea
loud-mouthed demons spawned out of clothes-hangers and emotional turmoil
show up in our nightmares that we nick-name ‘a good place to contemplate suicide’
repeated imagery stacked like flap-jacks in the mouths of blissed-out sociopaths
too self-indulgent to include us in to their personal stories so we can observe, record, and assess
i don’t perceive doctors to be particularly and predominantly just and true
but i one time met a doctor who told me ‘being a teenager is perhaps the hardest thing you could ever do’

tootsie pops, pop rocks, rock candy
sweet tarts, smelly farts, war-heads, sour patch kids
reeses pieces, reeses stix, snickers lickers
fudge pile, chocolate smile, peanut butter bile, sugary style
baby ruths, almond joys, soy bean sauce, creamy steam
ill give u a payday, mayday, hay tastes good with parfai
milkyways stay gay to play games with sunrays
icing splicing with knife dicing
makes cakes, cook steaks, rumcakes
****** sprinkles, rip van winkle, diddily dinkle
gummy worms, germs impregnate firm, permed urns
angel food, carrots, pineapple upsideways
fruits, *****, parachutes, scooters, jello shooters
goobers, corn on the cobbers,
veggie wedgies, pepper leppers, squash boxes,
fry foxes, fleet rocks', carrot tops',
dishes of fishes,
witches brew platypus and fat kush
pushy slushies riding skateboards on gary busy
fussy hussies getting blushy about cussies
cereal made of creoles, bread straight from dreads,
rice is nice with spice, yeast is beast,
last but not least, wheat is a treat,
kiwis, shmiwis, dodos on go phones, starfruits,
bartlejuice, grape drank, sushi stinks.
ill eat anything.

I love us in July,
the Saturday of summer.
Getting caught up in magic and cosmos,
killing time like it doesn't exist.
If being this carefree is a crime
then I guess we'll be locked up forever.

We sit in cars with slushies and show tunes.
Can't believe that I've never been happier.
These feelings are engraved
and they've found a home in me.  
These years were the little things
that made me love life.

Never did I imagine so much distance to invade our space.
Find us across the map and roads apart.
It's time we dance with reality.
Well, I guess time really did catch up with us.
It's time to break the news that summer does not last forever.

As air and leaf litter are substrate for the bird.
And what makes a human. Separation from the substrate.
Believing the substrate and the subject are separately defined.

Whatever gives the poem form - three lines - is the substrate.
Things will be said. The signer and the seer must supply the words
Which are the substrate of the mind. A beautiful week ahead.

No hundred year storms, normal summer warming.
Your bones are white as lightning and strong as sticks and stones.
At Pat's 80th b'day party most of us are old and jolly.

250,000 port-o-potties. There's a way to wash one out
And a way not to. Arctic ice melt. Slushies. One can count
Past one or nine by inserting zero to keep the rows.

Implied is an order beyond the small order we impose.
Goes to greatness human and divine. The two white wines
Death brings to the garden are the love between good friends -

Abstract. Suppose there is no afterlife, to understand the end
Imagine the beginning - no brain, no mind, no name, no I. Zero
Had already been inflated and the rose was in the garden.

Carmen's legs
are pixilated cerulean.

Rubbing beasts
that itch at untouchable
bruises beneath her skin.

Her computer is on.

She rests crossed legs
on its desk.

There's something sticky about her skin.

Carmen's date is calling,
her speakers make a sound
like **** plopping in a toilet.

The webcam blinks
like Sauron's eye.

Carmen has never had
any of the cards
in her hands.

Not a whiff of a queen of hearts
or a jack
of all trades.

It seems she's been slipping for awhile now,
in her black room, colored
by the glow of some
techni-cyclops'
cavernous mouth,
crimson, heart-shaped teeth,
and scythe tongue.

She has never known the war machine
of love,
or the war machine of self-determinism.

Now she does,
her compudate buzzes on-screen.

Tiny sprouted pixels
jump into a constantly
buzzing whole.

He's got a bored face,
and Carmen knows this is the look
of the generation.



Carmen lifts her legs from the desk.

Puts her hands on her lap.

Licks her lips.

She wants to know
what lowered human beings
do when they are restless.

She is seeking something
moreso
philosophical
than
******.

"Bored, much?"

Carmen asks sardonically.

He took it literally.

He jumped at attention.

"Oh, no,
now that I've seen you."

"How do these things work?"

"Well, I guess we talk to each other,
and if you like me
then we go from there."

And to Carmen this was reticence,
this was blasphemy.

She had the cards in her hands,
finally.

Carmen's legs are pixilated  high cerulean.

Cerulean the color of
a tiger ocean,
****** cakes,
slushies,
a sun-****** sky,
a corpse. Skin against a computer screen.

i can picture it
dusty desert roads
old motels when the
sky opens up and the
holes in the tent leak
the empty rooms and
bare mattresses of a
creaky single wide

a patch of wall where
a cross once hung for
so long the wallpaper
holds its faded image

payphones and
diner booths
card games and
cold pews

(sunbeams dreamily
landing in your eyes)

i can almost taste
cola flavored slushies
cans of beans and
cigarettes and coffee

and smell burnt pancakes
egg casserole the way grace's
mom made it at home
secondhand smoke a bonfire
made from incense and an
abandoned white church

i can hear the songs
the laughter tears and
screams to heaven over
rumbling rubber tires

i know the way they
talk and theorize
argue and laugh
cry and pray

i've felt it before
somewhere here
and there in
twinges of time

but nobody ever claimed
you could wander the
world in one day or that
writing a gospel was easy.

My heart is buttered cake
with brown sugar frosting.
It can't take much.
It melts at the edges sometimes,
and there's mold on the corners.
My eyes are made of green-apple jolly ranchers
that are sticky in your hands.
My lips are two halves of a strawberry,
sometimes purple and bruised
like the words that come out of them.
My hands
are made of milk and honey
but sometimes
not
as warm and comforting.
There's apple juice
blue slushies
and hot sauce
running through my veins
and cookie crumbs
behind my brain.
I am a feast
and
not
prepared
for
you.

I’m drinking a 40 on a ***** mattress wanting to carve his name into my leg. Drunk and wobbling in my 6 inch heels with daddy in mcdonalds. Giving him hickies with cheap ***** on my breath. He says I make him feel young again. I no longer put my menthol cigarettes out on my own heart. I wear blossom pink lipstick now and started brushing my hair. His mouth against mine feels like I tongued an electrical socket dipped in honey. His teeth are rotting out of his pretty skull but he tears through my star white skin like a rabid dog. Holding each other’s hands at random gas stations while he buys me alcohol to get rid of my bad thoughts that swell my brain. He takes care of me and pets my angel hair. Calling me his princess. Promising me slushies and gold teeth. He let me choke him in the parking lot along side the highway. I asked him if I could be his baby in the back of his trunk. He kissed my neck like a solar eclipse.

Greasy hair tied back
pink scrunchies haphazardly holding together the unbrushed strands
rosemary mint chapstick smeared between lips and lips and lips on lips
backseat bouncer, I'll leave when the dance is done
The same type of ***** this visual you get when you watch the sky turn in the AM
pink, blue, green, gold, gone
shoes off in hand, feet itch on concrete
to corner store barely open fifteen minutes
cherry coke slushies are so good at 7AM  
how dare you preach to me calling me
"Honey, Baby Girl, Peach"
listen to me for a change
Im no lesser than you because I prefer to live like wind
with a here today gone tomorrow mindset
It wasn't love, this isn't love
wont answer your calls, at school a nod in the halls,
baby my motto is pitstops and pitfalls
a brief rest for restoration, then back to hopping barbed wire fences
I don't mean to be mean but this is the last you'll see of me for a long time
because Love isn't real and if it is she took it with her

Please come back. We'll watch stupid movies and eat tacos and drink slushies again. We'll hold each other and I'll use your blanket so my scent lingers after I'm gone again. I'll rest my head on your chest again. I'll apologize. I'll make you coffee. I'll call more often and pay more attention to you. I'll pause my video games when you call. I'll talk on the phone for hours with you and hang on to every word. I'll kiss you longer and hug you tighter. Just please, please come back. Please.

I used a thesaurus for this
I wanted to have the right word
for when you look at me
and laugh
because you’re amazed
I’m in front of you.
I wanted the right word
for when you unexpectedly
grab my hand
and say what I’m thinking.
For the way grape and melon slushies
or ice cream with too many sprinkles
are things for only us.
For all of those times I’ve said
“I know”
when I don’t.
Spitting off the tops of parking garages.
When I try to tell you what you are to me.
Trying to describe the deeps of your eyes,
my strange love for your nose,
and that smile that launched a thousand blood cells
or something.
The broadness of your shoulders I imagine curling
into sometimes
when I’m feeling tired.
VITAE
I wanted to fly kites and sing
directly
on
key.

Looking out across the shore,
there's nothing now that i want more
than you right next to me
sharing that sweet little breeze
Sharing memories
It's you that I want
it's always been you
It's you right there
in a little of all I do

(CHORUS)
It's a beautiful day for memories
a day for fun,
a day for sharing summer sun
But It feels cold & lonely inside my heart
because we're so far apart

Strolling along in summer sun
watching the children having fun
Icecreams and slushies
rollerskates and puppies
Waves dance upon the sand
there's a broken boardwalk for me to stand
Artists gather to paint such a day
In my painting I'd use just grey
It's how I feel when you're so far away

(CHORUS)
It's a beautiful day for memories
a day for fun,
a day for sharing summer sun
I wish you were here to ment my heart
I ache inside when we're apart

I look across the grains of sand
I meet a face from where I stand
deep inside I feel a warm glow
for it's the face I love you know
I run to you, you run to me
you're here to share a memory
I've been waiting here every day
and you've never been too far away

(CHORUS)
It's a beautiful day for memories
a day for fun,
a day for sharing summer sun
Now that you're here we'll never part
for you're here to offer me your heart

Sitting on purple dinosaurs
has never interested me.
That is until today,
when sat I upon one and
wondered what they eat.
Who knows?
I learned my brother also enjoys the
company of brightly colored, plastic reptiles.
He is living two hundred miles away,
maybe more; maybe less.
Yet I felt the bond strengthen between us,
bringing us closer together.
Between a gap of 378 days
and 200 miles,
I like to think he felt it too.
Perhaps he did.
Who knows?

Who knows anything?
Who knows what purple dinosaurs eat or
why moths fly towards the light?
Who knows that I prefer blue slushies to red or
the square root of pi?
Who knows who invented the alphabet or
invents reasons for war?
Who knows how to stop chain smoking or
why we cause guilt for ourselves?
Who knows a sure way to cure hiccups or
how to love without being hurt?

If everyone knew only one thing,
people would still
parade around arrogantly,
as if they themselves know
every single idea
that God has for man.
One may even argue that
God does not exist,
and that he is just a figment
in the imagination of fools.
Once again, I will argue back
Who knows?  I know I don’t.
I’m just a girl
sitting on a purple dinosaur.

Never forget the joy of being 17 years old.
Never forget the joy of being 18 years old.
Never forget the joy of being 19 years old.
These years created a story that I'll reread for the rest of my years.
Days of slushies and singing,
days of love and summer.
Grassy fields and star gazing car rides.
The truth is I've been really lonely and distant from who I used to be.
So I stop and think that this is how growing up is actually meant to be.
It's lonelier than I thought,
but it's time to face reality.
I forever treasure our years and days together.

When I was a child, I learned fairly quickly that, "Because everyone else is doing it,"
Was the worst possible excuse
Individualism was sewn into us like tattoos
We fed off of originality like *******
But we were never that wild
I remember my father built us each a swing
And gave us a pile of spray paint cans
I remember my mother made the cookie dough, but we had to make the cookies
The first time I told my father I wanted to move my furniture, he just nodded
The first time I told my mother I wanted to stencil, she gave me paint
When I started drawing on my walls, they asked me what colours I needed
I watched my older sister grow up and dye her hair blue
She makes her own jewelry and I make my own tshirts
We shout poetry out of the rolled down windows of my Dad's old truck, on the way to get slushies from the gas station
We wrote quotes on the back of our hands when we were angry,
Shouted when we weren't.
The hunger for emotion sometimes turned my dull nails into claws
Sometimes we exist in the wind passing through the car
Sometimes we can see paint splattered on the tree the swings used to hang from
Sometimes we are so drunk on a feeling that we embody it, soaking the thread instead of holding onto it
Individuality morphed into impossibility, because
We are everything at once
Every feeling
Every moment,
Every bug smashed onto the windshield
Every colour of paint we somehow spilled on my ceiling
Every stain that I'll never get out of my genes.

We give our weight to the ancient decay of this familial brick building
the blades of our razor shoulders just barely grazing it
all as a part of our clever façade of ice cold leaned back sunglasses on our heads attitude
cool radiating off of the sparse, tattered patches in our jeans
the walls still warm from the sweltering July heat
the moon watching us quietly, red in the face
the night still simmering in seventy degrees
smelling of dust and trash cans and our extra-large cerulean slushies.
She sets down her roller skates to divulge the little treasure she had been hiding in her pocket.
Do you want to try one? My mom let me have a pack.
In this uncertain instance, I decide that cool is greater than safe,
as I chew my lip and dart my head around every corner
to ensure that disapproval isn’t lurking somewhere in the dark.
I gradually slip one out of its snug packet with a shaky embrace
twirl it between my fingers as I watch her light one on fire
uttering and stuttering: are you sure we should be doing this?
attentive to the way the tiny embers glow and dance off the tip each time she flicks it with her chipped nails
the smoke turning pink from the neon sign that flashes above our heads
and I’m not sure if I’m sick with anxiety or sick with chemical vapor
as we cough until our stomachs are empty
and the street in front of our feet become drenched in blue.

We would both end up watering our roots just to see how far they could grow
how many miles they would stretch even from the dry dirt of our little Southern street
then drown them so that they would rot and forgetting would be easier.
She would end up in Washington state
where she would wear out her bright yellow rainboots
and I would end up surfing the wind of the Midwest
and we wondered how we could have gotten here
how our miniscule seeds could have blossomed into trees big enough to cast shadows.
After adulthood had kept us apart at more than an arm’s length for a few weeks
she would call me on the phone at one a.m.:
I think I found the one
her voice fluctuating like the sound waves of a child finding their first Easter egg
I would kick my feet up choking on my laughter and letting my tears have free range like we were twelve again
when we would sing our own rendition of “Chapel of Love” in Mrs. Peters’ class everyday
our biggest worry then would be tying our satin bows in our hair just right.
We would talk until dawn
until we would drift off into the dark of sleep
the white noise of the other end of the line still breathing into our ears
dreaming of pixie sticks.

The sound of her body collapses onto the floor
as if she forgot how to fly
waking both of her parents as one treks the speed of God up the stairs
and she wishes the fall would have snapped her neck
that the flush of death washed over a face didn’t have to look so gruesome.
Before she could re-tie the noose into its perfect donut with slick and hurried fingers
her dad flings the door open and you’d think he left a hole in the wall
or a hole in her chest in the way he says
what the **** do you think you’re doing free-falling along with the thick saliva
foaming from his lips that were swollen with sleep
although he hasn’t slept since.
The first time she did it, she apologized
but this time she was only sorry for unstable ladders.  

At recess that day
I drew lilies on my hand with her sparkly pen and I realized later that I had lost it
as if it had grown shovels for arms and buried itself at the bottom of the sandbox.
I shriveled up my tiny face and spewed tears all over my dress,
I hadn’t known a greater tragedy,
but she said she liked the lilies on my hand better than her pen anyway
as the ink bled and into sweat and faded into something watered-down pink and abstract
she wrapped a medicinal arm around my shoulder and told me it was okay
that everything was going to be okay.

It's grey outside
and I'm looking for something warm
but all I find is snow covered metal benches
The blood on the top makes me think of cherry slushies

Bare branches break
in a driving wind that relentlessly
pushes me
and my face is a cold stone slab of nothingness
staring out of a dark void
filled to the rim with emptiness

Eyes
so dry
they ain't seen a tear in a month or two
but I'm like Conan as I walk in circles
pushing this stone wheel somebody called life
I get stronger and stronger
til I am the mountain before my mind
and bigger than anything anyone else has ever climbed

I crack a tooth-filled grin
and swing the bat again
cuz even Casey connect wood to ball
every once in a while

But it's so grey and black inside me
I'll find some place to run and hide me
just til this wind dies down a little bit
not a lot
just a little
...****

it has been so long since my head has bled flower poems about our friendship. they're always such a mess. recycled nostalgia and loose ends. the dark thoughts drip down the tube of my throat. but for now, let's share a beer and flood ourselves knee deep in poetry. what i mean is every mouth has a reference taste for memory. what i mean is green apple holds a photo of four girls in a basement. *** and coke are the boys that we played with. clementine is goodbye and ***** slushies are a bed of pine. whiskey is a winter storm with our queen jane. tequilla is a lost stitch and a baseball game. what i mean is we're a graveyards of tin cans and band lyrics about goldenrod and desire. i'm heavy with the times we reminisce about the two girls on fire.
i'm glad knowing dead girls are forever.

its like when you're little and something amazing happens and when you think about it you get this instant warm feeling that takes over your whole body and you forget every worry you've been carrying. or when you're 16 and you finally get to drive without your mom in the car and its like you have the entire world beneath your feet. maybe even when you're a senior in high school and you're with the boy you love and you get slushies and decide to just drive for hours singing and laughing and it feels like that moment will be forever and play on and on in your mind.

The other day I stuck my finger in the electrical socket, just to get one ounce of the spark you gave me with your touch. My finger tingled for an hour but it didn't give me my fix.

This morning I cried so hard that my room became the sea. I sailed away on my bed and promised to never go back to the person I was yesterday.

Last week I snuck up a building downtown just to have the feeling for a split second that I had made it to the top. I laid on my back and tried to grab the stars; "the most beautiful things just out of reach" you told me once.

This afternoon I went on a drive to clear my mind. On accident I turned in the wrong direction, but I wasn't opposed to going all around the globe to get to where I was going.

Last month I threw out everything in my room hoping that clearing it would do the same for my mind. I found the card you gave me years ago and slipped it under my bed. I obviously missed the purpose.

Tonight I sat outside the loneliest gas station in on earth. I watched the fluorescent lights flicker on and off. I figured it was counting the seconds it took for me to realize that you're not with me this time walking out with two slushies and a deep breath telling me not to worry.

Last year you told me that you loved me. Three words that suspended me well above cloud 9. Even when I felt my emotions could bend the universe, I didn't say it back.

Right now I'm sitting at our bench on Main st. as stardust seeps out of all the deep crevices in me and the cosmic magic of your presence becomes foreign to my body. Each car that passes by reminds me of that fragile night when ours turned the world upside down.

I stayed there, my neck askew, the ground above my head, out from the metal shell. Having no clue that your being had vanished from your own exterior. Unfamiliar faces surrounding me and caressing my bruised body, leaving yours, unloved, under the sheets.

I sit at this bench, wondering if I sit long enough, time will end and start over again, and you’ll come walking up to sit next to me, and I’ll never let you leave. I sit at this bench, reach for the stars still, trying to grab the most beautiful thing just out of reach.