God gave leopards spots
Zebras and tigers stripes
Hyenas fur and fangs
Lions a bright and gilded mane

But humans have but their skin
Pale or copper, thick or thin
Veins and white blood cells
Bare feet, bare of claws

How then, are we expected
To show the dangers we possess
If not gifted with fangs or fur?
If only given soft skin?

My ancestors in the Americas
Painted their skin with bright colors
Palms red with berries and
Faces covered with the designs of their gods

I am but a teenage girl
A goddess in no sense, a weakness
My force upon the world no greater
Than the force of a worm in dirt

I have no thousand year old dyes
No golden mane of hair but
Bright berserker eyes
and a force of will like gravity

I have glittering lipstick
My own brand of warpaint
Against all things that make me
Feel small, ugly, and worthless

Do you see this? My warpaint screams
I am not your victim
I am not your weak, disgusted little girl
I am a warrior

You can not have this
This body is mine
This body is strong
This body is me

And instead of fading
My warpaint seeps into my skin
Becoming what I am
A warrior, at war

I love how hard it is for all of us to accept ourselves,
Putting on elaborate masks,
To go parading amongst the phonies.
I love how we all talk to and about each other,
But never try to repair the broken relationships,
But what I love the most is
how we all complain about our position,
but never seek the answers to put our minds at rest,
To keep the past in the past and move to whats best.

You sit here reading this,
And think,
"What a hypocrite!"
"What a beast!"
But I see my flaws,
and I know who I am,
Im working to help myself,
on levels that most don't understand,
Because while most put on masks,
I put on war paint,
and march into battle,
facing the demons of my past,
to look foreward to that brighter future.

And the truth is
I love all these things
because I sit back and realize,
that im not a warrior,
that is battling alone,
that we're all going through the same situations,
Just different scenarios.
that we all have difficulties,
living with ourselves,
The same difficulty facing the monsters in the mirror.

But it's time for us all to face the facts,
To bring out the war paint,
and throw out the masks.
Time to smear it all over,
cover up the flakes and cracks,

It's time to march into battle,
to beat down our demons,
wipe off the shame and sorrows of the past,
walk triumphantly into the sunset,
head held high and soul held higher,
and never look back.

Please,
do me a favor:
stay out of my dreams.
i'll be beneath sheets, silent.
her love, even love for another
was a flood through my mind
at 2am.
you blend, spirit to spirit,
the ghost that i never catch.
the hope that lingers
like garlic breath.
swimming the lake,
it's slow-motion, it aches.
it's filled with possession,
money-drug manuscript
and reaching out without a grip.
she wears clothing, i wear internal
organs on my sleeve.
she wears lipstick, i wear warpaint.
i melt plastic for fun.
i melt into her, miles at a time.
she fancied displaying
naughty pictures of herself; hell,
i fancied looking at them.
angel wings, or what was imperfect
becoming so very perfect.
now she taunts me without
knowing it.
i wish for a long moment ago,
i wish i had closed my mouth
and made myself stay still.
i wish 50 weeks hadn't gone by.
i wish i had closed my eyes and
woken up in bed after a bad dream.
it was her halloween photograph,
that was the moment i sat in the
dark diningroom, staring, and
feeling my arteries bursting
through my sternum.
many nightmares later i am no longer
alone, and a noose in name is my
favorite false memory:
i electrocuted myself, three times
as a child.
once, using metal scissors,
i severed the cord of a radio
plugged into the wall. hurt like hell,
my arm went numb.

in the wrong place. i was released,
and ran like a fool back into
the trap.
i wanted to be trapped by
you. and NOW i have to force
myself to close my mouth
and stay still.
every day i stay away from you
is another ******* costume.

You have to fight for everything, even yourself.
Nothing was ever built for weak people.
But you are precious.
You are all the things I never believed in but happened anyway.
You are all the last thoughts of the last moments of someone's life. All I ask is that you always find your way home like you lose everything except for this.
Remember that wind is a language, like everything else, and every time you meet a new person you are discovering how to believe in people. And where we live, there is a lot of wind.
So in effect, I believe War is another way of saying I love something so much that I can't stop breaking whatever makes it sad.
And where we live, there is a lot of war.  
And courage is the form we take when we become someone else's second chance.
Remember that Earth is cold, that the world is a scary place to live, but ask yourself what the world is made of.
We all bleed the same amount, and we forget that if you ask for freedom then you have already lost it.
That sometimes running and leaving and going does not always take you somewhere else, and that in order to keep things, sometimes we have to lose them.

You were as golden yellow as the Carolina Jessamine.
You were as petite as the Long- Spurred Violet.
You were as graceful as the Wisteria and as complex as the Passionflower.
You stood as tall as the Sunflowers and as enchanting as the Fall Aster.
You were as intoxicating as the Cardinal flower; haunting everyone and slowly making them fall in love with you.
Your eyes are brighter then those Baby Blue eyes you love so much.
You were as happy as the California Poppy's.


You and your Wildflower Warpaint.

They get excited over the waves flowing when I walk by.
They look so weak
And I feel so strong
But then it’s all the same
I feel like this makeup is warpaint and my short dress sometimes turns into armor.
Honestly
I would wash over the world with my waters and crush buildings with the wind at my command.
But I can’t
Instead I have a flute playing wonderful songs and all these boys follow me into the ocean.
To drown
While I lay there unsatisfied

so this night, I set stars heavy on my brow

and paint my lips with ash

a courting ritual, a lady’s rite—

my warpaint is the lean of my hips,

my sword, the word of gods in my mouth.

yea, I will rule thee

like the sea of my birth

and the snows of my forests,

and you will think it is you who are king.

my warpaint is the curve of my throat,

my sword, the feather-touch of fingers.

do not think that I will hesitate

to take what is divine right.

the splendor,

the agony,

the death

is mine.

What stands after nothing,
what grows in the night?
What answers the calling,
what soothes untreated sight?
Tonight, without knowing,
know we sustained the right,
here now, without crumbling,
fight the dust in the mite.
We'll delight in the other,
never smother the fight...
but when hopeless
feels dopeless,
always answer the cry.

I suit up
I got my war paint on
forward into battle
forwar forward into battle saying
Fire, fire, fire, Fire away
hear the battlecry
hear and sing it like
oohohohohhhoooooh

At sunrise
I awake from
A violent comatose

I welcome the fiery rain
Soak my flesh from the faucet
Taking deep breathes in stride

With an arsonist anthem playing
Eyes closed and heart racing
The immolation takes flight

Bones made ash become warpaint
A far cry from help as I burn
An unstable dynamo ready to blow

To all the lovers who’ve been lost, abandoned, or left behind,
a word of wisdom, yourself you must find,
let the tears become warpaint as they streak your face,
let the silence of loneliness be your most powerful embrace,
so remember as you fall asleep at night,
you are courageous, you are strong, and everything will be alright.

little feet dashing across the playground with light-up shoes and arms raised and poised to hold our weaponry. swift movements mark the territory with memories of traipsing through our makeshift castles. when we’re children we gallantly save princesses with long tresses who cry from the tops of towers, fearing uproarious dragons and the darkness of the sky. we protect the princesses from terror, and some of us grow up to become them and learn to protect ourselves. the tall dragons shed their prismatic scales and flinch as they feel the girth of our swords. after much opposition, we face our fears and instantaneously make the final strike and become victorious. we turn and look through the binoculars of our hands and spot nimble thieves stealing the shimmering scales in exchange for their own greed. they climb medieval walls and we try to catch them. impulse clutters our line of vision and we go because there is no time to waste, we don’t want to lose them. sometimes they return the stolen treasure and sometimes its a lost cause. we learn the latter later, through long sighs at lonely 2 ams after seemingly infinite words have spilled out on paper and out loud out to those who can’t come back and those who can but won’t. but the former fleshes itself out when we experience moments of kismet. these days where we share conversations with people who satiate the hollow corners of our hearts and walk outside and breathe in the petrichor just as the sun has wriggled its way into the sky. we learn life is as vivid as any story we become momentarily enchanted by. people come and go as fast as the pages that inspired our childhood adventures turn, and everything happens at once. we face demons as beastly as our dragons but we have our warpaint on no matter how hastily drawn it is, and we convince ourselves of our strength until it’s real to us.
we were the heroes of the story then, light-up shoes running across the playground, and we are the heroes of the story now, playing and living in the light-up world.

I'm burning with every soft whisper down my spine, my pulse is vibrato.
Like the soft and energetic hum of horsehair melting into song.
Writhing in dance against the twisted embrace of chromium on the strings.
A clash of furious titans.
Making storms when they collide; the wind and the tide.
Wrestling for power 'til the waves crash one over another, gasping, growling.
Oxygen.
When my lips meet cotton crisp and sweet, and beg for freedom of another kind.
And there in quiet whimpers do we seek, together this enlightenment of lone and fallen ones.
Grazing sharp and silent little wounds, quieted by scar tissue.
Healing through our fingertips and moans, twisted as an ouroboran knot;
feeling mirrored heartbeats strike like savage drums.
When the guise of warpaint loses shape, cast aside for inner feral forms,
grinning cheshire, hidden thorny claws.
In the darkness of another night, heavy with the weight of misty breaths, there from underneath do they then come,
the master and his hound, the lord and fallen one.

You plumed filthy fascinating mess
gave rave hillside hair reviews
hated the monkey at the zoo
cos your mum liked him better than you
medicine ball bladder & hammer smash face
tiger glitter warpaint
sleeping it off
had a dog outta 10
living the tent life
the stars were spread out
but you're all fall-back shut-eye
thinking of punching your kidneys
wishing for crowd voodoo

comfort was a long road that came to a dead
end abruptly. happiness and companionship
left suddenly with the clutch of solace. he
was left standing there in the rain, all senses
disdained. a seeing man now build to ease,
seeing the fellowship of someone that ties
knots in your throat; turns your obscurities
to seize.


                                  distraught



at this very moment the quest for clenches
to console surrounded him with the ignorance
his state of mind was unable to control.
seeking and searching began in the
bedsheets. he found loneliness and
regret; mistake after mistake, temporary impassion
chose what risks to take. drowning in seas of
duvets, suffocation on the stench of
frictioned flesh and smothered in the salinity
pasted on each others skin like the warpaint of
ephemeral happiness, he searched down an
unsearchable road and lost his direction in the
*******; forever ringing his ears with regret. each kiss
down his neck, each bite to his lip, each face-blanketing
exhale, he repents with the ignorance of finding the
will to live and love between the legs of someone who
feels the same way. the crimson crevices carved in his back
drip with remorse and sullen; hoping for once to life the
bedsheets and find an unawakened bundle of coiffure
and serenity and not calamities of regret and ****** suicide

Engage
Ignite
the blood needs stirring
the legs have fallen dumb
stupor of monotony
has nestled into hips
wake these automatons
shake the dust from their harps
break beds and shred pillows
it’s possible that the very sight of feathers
might spark a memory of flight
these lifeless were not stillborn
these were once vivid
there is an epic in each of their wrinkles
each one of their tongues
once rang like bell towers
from hilltop carnal cathedrals
there are mountains they have stood on
that you have yet to reach
be careful not to judge a valley
without first considering
why it’s not called a plateau
these are atoms waiting to be split
waiting to rupture
to quake
to rip through the popular tapestry
waiting for their chance to be contagious
be contagious
these are already on death row
unaware of their slumber
ritual has rocked them gentle and slow
and habit is a cozy cradle
Engage
Ignite
spark passion in dried up timbers
gathered like kindling in foxholes
these have been lovers
for a forgotten number of years
these once meant ‘I do’
there is a sedative nostalgia
glazing their smiles
these are not now, but then
break hourglasses
and storm the new beach
raise flags in the motherland
bearing family crests
speak warpaint
sing fire
compose your battle cry
from their fragmented vitality
arouse in these
a memory of their first love
awaken the giants
that have fallen asleep
pull the plug
let them die or breathe
but let us see
who is and who isn’t
a sepulcher

her auburn hair was messy,
And I figured it reflected who she was,
Bright but a mess,
And I was absolutely right.
she’s the type of girl that stays up all night,
Just to look at the moon and watch the sunrise
she believes there’s still more to learn,
more people to love.
and she never stops.
she never stops working, she never
Stops loving people,
Even when others deem them unworthy.
She spends her days saving lives,
Couldn’t bare to save her own.

And everyday she wakes up,
So full of love, but so scared to invest in anyone
She just wants her mind to stop racing.

Her clothes drape loosely on her body,
And her eyes don’t shed a tear anymore
she puts on her warpaint.

In New Mexico,
My toes never tasted the red mud they
Craved. Four souls in a ton of tin
chased storms
Dreaming of warpaint but
I only breathed dust.
I ran at everything with twitching fingers
and choked on dry lightning
that tasted like highway tar and ***** *****
futilities
But I licked my lips and asked for more.

This being
That's Forgotten, with feeling,
Among words and
Remembered in pictures;
Mistaken as something
Other than himself.
Digging deeper into the volume of his petty mistakes;
At a home smoking a hash pipe,
Imagining all at once
With his splintered third eye:
Dragons and chimeras.
Smoke screens and warpaint.
Red plume warriors on red sailed
Boats to islands
Where sorceress' haunt;
Purple hued hearts galore by the
Sea.

I hate the way that you try to pierce through my very skin
like it's some mask you need to destroy
as if every interaction is scripted
and our plots became twisted in some sick burst of authored inspiration
when you say you want to know me
like I even know myself at all
like I'm some treasure trove
that if you pry at the lock for just a minute longer
all will be revealed
the secrets to me, my world, our...
whatever this is-

love?
the four letter word that fills every heart with elation
the ultimate goal, a timeless measure of success
and the premise of our relations
measured in kisses,
profound words shared at unreasonable hours
where syllables slur
and gaps in our memories plague us for nights to come -
why do I dread it so much?

why does love have to be a goal?
why does every touch of your warm hands seem to melt a part of me?
frost - five letters, brief and symbolic of everything I'm made of;
what's in a name? evidently much.

why are you so determined to see past my warpaint -
if it is warpaint at all?
you say you want me to bare everything
that I look pretty despite marred skin -  
I hear that I don't have to bother embracing my sense of self for you.
is that all I am:
a template, one-size-fits-all?
**** your delusions
and the way you like to lengthen my name
like it's one that resonates with me

don't you listen?
I don't resonate with this world at all

We walked through high desert.
High,
and feeling deserted.

We sped down the interstate,
barefoot and dodging oncoming traffic.

I guess it's a miracle we found our way,
never strayed from the path
as it wound through swamp-land and quicksand

And soon we were strutting up the driveway
proud, our mascara running like warpaint
our feet had blistered and cracked.
But still, we arrived.
and still, or journey never came to a close.

After the crippling exhaustion of finding my way
to the threshold of home,
the maps were being drawn all over
so I fed myself with the knowledge of bandaging wounds
and repairing a flat on an empty road.

I will come to terms
and hear-out the voices of ****** and despairing,
who tell me with voices like roadside ditches
that the destination
is to become a memory.

to be a worn out engraving on a marble stone.
to be rotted beneath your feet,
deserted
and maybe high
up in some sort of heaven.

I promise
I’ll never forget
the way we moved
when we first danced
you in warpaint
me in white rags
the sweat
the beat
the chemistry
I swear I’ll never forget
being set on fire

I melded my crown
Out of the metals I used to cut myself with
I dyed my dress
With the blood that once was a weakness
I painted my face
With the warpaint and tears I used to cover my fear
I forged my heels
Out of the glass that shattered me
I used to be hurt, weak, scared, broken
But now I am regal, strong, brave, resilient
-no amount of tears could take this new feeling away from me

here we go
Love

forehead touching
and we are gripping some cloth
something meaningful
an ally has died
the cloth is bloodstained
we are plotting our next move

and we meet eyes
and know what must be done

******* our ragtag trappings
put on some lines of warpaint
kiss one last time and strike out into the night

they don' know what's arriving

I call my sword Jesus in a Manger
that's how surprised they are

Because you curse yourself for the tears in your eyes
knowing they won’t do anything
except make your kisses taste of salt.
But you cry anyway;
there’s nothing else to be done.
Your heart is heavy and you can’t help thinking
All that weight’s from doing the right thing
And wouldn’t it be nice to have what you want for once.
You’re dying to be someone else
and heroes are empty stories to you now
Because kindness and courage aren’t getting you anywhere
but lying on the ground thinking about nothing in particular
because everything hurts.
So we’re rooting for the villains now
in leather and not lace.
Red lipstick is warpaint
and we dyed our closet black
We’ve come for power
Because forget happiness, we just want to survive
I can live with this hollowness in my heart
because it’s the only way to live.
Forget Prince Charming
Because he’s a nice enough guy but nice guys finish last
so leave him in the corner trying to get his **** together
and burn out the princess in you
You’re a queen now
and you’re gonna take your happy ever after
if you have to let all hell loose to get it.