Like a child enlightened by heightened curiosity,
So is a native poet by poetic luminosity.
A verse in sight and sound devoid of modern flair,
For poetic convention the poet does not care.
So, take this vague verse as one roaring rhyme,
And take it as verbiage very overdue in time.
Unjustly sunken voices the poet seeks to hear,
Battling a torrent history...above, below, and near.
This inquisitive writer infers a present too dismal,
As around an angry sea lies an origin; abysmal.
Rejecting fables history’s assassins inked true,
The writer seeks fair chroniclers, but wreckage was their due.
Sought is Illyria, a place far from here.
Land said "not to exist," but its roots still reappear;
Fabricated history most poets cannot fathom,
Quelled grandiose splendor serves political stratum.
Calling curious minds to ponder this heck of a theory,
First, consider the writer's roots with impartial query.
What the Illyrian believed in was a life well spent,
Not man-led "guidance" begging cents to repent.
Since Illyria’s rebel ship sailed onto history a fright,
Shakespeare's pen amorously inked the 'Twelfth Night.’
Around Illyria’s outskirts sly mythology prevails.
Modern Illyria’s pervasion of such mythology still fails.
So, how does one interpret Illyria’s butchered will,
As her Godless schism fibbing history faux fills?
Her feeble-minded native is essentially to blame
For their grand, deceptive role in the imperialist’s game.
Brutal eradication of Illyria’s vocal reason
Deem all native conspirators of ultimate treason.
As the State buries the dissident's piercing wits,
A treasonous dog barks, upon foreign command he *****.
This wormlike betrayal, painted by his foreign master,
Is an art to be repeated in future governing disaster.
In the European south roam these bad hounds of species,
Anatomical sketches of Europe's rear excreting feces.
A pile all imperialists eject with laxative ease,
A pile all imperialists still smear as they please.
Above Illyrian graves (those below made to inspire)
The ***** dog dances, blind to his own fate in fire.
This ****** work of art, not a site for you and eye,
Is an emblematic governance gagging an eerie cry.
As today’s political pawns (in corruption they engage),
Illyria’s distinctive scions remain fools on a stage.
Our bodies dance and sway like silly puppets at play,
Our minds confined to idiocy as the socialist's prey.
So,  a poet's jingle jangle on probing minds they should linger,
As besought are worthy scions who must leave behind a "finger."

it rained yesterday,
and as we walk today onto
the soaking track,
the long and circular
spiked-rubber
track, ***** puddles
assault us,
bearing the floating,
struggling corpses of
worms that escaped
the drowning underworld
only to be swallowed by
the waves of the
upperworld, where we humans
run and play with each other and
with nature, but as much
as we can change in our mother,
we cannot quell her lachrymose heart,
and so we walk
gingerly among the
vain attempts
at survival which manifest
themselves as bodies laying
split and ******, pinned
to the earth by natural needles
(their fluids drying over
their skin, sticking them,
melding them,
to the ground) as
though someone has
prepared them for dissection.
but no one save i
attests to the sincerity
of ****** science;
i am the only one
to delve into their
infirm bodies
to seek their minds
and travel
down their tracts and
empty their glands
and poke at their five
or four
hearts, however many
worms have;
i am the only one
to dissect them, yet
lay one digit on them i do not.
i dare not,
for what would i discover
but wormlike attributes,
and who would ever
discover
anything
inside a worm but
defeat in its own birth,
ostracism for having
been derived from something
so lowly as a
creature without limbs,
which eats,
yes eats,
the very black vile
we stomp our mighty
feet upon.
but,
remember,
worms have many hearts
(four or five,
however many) and therefore,
more blood to spill.
and so,
from that logic springs forth
the idea
that the blood of an earthworm
(in comparison
to its body)
flows four
or five
times as heartily,
more guiltily.
but no guilt touches the ones
who scream and swerve as they run,
avoiding death scene after
death scene in the
short films of worms' lives.
it confuses me, however,
how these worms came to be
lying dead atop our
artificial turf,
for isnt it fact that
a worm comes to
the surface
when the earth floods, and
so isnt it fact
that artificial turf does not flood
(for it is solid and immovable
through and through, and
so no worm's tunnel
can penetrate the
hard rubber) and
so isnt it
mysterious
that these creatures
have risen to the surface
from a subterranean lair
that doesnt exist?
pondering this,
i stop and i let the rest
run past me,
kicking up
brown water with an odor unknowable--
the stench of death in summer.
i look down to the
ghastly sight, and
i know suddenly that
worms have hidden
and that rain has found and
injured them,
and that we have dismissed and
killed them.
and i think to myself,
i know why worms hide.  
knowing this,
i look up to continue
trampling these mockingbirds
of the dirt
(for who would take pity on a girl
taking pity on worms?) but
i stop when i see a young
boy lingering on
the side of the track,
studying the turf
i so carefully studied
moments before.  
i study him.
and i see him delicately
scoop up a worm,
wriggling at life's end,
hold it between
his fingers high in the
air
like a golden chalice
to be blessed,
and drop it whole into his open mouth.

10/4/14
Those minutes
those mornings when I wake up and it feels I'm back at day one
and I'm still made of clay, and God himself
took his thumbs
and hollowed out my eye sockets
and never filled them.

(what do I write now?)

My ponytail is brushing the small of my back.
I'm staring at my reflection on the computer screen
and I'm not liking what I'm seeing.

(Stop talking about yourself.)

They say "write what you know", and yet
I can only write about myself.

(shut up.)

Knives. Earwax. Squeals.
What is my life made of?
In a day, I'll be back
at my temple of jitters.
(School).
(maybe there's something wrong with you, the way you brought those glasses to the kitchen,
that you drank the same liquid from, and your stomach
felt like it was holding water bottles full of blood, instead of organs)

10/13/14

Why do you have to make me feel so **** guilty all the time?
When we stood on the grey carpet in Spirit Halloween
the animated screams pushing against my torso
with your gaslighting, my head/heart/hair caught fire
and nobody won.

I feel like I deserve better than this, but what could be better than
these moments?
At least, later, I will have photos to lighten
in my sweatpants
and my designated sweatshirt for when I feel like ****.

And the inside of my mouth tastes like
those screams, from the wrinkled, blackened plastic
and the oil from our un-fluffable bangs.

I know tomorrow I'll be
busy ******* up christmas songs
and leaning on bus windows
and sleeping in the jumpy skin I've built myself
out of bad breath, smudged makeup,
and curly-haired boys,
So I should be grateful.
But when it feels like you've drained bottles of stage blood into my veins
and I am not real anymore
and instead of eyeshadow, my eyelids are weighed down
with toxic thoughts that, instead of coming from my mental lips,
come from your physical ones,
I will not be happy.
I'm sorry.
(You know you had fun. Stop it. You had a hell of a great time, and a bad aftertaste will never get rid of the taste of the absence of loneliness in those pictures.)
---
Me to myself: why are you like this?

(And also, why is it that
you always have more things to say
even when this program is closed
the typing has stopped
you come back
hungry for the attention you'll never get?)

---

10/24/14
I know people will ask
how my right shin got so scratched up and shredded
and maybe I will tell them
It got that way when I crawled out the window
and not that I sat on the bathroom floor
crying tears that felt pink, the way they darkened my face
and I dug my nails into my flesh
and dragged them.

I wish I could do something poetic with the stinging pain, like
cut off all my hair, or most of it
because It made me look like a wild animal, when
I walked, shoe-less, on the streets.
Or I could have scars on my leg, and be reminded
of the pain I inflicted on myself
(and others)
today
---
11-3-14

Oh ****, I fell in love again.
...
Is it love, Or is it
a childlike infatuation
with the idea of a crush
?
Do I have affections for you, or am I attracted
to the idea of you?
Am I just bored? Do I only like that you like me,
that you make me feel relaxed?
Maybe, or maybe it's
the sugar-high-ish, ache-y feeling
I get when I see you in the corner of my eye
or our legs brush up together
(Thank god it's not lust).
---

_
This is the color of anxiety:
Red, like the blood I wish I could expose with a sharp, small movement, but can't, just can't (you can't even hurt yourself correctly. Worthless.)
Orange, like the pumpkins in the halloween store I tried to have fun in, but the snake of uneasiness squeezed my ribs too tight until I couldn't breathe, orange like the light I saw in the middle of the night.
Yellow, like the sunshine that I wanted to run into, but I didn't let myself, a watery color like what my voice sounds like sometimes.
Green, like the leaves on the rock I sat on
when I ran from myself, my house
and cried, cried, cried (once is enough, *******).
Blue, the color I thought my tears would be, but they were just a salty clear, dripping down my face, and changing nothing.
Purple, like the bruises that I don't remember getting, but press on anyway, relishing the pain in a sort of ******-up way, thinking "Whenever, wherever, however you got this, you probably deserved it."
Pink, like the insides, and outsides, of my eyelids when I can't sleep at night, arguing with myself.
Brown, like the dirt that I imagine
cakes the wormlike workings of my brain, in the area where
self-sympathy and control was.
Black, like the centers of my eyes
that I see when I look in the mirror and think
"****, did I look like this all day?"
And, anxiety is the colors in between, too. Navy and tan and white and gold.
Yes, it's all the colors, because it's everywhere, and most of the time, I can't get away from it.
(God, could you've made that any more melodramatic? Yeah, you have dark moments, but you make it sound like every aspect of your life is drenched in manic-depressive bile, which, my dear, is ridiculous.)
---

i used to paint
drag my body in wormlike contractions
across the pure white space
violating the canvas
body dripping with shameful colors
nuances of brown
i enjoyed the animalistic madness to this act
more than the paintings themselves
this was never about art
always desperation
i paint no more
these days i drink and *****

The moon shone on the trees and found
The trees were paler than the moon.
The wind was a peroxide stain
That stabbed, wormlike, toward the veiled fastness of my brain
The wind that skinned me ‘til I stood, naked and raw;
The corner of my mouth cradled a pestilential sore.
My throat was lined and thin and wan
As though it held the cranium of an antique and parasitic swan.
I turned my mouth toward the origin of my demise
And said,
“ I vowed to die amongst the trees
While human hands removed my clothes, and closed my crusted eyes
And human voices stilled my vague unease
But this will do for now.”
A crow wheeled above as I keeled over in the dust and saw
The sacred steepled chapel of somebody’s fleshless body
Writhe beside me, and in hollow whispers fall;
I closed my eyes and ushered in the shadows as the night began to crawl.

Smallness crept inside
Wormlike string of fear
At the face of the grandiose
Grandeur, something
You wish could entangle in between
All your gaps supporting
The thin walls of crushing unimportance
And as it squirmed inside
You stomach empty and raging
It filled you with despair
Urgency to escape or to be
Held and cradled
By this enormity of everything
Most of which you will never see
Inside were thoughts
Bouncing off the walls
Meaninglessly sinking in
And dripping out
Just as meaninglessly
What are they in the face
Of endless repetition
So glorious and terrifying
You could breathe it in
Feel it, write it out, sculpt it
Or take care of its smallest bits
That fit into your grip
Tiny you are
Tiny I am
And all of them to come
Just as tiny-tiny bits of
Comparative insignificance
Yet like the molecules of matter
We hit each other's trajectories
And butterfly's wing governs the ball
So, good night dear insignificance
I thought of you today
Between every other blink
And on the big scale
It hardly even happened
Yet thought was most alive
In the universe of my
Petty mind
That never happened before
And will never exist again

On the night when
A thousand lions waived into the velvet
Of a cold winter sky
Seized their roar succumbing
To the call of ever hungry
Thanatos the ruler of all
I saw wolves pupils
That like solar eclipse
Imprinted onto the very fabric
Of my sleepless eyes
Hunted they looked
And void of meaning
Yet searching
And with a tug of some
Greater force
I fell into faith of a
Greater purpose
Something never ending I could not comprehend
And with a wordless howl it spoke
Of poisoned fields that saved him from starvation
Of mad coyotes that either bit or never saw him
Never part of the pack
Pretend nurtured in his fantasy
By barking scavengers
He turned into mythical wolf gods
At a whim simply to make the hell beautiful
So he fell under and crawled
Wormlike he condemned the self
To preserve the only world
The saddest tale that he only half believed
And a she crawled he ate only
The fallen berries and those worms
That felt all too familiar
And yet the wolf he was
And to prove he broke into a howl
Magnificent desperate powerful
Like anything he could have been
Inside the simple sound composed of
All that was left of the predators heart
And it glistened in the moonlight
Like the brightest star
He never learned to see
Within himself
And suddenly the word
Replaced the howl
As he coughed throwing up
The story he could not contain
Of darkness and death that filled his ribcage
And suddenly the howl subsided
The only anchor for the yet not lost
Piece of heart
That anchored his damaged spirit to reality
And what did my ever so loved
Sensitive self
Had to say to the true torment
How could I not feel guilty of
His loss
How could a cold embrace of my curiosity
Be worth the void of beauty
In this hopeless creature
Ever hurting
Ever eager to prove me wrong
For hope hurts more than sarcasm
That nothing of value was all there was
Of this shattered broken now voiceless heart
And what did I have to share of my own
But to expose petty sentiments
The raw sensations of self-proclaimed spectator
All my truth brought on nothing but
His contempt
What was there of value
In all this staring
Under the starless blanket
Of the cold night sky
Pointless was to continue
So I stepped away
To where it could not see
And while some things never change
Some things loose their meaning
I now listened to his howl
As it emerged
One day again into existence
Where I was not as much

I watched in the swirl, the blue fish paddle
steadily away from the boat,
knowing that it had been hooked before,
the wound protruding wormlike from his jaw.

Today would not be his last fight.
He would not be a photo prize.
He wanted not the weight of air,
just the restless, endless flow all around,
the homely tide.

Algae speckled his skin
refracting rainbow fingers
like prayers in the morning
and brown moldy spots on his lateral line
like vespers recited in a dark nave.

Swirls of lilies flowed beneath his belly
revealing his antiquity and mortality.

He danced defiantly along the reef,
shedding embedded sand,
corrupted water weighing him down
the worms wriggling on barbed Js above,
the anemones gesticulating alluringly beneath.

He once was suspended between ocean/heaven
everything green slipping off,
his blue mocked by the lighter sky,
his lungs rejecting its oxygen,
his blood rejecting its gravity
that cut his very being.

He was born with scales,
flexible bones Ill-suited for this rigid world,
born to glisten never knowing.  
more beautiful peony’s,
things more lovely than him
rooted in lands beyond his sight and ken.

His eyes seemed larger than mine
and in a certain graceful way
they had the heavy density of a stain glass panel
trying to contain all beauty in an icon.
They shifted only towards the light.

He stared mouth agape and every scar,
every hook wound fell off, revealed itself,
proof that he will never be any one’s prize.

Like everyone else, he had learned
the wisdom of the wound,
that life was not in victory,
but in surviving, the possibility,
the hope of catch and release.

I started my rusty boat
and in the dart of his rainbow
swimming away, swimming away,
I felt the thanks of his fin and tail,
as I moored in the direction home.c