you grimace behind a curtain
from the hollow bones beneath your thin skin
jumping is hard
walking after you get back up
is harder
you leave a ****** fingerprint
on every new surface
you lean against
springing back up and laughing
when it hurts so bad
you collapse into it
but if you don't stand you fall
and if you fall you won't
get back up this time
you fear the failure of another word
jumbled and mischaracterized
your voice feels foreign
like character acting
and your body is not forgiving
any more failed promises
and neither is the world
you struggle to keep up
but it seems like forever
that you've been dragging a broken leg
and we don't appreciate
the stains you've brought into our house
so what are you going to do
when every surface has been wiped clean
and they all give up and vanish
will you still believe as you do inside now
that you are not a worthy person

your life seems as small as your hands
you can't take your eyes off of them
as we melt, we wondered who the hell we were
before we were the way we are
like alice grows and shrinks inside a looking glass
an atom splinters inside a single cell
and a poison apple meets tongue
dripping with blood that blooms on the doorstep
this morning adam asked you
if it was his or the shadows in the forest
because he couldn't admit it was yours
four score and five lifetimes later
he hunts to capture
and you move lightly on your belly
through the underbrush, breathing gently
steady in the darkness, treading lightly
he knocks on the threshold and begs to be invited in
but he could not enter, not ever
as he stands in sin, a scar on skin, a rib in hand

I go into a paper store. I'm becoming enamored with notebooks. I buy them and stab at my decrepit brain sometimes. Sometimes I doodle, for mental health reasons. I would like to publish a short book of my brain and my doodles someday.

I try to make small talk, if I had a therapist I imagine she would tell me to do things like that in order to overcome my anxiety, but i don't have a therapist, so I operate on strict protocol of making small talk with at least two people a week. I'm afraid if I didn't I might forget how to, I've forgotten how to before, and I didn't speak to anyone in a way that made me feel anything for a very long time.

It can be scary because when you go back to talking the words don't come out the way other people's do, and you begin to wonder if you were ever a person as well, or just versed in the movements and sounds it makes, from imitation and delusioning oneself into believing one is a real breathing person too.

Cats sometimes think they're dogs, and dogs sometimes also believe themselves cats. Not mistake themselves for, believe themselves into being whatever it is they believe they are. If it were just a mistake we wouldn't be so sensitive about it. It's the fact that we really truly believed we were the same as everyone else before we were in introduced to the belief that they had held unbeknownst to us, that we are different.

I say hello to the clerk. He is young and attractive with a pleasingly soft colored brownish hair and beard. He seems smart, quick, and grumpy. He seems like someone who always understands what is going on exactly. Or in his way. Sometimes i am unsure how much i should believe sure people.

I busy myself pretending to look at notebooks and paper but finding nothing I can afford to buy. I stare through the color coordinated envelopes and they ooze together and i realize i have no reason to be here, this store didn't have any nice pens or notebooks.

I idled to not seem oddly abrupt in my exit and heard a song i very much liked, playing on the speakers above.

I love this song. I said.

Yeah, she's great. He said, not looking up. I walked around the stand of paper, pretending to inspect it.

I was hearing her in a lot of different songs and thought she was different than what you usually hear, she doesn't just write what people want to hear. this album is one of my favorites.

Yeah, it's really good. He looked at me as if the air between us was asking me out loud what i wanted him to say.

I pretended to fix a stack of colored papers. Well, i like your music, have a nice day, thanks.

Bye. I walked out and didn't stop to think about it. If i think about it i recoil physically and that looks odd in public. I put my anxiety to the back, in a neat box labeled, a guy at a paper store.

I am sitting in my car an hour later. My meter hasn't run out yet so im determined to stay until it does. I throw a dead lighter i was keeping out my window onto the side walk. I realize this is littering but i figure in a city this big someone will pick it up and i don't move to get it. Sometimes i have moments where i realize i don't need things. I liked it though. But it's just another thing. Meaningless.

I stare down at my notebook and hear someone stop outside my car and i look over. The guy with the nice colored brown hair from the paper store is on the sidewalk next to me. I almost jump. He is bending over to pick up the lighter. I am holding my breath as if it will make me temporarily invisible but i am very visible. Somehow he still seems not to see me.

He holds a black backpack strap with one hand and examines the lighter with the other. He tries lighting it and gets the lifeless sparks, but decides to take it anyways and puts it securely in his pocket. He continues to walk.

Lost in flesh
Inside your head You see him again in the Past dripping with so much blood it escaped into the pond from rivers along the length of his limbs
I don’t know his face, still, barely
I remember him swaying like a lightening rod and begging for help, not even that
Gurgling the word, and it took me a second to register how wide open his head was
I didn’t gag, but I didn’t breathe either
I dropped my keys and yelled too
A precious reminder of the tides beneath the foam
There seems to be no desire left
It collapses in on itself like the old barns succumbing to blustery wind out in the yard
Where the wild things grow
A heart made of the soft river stones that shine but shed their soft talcum brill
A young woman is perched on a bridge
Somewhere else but it is happening
Right now
Some kid is waiting for the right stop
Thinking his body is so heavy
And counting the steps to his front door
Outside my honda some kids are loud like a muffled faucet dripping laughter from the other room
Evening feels further away than it used to feel
Everyone feels further away too
I would try to tell you a story now but
Everything seems less important when the mist returns in the morning in this place
It’s a fatal question to dance around in circles of frustration
Watching some others offer it’s existence up for capital
When you can’t pin it down with an arrow or settle it’s parameters with measurements
Or wrestle it down like a bucking bull and a faithless matador doing his duty to his country
It can’t be as simple as the ways in which we quantify
Even the process of writing has become dispassionate, there seems to be no use in what the meaning is
The question looks quaint at arms length
The boy is home in bed, thinking about buying beer tomorrow and if he was hit by a car or someone shot him how long does it take to bleed out and just
So yes, I would try to tell you a story to explain myself better but, I can’t
I’d tell you a story but the truth is I’m confused by how much there is to tell
The intricacies of the truth, the aspersions of summing up the contents after breaking them down
The way nothing always happens for A Reason
The way most things always happen for some type of reason but not A Reason
The way I feel today
The way a fly poops on what it lands but you can’t see that
The way these things are never sold, nor told, nor need to be believed to be true.
You know the way it goes, do we die in our own **** or do we **** before we die
and did the chicken even know the road was a road when it was crossing to the other side?
The man is 65. I remember this because a girl and a guy had seen the man and I
and he told her this. He tried to laugh and
he choked on his own blood. He had wrapped his face in a brown tshirt
And placed his hat over the wound
Covered by that. He looked like Freddy from that movie Freddie vs Jason
but somehow mostly formidable in that he
was soaked in the red, drying in the sun
like glistening crusting paint, chipping away
I don’t pray very much but I did today after the ambulance came, I prayed all Monday
I thought about who that man was
A young woman is perched on a bridge Somewhere else but it is happening right now
And she is suddenly having it, she’s having the truth and she doesn’t say anything but she
Puts her hands in her pockets and doesn’t move
And then does, and presses a cigarette to her mouth and doesn’t move
And the filter gets soggy and
She sits there and decides to light it
And finally she moves away from the murky dark water and walks to her car
The mouth of the maw glistening against moonlight slated shadows
The seeker holds her heart and picks up the stones as she goes, doesn’t look back

I doubt your mother’s ever told you.
The alternative to sanity is losing your mind.

When someone you love is gone they are replaced by an ocean of memories.

Your mind is a swimming pool and you’re just a bug, moving rhythmically, fending off the crushing weight,

and then one day you get so cold you stiffen like a corkscrew and sink like a stone,

driving your screaming body into the concrete.

And when they finally find the bodies of lost divers in the caves beneath our world, they are curled in fetal position, burrowed into the smallest crack they can find in the stalagmites of the cold walls,

hands and feet destroyed from ripping at the rock with blind death instincts,
grappling for a tiny passage back to the light.

Everybody wants to be a model
So her outsides fit how she’s dying on the inside
Everybody wants to be roadkill
Pegged up for examination but mostly for display
I guess it doesn’t matter how the victim felt
It doesn’t matter how wet leaves slipping from under feet feels
It doesn’t matter how cold it is
It doesn’t matter how another cigarette tastes
It doesn’t matter how his eyes looked when he walked past
It doesn’t matter how a cold gun feels
You can’t feel a gun, technically
Is anyone out there? Can you help?
Does your brain
Hesitate too long almost all the time?
Do you need to breathe through your mouth just to keep going when your nose can’t work? Do you feel dizzy? These are deep places with no air, in the future. You need to be able to breath with utmost control
And take up the least amount per capita in your lungs possible
By prepping your lungs for the atmosphere
Of the mask world you are not dying,
They hum in every bright viscous corner
Of Hollywood Blvd and time square
You are not dying
You are winning
And you angle down just to show everyone you can make the illusion of beauty appear sick
I focus on the version of me I see in my mind every time I forget to feel better. You want to be me, I am sick. I want to be better, I forget you. I want to breathe with my lungs again

1
"New Latin, from Greek boulimia great hunger, from bou-, augmentative prefix (from bous head of cattle) + limoshunger

First Known Use: 14th century”

when i first got to california i would study the way ocean waves crashed upon the shores of beaches, it’s was bone crushing, pulp softening kind of tides. packs of tides keep rushing to the beach and throwing themselves down into it’s stand, as the beach absorbs each one.
it does not recoil.
i want to learn the earth’s secrets
i am attracted to water, tides of brevity, yet unrelenting to the sand
and the shells and sand they make regenerate, breaking down continuously
then hardening and heaving their particles back to the ocean
trusting it will be brought to some shore
the waves of the pacific quiet the waves inside my skull.

a constant pounding, a wave of bulls crashing through
uncharted territories even now.

i am coauthor of too many mistold memoirs
someone else wrote about me from afar.

2
it’s funny, no, i shouldn’t say that
it’s strange, how quickly one becomes commodity
how the pall of your skin has a scent
but your eyes are lassos
how, without your consent, your body can be bent
cut, *******, and transformed into an unanswerable question
drawing whole packs to your lone presence
dryly plucking the last drops of milk from a straw
you look up as they circle, giggling
and hunker into their places, surrounding

they’re the classic eclecticism of boys looking for fast entertainment
sure, let me be your dancing bull, wave the red cloth and dare me
because i am not the bull and i won’t let you have this one.
mr big ****, his homie in your face laughing at you
shy guy, and sarcastic dude who’s ******* bored
they say you don’t look like you grew up here
you think, “what, in this in-n-out?”
you say, “no, i’m from the east coast.”
whenever these things happen,
your words become bitten off at the ends

you hold onto your empty cup a bit too long as serious mr big **** talks at you
your head swimming with frustration and mistrust
homie who laughs jabs his finger into your face
pointing to the special sauce leaking from your burger
"aren’t you gonna eat that?"
you smile at him and you don’t know why but you just smile
you take a bite and chew with your mouth open
you haven’t got an appetite

you begin to cajole and retort casually with them,
seeing how long the game will last before it gets dumb
as if your harassers are friends
until the words “*******” enter your periphery
and in a fit of disgust you stuff the last bite down
and exit the pathetic scene
as you walk out to ringing laughter you find yourself
un-panicked but fatigued by the run in
thinking, when will i learn how to handle this ****?
and why should i have to learn to regularly handle harassment?
i never asked for this attention
never asked.

my body is not a question.


3
a slow burn of metaphors accompanies every bout of insanity
this week i’m convinced that i’m drowning from the inside out
when he comes over it’s hard to look at him, with his sweet eyes and adoration
after rushing around picking up the little pieces of myself off the carpet
hissing in disgust “stupid *****, stupid ******* ****”
and putting it all back together before he got here
because i feel less than nothing
far from beautiful

4
i would often imagine what people would do
after i died, if it would be
a mess of bad jokes about entitled white girls
with selfish insecurities
or a mess of bad sentiments about how i was a modest hard working girl who
who
who am i most days, except for someone
who ******* tried her hardest
i don’t like the idea of dying young, giving other people
control of how i’m remembered
i want to establish that image for myself
what a dream, what a dream.

who should get my trinkets, my instruments,
who got the glass collection, the tea cupboard
the patterned hats, the quartz stones and golden tooth
i thought about how the funeral would go
how my mother would cope
if my father could stand it
i have been making sand castles
and cooking messy cakes with frosting dripping jimmies
i have been reading books and
writing essays and working every run of the mill job
to keep my mother from crying
and my father from falling asleep in the stillness at night
regretting his regrets because i fall asleep in the stillness at night
regretting myself and thinking of him
regretting his regrets as his life stands behind him
and he drifts into a dream land where we do not exist but clouds

and i wonder, now, if i could still let this happen
if i could stand it, how much time i have to turn it around
i have been told you must invest
twice the time it took to dig the hole
in order to get out
if i start now, i can see the light by the time i’m roughly
37

i give my untouched binge food to homeless people
because watching them receive it
feels a lot more satisfying than the pain of eating it
fighting the weight of nausea
i hold back and return my wallet to my purse
as i whip around the burger king drive thru
and opt for dollar store cheese crackers in their little 16 cent per meal packages instead
that is to say, the package is the meal
i cannot fill my stomach these days,
with frozen organs and weeping ulcers
sweating and puking on the side of the road
i cannot sweat and puke on the side of the road these days
because i do not want to die, and must get better by 37
and these days, thesedays i have nightmares of men
with wild eyes and yellow teeth, bodying the window of my car
their hands groping for my face through the cracked window
pressing a gaping maw spittled against the glass
as i scream the deep scream of terror that comes from inside one’s stomach
when no one can hear or when a wild animal
is slaughtered by a larger feral creature, death drifting through the forest
home owners turning away with cold pressed spines
and wonder what died

i hear them talking about me from the hallway
more often than i speak of it myself
my bones crack, my muscles moan
i have no time left for sleep
the waves keep crashing down
i spend 12 hours in a day worrying about others
and try to take another 12 for myself but never quite
end up having that many
i wonder if you still think after hearing this poem
that this is a selfish insecurity
it is blurry childhood,
stab wounds from a series of sadness,
an insatiable wish to fill
the spaces of unmet need with small animals like me
wrapped up in unassuming parcels
forgotten under a christmas trees
eaten by maggots.

5
dear body,

they tell me we could have a heart attack
but i laugh at them
ask if i think I’m invincible and i laugh at them
i am far from it, because if i am anything i am a sponge
which doesn’t cause me to feel any less
just soak up the mess when there’s a spill
and continue to expand, adjust to the pressure, and then expand again
invincible is a generous word to use
for what i think i am
because i am weak, helpless, but angry

like a feral child biting doctors and snarling
or a person who lifts a car off an infant when the body gives you no choice
but to respond to the adrenaline of fear
pass the boundaries of what you believed to be true to save a life

i am simply adaptable, good at surviving
i have trained my body to be strong even when I am weak
my mind to stay sharp when my teeth have eroded
because the doctor doesn’t love you, and your mother
she’s sort of lying. like the government or dr jekyll.
you know not to trust people with empty eyes or bitter hearts
you will fight if it gets you out of this cell and closer to sunlight.
endurance is the only pride i cling to.

6
he picks up the book my mother was reading
"what’s this?" he skims the page looks at the block lettered heading "SUFFERING"
"suffering…" he looks up for a second,
then at me, and i wonder
if he knows, so i smile at him

when I was younger I didn’t get it
but now I fully understand how people
can keep secrets from their husbands and wives for years
some **** is too deep to allow
those you love
to wade in it

7
she swallowed me whole and after
clawing my way out of her stomach
I am still picking my fingernails
out of her teeth

8
i am paying for my grubby child hands
the baby bird bones in the backyard
of my childhood home
are singing warning bells to me from across a continent
they pierce my dreams when i finally sleep
the corn acres cresting golden hills in the dawn are gone
another night alone in a city far way from home
and my wings are still just feather and bone
muscle dead below, still holding the hilltops on her shoulders

you fall to the waves crashing down or
you pump the sore tendons of your weak wings
and you fly
there’s no other choice
your body is not a question
it is an answer
-

we lived inside of clocks
we had bodies of heartstrings that will be plucked
a vibrating mass of shifting cogs
and locks built behind bars and red rock walls
and i still don't know you after a couple years
the key is sawed after a few brief fears
reformed the locks

this is the feeling of ghosting into rooms
watching them read your memoirs
slow burns coals to old news
swallowing loosely fluming cooled fumes
yelling “stop stop your interpretation’s skewed”

you didn’t get the bruise
you didn’t eat the apple
wish i could remove all the words
and ways in which we could
describe the truth. the sapling

but they do not hear you
grappling but slackening
traveling across the map
to watch it all unraveling
picasso pats you on the back
this is static, your hair only glows
in through window cracks
don’t have it

keratin, bear the din, see through
transient setience, the void speaks to
this is the illusion
you cared for
there’s no taking it back
you’re where you always were
infinite lines don’t
point towards the earth

this is lock jaw with no key
when you take all the attachments in your life
and smash them on the ground
without heed to the deepest reaches
the only way your heart beats
is in tune to the way the rain breathes
watch it wash away and exhale out
this is drowning in a sea
and being found face down in a puddle
laughed at on the sidewalk

he kicks you in
you don’t care but you did
this time you saw it coming
band aids are pointless

"you wanted to be everything"
you still cannot swim
and they’ve got it all wrong
she just wants to be nothing
but they say that’s negative
at least it’s something

this is me being realistic
this dream is ******* ballistic
and we find ourselves transistic
because were or weren’t we meant
to love and live through this
but this time it was you
you ruined the script

lost friends were barely the beginning
no holds barred a death grip bending
wonder "what if" brings the bold ending
another story of my half hearted glory still pending
the forecast is gorgeous with a chance of importance
miss muppet eats her porridge, facade painting waits for mourning
gorged til morsels turned to acid moons, her stomach waning spoons of poison
and then the spider climbed on down the chimney spout
he loved her with a death grip, couldn't bear to let her out
she slipped away limping doubt

i am never what you ordered, right?
less forward then when you saw my light
came in for the warmth he runs from night
as it fell he left burning for a fight
confused by simple misery
mistook for complex mystery
from porcelain skin to bleeding tin
she was a sordid sort of fantasy
the lemons in the leopards tree
crouching he protects and heeds
the bitter fruit he cannot eat
so long as he may wrap his limbs
round such a lovely sacred tree
they see succubi laced in leaves
a lovely sight with poison teeth
but wrong the masses stood, as always
a daughter of zion missing her wings
fought through mobs, yearning to be free
nuclear body in a derelict land freezing
the pure love escaped her at beelzebub's hand
replaced with lust and sacrament
she had no home, but hut in sand
she dreams of warm days soon arriving,
dry eyes, dry land
living light in tears just drying
the purest kind she's never finding
in her mind the road seems endless
she loses sight of truth in it's windings
sits in trees ******* pulp
from the vitriol
at night that came
to burn him down
the windchimes tinkling
the golden sound

she made a pact with the devil
the night knights left the bevel
he told her for a piece of her broken heart
he'd offer peace and settlement
and on the day the angels touched down
he watched her wings part, unearthly sound
puffed his chest, lest the ego deathed
to brag at the world what he had found
and asked in awe where he was to start
understanding all the fragments of her heart
she left in the morning and never came back
the gods don't like the selfish calf
the flaunting of deities, the crass obsessions
they want their daughters depicted
in inked diary wraps
preserved for life
he whispered to her ear
these men want nothing
but to consume you to death

i have broken three to six hearts
since i started to warp
showed the spiders my hands
threw down my arms, too tired to explain
being human is hard when
the ananse have more legs than cards
the only fable was aesop and his art
the cyclical change of a fractal of parts
i am not the same being
as when i started writing these words

have you ever felt a home in your bones?
safety in the way it cushions the weight of your moaning head
upon falling at it's thresholds
you want to know what tender feelings
you hold in safe places
but they
never question the way your severed vessel
still toes the shoreline,
roaming the foam licking at the crests
of crescent moons left in the remnants of crab shells
pressed into particle upon particle of scruples
unspoken in the weeks that forgot you

they rush ahead

and you stand stock stuck, still mustering
the guts of every animal they left on the beach
in the road, and you too leave them
for fear of that lethal touch
mistaking broken shards of beer bottles
for sea glass, some days you tried to remember
and forgot

they are savages
the agile hunger pains
gnaw at the bandages

but you still love, in nausea,
ad naseam, you study them, reverential
try to reference their satiation with fondness
still sunken in repugnance for your own likeness

you collect them like passengers
pieces of you and worlds unto their own kind
he says you are two of a kind
you think not, because he is one

each thrown to the riverbed below
becoming rocks filling up the moat
cranking down the drawbridge
over a river filled with sea glass
the true form of whom you have settled with
knowing you may never know

and in forgiveness you live with
the sickness of knowing nothing
and the sentience of understanding everything
and when you stand by the water
they tell you that your eyes have a brilliant glow
and you let them find you stunning
in a memory upon a time ago
you conceal yourself in the
minds of many

while the solecism in his praise
still rings heavy in your throat
two thousand
nine hundred
and sixty eight
miles away
from home

no,

i don't feel beautiful
but i feel dangerously effective

“Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout ******* and ovaries rather than ***** and *******;to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars - to be a part of a scene, anonomous, listening, recording - all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to ****** them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night...”*
-Sylvia Plath

all the streets i’ve walked become a neat little maze
under crete is a labyrinth
under los angeles is a cage
in my head forms a neat little map
cover your legs with your napkin
the monster in my head
says to cover my back

she’s looking for a sweet little life
she’s slumping over in her seat looking white
she may seem a little lifeless because she is
are you okay, are you okay?
are you?
no.

you put on a little periwinkle dress
you reign in your red hair with barrettes
now you shed the little periwinkle dress
in a gas station bathroom
to be less like a girl and more like
the smoke in your lungs
the pain in your heartstrings

you rip your red hair from the barrettes
it doesn’t feel good anymore
they don’t feel right
you go to goodwill and stare at the men’s button ups
in gaudy patterns and colors
shaken and sleight like your mind
some people’s eyes just chill your bones
you think it is safer to wear camouflage
in a city where pretty little girls
are devoured by minotaurs
when they wander out alone

don’t think about strange boys on the boardwalk
who are stuck in your sun glared eyes
the less you told
keep telling yourself it was wise
the lies you told
keep replaying through your mind
the wall rears it’s head
when he says the word *****
you ignore the warnings
you ignite the warnings
you forgot the warnings
hand him the lighter and watch them burn

they say they can feel your lightness
you tell them you are looking for a life full of light
and it lessens, as the sun drops
learn your lesson
they only want one thing
and you don’t want to think about it
but eventually they say what they really think
what they rashly think
what they readily think
the sniffing nose around the corner
you barely blink
the bull shows you the horns
you know you stink vulnerability

and you always get up to leave
just in time, the warnings
you disappear back into your well memorized labyrinth
your body and mind are warring
the minotaur is bearing down
the moments are fleeting but you carry the feeling
the moments are feeble but the fear keeps on teething

maybe tonight
you can do something different
try not to haunt
every place that you live in

the quietness of content
between two people
walking down the sidewalk
after splitting a pint and a crepe
is something new to me

the quietness of unsettled
emptiness in the dregs
of heaving lungs in a public toilet
is familiarly foreign
and suddenly unwanted

i occupy booth seats
instead of the space between
two metal dividers
and a toilet paper dispenser

i study the dimples of your cheeks
and the scent of your hair
i've become a student
learning the feeling of having
instead of a teacher of wanting

i do not see any crookedness
to your teeth or my own
i taste lager and nutella
strawberries on your breath
and don't ask
what else?
no sign of do not disturb
in my eyes
only, please continue
speaking

when i sway to the counter
and ask for the check
i am surprised by our obvious pleasure
when the waitress giggles
"oh i'm sorry,
i didn't want to disturb you"
i didn't realize we looked so happy
so together in a moment
shared over candles and two forks
on a coffee shop table

i admit it was
effortless

i see now that
food, love, humans
the things i made complicated
were

effortless

i like everything about you just the way you are as you are when i met you. point blank.

i don’t have any preconception of who you feel you once were but aren’t now, that you wish you still were. that person doesn’t exist in my mind. the past doesn’t settle into my conscious. it’s just faint musings of something that doesn’t seem real or tangible to reality.

the person you currently loathe, i adore. the person you pine after, i feel nothing for other than what i feel about you now, because i don’t see him and you as separate or different selves the way you do. you are you. no matter what you perceive yourself as being, you are yourself perfectly.

and yet at the same time actually, i see you as very separate internally, with the work you’ve been doing, even if you don’t totally see that yet, because i know if him and i met when he existed in that state of mind we have both previously occupied in loneliness, neither of us would have been able to make sense of the other the way we can now. we both would have been too lost.

if that makes any sense. self vs internal self. treading water vs being swallowed alive. together vs loneliness. you vs a shell of who you are now.

it’s such a complicated balancing act but i wouldn’t have it any other way. when we backslide we are betraying no one but ourselves, even when it feels like we’re accomplishing and internalizing something greater than ourselves. we’re emptying our lives with our bodies, and it’s not fair to the selves we’re struggling to keep intact now for us to do that. we have things to live for. you have things to live for.

i like you now, not then. even if you see things flipped around. i don’t see any see-saw or scale that tips or drops to equal self-acceptance, nowadays with this disorder, i just see an hourglass. i know. i know it’s not that simple. but you’re the only one who sees value in what was. the people who love you now don’t see that, only how it has hurt and tortured you for far too long, and how much the person you are right now deserves to be free of it.

we drove down pacific coast highway
and stopped to bathe in the light
the ocean illuminated like a brightening lover
lost over the ocean, staring at the earth’s eyes

my fingers fit between your knuckles
when you fold yours into mine
and her smile feels real and bright
so i take a photograph to stamp it in time

nothing is wrong tonight
we have nowhere to go
so we just drive
that’s just fine

nothing is wrong tonight
we have nowhere to go
but we’re together and we don’t mind
everything is alright

chocolate cake fits in my mouth
and melts on my tongue
dissolves in my stomach
instead of sitting like a lump

my head is full of cigarettes
we mull over the afterlife
it’s all in good fun
the air is alive

the salt water kisses my hands
sand peeks from the lashes on my eyes
my brain doesn’t sit in it’s skull
like a *** of mashed up gum for a mind

i’m filled but not too full
i sing at the top of my lungs
it’s all in good fun
it’s all in good fun

i’m filled but not too full
i can touch the edges of the days to come
i’ve never had such little an urge to run
such little urge to run

a short silence
for lucipher's wings
a short silence
for jesus' body
a short silence
for the death of youth

breaking for adulthood

being brave is
loving yourself
when no one else
will

2013 was made of bus stops and ABC gum
while you garnered a habit
of chewing your lips in the corner of every room you entered
sinking into the cushions as easily as if you were the stitching
running your hands over the stitching in the cushions so many times
over the course of a single conversation, that you could easily
have become the stitching.
2013 was made of boys who left holes all over you
when they pulled out each careful seam
you restitching it every time and spitting
oh well, your loss

new years resolution:
stop allowing yourself to be turned into an object
because you're afraid to be a person

2013 was made of barely fun nights
of screaming sweaty 'cool' people packed into much more interesting rooms
and you, happy to be with friends
wondering who all these other angry people are
and why you never end up surrounded by a crowd
of happy people, who don't find any space taken
that isn't consumed by them, to be offensive

you say cool like it's an insult today
you say cool with a bitterness that can only come
from a markedly uncool person
someone who doesn't laugh at damaging jokes
who makes space for others in conversations
doesn't linger on the bottle of whiskey that is not theirs
their unwillingness to share reminding you of
greedy grubby fingered five year olds
clinging to snack packaged oreos
their eyes darting around as if someone might just
notice their selfishness
you see them, your tongue pinched between your teeth

new years resolution:
share more, even with greedy people
what is taken with bad intention can never be fully enjoyed
you know that well
bacchus could drink every ounce of wine in greece
but without a reason to count his blessings, he is just drowning.

2013 made you into someone different than you used to be
someone who thinks too much and is too harsh
too much instead of too little, always too much
who has learned how to stand but not yet how to bend to get
the best result out of holding their ground
who can be cool like their peers for maybe half an hour
before feeling the pull of a tidy bud of green
and a pen and paper, an archive of sounds and thoughts
that don't talk back. you feel weak. and yet
you feel so ******* strong

because 2013 has made you someone
who runs to help the drunk ***
tripping over the curb outside of your house at 4 am
even though your mother is reprieving you in your head
as you take his weathered hand, sleeve soaked with beer spilling onto the curb
and pull him carefully to his feet, asking if he is hurt
and despite your concern he regards your sunken female figure with discomfort
as if regretting that he couldn't have fallen in front of
a more ****, beautiful girl that is full of vitality and life
and nurses poor sad men back to health

and as he is having a moment of realization, you have it too
he is realizing that a man in shambles
can only ever hope for a woman in shambles to understand
no ****** mary will ever grace his worn soul
only a faded chain smoking insomniac waif
the world is not that magical
this reminds you once more that not only are you not cool
for caring about others, but you are not welcome
because you yourself are a social *****
and that's not the love they were looking for
when they asked for it
but you will give it anyways

new years resolution:
even when they burn you and cut you
even when they hurt you and steal you
even when they bag you up in pieces
and sell your respect in jokes
you still have it and just like the bitterness
it will never stop bleeding and beating
and you can handle it
even if they can't

you are strong in a messy way
a way that stinks and sops past memories
out of every pore when you are courageous
and if that is considered an uncool way to be
then that's the coolest thing you've
ever done
so don't give out on me now

when i say i don't need you
what i mean is
i could need you
if you chose to want me to

but how do i tell you
there are little dead girls
rotting like black pebbles
in my ovaries
and i'm still scavenging for the gold
trapped inside burn crusted skins
determined to pull every survivor from
the tomb before the world shifts beneath me again
and lava eats away at the bedrock

i can't let you be the next explosion
that crunches through
my chest and floods it's way
into the cavities of my armor
how do i say this and not come off harsh?
i have **** to do
i can walk with you but i can't walk for you
and i won't walk because of you
unless you walk because of me

if you let go
of my arm and instead
held my hand
if you would look at my eyes
instead of the door
because i'm sitting right here
in front of you, just waiting
for the moment
when you finally notice
i'm not manipulating or planning
i'm not waiting to crush you

i'm not doing anything to you at all
except hoping that you'll
look me in the face
and ask how my day was
and genuinely want to know
and actually listen to what i say
you will notice
you like me a lot better

i still stay up most nights
because sleep ran away
with the part of me that's missing
but i don't imagine that it's with you
because you will not be allowed
to take the valuable bits of me
if you just feel like sampling

and i don't run along fault lines anymore
searching for where the destruction begins
i don't think of you when i'm sad
because i won't allow any person the power
to shift my entire life into collapse

it's too easy to hand me a weapon
and think i won't use it because we all love ourselves
too much to do that, you're making the assumption
that all human beings feel like human beings,
and that's a dangerous thing

you see we all taste our feelings
a bit differently. sword swallowing
is something i do every single day
every muscle in my body is torn
every secret is ripped open and displayed

i feel nothing inside me is sacred
and now i am truly dispensable
but in that, i've found peace
i am nothing, i am guilty of this
but in that silence
there is only freedom
a blank page waiting to be punctured
with only the most carefully cultivated thoughts and feelings

and in the process of decay i have become everything
have been everything at least once
and even through my anger i understand
the people i truly hate
and even through my adoration i see the flaws
in the people i truly love

this is not to tell you i think you are a bad person
but you're a person who would hand me swords
just to see what i would do with them
because you live for yourself, alone
and you're a scary type of person for me
to get too close to, when i live to create love
to the best of my abilities
even when i'm alone

and while i understand it isn't personal and so on
i cannot sit through another year of not knowing
who you are and what you want from me
so i will make this choice for you

antioxidants, to help
we are poisoning ourselves with every breath
the records in the corner
crumbling underneath the dust in their crates
crunchy warm voices bounce off the sunrise
spinning around and crashing like cymbals
mist at 7 am and a cup of black coffee with two teaspoons of sugar
far away from life
in a corner, under a desk
all my friends want to be cool
i want to hide and be happy in a field
with a mug of steamed milk, with a sweet person
who tells me many things that make me smile
and query, and discuss
they will be the kind of person
i would braid my hair around
when i was listening intently, who would interrupt
themselves to point out a bird startling
and spreading it's wings
or how beautiful winter is under the surface of the sadness
how death is somehow majestic, in the way that
the earth can bring itself back to life after it has lain still and alone
for many months, she can still yield all the possibilities
of fruits in spring
he seemed confused by this idea
i was not upset by this
i was just a bit melancholy but not because of him
because of everything around us
he sees it as cold and uncomfortable
he doesn't understand why i walk outside every night
to teach my body to acclimate to the conditions, this winter
so i can accept it and become it without freezing over inside
and learn to love it as much as the warmth
he rolls his eyes, they all do, they roll their eyes and turn away
and ask why i don't put on more layers instead
why not three sweaters instead of one
why not fight it more, to keep your last skin thin and flawless
i only have one left, i dunno
one skin left, have to get it weathered quickly
before life boomerangs back
this skin is careless and has nothing left to care about
she laughs until she's crying and holding her belly
and she doesn't feel anything but tightening
everything is corroding us from the inside out already
i want to at least breathe in the direction of the moon
once a night

i
you say i am honestly not the same person
i say one day i woke up honest
and i do not know how to undo experience
my own eyes and ears and nose and mouth
cannot be undone at the moment
how do you do it?
push that pressure to the back of your mind
like that
how do you all manage to laugh with a straight face
at things that you know aren't really funny
i can't fathom it. where you go
when you are stomping and ripping
and ****** and jeering
and laughing and running
it's exhausting to watch you

ii
i apologize if it doesn't make sense
that i can't play along
but playing along
doesn't make sense
i could never win a grammy
with this tight lipped smile
laughing at the expense of others
makes me feel more like a paparazzi
placating insecurities for currency
leeching off the vulnerability
you may not think i'm smart but
i am smart enough to know this is not 'normal'
and there is nothing wrong with staring at you in the rearview
and saying "i wish that was really sarcasm"
i'll tell you the truth
and you don't have to like it
and you don't have to like me
and i don't have to like you
because if there's one thing i know about myself
it's that i don't dislike anybody
until they show off their callousness
hoping it's the right party trick
to gain respect

iii
we watch comedy tv, and you are worried
by the way my spine cracks
when i let out a uncontrollable laugh
dragging on, beginning to spill, and as i try to quell it
my whole body shakes with the pressure
of it bubbling inside of me
you feel all of this beside of me
a small volcano with a bent back
quaking absorbed by pillows and flowers and cushions
not quite right for you
wondering why i couldn't laugh like this earlier
when we were not alone
everyone is looking for something more porous
more willing to let in effortlessly
and absorb tirelessly
that can simply laugh like a stream bubbles
and let go of the undercurrent
yet we are sharp and uneven and course like logs
and the weight of our actions carries much further
being shunted downstream by tides of gravity
every intention runs it's course
every intention speaks volumes
if you feel that in your core
every day you will uncontrollably think of how
every intention defines the quality of the laughter
stuck in someone else's head
and you will save it for things that are funny

you cry like lost toys and dead pets
there's nothing you can do about it right now
you cry like a small animal with a broken spinal chord
you keep whimpering, but it can only heal in time
you cry like pressing the skin of your palms
into the membranes of your eyes

when everything in your head is so cacophonous
you want to rub away all the little things you absorb
want that your hands could throw out this migraine
like a candy wrapper on the sidewalk
and if you believe hard enough that it's gone
you'll never notice the sugar rush or the comedown
so you press your hands to your face
as hard as you can and try to pray like a religious person
but you were raised christian and american and
the ways of believing and hoping and loving that you knew as a child
seem insincere now, and hard to speak
the language is not truthful
everything is what they told you it was not
nothing is what they told you it was
or everything was always what it was
and you or i could've told them that

and you think that wrapper might eventually end up in a landfill
if you go throwing it carelessly around
and sadness taken with too much sugar can be a toxic combination
so maybe making the bad things go away
is harder than throwing away the wrapper and enjoying the rush
maybe the wrapper is somewhere else now you can't get to
where you can't hear it crinkle or see it shrivel,
but you can still relentlessly feel it
getting whittled away by time and weather
while steadily melting down bits of you
as you pass your heart around
gasping inside the icebox

until one day you look up and the sun is a bloodier color
and your lungs are full of ice like pins
freezing inside of you
and when seconds before you had oxygen
as you begin choking, you think it's amazing how long
it seems to have been
since you were alive

your knuckles are dry from holding on
to a rusty ladder wrung
even when you want to move so badly
and there's nowhere to climb
you refuse to jump
and you're still trying to figure out
how to fall correctly
to break the least amount of limbs

i still have not stumbled into strength
i have tripped and fallen
and hit my head on it
a few times

but i still have not drank
from the cup of the powerful
pervaded by wasted persuasion and doubt full
security in vacillating hours of uncertainty
turning eyes away from the ******
of crows in the front yard

sore stomach, gutter bored
tired of listening to concerns
about the unimportant things
while winter worms it's way in
to the earth singing suffering
while ice meteors fall from storm clouds
in ohio

i wonder where they come from
and all you really want to know
is what i think about
what you are thinking about
and i wonder if you have ever wondered
what i was thinking about
but i do not make hopeful bets
on boys who live in cities
and do not think
about storm clouds in ohio

finally started the novel he told me to write 3 years ago that i never wrote because i was too busy being depressed and wasting my potential over him which he would’ve never wanted. for maza, for you, sincerely liv tyler and lacey chabert’s love child

*pre:

right now, we’re floating in space, and i can’t think of anything. no that’s a lie, i conjugate things in negative too much. we’re floating in space, and i can think of everything, our bodies are pulling us like taffy in a loop-de-loop like kansas tornadoes and like cotton candy makers and wheels spinning across invisible pavement.

but i wonder if it is pavement? eventually there must be pavement. that makes sense, right? when you’re falling, eventually, you’ll hit the ground, right? that’s life. that’s reality. i say these things to you so much. and you look at me with that face. you don’t have to say anything. your slightly open mouth is reality. your lip biting is reality. your hands, so i hold on to them and pretend we’re padlocked together and nothing could ever break our hands from one another because you’re all i know right now. you’re all that’s real. i’m so scared of what reality will be when you’re not here. what is any of this, without your hands?

and now, we’re just freestyling in nothing, an out of control merry-go-round accident machine malfunction explosion fwoosh. i’m dead and i’m still waiting to gag on cold metal splitting bone. reality. reality, right? suddenly the hard seering pain seems so appealing. i turn my head to look at you and it feels slow motion executed too quickly, snapped neck swung sideways like a dog desperately shaking off it’s fleas, i know your eyes are on the other side of this so i keep pushing for seconds and hours to turn against gravity and look at you.

except your hands, i don’t know where they went. i thought they were there a minute ago, in mine. i saw them. i swear, they were warm like beds. i lay my palms in them and you held on so tightly that i’m sure you weren’t part of the decision making process in this ‘letting go’ thing. letting go, did you let go? did you free your hands from me? did i hold on too tight? was our velocity not enough? my weight was so feeble i couldn’t manage to hold you down from being ****** into the void?

my brain is still trying to put the calculations together. when did you let go? where did you go? i try to imagine you spinning besides me still but everything is empty. we have no momentum. the darkness is arid, quiet. i feel like a shell. i wish there was a shore for me to break against. i want to call your name but i know it’ll be crushed out of my mouth if i try to speak, so i clamp my teeth together and grab my body, and spin, spin, spin. alone. i can’t cry. the tears would creep into my eyelashes and float into the sky. is there any sky? is there anything at all?

i keep denying. i argue with the world, stiff bodied and silent. everything seems like so much for one person to take on. i’m not good at remembering i am being, i am a being. as in i am being right here, right now. everything. nothing. where did your hands go? reality: the wind whapping the screen windows, hissing in the drain pipe. reality. cold, i say. too cold, my body says. cold like a brain freeze. no, it’s not too cold, i insist again. it’s crackly and comes in bursts of shivering down your spine. that’s what it is. yes. just a slight shivering. no, my mind says, chilling. and i tell myself, it would be the wrong thing to do, to embrace that darkness, right? right? and no one will answer me.

i try to scream and my lungs are filled with the yawning roiling nothing, like salt water washing into my mouth. i choke on the feeling and remember telling you that story about sounding like a strangled chicken when i try to roll my r’s in spanish class. you laugh somewhere and i scream again. it feels good, choking. choking yourself to…nothing. there’s so much everything pent up in that sound forcing itself out of my windpipes. and the earth does not rumble beneath; the silence says you belong to me. humming it over and over, pulling. you belong to nothing. you belong with nothing you belong as nothing. i can’t fathom this kind of anti-gravity. i thought we had everything. was i wrong? i don’t feel like everything, right now. i don’t feel anything.

so, i ask the darkness, this is it? the echo is swallowed. i can’t even hear my own voice. is this it? is this everything? i clamp onto my upper arms, squeezing the muscles tense. keep spinning. keep spinning. don’t speak or it will swallow you. keep spinning. there is no meaning. i don’t know why you let go. does it matter now? spinning. real. what is that? spinning.

you never fully unpacked your clothes
the whole time you live in there

and now i know things that make my mind bulge
feeling like whenever i come back to reality
it's too vivid through my eyes
and that's why i never noticed that you hadn't
until someone mentioned it
too much for my stomach
it turns so easily

it's amazing what the human brain can prevent, form getting in
if you really try, if you fight for it
i'm sorry i'm so frightened
or i'd send this in a letter
but i know that they'd derhyme it
and figure out
we all love you, and you love us
and we love heaven, and heaven loves you

they've had us chasing death for so long
extinction for redemption as if that makes any sense
heaven is freedom, heaven is your eyes when the stars are out
heaven is all the battle scars on your worn hands because
you survived and today's breath is sweeter to your lungs
than any breath before, because unlike you, it has forgotten all of them
it just follows your patterns and hopes that you love it
you love it, the circuits do you remember how they
widened your eyes, the branches of trees can be limbs chopped off
but remember you told me, and i know it to be true;
they always grow back. they always grow back.
you will grow back. don't fall so fast that you can't catch you in a year or two
you are your worst enemy and your best friend
and you know better than anyone how to be your own best friend
your inner child is safe in this letter
your inner child is stamped into the fabric of my mind like a siren of eyes
your inner child is deep below the concrete floor,
incubating inside the earth with your name
don't let them take your name, god why don't i have the guts to send you this letter
i guess i'm afraid you'll never get it
i wish that i could help you, i know you're not crazy
and you, last month, i know you're not crazy
and you, last year, i know you're not crazy
and you, still on the inside, i know that it's scary
you know everything that i want to tell you already
in your gut, in your instinct of instincts, it's just being barred
your eyes are not black, they are shadowed
but i still see a gleaming inside you
a glow that snaps it's neck back into place
when no one's listening
this world is such a distressing illusion
and yet look at me afraid of becoming
if i speak clearly enough to be felt i guess that's all i can offer
i'm trying,
i don't want to die
you are hearing things, and they're not in your mind
this world is hazy now,
it's hard to believe, but don't fall just yet,
create your own vibrational frequency
they know us well. you are worthy of respect
you are worthy of love, happiness, kindness
you are everything and everything is you
and we can't lose something so precious

it's so strange how fear strikes
gently at first, like morphine
it dribbles through you, you bottom out.

and then when you are dry and cracked
it soaks into you like gasoline to driftwood
the sound of the birds become dull
and then you panic about your panic
because the birds see everything and you need them
when the wild beasts come
need them to listen, so you can sit still and hum--mmmmmm
dear forest, can you block the taste out of my mouth
block the sound of talk radio voices whirring through the channels
pineal staticky as a black hole, so you say
vacuum packed emotions cemented in nothing
compressed trash dumped into the same landfill
and suddenly your cup runeth over with the poisoned caviar
and you ignored that ******* caveat when you were young
the bed you make you lay in it, you dug your grave and then fought them
all the way in, i guess that deserves another personality pathology

words and pictures and angels that george carlin doesn't believe in
but i don't mind i still mostly agree with him
except quietly poking that thought to the back of my mind
to recirculate and well i don't want to forget it in too much time
but angels, there are some things you can't describe to people
that eventually make sense, and some that make you stop
before you start because, you have to see quezacoatl to believe it
and i understood after all those nights of john darnielle
soft voice meant to carry, snakes, destruction, and ripe plums

there are some little devils and some little angels
they don't need a medium, just an invitation
a little thought, blind intention, unconscious manifestation
and only then can they live
hocus pocus **** whatever,
illuminati is distraction,
these aren't legends they are presently presence
essence and breathlessness and aristocrat embezzlement
i'm not worried about the devil
i'm worried about the people who crouch to his level
leveraging him on their shoulders
parasitic loaner, bankers thirsty to sell us
everyone's just looking at miley cyrus
welcome to america, this is a ******* mess
i might overnight some toy blocks by UPS to congress
if they learn to count 1 2 3 but in millions
perhaps it'll dawn on them how much ******* debt we're in

so some nights i let the crackle overwhelm
and sink into the consciousness
and let the shadows prowl around
because pajama sam keeps demanding
not to be afraid of the dark now, for my art, for my heart
there's a world in there and sometimes you have to fall
to know what's life when you come up for air and see
this show is so debonair i can barely bare to read the latest
it's all so plasmatic, phlegm and smoke and paper
burning cities, smoke and mirrors, moving more paper
the only way to act outside the script is to stop acting
and it's the roughest road to choose
but it'll be worth it when you can actually rest in peace without dues
reality isn't real is it, blue collar is another word for slave isn't it
9 - 5 is another expression for consume, a check goes in a box
but we assume it's fair work for pay
we are each a stock, worth about as much as a tea bag
to a party of executives in hot water

and the man outside keeps screaming
something evil is hidden in the depths of the news page
slipping through slack fingered open mouthed people
somehow we're still clueless in the information age
we see it, we read it, we feel it, helpless
we sit in our desk chairs and wonder what next
and the devil sits in our ears whispering don't worry
i know what you're expecting of me
i'm coming, if that is what you all collectively believe

i turn to quezacoatl and all he will murmur
is
what are you going to do about it
the collective has power
waiting for a fateful hour like
a wave puffing up it's chest
oppressed does not mean suppressed
and politics are liar language
money is bluffing to keep us thinking we're nothing
once you've seen what hides in the dark
the light glows brighter in comparison
keeps you safe in the early hours of morning
when you listen

we are the change
we are absolutely everything

i see dead things, they coat the insides of my lungs
the scent of roadkill stings my eyes
the sight of mangled twisted carcass
saps the sadness from my gums
i see things in a red tinge, ever since i began to
absorb the fringes of weeping trees,
and stories of all the things i feared knowing
all scarlet letters that look apple-sweet
and hues of unhinged cringesom nights spent in the bath pooling
forties and bad memories and them stitched in the back seat,
sidewalks singed with a strange bitter heat speckled with white lies
while bruised fruits are dancing 4/4 measures on my concrete cheeks
grass curled, fists rustily sprung, wounds wound tight, see
my heart is beating 3/4ths of the time, waltzing meaty and slowcooked
falling from the bones, down to the knees
clinging to the ground with all my might, i thought of her
taking a lighter to the split ends of her hair in the bathroom
i didn't move, so as not to drag the blood through the streets
i will not let you see, i will not let them see
but there are never any band aids when i need them
and i wear my feelings on my sleeve and you read them
keep up a finicky fight with a world i don't believe in
i wish i knew exactly why we're fighting to begin with
you swallowed whole and chewed on the bones
and i'm getting ******* so i want to know
if you can just be ******* happy now
everything is slimy and porous and tinged with copper tones of terrible
how can anyone be easy to love and why is love so angry when no one is

i always fidget with my itches
then itch raw with each digit
of the rigid way we squirm with
words we feel to be explicit

but rearranged we're indifferent
without the frame we're elicit
no stopping shame that exhibits
the way your brain always listens

even in pain it's persistent
you can't prohibit the accident
of unwitting existence
don't say sorry to the superstitious fiction
stay judicious

just ease your mind with the lyrics
and grind the grass to find distance
don't mind, the path meets resistance
the system we're in's nonexistant
i'll build a fire ladder for each fallacy
and scale every rhythm

just cleaning out all desire
mind going off like a piston
mankind don't need this fine attire
but the dior keeps us christian
not built to feed to designers
only a liar does glisten
yet we find ourselves requiring
our own kind of inquisitions

in addiction and prison
a shiny label don't listen
so without your permission
i'll find my own set of prescriptions

1.

we all know versions
of people
we all know blips-
flickering tv screens
with constantly changing channels
on to the next, one after another
maybe this show will feel right
maybe this genre will fit

unsatisfied by the plot
in this episode
unfamiliar with the characters
on the screen
the lighting in this room isn't
quite right
eyes flickering in candlelight
skipping over the horror channel
very quickly
trying to move on to the love scene

2.

you talk about my body
like it is a puzzle we have to finish
i'm waiting for you to realize
it is actually a dress that
will never fit anyone

but being a puzzle gives me
some time, so i let you
piece together the edges
you create a faceless outline and
call it a beautiful frame
for a piece of art you
don't quite understand

3.

but i will never be the basillica
and i am not an augustine
it's impossible to drink
the wine from my insides
without being poisoned by it's strength
we have been fermenting for a long time

and the bread does not break because
it had already been broken
into too many small crumbs
i wonder if you're still hungry

4.

and i think about our houses
both scattered with wooden bits
of the eiffel tower and taj mahal
big ben in the bureau by the wall
the colosseum in the middle
of the kitchen table
sydney opera house suspended
from the ceiling of the bedroom

monuments to so many bodies
we sure like putting them together
but it's hard to find storage space
when you're done

5.

you take pictures to remember
how proud you once were
or sometimes just to seal them in a frame
frozen in time so that the next time
you see them standing in the doorway
like a degenerate masterpiece
you can touch the photograph in your wallet

how the **** can i be angry when
you help yourself to what's left
after all love is
always the closest thing
to death

bethlehem is restless
terrorist holograms of mary teary unblessed when
death is living every day of your life forever breathless
breathing is all that is left in your chest when the stress hits
regresses to compressing aggressive obsessiveness
******* in pages to confess unspoken messages
the lightening and quiet screams promise me
they'll light my step through this
green grass in it's morning dress
uncaressed by pestilence
beth/rest
you're possessed by this

and the ghosts flitting between the trees
direct me to the places i must have seen in dreams
before i lost the connection to the earth long since
to the directionlessness of adolescence
every vibration left a crack
enough tremor to slide a pin in
and erzebet would visit my skin every night with rumplestilstkin
and they'd spin another needle through the muscle soft as linen,
they promised it would turn to gold, so long
as i stayed hidden at the loom in this prison

shoulders tightening as they thread it away
i look at the money in my minnie wallet and pray
everything safe always seems to go away in a flash
so perhaps it was just that nothing was ever safe
maybe they will leave if i say that i don't
believe in any of these ******* fairies anymore
but maybe i am older than the world is different
and they were just never fairies at all

it seemed to be such a small small place back then
when you could always cheat at LIFE
and run away and play pretend
in your imagination
didn't have to listen to anyone
now cops and parents hate you
and everyone wants to know
what college you've been in cause
surviving is neither irony nor blessing today
just simple catastrophe and endless dissarray

4 conquest - http://hellopoetry.com/poem/conquest-1/
exactly what it sounds like
slips - http://hellopoetry.com/poem/viscous-ugly-slips/
3 curdle - http://hellopoetry.com/poem/curdle/
the death instinct, i was mostly thinking about the idea that it's said all those who have tried to commit suicide by jumping off the golden gate bridge have confirmed that at the last minute they realized they didn't want to die.
2 branches - http://hellopoetry.com/poem/branches-2/
wanting simple honest relationships
1 beautiful spores - http://hellopoetry.com/poem/beautiful-spores/
what brings a city to life?

1 aspen - slippery ***** youtube
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/aspen/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26JK5qP_rxk

anuljeezshia

this is about finding an awesome person and being afraid you can't be the best version of you for them because you're kind of emotionally blocked off at that moment in time when you met them. i think everyone's been there before.

2 hunter culture - this don't need no ****** music mang - holding the severed self
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/observations-from-a-daughter-on-hunter-culture-final-draft-shorte­ned-to-reasonable-reading-length-lol/

this one is about the way people treat each other in our culture, and the stigma around weakness and ignorance that breeds so much needless hatred. and getting out of the depressing closeminded little town you grew up in and realizing there's more beyond the horizon than this.

3 arrange disarray - without your love
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/arrange-dissaray/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RfBJkckN2I

this one is about feeling caught up in the chaos of modern society and having a lot of discomfort about what you see happening to the natural world.

4 leaving what you know - everyone alive wants answers
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/leaving-what-you-know-final-and-performed-version-of-piece-for-lo­uder-than-a-bomb-mass/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMoX7uL38os

about metamorphosis, growth, fostering positive change. it was sort of a response poem that formed in my head a couple months ago when i was thinking a lot about the saying "every man for themselves", and thinking about how it's not true because the most effective way to preserve yourself is through helping out others, because we all effect each other, and suffering isn't something that comes in one form, everyone has understood it to some degree. it's also about being belligerent about your general moral values, though. and trying to find a higher ground upon which to improve your life, looking for the people and the place where you belong, while feeling kind of lost in the bustle of everyday and the more stereotypical obligations you have like school, money, job, and so on.

so i sit here
with a hole in my foot
with a hole in my head
with a hole in this book
with the hole in her eyes
when she gave me that look
with the hole in my face
when i saw what he took
the hole in my heart
i still don't know the crook
paper is just too easy to tear
and you think i'm easy
when you see i've been shook
i think i need a hook

now there's a hole in my stomach
and it's feeling tight and queezy as she ties
me up in knots of my poor esophagus
her knuckles white from squeezing
i breathing like a snake trying to shed
the desert sun is hot so
please lift this mask up off my head
i try to offer a white flag
but she kills me instead
cause she doesn't like the things
that she can't understand

and so she holds her fists like
they have holes in them
holds me like there are holes in me
cavities of ample opportunity
for punishment and further tearing, no tears,
none of this teething willful jeer
i'll split and rewire, i don't need old fears

i am only tired at best
the pieces did not defy gravity
they fell right out of my ****** chest
but landing is a skill you see
tear me apart for free and be my guest
ripping down the wallpaper
wrestling with the messes of stresses
no one will unremember
looking for the emotions
you desperately want to render
but while i'm still soft
i'm no longer tender
so remember when you enter that
no matter what the temper of the sender
or persuasion of the vendor
i will not surrender
to all these social mind benders

there is a hole in my flag
my blood is an involuntary badge
no more flags, white stains
too easily

1.
he left me by cemetery road
with no money and no place to go
because he had to go back home

you've never really felt bitterness until
someone you've done everything for
walks away from you across an empty parking lot
in a town you do not know
and doesn't look back

2.
next, in an empty elevator
and he went for a drive
because some people just can't stand
blood that's not their own

it's fine
i'll fix it myself
it's fine
i clean up nice
it's fine
i understand

3.
he never had any guarantees
mostly i'm sorry's which
might as well be free
the way we shell them out
mornings at his house
are no less lonely than mine

but lonely is not a problem anymore
lonely is just normal
lonely shows up most often
with a crowd of friends
or with a boy who says
he thinks you're fascinating
than it does in your own
asphyxiated skin

you tried to shed it like a snake
but the delicately fake chords
of romantic language
are wrapped around your neck

4.
maybe you will understand
i'm not interested in infatuation
because it wanes faster than the moon
and burns itself into your DNA like the sun
breaks your nerves like twigs
and sprinkles your scalp with ash

until everything good you've ever had
feels like
a sin

but i don't
think
you do understand

5.
he swept me out the front door
disappeared with his cell phone for twenty minutes
to brag to his famous friends
and came back to hand me a couple bucks
as the bus pulled up

at the time i didn't quite know
why i felt so sick to my stomach
so i said it was the beer
and then i said it was the money

but now i know it was
the significance
of how much our encounter
was quantitatively worth
in his eyes

6.
to him i am not me
my interests are "cute"
i tried right? i'm just too much of a female
to ever understand you
and yet that's all you allow me to be
because denial is so much easier
than seeing other humans
for the first time

7.
i am commodity
i am a nice figure
i am innocent eyes
i am a checklist of angles
and sweet little gestures
and the same words
the same words
the same words
the same words
the same ******* words

i am simple, right?
and sweet, correct?
and so charming
and ****.
Girl

8.
last time i checked
i was a person
not a categorized priority
that didn't quite make
the top five list

and you wonder why i get angry
about not having a voice
about being talked to like a child
when you can send me off to take care of myself
but you cannot respect me as a self sufficient being

when you can dump me in a cab like your ***** laundry
that you're just taking care of before work
and yet you are afraid of my blood
disgusted by your own ******* stains

9.
i think you treat me just about as much Woman
as you feel Man
i am not a rib
to be shucked away
from your heart
i am not a snake in your garden
i am not a scab waiting to be ripped off
i am not a breast, or ****, or thigh
because i am not ******* poultry
i am not made for consumption

and i have to tell you
Girl is not here.
and Woman bleeds red
and so do you.

the words never seem to touch the tone
i am meaning to say i want to
weigh them with my tongue like pebbles
clattering under my teeth
i was never as lonely as when
i couldn’t speak
you must have felt that loneliness
you couldn’t swallow
we all have days when we get in our car
and think about what we could really do
if we wanted to
drive to the store or off a cliff
you choose the first
never let your brain teach your hands
to slip around the other one
possibilities are dangerous
when there are so many ways
to play in traffic
let me count the limbs
in this car wreck
let us count the ways
we have all been wrecked
by a promise or a minute
with a weapon in your hands
that you never thought about
until you were going to fast you wanted
to stop

A - A7 - E7 - Cmaj7
Am - A - C - G

G - Cmaj7 - G - cmaj7
G - Cmaj7 - G - strum

A - Am - C - Am
A - Am - C - strum individually 1st fret, 5th - 3rd - 2nd chord

i’m just tryin to get by
some days i’m just tryin to get high
this society taught me not to cry
so this society can deal with my
battered ego tonight

cause i’m just trying to understand
i’m just getting a better grasp on this hand
but no one can play cards
and no one can make art
without thinkin ‘bout the hands
those around them have landed
our world is not simple
everyone's been branded
and everyone stuffs a few cards up their sleeves
and everyone leaves a trail of unused aces
when they leave

br) because you’re not the only one
who wants to run away to nepal
and you’re not the only one
who sees this nation is a maze
made of, shifting walls
and you’re not the only one
who’s afraid to take out a loan
and you’re not the only one
who feels uncomfortable alone with police
and in, shopping malls

i’m just tryin to get by
some days i’m just tryin to get high
it was this society that taught me not to cry
so this society can deal with
my battered ego tonight

this place hurts us all
and i wonder why we stay here
and fall for all the pretty ways to stall
away the mindless days
high heels and guns can intimidate
but not mediate, a fall

1.
the way she shivers and sways is similar to the garden snake's slither
i didn't mind it around my neck
and tried to forgive her
before she injected me with
the venom within her

2.
now she runs through my veins
the way water runs the sounds of the day through a sieve
everything is dimmed by the bubbling rush
cuz you see, it's this hedonistic spree she lives
this sinful lifetime she's leading
is enough to send any adam straight out of eden,
believe me, you don't wanna see this,
and i don't want you to see me cry

3.
so leave the dusty clothes on the dolls in all their places
she will flinch inside of me
if you wipe the tears from the cracked plaster faces
they were meant to stay here
i understand she's trying to save me
by keeping them hidden in the shower
distracting them with tea
but she's enslaved me to so many prerequisites
perfectly strapped together plastic
that never breathes
this stigma never leaves
it's like it breeds inside my body as i sleep
sometimes i don't know how much i feel that is truly me
is inside the being i'm taken to be

4.
it's not easy being human by far
but it's even harder to not be
when you know you are

wearing your heart on your sleeve is a dangerous game
that only the lonely people play
and i have found, that when you smoke a pack of desire a day,
you are constantly searching for a flame.
onlookers examine all the fissures and clefts left by yesteryear's guests
the men who treated your heart like a map, riddled it with tacks,
realized it lacked a place to live in, and left.

all the antiquated philanthropists who searched for their languages in your pulse,
strands of hair in your bed, so pleased to have left their scent on the pillow
and you've begun to hold your breath
to prove to them that only you can make your heart skip a beat
and you've begun to dry clean your sheets, cold water
hanging them from the rafters of your childhood bedroom in your mother’s house
sweat it out girl, you’ve gone too far south
found yourself melting like butter in the devil’s mouth
and now you wring out the warm bodies tucked in your every pleat and crease,
letting the sun bleach away the pieces of people still surviving in me.
when you look at the sky, blink your eyes and change your rotation
so what if this society treats infrared incubation like it’s latent
I’ll rip the past from every pore, i abhor those kind of TV audiences,
the ones that are obedient and well fed
coming back to dine on the same lines each time, it's high fructose revenge
the sinister scent of stereotypes is hanging in the air
those little lies people tell when insisting that they care
about anyone outside of themselves.

and genuine kindness never really seems to come in stock
but i never **** the birds because i refuse to throw the rocks
my life is not just another kiss laced with arsenic, that
sick kind of hint about how thick my blood really is.
this is not a drama, this is not a soap opera
my life is not a novel and you are not the author
sure you’re having a hard time but you’ve been improving your posture
and it looks like he didn't know you were nitric until you dissolved a linguistic string,
and now he's realizing you bite back when attacked, and you have some surprises to bring
my new hype track for the evening is silence not seething
they didn't know; arsenic can only dilute a nitrous being
so this time, my knees will not break like the fickle figs from their stems,
sequestered in skin cells, ****** shell dropping dead
and this time I’ll find the strength to change, isn't it strange,
how you can wake up one day, and refuse to keep being misled.

and today they brought my bones to the cellar door in his chest
he didn’t mistake even an instant of no for the plump petal of yes
and he tells me, "there will always be people out there who will love even your
imperfect blisters cracking like transistors,
because when you're looking electric everyone’s listening to the frequency within ya
you were put here for a purpose, you will never be worthless.”
and this is no longer a decision; there are places you belong and places you'll fit in
where you'll flourish and gain a thicker skin
and it's about time we stopped chalking up our mistakes to bad habit.
so when i see that golden ticket i'll grab it and let life flow because see i've been told
rivers reflect train windows in the mornings till they glow, first gilded and gold,
then subtle and slow. the hope creeps in, i make the decision
to go

according to the social disaster disclaimer I’m folded into
I’m essentially a stupid kitchen joke and a statistic of abuse
cause in America whenever we see someone else
choking on public schools and rules
we kick them when they’re down,
cuz apparently cruel is cool
the world is gonna burn, and we forgot the golden rule,
I should be more concerned but
I know i'll just go continue without you
knife, butcher, this is a hunter culture
carve apart, fall apart, throw your daughters to the vultures
wish you never met this year, wish you never met this lifetime
but, it's just human nature to check the basement
see what crimes you might find inside
to peel apart the paradigm and feel the wall for a light
I know your first instinct is to shut your eyes tight
but if you want to know, you gotta open wide

so if they call you ugly, understand you are a mirror, they’re peering into and sympathize
that's another stigmatized child feeling vile after so-called civil society spat them on the wayside
and if you've ever felt radioactive in the spotlight then you understand the way anti neutrinos decay,
moving at the speed of light in spite of unstable nuclei producing beta rays
well ***** it, i will wear all my shortcomings and benevolent reveries with pride
you told me not to lie so i stopped writing about those infinite why's
and what truly happens after we die. i started writing about life.

those who did stick around for the trickle down are the people i realize aren't fickle, now
i don't flinch when a strangers shoots me a frown, i just laugh to myself; i'll get out of this town
i'll swallow that bullet and rip my mouth open
I’ll cut down your Trojans with each verbal round
i can't stop Rome from burning, and I can’t suppress this yearning
but i sure as hell can take Nero's crown
I will draw an army of waves from the Tyrrhenean Sea
pluck my lyre instead of expiring, why not enjoy the heat?
you have so many rotted adjectives for me
but i know i'm not, i'm a noun and i always will be

this hesitant resident living in a glass house of evidence
impatiently anticipating dunce cap vengeance isn't it evident?
you are constantly vigilant and aware of entitlement
yet you find yourself, intent on grasping the advent of your descent
into this environment
not afraid to admit that when you feel, you crack the pavement
not pretending to be angelic, sprawled out coughing up your appendix
procuring the puzzle pieces, rudimentary ligaments and appendages
and you don’t even know who’s pretending anymore
so you sit at the pier, think about jumping off shore
always stuck in the system and frightened to vent
fearing this consistent emotional dismemberment

tell me when you find the box where my heart sits
my head beneath the guillotine where my grief splits
brief pieces of sweet dreams, teasing me if I don’t seize it
no longer fitting in my cracked ribs, like degenerative diseases
I can’t swallow anymore scorn for your entertainment
they’re turning me into a neuro-amputee with every arraignment
feeling like a hazy ******, bona fide public offender, a opened letter returned to sender
on a really bad day that somehow turned into a week
and you still can't shake this discomfort, now that you know love’s not cheap
so you've stopped agonizing about destroying the feeling
instead of stealing in, you just let it creep and seep
I’ve started stopping myself and i've stopped starting to give up
i won't let a feeling keep me from being free

M) C - G - Am - F
1 ) bridges F - Am - G - F -F - C - G - F - F - Am - G - F

strum pattern 1 - 2 - 1

M) yesterday somebody told me that my poetry
didn’t contribute to my community
so i put it to some lyrics and picked up a ukelele
because apparently nowadays
you’ve gotta get a little bit more crazy
cause you’re not the only one who’s jaded
it’s amazing how we front

1) so i don’t want any more of this beer
and sometimes i still question why i’m here
talking away like it’ll pass the day
but i don’t wanna just give directions, i can steer
M) so **** the world that made me
because i am thirsty and chasing
the spill of all these messy messy messy messy messy messy years,

M) but you can’t clean up your reality
when it’s splattered on the pavement
so maybe i’m just angry,
because my words are the catalyst and
1) everyone saves themselves
i’m just like everybody else
M) so okay, okay
maybe i’ll just finish this forty for my health
just today

M) you should have stuck to dreams
it would’ve been so much easier
you should’ve kept the confessions to yourself,
now they’re hangin from the speakers
1) in this little room full of people
i don’t know you but i’d like to meet ya
have a chat and then perhaps maybe you will realize that
nobodies as bad as you first see them as

M) so hold my hand, and then you’ll understand
we all get sweaty palms after a bit too long
and if you let go, i will understand
because hands are comforting to fall back on
but we, we are all so strong
unconsciously strong
1) and no one needs sympathy
we all live life on our own terms
beliefs and ideologies
respect is the easiest remedy

M) and when you can feel your blind purpose vibrating
in every bone of your body
it’s much harder to hate anyone
cause their emotions are kinda sloppy
cause you get like that too sometimes,
when you cry
so despite the differences, you always
try to empathize

1) ‘cause some people feel alone in packed rooms
and in some way or another they all embody you
you, they are the people who are here right now with
you, and you are them too

M) while you’re singing this song hopefully
some people are humming along
and can stand here with you for a minute
look around with new uninhibition
and you don't think that's a word but
i know it's a concept and at times
it’s hard to tell if anyone ever gets
that at all

M) it’s just so hard to connect
when we’re talking so loud
we can barely
hear ourselves when we fall
there’s not a sound at-

chase the dream? or does the dream chase you
will i ever clean up this spilled ink,
or this messy ******* room?
all these unknotted strands of excess
stressed by lessons in having less
and not caring when it’s left
i don't care what is left

let me undress and leave my jacket
for someone else who needs to have it
i have enough to take this test
everyone survives their own sadness
in order to progress
i can share

and it smells like you’ve
been ******* someone else
but today, i don’t really care
or think that it’s my fault
and i think you can tell
the world is too big and too small
for those thoughts to manifest themselves
to fall into the small of my back
no more carrying rocks around in my backpack
the wealth of having nothing is the unrobbable stolen eyes
the stealth of the wise, being whole with parts,
it's the holy art of being too tired for lying to self
i guess jadedness is a start
but i'm looking for something else

options options options keep making me stumble on
and today the wind said no one ever listens him out
when he speaks for too long
and today the earth said no one cares
about her body heaving through each breath of this song
and yesterday i understood them but now
something is off kilter, something is wrong

i can feel when they cease to breathe
just like us when we sit in public places
hostile when someone gets in our space and
braced for impact, so enraged by this stranger
pull away, pull yourself up
she's about to go, so much love
how could we lose it all
in the flood of manmade lakes
the depths all caked in mud
like the inside of our stomachs
did you not notice what was at stake?

but now she is demanding a toll
for our rubble, so let's clean up the blood
the sky is chaotic and exotic
let everything love everything for once
this spoiled patch of stumps
is all we have left
so let's sit in the warm sun
pull our ringed fingertips up
to touch the clouds as they run
away from us again

the wasps caught in the cusp of our lungs
squirming towards our fleshy throats
that book i never wrote
it was a ******* masterpiece
the scars i stole
hurt like a headache in my hands
and where again do i find the right spot to sit
where is safest to land
and when do i know it’s the time to leave
i will wait, i will create, abate hate with silence
until she comes to, and cries, don't you see
it's time, and have you done everything you could
and then whispers
and if you didn't, would you

would you return and rewind to where it begun
grow up learn a trade, and marry a man, and have a son
or run to the apple orchard, and dance with someone
and touch the bottom of the pond
when it is at it's stillest and then wonder
will it ever be possible without ripples
and how many of these lakes are human limits
with potential unsung
barely digging into the bedrock soil

have you learned to love everything yet
and accept what you do not know
instead of seeing each error as a small death
each progression as an excuse to grow
and grow and grow

life isn't a saying
there is no chasing involved
there is only you and gravity and resolve

i don't think that you know
what privacy means to me
i'm staying drunk in the quiet
of my safe liturgy

of thoughts because concepts
are honest and curious
they aren't gonna judge me
and that's what i need
some company with peace

but inside them i'm violent
i'm rough to the touch
i try to be silent
so i'm not caught searching
the corners for love

when every house party is about
"that idiot who said" or her "stupid makeup"
so i'm not sure where i expect to find
any sort of understanding
in these social engagements
i don't see meaning in
ripping down others just for being
in the same room as you
and minding their own business
it always makes me uncomfortable
i don't see the usefulness knowing it's
easier to call someone else useless
when you feel so

and draw your own conclusions
than admit you don't really know
it's easier to stab the surface
than to learn someone's breathing well enough
to understand the way their blood flows
it's easier to make a snarky comment on their clothes
than to sit down and get to know them

so admit it
our darkness thrives on judgement
and you will feel so much better
because once you let go of them
emotions flow through you like weather
extend your arms for once
and realize that every single person you know
knows something you don't understand yet
instead of barraging them with
the ways you wish you were better

you thought i was going
to say they weren't you

because everyone's partial
to weak knees and weak ankles
it's easier to strike the person
who opens their arms to you
even once is enough
to break them because you justify
they allow themselves to be
so breakable

and though i feel these things to be true in my gut
and want to validate every single person
i can see needs the love
i'm in need of my own breed of saving
and i'm sick of this negative engaging

i just don't have any more chances
to be so kind
as to offer you
a target

you came to me drunk and looking for love
when before it seemed i had plenty of
suddenly my eyes must have been
mazelike and empty
it falls out of me
so neat and yet so unkemptly
all these bodies in storage
and the coroner sent me
but i can't clean up this mess
i'm only good at disassembly

you cupped my chin in your hands
and begged me tell me what you're thinking
i told you i was staring at the wall
with that smile quickly shrinking
too fast for you to catch it
i felt your breath kiss my neck
as you tried a different approach
with a more subtle effect
i should have explained i need a while
to think before i talk about these things

My memere liked the smell of gasoline, i do too
the tiny shreds of dying nice and slow it pulls from inside of you
and stale cigarettes in mom and pop drugstores
and burying the dead birds, saying it was just time for them to go
explaining that they don't realize they are killing themselves
every time they slam into the glass doors
she loved the seashells welling up from the atlantic
and the waves that held me detained
when she disappeared from shore
the glass that cut, that taste of blood
the stillness of death and linoleum floors and the whining dog
i couldn't fathom how they could all remain

her still skin was first time i noticed
the shifting quality of epidermises cusps so waterlogged
like lotus leaves and flaking logs of driftwood in the ocean
the way it's currents pushed and pulled everything above and below our bodies'
disturbances and submersions of purple i didn't love
i wondered why our bodies couldn't just come back to us
couldn't learn to rigor mort this
still deaths leaves me feeling purposeless
waxy and elastic, with small hairs like the cactus on the windowsill
she said so but i can't convince myself that this is a beautiful thing

when i was young i dreamt of falling down the wooden rungs
of our staircase, screaming in pain in the airway and waiting to be saved
it felt so real, and days later we were pulling over on the side of the highway
when we got the call, saying no one was there when she had the fall
when i saw the sunset from the beach for the first time in years
that night i cried for the beauty and
washed off the tears, purple and red clouds
salt water and tender sounds
and stared for a long time
at the empty shell of a horseshoe crab
did not eat the poison berries
removed the glass from my feet
set down the photographs in defeat
sat and read the dusty books
still caked in her fingerprints
sitting on the shelves of the library

and he never liked gasoline
he always liked fresh air and talkative people
the little things, and the adrenaline of strings
the 4 am sunrise over town center's church steeple
i was terrified of loving this good person
this aversion confuses me,
i teeth at these pseudonyms for something so real
being turned into something transient
i can't explain it i just hate dominance
and love hurt children

i still see his face like it was yesterday
saying that it was his birthday, and he was smiling
about going to the lake
i still can't retrieve a single date
last year from the months of august to may
i just remember the pictures and google pages
i would read 1 through 25 internally enraged
by this rememberance of you
my fists clenched in a faded grip
feeling the searing headlines
cutting through the blackness
i forget what it's like
not to lose it all every time
i close my eyelids
and the waves i love creep in and rip
i've just conceptualized it to be a pattern
and accepted it

They tell me to stop remembering
But they don’t understand with
Each blow life hands me
Another is already sewn
Into my ribcage, bruises in each hand
between each crescent bone,
this isn’t a coincidence
Most nights i hang my lungs
Dangling from my spine
Watching the walls cave in
the sticky residue of surgical tape
Strapped around my bicep
Will not wash off in the shower and then
This guilt will not wash off in the shower
and then, you are a burden, hidden
In the paperwork, between the lines
Three weeks later and there is still
Traces of it on me
Parts of me trapped in glass vials
i wonder what people thought
when they saw me in that blue robe
on the bed in the little blue room
I still remember how thick the
needle was
I was never scared of them
until now

i trick people when i feel like
i'm not seeing at all
i'm just feeling, not healing
with these words
that's my downfall
i wish i could give more
but this is all i have left
if i can't keep it locked in closet doors
i know the effect with be my last theft
don't force it out of me
just let the drainage catch your crests
let it come in time
when i feel safe knowing you
would catch my conjested confessions
and lay them to rest

love me when it's convenient
love me when it is useful
love me when love is necessary
on the terms that
i stay simple, i stay beautiful

love me because your mother thought
i was pretty, i was quiet
love me because your father looks at me
like a *****, successful diet
love me until i’m not always sweet
love me until it’s not easy enough
leave me at the station
kiss me like your lips
have become strangers
just for me
and wish me luck

love me until somebody else better comes along
love me until i misstep to the words of the song
love me until those nights
you see me when i’m not strong
love me until it’s not profitable
until it rubs you wrong

my words are no longer useful
when they are not lucrative
your eyes are no longer protective
they are punitive

i am no longer a friend
just the tail end of another
distended friendship ready to
split hairs and end it
not a person but a thing
not a person but a problem
you’ve been dissecting

you don’t want to bend back
and mend, it’s easier to
wait it out, pretend away the tension
show your teeth, your venom’s condescesion
not so lost in your eyes
so resenting my mention

and i’ve been taught
not to stop giving
until you’re ready
for me to stop

and i’ve been trained
to drink up the blood when it puddles in
to treat people i attach love to
like my king pins
no one is just a lapsed vein

and i’ve been told
i’m not allowed to pull the plug
once i open my body
and let you dig into my love
so here i am, watch me now

to keep my ugly hidden
to keep my thoughts restrained
to keep the stains upon myself
cloistered and contained

by nature we are greedy
and you can’t seem to stop taking
because you’ve grown bitter dancing feet
and i'm aching, you say i'm not grounded
yet i’m a burden underfoot
and you wish i’d just break life
or break life in
and forget what it took

you want me to be punished
or you want me to go
you think i don’t know
oh you think i don’t know
you wish i’d just open,
then you wish that i’d fold
i don’t melt in the heat,
but i crack from the cold

your affection is grotesque
and my voice has a certain note
that makes you want to wrap each finger
tightly around my throat
you hate me, more than you love me
but i don’t want to be loved
if love barely stays afloat
you hate me, much more than you love me
and i was never told love
was so naturally cutthroat

i stretched my tonsils wide and swallowed the sun
and all that i got was this mouth full of blood
i swallowed again
and relished the crack
my knees hitting the mud
the earth was the first
not to fight back

so i collapsed upon her back, forgot institution
and didn't try to get back up
just lay quietly in disollution, swept up in the flash flood
looking for some kind of nameless crudely chiseled love
chasing a faintly tricky latently burdensome buzz
tainted by ***** nail beds
and haunted by swerving white trucks
socially taught to get up and never come down
emotionally taught to get down and forget what it's like being up
luck no longer has meaning
that is just the universe being
i want to give up and go with it
i want to revisit that rattling requisite
i am ready for this ego to lift

“Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando
Invenies Occultum Lapidem,”
“Visit the interior of the earth and become pure
you will find the hidden stone.”
when the time is right
i'll turn from red to white
drenched in a vitriol bath
my bones will surface
bright as gold under the light of the night
sinners worst dream
alchemist's delight

swallow the demons and
stay awake
no matter what you do
don't miss a minute
forget what pain is
form callouses
you will not be ashamed
of your right to breath
and grow out of this

lately i have been asking you how
to start this book
but you told me only i knew

i don't know where to start
the days jumble together like derailed cars
overflowing off of the train tracks

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." - 1 John 4:18

a maladjusted little minstrel, rage focused in the pinnacle
least invincible principle of my environment, so biblical
i'm re-tired of rituals habitual to introducing individuals
like our voices and choices and self-importance, all cyclical
i wonder

does your infallible tongue feel hungry and porous
like your short lived torpid fond memory abhorrence
the inorganic and unfactual that actually came before us
dissident power of your ****** diction in a chorus

coughing on insincerities meant to be favoring,
listen to yourself giving your secrets away, wavering
like a white bible page ripped from the spine of glue on your mouth,
a risky display of leaking doubt, you gave out,
disobeying social conventions and being made prey
******* sick of everything being so **** blasee
you keep forgetting we all rust when it pours this way

you’ve got infectious dictionaries of fiction
fidgeting with the insecurity ignition
telling you what you're missing when you don't stop and listen
and these thesauruses can’t arm you with the proper vowel consonant friction
to out-enamor their derision when you pout as you fit the description,
constricted by eviction, waiting for the jurisdiction
never completely comfortable in someone else's kitchen
something's always a little bit different
they take your bewilderment for ignorance

and hey i wish you would scream and shout
but instead you just keep playing cards now
wish you’d unlock but it stops between your lips slow scowl
swallowing your tongue, the key, he cut out when you kissed
you left it in a public bathroom, it fell into boston's abyss
it's not hateful but afraid, to let it out, ‘kid’
afraid the words would fit like a slit smile on a spit
afraid that they would flow, just ******* like this

an unspoken conviction for viscious fulfillments
and dereliction of indiscriminate sauve depictions of riches
of addictions to ******* philanthropist princesses,
and affinities for infinitely angering insistence
what she represses expected on the table in an instant

you say poet as if it means perfect
when i know enough people with the bruises to show it
to realize it really means nervous
and i have nothing to show you see,
except the mosquiteos who ****** my blood
and would be delighted to tell you
what lovely ugly things they know about me

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." - 1 John 4:18

a maladjusted little minstrel, rage focused in the pinnacle
least invincible principle of my environment, so biblical
i'm ti-red of the rituals habitual to assimilating individuals
like our voices and choices and self-importance, all cyclical

does your infallible tongue feel hungry and porous
like your horrid torpid fond memory abhorrence
the grossly ****** and unnatural discordance
the inorganic and unfactual that came before us
the dissident power of your bodies' diction in a chorus

swear i'm fine, it's just your eyes, inflected with disinfected distance
a forest of imbellished distrust, derealized with disinterest
making me feel like my lungs are full of fumigated insects
and that's fine, i swear, trust me,
i don't need to convince you of this
i don't want to climb into your mouth and wrestle the truth out
i want to go home smelling of wine and pass out on the couch
and your actions are latent, this is stupidly freudian
stop treating me like a ******* patient,
you're supposed to be my friend

coughing up horrible insincerities meant to be favoring
stop and listen to yourself giving your secrets away, wavering
like a white bible page ripped from the spine of glue on your mouth,
you gave in, balancing on the edge of a risky display
disobeying social conventions and being made prey again today

you’ve got dictionaries of fiction fidgeting with the infectious insecurity ignition
stop and listen
and a thesaurus that can’t arm you with the proper vowel consonant friction
to out-enamor their derision when you pout as you fit the description
never feeling completely comfortable in someone else's kitchen
i wish you would scream and shout but you just keep playing cards now
wish you’d unlock but it stops between your lips slow scowl
swallowing your tongue, the key, he cut out when you kissed
not hateful but afraid
afraid to let it out, ‘kid’
afraid the words would fit too much like a slit smile on a spit
afraid they would just flow like this

an unspoken conviction for viscious fulfillments
and dereliction of indiscriminate sauve depictions of riches
of addictions to princesses and affinity for infinitely angering insistence
of what she represses
expected on the table in an instant

the constriction of the snake in her belly
makes ******* and planning things
seem insanely oppressive
she was getting too old for things to be like this
but they all like it that way
this is why she hates yelling and kissing
always the same old
merry go round

you say poet as if it means perfect
when i know enough people with the bruises to show it
to realize it really means nervous
and i have nothing to show see
except the mosquitoes who ****** my blood
and would be delighted to tell you
what ugly things they know about me

liturgies of lethargy
lull their sleepy tongues,
and run among my stumbling dreams
towards the visceral setting sun
keep the soldiers’ safeties off and order no retreat
you can’t afford to chip your teeth for the price of being numb
stay glassy eyed and leave your pride
behind the backs of bus seats
with notes, sharpie, and lies
these men are not what they seem
this world is a messed up dream
while the elite claim to delete the supposed deadbeats
as if they deplete the city’s concrete streets
i want to scream
they’re really the secret
to keeping the working class alive in the heat
to keep the coffee shops open on every street
to keeping the cheap soda purchased
at the indiscreetly laundering cover up convenience stores
you would only see when you’re walking pavement
breathing in the scent of cigarettes and pollen spores

walk into a bookstore where a poetry open mic is going on. the man previously nursing a lager in the back now has all eyes in the room on, flowin to the beat like drums to a song, this is all he has left that doesn't feel wrong.
"these words are all that matters," he says. " ’cept poetry, liquor, and the duality of man, i confess, these pages store my sanity and reveal my real friends, so i'll keep writing until these calluses have bled."

Lately I’ve been talking to Michael Larson in my head
And yeah, I know it’s a little weird to have a real imaginary friend
But we all need someone to turn to when feelin like we’re burning at the stake
To remind we’re still human and there’s no end; ending’s a mindset you create
There’s not really walls to hit unless you tell yourself there is,
just the narrow hallways in your mind where you lose yourself to negatives
See, you can always bend to be more
but you conceive a break, cause breaking is what you do
when you think you can’t create

and if you spend too much time wondering if you’re a particle or a wave
your thoughts manifest into the mental circles you repave
self fulfilling prophecies are subconscious misbehaviors
ignoring synchronicity in the universe’s behavior,
always waiting there for someone else to come along and save ya
caving in you dig a shallow grave, crawl in, and lay there,
blaming everyone else and yet expecting a savior?
from the wayward pain of exacerbating these anticipated cracks,
you still can’t seem to break, just blister and bounce back.
from this controversy in the name of your unsure authenticity
each flaw you extract from your skin is your own vulnerability
the world is not black and white, flat, or statistical see
just rife with impenetrable culpability
so everyone grows up and grows out with restless mentalities
time and age are isolated perceptions of our static reality,
cause we’re changing and flowing together, and we always will be
the only differences between us all are the ones we want to see
to comfort our dogmas and convictions as we atomize our selves obsessively
what matters are the paths we pursue and the wisdom we seek,
not our genetic abnormalities or the ways that we feel we are weak
when everything has innate duality, there’s no good without the bad
good’s an infallible syllable completely unpaletable til you realize bad
can only be in your heart if you perceive that’s what you have

there’s just your belief that you are either trapped or free
and realizing you want what you always had, eternally
if I’m gonna live this life, I will not sit and wait,
I will skin my knees and bleed and then get back up and create
In public Michael Larson’s hanging in my headphones loving the attention that I pay
Telling me earnestly not to worry, cause everyone is a critiqued critic these days
In burn fetish he tells me, “empathy is the poor man’s *******”
And now Krishnamurti is on my other shoulder repeating once again,
That “being well adjusted to a sick society is completely insane, the end.”
everyone gets nervous on the first dinner date, and everyone craves the safety of a friend who has their back
everyone feels like a literary hack the first time they take a paper to their thoughts and attempt to translate them into rap
we all feel a bit misdirected, and a little bit hated, but collective requires an equalibrium of giving and taking
while these days everyone treats each other as if life’s just about getting your own slice of the cake
and blatantly crazed by the toxic disarray
of our modern society transgressing and yet we just stand by and wait

Michael looked shy on camera as he expressed to me that, “what makes us human
Is how we’re a collection of our mistakes and the reactions that we have”
And what makes us individuals isn’t our lifestyle or to whom we pray
The stratosphere here that stops us from cooking to convection
is just a collection of perfections formed from love within the human condition
the gravity that keeps us from falling, is the art that we make
self actualized individuals, not feeling so lonely or crazed,
because paradoxically, art is also how we all relate.

1

decide not to hurt her. but don’t decide to pull her back. if she wants to go she can go. I do not plan on stopping you. it’s not my choice. nonetheless I must warn you; I do not pick up phone calls from numbers I don’t know. if you don’t plan on showing me your scars I don’t plan on showing you mine, I will live inside myself without your help. stop pretending you’re in control.  your presence does not make me a better or worse person.

2

drink beers, sliding your sleeve over the x on your hand. sway like you never stood so still to pretend you were just a charicature so no one caught your scared stench. you **** the stench. you grab it and rip it right out of yourself. **** your rules I will ******* fly, I will ******* dance, I will ******* love. you cannot stop me. you are not my guilt, so stop.

3

look at his eyes as he says it doesn't really matter where you go anymore. safety is not a cold room, an exorcism, or a catechism. mushroom clouds are dancing like rotted sugarplums and fairies with crippled wings in my head. through continuous trial and error life has taught me you can run but you can't hide. don’t take off your coat until you’re two drinks too deep to care if anyone sees the dried blood. laugh at the people who stare, laugh at yourself, laugh at their ******* social rituals. always remember not to let them get you. you are not paying any debts.

4

think about tasting sweat and his pulse. search for it. find none. and you do not require just any pulse. ask him if you are scary, let him touch your open wounds, let him lie and tell you he doesn’t think you’re depressing to be with. even still, you let him win. know that he would gladly take on a less complicated girl. feel like target practice. feel like a faulty product with no receipt. feel like a body, always, you are feeling like a body. it consumes you before you can consume it, filling yourself with holes. This bleeding is further beneath the surface. split skin doesn’t let any more sunshine in. go back to bed sweety. don’t believe in humans. don’t believe in love. they are equally transitory. they are equally fragile. they are equally hungry.

5

think about the fear. think about it. ******* choke on it. do not deny it is there. they never really cared. you don’t really need them to care. So this is what getting older really means. remembering the streets you grew up on before they painted limbs into the pavement. It's hidden in the exhale at the end of the way most people say tired. when what we really mean is, the way things were still lives in my head and i can't deal with the present because it's just a ribbon wrapped around a nuclear bomb. Humming. You tell him you don't think running is worth the effort. He calls you a liar with affection. You are choosing your bus tickets. Like a car driving from a tornado. You just want to see how far you can get. before...

I feel very weird today. everything feels foreign to me, like military time and gun powder. animals staring at boys with scared eyes. the uneasy silence of blood stained sidewalks, the airplanes, the buses, the trash cans. the cameras. the police that flooded the scene as the hatred split the glass windows into a million flying swords. a million fighter jets. the city is a rat trap, I curl up on the floor of my room and listen to the police radio feed, heart knocking in tune to the white noise between more news. i said it over and over. the economy is sinking, your face is something I think of as a whole different place. I keep grasping at the tendons, and the threads. such a messy job. i wish I could be one of those people who did everything right the first time. if you don’t recognize yourself no one will recognize you. the hurt, and the ***, and the dark nights riddled with chinese paper lamps. and the feeling of something ugly growing tumors in the sewers. you say only two people died. but who will die tomorrow. who will shrink into history books. how many cities will burn, how many libraries will burn, who will burn. someone is going to burn, the air tastes like charred cities. the panic. you. I keep wishing to be strong but I don’t think it works like that. I don’t need love, but I really do.