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

"it's true what they say, the revolution will not be televised" he said to me hands in his pocket both our faces to the sky i had told him that when you walk by buildings in the shadows of their jutting brimstone, when you watch them go by overhead, it's more beautiful.

"the revolution is every day." i said. "every minute, every month, every lifetime we all have the choice to engage or not engage in the revolution of kindness and humanity. we have the power in us to contribute the the energy of our world in a negative or positive way."

it's true what they say.

the revolution won't be televised.

because the television has never told a real love story.

it starts out with one single revolution getting it's voice. then that revolution meets three other revolutions, and then those revolutions find five more revolutions to coalesce with, and soon they all find themselves drawn to hundreds of other revolutions, all bursting to the brim in a single room, in the middle of an obliviously sleepy city.

the revolution sings with a pretty voice and coats the city in warm sheets of sweet song, and he rolls over the pillow to awaken in awe to the revolution, with humbled eyes.

the city remembers last night when the revolution looked so beautiful in it's dress of vowels and consonants. they had tangoed and gone home together and the city knew the revolution was not a mad twist of fate it was destiny, not good luck, that had brought him to her feet, as he took off her shoes and placed them at the foot of the bed.

the revolution had been quiet, with a secret smile, dressed in dappled yellow rays of evening sun, the revolution saw honesty in the words that swam around them as they walked home under streetlights. the conversation had all been sweet truths.

the revolution doesn't have to hide it's skin under layers of fabric because of her beauty. the revolution is not afraid of hate, and the revolution understands how the world works, but loves like a millionaire and knows she can never go broke when there are endless possibilities.

the revolution makes kindness her job, and she didn't have to go to school to know how to be compassionate. the revolution doesn't think in failure, she looks at money and sees paper, learns to pay her way with a currency of empathy and never counts her losses, only the lessons she has learned and the ones she has yet to.

the revolution wakes the sleeping city and tells him she makes mean scrambled eggs and her coffee isn't that bad either. she tells him to live in this moment, don't think about past, chances and mistakes, not even the future and what is out there in it. think about now.
this moment when we can be.
where we can be.
where anyone can be if they choose to live fulfillingly.

learn to love a silence and tame the emotions that roil in your stomach. learn to put down your hands when you are feeling violent. learn to fill your mouth with goodness up to your teeth it's amazing how grace can be so poignant, and yet go down to effortlessly. we are so easily choked by hate that this stirring feeling of calm is welcome.

welcome.

you are welcome.
you are a piece of the revolution, wake up the city.

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

choke down pomegranate seeds
we all have needs
you had to eat

and hades put his hand over
your ****** mouth
at night

and in the morning
demeter tried to follow
your footsteps in
the trail you left
through the dewey grass

she sits alone at her hearth
and sings to the bonnet
she had knit you
this will do
this ill will
not swallow you

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

when we are young
we try to kiss our classmates
not knowing the consequence

i knew you were unhealthy for me
but i did it anyways

the only good thing you ever did
was cut me loose

i had a dream you took me back
i never wanted that

-

you smell the way i used to after showering at summer camp. fresh, and new. like shampoo that makes your hair very soft and the dew that pools up on leaves at dawn. it sticks to your skin, because you are an early riser.

-

i know this girl
fleeting, like cold hands
and cheap soap
but in an okay way
and this girl can ***** up every single thing
and still always be on time

for these unwanted affairs
these personal issues
being aired in a court room
and her hands are fanning the air by her knees
as she sits on a bench that feels more like a pew

the size of her fear is bigger than
a sentence
a thought
that could never express itself in words
because this girl hasn’t been writing lately
they never meet the mouth
delicate, like a glass bottle
something turned stale as it left it’s owner
something as cheesy as this poem

-

i needed him like my stomach needed nourishment, that doesn’t mean we get to have those things.
we all need a lot of things we can’t quite grasp onto
wet leaves after thunderstorms
antibiotics to cure every type of virus the catch being that the magic pills are carcinogenic
everyone is a pessimist these days
a happy ending is just an affair that turned out better than expected
they tell me to be a grown up, but when i talk secrets into his ear
i am a child
the world is a dangerous place.

-

the day it first came to life i bought white flowers
hanging plants, i put them on the balcony
and the day you explained yourself
what a mistake it all was
i watched them rot before my withered eyes
they couldn’t believe i could care for people
how can you love things that are so so so

petals red and juicy were blossoming sticky on my thigh
and i’ve attempted five billion feeble ways to die
every day i keep expiring but i don’t stop breathing
it’s chilling that i am allowed to exist in this manner
rotting incessantly never quite speaking
when you should.

-

once you’re friends with someone for long enough
you find their weaknesses
when you love someone
you learn their deepest desires
caring isn’t creepy it’s so real
i know this
i can ******* spit on his lips

beg your better judgement to steer you home
and in the car forget his name and remember
his hands like they were your own
and at night
i am see through
easy to touch
hard to love
bitter for the things felt so loudly but unsaid
stopped dead in the dark, unable to see
your love has become nothing more than an idea to me

-

she had fingers so delicate
but they let me in
love is not supposed to be a feat of lock picking closed doors
if the lights are on
i will move towards your porch
he turned them off and i rubbed my arms raw with sandpaper
so the skin would heal up thicker, and stayed away
but her door was open and her lips were tempting
so i gently crawled in.

the preacher never wrote a poem
about dahmer's baptism:

1.

he leaned across
the jail cell table
and his eyes were honest
when he said he believed in god
deeply
his eyes were honest
when he said goodnight honey
and gently draped his body
in a tub of sulfuric acid
his open jaw glistening in the moon
dissolving in the dusty noontime soliloquy
of crickets outside his apartment window

2.

can an honest man
bathe in those kind of wounds
and be allowed to ask
for a penance?

3.

for two weeks they left
his baptismal robes in storage
they asked if he really believed it
if he could believe in all this

4.

“when i was a kid
i was just like anybody else”
he had said
he seemed to think
being like anybody else
could dull the bloodstains
reduce the skeletons
still tucked into his closet
to powder
make his wishes into holy water

5.

yes jeffrey, anyone can drink it
but getting drunk on holiness
isn’t enough to repent
all of their fingers are wrapped around
your heart
doesn’t forgetting seem foolish
to the brains in your refrigerator
isn’t it just useless
to the spare ribs, in your bureau
drink all the holy water you want
you will always carry their bodies
on your chest
have you ever had a heart
other than the ones you collected
and did you ever know
what a soul feels like?

6.

and that day
they took him to a prison tub
and his body
glistened under the water
like a drowning animal or a martyr
jeffrey doesn’t float

7.

as he opens his eyes
his mouth wide
he looks just like him
suspended in white
ripples curdling in currents across his pale skin
a solar eclipse
covers the sun
as he comes up
for air

“It was so quiet, one of the killers would later say, you could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers in the homes way down the canyon.”

William Garretson was the gardener of 10050 Cielo Drive, in Los Angeles, a summer house rented by Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate. He lived in the guest house on the property. On August 9th, 1969, members of the Manson family visited the residence and brutally murdered all the inhabitants, as well as Garretson’s friend Steve Parent. Garretson claims he had no knowledge of the murders that night. He is the only survivor of the Tate Murders.

your screams sounded
like fiberglass breaking
an almost impossible noise
like a hemorrhage at midnight
i was walking through the garden
and i swear
i heard the neat click
when he severed the phone line
if only i had known

i have thought up one hundred scenarios
in which i saved your life
but there is only one
when i don't
and every night i try to justify this reality
because i could have sworn
the sound of their boots
on the steel fence
was the telephone
ringing

when they saw the headlights
swerve over the lawn
steve was as good as dead
shattered like a lightbulb
under pressure
four shots pressed into his forehead
a candid bullet kissed him faceless
his absence was
a tell tale piquancy of slaughter
i lay in bed that night
and turned my face to the wall
when i heard the screams

tell me i reek coward
say the raw red skin of my knuckles
shaved away from the foundation of my raised veins
as i sat through another police interrogation
are nothing compared to the red poppy
that blossomed in the center of his chest
call me callous
but i will never forgive myself
for trimming the flowers
that sat innocent on the coffee table
in the middle of a mass grave
all i can say is
i was just the gardener

i found her
blooming on the living room floor
the baby cut
weeping from her umbilical cord
still attached to mother and father
by a rope traveling from neck to neck
thorny slices of fetal skin
peppering the carpet
blood sprays still wet
were soaking into the wooden door
sadism comes in many
limp limbed contortions
but only one color
and i saw *HIS smile
carved in the cavity
of her stomach
i swear to god
i wish i could say
i didn't see it coming

i found the severed tendons
of his fingers
suspended in the eerie light
of the swimming pool
pruned like overripe plums
the remnants of his face
scattered across the driveway
like taraxacum seeds
their bodies all
hanging like wilted stems
broken xylems hinged to sepals
by threads of sap
running down uprooted ligaments
there is not enough therapy in this world
to cure the silence in the garden
upon the aftermath of execution

the shapes of murders' footprints
left raised beds in my shoulder blades
manure smeared ***** across my lips
every flower i have ever planted since
has languished in the smell of your corpses
melded into the callouses
of my finger tips
i am just the gardener
and i am all broken anthers
petals shriveled, toxic
call me a survivor
but there is blood inside my filaments

as you jiggle
nervously
in your seat
during therapy
i can only imagine what
is eating at you haley

no that’s not true
i know a little bit about it
for instance your mother
drains the medicine cabinets
instead of sink
the last months’ worth of dishes are still *****
she takes her pills with *****
because they are her water
rubbing her stomach clean with alcohol
yet she has never picked a rag up
to scrub the sickness from her house
red stains on your blouse
haley does she even know
what grades you got this year?
haley did she ever notice
when you dyed your hair?
to feel like you fit in somewhere
when you didn’t fit in her lap anymore

you come home from school
with scratches on your arms
and she never asks where they come from
so you tell her:
you feel like in a past life
you were a dartboard
because at school your peers play bullseye
with your forehead
and sometimes when they break your glasses
and you skip classes to do lines on your skin in the bathroom
with your walmart scissors
you just tell her you tried to kiss a stray cat
on the way home
and she actually accepts that because
she’s the one who taught you to play dumb

and at thirteen you’re still
suckin o  your thumb when you think that no ones looking
and though you don’t know it
the reason you do that
is because you’ve been drinking from a bottle
since you were a baby
and she never even attempted
to breastfeed

haley doesn’t understand
when i read her stories about the buddha
she just knows my voice
is comforting
haley doesn’t know
she has this inner peace
and all i want to do is
gather up her gashes
and put the pieces back together
haley doesn’t think she is lonely
but she thinks that i’m pretty
and she subconsciously wants
to make a mother of me

so at the end of the hallway
when she’s crying in the corner
because she misses freedom and light
i ignore hospital rules
and rush past the nurses
to hold her tight
and i teach her to breathe with her nose
close to our open window
and tuck her in when the bars
make shadows on the floor
in the moonlight

we sleep in beds of ashes but i know
that someday haley
will rise from this and grow
out of suicide
because in her sleep
she still hears me in her periphery
whispering of siddhartha cross legged under the bodhi tree
and how he discovered
life and death are not separate
and they each come accordingly
and right now she should just
focus on her breathing

and before i close the book
i also add that she’s beautiful
because it’s an important footnote
hermann hesse would want her to know

when i left she hugged me tight
with a tearful mumble goodbye
and when i walked into the sunlight
the two of us had dreamed about together
haley was still just a patch of phoenix ash
an egg hatching but i know her
and it’ll happen fast
but someday suddenly
she will realize she is
full of fire

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

tiara
you call your cuts failures
and your blood a testament
to all the times you didn’t succeed
but living is an art
and you are clearly an artist

so don’t tell me there’s no reason why
you are still alive.

when the cops came
you swam through a crack haze
to the window
and jumped

i wasn’t there but i can see it so vividly now
you thought you’d land like a cat
but your legs gave out and snapped like popsicle sticks
you shrugged off the pain
and choked on blood
as you dragged yourself across the lawn

there was a warrant for your arrest
you decided to give up
and wait for them to find you

collapsing in on yourself on a moment’s notice
is your specialty.

laugh about the man who cheats on you
dream about stabbing his ex-girlfriend
tonight i will not give you knives girl
you know the world is a harsh place
learn to navigate it with no razors.

you are not a crown
to be worn by others
you like to make sure people know
you are a tiara
and you will weigh heavy on their heads.

tell me you are stupid
say the methamphetimes made craters in your brain
as you peer at me over your physics textbook
that you call light reading.

lament about the classes you failed
as you strap jigsaw puzzles together
with the scarred arms you carry
the split skin you once opened
out in the open.

are you calling me stupid
by playing this lying game?

tiara
you are all cat eyes
a frail body with an endless appetite
we both secretly derive joy from the money i spent
slipping you candy bars
and the flowers i left by your door
that you dried between the pages of books.

you have not been outside since december
i want to bring you more than flowers
i want to bring you grass and dirt, trees and roots,
birds and mice and worms

i want to give you life
i want you to run your fingers through it lovingly.

you shoulder pain so indifferently
i want to make you cry
for more beautiful things
i want to grab your tender wrists
and fill them with the sunlight.

when i left i hugged you so tight
you said you’d see me
all the big plans you had
i knew you were lying again
i know you cried that night.

tiara i love you
you are someone who needs to
bear the weight of those words
not the pain of never hearing them.

that is what you needed to hear
why did i never say it.

i was just recently given the youtube link for my performance, so the live version from Louder Than A Bomb Massachusetts is here as well: http://youtu.be/TaVoQ9si4t8*

we are all disconnected
like rain lashing against the tongues of teenagers
who just want a taste of purity
deep in the battle trenches of the suburbs,
they're dancing in the storm
dancing, in parking garages and derelict strip malls,
empty streets fill with shaky feet
beating at fear like brush fires we can't stomp out

and after the sun sets the air tastes clean
and we breathe in time to the people sleeping in
gingerbread houses creeping up and down the cul de sac
battle wounds that drew blood eventually present themselves,
and sewer water seeping into parking lots as dry as a droughts...
but what we don't know is there, we don't ask any questions about

it's the little things...that are not the big issues
while we're chugging fluoride water bottled in adipose tissue
capitalism splitting at the seams with pyramid schemes
believing new clothes and big macs are a cure for low self esteem...
storing dreams in mcdonalds bags
we look away from the obvious problems
so as not to remind us...
we buy into these lies while we watch our lives pass us by
we're actually not that good at hiding our scars

so please say pharmaceutical...
and it sounds sort of like suicidal
a pill is a bit, a paycheck is a harness,
and your television is a bridle
fox news feasting on the population, brainwashing, whitewashing
suffocating education with hate and justification,
this nation has been sculpted by foolish politicians
so realize this before it's too late:
we are only hooked if we take the bate
waiting for tidal waves to rip up out of the ground
the whole world falling down like dominos
take a look at your own town
everyone is drowning in themselves

our fear of the truth is like putting hands in fires
limbs scorched unaware till we're up to our knuckles
crying fighting screams and watching fried up
dried up muscles go slack suddenly so tender so tired...
repeat after me:
our fires only hurt if we try to stomp them out
try to swallow them and burn our mouths
scream over each other like a pack of braying cattle all saying the same thing
the human race is it's own organism and it's dying...
we are knee deep in a civilization that has lost it's humanity
it's a legacy
to the same old ball and chain clamped around your legs
you do the man a favor and break yourself in his wake

in the age of the apocalypse of the pursuit of happiness
don't surrender yourself to complacency,
we are mechanics not machines
so don't be another agent of this age of conformity
don't self-destruct because it feels necessary
in order to survive in this society

don't allow yourself to hang on to memories like you can rewind time.
repeat after me:
we cannot rewind time.
it is time for this generation to live in the present
change the future for the better

happiness isn't something you can find in another beer...a thrift shop shelf...
in a lie you want so badly to believe...
my happiness is inside of me.

i asked people for writing prompts and one that was given to me was to write about the kennedy assassination from the point of view of a school teacher.

"It is time for a new generation of leadership, to cope with new problems and new opportunities. For there is a new world to be won."* -John F. Kennedy

i'm a mathematical woman and i know
a bullet from a bolt action rifle
travels at a velocity of two thousand feet per second

i'm a mathematical woman and i know
if you fire three bullets straight at the target
there is more than a fifty percent chance
they will bite hungrily into bone

i am a mathematical woman but
i can know all of these things and still
i cannot derail a national tragedy
and i cannot lift a bleeding skull
from jackie's hands

i always thought the black and white truth
could show you facts through polaroid
laying bare the negatives and the positives
but now i stare at grainy pictures of the crime scene
and the parade that felt so hopeful
is exposed to be garish
the stains on mr kennedy's suit
are too dark for brave convictions
i can see the evil spattered across him
i wonder what kind of person would ever
spit wounds on such a face
like that

i was bringing these pictures
back to my children
lined up in elementary school rows
my instinct now is to not show them
the chronic pain that pulses
through frescos of execution
the pollution of optimism
curdling in the wake
bottoming out and trickling down
pooling into pipe dreams
maybe when they're older they can understand
the way he was pitched headlong
into the arms of crying doves

i wonder if my influence will determine
the presence of another lee harvey oswald
in the births of my classroom
does he sits in the back
in one of those plastic seats
is he hungering for the encumbrance of
a fresh pistol with a safety that never shuts up
a barrel that hums against his shoulder blade
a friendly trigger to hold hands with
is there any possibility i could hold the responsibility
of taking the attendance
maybe calling the name of an impending killer
can i possibly bear the weight of human suffering
in equations of newspaper pages devoted to assassination
and half developed pictures of growing people

i love children
i pray for their ability to flourish
i teach them to measure their worth
beyond the lengths of wooden rulers
their transformation to flowering petals
from pygmy buds
is full of pollen ambitions
the promise and possibility
of barren soil blooming into gardens
i'm a mathematical woman
but my love has no limits
no square roots or dividends
and i never
claimed to have the answers
and though i am here to edify
i still have a lot of questions

so let me ask you this
if i do not pluck dandelions
from my garden by their stems
if i allow them to grow and do not
sever them from their soil
is a murderer growing in my garden
or am i growing a murderer

1.
it is so easy to become
someone you aren't
in a room full of people who
will hang on to your every word
bate their breath and then laugh
at the right moments
it is so easy to pretend
for a few minutes that you
are charming, witty, and likable

2.
your skylight is full of sun
even when it's dark out
your skylight, it glows
and the constellations are as far away
as you sleeping next to me
i lie, petrified of touching you
should you pull away

3.
why couldn't i be this charismatic
with the people you know?
it seems, at your house
i never start a conversation

4.
even simply liking you
is touch and go
do or die
i don't know
time may lie
still, the clock would stop
ticking and i
would sit alone in space tonight

5.
sometimes without meaning to
i block out sound
my ears simply filter out
the voice or sound
i do not want to hear
so i'm beginning to wonder
if i skimped on the details

6.
do you find this
a suitable noose
to **** me by
-to myself
who never stops pining
after something to bring her grace

if you could hold me in
like burning dawn
on the tips of fall mornings
i would scratch our names
into my bark

i would lean over children
that looked like you, baby
sew my leaves to their jackets
so they would always smell
like fresh dew on a misty morning

water my roots and trim
the thorn bushes i've collected
a dress swathing hips
that are barer than deserts

and if i sing this song now
would you come to me in honest
or like schoolyard jokes
will you kiss my fingers only in jest
i'm a simple plant i need only
sunshine and damp dirt

bare bones lapping up nutrients
a stolen kiss over dinner
a bath that is not lonely
a hand to be held
on afternoons in the city
two people staring in rapture at each other
in the black subway windows

“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

he picked apart the movements
of girls' hips
like he forgot what his momma looked like
like he never knew how to believe a female tongue
he never thinks too hard
about the sentences she can make
only what she'd look like if he
forced himself inside of her

he ate his words like
a picky child who only ate cigarettes
and ******
he bathed in the brute fury
of how they never payed much attention to him
until they were screaming stop
and he was going anyways
he hated them for being beautiful
he hated beautiful things in general

but he liked the feeling of cornering his prey
in a dark stairwell
he liked playing the devil
and walking to meet sin with a backwards heart
a heedless skull
a set of fingernails that always chipped
as he picked away at them with his teeth

he liked to think he could have anything his way
if he made it so
he liked to know that if he made himself
the faceless shadow in a dark corridor
he could become the boogyman
he could wrap around bodies like silicon
and swallow them like tremors cracking the earth

every girl he'd ever hated for her body
would have nightmares about him
and he liked them better as dead bodies
because it's the only time they'll shut up and **** him
he boasts tire tracks running along main bloodlines
a broken brain like a land mine
a chance of luck that he could **** some time
following the scent of something feminine
the idea that his presence alone
could shake her down to her knees

he wants to take every thing
that has never been given to him
he takes joy in the distorted
the sick satisfaction
of tasting the caviar that no one ever served him
the princess, trapped, in a black dress
pinned down in the dust
behind the restaurant dumpster after dusk
what an interesting view from above
he thought as he perforated the flesh
and though he never cared for the victim's clothing choice
he liked her best in red

he was not a mommy's boy
and it showed
he took care to take in a way
that he knew left limbs hollow
in it's wake
slit wounds in a human
that were harsh
in places where white legs flashed beacons
a wraithlike shape that closes in
on women wreathed in dark streets
and poetry that hasn't been written yet

she had a sonnet to spout and a poison
of malignant parasites she couldn't shake out
that latched onto her veins
as she arranges them over her arms
and lower around her knees
and he never showed much promise
and he's angry that he has never been able to please
the world
so he waits for her
and he takes from her

and now he traipses out
with the blood
and leaves her to lie there kissing an ink spill
from her pen to the tar
have a billion conversations with the pavement
until the wounds dry up
she'll stumble into the arms of gravity
and leave her dead body behind
live with the infestation of his invasion
fused into her spine

making her squirm and shiver
years after she wormed herself out of your grip
she will always feel sick
of all the ways you almost got away with it
even when you've also died and gone
she knows
you've never been a mama's boy
and you'll never be a ladies' man
you'll only ever be the amens she made
after praying you would die
at point blank range

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

"I'm sorry for being imperfect...I was born this way...there's nothing I can do about it but it doesn't matter cause i'm perfect in God's eyes."

i recall the perfect sounding pinpoint on a map
a theme park and a wonderful family
the aching cavities of cotton candy
a rollercoaster in the gut
and a mother who cares too much
and the problem of being a child who is always
fading out and pulsing with the lust of being almost free
running towards the exit eternally

and i remember jesus in the golden plastic picture frame
the silicone watches your daughters wore
and the pieces of polly pockets wedged into the carpeting
you blushed when i told my mother i found a tick on my arm
after playing dress up in your daughter's room
not everything holy is blessed
not everything unsaid is innocent
the sun and god are no better than a shepard

the first step to letting go is learning to exist. i admittedly, still have not completely let go. no one ever said you had to demonstrate your knowledge, although i'm working at it. when you were there, roadmaps became love letters, the songs you wrote were preludes, flight schedules became the dreams i never spoke about, no one i was close to knew you. as far as they all know, you were a figment of my imagination, and the act of knowing you itself became a test in what i could hold onto by the skins of my soft teeth even once you'd disappeared, once your friends all buried you, and you stopped writing love songs. special occasions no longer sound like your voice. the test was, could i exist without you?

i have written this a thousand times in my head. erased and arranged memories so as not to spoil us. tried to press you into the backs of my eyes like the flowers in the pages of her notebook. and a few weeks back, i stood at the very top of a rope swing, and when i jumped, i stared straight into the churning water all the way down, because all i wanted was to look at you. but this is not a story of getting the things we want so easily. this is not a story of holding your hand, or sleeping in and having late breakfast. this is the paradox of something so strong, that could be so fragile. something that is so raw the universe could only erode it. that love could exist, and disappear so quickly, and i still want to know why no one ever taught you to swim when you were young.

i am on the train. i see a picture of you. "rest in peace" it said. at first i didn't understand. i had talked to you just yesterday. then i do. the sickening sound of your voicemail on repeat. the way you used to call every night, and tonight at seven there is just a silent cell phone sitting in my lap. i think about your baby pictures. the mother and sister you sometimes talk about. the guitars collecting light layers of dust in your empty new apartment. i wonder how they got your kayak back to shore, when you didn't come up for air, and the swing became still over the foaming water. that kayak was as empty as i am. without you, that is very.

they make plans for your funeral, everything is beautiful. everything is in order for you. i get off the train at the wrong stop and run all the way to ami's house, trying to breathe. i am painfully aware of what drowning feels like. i am as transient as us; my existence is a freak accident, circumstantial evidence with a shaky conclusion, two people who can never explain the nature of their affiliation. kierkegaard believed in taking an ethically existing approach, over a cognitive subject. that all single entities can be reduced to singular universal rules. he believed that even when we didn't do it purposefully, cognitive thought forced us into patterns of universal rules. existence is a song we play on repeat, a feeling on loop in our stomachs because a couple of words sucker punched you in the head and you still don't know why. why, is the answer and the downfall. i think what kierkegaard meant is, some things are simply unexplainable, and some things explain themselves, and our very beings switch between these two rules, baffling us, because we are creatures of ethical existence and cognitive thought; we base our actions on human-established concepts of right and wrong, refer to ourselves as "I", live in the present, and yet we also have the capacity to shape ourselves in the future tense. our ability to understand lies in whether we choose to resist or flow with universal patterns as we become part of them in our ethical existence. learning to exist is nothing more than playing chess with a higher power and allowing it to take your king when you're backed into a corner, even if the queen has to play the rest of the game alone. The game has been flipped. Learn to play even when your world turns inside out. you know the queen is your ace, your you, and she has amazing potential. you were not just some figment of my imagination that convinced me to sleep at night. i am so sure of that now.

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

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

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.

"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

a coffee shop
a normal saturday morning
i wait at the speckled counter
and count the deformed donuts with sickened reassignment
a little girl is sitting at a diner table to my left
she stares at me with awe and darts up
handing me a picture she looks right at me with glee
“oh wow did you make this?” i ask
in the way an adult talks to a child
she nods and i say “this is great
do you draw a lot?”
she shakes her head no
“well you should” i say
and she, laughs and says
“no, i don’t need to do it more.
it doesn’t matter
i do it when i want to
i just like to”

i think of the way the little inflections upon her talk
mirror in my mind the voice of camus
you are not just what you do
you are more than the opportunities in your environment
absurdity arises in the aperture between you and the world
the world is real but the choices it allows
how can you exist when they close around you
from all sides, like a test from hell—i mean school
we have to choose a b c d
it doesn’t give a human space to breath—i mean, be

what i’m saying is
i’ve been washed up into the land
you go to when the fairies die
i’ve learned to lie with a very straight face
i’ve been had by the dollar bill
and in some twisted way
i only work for the prize these days
and still i’m willing to admit
a child outwitted me
and i’d rather it be that way
because sometimes i need to be put in my place
while rational and logical and adult
i have been living without being
and she
has tripped the strings
attached to the knots in my fingers
and my throat
this poem, i owe it to her

"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

nora stretches her arms like flowers
she is a tiny fighter
who grew from dry dirt

she has been hurt by men
who said they would protect her green stem
and then cracked her open
when they ripped her from the ground
she took her wounds with pluck
and let her sap guts bleed transient
liquid interiors never tasted so tranquil

nora doesn’t seem like the type
who cuts tick marks along the lines
of her floral spine
out of self pity

but maybe out of fury
she is a tiger lily
freckled cheeks and hair like
a sunset
she is obstinate
to make progress
nora wants to **** her sickness
she still has a dark scar on her shoulder
from the day she tumbled down the stairs
would have died at his hands
if her shoulder didn’t get caught
between the railing balusters
after being almost killed by a man
who tried to crack her open
like so many beer bottle caps
nora collapsed in the quiet desperation
of what he had left of her family
screaming pity the fool
who ever taught me
to love the devil
and call him a father

she wants to escape the laughter
of her classmates
pigeon holed in a tiny body
nora wants to escape her life
too often for repose
she wants to close the door
and hide huddled in the bath tub
waiting for the storm to pass
but she has not met many calm eyes
and she cannot seem to escape the storms
that pass through her like a spring in tornado alley
some days nora feels like dorothy
and she wears her red shoe escape plan
in the blood tick marks she leaves
on her arms and legs
each knife and razor blade
she uses to hack herself apart
reminds her there are other ways to crush pain
and she begins to realize
she can't run and hide but
she can fight  

nora does not beg for mercy
she waits
every day she takes another step
down the yellow brick road
leaving lilies in her wake
crawling up with hope
through every stone
she will not be worth only the
pain she counts in fives
on her skin blushing like burnt red cheeks
she hasn’t slept easy this past year
but she watches the sun rise
with the consolation
of how little she summons tears these days
of each stone she grows over
trampling her fears
with heels like roots curled around boulders
nora will survive tomorrow
understand her worth in the snaking path of flowers
she’ll turn around to stare down at
growing in the wake of her progress

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

I wanted to see him taken
in loving arms
told it was forgiven

I wanted to kiss him
along the neck and jaw
promise him that God made us
in his image, and he is selfish

but somewhere in his inscrutiable heartbeat
the hunger can wither
like bluebells plucked from winter’s soil

I wanted to promise
we are penitent
and it counts for something
and yet the ache lingers

are your teardrops as wet
as I imagined they’d be?
and yet oh how water expires

the sun is scorching through the parking lot in pillars or light, shivering on the pavement in waves of reality shaken by matter, it reveals the change in matter. so fluid. i see an old man walk up to the gas pumps by the mr. mikes. he walks past the car wash, past the little barrier between the road and the grass on the side. stands there, looks back and forth as if calculating speed and distance of passing vehicles. in shock i see that he is trying to figure when to jump.

he stops, turns, and begins to walk up the busy main street. as he goes, he take slips of paper out of his coat pocket, stares at the receipts and then surreptitiously drops them behind him. instead of children dropping crumbs in the woods, i see an old man shedding silent messages in his wake as he trudges through suburban forests of pavement and condos. how strange i think and pick myself up out of the car, running past the chain link fence rounding the edges of the hardware store parking lot. she won't even miss me i think fleetingly of the person inside who might come out soon.

the old man is walking at a parallel angle to i, as i was too hasty to know his story before changing the outcome of his journey. he sees me, and stops to face me on the opposite side of the street. we make eye contact, a car whips past, then an ambulance flooding the hues of the air red and blue. i remember there is an accident up the street. there were almost eight or ten cars pulled over near walmart. traffic was backed up and the **** in front of me had been rubbernecking like his middle name was bashful. somebody was probably dying a mile from here. he looks at me a second more and i feel the sadness wafting off of him, so strong it crosses air, barriers, vehicles, straight shotgun windshield shattering screeching into my chest. he turns and walks away. continuing to leave his trail even after knowing he had been observed.
i run across and bend down to retrieve the papers casually, clamped lips around the cigarette i had somehow managed to light, my body's natural response to everydamnthing. i do not look at the papers, just stick them in my plaid breast pocket and rush back to the car. a few hours later i am ready to read them, and i unfold the papers.

first
1: PRE COFFEE 2.00 F
2: SCALLOP POTATO .99 F
3: SHAKERS CHICKEN .79 F
4: POULTRY .79 F
5: POULTY .79 F

SUBTOTAL 5.57

CUSTOMER COPY
EBT APPROVED
EBT FOODSTAMPS

and then
DISTRICT COURT
CASE NUMBER 1161CR001443
DESCRIPTION 1161CR001443 Commonweath vs. M*, Michael J
On Behalf Of M*, Michael J
Payment Type                                Amount
CASH                                              130.00
GENERAL REVENUE FUND               80.00
VICTIM WITNESS                             50.00
Change                                              .00
Balance Due                                   20.00

Comments:



this feeling of overwhelming misery comes over me. i allow it to flood in and fill me with images of this man's life. his shame, his despair, his shackles, that cause that feeling of life being a bad migraine that never goes away.
but then i feel sympathy and compassion seep in afterwards, so silent and gentle. i think of how my presence may have changed that man. to see someone run to him, show him he is not invisible, not just another lost soul in the court system, not alone and invalidated by society simply for existing, not all of society is like that. i hoped my awareness would shout to him too, perforating the silent barriers to say "look, you are not unseen, you are not unheard, i know you exist! it's not time to die yet michael."

michaels seem to stick to me. their stories are vast and painful and hard to peel off, like dry glue. their struggles worthy of attention. michael you are real. michael, i see you. michael someone is listening, somebody knows that you exist. i know it is passover and it probably feels like you are dying in your sleep with no blood painting your doors for protection, but you do have that blood. it comes from your body michael. your struggles become your pain become your understandings become your transcendence. michael, you are intelligent, i can see it in your eyes. now do yourself a favor and

don't jump.

a haiku I: carbonated water rocks

slightly flavorful
carbonated beverage
one liter bottle

a haiku II: ode to seltzer

in massachusetts
seltzer costs eighty-nine cents
one liter bottles?

a haiku III: read and recycle and stuff

NY-MA-ME-CT-VT
five cent deposit (960 mL)
**** haiku format…
you liars that isn’t a ******* liter that is less than a liter **** america for not adapting to the metric system.

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

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.

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

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.

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

i woke up at four am
you had died approximately three hours before
i got chills and lay impossibly still
with wide eyes
there was something
all around me

i climbed cautiously
down to the bathroom
to smoke a cigarette
as if someone
was watching

i drank a lot
of water

now whenever i get chills
i think it is you
trying to touch me

today as i methodically
wiped down tables
a radio broadcast in the background
was having a deep
sunday night personal in-depth hour
on the talk show
and all this losing a loved one
and a piece of me
****
is really getting to me
because you're still here
aren't i breathing?

this feeling is not a wishbone
it breaks evenly
and we walked away
with half of each

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

breaking for adulthood

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

two gun shots
circled around your brain
like the world

you heard the bullet
crunch through his head
like it was your own

remember when you were five,
and you played army together?

remember when you were twelve,
and you started smoking **** in his basement?

i remember

you wrapped your body around him
bleeding into the pavement
like bandages around wounds

michael
you are not made of gauze

michael
this is not your fault

michael
don't feel guilty for the laws
you've broken

you are not broken

michael
your friend is not gone

his body has been stolen
by bullets to the neck
and the jaw
you are not alone

this is not your fault

blow may numb your nose
but it doesn't change this
guilt

don't punch walls when you're angry
you're knuckles are not a letter
to the men who killed him...

i know it's hard to let go
of the past
but ****** clothes can't stay
crammed in zip lock bags forever

standing in that parking lot
waiting for a second chance
so you can taste the limp limbs
of killers
won't give you a reason
to stay alive

it's time to take out the ***** laundry michael
listen, listen to me when i speak

don't you dare believe
you deserve to feel this way
michael
i will show you the utmost sincerity
even when you sexualize me

michael
you laugh at group therapy
like we're watching a funny TV show

michael
we play catch with a rubber duck
and you tell me
you don't remember who ***** you

stuttering childlike michael,
you don't believe in the inner child
but you have one
he just doesn't act his age
you don't know how to swim
but you are wet behind the ears

your brain is a novel
not a blank page
don't look away when i say
you are bright
let those words keep you up at night
instead of the nightmares

michael
it's okay to be sad
it's okay to say
you are afraid
you keep tripping
over rock-ribbed pavement
replaying the moment
you couldn't save him

in another life
you must have been a pit bull
your teeth clamped fast around
faceless men in black trucks
you're allowed to cry
so loosen your jowl and look up

you can treat compassion
with disdain...
and rush to meet it
with a propane tongue...
setting fire to everyone
you love

but eventually you will
combusting in on yourself
you are yearning to communicate
burning up like
alkane C3-H8

slipping your pinkies through *******
you are a powdered-nosedive
you have survived
the underbelly of trauma
now come back up
michael you can
break the surface

i know that echoing hallways remind...
you have seen too much
too young

but michael
you are good...
you just don't know
what's good for you

she wanted to be
a killer bee
so she honeyed up servant girls
and placed them under
the fruit trees
but upon severing the stinger
a bee loses it's lust
so she left them to the bugs
and took on a bigger love
for pins and needles
and fingernails and a pale face
laced with pain
when they scream she shivers and asks
them to say her name again
when she was still young
her husband taught her necks break
if you bend them back fast enough
eyes go blind if you cut them
crisply across the iris
peasants can go missing and
no one will ever know
god help the ruthless mistakes
nobility makes
dorian gray in her mirror today
****** erzebet kissed the servant girls
like jeffrey's boy with the hole in his skull
she must have looked beautiful
in the moonlight coming through
the dungeon grates
and they finally found out
bricked over the windows
left a slit for food
minotaur in his maze
she thought she'd show off
for her funeral
but she is alone
the bodies decay
now she is a killer bee
in a cage

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.

1.

you kiss my hand
i suppose to myself
that you are doing that
for the cinema novelty

2.

you look around my room
“you live in this little world
such a mistake you’ve made
to let me in”

3.

i take that as a threat
i sleep with my most prized possessions
under my pillow that night
like a magpie

4.

i don’t know why i’m uncomfortable
it is partially your fault but also
it is not your fault

5.

i can’t find this flattering because
you don’t see me as a person
just a vision of what
you wish i was

6.

“can i sleep on your floor?”
you ask the most vulnerable question
i cannot look you in the eye
when i say
“no
i prefer to sleep alone”

7.

i am sorry
i am all smoke and mirrors
cigarettes and my reflection
the sun tastes my skin
and now i’m sharing his burning

sitting on a living room floor
watching a boy play guitar
there's a tattoo on his arm
and i've never heard it before
but i love this song
and with another shot of whiskey
my toes get numb
and for once i don't care
about being alone in crowded rooms
you're driving to my doorstep
you're gonna get here soon
and i'm getting too used to this
like another house show
acclimating after the first few songs
with you i let go
and today the air is saying
get realistic
and i want to say no
but it clogs up my chest
and forces out an obedient
yes

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

I am deep sleep in a bed of flowers
I’m the feeling of screaming for several hours
I’m forgetting who you are and forgetting your name
I am self deprivation and momentary gain

I am sweet black coffee and fresh dollar bills
I’m a missile crisis and oil tanker spills
I am cutting sharp corners and making amends
I’m Jesus’ daughter and Lucifer’s friend.

I am Freud’s ******* and a hospital ward
I’m the nurses who go there and the sickness you hoard
I am propaganda, prose, menthol, and medication
I am roadkill and warm kisses and capitalist nations

I am burning Buddhist monks and bleeding anarchists
I am iron maidens, nooses, and human games of chess
I’m the mafias dress maker and a gun pressed to your temple
I am the stranger next to you, and the ocean, and the gospel

I am quiet thawing winters and I am mothers sentimental
I’m the universe I’m a secret I’m everyone
I am mental.

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.

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