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

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

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

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

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

driving your screaming body into the concrete.

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

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

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

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

"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

"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

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

when they cover me
White sheet on face
Earth burying box

dance on my grave.

i want every child
at my funeral
to dig their hands
into my soil

take a part of me again
broken so you can live
let me hold you

love me like
The fall
when it comes

i am the roots
you are the leaves

every time i chew away
at my fingernails, my hands
break beneath the weight
of the blood spilt inside of these lips
they just couldn't bear the sight of open wounds
the body count, stitched into my gums
bullets aching inside my clenched teeth
there is war in my footfalls
anger in my love

it's hard to touch someone who reminds you
not to walk alone at night
and to always add laughter to a tight lipped smile, just to get along
i never wanted to be a martyr
the same way philomena never meant
to suffer because she is a bad liar
and all he sees is a noose on a ******
that is to say suffering, comes to the ones with stone cold tongues
and all that really means is love me

so diocletian subjected young philomena
to scourgings, she survived
drowning, she was too good at holding her breath
arrows, they went right through her
and then decapitation
there's no coming back from that one
secretly he simply loved
to see her in pain
she refused to eat her words as she praised him
she just refused to eat her words
so she never praised him

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

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

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.

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.

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

"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.

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

breaking for adulthood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-

you 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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

when I asked you what happened last night
you said. “Nothing”
I asked you why
is there a used ******
nestled neatly in the space between
my bed. and wall
You don’t look me in the eye when you say
“We had ***”
because you know. “We”
didn’t have ***.
after you fed me a fifth shot
of the liquor you brought
you watched me spill over and
swooped in
to drink your fill

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

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.

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

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.

“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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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'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

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

and he said we were all loose threads
just the unsure ends of
stories we reached out and bent
to fit us better
loose ends of letters
i wrote when i was fifteen
and the odds seemed better
than they do when i have to pay taxes
and the odds seemed better
than my simple right
of trying to survive

you refuse
to let me help
you move in

this is a new place
that i am not a part of

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

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

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.

the minute the man walked onto the train
with his forty in a paper bag
i noticed the
salty
sickening
smell of
trash. he’s got a petty criminal’s
sneaker drag,
he had that looking for trouble
vision lag,
and he looked me straight in the eye
so call me trouble but the body language
of that
kind of guy
makes my throat a foreign land spit travels through
in tentative swallows,
the aura of quiet anger
around that
kind of guy
makes for a swollen tongue
that’s rough as a desert is dry. with his lumpy coat and
strange emotionless
maliciousness
i know his kind of dog and
it’s one gentle pat away from viciousness
it felt just like old times,
reeked bad news in the sunday paper lines and
sliced my memory like a quick surgeon’s incision
so i averted my gaze but
kept him at the corner of my vision.
he talked about how he lived nearby,
he was on his way,
he was on time
but them guys they,
only talk to dealers and they
only tell lies. and i gently squeezed
the scabs on my knees
and tried to hold my breath or at least breathe
shallow
until his presence wasn’t so threatening
but truly, it always was, because,
it was going to be
until he stepped through the automatic sliding subway doors
and surfaced
got swept away in the city above me.
his body had to be far away
from my body
for me to feel safe.

her shoulder blades were made of a thousand paper cranes
so breakable and small
when they hunched she seemed to whisper
i could fly away from here
and you won’t ever know me at all

we thought about the ice age
we made picture books
and discussed the likelihood that we’d find her
captured in an iceberg
her bones all melting into snow

and we had a leader once
but he’s been gone since the temperature
dropped so low
we all know, he’s somewhere we’ll all eventually go
sometimes my acceptance is the only thing i have to offer

now we sing and chase in circles
waiting for the part where we all
fall down

the day you come around
will be anything but beautiful

being brave is
loving yourself
when no one else
will

When i was eight my dad would bring me to a movie store, i was always curious about that back door, i didn’t know it was where they stored the ****, girls plastered on their backs and worn by men like casual dress their mouths all open in silent ****** and yet bets are they’ve never gotten that far and tonight i wonder where these screaming lick lipping girls are because I’ve never had one in me. And i think maybe most girls don’t because only men know that back door, that back entrance, where all the women love them on command, and real girls exist only as a figment of their imagination. When women’s pleasure is locked discreetly away you have to wonder whether men will ever taste chapped lips, touch fleshy hips, and love the bliss of a body on a body not a lifeless video hobby.

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.

run run red fire truck
mom is out of ***
dad is out of luck
he was taking a lighter
to the candles about the Christmas party
mommy dropped a cup of Bacardi
she screamed when it shattered
and daddy dropped his flame
ever since that day
we haven’t said her name
she cracked like burning honey
when she lit up like
the Christmas tree
it’s so easy to become
Nothing

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

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

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

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

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

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

1

being needed less is a pain that follows you
stretches and bounces as it lands at your feet
soon you learn how to dribble it

2

” someday” you said, ” we’ll all lose contact”
is that really the only option?
I get quiet when it hurts
but I still ask ” you think it has
to be that way?”

3

You are empty airwaves
I am an open phone line
I would call you
but I have a feeling you don’t want that

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

what texture did the skin take on
before it gave up and swallowed you?
did you ever for a second think
that you could be safe when
your fingers never stop twitching
every time you examine your neck in the mirror

there was a time before your hands
were reasons to hold on tight to anything
that could breathe
don’t tell me they’ve always been
this hungry

you must have known a night
before you had to bury them beneath pillows
to keep them from biting at your ribcage
fenced in by notions you put in your own head
they weren’t always this restless

there are ways to think about dying
without burning it into your skin
and there are nights that crackle like pyres
when you slip and let the embers sink in
and you think what is a body
but a vessel for sacrifice
but living on sharpened stakes
never felt so good
stop convincing yourself
it feels good

this depression is overgrown
you’ve never weeded the garden
didn’t water the flowers
and then turned away from your withering
too ashamed to call it your own

don’t you wonder when this self-hate
became the only trait that stayed hidden and safe
take those itching fingers to the shovel
and dig fresh beds to lay in
stop lying in the excuses
and uproot this grave

how does one climb out of a life
when every day is the same
when did you get so forfeiting
that you stopped attempting
to pull your body out of this?

i know it’s hard
to convince yourself this woman is not
the sum of her parts
don’t believe the man who spits at you
when you don’t agree to be the object of his rage
is sane
he will stay the same
but it’s up to you to stop
believing him right
and seeing yourself through his eyes

you are not a statistic
or a receptacle for pain
stop blaming your ribs
for holding on so tightly to your heart
for all the ways that you hate them
your organs are still smarter than you are

because they hold on
like deadbolts and locks
when you manifest the world’s sickness
in your brain
stop blaming yourself
and take the reigns

get a grip
that isn’t cataclysmic
learn to live
instead of picking at scabs
just to feel a pulse
you have gotten in too deep
and you are above this

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

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

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

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