Aimless devotion to discontent deities**
sacrificial offerings crucial for good juju
Altar boys and pages kissing feet for wages
Praying to relics
punishing heretics
Burning,knifing,shooting
Oh for the love of god!
Don't believe
Do believe
Maybe just for acceptance
Penance repentance
Breed a way of thinking
and get many precious berries

Somedays I think of how I will wait until the skin drops from my bones
To tell myself that I am beautiful
She will be there at 5 foot 2 the smallest skyscraper ever
Gleaming shades of tan and amber
Defending the shape of her thighs and the queries of guys.
Disallowing herself to be patronized
I won't need you anymore
I will love myself, in fair or morose health
For when your hands shall leave my *******
I won't even feel the ghost of your caress

Beauty is power
The words we teach our girls
whipped mousse over the freckles along your temples
will get you respect
the zit under your chin
will make you somebody to avoid for a month
The rouge on your cheeks
will make people think they've made you laugh each time you smile
Taken more seriously under anonymity on cyberspace
than to that same person talking to your face
As the standards grow higher
The modified faces and bodies of revlon and maybeline
become tall tales in every sense
The waistline is taken in to better display the shellac of that manicure
why of course!
as more and more voices go hoarse
from taking out meals before
in fear of a body to abhor
when beauty is power
and its concepts changing
is it only to keep us from misbehaving>

In the moments of your first breath your name is burned into the skin
It's up to you to live that life and make it fit
I have grown out of my name, out of my home
A giant trying to room with the little old lady that lived in a shoe
Sometimes I'm held hostage by my roots that reach up and fasten their tendrils around my oaf limbs
Tugging too hard makes the earth turn into scarves that wrap around my colored hair
A queer islamic girl is weird and rare.
I don't believe that a god would condemn us to be such a walking oxymoron
But sometimes when I read the Koran and agree
Trace a few familiar names with my finger
What used to be me can't truly be

my words gathered near the drain
too big to saunter through
a shallow pool of empty vowels and consonants
ceramic reflecting back
shiny white room for more
******* letters
to be vomited up
another time

When fragments fly from your mothers favorite glass
It's time to give in
All your pride waves out fresh like water after a listerine rinse
The blinds stay closed because the windows glare
not just because the people behind them do as well
Condensation rises on your glossy eyes and youre as high as where the snow falls from
An insomniac mirthful mercenary defected from an army of awake dreamers
Draw string bags of angel dust rest on the loops of your belt
But here I am trapped under yours
A Jiminy Cricket with a pillow over my loose lips
It's toxic when we make our hearts skip  
Pumping your veins with strange men in nice jackets
I can't just close the blinds to hide the glare.
I'm caught in this piercing snare

Look at the child with the rifle
She's posing for a photo
She just doesn't know what it means.
Give it three years, and she still won't know.
Except now her people,now her country have nowhere to go
She's 6 years old with an arms embargo
The country is suddenly three now
The people inside can't see,the people murdered along its beaches can't see.
The people washed ashore can't see.
Air strikes fall somewhere distant.
Militants front and center
Nothing else but to surrender
The country's identity is reduced to its language,their colors and the violence around them
Never did it experience serenity
Fully get the wealth from their oil and luxury
Nobody could guess that people could shake and shimmy along the beaches
Where the nameless faces appear,dreams dust in their open and clenched fists.

I know it's not my fault.
But I can't help but feel like it is
The more she got to know the needles and coke
The more I became a joke.
She kept trying to come back to me and my parents knew
They wanted her and I to have nothing to do with eachother
How could I have allowed myself to turn away from you
That little girl who called me mommy because she didn't believe her mother love her.
She'd cry and scream and want her way but I would just hold her head to my chest and rock her back and forth
Because her favorite toy had broke or someone was mean and rude
And yes you were always just one year younger
When we lost each other in the tides of adolescence
We became ripped apart from the other ones prescence
Never giving up the idea that I would always be there for her
She still dips her toes into the water of my life.
Water isn't nourishing unless it's ice

this is the year that youth dies
born into the world in the air
flying high
balloons embedded in flesh to keep afloat
docile and naive
with each spurt of growth a balloon pops
propelling one closer to the ground that has come to embody fear itself
the misery that can be caught in every parents eye
for the first time being fully realized
no fairy tale ******* could redeem those juvenile days that could have been stolen
by the weight of all the bills and capitalist charades that fly through their accredited slot
accumulating into a mountain that in return deliver a crippling anxiety and a life of caution
A day can only be seized so long until night falls
cant fly back into the atmosphere
when the balloons have broke
and youre grounded

One would think it's passed
an era of repression and commitment
commitment to repression
how hard we dry our eyes by forgoing blinking
still in shackles we don't cry
we are this by our own device
So when hearts beat hard and heavy
Find a reprieve as a slave of your own emotions
and let those carry you
The others on that chain gang let them in
to love is to have family
to love can make one grin.

Out of all the hysteria that unraveled
My sanity was the kickball lost in the neighbors garden
Too embarrassed to recover
One backpack strap over the shoulder made each step a dance
hips swaying trying to retain balance
as if that was something of a friend that i knew i would someday meet
Each stride- each left right glide didn't make trotting a positive feat  
The sleet of sleep that rested on the bottoms of my eyes made me blind to the consciousness of others
It was not the cracks in the concrete that caused every trip
just legs struck out,just little "slips"
Another layer of confusion lamenting
My brain had disney stickers slapped onto every ridge and every gap
Nobody mentioned they were supposed to look like that
Underneath were throbbing aches
A hostile home versus what the media had shown
was school to become another danger zone
Yes.
I'll tell you now,years later some may try to atone
The slight dominance they had felt over you will be overthrown
Once you learn to make your own laughter the world will be your oyster
that will be your umbrella for every drop of moisture that falls
So trot through those doors,
soon will come the adolescence wars
right now though you're only five years old

Paying for the bus in pennies takes a long time
The busdriver waves you forward
It's okay, but you still feel the need to pay your way.
Sit down, it's only a short distance from here to there.
Everyone's uncomfortable or ice cold
Consumed by their telephones  
The numbers on the clock snake around into new ones
What's the rush
Doors swing open in front and people stream on
Exposing wrinkled strips of color from an hour before
Hurry, everything is done quickly to feel important
Chances are an empty home with creaking floors are waiting
Take a seat next to a stranger endure an awkward conversation
Save the lonely for some other occasion

There's a road far away from here, beyond the nurturing couch that has always lain behind the living room door.
eyelids open and close but body is frozen, you're a man made of fire trying not to break the ice
it's not a pain it's a fear
Legs are warmed from the wireless furnaces that heat up in your lap.
Fingers have traveled hundreds of miles on that typeset but toes none
You can't be the only one
technological systematical hazes in which we bury all our gazes
Suddenly every friendship ever born seems to have its own wi-fi password
Bill Gates, a god and jesus a fraud
Autotuned presidential speeches leeching into ears
are there actually words that we're hearing. Is this a state of mind that we are being herded into
That phonix toy that taught me how to read is replaced by angry birds on some mothers iphones
We are all so plugged in, you can update where you are on a single whim
But it takes so much whining to get the mangled limbs off the couch.
Every youth is living in two worlds one in which they binge and one in which they purge
But i have a question,
Do you even realize there's a lesson here, in all of this?

I miss the honey that dripped from the words you spoke
so few they were
all different tastes of raspberry and lavender
Each kiss was like an array of samples from a farmer's market
Although you were as graceful as a goose on rollerskates
you were a place that I could let my feelings loose
Homebase in a giant game of tag
You were wi-fi that never once lagged
I'd lay down and call you boring
shape my nails using the skin from your back
Waste time in a digital daze
while you'd spark up that pipe and get blazed

You cannot phase me.
stone cold eyes with built in wire.
You cannot touch me
My circuitry makes it so.
You cannot aide me like a wounded crow.
Everything human requires sense.
for me,it's a pretense
A simple system of defense
Another chromatic character
gathering dust of another layer.

As the summer fades to grey
I want you to love me.
To be the fresh water after you brush your teeth each morning
The doormat to welcome you home
The watering can to help you grow.
Me, say it one time and it is self fulfilling
Say it again and again and the meanings near lost
Add you. You and me. Me and you
Until the day we fray like an old straw hat  
Those words hold hands as I do you.
I was a big tin bowl with a lot to hold waiting for the tink of a penny
one came down as we became friends
And one hundred more as we evolved to lovers.
How I wish I could expand to hold all of the change youve brought into my life.
Maybe I will

Hadn't it all been forgotten
Between the brooding the bruising and the torn skin tissue
What did it even feel like to ride a bike up a hill to deliver soup to the boy with chills
your boy
That boy who you thought nobody else could be
Insist to lay in the arms of others in a state of apathy
is it really coming back, I will get hurt and trapped
All of these notions rushing in a quick return to help, heal but worst of all heal
Knowing what love is, when to say it, if to say it is all a different thing
It's a forgotten flavor long lost in an ocean numbed by nicotine and liquor
A warm cinnamon bun hot from the oven, tender and brittle perhaps maybe crumbing

5 in the morning
Caffeine in my veins
That one and only restraint
lashes high fiving my brows
Curtain call
Have to stay awake.

She will be our daughter
with hair of finely woven copper
to match that of her father.
And as she drinks from her sippy cup.
Five feet off the ground.
I could never be so proud.
When she holds my hand with fingers the size of pencaps
I could never be so glad
When she wimpers in her sleep
I'll wonder what she's dreaming

Down the rabbit hole I go
Trademarked by Acme and the warnerbrothers
I put it there myself to see where it would take me
Thrown down in the middle of dinner parties
Slapped on to a stranger's windshield
Pulling it out it feels rubbery and flimsy
The only way I've ever known my reality to be
Walking on the other side of the sidewalk
In an attempt to avoid the pianos that might fall on my head
****** features exaggerated with expressions of valor or dismay
Hearts surrounding the dogs sniffing each other
Can they see it too?
Sometimes the forget me nots blow kisses as if everyone are their lovers
their little blue pedals waving or curling in and out from the garden
mom's a little clumsy and there's always at least a single star spinning above her head
It's always been this way
A spoonful of sugar was never enough to make the medicine go down

I am aware that I'm toxic
It was never fair to believe that in life you just give and receive
Spending half a life as the novelty welcome mat on a rural truck stop.
Nobody ever stayed around, they were all on some journey.
A foot gets put down and occasionally people frown
as in you were never supposed to do that
as in you should be comfortable because people still at least say hi
When the greeter gets greeted they feel more or less defeated
Because everything is done the same daily, it's repeated
Crane that neck around, and see the stomps impeding
On all that sense of worth, that basket full of reassurance that was spread like pixie dust
Take all those coming forward with their not so friendly faces
Get off of the floor and go forward, get ready for the races
Stay down or drown in a pool full of that stiffling reality that just cannot be avoided.
Go toxic.

blood is what ties me to the bedpost
Out of my veins and knotted to the frame
It's the culture it's the history of another person another time and place
Nothing in my body is mine save for the face
But that's just 2 parts her and one part him
They say I even share my parents grin
Earth is a recycle bin
But we didn't ask who manufactured them

I tried so hard.
I had wanted to run you across the world
You curious squirrel!
I was nuts for you!
If only i hadn't grown up.
If only i were able to remain cynical.
I don't feel like i can keep you happy.
I have to carry the energy,its overwhelming.
If i complain about one thing,you breathe fire stomp your feet,call me callous and repeat

If your hair ever grows longer than mine
I'll braid it back and listen to you whine  
How everyone ***** and are all the same  
I'll tell you yeah it's pretty lame
Had you done alot of drugs some night I'd wait in the parking lot
Until someone came to pick you up
And if they don't  just ride my handlebars
If we crash we'll share some battle scars
laugh and brush it off like leaves from the porch in the fall  
And yeah I've let you become my main man  
So much taller and lean than I am
But you'll learn in time that I am mean and stealing your heart was part of my scheme
Just don't forget we are a team

I am the messiah of all  the houses that neither you nor I own
In the building behind  your suburban home
Beyond the gates that say
Go away
we are owned by the bank
Secretly drop outs snorting up crank
Holed up in a house that some poor soul could not afford

I've that pendulum swing in my brain
occasionally it's difficult to ascertain
the here the now the then the there
can't even find the nouns
person place or thing
My tongues the red carpet to the Wonka factory
Words too old to be somersaulting around
Not even walking straight in my own home
Losing a sense of direction in a matter of seconds
How have I ever managed anything
Trying to impress everyone that passes by
Is it affable or is my existence just so laughable?

Look at the child with the rifle
She's posing for a photo
She just doesn't know what it means.
Give it three years, and she still won't know.
Except now her people,now her country have nowhere to go
She's 6 years old with an arms embargo
The country is suddenly three now
The people inside can't see,the people murdered along its beaches can't see.
The people washed ashore can't see.
Air strikes fall somewhere distant.
Militants front and center
Nothing else but to surrender
The country's identity is reduced to its language,their colors and the violence around them
Never did it experience serenity
Fully get the wealth from their oil and luxury
Nobody could guess that people could shake and shimmy along the beaches
Where the nameless faces appear,dreams dust in their open and clenched fists.

I've that pendulum swing in my brain
occasionally it's difficult to ascertain
the here the now the then the there
can't even find the nouns
person place or thing
My tongues the red carpet to the Wonka factory
Words too old to be somersaulting around
Not even walking straight in my own home
Losing a sense of direction in a matter of seconds
How have I ever managed anything
Trying to impress everyone that passes by
Is it affable or is my existence just so laughable?

Am I mistaken?
You put my body above my face.again.
My anatomy does not keep me from my autonomy.
Objectifying your own daughter and constantly telling her she better run.
Meanwhile expecting nothing from the son. Teaching nothing to the son. Boys,darling. Boys will be boys.
"Have a nice day at work,honey today you might get shoved into that van."
I find myself flinching when joggers come to close.
There was never that plausibility of consent.
Don't let anyone touch you. Never ever let anyone touch you.
Your virtue will have dissapaited into the ether.
I will be ugly.
I was 15 when I let a boy touch my breast.
I cried for 3 days.
When allowances had shifted I had found myself more vulnerable.
But I always was more vulnerable.
Ready to decay at a young age through a impotent sense of resistance.
Be ******. Spit. Clench your fists. Smoke your cigarettes. Wear big boots. Dont look soft because they might think you feel it too. I thought i would catch fire i thought i would die
Especially when it seems so real.  
This culture of predatory vultures looking to the elipses that make a chest. Nothing about my life has ever told me that I was allowed to feel safe. That it was okay, to permit a lover to trace my sillhoute with fingers crowned by tiny nails chewed up from a similar confused and scathing perception of the universe. In this house I was never told that I would find someone who I might feel love towards,or that anyone could entertain the thought. It seems as if you would rather I be taken
And kidnapped
Then ever give myself away.
Just so you would know i always have to stay.

dreams are now just cracked porcelain cups
their matching saucers long gone or never present
broken because of ******* pubescence
oh how they failed to mention how unpleasant

You slide out crying and upset
as if already prepared for a life of deep regret
All the eyes that stare and beam with pride
Naked, newly born with nothing there to hide

I could melt your frozen freckled cheeks between my warm hands
The streamers of copper hair I find sometimes become tendons to the marionette I still am
Desperately flailing
where all the previous strings have been lay scabs

I held my keys to my side as I walked home tonight
Let out wails and cried by the schoolyard
All I could think about was the way the clasps of your heavy leather jacket clanked against each other next to me
It's an image so vivid and familiar
I could probably tell you all the lines on your palms based solely by the many times I have felt them in mine.

Days creep by as fast as the last leaf falls
My summer of solace is over
With no sun to guide me to rest
I feel life is a study for one big test
My summer of solace is over
The late nights have blessed me with bags beneath my eyes
Struggling to socialize with a playful guise
A backpack with what feels like lumber
Lures me into a familiar educational slumber
The late nights have blessed me with bags beneath my eyes
Once again life returns with an early rise
It’s safe to say I have long since realized night is where my heart does lie
The sleep button on my alarm is my best friend and with it I pretend that all we are is someone else’s mellifluous dream

Once again life returns with an early rise
The birds whistle in the dark morning skies
As I quickly and quietly await the days’ dismissal

There is no feigning love
Only a light switch little boys toggle in a big room lined with the belongings of the ones who left it last
Tents made from the frayed and bleached garments of playmates who had to return home for supper,but not before changing the light bulb.
That is not the fear, foundations made of bone covered in soot from flames whispered out with secrets
Nails jagged and loose and I can't afford repairs
Paper thin walls with dixie cups full of crayons

There's nobody anymore
That I can make plans to live with someday
Because we're just so close.
To make that phone light up at the witching hour
just to say hey, i had a good day
how about you
how about me
mascara running down and leaking in through my lips
as I heave

throw rocks at the sun
For the moment they glimmer gray
Make an instance of understanding
Relate life back to gravity
Rushing blood and solid bone
Bound to glimmer like that airborne stone
Be the one to flick the rist
Find answers to whatever destiny

Wanna be an all American!
As my corpse tries to jump out of it's dead brown skin
The fair foundation has been working again
Our experiences have been exactly the same!
Hearing your hesitancy in the pronunciation of this name
roll it out like the Princess Bride- all the words every time
Reinforcing this breath I will be the punchline but
Can you cry a god back into your heart
Rolling like thunder behind your own title
Whisper it back and then still be rid of the shame?
Decolonize a spirit with  Raid™️
Keep only one tongue and let the other one fade