I think I loved you most the winter your heating was broken
And we’d stay inside all morning
Pretending to complain that we couldn’t get out of bed
Our clothes becoming little islands on the floor,
Ones that we could not quite find the courage to visit

Your hand stayed glued to my hip,
Your breath warming my shoulder
Like a long drag of whiskey
That kind that had a home so far away,
In a glass bottle on top of your refrigerator.
The one that would not be opened
Until that fateful day in February,
When everything went wrong

And on that unbearable night
When you joked that you’d freeze to death if I left you
There was a long silence
Like it might be true.

Now it’s warm enough
That I show too much skin when sitting in bars
And you avoid me like the plague,
Whispering in any girl’s ear that’s near to you
Every time you see me watching out of the corner of your eye

We should have stayed inside when the ice began to melt
Because I think
When those doors opened and we finally ventured outside
The world had changed,
And so had you and I.

I never wanted a hero.
I'm no damsel in distress.
All I wanted was a place
a safe place without duress.

I feel like I'm betraying you all
when I say I'm gonna stay,
then I start packing anyway
and backing out the door.

How can I explain this?
The pain in my heart won't quit,
mind caving in on itself,
and no one liked me extroverted.

No one liked my stories,
all the people, the places
I went without you.
How would I feel if it was you.

No one wants to think,
you might have had it better
than they did.
who can blame them?

Better to keep it in,
to keep on packing,
to keep on backing,
out that door again.

our highs are like the
himalayas and our lows;
death valley. but all
i want is to be at sea
level with you.

Seagulls pacing dark skies.
Walking circles below,
with a cigarette, in the snow.
Thinking of reuniting with you.

I went back to the past,
exhausted by everything new,
estranged by my time with strangers.
Dreaming of reveries untrue.

I went back to the future,
but all it showed me was you.
Nothing of what would become,
nothing of what we would do.

I wanted to break that portal,
to cut myself off,
to be free of prophetic visions.
I was afraid to be alone.

So I let it sit,
like a canker,
like a cyst,
until I would be brave enough.

Brave enough to step through it.

A strange time to be.
A strange way to think.
Strange noises,
no on explains.
Strange news,
no one to blame.
Strange fish in Alaska,
Fukushima still leaking?
False flags,
toe tags,
dog tag stories
to pluck the heart strings.
I saw it in my dreams,
among other things.
For all the good it does me.
Still lost,
keep moving,
but it always finds me.
Still dream,
still wake,
walk through it
obliviously.
It's okay.
It was all going to happen
eventually,
anyway..

I learnt this year
that twelve months is not a long time.

And suddenly I was up staring at the dates
burning past; I
was still sunken in the last wintersleep
when spring danced its dance
and left me watching
from the dark corner
of the bar that my life had become:
the dim lights, and broken hearts,
and the drunken thought of you
rushing in and waltzing out.

I learnt that
you are only as tired
as your last mistake.

And that people only remembered
what they wanted to forget.

I began to measure time
in the ways your laughter changed
from a river-burst resonance of joy,
to a difficult trickle of a mighty
stream
drying up.

When I die, dear Mother
don't give my body away
to science.

I'd rather have it given away to poetry.

I want people to cut me open
and observe
how my bones were riddled with
melancholic verses of joyful pasts.

They have to see
the scarlet of my blood was the hue
I stole from the sunsets of
wishful thoughts.

Dear Mother,
give my body away
to the art of writing:
for they have to look past
everything they have ever learned.

They must know
of how much I loved and I lost,
and how that made the twine of my ribs
a story to tell.

In the beginning it was already the end.
That distant apocalypse was here all along,
Riding freight trains and eating the "trash"
There when they boarded up the Slavic village. There when the fresh prince gentrified Philly. So much apocalypse has been swept under the rug that the middle class can't keep their balance with the weight of the rich on their backs.
Stepping around the smoldering hell holes of Centralia, while the earth quakes from underground fracking. The ash and smog hides the glitter of aluminum in the air. The water laced with fluoride, lead, arsenic, cancer. The seas run black with greed. Designer labels sit passed by on goodwill shelves.

By the time it began, it was already over. Anyone who didn't notice yet, just had to go hungry first. Bread and circuses, just like Rome.