I am living with eleven dead women--
rather, I am dead with eleven others
just like me.
Even the fat ones
are all snapped bone
and skin so thin you can see right through
to the blue veins.
Our skin, our veins, our bone
come from one mother,
monstrous and controlling.
We sit like puppets on strings
but at night we lie with death like animals.

Doctor Dearest,
when I ask you to drip sweetness into my veins
do not tell me that life looks better
with stuck-open eyes and *******.
I want to feel my arms light up with the anticipation
of release.

Do not prescribe me rest, I’ve had enough of that
to make an infant cry out in envy.
And anyway, my bed is stone
and my blanket is fire spun into thread.
Sleep does not tempt me unless
it is guaranteed.

Do not tell me to eat
or unfold your little pyramid,
a stack of sins that weigh on me
with the full force of an iron curse.
Food does not welcome me into its yellow-walled home--
it senses desire and punishes me.

Do not pull a magic pill out of your hundred dollar hat
and fold my fingers along its dusty edges
because I will crush it under my weight
and piece it back together with spittle-thread,
the glue of a starver’s refusal.

Do not promise me that time heals pain
when I’m not even an inch up this mountain.
My feet cannot balance on footholds
carved in mud,
and my hands were stolen
from a chest in my own ghost’s attic.
They haven’t been used in this lifetime.

Doctor, Sir, do not tell me that I am sweet enough
to tempt even the fullest stomachs
and the tallest men.
I know the taste of dirt
because it sours my tongue and scrapes my throat.
And I am tired, so tired
of digesting Earth
when I wasn’t meant to be fed.

So I went
down the rabbit hole
thinking I was following you, my love
They would have said
it was Mad
that's why I didn't tell anyone
that the living room table & house
was divided into different countries
America at the helm
Germany, Britain and Russia
as I stood in my chequered coat
for days on end, crying
believing people thought I was Stalin
or else, a diplomat
about to be killed
& M&S; tea, the package
being red & black
made me think of communism
( red) & fascism ( black)
& though being neither
I wanted to promptly
order my mother
to spread it amongst the people
then realized the irony of this
& refrained
instead, asking her
why she was sending signals
to the neighbors
by putting the kettle on
whilst praying for all the believers
in and of True Love
True Love,
salvation & fury
debased by them
on purpose, I thought
' Erotomaniac'
what?
Simply for wanting
to have hope?
Believing in romance?
And you,
who rejected me
you'll never know Wonderland
all you saw was a rabbit hole,
darkness & dirt
& it's true, it all just turned into barbed wire
& Angels singing, locked up
little pills at bedtime
fear, my only crime
& yet for a while before that
the world shone
& I don't know how to talk about that
it's just that I thought
every person I met
would lead me to your door
that all the songs in the world
were sung for me
& that all your poetry
was a declaration of love
just waiting to happen

The city's shrouded in smoke today
smoke coats my mouth, throat & eyes

& I know, I know.
       I should be writing in form,
in rhyme - villanelles, sonnets, terza rima
      some say there's too much free verse, some say, it's like
everyone's jumped on the bandwagon
       yet the most of the magazines still all want rhyme
                 but sometimes this is just the tune
                                    your heart sings, a broken smile
                                    & the way the images build up
                                        waiting to sail like ships in the harbor


& besides, should we really be writing in villanelles when we are the Mad & I see now, the best minds of our generation, the gifted,

the naked wastrels of the coming apocalypse,
talking to lamp posts, screaming of Ginsberg's Moloch

& the wrongs they did us, yet not destroyed even as we scream locked
behind whitewashed walls in razor-blade glint & halogenic

glow of ECT or walk the empty streets at guerilla dawn
& dusk, bearing the ample weight of our drugged-up minds

like those martyrs of the old Soviet Union & clinging
on to memoirs of our stolen, interrupted, spiritual awakening,

searching for the redemption of litter in this hobo life, 
changing countries like some change bed sheets,

others rooted by the invisible chains of familiarity & home, still calling
for the road, oh Kerouac, the fallen angels of tomorrow strung out on sweet

childhood memories & jazz in starved sunsets,
picking themselves up to pick at their scab wounds,

spitting at corrupt governments, bitter with alcohol,
writing poems of unrequited love to poets

far better than us, while Elvis croons
in the background & a Baboushka spits sunflower seeds

in the Russian town of my ancestors
& an open air film plays in black & white

& this colorless summer is nearly over
& they still haven't lifted their sanctions

them with their stone gods of war & psychiatry,
always lining up the next undesirables :

you could be next, yes you with the rainbow eyes
you the believer, you the dreamer of visions

Oh pity them, the children of smoke,
blind to the vagabond, the poet, the lover

lost children always seeking out the same roads
the city is shrouded in smoke

& I wonder if it's not always been there
& if we're living amongst blind men

ones that never read poems
or else how could all this happen

My life has shrunk
to fit the skin
of this small town

to live inside
the microcosm
of it's streets

to tell it's sad tales
of love & loss
& bygone travels

to walk the ways
I've known
since childhood

even the guest
that came last night
is from the street

I lived on
when I went
to college

& who was
also labelled 'mad'
here by the docs

this is a town
like any town
that locks it's dreamers up

& spits them out
to live branded
& afraid of their own shadows

a town
I want to leave
a town that once I loved

I'll lay my soul on your tombstone

Sorry I missed the funeral darling but
I couldn't quite handle seeing you so bare in your casket

A sight so painful like the cuts I made on my wrists

Those pearls gracing your neck still pale in comparison to your beauty

Now that you're gone there's not much else to say
My days are a little more grey as every thought if you turns my head

Maybe you'll walk through the door undead
Killing my eyes with that bright laugh and smile
But it's alright I guess

I'll keep your memory just below my surface
Living in your memory using all my favorite vices

I smoke those herbs to numb it all
Bowls after bowls token up like Thomas the engine
Trying to get as high as possible to laugh so hard my tears stop being from sadness and start being from joy

I drink this patrone to forget it all
Feeling the burn of my favorite whiskey hitting my throat and slurring words a bit
Speaking so vague not even I know what I'm saying.

But it doesn't help

You're overloading my system every once in a while
With those eyes as pale blue as the sky on the last day we met

Never opening again, **** that hurts my soul

My dear it may have been four short years but
It all feels like yesterday I got that phone call

Telling me you're fighting for your breath
Telling me you might not make it
Telling me it's a time for prayer
Telling me you've been killed

But here's the deal
I've never been the spiritual type
The first thought that comes to mind when I go in road trips isn't to pray for safety
And I'm not sure why

Maybe because I prayed more in my life in the two hours between those phone calls telling me you've been hit, and when you died

Maybe because when I needed Him the most he didn't come to my rescue like everyone said he would

When I was staring at white walls and florescent bulbs waiting for the next meal
I would reject because I wanted to be hanging from a rope and noone should try to stop me

When I prayed to Him about wanting to take my own life he turned his back on me
It was as if it was meant to be

But then I sat staring at four white walls lying on a bed of nails contemplating how I made it there

Then I think about you
21 was to young to be murdered.
16 was to young to contemplate suicide.

I guess my point has been lost in traslation

But just to bring this to a close it's that your departure did more than **** you
It killed my faith
It killed my self worth
It killed me

But maybe it happened to bring me here.

You know I always have to put this positive twist here somewhere

I've settled in the university of my dreams with friends I couldn't have thought better of myself.

I've started blossoming In my poetry
Spittin these words straight from my notepad where four years ago noone would be able to stare at me this long without my anxiety destroying me inside and out

My dear, if you were still here
I don't know where I'd be today
Maybe I would have found some different passion
But I think I'm happier where I am
Then where I would have been
Had you never been taken from me

“Second place…”
“Everyone feels.”
“Get out of your room.”
“…. Intensive therapy…”
“I’m a bad person.”
“I’m sorry.”
“How does it feel?”
“How did it feel?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I love you.”
“You’re beautiful.”
“You’re not enough.”
“… People like that…”
“Is that why the world is so sharp you cut yourself on it?”
“What do you want?”
“You want me to be something I’m not.”
“I hate you.”
“Why won’t you let me hold you?”
“Are you up?”
“It hurts.”
“You can tell me anything.”
“I’m scared.”
“I don’t think I can help you.”
“Are you okay?”
“… Going through the tunnel…”
“You can listen to my records.”
“So that’s why it’s me who ends up the cause of everything that hurts you.”
“Can I help?”
“Fight back.”
“I’m busy.”
“Sure, honey.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m sorry.”
“… When I cut…”
“It’s not okay.”
“I care about you.”
“What did you mean?”
“I punched the wall in my bedroom.”
“Go take a walk.”
“I’m bleeding.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Has the counselor talked to your parents about a hospital yet?”
“Crazy people are beautiful.”
“Drop it.”
“Stop being so cryptic.”
“I don’t know how to love you either.”
“Why do you treat me this way?”
“What’s going on?”
“… Like I’m nothing…”
“It makes it feel worthless that I’m a kind person.”
“Then nothing’s going to change.”
“It’s okay.”
“You’re so annoying.”
“You’re so brilliant it hurts to think you might waste it.”
“You have to keep trying.”