you got this rattle in your chest
like the timing belt in your heart's been limping towards death since birth

it always hurt to listen to

so here
     here's the message at the bottom of the bottle
     you spend so many nights studying
as if perhaps
          you might actually remember what it read when the sun assaults your head come morning

here's what you been begging every fair-haired eve to whimper
as you slip her a dose of your hand-crafted love-sludge on her boyfriend's couch

this is the truth i learned about you seven years ago
while you spilled your guts on my favorite boots
     you really were cute
all campfire-light and anguish as you visably contemplated introducing your hand to my chest

you're different
not just from me
     but from everyone you meet in every pub on any street
and for some reason
     you seem to think that means that they don't see you

          they see you

you're scared
     not of dissappointing onlookers
but of disappointing yourself in some manner you can't help
so you help yourself to whatever opportunity you can find
     to exhibit boisterously the ******* you think they see you as

          you're too smart to be so stupid

and you're hurt
i get it
     i've heard your monsters howling through your head
     everytime you ever used my bed to rest it
but that's not an excuse to pull the dumb **** that you do
that's not a reason to abandon whatever sense of self-worth you once grasped

oh
     handsome boy
          the wounds of your past are not handicaps
     no
pain catalysts enlightenment

and i meant to tell you that night
     'long the river in the fire light
that you're going to be alright
          that you'll survive
so long as you give up the act that you're the only one who's ever felt like that

hurt just proves you've still got feeling

you've got the same gleam in your eyes as god did
     the night before she gave birth to the stars

some women call their bodies home to something greater

     me?
my body's a burial ground
for dreams i found
     and lost
just as quickly

i'm a canvas
void of my own expression yet riddled with scars
left behind by precious little ghosts
     and their lack of confession

i've written a grip of confessional love poems on beverage napkins
strung them together with a dissociative understanding of time (like dental floss)
     wrung them out and hung them up to ripen on the line

mama always said not to name things that are only going to die
and i lied to her face when i told her i wouldn't

          i gave it a name

and i was going to send it your way
as if maybe seeing it all spelled out
would make you change your plans
     and stay

alas
     i'm quite certain that i blew my nose on the winning sonnet
and burried the rest with what was left of my tears

now i don't even write
     i just scream at the stars all night
as if my life's become a sailor-song
and this desert
          my decaying cabaret

i leaned against my mother's kitchen sink
crying
          six shots of whiskey deep at half passed noon

     and both mutts came running
leaning their limber legs against mine

a heart-felt interspecies hug

ready and willing to catch my salty tears
upon the bridge of their snouts

     so this is true love

if looks could ****
     i'd be slaughtering the masses
and if these walls could talk
     they'd probably never stop laughing
but if that ***** of a mattress should crack
and leak the secrets of mine that she keeps in her chest-
like tightly bound metallic coils-
     so help me lillith

i'll burn this house to the ground

     i'd rather see all that i've built turn into ashes
than to hear her voice rehasing all the whispers i'm slinging whilst fast asleep
     or how i cry in bed for weeks
     or the way i flinch when the sun crosses my face
like a shadow i can't name

     i'm a mess
a natural disaster with whirlwind hair and a lightning strike pulse
     in a second-hand dress that doesn't fit right
          i'm fine
     i'll survive

but should you be the boy i find
     and i bring you home tonight
just know that i'm better than alright
          know how very much i feel alive
regardless of the subconscious soliloquies you unleash in your half-silence
     divulging secrets whilst you slumber

          i wake like the waves lapping at a fallen empire's shoreline
     and quest to test your lyrical limitations and the possible personification of your breath
     and your chest
          heaving like the sea himself

there's something in the way in which grown men cry
          that begs us to fall to our knees
     and weep
for the heart ache that we've given to our fathers

I hadn't cried in years.  
I was always taught that strength
was not having the courage to let yourself feel but
******* it up, holding it in.
I am sick of "You're going soft on us, honey"
Today I came to understand that
you are completely okay with writing the same poem
over and over again.
This is a metaphor for the way you ****** her in my bed.
This is a metaphor for the night you copy and pasted love letters.
This is a metaphor for what really happened-
I never fall in the same place twice.
Except when I do.
I think the critical difference between the two of us,
critical because there are many differences
but- I think our hamartia, our fatal flaw,
our end scene is this:
if people didn't like my poetry, if nobody listened,
if I walked out on stage and nobody snapped their
fingers, I would still write for just your eyes.
I would still cramp my crooked, birth defect,
quadruple jointed fingers writing to you about the nights
you loved me back,
for a minute there you loved me back.
And you loved 20,000 other people back.
And you loved small towns back and big cities back and the entire west coast
back when you drove through, making temporary homes out of people
who should have been permanent
and I loved you.
And I hadn't cried in years.
Not because I wasn't sad, but because I was taught that showing emotion
was weakness.
So if my father made me memorize the How To's of strength,
if I were going by the book, today I'd be so fragile
you could say hello and I'd shatter so suddenly you'd
forget you were the one that let go.