My sculpture artist.
My mad scientist.
The constant reader of anatomy books
Perched on paper scattered desks
Close dissection of the human
You want me to become
And I want it too.
I am tired of being a moist lump of clay
Slumping over from unmolded parts of my frame
The structure that holds promise of life
If all parts are carved in just right
Mirroring the blue vein lines
Between red masses of muscles
Printed on yellow and finger smudged paper
From your constant flipping between
The full human form and
That small pumping muscle you
Have carved into me time and time again
Only to smear with one finger tip
The dainty clay aorta
Inside my already perfect chest
I am tired of not burning hot with the
Fires of your kiln.
To be burnt so severely
That what was supposed to be skin would
Crack, break, and fall into a complete shell
Around my base.
Leaving a small pumping heart
That would finally define me as human
To an artist who plays with science.

On a Wednesday I bit down hard
Into an apple.
The red ringed hues of crimson
I thought would taste better to my mouth
Than to my eyes
Until the sweet juice dripped down
Onto my chin
Leaving a sticky residue that ******
On my fingers when I wiped it away.
The one bite of flesh I held in my open mouth
Less open than my eyes
That first saw that thing.
That half of a worm that
Still wriggled for life
Hung half out a hole in my apple
Like a drowning man hanging out of a
Bouie waving his arms franticly for help
But underneath the water his
Legs still and deader than what
I can either assume to be the head or end
Of the worm still in my mouth.

Sometimes I feel
Like a tethered titian
Of sorts
Tied to and underneath the
Footsteps of morals
Above me on earth
Angry with no shoes
I stomp around with my thunderous feet
Because no tailor would tie
String around my arches and leather beneath my soles
To protect me from the hot coals that line
The carpet of my cage.
A mythological beast of old is what I feel like
Some days
And in many ways
I feel like
A god of flight
Not confined to the barriers of night
But to the endless blue hued sky
That my golden wings contrast against
So sharply they cut through the air
Propelling me in circles around a bigger circle
That the mortals below me still think to be flat
My heels clasped with wings confining me
To the jail of myself where I am
The warden of one and exact my
Revenge on my prisoner daily
With the force of a titans foot
Tricked into thinking wings could
Be shoes.

Time does not heal all wounds,
Cannot make everything right.
All time is—Is future and
All the future does is leave you with
Immeasurable space filled with ****** earth
And the promise of fresh crops
That could be your thriving life
But for your need to think,
To ponder ,
To wonder,
To mull over every decision
Rake over every choice
Picking up and turning over
Every hard as rock thought.
Planting new bulbs tainted with old ideas
As you purge out all of your memories
Just to sift through each one
with your ***** hands—naked without gloves
The muddied clumps of soil riddled with the worms
Of things you used to know
Slipping through your fingers
As you pull them apart and leave them,
The tufts of unfermented soil
There on the ground.
More broken up than they were in your own head.

A lesson I learned in school
From the boys I have only known
Through sharpies on bathroom stalls
Mike who broke Kim’s heart
And G who would love S forever
Even though the arrow pointing away
From it in a different color
Said otherwise
I learned on painting wood
Suspended by nailed in hinges
That love was more temporary than
Permanent marker
And could be erased by a janitor with
Clorox and even the
Girls who were so motivated to hang onto
Their love that they carved instead of drew
Hearts around their lover’s names
But found they could just as easily be painted over
By pink stained brushes
The lesson I learned in college
Eventually replaced the one before
The first day
In between classes and cups of coffee
When I saw the stalls
Were covered by doors made of
Marble.
Without a scratch of temporary.

The trees are stricken with a terrible illness
a certain shrillness that permeates
their perpetual stillness.
And I have seen them.
Their pitch dripped hearts buried underneath
Their brown and rough bark, our version of skin.
And I have cut them.
Looking for their sap, their form of our blood
Hoping to find it still sticky sweet with life,
Hoping it has not succumb to their illness
That is our men.
Men, with burly beards and chainsaws
That are the trees versions of sterile masks
And metal toothed needles
Chainsaw needles that pump poison into
The trees’ version of our arms
Their form of cancer that
Ravishes through what would be our
Organs.
Men with saws that are our version of chemo
Shaking off the leafs that would be
What we call hair
And I have seen them.
They fall down the same way we would
And are covered by our same dirt earth.

If I were a man
I would ask out a girl just for the hell of it
Because either way ive been waiting far too
Long to try that restaurants grilled halibut
I would sag my pants down low
In any given social situation
I would wake up in the middle of the night with a cold sweat
Fearing that doctors castration
And in the same situation I would burp real loud
Because I drank too much beer
Or ate too many chips
And what is a man to do
other than flip his own scripts
and rip on other men’s trips
and say, “dude you’re so gay”
if I were a man
I’d probably put bumpin’ speakers in
My Honda civic
And id bust out loud rap as I turned and whipped it
In front of all the pretty girls
The ones with hair curled and necklaces made of my pearls
Ones I wouldn’t call back because I paid attention in math
And knew the male to female ratio was 1 to 4
And that left me with 3 other girls to score
But sense I am not a man
And according to them I am some-what less than
I’ll belt my pants suffer your ****** glance
Deny you a dance and instead of implants
I will wish for a transplant.