the poet in me is lost
it left my body while i slept, while i wept
and the shades of life have since grown duller
colors reach out to touch me
they say see me, see me
i once filled your endless cup of a spirit
with something,
an awing otherness
but all i see is the pit from whence it ascended
it's just black, black and black

you are one of those
that keep me on a leash-
tight enough to let me know you're in control
but loose enough for you to roam
only selectively showing me pieces of your life
like opening your front door
but never letting me walk inside

i was born with my heart outside of myself
free to grapple with and pull apart

and they did, they did

there was once an artist
who laid out knives and needles and guns
and spread out on a table
and waited

she didn’t even move when they started to **** and stab
and i have always wished i had the same strength

how does one so gracefully intertwine love and hate
as if it was an indistinguishable entity ever shifting through fluid states

an amoeba
elusive
esoteric

passion, not a substance but an undefined thing
it might not even exist if not on some quantum microscopic level where i live, where i have always lived
among the threads of the underworld  
tearing through realities
deciphering the dead languages that
may suggest an inclination of truth

we are stuck inside of a perpetual mirage
thirsting in the driest desert
believing we have finally reached water  
when there is nothing but sand

his words hung in the air
like windchimes
after a storm.

i remember keeping the shower window open
even when
icicles were forming on the frame
we could see for miles,
the train always passing at inconspicuous hours
you made the water so hot
and we were just so hot

(for each other)

sometimes we would **** but
with you it was making
love
and joked
about how the tiny pinpricks of light
were people watching us
laughing at our
naked, animal
impulses

our sud-soaked bodies
our steaming cold skin that screamed
into the distance whenever
we touched

i like a boy

who doesn’t have a name

i have to touch him 
ever so
carefully

to make sure he is real

to make sure he won’t disappear

at the
shiver
of my 

voice

eat
sleep
write

repeat as necessary

every night i creep in beside you
and touch the nearest skin so i can count your breaths
the airs you breathe are the sweetest sheep
and when i dream i worry when i am not there to calculate them they will cease
like how words fall away from your ears
when you're not listening close enough

an undeniable emptiness,
shake me and there will be
no rattle
the mice that
lived in me
have ceased their playful ways
when they broke their necks
seeking nourishment
fools futilely falling for
tricks tried and true
stuck on repeat repeat repeat

that sad little rainy sky
the chill of the sheets from your sweat the night before,
and the creases it left behind.

your heart is an alaskan wilderness
and i never know what's hiding in the trees

i am
a magnet
for broken things
pieces of boys
forever
clinging to me,
making it hard to
walk

that you were "all in"
then why are your toes
barely wet
and i'm already
drowning

i fell into the world like an accidental spill
clean up on aisle 5
          oil spewing into the ocean
i am death and decay in motion,

a wildfire taking down every last breathing tree
         in my careless path

how many times have i been so acquainted with the ground
gravel filling up my throat
stuffing these useless words back into that deep dark somewhere
where everything dies and nothing grows
a fever that's been killing me for days
my brain hot with over-thoughts
a pain that's been killing me for years
a scalpel in the back is nice and steady
but the knife that you hold is red and rusty
i have many scars but none have hurt
as much as yours
death would be nicer
even death would be much nicer

in school we were taught about the atom, how all matter can be reduced
we also learned how to sew and use contraception
how to say no to drugs but
they didn't teach us about the other things we need to say no to
those harder drugs like narcissism, like charm
and the withdrawal symptoms, and the coping mechanisms

so yes, i pretend that i am dead.
mom isn't hurting though,
it is an ideal death.
because i have left my body, that body, that mind that was woven into his magic
there is a theory: that the moment of your departure
you step into another life where it resumes as if nothing has occurred
walking out of a car crash into your destination, safely arrived, oblivious of the world behind that one
every thing learnt best forgotten
i tell myself that i am dead, and nothing can touch me where i am now

but,
i also remember the lesson on the great continent of pangaea, breaking into bits
and sometimes i miss the self i was before i settled into my own crumbs

his eyes, icebergs
he is dangerous and you can hit them and sink at any moment
and i am the titanic- my too large of a heart
trying to take over the entire sea

there's a book inside my head
and it's all about you
it writes itself when i sleep and edits when i wake
i have ten thousand manuscripts by now
but i'm scared to write you down
i'm scared of letting you in
i'm scared of provoking your spirit again
reality lets me run but my
mind won't let me hide
one of these days i'll be strong enough
to stick my hand in your cage and feed you the words i've kept inside
until then i'll brush them under rugs
and dance them away

there’s not enough room for me
in your present
how can you see me in your future
you’re killing me and
it will only be realized
when it is much too late
and you’ll go back a thousand times to save me
try to do things differently
but you’ll fail
and you’ll fail
and you’ll fail
because you’re stuck somewhere
where i never existed
and i am fading from
the known world
by the
second

as for me, i am just the
moss,
overgrown and unnoticed
growing over that stone
you call a heart

these symbols just flow out of my inkwell soul
hieroglyphic tears streaming from a forgotten, ancient face
the pen feels so natural in my hand
like its been holding it for
centuries
always
dripping
never finished

i may have been weak
in the knees,
and in the chest
but i have beaten down the bars
of every cage
and yanked them out with my teeth

(i could cut through steel with all this pain)

take my voice and set it on fire because
i will not stop
you have built yourself up so high that to
come down now would be an admission
of your simplicity, ignorance and intolerance
that you hold above your head as a torch
convinced you are a gift from the gods
but you have been using our hearts as bricks for your castle  
and when that moon falls out of the sky
we are all going to the same ground
and only then
will i finally bite my tongue

they said i wouldn't feel the impact
for a few days
my neck, stiff and unable to look around me
my universe has become somewhat
smaller
my head piercing at
spontaneous, inconvenient intervals

but they didn't tell me about you
sneaking back
into the places behind my spine
inside the songs
that are ruined
i can't even listen now without
choking
on the words

virginia filled her pockets with rocks
and walked into a river
sylvia taped her doors shut
and crawled inside her oven
anne took a swig
and started her car to nowhere
ernest, like his fathers before him
an old fashion shotgun to the head
them and us and i
we were given too many thoughts to manage
and we failed to keep the dam up
to keep out all of those endless loops of words that
just kept flowing,
kept us reminiscing of a deeper emptiness that could never be articulated
the world of writing was never meant for the faint of heart
but so often madness has met creativity
and became the most arduous of lovers

we've become walking coffins
throwing dirt on ourselves
with the idea that if we all
somehow, managed
to care less
loss will never find us
but the slow death of feeling
buries us alive

and i,
am not yet ready to die

i find no satisfaction
playing in the flowers
i need the earth
to sink underneath me
i want to struggle for air
the soil and roots
worms and horrid things
i want to find bodies below us
i want the rot of everything
i want to go deeper
or nowhere at all

you were the reddest,
most delicious apple
and i never had a choice
but to take the first
dangerous
bite

the truth is a bomb and the blast
is a woman standing in front of a man with red lipstick marks
where she could be fixed up pretty and brightly
could be made brand new,
a cellophane covered easter basket shining with glitters and bows
just a vessel to hold eggs, to hold their growth, to burst forth
she knows she is not worthy of a sunday morning
that he unwraps her every day and does not find a gift
but just another thing that
occupies too much
of his very limited
space

step one: create an atmospheric barrier between yourself and others, fill it with auric spikes, like the black fence encirling the haunted house nobody wants to go near. become the whispering voice in the hallways, become the creak in the staircase, and sink into it.

step two: disengage the emotional counterpart in yourself, be the intellect or be nothing. be air, undisturbed. when they walk through you, only be still.

step three: do not be tempted by the scattered sweets they drop behind them to reel you into their cage, do not eat what they give you, do not be hungry for anything, do not crave nourishment where it cannot be found.

step four: do not fuss about your hair, your skin, that machine you are in. exist simply and softly, do not turn on the lights in the morning if you don't have to, do not speak, and that is important.
though they will dare you, do not ever speak, for they know your replies and have only fire to stuff back into your throat.

i have such violent longings,
they are quite disquieting but
hardly disheartening

enough was never a destination i reached,
a thing i could acquire and hold in my hands
i was cursed from the birth with "more" on my tongue

i want your volcanic mouth
and all the dangerous things that come out

you leave me in ashes

don't tell me that
all men with bouquets of flowers
also have knives in their pockets
not when you fed me poison every day
and called it medicine

my form is formless
         -ness
he said i was a strange creature
to be remembered
now and again,
         always

i wonder how i looked
         dancing
with too many chemicals inside of me
my eyes
         wide
                and wandering

i couldn't let go of his hand for days

and in the rarest moments i let myself
slide
         back in time,
i am almost convinced
         that i never did.

she said,
   "tell me the things you say
   with your touch,
   because i cannot distinguish as  
   much
   is it fact or is it fiction,
   you're such a lovely contradiction, but
   how does one keep mixing
   cruelty with gentleness
   i assume it is not simple
   but must it be so complex?"
he waited, then thoughtfully replied,
   "everything is true,
   yet it is also all a lie."

and we are still strangers who only find each other
in the starlit hours
our love is unconscious and ceases to exist
when you wake up in the morning, drink your coffee and realize you've made yet another mistake
you look at me as if you were expecting something better, lovelier
as if we did not travel through the nights so closely
as if we never went anywhere, as if we were never anything other than a dream

sometimes self-care is buying a nice pillow, something softer than you were
something that can stand the weight of my head, my thoughts

mascara stains

other times it is going to the gym and sweating you out, one heavy step at a time

going nowhere
but at least away

can't sleep
too many possibilities await me in the
night; the time of lonely wolves
i howl with them

i never understood the sun and its purpose
and when the thoughts come i almost cannot bear
the weight

philosophy is a brave art
but i am curious and fearful of
answers
so i stay,
howling, in the dark.

war, hunted lives.
hungering toward clarity
choke
          unerring
                         inequality

beloved
          pneumonia.

the strongest of us will find hope in the face of uncertainty
as for the rest, well
they can lay beneath the rubble of the cities they've burnt
and left behind
even if the mind sometimes leaps and bounds
to treacherous conclusions
there is more to love than hate
there is always more, and more, and more

miss you
even though you are convinced
that no woman could even
breathe
without your
existence

you touched my scars lightly
one by one
stroking them in small circles

the dents where stitches have been
the long marks that stretch on for eternity
the burns that burnt more than my skin
and you just said

okay

my limits were pressed
first, lightly,
as flowers between the pages of an old book
then forcefully, as it shuts

there is no entirely benevolent being:
god, must know, suffering.
he placed us here, knowing
that our capacity for feeling was not
as it should be

there is no plan, destiny, reason
just another layer of purgatory
just hearts that crush too easily
just monsters that look, and sound, like men

there was always a shadow of
something,
but i wasn’t sure of its existence
until i felt the
flutter
under my skin,
a pulse of dead things
brought to life
a cluster of
silent creatures
in the zoo of my body
haunting the tips of my fingers
where i once held you
and a
spark
of remembrance
of things from a past
that has never happened
until you came along
and broke the wall separating dimensions
the universe has exploded in
my night time eyes
and i am even farther away
from the truth
sometimes things are much too great to comprehend
this must be what god is,
if anything at all
this must be a reason
this must be a meaning

are you so very hardened by life that you cannot love?
you lived and died in that tangled southern wilderness,
the branches reached out to you then and they
still reach out to you now
you feast on knowledge of the men who have passed,
wrote down their minds in great big books
but you have yet to be wise

i may be an optimist,
but the truth never escapes me
the soldiers in my chest have long
abandoned their posts
with the foreknowledge that
some wars
will never be won

in the coldest months i let the hair grow like ivy up the sides of an old house,
my old house of a body
let the blemishes form, i invited the oils into my pores and the dirt under my fingernails

i wanted to be ugly- (but not too much so)
i wanted eyes to not rest on me for long
i wanted to dissipate into the background

a chameleon girl,
a blurry figure at the edge of the movie screen
a girl just walking by
with no plotline or context
when she opens her mouth only ravens fly out
she wanted to erase all the places she had been hurt
but she could not reach far enough
so she became invisible, instead.

darlings, you must remember
that the most beautiful things
will always **** you the best
that pieces of you will have to die
to become part of something else
it's a sacrifice we all make
it's the price we all pay
even if our pockets are empty and our hearts bled dry
we will give and give but never dare to take

on a diet of
   cigarettes and wine
if anyone asks
   "i'm fine,
      i'm fine."

note to self:
you do not live for yourself this time around,
your love will be taken for granted and
your body will be wrung out
like a used rag after
it is your use, do not question the place
you have been set so carefully
maybe in your next life you will
wear diamonds on your finger
not be born to prepare for the worst
you will be wrapped in silver blankets
your skin a warm shower, not
just something barely holding it all together