J'suis.

Oh no, the lock!
It has broken.
Jammed
Shut
Whatever shall he do?
The key,
It is too small.
No potion can fix its size.
And the heart,
It is locked tightly in a box
Too small for its size,
Spilling over the sides,
Her insides,
Her lifeblood,
Black as a bruise
Bloomed
Too soon.

bruises of judgement

I hide behind a lens just to find reality.
It keeps me safe from the stares, a buffer zone that eats out the
coldness.
The judgement leaves bruises on my neck.
Your heart leaves bruises on my wit.

The sky bleeds together in a rush of complementary colors.
The trees are skeleton hands scrabbling to grab at God's cloak.
You miss/kiss miserably.
Its as if I can feel all the apathy bleeding through your teeth.

The songs that infiltrate my ears remind me of the crescendo of
infinity.
I want to be endless and hopeful and optimistic.
Unfortunately, my blood runs cold at the lion eyes.
Mall music traipses through my bloodstream.
to be finished later.

in between your sheets

Everything about you is a contradiction spanning a few sluggish weeks of adjustment that closed my mind and focused the lens of my eyes fast upon you. From jimi hendrix and "he played the fucking national anthem with his feet on guitar or something" to "yeah, you're such an english major." But when you're barely ever lucid, how can you ever accuse me of my rapid fire thoughts? Your only concern was climbing into my loft of intangibles to leave visible traces of yourself. I admit: my sheets went unwashed for weeks because the scent of you felt more like home than the home that's hours away and miles from my mind, despite the constant chatter about winter break plans and my real home. The real home that's a rare occurrence that I live eat and breathe and sleep and advocate. You just scoffed and laugh at my enthusiasm for the velvety green of my heritage and curled your lip at my incessant use of fuck, but rather as my irish fresh off the boat father would say, it's "feck," if you please. From your broken pipe to your so called philanthropic deeds, it seems as if you walk around with a cloud of smoke around your head. As the circle of people included in the knowledge of my body grows, each time I rewind back to every single naive second and wonder whether you were too busy mending your bamboo pipe to notice that the crack in my heart was much more permanent. Widening as deep as an abyss, swallowing everything from between my thighs and circulating through my lungs for the full effect of destruction. We were born to fall apart, right? We were made to fall apart. With centuries of suicidal poets behind me, I already know I'm destined to be a wonderful basket case spanning the range of human emotion, neatly packaged and just like every stereotype the feminist criticism dictates: nymphomaniac, spinster, psychopathic... oh, am I forgetting any other fine qualities males seem to think we possess? I just fall for this boy who poses as a grounding influence but is really drowning in the instability of his own supposed nonaddiction. Suddenly it hits me - well I hate to be vulgar. No, I don't really mind using obscenities but - is it always that it all comes out after they fuck you? I can't carry these piles of skeletons through corn mazes because I'm suburban posing as urban but really she doesn't know what she is. I know that thin limbs and the most intense girlish laugh on this boy somehow kicked my knees out and had me lying on the ground in shock and defeat and what was that word? Oh. Uselessness. I am not a plaything to be discarded. No, we can't just be friends. I demand more, I need more, I - feel as if I went backwards from the mantra of mind before body but every human being gives into the tug of attraction that tugs at the clothing articles with the push of a little bit of spirits and the shotglass collections and the belief that everything happens for a reason. But I haven't done anything to warrant such bad karma - I share, I love my neighbors, I try my hardest, and still, I come up with the worst hand of cards and the sheepish grin that says, "it must be that irish luck." But in the meantime, I crowd the back corners of my mind with memories of you and attempt to keep my feet out of the muck
that's starting to drown you. I'm barely getting my head above the water as it is. A minute treading, keep your hands out of the water. What's your email again? You worked so hard this week but I'm afraid you just weren't good enough. Sir, I'm afraid to tell you that I'm far beyond the talent that you seem to think I don't possess. Every stanza about supposed failure needs no segway. All the cheap thrills that I've indulged in have brought nothing but angst and I wish you could just get out of my bloodstream. All I've wanted is to bury my face against the crevice below your collarbone that fits perfectly and collapse into the dreamlike trance that had me underneath its feathers not so long ago. All the beds knocking against the walls are the only things that remind me of you. I know where I can find my sense of self. In between your sheets, woven into the fabric like a tapestry of liasions.

Pretty girls aint worth a dime

All the pretty girls fuss with their hair,
Their heads just filled with air,
And I declare:

It takes much more than a kiss
To have face meet fist,
And I want to hear his jaw splinter
And maybe that will be an indication of
The horror of being easily discarded.

What should kill the sting
Only makes him more of a king.
All the martyrs would accept him as one of their own.
I won't accept you as anything other than a dial tone.

Your screams echo in the multitudes of trees,
As I just wish you farther away from me.
Over wind and under fire,
My heart only ever chooses its one desire.

You are not a prize,
I realize:
Where is my pride?
Where is the intellect that carried me to the other side?

We just need to listen to our brains,
Shut the doors behind our eyes,
Live in seclusion for a brief time.
We've got hearts full of bruises to match our eyes,
So don't get too worried by my beautiful lies.

I feel utter desolation

this heart is not mine anymore.
the thorns that prick are cold and calculated.
--casinoroyale

tunnel vision

the road of the future is winding, obscure and dark.
the snake that sinks its fangs into my dreams.
it takes me away from the oceans and speakers that once kept my life
calm and placid.
I am the tree uprooted, the abandoned baby on the doorstep next to the
morning paper.
new beginnings have no spiritual guidelines.
beaten and restless
guilt ridden and faithless
I miss the rigidity of the hour and wonder if I would've been
different.
"the last lap is seriously tunnel vision"
the other three before it are blind faith.
you are the only sweetheart for me but you sing almost too off key.
we bleed with distaste but we bathe in our dirty habits.
can't shake you, can't shake you, can't shake you.
there were moments when I thought our hearts collided but the force of
your hips sent me packing the other way.
there is no such thing as love.
it is misguided.
and your brain?
it is sawdust.
the chips float in the air and creep up your nose
like smoke,
like death.
I read every novel until it's dogeared, sad and downtrodden.
your soul,
is it empty?
because I know the ticket to filling yourself up with meaningless
drivel.
pack up your bags and burn your dollar bills.
live a life of irony and chance.
don't fall prey to stupidity.
embrace ambivalence.
break your own heart and hand it out to the highest bidders.
cookie cutter society.
build it back up from the ground.
no one ever really has you all the way.
continuous.
and when you break,
you're only very bent in different directions.

pier and hair and work and geneseo is finally here

I guess I can start writing my heart out onto the page more.
--casinoroyale

and just when you think you have it all

you freefall into the ravine with all your hopes and dreams trapped
under your feet.
the monster eats its way through the metal of your blood.
god help me, god please me or just tease me.
we aren't made for anything but jealousy and grandiose charades.
here, I don't want this innocence.
take it, you can have it.
I beg you.
fists on the table, veins standing out.
seeds of misery sown in the ground at your feet.
oh she was never good enough, no she was never ever good enough.
all the pretty words can't save you from yourself.
you weave a gallant web but its only a matter of time before you get
caught up in it.
her flesh eats itself off the bone in anticipation.
laid bare for anyone who will feed its attention.
distractions for social reactions.
the lepers of society flock to her rotting flesh like beggars to quarter
dollars.
where is the quaint, laughable gentleman to save her?
he isn't ever there, he's too busy chasing the skirts of town sluts,
town wrecks, town insert another insult here.
she isn't the town anything.
she has been far above this town, far above the manipulation.
she has her own games to play.
right in between the lines, she sticks the pen in his third eye.
the game is kill your captor.
unfortunately you've captured my heart.
bleed it dry.
no use when it shrivels up and mangles like an amputee's useless limb.
hearts are useless.
they only get us into trouble.
its all about which baby is the best baby.
baby, maybe you should put out for me.
but god gifted me with a sense of the unexpected along with these
words.
sink into winter chill,
graft it to your bones.
learn to live it out,
learn to cope with growing old.
you have handfuls of me,
but you will never have me.
hard to understand over the overflow of superfluous sentences that are
emptier than hollywood souls.
you are my coke habit.
only a matter of time before I need reconstructive nasal surgery.
keep me in my head for a little while longer and chop me up.
but you always looked beautiful when you tried to hide those nosebleeds.

I have too many words in my head

the length of my fingernails dictates the amount of stress I have.
but it'll be the day when I chew you up and mangle you.
maybe I don't want to spit you out.
trying all the keys to the lock on my mind.
once you get in, its 25 to life.
white padded walls and misery.
we make it a business and we pay our dues well.
debauchery and crime always seem to get caught with their pants down in
back alleys.
I like to think that you're an upstanding citizen.
we're all so naive that it hurts to breathe.
the winter is going to come and swallow your insides, a low blow like
carpet munching and not even it the almost badly risque way.

baby I'm tired and I should be leaving...

its like a dream state that imploded your brain.
our hearts beat on cue but that isn't good enough for you.
all the models speak their foreign tongues and you're too wasted to
understand that its all the same.
big fat raindrops coat the heart
slip n slide
a new ride
but you're losing everything inside.
like turning out your pockets, all the change raining on the ground like
a storm of perfection.
but the smokers cough has got me and the parliaments come in twos and
threes.
you don't eat these cigarettes for me.
cancerous is the love that breeds from the toes to head.

Public service announcement:

"Why are you doing this?"
"I fuck up your head. That's a writer's job."

To put it simply:
Abreachinsecuritythelargestinhistory.
I was beautiful once but now I am skin and bones.
Every valve contraction is malicious in intent.
Sleeping beneath tree roots and grabbing your ankles on a rainy day.
The blue mood can put you underground.
We don't make sense in our own heads sometimes but we still justify
everything with an iron excuse.
You don't know what hard work is, your hands are too soft.
Lists are harder to wrap my head around these days.
We are nothing but items in a line, waiting for our turn to shine it
out.
I want to break some streetlights because its better than breaking
hearts.

we are the sins of all the world...

...and we are not beautiful.

I can see through the looking glass

I fell in a trap today.
The trappings of comfort are like a ball and chain.
I am fettered and condemned.
I placed my heart under the floorboards before they came to take me
away.
My skin has been shorn away to expose this utter duplicity.

Are you a caged dove?

terms & conditions

new york. dublin. london. paris. berlin. rome. amsterdam. a connect the dots of capitals that map out your mind. the breath of life is just another fancy phrase for an open mouthed kiss from an admirer. with all these cities in mind, we don't have any worries, just worn out soles and souls and holes in our hearts.

i will fill notebooks about the curves of your body and the softness of your skin. my body has been asleep for ages but you've dusted off the cobwebs with your easy, slippery words. fireflies light the path to desolation, and fairies perch on your shoulders like God's shoulders.

i will wake up to diagrams and fists wrapped in blood. we are the soulless of the world. the excrement. the degenerates. another few years, and the cobwebs have grown back. make my skin a bluish gray, a bruise wrapped in a ribbon of cancer. dissolve me in water like date rape and hold me over your head like something you'll never live down.

i will fill my notebooks with tales of love and love lost, and travel with these easy words from a fountain pen. i spill my ink like a knight spills his blood and wonder if it's worth saving anyone. he sings out of key but in keeping with the rules. ettiquete and chivalry are dead beasts with spears hanging out of them. entrails become extrails and hearts become dead muscles.

ancient history is fuzzy around the edges, like a peach. i'm dying to sink my teeth in and let the past bleed over my lips.

i am a coalmine

"the kid was alright but it went to his head"

currently - my insides are waltzing outside to the beat of your fingertips against the keys of your keyboard. my heart is a coalmine made to be quarried for an alternative source of energy. keep you running smoothly, even if your lungs get filled with sooty ash. i'm dirty but i'm not a secret. thesecret. there is no secret, there are only lies behind pretty, empty eyes. all the words that aren't my own are the most impressionable. you pour water over my head but you never let any reach my lips. the drought of my soul is stronger than the sahara. i belong below the earth. posthumously removed from the earth by your dainty hands, they opened my casket to find worms and scratchmarks. buried alive by my own hypocrisy is the way i'm going to go, with or without you. all my sins are calculated by the notches on my bedposts and all the extremes. i am in love with love songs but i never sing along. i keep the words in the back of my head along with the aftershocks. i've already set myself up for my own demise.

my lady macbeth

"the lady doth protest too much, methinks."

oh my darling, it takes an axe and a crack and a scream for those that are hard of hearing to realize that we are nothing short of the perfect crime that's badly covered up. my fingerprints stain you like the crimson wine that trailed down your chin. "you glutton." gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. clearly i am deadly enough to do you harm, but i know my charm is really just bravado and a transparent smile that doesn't quite reach the eyes. my lady takes deep breaths and every exhalation fills the air with ice. i've frozen her to the core, i've etched into her heart. "i was here, now i'm gone, take three beats for my every two." all this philosophical waxing and waning has got your feet up on the table, leaning back in your chair with two of the legs off the floor. eyes in the back of your head are currently closed. sneaking up unnoticed; eating away at the edges of your head like acid on the brain. we can't all be geniuses - i am not van gogh, i didn't go insane from lead poisoning. surely i am as romantic. surely i would cut off my ear and give it to my lover. i lack the typical signs of affection. i lack anything but some pretty words and a blank stare. i am nothing but the love that you've given me, filled me with. you breathed life into me and welcomed me into your bed with open arms after all of my transgressions.

live forever never

Ever since you were gone, the only treatment I received was being called a repeat offender, too many tears and not enough nostalgia. She always cries on the same day every year because her only and best love tied himself to the traintracks and screamed out that he wanted to die. "But I don't wanna die, I just got to live forever." Or maybe never. Straight up blood rush, ultraviolet lights making it too hard to find the veins. She shoots between her toes to hide the trackmarks. Her veins collapsed the day he was run down and she was in the laundromat scavenging for coins to put their clothes in the dryer. That night, mama took care of her, but not even trauma nurses can mend cracked and broken, mangled hearts.

weal

"Today is the first of August. It is hot, steamy and wet. It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: After a heavy rainfall, poems titled RAIN pour in from across the nation."

I miss you most on the days when it's sunny and the beams soak into my skin, making it a little redder than it needs to be. My skin always burned and then turned white again, like hitting an arm on the stove and watching the weal form. The scar a reminder of the past - the problem is whether the past that it reminds you of is either beautiful or ugly.

No words can do you justice, and no song or skit or play could relive your life the way an old photograph could - your son and your daughter laugh and play like any normal children but something will always be missing.