mouth to ear

There are two types of people in the world –
the duped and the non-duped.
I used to consider myself non-duped until
you blew my world wide open, a car bomb
in a crowded city street. Words traveled
mouth to ear, mouth to ear, mouth to ear.

I wondered if I was killed in the explosion
because I had to close my eyes when you stared at
me. I thought if I never looked at you I would never
see myself (I covered all the mirrors in my house.)
You were all the sounds in the night that I heard when
I was alone not quite awake but not quite sleeping.

“How do you know if a tree that falls
in the middle of a forest makes any sound?”

Sometimes I thought you were next to me
eye to eye while I was lying on my side in my
bed sick with fever. The corners of our
starved red mouths were electric with desire
or conversation but you can’t kiss anyone when
they’re coughing up their heart and lungs.

It was a hell of a lucid dream because
I could’ve sworn you were solid and
your outline rumpled my sheets but
I am the duped after all.

I’m the priest shot dead in the street
there’s no faith in the rosary and
I don’t get down on my knees
to pray.

I stare at the sky through the cracked
ceilings of bedrooms that aren’t my own
and I don’t think about God. I wonder when
the Earth will stand still on its axis and when
the duped will all be pulled down by their ankles
through the mulch and into the fires.

the core

I am surrounded by padded walls
for a padded mind in an attempt to
stop this implosion of hate and regret.

I know I’ve cracked open like the shell of
a nut waiting for my insides to be devoured
and understood but no one can read this

murky motivation. Somewhere in this
stillness I am an unborn child waiting to
confront the new era. I am meandering through

the rivers of my own blue blood before it hits
the surface the air just to become another type of
smear to wipe away.

There is nothing to document in this emptiness and
all I can feel is my own biological clock
ticking ticking ticking

a bomb waiting in the dark a grenade without a pin
a hallucination and a suspension of all rational thought
this is what it’s like when I know

I have death around the eyes since everything dies
eventually and I know all I have is my own constant ticking.
One day you’ll reach me at the core

of everything where the light blooms and explodes
kaleidoscope geometry in a heart so deep that
it may never be found.

violence

I am a lens that would rather forget all it’s seen.
Cover me with the cap so I can fade to black and
wake up walking into walls for the rest of my life.

I don’t want to see all the smoke across the water,
the implosion of buildings, the mirthless replay of
the media implanting the violence in my brain,
an egg in the wall of a woman’s uterus.

I want to close my lens forever
focus on the breakdown of the body
that comes with age and wisdom
rather than the premature deaths of my peers.

no stranger

I’m no stranger to accidental collisions of
naked bodies. I’ve never met someone
who could cram all my words back down
through my mouth, an unsuspecting pillage
of speech. You’re no stranger to what lips
can do when they’re in a rage or a rave or
steeped in a bottle of vodka and spit back out
in your face.

Maybe I’m a piece of clothing you keep
in your closet and try on when you get
bored of the other boring people but
I like to think that maybe you’re scared
of what might happen if we opened
our mouths instead of our legs.

AK-47

Even when I’m thirty
my father will still cover my eyes
during sex scenes in movies. When I was
twelve my parents took me to see The World Is
Not Enough long before I was aware of the
objectification of women in James Bond
films and took me out right before
Bond James Bond laid
Christmas and I

knew what happened
it was ridiculously obvious
but the visualization of it was
what they were worried about because
what we don’t see is what we don’t know
no frame of reference is better than a foggy
picture at best and I’ve carried Catholic guilt
holes from the nails in my palms but I am
no savior and just a sinner at best. I’ve
seen the bodies of women

geometric shapes shifting
in pools of oil and I’ve seen the bodies
of women as if they are sand dunes but it
doesn’t help me understand myself any better
and I’m sure I haven’t figured out how we work
in tandem. I’m also sure that the man in the prim
expensive suit with the Omega watch is nothing like
the rest of the men in the real and tangible world
because no man has ever been this consumed
by love and no man would ever shoot
everything up if I died in a
conspiracy.

the shape of handprints

Some nights I dream I’m standing shivering
naked in a room full of crusty old men and
all the places where I’ve ever been touched
are red welts in the shape of handprints.

They call me a witch and a whore
drag me out of the town hall by my hair
tie me to a wooden bucket of rocks and
throw me into a river by the edge of town.

I always wake up before the water fills my lungs
but sometimes I have to go into the bathroom
to check that there aren’t any red welts in
the shape of handprints.

well i guess i found my match, lit it and went up in flames.

I suppose I should have enjoyed it
when he called me baby, put his hand
on my thigh but you were all I could
think about. You drove me home,
clutched my hand the whole time
as if it was impossible to think of even
letting me go. I could feel the reluctance
jam against my fingers.

I suppose I should have enjoyed it
when he struggled to get my clothes off, all the
shit
fuck
damn
and the metal bed frame smacking the wall,
our skin slamming together in a classic fight
for dominance but you were all I could think
about. This was not slow, coincidental or
innocent and I’m afraid that I’m much more
determined to distance myself than you first
imagined.

We can’t even look at each other now.
I stare down at the concrete or take out my phone,
my preoccupation almost convincing but not quite.
I remember when you restored my faith in a
decaying and meaningless institution, revived
childish dreams of suburban houses and minivans.

But I went back to him and continued the fight
against monogamy, the war against your indecision
even though I’m sure you never recognized
all the bombs dropped, all the small battles riddled
with passive aggressive sparring.

I lined that dream up with its face to the wall
and shot it down like a prisoner of war when
stumbling out of his room became a common
occurrence. The shame clawed at the back of
my brain but it’s too late to stop now, because
I’m not the marrying kind.

i found you in between the pages, cracked and old and broken, remembering the past just barely but enough.

don't follow me. it's been months and you're still haunting me. sometimes i think i see you in the corner of my eye, just out of sight. but you are never out of mind. i've had a lot of bad habits but for some reason you keep coming out on top of that deck of cards that also have rehab, let's smoke some more, and fuck it, let's fuck. but i know it wasn't me. this time, it was you. you let the water creep in the cracks, the mildew build up. i just had to get on my knees and scrape you away. try to salvage what was still left. sometimes i wonder what would have happened if things had ended up just so; but i know that things ended up just so because we are in too different frames of reference. mine is fast, moody, ever changing. you are my spider veins and my back aches. but i've learned a few things since you and i know i can never give up who i am. there is no compromise left in my body.

it's been two since you but it's still all the same, a letdown and a name

I woke up this morning feeling like
everything fit together, a map that was
redrawn, redefined and the cold sheets
unraveled an ancient mystery. Suddenly

I was smothered by fall, sad and somber,
the leaves changing over, all without my
consent. I want to command something
in my life, whether it is the harsh winds

or the grades I receive, head filling up
just to forget in the next breath. If I could
count each freckle on your back and
drown out the sounds of bed frames

hitting the walls I know I’d remember why
we stopped smiling at each other. The bottoms
dropped out of all the glasses, and your
occupation is picking all the little pieces of

me up off the floor. Instead you wander
drunkenly between the two dirty rooms,
laughing slowly while I’m upstairs
forsaking God and lighting cherries on fire.

There are worse ways to puncture holes
In my soul, letting the air out of a balloon
To float away while the animal shaped clouds
And the azure of the sky eat its skin alive.

daddy remixed

Paper trees catch fire, jumping from limb to limb.
He would be ashamed if he knew. What he knew
was addiction, how to avoid it. Platter full of winter
snow but he made damn sure to close off his nose.

No, his vice was ordinary dark wood bars
scuffed and pitted, last call never really
ending anything at all since all of his days
and nights bled into each other, the Independent
in the rain over his head spilling the ink all
over his hands.

But a child made him responsible,
a little girl with a mean red grin that
he barely ever saw working four jobs
and one still at the bar.

Every Sunday morning they ate toasted egg bagels
with butter and enjoyed getting to know each other
all over again because it was the Lord’s Day. When
she was older, she sometimes saw his
twentysomething self peek through those
hazel eyes with the crows feet at the corners.

“You’re never gonna go to college and
make something of yourself. You’re a
fucking failure, eating up my money and
wasting my time.” Sometimes she cried
in her bed at night, muffling her face in her pillow,

wondering if he was right.

I wake up covered in you

Some nights I dream a sea of naked bodies
entangled barbed wire all sleep fitfully
together. We sweat out the long hours
twitching little rabbits wishing we had
less fur. Sometimes He pours gasoline over
us and lights the match of eternity.

I wake up alone ashamed and small
curled into a ball with these dark sheets
in this dark room knowing that I will be
twitching and insomnia ridden for
the next few days.

resist

i am afraid
this will destroy me
let's balance this out
with spirits and woe
i am afraid
you will destroy me
destitute and alone

i have a lot of words in my head and woe in my heart that won't quite make it through to you

My concepts don’t involve
Lines, theorems and tangents.
They involve unwashed sheets,
The weak heartbeats,
And the halfhearted farewells.

From what I can tell
Your breath stains my consciousness,
Red wine on the carpet.
Broken glass on the coffee table.
Did you mean to lay me out?

The final strike
But I never claimed to be a boxer.
I’m smashing
At the bob and weave,
Avoid your questions with a
Natural ease.

How many is it?
One, two or three?
I throw as many jabs
As that girl over there,
Why are we so lonely out there?

We’ve got the crowd like millions
Of blood cells pumping adrenaline,
But all I see are the ropes
And you
Always you

Why am I so lonely in here?
Coated in sweat and misery,
I’m boxing in my own head,
One box at a time.

they always said i was a pragmatist but you make my heart beat so lovingly...

i have a heart the size of oceans,
i have a heart that is fathoms deep.
all i wish for is to loosen these chains,
for you to set me free.

I am your (love) lush

I've rotted straight through, still gold enough to tell you how much I
love you. But you are the master of a sewn up heart and I'm unsteady on
my feet as it is.

A drunk, he said. "I cannot fall in love with a lush because they
betray you eventually, for men that don't convince."

So I swill the end of my wine glass and smile with a sinfully stained
complexion. "A lush lives life as if every moment is a medival
painting, a tapestry. Life is our tapestry, lover."

He was not convinced however, but still found it beneficial to carry me
up the grubby stairs to his cubbyhole of a room and let me seduce him.
Women know seduction because it breeds in their bones like a genetic
blueprint of destiny.

But the ending of this story is centuries of repetition and scorn.

the dull and rotten waiting seems to be my destiny...

i am sad and poor and rotten. your love brings me great grief. he said that my insides were like a rotten apple. god, so red and shiny on the outside, as new as a beautiful, shiny convertible. but my insides are black like the leather interior. not nearly as shiny, though. dull, dull... and they make fun, they tease and tease - thinking that every single word is nothing more than a little slap on the cheek. but they are barbs, and they bear the pain of all the rotten fruit that passed through your skin on contact. oh, i am rotten and sinful. sometimes my eyes get so wide that they seem as if they'll pop straight out of my head - sometimes you have to burn it down to rebuild it from the foundation. the worms crawl out of my rotten core, my heart - it is decayed and decomposed.

the only time i feel whole is when the music streams through my ears like a river of gold, and my nerves become tunnels for the thoughts to escape into friendly territory. we drove until we had no worries, and screamed and hollered, turned into savages. i want you to climb through the brush and rescue me from all my wrong desires. i want you to come save me, come claim me. i'm here. waiting, waiting... waiting.

i love it when you call me sunshine

i want to be the sunlight that streams across your bed and wakes you up. no one has ever made my soul smile this much. the peace you bring rots me like a dying tree and all i wish is for you to save me. this sinner is penitent, waiting to have your blessing. she would change it all (or maybe she would just change you) at the drop of a few cross words. i know that i am in love with all the imperfections that make us human, make us whole and unique. don't disregard me, i don't know if i can handle it since i'm willing to break my own heart before i let you get to it.

don't hold my hand while you drive, it makes for dangerous things.

i am strung out on the multitude of words in the english dictionary that could describe all the thoughts running through my head on a minute by minute play by play. i know you missed my colorful, nervous ramblings where i wrung my hands and chewed my nails and my voice quavered like i was about to cry with every word i spoke. every word was painful then. so much had been ripped from my throat, my vocal cords sore and sad. i was a damaged little bird, awkward and despondent. life was not something to live. life was a ticking bomb of when i was going to die. don't you miss this little ray of fucking sunshine?

i stopped calling when you stopped caring.

this is three months in the making.
you can't mend what doesn't want to be fixed.
but i sure did try and sew this back together
with my pretty fucking words that you loved so well.
"your attention to detail is superb."
you are the only person to date who found this little leather-bound enchanting.
i sat in that chair and meditated on my life or lack thereof.
i keep revisiting all the moments with you in them.
there was just something about you that made me break my own heart.
i pour these spirits down my throat and hope that they will breathe some life into me.
so much for that.
the slosh of the vodka in my flask is like a battle cry.
i can hear it warring against the sides, the cap - waiting to be unleashed upon my throat.
there are so many mistakes i made, i made my own bed and i understand.
i'm sure you're not blind, not dumb, not ignorant.
i'm sure.
but i'm a sinner, and if i could wash it all off my body...
in the blacklight you can still see all the handprints of my former lovers.
i am marked and marked well.
i am meant to be alone.
i am meant to grit my teeth and groan.
i am meant to pound my feet against the walls in surrender.
i am meant to leave beds in the middle of the night.
all that you need to remember me by is a note.
i am meant to slouch in the shadows of statues,
bleed all my woes at the base and
hope that my blood at His feet will be enough.

what a dance mix does to my brain

right now, i feel a little too fuzzy around the edges. i wonder if i'll just pixelate, dissolve back into the airwaves. i miss a lot of things, most of them being things i will never admit. insomnia's coming back full-fledged, like those days when i went for days bingeing on holiness, and by holiness i mean the nightlife that caught me in between its jaws and chewed me up. spit me out. i fell far down but someone caught me by the ankle before my head could hit the rocks at the bottom. but even if i'm caught, i shook out of that grasp pretty quickly, because i've got to stop "drinking the kool-aid." too debauched for this, genuineness doesn't agree with my stomach, but all the liquor you give me will calm me right back down. i prescribe to disposable pleasures, sometimes fancying myself to be a regular casanova, explicit and uncompromising. i believe that no one will ever love this, because there's a monster trapped inside of me just waiting to rear its ugly head out of my skin. it's late and i'm waiting for you to come back to me, just so i can turn you away in the next few seconds. i relish the power i have, bask in the loneliness that suits me. even if it might eat me alive soon enough...

one month until i'm not eighteen forever

there's something about
every poem i've written
and i think i've figured it out:

you strangle every word
of every line
of every stanza
with your microphone cord.

oh, how i wish that it was
feasible,
possible,
probable...

i need to keep writing.
you are nothing more
than feverish scribbles,
bolded terms in books.

they used to explain
everything
so goddamn simple.
what happened?

i remember when
i possessed so much
self control, poise.
now i'm raging.

this storm is never
quiet; just bleak,
wind and rain
whipping at your cheeks.

i am half out of my head,
half inside the ocean.
we got what we needed
from those glass bottles.

remind me again when
it settles.
when the sand is still,
the water dark.

i'll lie like the
vitruvian man
the water will
swallow me whole.

i'll be in the belly
of the ancient world,
floating peacefully,
drifting eternally.

whore of babylon

Don’t you want to know details?
It isn't surgery for the soul. 


I opened up from the neck down,
My torso cracked apart like a dead cow.
They want my meat still.

You could take out my heart, 

Dissect it.
I’m your favorite science project.

They say you only become beautiful

After the biggest tragedies;
Pieces litter the ground to form a red carpet.

The sorrow in your eyes catches on film,
And those cameras
Soak up your misery, a dirty rag.

The only use for these trash magazines, 

They mop up the blood when you get too obscene.
And now, what can you be?

Nothing more than a vintage Polaroid,
Quaint as the time from which it came;
We would shake it out,

Lay it down to dry.
Well, that time has passed.
I cut it in half.

I must preen my ruffled, bejeweled feathers,
Sit on my throne of demands,
Perch as stately as a peacock.

Humor you,
And your fucking complaints -
Grate on my skin like dirty nails.

Just like the Polaroids,
The sunlight catches you, 

Little points sprinkle over my skin,

Like gunshot wounds,
About seventy of them. 

I’m open, a watering can.

Pour my blood over your lilies -
They would appreciate my honesty.
Shoot a hole through my neat photography.

But not everyone can be like me.
All saintly and frayed at the edges,
I wear my pride like your coat.

You put me in a coma. 

I wish the IV would erase any trace
Of you tearing through my veins.

I want to wake up,
Feel the blood sluggishly pump,
Hear the rhythm beat a tattoo in my ears.

My heart is in my head, 

We’re starting to think in the same patterns.
Is this what it’s like to love rationally?

This is a spiritual meditation,
An exact question about anticipation,
Series of signals misinterpreted –

Then reinstated like a political official.
Creatures of habitual formality,
Prey on the institutions of nerve endings.

I am most sensitive at the fingertips,
Close my eyes, feel my way along
Your neck, spine and clavicle.

I don’t have to remind you
I’m still watering your lilies,
Feeding you some half-truth,

Wasting time among the living,
When I could be passing through.
But for tonight,

My malleable body spells out lust
In the nest of your cotton sheets.
Pray for midsummer like a martyr.

ageless poetry

I am ageless poetry,
So wave your hands like trees,
Battle against the wind:

Shout
Your art
Of love.

Drink a bottle of wine.
Have sex,
Sleep alone.

I bought depression,
Orange plastic bottle,
Suspension of real time.

I am
A junkie
For the morning after.

The early sun
Cuts through
Your industrial blinds.

I sit up, rigid.
Light focuses on my mouth,
Sets my words on fire.

I’m painless, fine spirits.
The muse of your songs.
The microphone in your hand.

For G.C.

la petit mort

Sunlight creaking through the blinds
Cuts you up into long rectangles.
If only I was in such a deep slumber.

I view this world clearly with one eye shut,
Finger poised on the trigger,
Scouting the next target in a field of ghosts.

In this zen state,
I feel the infinity of the universe,
Gray cotton sheets electrify skin.

Wake up, our eyes level,
But I’m looking through
A window.

This is new age.
I hear the soft jazz static
Sway lazily in my ears.

Dance with me.
Slow, revolving close,
Sweeping my mind.

Normally I would regret this
Within approximately the next
48 hours.

Humor me.
Something must be in the water.
Maybe I’ve been reborn.

During the night
I shed my old skin
Mapped with regrets.

The simplicity of spontaneity,
No focus on the premeditated act.
My advice -

It seeks me out.
Makes me the proof.
Cautious optimism –

Nothing but a euphemism.
This jazz static,
It started fading out.

“Do you miss me?”
Now it’s week two.
The 48-hour window passed.

How I regret you now,
Words broken, bent, splintered.
Barbs of you settled under my skin

je suis

A Zippo with no lighter fluid,
An empty pack of Marlboro Lights.
The ash under your shoes mixing with the snow,
Grey slush and cigarette butts.

A stack of empty Smirnoff bottles,
A flask full of troubles.
A notebook full of drunken scribbles -
A waste of ink.

The heart of Yeats,
The eyes of Diane Arbus.
The liver of Bukowski,
The chemical imbalances of Sylvia Plath.

Erratic dramatic hypertension,
Shakes and sweats at midnight.
The antithesis of kitsch,
The ultimate opus.

The aged oak of the bar,
Dirt and scratches overwhelm.
Burn marks from cigarettes,
Littering the oak -

Track marks on a junkie’s arms.
Dirty, empty pint glasses surround,
Drained like the Mojave-
They leave you endlessly unsatisfied.

Since when

Have you decided that your love is worthwhile?
I obliterated any verbal contract when my body writhed in his bed.
Not yours.
Even if it meant nothing...
"Well, I'm sort of attached."
"Then why are you doing...this?"
"Because I'm not attached in that way. This means nothing."
"There's something wrong if this doesn't mean anything."
"Well what do you want it to mean?"
It came out a little more flirtatious and porn than I meant.
Neon yellow tank top, stretched out on scratchy carpet.
Well, let me kiss you on the mouth.
I'm better at convincing than you give me credit for.
I threw a decent brand of condom at him and laughed.
But really my heart had been broken long before I led myself to ruin.
The greatest paradox of all:
I've done much worse than what you've condemned already.
I gave up on feeling anything awhile ago,
All those long walks from center crying dramatic makeup smeared tears
ensured that.
So if you want to fall in love, its 50 cents a minute to hear my quavery
voice speak falsehoods easier than the forked tongue of a snake.
It doesn't mean anything.

If only you knew the things I've done and said

You're sprinting through my head
Your mouth is a microphone
If only I was the audience you sought to reach
Your words, they head straight for me
I dodge them like a hail of glass
Break my window
Get my attention
Don't you miss when your bed was endless
My body was an ocean
We enveloped each other
But my heart will always be a quicksand mirage
How I want you to be trapped with me
For eternity
We could make this desert oasis of life all our own
No need to panic
We are the most beautiful dream
If only you got your act together and realized
How much you want to waste your time with me

"Nice pants"

Late night thunderstorms make me feel like I've been reborn,
And the rain on the windowsill is the promise of the sweet and new.

one eye shut

The sunlight creaking through the blinds
Cuts you up into long rectangles,
Illuminating your closed eyes.
If only I could be in such a deep slumber.

Somehow, I view this world just as clearly
With one eye shut,
Like my finger is poised on the trigger,
Scouting out my next target in a field full of ghosts.

In this zen state,
I can feel the infinity of the universe,
Every fiber of the gray cotton sheets
Electrifying my skin.

When you wake up,
Our eyes are level
But it feels as if I’m looking through
A window.

This is new age.
I can hear the soft jazz static
Swaying lazily in my ears.

Normally I would regret this
Within approximately the next
48 hours.

Something must be in the water.
Instead,
I feel reborn.

Somewhere in the night
I must have shed my old skin
Mapped with regrets of your brother,
The other.

Now I view the simplicity of spontaneity,
Rather than focus on the premeditated act.
Instead of my words applying to everyone else,

They now seek me out.
They make me the proof.

Cautious optimism
Is a euphemism that I used to live by.

sinners

Trying to catch your murky words
Only causes them to explode
In my hands
Ink running down my arms
In all honesty
You bleed into my skin
Seep into me

I can’t comprehend
Like a child with berry stains
On her face
Guilty and gluttonous
Such a sinner
Oh
She’s such a sinner

slainte

This bottle of clear spirits is the finest friend,
A handle full of wasted brain cells,
The way to ensure a perfect night’s end.

Our throats elongated, pink thin vase, we pretend
That we are bottomless, a fathomless hell,
This bottle of clear spirits is the finest friend.

Our flushed cheeks, a convoluted message we send,
All those mouths have a gravely sour, liquored smell.
The way to ensure a perfect night’s end.

With slurs and motor skills we heavily contend,
We burden other’s flesh with the stories we tell.
This bottle of clear spirits is the finest friend.

Limbs are tangled skeletal branches males ascend,
Spirit out of flesh that’s looking for somewhere to dwell;
The way to ensure a perfect night’s end.

No one is comfortable enough to break from this trend,
So many different problems that this pure liquor can quell.
This bottle of clear spirits is the finest friend,
The way to ensure a perfect night’s end.

iamyouareheissheisweallare

The match that has prematurely gone out,
A zippo with no lighter fluid,
A star burnt out,
The ash under your shoes that mixes with the snow.
The grey slush and cigarette butts creating tangible undesirables
Right before all of our eyes.

Carbon monoxide,
Rat poison,
Acetic Acid,
The fumes that unfurl and infect your nose with knowledge,
The type you would rather bypass.

The guts of an Art History textbook,
The brain of Esther Greenwood,
The veins of Diane Arbus,
The liver of Charles Bukowski,
The chemical imbalances of Sylvia Plath.

Every locked door you’ve tried to barge through without a key,
Every wall you’ve slid down to the base of in defeat,
Every phrase you’ve shouted in private that you would never repeat,
Every folded and pressed shirt that you’ve kept so neat,
Every pair of sunglasses you’ve worn so they couldn’t see.

Erratic dramatic hypertension,
The shakes and the sweats in the middle of the night,
The tangle of those covers with someone else’s legs other than your own.
The antithesis of kitsch,
The ultimate opus,
The birth of creative genius and creative craziness.

The aged oak of the bar,
Where the amount of dirt and scratches overwhelm the patron.
The burn marks from the age when cigarettes weren’t barred,
Littering the oak like track marks on a junkie’s arms.
The dirty, empty pint glasses that surround you,
Drained like the Mojave,
Leaving you endlessly unsatisfied.

The last thing you see before you shut your eyelids,
The first thing you see painted against the redness
When dawn peeks over the horizon like a little child
Playing hide and seek with the hills of his covers.
The novel you curl up with before you go to sleep
That you have read at least a hundred times,
But it never goes stale and stays immortal.

I am a mecca composed of nerve endings that just end at you.

I can't see a thing except for you;
Grafted to the inside of my eyelids
You shine red in the morning light
everpresent and invading my cocoon of sleep.

But sleep is something I deign to have,
And this smoke filled raunchy cabaret is what I long to have.

It is the idea of you
Your whispering is your genetic blueprint
My map to find you when my demeanor becomes dreary and hopeless.

You are lurking inside every word,
Nestling yourself in the dark irises of my soul.
Take the edge off.
My form of dancing is wasting away before your troubled eyes.

And I am cracked like every greek statue you will ever view in those
posh art museums across countless
Countless meccas of culture
Countless cities that I like to blend with

A sidewalk is a sidewalk
A park bench is a park bench
I am just a passerby
Dissolving into the cover of the concrete trees
And the quaint lights at night.

sensitivity

All this change,
It is new and unfettered.
It is the crashing of a wave,
The slow shake of the sand on the beach. 


Don’t you want to know details?
It isn't surgery for the soul. 

I opened up from the neck down,
My torso cracked apart like a dead cow.
They want my meat still.

You could take out my heart, 

Dissect it.
Tweezers couldn't make it in those cracks; 

They would catch up,
Jarred so deep on a break in routine.

They say you only get beautiful

After the biggest of tragedies; 

The sorrow in your eyes catches on film,
And those cameras,
They soak up your misery like a dirty rag.

That’s the only use for all these trash magazines, 

They mop up the blood when you get too obscene.
And now, what can you even be?
Nothing more than a vintage Polaroid
Quaint as the time from which it came
When there was time to shake it out
And lay us down to dry.
Well, that time has passed.

I must preen my ruffled, bejeweled feathers
Sitting on my throne of demands
Perched as stately as a peacock
Humoring you
And your fucking complaints -
They grate on my skin like dirty nails
And you can't catch your hooks in me for long
Since I distract too easily.

Just like the polaroids,
The sunlight catches on your sin

And all those little points sprinkle over my skin
Like gunshot wounds,
About seventy of them. 

I’m open like a watering can
So pour my blood over all your lilies -
I’m sure they would appreciate my honesty.
Shoot a hole through all of my neat photography.

But not everyone can be like me.
All saintly and frayed at the edges,
Makes me think of your coat;
It’s been eaten away by imaginary fangs
And sometimes I wish you had some bite in you
But as I peek around your sides like a little child,
It yields nothing.
All I see around your arms and legs are chains.

God keeps you and your alcoholism with him for eternity.
He breaks you from your soul outwards

And damn if you'll ever know what he's going to do. 

You aren’t an angel and you shouldn’t attempt to flatter yourself.
With your head gasping in the clouds
And your feet sinking into hell,
All you can do is scream
For eternity.

You put me in a coma. 

I wish for the IV to erase any trace
Of you tearing through my veins.
I want to wake up and feel the blood sluggishly pump,
And hear the rhythm beat a tattoo inside my ears.

I am strung out,
Purple and black and blue,
And it’s true;
You can't even revive a soldier.
I’m a (soul)dier of love.
With my nails digging into my wrists, 

And my heart in my head, 

I think we’re starting to think on the same patterns.
So this is what it’s like to love rationally.

This is a spiritual meditation,
An exact question about anticipation,
A series of signals misinterpreted
Then reinstated like a political official.
We are creatures of habitual formality,
Preying on the institutions of nerve endings.

I am most sensitive at the fingertips,
Closing my eyes and feeling my way along
Your neck, spine and the inside of your soul.
I don’t have to remind you that I’m still
Watering your lilies,
Feeding you some sort of truth,
Wasting this time among the living,
When I could be passing through.
But for tonight,
My malleable body spells out the truth
In the nest of your cotton sheets,
Praying for midsummer like a martyr.

3.01

Skeletal hands reach up to the sky,
Whiter than a dead body,
And colder than the most frigid marble under bare feet.
If I could reach your hands and collide
With all of the stars that make up your
Transparent skin full of sins,
I would be engaging in sensory debauchery.

But I am just another pull from your flask,
Amber misconceptions that spin when you walk.
Each footstep wrecks the marble of the dead bodies,
Wreaking havoc upon the graveyard of the lawn,
That was once so green and untainted.
They’ll bury you in here,
The same place, the same way, the same broken cry.

You wear a cloak constructed of pieces
Of the hearts that you have collected,
Yet you still do not have a whole one
To call your own, “your conquest.”
Your own heart is comparable to a Dali –
A reference to time and experience,
But a loss of all reality.

All I am is
The snow under your boots,
The flush in your cheeks,
The blood oozing through your veins,
The ideas sewn to the folds of your brain,
The ash of your cigarette.
You said you were quitting, but you can’t quit everything.

I am everything, a reminder, a lock on your thoughts.

whore of babylon

all this change
it is new and unfettered
it is the crashing of a wave
the slow shake of the sand on the beach

don't you want to know details?
it isn't surgery for the soul.
i opened up from the neck down
my torso cracked apart like a dead cow
they want my meat still.

you could take out my heart,
dissect it
tweezers couldn't make it in those cracks
they would catch up
jarred so deep on a break in routine.

they say you only get beautiful
after the biggest of tragedies
the sorrow in your eyes catches on film
and those cameras
they soak up your misery like a dirty rag.

that's the only use for all these trash magazines,
they mop up the blood when you get too obscene.
and your fucking complaints
they grate on my skin like dirty nails
and you can't catch your hooks in me for long
i distract too easily.

the sunlight catches on your sin
and all those little points sprinkle over my skin
like gunshot wounds
about seventy of them
i'm open like a watering can
so pour my blood over all your lilies
i'm sure they would appreciate my honesty.

but not everyone can be like me
all saintly and frayed at the edges
makes me think of your coat
all lumberjack without the saw
and sometimes i wish you had some bite in you
but i can look high and i can look low.
sorry baby,
all i see around your arms and legs are chains

god keeps you and your alcoholism with him for eternity.
he breaks you from your soul outwards
and damn if you'll ever know what he's got in store for you.
you put me in a coma.
i want to wake up and feel the blood sluggishly pump through my veins.

more than you could ever do,
you can't even revive a soldier.
i'm a (soul)dier of love.
with my nails digging into my wrists,
and my heart in my head,
someday you will pay.

those breakers of babylon will swallow you,
drown you inside your own mind.
oppressive little town,
built up on the seaside
everything is just an illusion
for nothing we will ever see.

you're acid on the brain.

And if I wake up
I hope the sky will break up
Into a million little shards of mirrored glass
reflecting the light of the sun like a prism.

The inside of your skin looks like heaven
Its message wrapped in scar tissue and repaired muscle.
I want you to be as brave as the war,
I want you to explain to me what this feeling's for.

I sat in the garden
Watching the sun reflect on the undersides of gardenias and lilies
Questioned our existence
And found every answer I was looking for

In the thorns of the roses.
Our lives are brambles
Our resolve is prickly at best
And our hearts bloom in crimson fashion.

Despetrately we try to grab at explanations
Like too many layers of clothing
In between our destinations
Our bodies sinking into a glass full of amber fantasies.

You can set us all on fire
But I will never fade out.
I am brighter than the sun
I am the smoke of the gun

Put me to your temple
Send me racing though your veins
I want to be the rose that blooms
Inside your vibrant head.

A 90% chance that this is all on you.

I am only eloquent when I talk about my own misfortunes.

I woke up in a nest of ashes
Ressurrected
My head clear full of objectives.

You run through my veins
Sprinting
Out of breath, like a horse in the heat.

All these pinpricks of light
They shoot through my skin
And I'm wondering if you should taste like this.

I drink to the ages,
A thirst always unfulfilled.
And if you were at the bottom of every bottle...

I'd drink my way down there too.
My insides would be perfectly new.
I'd drown at the dirty bottom with you.

The only life is the bedroom (night)life

It is a disturbing notion that you can only live in one realm of a
person's life.
Pinup nude model with a mouth larger than all the screens in times
square.
Those eyelashes could snap you in half.
It's like a ghost town there,
In the vacation spots of your head.
Monosyllabic.
When I say you put me to sleep...
I really mean you hand feed me melatonin.
You say anything herbal goes.
I say that I believe in vampirism.
The death I know rings my eyes.
You're the biggest case of a.d.d. when it comes to shedding clothes.
Xyz.
Affair.
You'd appreciate the reference.
I dropped the vowels hoping you would decode my plea.
Sv m frm m wn hd
Spdrs crwl n yr bd
Wghts md f ld
Drg m dwn t fd m t th tdl wvs
I cn hr y n th s shlls
Brth lf nt dth