I am no polished, smooth-skinned, arms extend-
ed beauty. I have no sleek-and-shine, just
too much extra time.

I am no floating candle, light in the window in
the deepest of the deep dark night, hidden by
fabric folds and

I am no different than any other clam, happy though,
I have made no pearl, I have ground no sand.

I am no morning song, sung by bell birds in the
chorus at dawn, no breath of fresh air, I have the same
ideas as you do about most things.

I have not felt
I have not felt
the strain of heart-strings or the popping in my ears
due to the loudness in my own head, no crowd of heavenly
angels singing in the background as my teeth become brighter
because they feel sunshine in the width of my smile. I have
not felt the longing to be near a person for more than an hour,
much less the rest of my life, I can convince myself that it
wasn't what I thought it was, that it was a fluke but then I
remember

"It said 'STOP' but we went on whole-hearted
it ended bad, but I love what we started."

if you had looked

behind my lips, down
my throat like an express - you would have seen pink flowering
beneath folds of conversation, you would have seen a bud
o   p   e   n   i   n   g

(you drink me up
as if I were cheap
boxed wine

swallow me whole &
I sit
warmly
territorially
giddily in your
stomach)

if you had looked,
in the root of the root of
the deep deep down
of me

you would have seen
that I was asking you
to be
mine.

Until I feel this, I won't

I am a raw slab of meat and you are
a bo-na-fide
butcher's knife.

Each cut is at a 45 degree angle, precise, your signature
in the perfection of each placidly placed slice.

No accidental nicks in my hide, just
intentions and too much extra time.

too much
rubbish, like
tight pants around the middle -

suffocating and uncomfy:
much rather walk around in undies.

"Like a black hole, the increasingly
self-absorbed person eventually 
becomes incapable of
mirroring anyone."

- Frank James Davis

can't be your chapped-lips-chap-stick,
be your late night calls or
your first morning breath, can't
be your warm fingers and can't
be your blooming bruises around
the neck.

all it will take

floral pants, a 

better sense of humor, 

some ability to maneuver between

sleep and the pre-dawn hours, 

enough of a house to keep 

the bugs out

the cat in

and a handful of 

mountains outside

my door. 

There are people whom, upon entering the room, 

make me wish I could vomit on cue. If just to show them

what a bad taste

they leave 

in my 

mouth. 

I am no polished, smooth-skinned, arms extend-
ed beauty. I have no sleek-and-shine, just
too much 
extra 
time.

Jessi,

I'm sorry that I lose you in the crowd sometimes.

even if you've sunken deep into 

uncharted waters, even if you 

are dis a   p   p     e         a                r                     i                           n              

even if you are being eaten by 

my subconscious and by many

hours spent aching on my part

at least I know you're alone. 

utterly, terribly, wonder-

fully alone.  

get to know me,
I'm good, I swear.
sometimes I even do pretty things
sometimes I make funny faces
you could record them with a shaky camera, if you wanted,
while my voice is awfully fuzzy, but you can hear me saying,
"this couldn't get any better."

get to know me,
my hair isn't that bad, I swear.
my eyes aren't sunken like this
sometimes my room is clean
sometimes I will make you food
sometimes I will do cute things.

get to know me
I don't rust, I swear
I don't unfaith
unhope or
untrust.

well, maybe the trust.

but get to know me
I'm good,
I swear.

God I just want to help, I just want to help.
Because I can't do anything else.

I have no
stomach,

I need to feed my head.

I thought that I'd lost my voice in all the

bustle - dragging me behind like the train 

on her wedding day. 

gone hoarse - my voice was clawing the inside of my throat, trying

to reach the top of my mouth and 

shout! something!

think I'm finding another voice, think
I don't have another choice. 

I try to say things that
people will remember, I think
"someday one of these people will
say it's something they'll cherish"
I think like that a lot. Too often, maybe?
I don't know what 'too often' is, most
of the time.

too much trouble,
too much trouble to move myself like
I'd like to move. too much trouble to
brush the dust from my shoes, too much
trouble! to pick up my feet like good girls
do.

like I'm sitting
on my foot and I'm
losing circulation and
it's too much
trouble
to move.

like I'm cold
and there's a jacket
on the bedpost
but it's too much
trouble
to use.

two eyes closed like pinched, pursed like lips
on the verge of speech, it's funny how
long it's taken to be able to see them properly
and how longingly I would wait for your big
beautiful globes to spout a simple greeting but
I would rather grate my skin like cheese
than hear your mouth say another
thing.

You're a jerkjerkjerk.
But I like the sound of your voice.

I feel
I will take
everything for
granted
even-
tually.

passive by nature - television and cigarettes - it makes me
sick to think about sex and adventure and
good things I don't deserve, it makes
me sick to think about anything at all.

I wish I could just sleep and never
ever be hungry because
you can sleep
anywhere and
no one will
care if you're
sleeping.

I excel at making mix-tapes and being alone.

"The most important people in your life are the ones you can picture sitting on a porch with."

Leaving for the night, I looked
at the table by the big window that everyone
wants. The last table of the night had sat there:
two young men and a
lovely young lady so,
thinking of Mason Williams,
I walked over and touched
the handle of her
coffee mug.

feed myself in a timely
fashion, I can seek water and
drink when I am thirsty, I can
find myself in predicaments and
I predict I will make it out
of them. I can work until my
fingerstoesnoseandlips are
nubs or non-
existent, I
can make
my own
sweet
sun
shine.

in my own
sweet
time.

I watch movie after movie, sex
scene after sex
scene, kiss after
forced kiss after
kiss
kiss
hug
embrace,
fondle and
amputate,
take my temperature - there's a fire
in my brain, amputate,
amputate
am
pu
ta
te.

cry cry, listen.

It's a shame, my dear. There's no room for me here. So I'm leaving.

June, July, August, September. 

What comes next? I don't want to remember. 

Monday. Monday is first.
Monday is sucking and beating
and biting my lips until they
swell into grapefruits.

The next two days are combined into one in my mind, for
they are of the same color, both subtly greying around the edges and
a deep, deep purple heart.

Today is Thursday and I
have yet to accept the most recent events
that smashed against my windshield this
morning and afternoon.

I don't want to finish this week, mostly
I don't want to be a part of today and a
part of tomorrow and especially the day
after tomorrow because that means that all this
time is still passing and that means that I haven't
caught up yet.

I doubt
if I will
at all.

you would think by now 

I would've mastered the art of

getting bent. 

you're small and it's all
grow up, get this, do that.
but the truth is that the world is so much
dark, it's so much matter, it's so much
stranger and layered and
it's so
much
better.

sometimes I feel as if
cigarette butts are
bread crumbs
for grown ups.

My Working List of Things I Will Never Tell You

When I said it was you that made it good, I was lying, it
was me. I told you that I never lied to you and
I did but it is still true that you are the one person I
have lied to the least. 


I mourn like you are
dead sometimes, I even
lied to a complete stranger the other day
and said you had died in a car crash, just
to have something to say about you other
than what I always say.

I hated that you felt so comfortable
sometimes, you looked like an
orangutan in sleeveless shirts.

I screamed at myself in the
supermarket for writing poems about you
still, reminding myself that everything
reminded me of you.

When we got really bad I would
go over to Cory's and ignore your
texts for hours until I was sure you were
asleep.

I have a growing queue of things that would make you laugh.
I don't know where to put them.

I'm terrified of settling with the dust and ending up hating everything.

So I don't settle down anywhere, doing anything, with anyone and

I love everything, absolutely everything. 

tender and respectful art?

lotus flower poems.

the folds in my shirt appearing and dis-
appearing as my hips make the rounds, I
love the shape I take on when
hands caress my curves, they came
out of nowhere, it seems I was a length
of wood, a slab of material with no
definition until
the subtle crook in my arm was noticed,
the length of my neck and the fold of my thighs
as I lay on my side, too.

Yesterday, a friend of mine experienced an omen if there ever was one.

He was sitting on our front porch (as he is the 'du' to my 'plex') reading an e-book on his brand new phone. 

Not unfamiliar with the readers of today's exodus from the real world myself, when he says things melt away, and the pages, or in this case e-pages, build walls between him and his immediate surroundings, I know to what extent he's referring to. Breaking from what could only be screen-induced eye strain, he looked up from the the downloaded version of 'Romeo and Juliet' and was shocked to find that a bird had ambled up to him, and from the looks of it was, for lack of a better phrase, half-dead. 

The bird couldn't move his legs, but his head and wings were jerking about. Not knowing what to do, wanting to help, my friend scooped the bird into cupped hands and held it until it died. He said that at a few different points it seemed as if it would be okay, that it would just stand up and fly away. But then it's eyes would close and he said he almost felt the wind move from the bird into the air and all too quickly the universe had snatched it back. He then placed it under a bush outside his home, hoping nature would dispose of the bird in a more dignified fashion than we humans do with our boxes and our chemicals. 

This story made me think about what last wishes I would have if I were injured and knew I were to die within the hour. As undoubtedly was the bird's case, it is likely I would try to find help and if help could not be provided, just a pair of hands to hold me as I faded. Just another living thing to witness my departure and to ease the inevitable loneliness in death. 

condescension and the deepening folds of dark. 

moods are made up of everything we 

want and everything we have already. 

wanting and waning/having and indifference. 

how indulgent and disgusting I find myself sometimes. 

how delightfully oblivious. 

how annoyingly warm. 

I felt like I was my body for once - like I wasn't only inside it.
Plucking tall glasses from their perch above the sink and
letting loose the dark that wiggled, relentless, inside it's bottle.
The gold was chipping from my mother's cheap wine glasses,
creating a sort of sad ambiance you, surprisingly, so often 
find yourself yearning for.


I could easily have chosen either extremity my sisters have so triumphantly
exemplified, their past in ash and smoke, their faces freshly pink from battle.
But as I sipped on bitter drink and cried on the front steps, in my most
adolescent fashion,
I was in wait.


There, in the belly of it - flavor resembling nothing of the puckering and
rambunctious, summer-sweet cranberry and pomegranate that
prod my insides - lurked a hazy twilight.


And I,
haphazardly stealing from the bottle's mouth,
didn't realize just what was stolen
from my own.

I have become a bowl
sitting
under
a broken
faucet

for too long.

(drip)

Different patterns across my
face, shivering ripples, in my
way a
rouse
to keep me
interesting.

(drip)

Though, I
cannot always
catch
what falls
off
of
the
edge.

(drip)

Mm. Smell that angst.

I will rip the first three pages from your favorite book and I will
eat the memories I have of you
in one
bite.

I will devour any trace of you by
burning
my skin
away.

I will dissolve every look every time every
good intention on my tongue like bad sugar,
like bad sugar you
will remain
a temporary
satisfaction
for anyone
you touch.

like a fictional character's pain

a hand
touching my cheek,
I feel it there - warm - settling on my
skin like debris settles
on the earth after the
explosion.

I can soon feel the bruises bloom
beneath my skin, they are varied in
color and in size and they remind me
so much of
the valleys I've left in my wake,
I wouldn't call them craters for
they are not baren. I do believe in
the preservation of life
in all things, I find it necessary.

but without warning the hand disappears like mist
though my fingers, I cling to something like the
dew you see so often in the early morning, I cling to
space and to time and to the very edge of
everything, that is, everything that I can
think of.

instead of sorrow I feel only emptiness, no stabs of
pain or gasps gasped in horror, just
a dead-pan expression
and hollow
silence.

there was no burning.
there was non-chalance and too
much space, a rift that sank from
her chest, with bones protruding like piano keys,
to my chest, pock-marked with kisses and swelling
in pink youth, I
still don't understand
much of it, but I have
always known one thing:

we will never get another try at this.

it means nothing when I picture your hands sliding
through the motions of my patient body, of your eyes smiling when I am
beneath your slight frame.

until everything is anything again and
until the wind has stopped blowing at my back
or until I have enough courage to turn around,

I will settle, with limbs limp, into a deep, u-shaped sigh
and drift in and out and
in and
out of
this conversation
watching your
lipslikepetals
caress the air and
fondle my breath,
knowingly or not.

oh high

there's something in the middle of me, in the middle of 
me there is a large something
pushpushing against my skin and
aching against my vital organs, I 
can feel my heart strings as they are
are tuned up up up and pulled to the taut
-ness of a mandolin. the monotonous monks that 

haunt my chest take on a barely audible hum, 

angelic, the lightness of 
their voices driving into the tips of 

each of my quivering limbs like 

feathers, they are like
feathers in the sense 

that I am

covered in 

them, I am

buzzing with 

a glow of satisfaction - !

--------------------------------------------------------------------

^that is a work in progress. I've obviously got to come down from that high. 

I need more than I want to.
I want more than I need.

What is left?

"Have you seen how thin he is?"

You look like you're ten years old. 

You look like you did in that picture on the fridge

of a boy all wet from swimming and happy from 

living.

It's only now that I realize,

I never knew your 

happiness.

I only knew 

my own. 

I pull on my skin sometimes, I
pinch it away from my neck and collar
bone, mostly, I'm not very sure as to
why. I shouldn't be a big believer in
hidden meanings or false realities, and yet
I am. Almost religiously, I am.

I thought that maybe I could force the fizzy feeling in my throat or

the everything-smells-like-you phase or the

forgetting or the remembering or anything anything. 

But I'm not good at forcing things, seeing as I don't exert much energy into

anything but myself. 

How? 

when I'm sick
I'm drunk on myself.

I also enjoy power-disc-ing, whole
vegetables and tea. lots o' tea.

eloquence is out the window, even though it's my favorite thing.
unless it's pretend eloquence with a british accent. then I'm down.

repetition is a sort of therapy for me, I've found

I don't trust you, 

I don't trust you, I don't. 

I think you're too easy-peasily swayed by the fraying ends of 

dress hems, by the tails hanging loosely from the back of girls too

pretty for you, and by your impatient and italicized 

need.

I am ready to be swallowed by the massive curls of your body and

I am ready to have my heat (it's all gone to my chest)

recognized standing next to your heat (I can tell it's all in your head)

because the time it has taken for a 

face-forward-palms-un-clenched

acknowledgement 

has been ex-

cruciatingly

hopeful and

pain-

fully

trivial. 

I am ready 

to not be 

trivial 

anymore. 

But I don't trust you. 

I just don't

trust you

at all. 

if you're wondering

I'll be dreaming safe and sound, it's
all I've got so I'll be sleeping a lot more
often, now.

I'll be drifting in and out of the
conversation because it's all I can do to keep from
watching your
lipslikepetals
caress the air and fondle my
breath, knowingly or not.

is/was

bad books and toothpaste left on my face in the morning, I'm early all the time and I don't want to wait for anyone to finish their sentences before my mind becomes a mimosa pudica, the foliage closing, sleeping in the dark of the closed mindedness I've been suffering from. the magnitude of dry layers my skin has collected is truly astonishing, only letting pass my hesitant perspiration and the vibrations of my gong-like heart muscle. it resonates within my chest cavity before sinking into a slumber for days at a time. I don't miss it, I don't.

sticky red and circling black charcoal, the
pink cheeks are all mine, I can
still blush on my own,

               (thank god)

I can still feel the heat surfacing while I
am painted in this sickly green fluorescent light
         
            (as compared to
                 my own
            sweet sunshine)

I don't feel pretty all the time,
but when I do it's on my own
- all -
on my
own.

Mmm.

that anyone could make me feel naked in
suspense, a need to curl my fingers? I'll remind myself 
that I need my bed rest, that I need 
the thing that heals, that I need 
anything at all is too much, it's too
tedious to need, I won't admit to 
it, most of the time I won't. 

groaning grows from the throat,  trickling down, 
my voice isn't sweet like honey,
but more harsh harsh harsh in ways like
dry swallowing big pill after pill after pill. 

the ends of my fingers are beams, they are brightest 
when I touch the space between me and
the space between you and the soft space
left after drinking what we 
bottle 
up,

every time
every time.

I know you're as hungry as I am.

Let's let the hem out of every 
skirt we own so we can
be
  long 
     belong in
their fraying ends.

writing this while I'm not writing something else

there's something to be said about
the time it takes for words to
formulate, make their way
all the way down to the tiptips of our tontongues,
I savor the ringing silence that comes
after the bitter ones leave, the after-taste of
arguments and the residue left from things I didn't mean.

if I could I'd pour nectar down my throat and
speak in whispers only in whispers and then
quiet quiet
quiet
down, I'd
whisper,
quiet down.

these gaps in between the teeth of my
abilities, no lips to cover, I am
lost for words, so to speak.

perhaps the next go-round I'll be able to write epic poetry like Gilgamesh.

halfway between home and the nomad's life

In my room there was
a strand of christmas lights
lining the four walls,
eating itself where it
began and my records are
filed in a cardboard box in the corner.
When I left I left two piles of clothes,
one for keeping, one for
burning. For
I left a pair of scissors on the floor and
the smell of moist towels molding the air.
-----------------------------------------------
It seems the clothes have evaporated with the tears,
leaving the scissors in a cup on the desk while
the strand of lights no longer clings to the wall
but droops in the center of this
purged,
tired
room.
The records, thank god, haven't been touched.
-----------------------------------------------
When I left I thought I left what I cared about because
it hurt too much. As it turns out, I left a pile of shit
and some fucking
christmas lights.

fourteen to fifteen I was

I remember having long hair. I remember,
I felt like the wind would ruin me as it whipped me about, as it
tore me from behind curtains and into sunlight, I felt
naked. I loathed the wind, I loathed
it. I closed my eyes. Everytime, I closed
my eyes and thought "if I can't see them
see me like this, it isn't real it isn't real"

I remember feeling that easily-swayed way, that
trembling-all-over-all-the-time, that shifting-sliding-about-to-break
feeling of insecurity.

I don't
miss it, I
don't.

I don't don't don't.

You can never help with your money. Money is dirty.
Money is worse than anything you have to give, which is a whole lot.

You can help with your voice and compassion and a little dignity wouldn't hurt.
You can help with your knowledge and your passion and your creativity.
And you can help with your stories because
who doesn't love a good story?

I don't want
your money.

cheesin'

I wish I could write beautiful poetry about
mac n' cheese from a box.

But I haven't the room in my stomach for
poetry.

Get on this shiz.

Watch THIS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc&feature=g-all-s&context=G250750bFAAAAAAAAAAA

And then if you don't click ----> HERE, then you a damn fool.

I'm asking, now.

make eyes, little girl, make
eyes
at me.

make them stars so I may not
lose them in the over-bearing light
of day at times and
make them burn like
third-degree burns so I'll
never forget the feeling of them
on my skin.

make them that sweet poetry you speak so that
my palpitating heart can know what it's like to
stop mid-sentence and


(quietly, now)

make eyes, little girl, make
eyes
at

me.

but not but really but

I'm not so good at telling you how I do feel it.
But I am so so good at feeling it.

I think perhaps I've always needed something to define me,
and my problem at the moment is that I feel nothing and no one I'm involved which is worth my entire existence compacted into it.

Perhaps I was supposed to have reached this conclusion eons ago.
Perhaps I'm progressing slow-like.

Okay then.

Living like I'm living like I'm living in rehab.

Relapse, relapse, relapse. 

Please show me how to convey my ideas.

I have so many many many. 

At first it was bare and ripe for the picking -

my chest was pulsating under your weight you

stripped my heart like an exotic dancer would: 

all eyes and no hands. 

After the initial grasp, the puff puff pass and the

smiles exchanged between our legsarmslimbs and the

time it took to be rid of the excess skin crowding us in, 

we breathed in sweet, sweet fumes of spring and said

things kept in our mouths, light like ecstasy but 

heavier than the average promise. 

But the hours it took to argue the hunger away made our

heads ache and eventually our jaws could clench no longer, 

our eyes could see no more of each other - just smoke and

rubbish clouding our way - it was lost,

whatever it was, it

was lost. 

Take it, please.

I can write love poetry when I'm not in love with you.

(The secret is to be in love with everyone else.)

a nefarious dead-pan glance and

all I can think about is how I have

your favorite book tucked away, safe, 

because I want an excuse for my 

trembling hands and the constant

chugging of my mind at times, the ever-

present headache that originates in 

my stomach. I am hosting a 

cavernous black hole there 

that spreads it's lips 

wider and 

wider 

and

w   i     d             e             r

every day that washes over, 

leaving me a little paler a little thinner a 

little hungrier than 

before

I am s

         i

          n

            k

              i

               n

                 g.

This is how I say 'I love you'

I'll realize that I'm not the only person on earth - little by little. 

I hope you know that

everytime our eyes meet it is
Anthony and Cleopatra,
it is ee cummings and his
dark-haired mistress, it is
every love affair that has ever been
lived again and 
again and
again

in those brief seconds 
when our eyes meet, in those
I can feel you 
looking for a reason
forever 
searching 
me

tell me when you find it, 
and let me hold it in my lips
for the next time
our eyes
meet

Don't hold me.

As much as I want a humidifier for this cold,
I want to breathe on my own.

That which would make you more than a dream isn't worth much, to me.

creeping along my hairline in
beads of sweat and in
my eyes, in the corners he
urges along tears, rides them, 

painting 

down


my 




cheeks,



then onto my neck, 
kissing my collar bone
and, in passing, 
tickles the freckles 
between my 
breasts. 

the little that's left of him fingers into 
streams on my belly that has 
been hungry for him - 



- he knows.

a visit from you always leaves me wanting

my food has begun to taste as 
I'm sure I've begun to
look:

grey
quiet
tired and
mean