Charlotte Bronte said it best....

Reader, I married her. A quiet wedding we had; she and I....

What a long strange trip it's been.

If you told me a year ago that my life would be what it is right now, there's no way I would have believed it for a second. But I'm living these days and living is good.

I'm going to leave this city behind and start a new adventure. I'm doing things I've always wanted to do. I'm going to explore england and spain and egypt and paris and any other place that presents itself. I'm going to teach in a foreign country. Im' going to live and appreciate each day.

dissolving

and if I could reach my fingers,
i’d lick below the nails to suck out the poison
someone planted
in a slight, sadistic plan
to make me see a bit more clearly
through the fog I’m breathing now.
and through the walls, we’d see the city;
laugh about how bright and beautiful
it is, while comparing it
to something a little less aesthetic,
just so it won’t lose its majesty.
and around us the walls will crumble
to bits of plaster and shreddible, edible easter grass
like the smiles we never could muster.
the walls will melt and turn to molten
as the fluid ghosts of all the men I’ve ever needed
flood in and surround us in their warmth
and in their smell.
they’ll bend my back and expose my neck
like an infiltration in the infantry guarding
my blood, and pick them off
with hammers, nails, and steel
one by one by one.
and the floor will open up
to suck me through and make me
just a few more fibers in the woodwork;
make me hum and dance with the heartbeat
of the house that we created
with our bone.
and the sky will drop from heavenly heights
to shroud me, make me lovely,
in the miles throughout the darkness
with the stars about my hair like crowning jewels.

just to prove me guilty, just to deem me sane.

they’ll drop the souls that I commended
into laboring to mend
the hearts that I have broken
and the skin I’ve yet to rend
upon my back to claw me, Jesus,
shaking, trembling, insane.
they’ll shatter me, break me humble,
make me crumble like the walls
and they’ll tear me ‘til the stars ring out
until I’m ugly, ugly, ugly,
until I’ll never see beauty again.
and when the woodwork dissolves in the flood
the one i didn’t mean to send
and the servants head’s drop under
waves of ice and photons firing
in their irises and retinas
in the lenses of their glasses
making universal pictures
to unite under the sea
in all their glory, glory, glory
pure horror beauty just for me.

i think i will...

spread these explosions of willing joy
across the mothering sky-
i am tapered in sight
but not in mind-
and now i can smile.

i think i will..
for a long, long while.

living

They say that people
Only start to live
As they die

Bodies
Bones
Buried

Ashes scattered
Secrets sparkle
In the dust

They say that everyone has
At least one secret
That would break
Your heart

Pistols
Poison
Parasites

Nesting
Infecting
Dissecting

Piece by piece

Nooses wrap
Snap
Our spines

But we are all
Entwined

Atoms fired like cannons
Spread like linen sheets
Across the sky

Backbones replace the wings
We lost at birth

Repair
Flutter
Uncaged

Like wild birds

We are all made of stars

alternate reality

this
is
not
really
happening

i never was a
simple girl

layers of fabric
charity shop binges
of leopard print
and kitsch

peel them away,
it's funny,
but i think "please,
don't rip them
from my flesh"

what if I'm not the
good girl
in all of this

they say that
things change
people
and that
love's not
some solid
construction made
of steel

you
have
to
make
it
work

sometimes it hurts
like hell

years go by
and i don't drink
until someone passes
me a glass and
i choke on a
fluid memory

that
sticks
to
nothing

so many dreams
dissolved
into sweat
on your chest
where that
my heart is sometimes found...

absent presence

Tattooed

he had a tattoo
instead of a gun
that forced me to
buckle

they said they hadn't seen him since,
i'd be lying if i said
i wasn't scared by his
absent
presence
that wrapped like cellophane around my limbs
the week before

i remember that
Thai, cheap ink,
colours faded and
thinking what it meant
why i never wanted to ask
until my mouth was full

lackluster nothings

my mouth can hold nothing now
it desires the wall it bruised upon
and her mis-matched quotations
after she says she wishes to have with me
days to speak of new, unfaltering love, long
and between these conversations
we will eat ice cream
and she will tell me their intimacy is lackluster
but his eyes are bright
and he knows all of the right equations
rolling around the covers
beneath a single sheet..
then i will tell her i cannot write
now i am no longer eating
or thinking
and no two thousand nothings
can make me feel alright.

i don't know what it means

jumping, is a boy, who,
between the little chambers, imagined a girl
and built his city
from human stature and
whatever happened to the eyes of white
winged creatures
who distorted the distance
of milk, from the palm to the mouth
and the deformity of a windowsill
the vice of the shell
until what was looked upon as a strange world
was created
of milk and sins
a tower
in the kitchen, then came to fruition
for its beauty
be in the minds of christmas


sad eyes, my eyes.

why write

both hands

i look for warmth
within her palms
the greatest snow-white
as i broke the balance
but traced little hearts on her arms
where she was steady
to put her hands on me
lay her hold on me
with her narrow feet
tip toe, the most delicate part of the grass
she is all i need
i am not saying i'll never get desperate
i am only saying i want her with me
for her company
there, she is the most beautiful
and most significantly
makes me write my poetry
as if i am a warrior
of words
the battle is something short
the weapons are simple
for her to observe, may not be worthwhile
but i just wanted you to know, i want you
and what it is to inspire one smile.

ligeia

oh, Ligeia

my hands have felt no beauty
but the kiss of her cold, deceased lips
she is not phantasm
she is flesh
flesh, i tell you this
and i vex myself
i trip up on opium odysseys of the heart
she had me turned neurotic
with one lick
- caused my earthbound pieces
to form the curvature of two halves
because after death
she is the only apparition
she is my one all-consuming wish
'til sanity do us part.

you're empty.

For some strange reason,
the world of ethereal, frozen lattices
and of livid beauty
entrances me back to sleep
only minutes after I awake in the morning;
only seconds when I wake again at night.

The sound of my head against your walls
and the pulsing that bakes my insides golden
with my tongue in your mouth,
your hand up my shirt,
has somehow ceased to provoke a feeling.
The hair rippling, curling across my palm
has turned quickly to bird’s nest kindling
and the eyes that open sometimes to flash
brilliant oceanic scenes into my retinas
have turned to pools of plasma behind your lids.
Your skin is hot to touch
but brings no words to my bruising lips
when I watch it ash to black;
burning char and peeling away to
milk white bone, hollow as eggshells,
lungs black as coal,
and a heart encrusted in ice
growing colder still as the fire roars.

The shell I’ve found crumpled in my arms
is visible in any mirror, radioactive;
apparent under x-ray and dilutive in acid.
When staring straight ahead; however,
it is only singed letters which can be arranged
to spell the word “lies”
in seven different dialects.
It will dissolve completely with alcohol.

We all found our vices;
It just so happened
that you were born with yours
and taught me mine firsthand.
The moment you were born, the rings
around your eyes were to be symbols;
you’d be a scoundrel and a liar
but a lover all the same.
The moment I was born, the birthmark
like a noose; it bore a symbol;
I’d be a scoundrel and a lover
but a liar all the same.

Oh, cradling your body only makes me weaker
and my brittle bones will crack under the strain
of playing atlas; test tube baby, seek her
and bring me back a bottle with a name.

sacked

his eyes wide in his face,
he blinked
like a deer
and attacked me with vigour.
all the sweetness
and the charm
absent from your aspect...
in your grasping.
hoisted me on the sink
smudged my makeup
and tore my dress.
holes in my stockings
like every pair.
thumb-marks littered my wrist
in bruises
and marker-pen.
well i stuffed your clothes in my bedroom bin,
littered
with toenail clippings
and an empty bottle of jim.
and swore,
i will never again give myself like that to him.

trade ya

When my eyes go blank,
The bomb likes to drop down
And sit in the middle of my forehead
-innocuously, as only a bomb can-
With a beep, a flash, a periscope
To seek any sense of motion--
Any mention of sound.
Sometimes, gods with censored faces,
With tinted windows, withheld smiles
Like to sing me lullabies
In the cool
cream
leather
sitting
shotgun.

They give me anything, anything, everything
With the promise of redemption,
with a promise to forget.

Hands holding
House-warming
Sweet, sweet gall
And musty smoking mistletoe
Apparent through transcendent souls
That separate from hollow shells
They vacate to forget.
Please tuck me tight in Bible paper
And birth me whole in phoenix fire
In smoke and ash and avocation
to sputter dancing, pirouetting,
paper-prophet ashes.
World spinning softly now,
Holding every breath in now,
Hand over mouth now,
Making love to my senses.

I told you to make me feel something-
Thank you for giving me everything.

Passing through the gate,
Paper-perfect dolls and fire that licks me
Like salt. Like ice. Like milk.
La Tierra starts to pulse and I can feel
Nothing but the start and stop of the
Firing circuit boards, the unplugged extension cords,
The racing current hitting every copper checkpoint.
bodies move in rhythm
While girls with lover’s eyes come dance beneath the stars,
Blending waltz and tribal manifest with sensual desire.

Watch: as they’re living we’re erasing
Slowly, smothering our babies
while every ounce of sanity
Each gasping, seething ounce of me
Is begging to let go.

I will cry for my brother, and my innocence, my control.
I want a face that isn’t vacant and a soul that’s goddamn whole,
And a fire that doesn’t burn and a heart that doesn’t freeze,
And a mouth that never lies and a child that never screams,
And a day that breaks before I wake
A stapled heart sans constant ache
A house, a home, advice to take
And silence in between.

I need words in my mouth; I’ve got blood in my mouth.
Can we trade?

nature

softly, the seasons change from spring,
trees shed their skin and bear
branches as bones.
the leafs start falling

the sun grows tired of its heat,
cools in an opaque sky
of red and gold

autumn's arrived,
spiders scurry to spin
webs over dead ground
to catch the fading flies

others scavenge,
like magpies,
treasures from the frost

it's cold,
but swans mate for life
and there is always warmth
in company

watching as the
seasons die...

beg me

Beg me, baby
it's sexy
I'm eighteen
I can still do
stupid things
to stupid
girls
younger than me
(that one protrusion
makes all the
difference)
taking the
barely legal's
just not me

Words on paper
are black and white
but words on mouths
can change
rearrange
I said no,
no, he said
who do you believe?

Shut up
it's better to remember
silence than screams
and showers just don't
run hot enough
soap just doesn't
clean deep enough
time just doesn't
move fast enough

Beg me, baby
it's what all the girls do

you and your...

good bone-structure,
and gaze
like a cornflower.

we breathed puffs of air
like cigarettes
and in my head
you loved me
over
and over
again.

glass menagerie

I'm wandering,
barefoot through a day
That’s never belonged to me.
A stream of consciousness,
Or lack of that which should be
In which I swore I would
Never spend night dreaming
In vivid installments of 32 bit color,
Never spend a day awake in sleep
Of dreamless dark to back of eyelids
And prevention of waking the day.

With one hour to midnight and
Less than half of that until the bottle
Is cracked, and empty on the pavement
Crushed by our infatuation and our laughter
Loud and mighty.

The tree is tall, but
We have crowned ourselves
Kings
Here tonight aloft
In its branches, alone in our glory
We proclaim our majesty to the flashing lights
Of the sheriff’s Ford as it
Flocks to the trunk to worship.
We are never shy, never weak.
We are the blasphemers of the new century,
Crowned in thorns, and leaves, and glacial wind
Admitting to every sin
We had ever been convicted of, in honor,
Our own crucifiers,
Sounding off on Good Friday’s eve.

She’s beautiful isn’t she?
Well, what about me?
I’ll look beautiful when I’m the only pallid color
You’ll find in some place,
But when I’m not under glass
You don’t see me do you?

I remember when we were little again
And you couldn’t tell the boys from the girls
By their hair, because it was all long and dirty
Or their chests, because they were all flat and bare
Or their mannerisms because they were all beautiful
And unplanned, and innocent, and jubilant
And free.
And we were all mommies’ children
Growing up in a world
That planned to slaughter us as soon as
We got fat enough to lick our own wounds.

We stayed out late every night
And mapped the stars on the back of our hands
So we could map them in a page in a book
Or engrave them on a desk in computer apps
Or on an inner-city wall in the dead of night
With open veins spewing spray paint
Like fire-hydrants through a hole in a wrist
And a plastic poncho to protect us from the rain
As well as a gas mask,
Because the bomb could drop any minute
And it could break you
In two
Like a wishbone
That wasn’t very lucky.

And where did the fresh air go?
Only recycled breaths left, and only so many years
Before the sun gives out and cries
“Fuck you, dirty heathens,
Won’t you let me sleep?”

It’s so cold here.
The rusty pages in the golden bough
Aren’t going to save me now;
And all those books on existentialism
And tarot readings, and philosophy, and childbirth,
And psychology, and sleep-disorders,
And Zen Buddhism, and how-to, have-to, where-now?
Were swept out yesterday
And left on the curb of Second and Cherry
In a box reading “Seeking Good Home”
And we’ve got nothing here worth fighting for.
So what do we need these guns for?

And why are the newborns weeping in Moscow?
And why have the lambs started screaming again?
And why are my teeth bleeding acid?
And why are the polar caps melting?
And why is there blood all over my shoes?
And why did you put me here?



Do you even know?






Have you ever known?

swallow me whole

There is something about operating on the fringe, even the fringe of your innermost self, that can be so conspicuous. Perhaps you want to hide from prying eyes and annoyances but you feel that you are displayed for others to gawk. The cutting judgements of people's stares and questioning glances are breaking your casual exterior. You run the scissors along the only seam that covers your nakedness. No one knows the reasons for their madness in the moment...

And when you are struggling and a close friend slights you, however innocently, it can feel like the witness of a thousand angel's torment.

swallow me whole. please.

january victim

I will light a fire
Inside me
To rival
The heatless
January sun
That beats upon my back

Kneel before
The embers and
Burn one
By one
The people I have
Been

There is an
Inferno in my heart
That will destroy the ghosts,
Who quiver as they wake
Surrounded by
Flames