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.