i feel sick

i don't exactly
know why
but somehow
it is you,
sweet, gentle
you
who has
made me feel
more unwanted,
more unattractive,
more useless
than anyone else
ever could.

gnashing

well, if both of us have torn parts
of ourselves out
with our teeth, then
at least we know
we don't make
an ill match.
it is no consolation,
though,
this along-side ache

full of heavy silence sighing through
our noses, our lips clamped
upon our treacherous tongues,
the
eerie
quiet
pacing through the house
until the endless rushing cycle of tormenting thoughts
stops.
halts.
begins to blur from your intoxicants [take your pick,
it's all numbness
in the end.]

we crash into ourselves and
pass through one another like ghosts.

S [elf] I [sh]

call my cutting selfish all
you like, it
will not alter your self-absorption

the way you want me to wear
a band-aid
to cover the scabs
your guilt can't stand to see,

not because it will help me heal.
i think
it's a clear way to see
what lies between us: you,
handing me a small bandage saying,
cover your wound.
be
happy, i cannot bear to watch
you cry.
i can hide
beneath flesh-
colored tape if you really want, but

it will not erase your involvement
in creating the melancholy
i wrap myself in
like a shawl.


UPDATE:
the picture of the painting this poem has also become:

the den

if i fall asleep on the couch
one more time,
i'll scream

so i occupy my time with obsessive
internet surfing
don't
know why they call it surfing
it's more
like being caught in
a riptide. you go
where it throws you.

sick of being not-tired
waiting for the clock to circle back
into hours that seem reasonable to more
than chronic insomniacs,
or just those
whose brains spiral into the void

he loves me not, he loves me not. he
loves me. [not.] she. they.

trying not to stare
into the mirror, as though
somewhere on my body is written
an answer my brain might accept,
or,
failing acceptance,
curl around
like a cat.
some nights
might be better, i might be able
to tell you
if i could remember with clarity
what blurs.

the act of breaking

i.

what supersedes
the act of breaking?
can you add insult?

glass knocked to the floor
tinkles into pieces that still fit
with glue. it does not alter the fact
that what you have left is
a facsimile.

you tell me
you are broken

and now i'm wondering if this can really harm me
i mean, you make me cry, but
i’ve been broken by better than you

say that glass was a window
if a window is broken
can thrashing the pieces to glittering dust
alter the effect of its breaking?
you can stomp the shards into a puddle and spit
in the residue
but
after glass is no longer
a window
it does not matter next
how it is split in two.





ii.

all last night i dreamed of her, as
i am sure you also dreamed

waking up every hour, or less, to
stare at the clock and wait
for night to be over.
you want me to hold you, but
you won’t hold me

and i have her face inside
my head, the girl you really
think could be “something,”
despite the fact that less than
a months’ worth of knowledge lives
between you.

and what
am i? you tell me
i am wanted i
am loved i am amazing i will find
another

am i so wanted, then, after all?

i refrain from the act of breaking
holding myself upright in a steely grasp
grinding fragments into something
that melds.
sometimes
i have fantasies of acting
as broken as you claim to be

but i’m applying the pressure until i stop
feeling anything at all, although
my body
bears the brunt
of my refusal.
this morning, brushing
my teeth
i vomited into the sink
nothing but blood came up
and i watched it swirl down
the drain, thinking
this is not reality.

this is not a life.





iii.

“i love you,” you say, dick-deep
inside of me
break-up sex,
you’re calling it, as if there
could be such a thing at the
end of a relationship you

never acknowledged.

i know
your heart
is tied in knots, but you don’t
understand what i see
beneath
the lies you keep telling me,

or why i am
holding on.
and i lie
three thousand miles away now,
alone in a strange bed
imagining
unknown situations you are
or aren’t going through,
jumping
at the sound of the heater
clicking
on and off
hurling what little i eat
and drinking wine i have no taste for.
you keep telling me i lose nothing
and perhaps
i lose nothing but you

but in the month you’ve been unable
to leave my bed, i have come
to understand the complications
of love.
lie all you want.


your body is still
next to me.





iv.

so abrupt
one day consoling, the next anger
touching your voice, barely restrained

it does not matter
whether you’ve had her in your bed,
i felt you draw away

i will not need to ask.

that morning i awoke from a
nightmare,
noting the incredible
ill-timing of dreaming true.
if it’s
all the same to you,
stop trying to console me
it is only appeasing you
and your slow letting-go.
no.
i
will not be comforted,
i do not want to,
will not
hide this from you

what a kindness
that would be, were i
to give it.





v.

it’s the tenuous peace we’ve erected that
i’m scared of shattering
terrified
not just of arguing or
the [almost] accepted worst-case

i’m more afraid of better
a little something unexpected

and i don’t have the resources
to bear another change, the violent flipping
of the hourglass back
& forth, before the
sand can go from one
direction
to the other.
my body’s
wound tight and twitching
awake into the night,
blinking
towards morning, and plane engines and uncertain reunions
at variable times
i am weary of watching my hands tremble
on my novel page

see, i’ve got this infinitesimal thing
clasped delicately
under my ribs and although
i told it to die, it turned to me and said
“Fuck you, Bitch”

it is this very last reserve of myself
i am bone-weary afraid
of breaking





vi.

talking about your disjointed
painting, you said

“i feel this is like
the last month of my life – pieces
look pretty but the whole is
chaotic. yet
i must paint it how
it must be.”

well
i say to you – here’s what this month’s
been like
for me: angry

red and rent flesh on my arms
bisecting the clean lines
of parallel, occasionally weeping

and when they finally scab, i
take my fingernails
and time and time again
scratch the layers away

until they toughen
into tissue that will not alter

no matter how i worry them. they build
armor and remain
raised
scarlet in their anger screaming,

“no, you cannot
touch me. i am impervious
to you.”

go ahead

stare,
my skin
is thick enough to take it,
even thicker
in the places you're
viewing with that look
of indecision, trying to
figure out whether to
find meaning in my
skin's incoherence,
the bisection and incision,
the permanent things
we do that stay with us,
no matter how we try
to shake it off

so teach me

it would be, perhaps,
indelicate of me
to ask
if you want to fuck

but the curiosity's
eating in.

every time we meet,
a different reflection
glints from your corners.
i have seen the proper
classroom mask, the
wet&freezing ocean you,
sweating, breath in my ear hiking,
casually revealing you,
the
fireandnight side,
crashing beside me wildly through plants, and
brandishing an ear
of corn like a saber against
the darkness where our flashlights
do not penetrate.
it is
you, every time, whose
long fingers tap out
deliberately inconsequential invitations -
what next, where
to?
i
know what i find in you;
but
your kaleidoscope faces
do not give me the reasons
you show me
your patterns.

in which i realize

i find my priorities have changed.
i don't
want things to remain the same.
& i find you
in this time warp,
trying to squeeze into the mold
we both said we'd never fit in,
i watch you
& wonder where i would be,
had i not stuck
through the dull inanities of the south,
held my ground until my sense of self had
gelled
into what i want to be.
now i watch you and assume the area's
ironic smile, when i realize
that i assume about what you do, only
because i am right about you.
i miss
the easy rolling intimacy of
our earlier years, but know
the past can't be repeated.
i am trying to forge something new, the
push & pull of new scars stretching
into a place we may carve for ourselves,
that is,
if you are willing
to make me any room at all.

spontaneously

i'm obsessed with dancing in the kitchen,
i mean
i realize
it's not your average discerning factor
as to whether the one we fuck
is the one we love,
but still i'm
telling you, take my arms
and
fold them around you and step on
my toes
and off we go around
the kitchen in circles, my head whirling
from too much on-the-house
vodka.
kiss my shoulders i
don't care what music is playing, just

make me laugh
and let me
get dizzy on you

interpret

yesterday i stepped out
of myself for a few minutes, peering
curiously into
the life i'm leading, looking
for signs, or an explanation

floating over the encircling
arms of the one who shares my bed,
i said
something is all wrong
with this picture, i don't
know what it was; maybe
i was too high

but it all gets mixed up
into hoping
that when this is over we'll love
each other as much
as when we were
fucking

the pulling moon

i want to know
where it comes from:
our moisture that wicks into
our underwear, does it
spring forth
as a cave
bears its water on
its walls?
or
are we wet from
the womb's ceaseless sea,
the shifting tides?

today my thighs are still
damp from clenching you, last night,
into me

and i rub my own spunk between
my fingers, salty like the
ocean.
we are all
only
the legacy we leave behind,
if we
leave anything at all

like waves
who vomit shell, fish, and other
debris onto shores washed
by other waves,
who take
what has been given
and leave more in its stead.

"service with a smile"

how quickly
i remembered the dance
the pop-top, palm cash
into hand,
click-click ca-ching,
thank you, here's your change.
seven twenty-five.
whirling
a flimsy straw into the vortex
of someone's nightcap,
or their addiction,
the cigarettes and worn flannel
creep slowly
into my skin.
i cover my awkward,
cuckoo presence: drip
my accent out
in doses, the way it
springs through when i speak
to my family through the phone,
laugh louder at the jokes
from the chauvinists
as if
i, too, grew up in this
particular cultural poverty. here,
my teeth alone mark me as foreigner.
now, i'll practice again the art
of submerging all of me
that does not belong, and waiting
until i reach my car to gasp
for fresh air.

infection

i'm gasping
for breath and you moan alongside
me, push your sleeping head into
my neck like a cat
rubs the one
who feeds it. i don't know
how i caught your fickle feline fancy exactly
but i'd lay odds you're also
drawn by what you can't have.
miaow.
i'll pet you anyway, in my stilted
sort of manner.
if my pores
would just open and breathe
for me i'd join you
on that pillow and stop
rasping through my half-
closed throat but
every method tried
thus-far's a failure, and i have to admit
there's a certain satisfaction
to watching you sleep. there's magic,
somehow, in the still hours. the night
even sleeps, the dead leaves
catching catnaps on their branches
before tomorrow plummets them
to the pavement.
and over
and over i ask myself: what
keeps me? why
am i staying?

soaking

i'll watch as you slowly drift
closer to me
almost touching.
our arms wave in the current
of the water and hang limp,
and well-heated.
your voice
has taken on that confiding tone
i know so well in you,
and i'm warming a bit -

but my trust still oozes slowly
toward you, cringing away
as if expecting a blow.

nudity

sometimes i read
what i have written
years ago,
and it's like a ghost
shouting
from long ago
screaming,
~ please
do not leave me behind ~

it all gets mixed up

i want to say it, but
there's no ears to pick it up.
dear
anonymous: i wish
you were here.
i've been
thinking of writing letters to myself,
scribbles
of indecision
i etch into my memory.
mind-masturbation, a voice
answering my half-assed questions.

i'm too emotional about this,
i keep
thinking i should approach it rationally
but i'm not rational
i'm right out of my head, heart and convictions
while thinking i could just as soon
use the time alone
to talk myself out of what i'm feeling.
it's not real
it's not real
it can't be.
too much to be really happening.

my mind is tired of the racing and
it's no surprise to me,
really,
how much i've been drinking.

either way

i think i need to be left alone
in my private hole
to mull it all over.
i need
to let my private life back in.
i've lost a few parts
of myself on the trail from here
from the life i used to lead,
i missed a turn
somewhere, to end up where i am.
today
i wish i could be completely alone,
no human contact until i've figured out
how human i really am,
i want things
so impossible at this point i'm starting
to give up.
outside it's attempting
to rain, a few drops at a time.
i'm huddling above this book and my
bedcovers and i want to lock the door
i don't have,
to keep myself
inside long enough to figure this out.

burn it onto your retina

remember her face.
remember
rain falling so hard you shoved the window up
and let the water puddle on the
windowsill and the floor, holding
her in your arms.
remember.
or don't.
forgetting comes easy with anguish
make it a blank, black wall that
will not collapse no matter
how hard you'll pound on it later,
wanting back those years of your life.
forget.
remember
she wasn't everything you made her
out to be, a small dark
chaotic whirlwind swirling
around the memories
of who she was. of who you were.

the coffee table hits right on the shins

my house is still unfamiliar enough
that i sometimes miss the last
step
going
down the
stairs,
landing
on the carpet all arms and knees,
just enough impact to get an
"oof"

but it reminds me
of how impermanent i have been
flicking around
waiting to take root somewhere.

i think i'm trying to root here, but
it's
off-putting, the newness of
it all, the jarring realization

that this is nowhere near home
nowhere near.
surroundings i know in the dark
are far from me now.

in this house i stumble
in every room, waiting
to learn it.
waiting
to be sure i won't be leaving
too soon for the knowledge
to matter.

it's novel

tonight my only friend
has 645 pages
a hefty hard cover,
and no way
to wipe off the tears i try
to will away.
i'm sure
my face is steely, but the
impassiveness doesn't matter
to my eyes, which follow,
stubbornly, their own course.

my own victory is to go outside
alone
and experience this silently,
staring at the stars and waiting
for the moon to be full enough
for my howl to seem merely
theatrical.

waiting for the world to
turn around again.

puzzle

yelling screaming
mulling
it over in my head
and now
your inability to name this
has become
my inability not to. this is not the person
i want to be.
leaning
into myself, hugging the bar until
i feel capable of walking away
without my head scrunched against
my shoulders.
i'm not dealing lately.

my hands twitch with aching desire.
instead, when i walk home
and crawl into your (my?) bed,
i'll try to dream,
and wonder
how i fit into this scene.
how i'll understand what i'm
supposed to do
with the pieces of you
you'll give me to fit together.

poetry

i'm trying to
submerge myself
in words, hoping
to drown in this art
until my words
detach and float

to the surface.
the stack
of poetry beside my bed is at least
shin-high, filled
with the words i'll pull
out of their context and rearrange
into my own patterns

until i can stack them against
the chaos outside.
sometimes
when i am alone,
i start to believe
the only reason i write
is the fault of quantum
mechanics.
i see
the page blank, and must
replace all those possibilities
with anything definable
to keep away the swirling

could-bes of what-ifs and try-mes and
what-the-fuck-is-this and what-
does-it-all-really-mean

who do you let in?

it's not you,
precisely, that i'm attempting
to drink from my mind.
it's the
implication of you.

our bodies fit neatly,
face to collarbone, hands curled around
our fingers, legs crooked
into the spaces
behind our knees.
it's the hand on mine subtly, in stores, your touch on
my side - the signs of a connection, but also
the hesitation you have
regarding me.
the nothing
[something] we are[n't].

the implications of this. i'm
getting mixed up
about [in] you.
and so i’m drinking liquor mixed
to get it down faster,
and
strawing it like oxygen
until my vision starts to sparkle.

sleepless

i remember this feeling
trying to sleep
in a sticky bed
gasping
at the heat between us.

our sheets ended up soaked
by our slumber. years later, i can
conjure up that smell:
unwashed girls,
tangy
and bittersweet.

i don't invest so much, anymore. if the
covers go clammy, i kick them away.
i'm thinking downstairs in the den
that love is only the illusion you make
for yourself,
to give hope something to lean on
as a crutch.

i notice you're a bit quick
to tell me
you love me now,
and now i'm quick
to shut up.
the kind of love i build bonfires for
is love that's not returned,
and i know it.

sometimes, we define ourselves
by who decides to leave us,
so now i’m busy learning to leave others, hoping
if i learn well enough,
i'll understand
why the ones who leave us
don't look back when they're out the door.

the edge of love or hate

i see all we wrote about
"LOVE"
the concept the raw
hamburger anger of it

crying until
you choked, and then,
the inability to
no matter how much you wanted it

the mess it made[makes]
of you and me
and i'm wondering why
we ever called it love at all

but then, a masochist loves her razorblade
we love the things that hurt the most
we love the most the hurt we inflict on ourselves

you are the poem i do not write

i eviscerate what you write
in hopes
of discerning slightly more about you.
we speak in glimpses and our
desolate silences.
we both know why
the other is sad, [or used to].
it's poisonous lately,
our unspoken understandings,
the whispers between the words we do not say.
i want to knock on your skull
to know [really know]
what [if] you are thinking,
if your mind
is as blank as your eyes
have become.
i see you everywhere
on the streets, a flash of blonde
becoming your face, your eyes, until
the spell breaks
and i see a
stranger.
never mind.
put it out of sight.
drink it down.
i'll remember things that mean
nothing to you anymore, or
let them fade into the obscurity
of my mind.
either way.
fight it down.
i keep rationalizing
with myself but it never
seems to change my mind.
i flip through our shared history
in your words, wanting to
remember.
or forget.
or change my mind.

parenthetically

i like the way you [i] (we) smell
tangled up in me [you] (ourselves)
hanging on with sticky fingers,
the pads of your [my] (our) fingertips
stuck together, intertwined.
this smells clear, like your
[my] (our) clean sweat and
your [my] (our) mouths(s) all over
me [you] (we) smell like me [you]
(each other)

i'm failing to qualify it
musk is too strong
sweat's too sweaty and we
don't reek of sex
it's not like that
it's the scent
of a pillow after someone has slept
and you pick it up
and it smells like someone
has loved this place, these
crumpled sheets, my [your]
(our) twisted body(ies)
your [my] (our) arms
akimbo
and sprawling

for good measure

i do not believe for a second
that you
do not fuck me [love me]
like you want to
worship my body, take me into you,
just a bit.
a little.
when you pull me
into your neck, bury in,
all i'm
thinking is,
i don't care what you (i) [we] say.
this is more than temporary.
this is more than fucking.

routine

i have the feeling
my body won't stop
shaking until i get a grasp
on where we're all going,
where it,
why it goes,
revolves into this roiling
festering mess we're in.
men
who use women for their simple visual
and women who wipe tears in the
back rooms
and pretend to live like
the party they appear to be,
watching
as men come in the door -
broke, broke, mark.
broke, broke, sucker.
chalk it on their foreheads,
reach into their wallets,
and don't
take your fist out
until you come up with something.
don't give up while there's still a wallet
in the building.
men who have exhausted
the world's resources so heavily
they now rely
on buying feminine time.
men
who want to confess their sad, pathetic
regrets and lives and jobs,
spew them into
my half-naked lap and i'm smiling,
nodding my head and thinking
i taste bile
in my throat.
talk all you want, just reach
into your wallet, pay me for it.
you realize, you
are nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing
NOTHING more
than the denomination you place
into my upturned palm.

appeasement

today
i use my body
as a weapon, poised to strike
unless
appeased by money,
placate
the goddess with your bills,
i'll be nice enough -
if you pay me.
i'll show you the least important
part of me,
if you pay enough.
i'll smile
and i'll hide my truth behind my eyes.
fucking give me all you have,
because outside of
this tin world,
i would cheerfully kill you,
as soon as you'd give me the chance
to get close enough.

nervous in the drizzle

it's raining, really raining
(as far as oregon goes, anyway)
and i'm thinking even
my tears aren't falling as hard,
for once.
hard enough to
wash my goddamn windshield,
take the bug splatters into
the beyond.
my eyes
are so blurry the rain's
not even impacting, and
i think if i see that strip club
one more time this week i'll explode.
the same highway into the same
smoky hole where people think
they can buy my body
with the money they hold.
can they touch me, fuck me,
offer the pretty girl
a life vest, give me anything,
is it
better than nothing?
tell me,
is prostitution worth your time?
is your fingers brushing my twat
worth the forty dollars you throw at me
as if i'm a whore on the street?

you know, for all i use it
my education was a $20,000 WASTE

i'm telling you
it takes more, these days
than a drive to succeed,
it takes selling
your soul or your body or your skills,
who cares which?
whether it's shit wages or no insurance
or no money for food
or a stranger running
his fingers over your crotch

nothing is worth this,
nothing can give me back the respect i had for myself,
back when my body wasn't someone's commodity
and i don't
just mean naked,
i mean AT ALL,
like i'm nothing without
a job without a neat fucking category
to stick me in.

at this point i'm
welcoming the crying rain.
i'm wanting the skies to weep
even remotely
as hard as i do
i'm waving all my talent above my head
and thinking it'll be a fucking miracle
if anyone cares at all.
if anything
i could possibly do as a "profession"
can make up for this prostitution
of humanity,
as if some simple phrase
or job title
can give me back times
when i wasn't judged
by how much wealth i could amass
for my employers.

swimming backwards through it

i'm too high
to still be awake, but
my brain's flying around
my bedroom light, making
scorching sounds.

so late it's early
and i'm learning
ways to keep myself awake
while trying to fall asleep.

nights like this
it's almost painful to have
someone sleep beside you.
they twitch and toss
and gape their mouths
and you go on doing
what you do, wishing
you could look that peaceful
on a pillow.

dear book...

i hate to admit it....

but i'm scared of you. the amount of effort i'll make
to satisfy these blank, ravenous pages.

i'm feeling transitory lately. hope
the feeling is fleeting - writing in
eraseable thoughts, i think, is
a sign of my changeable mind.
it's not that i want to disappear,
but i'd like to make sure
i'm capable of change.
never static, always bending
(just a little)
[don't stop
evolving into yourself]

in[valid]

today i feel impermanent
and mostly see-through
camped on the couch
or the bed i do not own,
clutching my mug of tea
and a blanket
i do own, i keep thinking how
i pay my rent just like you, but
this still feels like your place i'm
intruding upon

and i scald my tongue on my tea
and think about eating food i don't
have the appetite for,
curled under my covers
like an [in]valid
in[valid], not
sick enough to count,
not well enough to
shrug off
your oblivious insensitivity

it's days like this
where i want my body to be
less substantial
to match the way i feel -
a little translucent,
turned sideways so you can't quite catch
a good glimpse
of me

the same old refrain en français

je t'aime
halfway between
lie and truth, between
what i say i want, and the
reality
of the situation.
un peu...
beaucoup...
passionnement...
pas du tout.

pas du tout.

it's true

distance will
distill
you, from your parents, old
friends, things you were
supposed to do,
thousands of miles can
change you.

do not presume what you find
is the only " you" you can be. or that this new product
is "you" at all, don't think
you're not trying on new faces, this far
from home. it's so much easier
to hide behind your masks
when no one can distinguish them
from reality.

book now firmly planted
in my bag again,
i pull it out now
when my fingers get itchy.
i am slowly walking back
to myself.
my brain has
turned back on,
retrieved my desires.
at night, i wonder about
unused words, lines
that need to insert themselves,
details not yet plugged into a page.
sometimes, i am afraid
of the sudden outpour,
the reveal of the underbelly,
naked pink secrets.
remember
when i displayed my secrets
in blood on my arms,
wrote them in capital letters
on the page?
these days it's safer
to play my cards close to the vest.
they are plastered to my chest.
i do not assume,
anymore, that those
who read my words
will let them remain
in hiding.
small matters.

those words i let escape
into light,
i pin,
wriggling,
against the black backdrop
of internet
anonymity.

burn out

i've decided not
to go to sleep until
my jaw stops clenching,
an exercise to see
if i can wake up
without aching.
you look so calm when you sleep,
legs slanted toward me,
reclining into your pillow
as if in the throne
of sleep.
looks like a lovely place;
wish i was there.

it's hard to hold
someone already sleeping,
set into
their unconscious patterns,
limbs leadened
into slumber.
i try, but always,
in spite of the warmth of you,
feel
like an impostor.
maybe tomorrow night, we will fall
together, all tangledup
in one another,
and i won't feel like a voyeur,
when i'm lying
next to you.

weakness

i imagine it to be pink-red raw
like rug burn on your knees
where all the skin is scraped away
and the flesh left swells, as if
compensating.
that kind of tender. that
way of laying a large, gaping
hole like that down,
one i've kept a festering lid on
tight for these eight years now
and now i'm open, waiting by
my wound
for you to come by, cover it,
help me heal
i don't know
what i expect from you.
i only know what i fear.
i fear
opening this, at all.
but these days,
i fear more
the blinding wall i built
around myself so tightly
that nothing
could get through.
not anger, guilt, or the agony
she put me through
nothing
could have broken that shield
down.
not even you.

when you leave

you won't be knifing me
with it
too self-possessed, and
kind. you'd be the type
to cry more
than i would. i save
the bawling, for later
when i think no one
can hear.
no, you have no knife in this scene,
the owner of the blade is me -
turning it over and over
in my fingers, walking along
its razor-sharp edge
with my mind, trying
to spot its flaw.
sometimes
i watch you while
i fumble around my
sharp metal,
collecting
"paper"cuts.
i'm planning
and preparing. i'm not a fool,
this one's easy
to spot coming.
you'll fade away,
and, alone,
i'll peruse my body
for the best place
to stick that blade.

havoc

she sits straight up in bed,
never got to lying, back stiff
and aching.
her stomach twists,
and wrenches
quarter-sized pieces of flesh
from her insides.

soon she will need to walk downstairs, staggering
to the bathroom to crouch
over the toilet and watch
the slow hemorrhage of chunks,
staining the water ghastly pink,
a waterfall
of red stains
on the white porcelain sides.

it wasn't a baby now,
hadn't ever been, wasn't even
a concept
until the bleeding came,
in the middle
of the cycle, all wrong.

her lover watches her body eject
the foreign material,
something that never was, and
tries to argue:
must be side-effects from her new birth control,
anything
but the reality of the word miscarriage,
which must, by nature,
imply first
the fact of pregnancy.
the fact that his gentle, sinuous body
has wreaked violence upon hers.
he sleeps beside her rigid form, right hand
curled around her ankle.
the ache shifts, lowers.
she breathes slowly, and,
untangling his hand, steps one foot
toward the staircase.

contemplating it

i think i'll never
unravel your complexities
the way i think i've got you
all pinned down
and you take that moment
to shock me.
your text: "be ready
for me to come home."
you never waited for the bed.
who is this animal
underneath your usual
musical composition?
why don't you let it out
a little more?
i think of your brain
like a computer - a mass of wires
i'm scared to touch
for fear of malfunction
and there's so much complication
a million ways for things
to go wrong,
none of which
i have the skill
to fix,
the technical know-how
to troubleshoot.
i'm standing outside your locked door
knocking, not afraid
of hurting you,
anymore.
i am afraid of really, truly
feeling all this
when it is over,
and i don't
want to be there
when i fall.

the hanon book

i remember the repetition
the endless up-and-down
the plunked-out plodding scales
i hated them so
but what
i would not give now
to have that certainty
of fingers on keys
hands to rhythm to
keep the music coming.
the things we do not understand
always come back
to haunt us
with my ghost
of a skill,
and uncertain, shaking fingers
pressed to keys no longer familiar.

forever and crap

you crashed into me, gently
but with force enough to twist
my path,
head me in a different direction.
it wasn't intentional;
you wouldn't dream of interrupting,
just insinuating, gently
interjecting
a hand with an open palm,
an open interpretation,
an A or B or C choose one,
choose all of the above,
choose anything
but not choosing.
now i'm staring back the way i came,
the path paved with
my shame and rage, my tears
and impotent innocence all
combining into fear and disgust,
all the reasons i'd tried a new path
but here i am, deja vu
give it a second whirl.
until the fear is gone, disgust
optional.
open your eyes
really see it, stare
until you know what you were
supposed to be looking for.
then, try
your parallel road. give anything
a try,
but be prepared with the knowledge,
first
of who you are.
of where you are going.

meld

the ferocity with which i grasp
at you terrifies me,
as it must you.
i love you
i'm not IN love with you.
how much of this statement
is true, how much
a lie?
which one of us was lying,
who
is lying now?
sometimes as we sleep
i try to fit into you
as though i have always
been a part
of your body

moving in together

teeth tasting, tonguing
the sharp, bitter
pop, iridescent
effervescence winking
away as i chase,
open-mouthed, palate agape wide
to eat the shining
see-through soap.
our hands
are slimy with mr. bubble,
waving, reaching to hold
brief round moments
and pass them between
our fingers.
they cluster, compound,
disappear when we move
too quickly.
the late sun shines
through us.
"do you think we're still
children?" you say.
"yeah," i say
"i think we always will be."

transparent

like a vampire i rise
to meet myself in the glass
and stare
at the hollow void
i have become

thrift

like your old
clothing, lying hidden
in drawers, cardboard
boxes mouldering
in the attic,
like the
homemade things
you would have thrown out

i also
am discarded.

do this in remembrance of she *

sometimes
i scry my wrist like
an unwilling
oracle,
trace thin
white lines
from origin

to completion.
scarred flesh pillowy-soft at
surface, rope-like, raised
and rigid
underneath.
my fingertips
read lines like Braille,

this
from when i called hysterical,
cried, begged you
stay
on the line, i’m
scared, so scared,
so
can’t get the bleeding
to
stop.

this
from the year my watch strapped
permanently
over blown veins,
collapsed, bearing no blood,
vessels
mangled
through a fine science.


lines
i ignore out
of habit, almost
forget, until they
glint silver in
sunshine, draw attention
to my arms.

sometimes
i catch myself
in class, staring
at my skin,
touching, pulling
pleading memory
out of flesh,
begging
twisted tissue

for an
explanation.




*B.A. senior thesis poem

i actually wrote this in class, less than 10 days before my final thesis was due. i put it at the end; it seemed to sum up everything quite nicely.

butter *

smeared languidly
by
the middle finger on my
left hand, the
blood i wiped on my pants blotched
the thin, greying material, between
the spatters of paint.

you were oozing
between your shoulder blades, left of your spine
on the scapular
tattooed wing that webs
across you

i licked my finger
let the salt and tang dissolve into my tongue,
the way i want
to melt
into our lives, without interrupting
you, or me

effortlessly

as simple as freeing
you of droplets
that would have
stained your shirt.

i don’t mind shit
on my jeans.





*senior thesis poem

the view from kelly’s window *

nonfiction classmate
beating off under blanket:
oh god! close the blinds!





special thanks to two of my wonderful friends for inspiration for this haiku.



* also in my senior thesis. this particular poem is a true story - my friend lived next to one of my nonfiction classmates, and one day saw him doing the above activity in his living room - of course he denied it (said he was petting a cat - HA!), so naturally, i shamed him publicly.
also, he deserved it, for being the prick that my entire senior seminar class loathed, universally.

B. achelor of A. rts *

call it stuttering pen syndrome,
a thing learned
in classrooms.
i find
the transformation suspect:
i formerly wrote prolifically
in stark contrast to the
two or three
poems composed
in this last year.

my
exuberance

has been appraised,
honed,
[mnemonically
harmonically
composed]
something lacking
in the evisceration
what not to do
all the ways you’re
Doing
It
Wrong.

uncertain
and afraid
of tiny
missteps,
my work has transmuted from chaotic
foot
prints
of a mind
on a page

to the ironic sneer
of a one-finger salute
to an education in writing:

a blank page full of lines,
through which thick black marks
obliterate any coherent meaning.



* yes, of course i put this in my B.A. senior thesis. had to. how else are you to thumb your nose at teachers and peers?

to my [married] professor *

sure, you leave,

and you do not kiss me,
but before i go, woman

you will.
go ahead, shy away
from color on my lips,
i don’t need to make my
mark visible;
i know where i have been:

up on your classroom table, flat on my
back
you bending between
my thighs, worshiping some-
thing your catholicism has
refused

to explain.
silently closing(&locking)
the door, speaking in breathless
murmurs,
the thrill
of getting
away with it.
you play it cool
but i notice things:

your insistent gaze,
the fact that,
this time

you did not wash the scent of me
off your face.





*B.A. senior thesis poem

yes it's a (mostly) true story. no, it didn't happen at the college i graduated from. nevertheless, it horrified them a bit; so naturally, i read it for senior presentation day.

concrete details *

i.
in absence, lieu

of razorblades,
the fingernails, which peel away
from the curve
of forearm
led by fingers so stiff they clench
into claws
reveal angry, torn crescents
which, though white at first,

begin to weep
drip
onto the paper kept
to
make sure this isn’t
a dream.
this is my reality.


a day or two would see claret
turn
to brown stains.
they
smelled salty, slightly,
and reeked
of iron.

the aroma would last,
stick
around,
become synonymous
with the
living death
that consumed my life
for eight years

even when, cleansing my closet
of my past,

i find paper,
blood-soaked, puckered
and bearing the faint scent of
tears.



ii.

as my arms still bled,
running red, the
janitor, walking in
the door spots my tangled limbs
sprawling on the cold
brown tile floor
of the last stall,
knocks, twice, a
hesitant rap on the
hollow steel graffiti-scrawled door

takes one step, two, tries
the handle

i coerce my wooden
limbs, shift,
grab
for toilet paper, stuff in sleeve,
pull shirt over
my hand

sniff loudly, mimic the tears
i can’t cry

“you okay?” she asks, and
i say yeah,
fine
feel better now.





*B.A. senior thesis poem

trying not to let go

when i see you, it's not
the same you, i used-to-be-you,
where are you,
underneath the things you took
like manna from him,
and wrapped them around your
shoulders, a shawl of safety
the feel of a plan or a
float to hang onto, as you
try not to drown
in yourself?

add this to the collection of things i will never show you

i love you
i always have,
i never stopped
from the moment your fingertips
traced shapes on my spine
and shoulders i
wanted your touch,
unlike any other
you asked,
didn't think of taking,
or trying without
letting me bow my body
into you.
so small, that happiness, but
it meant the world to me

and then
a year
separating us, most of which
i spent
miserable, silent and sick
as you sat
feet from my trembling limbs,
locked into my hunched position
locked away from your mind.

but the universe can sometimes shift
in threehundredandsixtyfive days
can turn into us,
circling each other like
sniffing canines,
lying on your
[ex]marital bed, the
same frame
i used to lie in
surrounded on both sides,
but now
there is only you
inexplicable you who
made me want you, who
i tried so hard not to love,
in vain

so, give me, please
one of your goddamned cigarettes
the taste of which i
never dreamed i'd miss
on my tongue, miss enough
to start smoking my own -
send me your desires,
and missives over
email, although honestly
i prefer your letters that come
addressed by hand, your
blocky script
spelling my name out,
please
tell me
what you do with your days.

the new apartment

mostly empty room,
just a mattress set
i've seen so often
i have it memorized,
and you and i.
not touching
at first, both nervous,
probably shy
remembering, together
happier times, interrupted by
the same woman who's now
interrupting you

but i had to touch you, run
fingers through your close-
cropped hair and let you know
i meant it when i said
i love you
a year ago

above

skimming clouds,
blotting spilled water
from my books and my jacket 0
the water's vivid on the leather
staining the color dark.
i don't want to be here, but then
again, i don't look forward to
my destination. and although
i'm damp, i see this as a sanctuary
cramped as my feet may be,
where i may watch the sun fire
the horizon.
and maybe last night,
i was too drunk to catch the joke, or
maybe it was on the inside
i'm no longer part of,
but i feel you're laughing
at me.
stuck, suspended between
two places i do not belong.

your knife waits

it's either
a sharp, bottom-of-pit
ache
or a nauseatingly
full slosh these days,
and though no one mentions
anything,
because of course you're aren't
really all that thin
[all things considered]
you know the signs. they
confront you
when you least expect it,
holding their truths
in the mirror
the way you judge everything
more harshly than anyone
you get sick more easily now,
the fact that the stairs make you
out of breath. your mind
is a cloudy haze. is this
the same affliction, or
something newer you've developed
from your nasty little habit
of refusing to eat?
who cares.
hold your insanity to yo
like a shield.
sink into the covers,
head aching, stomach
roiling,
the world revolving around you.

american health warning

we advise you not to ingest
the things we promised save
for ingestion, and oh
(please) remove that cigarette!
thank you for smoking! but
you'll have to huddle outside, under
the dripping eaves. that's too
poisonous for our indoor air.
also, enjoy our arrays of fine snack foods but
don't eat them, they're bad for you!
(mouth full of doritos...so...fucking...
crunch, crunch...good.)

tourniquet

to leach harder
i tie the elastic above my elbow, hang
my arm off the bed, force
gravity to work
for me.
i can see the blood seeping through
constricted veins, shallowly spread
flush red beneath my skin
as if
it tries for oxygen
by getting close to the surface

although you still pretend your scars do not exist

scars are never
impermanent.
they will stare
with their blind,
white tissue
until you are forced
to acknowledge
their existence.
make yourself sicken upon them,
LOOK
really look, as if you
have never gazed
into their muted, raised
impotence.
make yourself RECOGNIZE
the damage - i
did this.
i have marked my body,
irretrievably loosened
my skin, widened
my cracks.
the singing
of blood and my mute longing
to speak,
there is no denying this.
i could lie, back
as i did in the years that
i spent hiding from mental incarceration
but the point has vanished;
no one ever believed
the falsehoods.
the fact remains:
i have wreaked
vengeance against myself.

consonants

the tongue trips
over the tinny taste
of words that associate
themselves, rudely
with the taste
of old, and crusting blood.
linguistics linger with
memories that thrash
into me, & attack.
your eyes, staring
up at me, from your
hunched form on the carpet
as you tied knots
into your converse
you seared into me.
i love linguistics,
lovely lover words,
L's, lilting from
any tongue,
any but
your word,
hateful
"lifestyle,"
sneered out as if
the fact that mine
would be different,
queer,
would poison you.

bury down, hunker down now *

we're wrapped up
worshiping "more for less!!"
erecting concrete-block monstrosities
shadowing the handmade.

this cathedral smells musty, like history, and
i think you'll know what i mean, the way
bygone buildings accrue the
quiet habits of older times.
thousands of hands
helped mold the metal,
smooth the wood,
wear patinas into the key
protruding
from the lock, stuck for who knows
how many years.
places
like these make me certain that
history is not quite so removed as we
think. peeling-plaster jesus implores
the peeling-paint benches, take
me down, the centuries are
really getting to me,
get to the root of it.

get to the root of it.
sometimes when i run my fingers
on the floorboards i can't even
feel the nails although my eyes
say my hands are lying,
and all this jagged paint
and plaster falling off the walls
makes me ashamed of how little
anyone cares to preserve
brick-by-brick examples of why
big and new is not better,
or
advanced.




*B.A. senior thesis poem

dreaming

she was just, suddenly, there
i ran into her, intruding
on my campus
my turf.
FUCK classes, i pulled her
by the hand away from her tour
group, held her
by the hand and
for once, she didn't mind.
i took her - my small, lonely chapel
the peaceful cemetery full of dead,
chaste priests
to the ribs above the soaring
gothic cathedral arches, the
abandoned dome of Admin
business-office's open, musty hold
of a basement, under
the road in brick tunnels
the oak whose branches i crawled
into, seeking solace
or solitude
when i cried.
showed the heart
of my campus, the heart
of myself.
fingers clasped tightly
to hers the entire time.
she did not pull away.
and then we lay on the worn,
cool stone steps
running my hands down her
sides, splitting open my heart,
my mind.
tonguing, melding, abandoning
ourselves to the absence
of alone, as the shocked staff
peeped out the office
windows, and neither of us
would mind.
free of shame,
constraint, uncertainty,
fear. i held her
in my hands,
took her to my chapel
we lay together, stretched
on the floor, worshiping
each other. melting
into her.
melting into her.

i don’t hold my breath for you these days, either *

i don't know why my mouth gums
up when you talk to me.
i tried to offer, meant
to say—two words, your
basic apology—
but
the words would not cleave, they
hung, forced the works to
a halt
until "uh-huh"

was my
only articulation.

these days we rarely speak
although
when we do,
i shake
around you

my prolific
mouth shudders to a halt
although

i itch to
say,
i’m sorry

you talked about the band, gave me
headphones to hear
your new songs,

especially
the
nerve
splinter
ing
one about me,

the rough
draft of which
i found hiding in my favorite novel
between 682, 83.
you sent it back
through a friend,
three months after i
asked for it
back

so now i remain,
with my tongue tied somehow about
your heart, which left

with you

an hour or two
ago, heading out into the night



*senior thesis poem

to the metal *

dismantling the last three years of my life
i try to forget, as i meet people who interest me
that i will leave,
soon.

soon.
count down days like sand through my
fingers, gone
before i clench closed my
fist
a phone full of numbers i may,
but probably
won’t
call, too full
of excuses and a little,
admittedly, busy.

ahead lie roads i don’t
even know exist. but i like
driving, so

i whip around the curves,
engine rumbling so
satisfying oh yeah that’s
right pedal floor down
heading into the horizon

on roads going
no place

i’ve ever been.





*senior thesis poem

relax

it is three a. m.
the hot tub whirls and bubbles
i feel i'm floating

iie

the wine cannot be
the only reason i'm so
dizzy, hopeless, tired.

hai

she's wet and dripping
holding her towel closely
until she sees me.

villanelle

i don't think i'm the kind of girl you're looking for
my emotions bend and sway
and you don't seem willing to put up with me anymore.

i'd look to even the score
between us but i think you'd rather i make my way.
i don't think i'm the kind of girl you're looking for.

and darling i just can't ignore
the way you always leave now, and never stay
the night. you don't seem willing to put up with me anymore.

it's in the way you don't touch me or
repair the tears that fray
our fabric. i'm not the kind of girl you're looking for.

and i don't know if i could have done more
to get you to stay
but you don't seem willing to put up with me anymore.

and this won't be a chore
i'll leave, though i won't know why i'm walking out this way
i don't think i'm the kind of girl you're looking for
and you don't seem willing to put up with me anymore.

sestina in the key of swingset

children are flying
they pull at the chains of the swing,
their voices crying
out, laughing, trying
to transcend from the sharp
daylight into worlds of their own construct. the creak

of the chains transports them as the kids creak
out hoarse chanteys, legs flying
and flailing. a sharp
ache assails me as i watch them swing.
there, at night, there i sat trying
(but failing) to stop crying.

and the crying
is not what made me weak. i had to creak
out the tears. my ducts were rusty. but trying
to remember the feeling of flying
with you by my side, on the other swing -
this gets me every time. the pain is poisonous and sharp

a sudden wash, a tired ache, sharp
and insistent, nothing more, or less. crying
will not make it stop. i come here to swing
when the children are gone, to hear the creak
of the chains, and to think of you. it's not flying
anymore, without you here trying

to fly too. but memory is sometimes trying
sharp
and clear, when forgetting would be a blessing. and flying
brings no freedom, only chains. i'm crying
with every part but my eyes. creak, creak.
the swing

sighs and moans. i could swing
for hours if the wind wasn't trying
to turn my edges blue but even the trees creak
and groan in the sharp
biting breeze. i'm sick of crying,
tired of flying

alone. the swing chains are sharp
with cold. and now i'm trying - i'm not crying
but this familiar creak no longer means flying.

indecision

the ways you treat me are ambiguous
and change daily
last week i was wrapped around you
and enjoying your mouth in mine

tonight your hands explore
my body familiarly
but no more
than anything a friend does
to another friend they feel
close to,
but share no spark
of passion.

i have made my feelings for you
as transparent as water.
you neither mirror my desires
not run away from them,
leaving me staring at your
beautiful face, like always
unable to see the answers.

desperate measures

sometimes it seems as though i've
simply taken a break
and any
day now
i'll walk back in the
door to your welcoming arms.
i know what i'm doing to myself
is torture but sadly enough
it seems to help

the ache of not seeing your face
light up with a smile when
you see me does not cease,
but sometimes i manage to
drown it out with the
right mix of drugs. i know
better this time.

trying to change things is like
attempting to turn my skin
right side in

you are
working too much and i know
what you're doing.
this semester i lost myself
and my grip

and i kept looking at the phone
and wishing so badly to hear
you speak on the
other end of the line.

there is no quick fix, no superglue
will hold this broken thing
together.
i'll hold the shards
in a small box tucked away
in the back of the closet
so i won't think, too much
of you.

a glimpse through the window

take a look see now
the tableau, the long fingers
that run over my body, what
does it say about me?
yes
what does it say? enveloped
in arms, what do i feel and
how do i go from here?
my hair falls into my
face, candles flicker in
the darkness, the melancholy
notes filter down, nostalgic.

miss you, mirror, i hope you
are happy with him i wish
i could see you.

heart still
beats.
take a breath and start
listening and lie back down,
eyes closed and spinning.

[auto]sarcophagy *

your mouth is bleeding
it wasn't intentional, you just
chewed it red,
a nervous
(guilty?) habit

you’ve done it for years
like your father before you
just another thing to make your sanity
suspect
: (maybe you’re due
for an inspection.)

understand
you could do worse,
have before.
a hole-ridden mouth
is private, known only
to those who are too
close
not to taste.
but blood flows for you,
no way around it —
comes when you least want
the obligation,
trickles
down your arms and fingers, a
wristful of mental case

your bloody show
your life-like girl

blood becomes a lifestyle,
a way of crying
when the tears
won't flow, when
you fade

into numbness.

blood
constant companion, friend
you always have
within arm's reach.
spill your life onto the paper,
ink, blood, passion, fingernails,
razorblade, tears, sweat, heartbreak

throw your wordy bloody gauntlet
down (you)
stupid fucking bleeding
poet.




*B.A. senior thesis poem.

for the uninitiated, the title basically means "self-cannibalism."
i am particularly smug about this one, i like it a lot.
(thesaurus power!)

privation *

this loss is physical it
hits the solar plexus, making the
air hard to
suck,
these
corrugated
metal
steep
stairs

a
dizzying
ascending
vertical
slog.

my vision swims but whether
from tears or
the ache you leave
in me
is unclear.


today i sat all day,
phone in front
of me on the counter.
i
do not want to hear the ring
which i already know will explode us
like a grenade held
in a soldier's hand, the
pin flung far.
my body feels what i will
not accept.

i have lost you. i
wait
for the call that ends
our fragile, uncertain ties.
shivers
shake my shoulders as i wrap
my arms around
my gut wound,
stomach cramped,


and empty.
is this desire, mourning,
violent anger? my body
knows only the terrible
wrongness,

the void.






*senior thesis poem

conflagration *

[part 1]
the cold eats through the
blankets, hats, gloves, but you
warm me so well i
let go these layers,
strip myself for you and burn us
both to ash, to bone.
my searing lips sprawl your small frame
on my bed

my thumbs on your nipples,
the buttons you love to loathe
that send
electricity down your
spine and through your arms
which attempt (but fail) to pin
my limbs.
you gasp. go on,
touch me. i won’t pull away.

i will burn us
to ash, to bone.
give me
power and your limp extremities
will twitch and jerk.
burn me, burn you
set us smoldering
and watch the sparks catch

in the white-hot heat of our connected hands.
scorch me now,
burn me, ash, bone, blood
burn you to nothing but
cinders
between us

burst into flames.






[part 2]

fire is
dangerous, but mostly
it elicits transformation — blistered palms,
flushed
sweaty faces,
flickering light that romanticizes
even the harshest
features.
fingers snatch
back
from the flames or else
accept
the burning sensation, the flames

jumping playfully from
candle
to bonfire
but
realize, please, that all of this
fun

with flames
will necessitate the fire
of untruths, the burning
lies,
loathed,
to
keep the flaming show from setting
life afire, from

letting the searing heat out
so that others might
feel the touch
of fire
and be hypnotized
by the burn.




*senior thesis poem

education

hours spent passing back and forth
the hose of the hookah, aromatic tobacco
scenting the air, dreamy.
our voices rising excitedly,
gleaming tidbits of information,
learning more in an afternoon about
life, love and other idiosyncrasies
than semesters of college
ever could teach.
hours lived in a carefree, non-
obligated moment, a brief gasp
of eternity
long limbs, hands that encompassed
mine, feel of a length stretched
down your side, close, whole.
unconditional love, words whispered
in ears that do not demand
reciprocation, merely the knowledge.
sunshine in the afternoon
that glints off of your white pages,
blinding in the ecstasy of a
lazy walk through a moment,
a beautiful brick history that leads
to buildings with antiquity
where you channel knowledge
as a conduit that passes
through time.

(last night i had) *

drinks in a stifling, smoke-choked
bar where i told a stranger we
should be friends. i am done


with subtlety. today, stale
cigarette smell clings to my
unwashed hair so i tie it back
to displace the offensive reek.
tonight
promises more smoke, a
whirlwind afternoon filled with
duties before drinking becomes
the only certainty in
the always-changing plan
of the night:
following the band van to another
disgusting bar to do the

only

thing i'm really up for—
watch the one who gives me
that fluttery feeling

on stage, singing into a mic,
stroking beauty out of the
mandolin with nimble fingers





*senior thesis poem

turning 21

and here it is. your moment
you've been waiting for it
with bated breath
and anticipation that grows but now
here you are. did you expect
it to change you,
to radically alter the world?
you're still sitting alone
on your birthday, knees drawn
to your chest as the world sleeps,
this only means
you don't have to hide your drinking
past the arbitrary line
added another year to the garbage heap,
another fucking miserable wasted year
out of your sight at last.
what are you waiting for,
what did you expect to happen,
do you really think
this changes anything?

mercurial *

no mere mistress
i slip through the cracks,

pull my fingers into traps, the
“gaybistraight,”
the songs i sing in
my head, i am ill-defined, please
talk to me now tell me i am still
breathing.
i am, am i, i

am?

time seems quicksilver in these darknight hours,
stay with me now i need to talk. i need
you
to take
my pulse, my blood, give
me breathless pain and aching
until i am more closely
approximating
the woman
i appear to be.

hurt me, dull and
sharp, until i know who i am,
until the world falls
into ordered pieces around me,
until it will be easier to leave,
and i am either dead,
or stone.

my hands cover my face, and yesterday’s gashes
on my arms throb
in the chill of the air-conditioning, until
my time with you is up.
you leave
and i walk on, unattached.

i assume only that rules are for breaking,

that the ones you love the most
are always the ones wielding the knife



*senior thesis poem

sonnet in the key of swingwset

and our swings make sounds like children screaming
or sighing, i can't tell which. a longing
for you fills my chest. the park is teeming
in the day but nights you sit there fondling
your cigarette and i stare at my shoes
and we are alone. i say i love you
and you flick ash and try to make me choose
between a future with or without you.
and it all comes with conditions, you see
i am trapped. even as i walk away
from your fierce hug i know this ends with me
blinking through my tears at the vast array
of stars as i pump my swing through the air
wanting to run, but i just swing and stare.





this is probably the best sonnet i've written. it was an assignment from a teacher who knew i hated form, and so made me write in nothing but, for a semester.

sans nom*

i cannot explain why your mothlike
fingers kept me up all night,
mentally
reaching
for your touch
but oh-so afraid to move
for fear
that you would stop moving your
hands over my body,
stop letting your fingertips

memorize my frame
and validate the melding
of our skin.
what
is this? not
overwhelming desire
but the longing
to have your arms hold me close
all night long

but
i am not made for these things.
my mind will not slow or bend to
my longings and you cannot stay awake
to talk

but oh, just
know

i desire to let you grip me
fiercely to you for the days
we may number together,

know
there is something here,
even if we have no name for it.




*B.A. senior thesis poem. a large bulk of my senior thesis was pulled from 2005/2006. which makes sense, as i graduated 2007...

four feet

four fucking feet.
the lines of my book bend
and blur and i am cold yet
sweating. you do not speak.
i could touch you from here,
reach my body over the flimsy table
and take your cigarette, drag that
poison on down, and you would stare
in disbelief
i, too, am capable
of change.
i'll have you know
a camel's been
to my lips more often than
i care to admit
and the taste is you
and you are the reason
i do not immediately wash the taste away
bitter, acrid poisonous
in so many ways
the stress hits, now, and
i desire that poison
and long for anything
that would take away
the shaking of my hands,
the sick pit of stomach,
the flutter and twist of my heart
but a simple cigarette
accepted from your hands
will more likely only
compound it
so i'll sit silently
and try not to stare
and think,
what i wouldn't give
to put your fingers in mine.
what i would not forfeit
to cradle the base of your skull
in my palms
and inhale the smell of you
fingertips to scalp,
masking
the tears dripping down my face
that i will never show you

in time to come

why my eyes tear up even at the thought
of you touching me
eludes me but
i don't have the heart
to dig it any deeper
i want to say, oh
an endless fount of things,
but won't.
if i am
to stammer out anything
it will not go near
the things i most desire
to tell you - it will be trivial
things, how are things, my writing
is fine, work is good, what about
the band, fine, fine.
we're fine.
sure we are,
fidgeting in our chairs
occasionally trying to flip a page
before more awkward conversation trying
desperately
to keep from looking
into the eyes of the other
and having that desperate recognition
in the moment of silence.

the silence of a park at four a.m.

as i pump it high,
my swing creaks bittersweet
like children screaming
or sighing, i can’t tell which.

i look sideways at you.

you sit on your
swing,
scuff your converse
in the dirt, your mouth
a band
of steel,
clamped.

you sit there, fondling
your cigarette and i stare at my shoes
and we are alone.
you flick ash and try to make me choose
between a future with,
or without you.

my mind is a racing,
ticking bomb
counting down.
please,

don't go
having you here is like breathing clear

(for

the first time in years)

six a.m. waffle house *

i plead with my
stomach to at least
keep down the coffee
as i try not to
stick
to my space at the counter.

i need the caffeine.
long night? why yes, it
was. is. nights blend
into days into
nights i cannot
remember. it matters
less and less that i
can't, or didn't sleep.

i broke us both a
week ago
and hit
the pavement trying to shake
the chasm
you left
in me

this morning i watched
first the fog come in
and then dissipate as
my car worked the
curves in the road.
i drove to remember,
or forget—
never chose.




*B.A. senior thesis poem

tell me directly

say the words i need to hear.
you do not care
how this breaks me.
it does not matter that the only thing
i was holding on to was your
broken, shattered promise
of silence.
your words are far sharper than
any blade i could ever
take to my skin.
tell me - why bother
with the lie?
how long did you wait
before you stomped your oath
into the ground,
spelling me broken, mutilated,
crying rocking with my head slammed
against a wall (you did not
touch me, or try to help my pain)
my stomach is wrecked and bleeding,
i am raging angry at you,
you promised
i want to scream at you and break
your stuff and hit you so hard
you hit me back.
the pain
should bloody well fucking show
and it shows
but never enough.
there is not blood enough
to show this sufficiently.

why memoirist might lie

what scares me more, i wonder -
that, in time, these scars will fade
or that their presence
will never leave?
i do not know which is worse:
self-negation, or self-erasure
will white lines haunt well
into my tired, old life,
or will they, like
the rest of my past,
leave me standing,
grasping at straws?

insomniac *

watching others sleep
in a strange house
amounts to: alone
so i mouth the word
in every
language i have a grasp on.

solamente, seulement.

my breathing
is the only noise because i've
muted the television

my limbs
graze the sofa,
and clink ice in my glass.
i
wince when
every gesture i make
echoes through the living room
when i walk, and the soft pads of my feet
thump against the bare wooden floors
but i know
no sound really matters.

the toilet flush and my restless shifting
in your bed did not disturb before, and so i won't
annoy you now with whisper-soft footfalls
or the sneaky hiss and hum of
the refrigerator
when i refill
the ice
for my scotch

although it doesn't stop
me from attempting silence like
the intruder it seems i am when
i see you two curled
around each other
shrimp cocktail
on
your
bed

when four hours ago, i was holding
you.


will the alcohol
do for a sleep aid, or do i
try
to smoke myself into
oblivion?
the tv light flickers
across my book’s pages. tonight is chilly outside
and ideal for the kind of rambling, blind
pacing i plan on engaging in, losing myself up
and down the streets, through your unknown
neighborhood, until my
body is worn and collapsing.
sleep (or not), heavenly fucking peace.




*senior thesis poem.

yes, i realize, at some point, i have no doubt titled another poem (or two) the same thing...
this is the one with "insomniac" as the official title. official, as in published.
to be frank, titles are very fluid with me. i tend to either get stuck on one thing (no matter how bad) or change it countless times. or to pick something randomly, stick it on there, and years later be so confused when i come across the weirdest working titles in the universe. it is, without fail, the very last thing i edit on a poem.

type O[negative] *

october music

settles
her down in her niche,
she feels herself
slip
ping
back in.

hello blood,
razor
blades,
(ohpositive),

wrists,

madness.

sleep
becomes a memory. it does not seem
to matter the little sleep she had
the night
before
was really
passing
out,

coming down
from stimulant, hallucinogen,
depressant,
[mix

liberally].

she tries
not to
sleep. it feels,
more permanent, a
forceful takeover
each morning requires
sys-
tem

shock.

sleep
snatches, terrifies her
here it comes, she can feel

the signs. the middle,
tripfall—this is less certain.
the madness,
an endless thing
takes her over
again.


it will only be
later, through the recollections of others
that she will remember anything at all.





*senior thesis poem

what we do not let ourselves feel

it's to do with fingertips, the travel
on skin
up and down, light enough to
tickle, the hesitance.
it's to do with kisses so soft they
don't even pucker , but brush me
and leave goosebumps
in their wake. it's to do with
being awakened in the night
just to touch and be touched -
the realization that i have been
caressed the entire night through.
it's the new attractiveness of melting,
stuck together with sweat,
that look you give me when i
appear to be paying no attention.
it's to do with what i can feel for
someone silently, on the other end
of the couch, while you burn away
(but keep to your side, to be polite)

it only hurts when i make you cry*

i realize now how much i missed
fingerpainting my blood into
poetry
i am what i am,
insane.
(i do not pretend otherwise)

a warning, of sorts
prophecy, if you will.

i
can’t stand
to see your face
when you fail to tie me
together, helpless against the
bite
of the razors, the
tremor of my hands, the tears or
the haze when
i lose myself.

i do
not get close.

i say it
like a mantra
(someone else will come first)

should
leaving be necessary, my
litany
is well-rehearsed.

my oft-repeated organized flight
into my small,
dark mind where my blood
cements everything,
black is always my color.

i begin to sink
into my wonderland.
take my drugs as i like it,
feel the tingling limbs jerk
in
feeble response.
i am not nearly numb enough, no.
i do not know if i ever will be.
i pull
down
my sleeves
over my slashed arms.
yes,
i do cut and mutilate myself and
no,
it is none of your business.


Stop
Fucking
Staring.



*part of my senior B.A. thesis. yes, i was highly controversial.

i really can't*

love (no, not
at all, not
even a little,
okay, maybe,
maybe i do.) you




*senior thesis poem

unquenchable

this is a pretty predicament,
an ironic note too good
to be kept quiet,
oh why
didn't i see it before. my
cunt has walked me into
another way to shatter my heart.
i will fill my small self
full of bittersweet memories.
i will let you know the capacity,
the meaning of the moments
i carefully hoard.
hand in mine, rub thumb
to fingertip, lips to palm, feel
the pull of warm body
pressed to you, holding
arms, crooked smile.

white quartz dawn

if you have not made the trip then
i cannot give you a clear picture.
the blurry pre-dawn light, your
headlights on and ineffectual -
it is still night for you. you
have not yet slept. you are
fresh from your lover's arms,
skin prickling in the relatively cool air
of the morning, makeup smeared
down your face. your roommates
greet your bleary night face with
morning energy.
eyes blurring, head
pounding with all the reasons
you had to leave and all the
reasons you wanted to fiercely beg
her to let you stay.
the incident
is inconsequential. it does not matter
why you left or why you
could not stay.
the only thing left
is the utter isolation of being
the only person awake from the night before
as the sun streams through your curtains
and the rest of the world awakens, drives
to work and drinks their coffee.

[tweaked and unhinged]

i could speak of blood, but
you have heard it ad infinitum
from me.
i could speak of love, but
i have none to speak of,
save something that flutterwings
around, transparent and intangible
so that even your arms, strong
as they are, cannot cement this,
nor our expectantly fearful faces.
i could speak of loneliness, but
it cannot be described concretely
enough for you to see me
knees drawn up, feet resting on
the sideboards of my bed, i tight
in my corner, four am, the realization
that i will be sleeping alone.
i will not speak of blood, fascinated
though i may be, or of love because
i have no one to speak about.
loneliness one can imagine, or remember.
i don't know why i am speaking,
or about what. i have only two
certainties: my room is too silent,
and i wish you were holding me.

i’ve been marked by better than you*

but suddenly it is your absence
that
bruises me, although my hips
still ache with the insistence of
your touch last night,

and oh,
i have to let this go
i see
the way it plays out.

you left
as the sun was coming
up and i am still not
tired i am
jit tery awake
but
exhausted, knowing that the day
will begin again, in only a few hours.
i am beginning to think
i am meant for
betrayal.




*senior thesis poem

cathedral*

i can't
leave a secret be, i pull myself into
hiding places, the cold wide metal ladder
on the third floor ascending to forgotten
niches
i lose myself in, the hole in the ceiling
leading to boards laid, not nailed
across rafters which lead to
steep wooden ladders, unattached, and rickety
with age.
light filters only
through the supporting framework for the
rose window, the two tiny arched gothic windows
covered by wire to deter
the birds
and bats.
and i sit
on the highest point i can reach, the
narrow walkway slatted with ancient boards, nailed
by long-dead men,
which raise the highest
arch of the interior, the soaring ceiling
i now sit over.

my phone glowing in the dusty
dusk,
i called her, whispered
i miss you
to her recorded voice,
may as well talk
to myself in the mirror, but even
my looking glass is
unreachable.
any private place
may do, but tonight's
the burrow that lies
disregarded
on the top of cathedral arches,
the hole i lie in
to hide the abscess at
my core,
[wholly, holy, holey]





*in my thesis, edited quite a bit, but the original intent is all there.