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.