Take a card.
Get in line.
My love is free if you’re inclined.
I’ve spurned the sun and shunned true love,
I’ve swallowed shit and thrown some up.
I’ve bowed until my back has broke
and all my dreams went up in smoke!
“I’m done, I’m done!” I’ve screamed at God,
and he replied, as he often does,
with stunning silence, striking loss,
‘til all my passion was forgot.
Where you live, I wouldn’t know.
How you are, I wouldn’t know.
If love afflicts you, I don’t know.
You don’t exist. God told me so.
This is what we’ve turned into—
a sip for every kiss wasted on your stupid lips.
But now you want to be my reason to live?
It should be enough that I still exist.
I melt in the sun and you bottle me up,
so tonight, you get drunk and
sing me back into shape.
I cover you in kisses you’d regret to accept,
but the liquor slowly loosens your spine
and tonight,
tonight you are mine.
I love you and I show it with sex.
I am milk left out to spoil;
a water-logged book in the rain.
I bleed ink on your hands and
seep into your pores and
paint your insides black with words.
I am kissing your feet and
removing my rings.
I relinquish my poise and
fall for you—headlong.
I have nothing to offer but
highlighted text and a
cheap fuck.
But letters in longhand from
five states away
won’t betray me.
Not yet.
“It’s good to sea you on the East Coast,”
We toast to new friends, and love, and
reading between the lines.
I struggle to sound like I still understand you—
keep up the facade so you’ll keep me around.
I fake feelings while my mind screams in
jumbles of capitals.
You have trouble meeting my eyes.
And it’s good to sea you, standing there for all you’re worth.
And it’s good to sea you, shredding up my plane ticket.
And it’s good to sea you, looking at me so concerned.
And it’s good to sea you, lost at sea.
It’s good to sea you drowning in me.
Confess secrets that I’ll carry locked tight in my chest
like my car we buried in the lake.
The city that never sleeps is starting to drag on me,
but you kiss me softly over four AM coffee
as we toast to modern technology.
I love you all the time.
Even when your sweet kisses slip off,
get kissed off.
Even when my bed remains empty,
when it’s burdened.
My body is burdened.
Poked and prodded—
dissected.
But you’re the only one who will
have me.
My scientist.
Unburdened and unimpressed.
August is here.
As usual,
I’m waiting on the wreckage-
sitting in my lawn chair on the side of the road;
I saw it coming and did nothing about it.
My mother’s in the kitchen and she’s baking up a storm,
sprinkling regret in the batter and
tainting the taste.
Her cake says I’m fourteen,
but I’ve felt so much older for
far too long.
Father? Well, who knows. Who really cares?
Three years ago today he lived and let die.
It’s not much to talk about; he’s just not around.
Two voices serenade me as I watch flames flicker.
One is hollow with memories, and one too young to recall.
I caught a glimpse of mother’s eyes from over the candles,
and they’re the brightest I’ve seen in years.
I’m not expecting much, I know the bills are due;
I’m careful to look the other way as my mother hides her tears.
This has become her annual shame.
Later with my friends, I’ll
try not to grimace because
these kids can afford to shower me in gifts,
but the man who conceived me sends
a blank card and a bouquet.
Not that it matters, but as
everyone knows, you can tell by the rose;
red means I’m sorry,
and I got pink.
When the words begin to scare you, then you know you’ve got them right.
It’s like a cacophony of voices from somewhere you can’t see. Until you get so paranoid, you start to think your breathing is the sound of someone coming up behind you.
The sun doesn’t even try to find a hole in the clouds.
There’s nothing keeping you here.
Enlightenment
They called me suicidal when I stopped standing on my toes.
When I stopped fearing heaven and resigned myself to black,
I walked without worry of god and found that I loved everything.
They talked me off of ledges that didn’t exist and
bought me those pills that they thought I would need and
I would see my mother in the doorway, watching me feign sleep
and worry etched her features in the harsh light of my enlightenment.
But I’ve seen crowds of people screaming at the sky.
“We just want to be surprised, lord, surprise us!”
And some of them fell to their knees in illumination.
They clutched their hearts and raised their hands to the ceiling,
and they breathed their air so weighty with heaven
and I pitied them, but had no books to show them what I knew.
So I hope they find some peace in god like I find in the chaos.
That they fall to the ground in clarity, or hope, and
someone shocks them with their grace and their goodness.
It’s so easy to get confused, yet so hard to be surprised,
but if this is all there is,
then that’s okay with me.
There is such a thing as “too fantastic” and
I am it—
with my teeth click-clacking and
my toes tip-tapping and
my eyes lit up like a showroom.
I am young and I am brilliant and I’m
so fucking funny.
I am on and I am gushing and
my words tumble out like a
jumble of jigsaw pieces you can’t fit together.
But I’m loud and infectious so you
tuck it away,
sweep it under the rug like the
throes of my lows
and think, “Maybe she’s better.”
And I am— oh I am!
My blood runs hot and the water is cold
when I jump in fully-clothed
and entreat you to drown with me.
And inside we’ll get dry and
you’ll see that I’m fine as
I float straight up through the ceiling.
