The problem is that I hated my life a lot more before alcohol. I still don't like it, but it's tolerable.

When I was a teenager I hated myself. Clean and sober. But what self-respecting teenager doesn't hate themselves. The head cheerleader perhaps. But even she is doubtful at best.

In my twenties I switched from hating myself to hating the world. It was a fun obsession. Endless nights. No sleep. Illegible poetry.

There was a brief period of optimism where I went to computer school. That was no easy task getting my parents to agree to that.

Later, went to Europe. Learned I hate pot. And sailing makes me very sleepy.

Worked for a while. Deadlines make you stronger. Turn soft skin to leather.

Still clean and sober.

I lived pretty much everything there is to live that way. Loneliness. Love. Loss. Aggression. Apathy and ostracism. And all the while I always. Always wished I could be different.

Then one night, purely by accident, I was.

It was jus one beer. But that was all I needed then. To change.

I don't know if I hate the world. Or hate myself. Both probably. For different reasons.

But what I've learned from all of it. The so sober and the not so sober moments is that sometimes, some people are better off not being themselves.

This is how I make it happen.

Backward through the maze. Until every step is negated. All my pain used to be wasted on those who didn't deserve it. Now I just keep it for myself.

It's easier to live in the now, but hard to remember the reason I'm still here.

Can't swim in the desert. Can't walk on the ocean. But the grass always pretends.

I smoke and I drink for pleasure, but all the time I'm waiting for them to make good on their promises and kill me.

Can't draw a picture I've never seen. Can't write what I don't know. But the are so many empty pages.

Emotional dodgeball every time I touch the keys.

There'll always be the ones that aim and those who are targets.

I believe in the balance. The paradox of opposites. No light without darkness.

But there is no balance in that unless sometimes they switch places.

Weighing everything in terms of what is worse is not enough.

It occurs to me I never did have friends. Just strangers under my clothes. I've never had lovers. Only people I've fucked. No relationships. No partners. Just masquerades that lasted long enough I would forget their disguises.

But it's dangerous to look through the keyholes of those locked doors. Nothing but pity painting all four walls.

So arrives some frail messiah to unite the poet and the alcoholic. Turning two feeble liars into one strong truth.

When choice and reason fail to meet people happen.

Reality owns me.

I can never buy myself back.

Time does me no service. Always happening.

The window was draped in a cinnamon cowl as he pulled away. There were voices on every corner like static consuming a broken wire. It began to rain and I looked up through the snarls of hair that had swallowed my face. But mindless traffic was all that greeted me.

Following the sidewalk as far as it would take me I listened to the howling vehicles driving passed. A blizzard of people sweeping over the darkness. Myself, only a shadow marking their fall.

I remembered how I used to like watching the cars float by in their noisy parades. Neat, little people packages on their way to some undisclosed destination. I would always try to figure out where they were going. And if they would ever get there.

Why, yes, I do have an attitude.

And no, you shouldn't like it. It most certainly doesn't like you.

So little drama left.

Wear the truth as your dress and let the lie be your pantyhose.

My life was a cardboard box I left out in the rain.

Now it's just a puddle of useless paper.

No backbone.

No shelter.

Why, yes, I do have an attitude.

So many slipcovers later and still I see the stains.

It seems impossible. Like cold mugs holding hot coffee. But it's true.

It's over.

Cold bustier eyes. All pushed up where they don't belong. Gazing with a simian awe. At everything you once thought yours.

There were mountains in his words. That I was never fit to climb. And deep valleys in his silences that I'd get trapped inside.

Living to feel. Cutting away every callous only to be left with naked bones.


no

skin


Touching the tip of the branch. Always avoiding the leaves. With a cool, spectator smirk he flattered himself that the glass was broken.

The doorknob on his back. The window in his side.

No rooms.

Only empty hallways.

I need to make new friend. Or remember old ones. This stale leotard still clings to my skin. Dance I do. But gracelessly. As the hours overflow the stages I've kept for them.

I need so many things. Most of which I'll never even attempt to have.

The lens focuses, but the shutter refuses.

Life crawling like photographs through the exposure of my blood.

I'd like to know what's become of them. The wither of their winter. The chargrin of their summer.

I'd like to be the cold despot who tells them what page to turn next.

But I'll settle for a footnote.

After we go
to where we have
been, it's then
that the plucked
petal is colored in;

Outlines. So many
empty cages asking
if I want to fit.

Once we know,
if ever we do;
silence spreads
like herpes over
gentle lips;

and we pretend
there is a cure.

Deception suits him. Incredibly well. It's his tuxedo and his bow tie.

Forgiveness is my gown. And my panty hose.

But I'm naked now. Have been ever since.

Kindness was my cape. My emblem. Until I met him.

Sometimes friendship is a rubberband. If you let them they'll stretch it until it snaps.

No ends. Only changes. As those volcanoes spit out the last of their lava. So much damage. Why must I survive.

Crossing. Like roads do. Making intersections lacking stop signs. And on those streets go long after. Alone again. Chasing thankless horizons.

You got the cake, but the icing is mine.

Still, I'll always remember you as feeble. Not vicious.

With a heavy question mark on you shoulder and stalled words on your lips. Whomever you are, I'd like someday to meet him.

Should he ever decide to open those traps he's set.

The other side to all of this is an empty sidewalk. Concrete as ivory as intention without a martyr. I have a million pens, but I can only write with one. The pages labor. Digging their mines deep to find the ores embedded. But invariably, those tunnels collapse.

There is poetry in alcohol. A soft lullaby for an restless tide. A refill for all the ink I've spilled.

When they look. When they stare with callous eyes and pretend to read. As though the living can speak to the dead.

Sometimes, perhaps, if we let them.

But not this time.

In these macabre zoos of stalled inflection. Just animals with words at their beckon.

Growling in jungles so deep they'll never be heard.

The other side to everything is knowing. Who you are to them.

You think you know yourself until you see how they reflect.

Sharp siren grinning loud. Coarse mirror follows me to my shadows.

Until I want only to be blind. And deaf.

Or to show them how wrong they are.

Treat me as a corpse and I will always respond in kind.

There goes my other side again.

The world a spider web. So many ways to be the victim. Angles everywhere offering what could never be had.

Numb.

I like this venom.

Paralyzed. I've been the predator. I'd rather be the prey.

I'd rather lose like this. Than to win the other way.

Beginners. So much refusal. To acknowledge the leaves have fallen.

Can they taste the truth that contaminates my blood. As steadily it multiplies. Surging in the darkness under my skin. A swarm of cockroaches inside these walls.

Nothing.

Everything.

A cold, petroleum kiss. A ripped panties stare. With clenching vertebrae I devoured the pain in their every footstep.

I was only a beginner. And there are so many ways to climb. Or fall.

Learning. Like a pliers to my throat.

So this was my tuition?

Look at me feeling the pain of others again. In my sleep. In my dismal revelry. In every petulant moment I allow to invade my skin.

Trafficking in the empty every life is forced to buy and sell. I am a commodity. Everyone is. They bid and I sell myself.

This tapestry of lost ones is what keeps me warm at night. In their bondage. Be it imposed by self or others. In their grief I become them. Seeing how we are the same. Finding how I knew them even as they wouldn't let me in.

But they bleed where my scabs were long ago cemented. They dream the nightmares I've long ago dismissed.

They once seemed so beautiful. But it's all ugly now. The kind of ugly that reaches deep beneath the flesh.

Pain is only a plaything. Red yarn teasing my claws. Loneliness only a slow mouse. Too easy for this cat to catch.

Let it run. Let it nibble. I'm no longer interested.

Let them hurt. For all the reasons they deem fit. Let them hurt like I did then. Healing my only revenge.

The shadows through the gauze are all I remember. Blurry lies slowly coming into focus.

And now that I have the chance to be your salvation, I'd rather just watch you try to save yourself.

First, do no harm.

Second, remember, what they've done to you.

Open.

Always and never closed.

The sky. The ocean. The moon tethered to both, but without allegiance from either.

Open. Always and never alone.

Triangles. Squares. The circle watches not knowing where its edges are. No corners. No intersections. No visible means of entry or exit.

I am Open.

Always.

And never.

Summer. The height of the tourist season. There she rode. Head up. Lips chasing the music in her ears. Her bike an amber demon writhing between her thighs.

In that chaos of oneway streets and lost minivans she knew just where she was going and exactly how to get there. She'd grin thick ivory tusks as she'd barrel passed all the cars sitting in traffic. Red lights only a caution to her. Stop signs just a suggestion.

I'd watch her on her resting perch. That decaying wooden rail next to the corner diner that rarely opened. She'd stare at the sidewalk for so long. Like she was examining all the footprints of every stranger whose shoes had ever scraped the stones embedded within. She'd reach into her deep, velcroed pockets and give quarters for the meters to people from New York who had just discovered the shore. June through September... this is a business, not a town.

She'd jump the potholes with dire intent. She'd skate so close to their sideviews. With an I know I won't be young much longer look on her face. The brash intensity that only exists in someone who knows their youth is leaving them.

I could see her as she would rise from her saddle. Calves clenching to beat the wind. Smirking at the stencilled smiles on the faces of those she'd pass. Their children running off ahead of them as they labored to keep up with all that baggage on their shoulders.

She always went there for the congestion. For the chaos. To prove to herself she was faster. More agile.

There was so much traffic in her stare as she rode. That amber demon swaying relentlessly between her thighs as she commanded it to move. So many places she was going. She never knew she wouldn't get there.

Those are all valid points, but I can't address them now. My love is too stubborn. My bridge too suspended to permit the luxuries you take for granted.

Your sad eyes say more than enough. The helpless quiver of your arm as it reaches for what is gone.

Your only dilemma. Who took it from you. And why they did.

My only regret. That I never let them know me as I'd always promised. Not that I didn't try.

I remember most the patent in his eyes as he seemed to be copyrighting what we had. Like it mattered that no one else have ownership of those moments we'd found.

It would fail us. Just as everything does. But that I always expected. It was the silence I couldn't resolve.

Whatever he thought I wanted, he gave me too much credit.

Because I could never want that much.

Years later we'd look back and tell ourselves how young we were. But getting older doesn't change who we were then.

One more tumor won't change us when there are so many left.

Gone.

The fabric of his gaze stretching to fit my movements. The arch of my frown. The slope of my grin.

I could feel my eyes turning on that sign. It lighting in a fluorescent stammer. No. No. Yes. Until it was so obvious I had to look away.

I didn't want to be myself then, but he had waited so long to meet the person he'd always imagined I was. In those little capsules of betrayal we'd find so much happiness. I was supposed to want more, but I just couldn't find a way to deserve it. Or believe that his colors were so obvious.

Even if. This is. Even if. What does it matter. I am. We are. So weak. Prisoners of our own flesh. And then it makes us do what we never would. And then it asks us to love like we're dying. And we do. We pretend only days are left to love what it seems we always should.

And these words are what I'm left.

Gone.

The tiger striped of its stripes. Everything I tried not to be proving that I've always been.

Every moment epidemic as we languished in our lust. And love lay there in its womb waiting for us to gestate. But abortion was all we could live with.

I'd rather be empty. Than to highlight the holes in you.

I wanted to be there, but in some other way than I was. Beside him instead of under. The petal, not the stem. I wanted to be him. And then I could make us leave. She'd have the almost. And that would be sufficient.

I'd choke on him when he was gone. And suffocate when he was there. He was so alive I thought he had to be lying.

But he just kept on living. And I kept on dying.

We had so many plans for saving each other. But we only made it worse.

It's always a lopsided argument between myself and I. I don't listen. I don't speak up.

Living peripherally. The edge is the only place I understand.

People wearing their lives like corsets. Tighter and tighter until their confinement becomes them.

Shorthand and long instigating that those ephemeral moments of happiness are all I am. Gone. And forgotten. Insignificant. But happiness means nothing to me. It's just another god that failed to listen.

Stark quotations from the base board to the ceiling. Time is linear, but memory curves. A snake in its basket dancing through the lid.

The air tiptoes around my halcyon isolation. Not waking me, but crawling inside what I dream.

There are no alternatives to consider. There were no choices. Only different routes to the same destination.

The cupboard closes softly. With a muted thud. So what of those boxes. All in strains of yellow cardboard. Salt and wheat decaying inside.

I'm not asking to be seen. Or heard. Or even acknowledged. The hour cocks its weapon and my feet move without my permission.

Straining the bindings. Listening for the snap. Parting those pages until everything inside spills out helplessly.

I could've kept reading, but the story was over. And I already knew the girth of the cover's lie.

Could've left that one over. For tomorrow. Or the next night. But I always want to believe such a time will never come.

It's difficult when you open the cupboard and see so many boxes to comprehend that they're all empty.

I hear the colors. Taste the music. Listening in shades of blue. For the sound of resilience.

There they are. Grey as ghosts. Making deals with perspective to let them see a little less. While all my reds are beginning to overflow.

There we were. Dressed in the sounds of the flesh. All the shades of its spectrum changing me.

I see in red.

It's too bright sometimes. So I keep the lights off and paint pictures with the sounds. Car engines and closing screendoors. Stairs being walked on and distant sirens.

All the noises look like life. Moreso as I listen listen in blue. From the darkest navy to the lightest pastel. The colors speaking. The sounds showing as I listen in from my red.

Watching the cursor dance.

Talking to the words. Sometimes. Sometimes they will listen. Photographs in black and white. Too polaroid. Cavernous greys. Paper thin people.

They never move. Never change at all until I stop looking.

Stealing from each other with every silence. All that's lapsed between crawling like ivy over every face of this building. It used to be the eyes, but now it's just the skull.

Watching the cursor dance.

Thinking somehow it can listen. With worn crayons that betray their colors. And those edges too close to what is drawn.

I look for the lips, but they could be anywhere.

Now that we're dealing in mannequins. Plastic arms still comfort somehow. While fingers fused together attempt to hold.

Turning the hour on its side. So that it might breathe a little better. Through its illness. Tomorrow yields such different results than my equations suggest. I never know whether or not it's mistaken.

Drawing the outline in fleshy inks. As our bodies dissect the darkness.

It was already dead when we found it.

We didn't want to learn, but it wanted us.

Watching the cursor dance.

Knowing it decides what I will know. Who I will be when I wake up and am left to read this. Alone.

Sinking the drill into holes already dug. So much love in the world. Always wasted on those who already have it. And just want to keep what they think they own.

The truth on its perch like a vulture. Following that trail. Swallowing everything that led to.

Open legs spilling life out like jelly slipping off the knife.

Watching the cursor dance. It could listen if I let it. Vomit me inward until I was whole again.

Play every record backward until I hear the devil call my name again.

And then I would get in line. Watching the cursor dance.

Begging it to listen. Knowing it can't.

We leave no tracks. If we're lucky. There's no way to go back again. Relive the miscarriage.

Collecting the blood a spoonful at a time. As if it could feed us. Or that we could catch what falls from it. As it pours generously from sores that remain infected.

Watching the cursor dance.

Asking it. Always asking. Knowing it hasn't any answers.

There are dimensions to this shadow. There is survival. Its bloated tongue wagging. So neglected. There is shame. The face of it so long. Endless brow imposing experience. Memory. As saccharine as it is acrid. Now that I have enough of them to know I've lived.

Not just been born. Or survived.

There is reception. Glossy and dismal. Heavy dials on old radios. This search crackles at every interval as I pause to listen. To see if the signal is adequate.

Reach me.

It's not good always being the hunter. I need to be the prey sometimes. If only to remember how to hunt again.

Slip the blade between then and now. Pull the fetus from its empty womb. Kill it.

Either start over.

Or bring it all to an end.

My eyes follow the moon while my fingers cup the clouds. Wearing their shadows. Trying on their skins one hair at a time.

I see the lines. See the road. But I don't know why it's there.

Ricocheting off into the horizon's deep cleavage until vision proves unfit.

To show me where I am. Where I am going.

Or if there is any place left to go.

It drains slowly. Feeling it only as a clock ticking outside myself. Grease the griddle. The eggs are beginning to split.

I know they are different. See the path of their orbits dusting the sky. I know we are different .Every breath I take wears its shroud.

Graves sprouting like dandelions throughout the grass.

The full, yellow promise turning to gossamer spores. Breathe. Release the seed.

Racing the wind for dominance. This is life. As I know it.

Burning cigarettes balancing on full ashtrays. Naked windows collecting the skins they've discarded.

Strange lights invading everything but the dark corners.

I don't want.

Don't want to be different anymore.

I just want to be the same.

Stitching demons with needle and thread. Long capes that shatter the wind. Deep inseams flowing into utter darkness.

Some tragedies are eligible for grief. While others stand in line. Hours. Days. Months pass and they never receive their bread. Because distribution is contingent upon frailty and expectation. We're always falling. But we don't always break.

He told me to believe, but I didn't listen. Disappointment's varicose thoughts all I could accept as they throbbed in my skull.

I don't believe in believing. I need proof. And so I look for, but seldom find evidence for their truths.

Something told me I should let him. A carefully placed missive in an otherwise perfect sentence.

So I did.

Plushed up my tail and let him chase it. Until fur lay everywhere.

The benefactor of his loneliness. The queen to his empty throne.

We poached the darkness to extinction.

It must've meant something because I still write about it.

I should've been sad when he was gone, but I wasn't. It was all too easy to let him leave. Because for every moment I loved them I spent twice as long knowing they never could.

It's a fluid transmission. From knowledge to acceptance. Like the way the sun has completely vanished from the sky before we even notice it is dark again.

The plane boarded and she was lost. It didn't have to take off. She was already gone. There's no going back to before the end.

I couldn't take her home. And I couldn't take her away with me. Because I'm always going nowhere. Always looking for a place that just isn't there.

No shortcuts to the keyboard. Stabbing adjectives until they bleed. Living life inside my head. It's doubly confusing when it's real.

No hops combusting against innocent brain cells. To turn our natural enemies into allies for this battle. Just the arbitration in her stare as she swallowed her departure.

It's not letting go. It's acceptance.

pulling up the tracks only to watch the train still barrelling over the empty spaces.

It's not a metaphor when I say that I've set the alarm. And I expect it will wake me up at the designated time.

It's just an acknowledgement of the fact that life make us. Not the other way around.

There are not enough pillows in the world to make that bed soft again.

So many words. And for what. To be ignored again.

So many wrinkles in those sheets. For what.

As many times as I shed this skin, still it grows back.. Thicker than ever.

Long ago they would've broken me. But these days they scarcely make a dent.

I long for the angles so sharp. The ladders so unfair. One step at a time. Until we fall again.

I need to feel again, but I can't find any reason to in the people I have left.

I almost miss. Almost miss sometimes how well it hurt to feel them.

What's a cloud without rain. What's a sun without its set.

Too easy. Too reliable.


There's always that moment when the stairway begins to move. The engines begin to whirl and we must acknowledge our powerlessness.

There's not tragedy in wishing you could've loved them better.

Only in knowing you never tried.
I can't be like that.

So we didn't smoke. It was like being at the movies sans the popcorn. I'm supposed to be angry. And outraged. But that's so passe by now. Bit by bit they chip away at that boulder called freedom. So slowly that no one notices.

She starts calculating the tip before we've even placed our orders. She likes to be prepared. She likes paying in cash and not having to wait for change. She prefers putting her leftovers into the styrofoam herself.

You go out for a meal and you come back with something else altogether different. The sneaking suspicion that you've read this story before. And you've been living it longer than you ever thought.

Big Brother. I'm in the swimming pool again. Time to push me under.

She's so soft. I worry I'll break her. Or that I'll tire of my snarling and let someone else do it. She's so delicate. I don't want to tear her, but I might. All these razors that burst suddenly from my flesh. Are difficult to retract. It takes so much concentration to love someone.

She's worth it.

I wouldn't bother. What would be the point. Stab the callous to feel nothing still. Except the warm waterfall of blood as it cascades over dead skin.

I never have been able to voice my feelings. So I write. It's a double standard. Men who write poetry are presumed to be sensitive and thoughtful. Women who do the same, whiny and malcontent.

We are as females expected to express our feelings orally. Yes, orally. In more ways than one.

I wouldn't say that it's too late. Just that it was never the right time. The minute hits me and all I can do is watch it explode. Collect the pieces after.

There's ugly in everything. If I look close enough. And beauty too. Yes, I see it. I'm still here, aren't I.

There's the nest full of fledglings high in a tree. One at a time mother will push each of her children out of it. Not all of them will fly.

It chafes close to the skin. In words that don't listen. I'm not young anymore. I know this so well. There they go thinking they're better. Because we let them. We're women. So submissive. So fragile. So needful of the sperm they provide.

Come fill me with another life.

Come teach me how to multiply. Because there is not enough of me. Because I'm full of holes and only you can rape the stairs in a way that will prove I still possess what they call my life.

Shoot the bullet. Kill me with life.

Plug the hole.

I wish I could be that weak. Make them love me.

So much the girl, never the life.

So the hour. But not the time.


I couldn't love them anyway. How they look at me. As if I'm still alive.

How they stare. Like there's a skirt around. Like they can file that hole. When it's mine.

It's always been mine to own.

No loaded shotguns. No triggers under their thumbs. My bullets. My dolls with their empty dresses. My dolls. With their plastic skin.

Don't make me whole. Just remind me. Remind me how near I've come..

A quiet place to die. That's what this is. Fucking river. I have plenty of paddles. No boat.

A lonely place to die. This is. Myself the cage.

I swim. I'm always swimming. There's no land.

They're all just fire engines after the building is burned down. They're just ladders after the stairs have collapsed.

Why. Why would I try to go up there. Just to fall again.

Embrace the bottom. Lose the mirror. It all looks the same.

Fucking river. So many paddles. No boat.

I'm floating. But there'll be no more swimming.

The land. It lies. It's always shifting.

So why give it the satisfaction of fooling me again.

These ugly hours have no name. Falling on the sill like mysterious raindrops. The sky is melting.

It feels so right.

All the real gone from the world. We were sails without a mast. Puddle of fabric imagining we could capture the wind.

We went nowhere so fast.

I want to go nowhere again.

His shorts like a dress. His skin like a boot. Always stepping. Stepping into or out of it.

Numbers in her throat. Adding and subtracting truths.

Choking on her long division.

Friends. Always friends. Friends without faces.

There was summer in every stroke. Hot and gradual. As it sweated out the last of her strength.

And numbers. Always numbers in her every swallow. A decimal away from whole.

The pleats in his knees. The soles of his skin. Covering her face in footprints.


The owl in the treetops can only ask. Shrouded in shadows and foliage. Bellowing its haunting question as she put the numbers to bed.

It only asks at night. But she imagines it in the daytime. And resumes her counting again.

Who?

Choke down the fractions and let it be dark again.

Incomplete suits me just fine.

It will always ask.

That's because it doesn't know what I always have.

She has a dust rag in her hand. A husband on her shoulder. She has to stoop to see the sun. Because he'd always bent down to see everything.

It worked as any machine would. Doing what it was told. Extracting motions from those around. Until every wave had dissipated.

Only then would it try to find an alternate source of combustion.

Like the alley cat. Like the lost dog. It wants a home, but knows not how such a thing might exist.

It's not hard to live. Just hard to admit that you never really wanted to.

They'll tell you how lost you are. But never provide a logic for their rightness.

They'll say they're happy, but I'll never believe them.

Because no one is.

We just want to live because we don't know what else there is to do. Or how much more it might hurt us.

The clock chimes. Somehow it's tomorrow again.

We imagine ourselves alive, but we don't know at all what it means to live.

Worshipping this midnight because all those other gods never listened.

I've never been a rabbit. Re the race. Not that arrogant.

Nor a tortoise. So steady. It's laughable.

Maybe they know, but I see doubt in their grin.

Maybe they're old enough, but I've seen no indication. I just held the bark tight to my chest as the saw buzzed. They said I should fall, but I wasn't ready yet.

I don't know what they wanted.

But I do know how hard it was to say no.

I'm talking to myself again. she's someone else. caterpillar in my cocoon. wings about to sprout.

so many people i've been. she's only one, but i miss her the most. especially when it's time to be strong again.

She was, but I'm not.

Talking to myself as if I'm listening. There's lightning, but no thunder. Far away storms echoing in distant lives. Making strangers friends. Proving time is my greatest vice.

Talking to myself. In numbers. How little. How much. In rhymes. Closer to the truth than I want to be tonight.

Thinking she knows me. And I her. But these words between us only widen the gap.

It's like she's leaving me, but won't let me go. Like she's the splint for what is broken, but I prefer the crutch.

Talking to myself. She wants to heal me. She's so naive. There's no nice way to tell her we'll never be each other again.

She wants to heal us, but I like us better when we're sick.

Pulls her hair back and says it's incidental. Everything is. Millions of molecules just to make one tear. Twirls a strand around her finger and stares at my feet.

Where have you been?

There was always mud on my shoes. It's only just now that you're noticing it.

She starts a braid and doesn't finish it. I offer her a rubberband, but she doesn't want it.

Pulls her hair back again and changes the song. Says she wants something loud and fast. Devoid of melody. Like she used to listen to when she was young.

And Angry.

And Certain.

That everything was changing.

As fast as she was.

Finishes her braid and asks me when it stopped.

I don't know.

Somewhere between the beginning and the end there's all this middle. You keep walking, but it sticks to your shoes.

Incidentally, I'm not so sure I want to change anymore.

Or that I ever did.

But watching her draw those small braids in her hair I realized how subtle change often is.

He could be so loud. Occasionally it made me listen. More often it just seemed pompous.

Fatted calf with the blade at its chin. So many sermons on not wanting to die. But he never could see how hungry the world is.

The hour sold me short. I had so much more I wanted to do with it. Us. Then. Him. No plans, but so many destinations.

What wounds there were quickly healed. His blade was sharp, but he didn't press too hard.

I sometimes wish he had cut deeper. Or at least tried to. What is skin without some ugly scars. Just draperies on hollow bones. Windows that never open.

For once I didn't want to be pretty. Wasn't wishing that I could. For once ugly was comfortable.

Beautiful even.

Of all the ways there are to hate yourself, this is the one I like best.

Bitten tongues chasing words too agile. Stiff shadows miming the bodies that frequent them.

I wanted. I wondered what it must be like to know that it didn't have to hurt to feel something.

Guess I'll never know.

Nothing but the bottom.

In tangled verses. And empty pants. Their skin puddled at the foot of the bed as I wear their skeleton.

I wonder what it feels like to be sure. Close the door behind them and know it will open again.

I never saw him. Besides the face. Terminals without a connection. The static danced. Time choking itself. Dark fists everywhere. Swimming in the sheets. Drowning in the mattress.

Bold anchor pumping out its shape against all that pressure.

Nothing but the bottom.

And everything above it.

There's nothing to see except heaven when the only place to look is up.

Doesn't mean you've found it.

The angle held her tight in its grasp. A bitten fingernail just about to bleed. The skin waiting for the perfect moment to break.

Reveal.

Intrinsic weakness. The red follows every sigh with a hungry pen.

He wore nothing and everything. That cold masquerade. His monster donning him. I would watch his eyes blinking through the holes jadedly cut in that jittery mask. Follow the shadows as they conducted their silent symphony. Try to hear the music.

I always thought I saw. Those pigeons on the window sill. Thought I heard simply because I'd listened.

But those were different rooms. Different voices.

This box still waits to be opened.

With every color. In every strand. It waits. For someone to remove the lid.

Reveal.

All that's been hidden.

Devour the curtain. Beat the stage. Stripping every last role down to its victim. And then. Maybe then. We will remember who we were.

If we ever knew.

Floating on the moment. Chalkboard skin exhales sharply with every word you put on it. It's true. How old we are now. How young we were then.

I taste the karma in every breath. Its bitter wine pumped into my blood. Makes me nauseous. Makes me content with my sickness.

In my world your every thought was paper. Every wall wore it. It was all I could see for so long. The sun never set. It just blinked and suddenly life was over.

There are too many hours. Plagued with when. Too many minutes. Infected with if.

Not to begin again. Burnt match sticks won't ignite. Not to go back. Revisit that charred kindling. See how little is left.

Just hours. So many hours that sit in the bank and yield no interest. Counting. Always counting the minutes.

Lovers forgetting this echo of who. Friends disinterested in this sour apple.

Walls not withstanding, it's all so typical.

The shadows that lured them here caused them to lose sight of what it was they thought they saw.

I'm not empty just yet. But I may as well be when you listen, but don't want to hear.

You try to take me like a picture, but I'm the one with the lens.

Turn off the auto focus. Learn how to see me again.

I'm here. Right where you've always been looking.

I'm here.

Being myself again.

I had to let them go.

Again.

The first time to see if they will come back to you. The second to teach yourself that they won't.

Every day the leaving is a little easier. Turn those pockets inward. Holes and all.

Up the stairs. And down them. The only difference is what I carry with me when. Shedding shadows. Not wanting to see the light. Because I remember how dark it was to see for the first time.

And we all fall down.

No one to put us back together.

Isn't that his gun. Aren't those his bullets. The shadow in the bushes as the eggs begin to hatch.

I wish I knew why it hurts even when it doesn't have to. Or how I could learn to dislike it.

Start over. Stop the sperm. Warn the egg. Tie the tubes.

Living is one abortion after another.

Where to bleed and how much the only mystery.

Isn't that the trigger. Grinning again. Thirteen loops to make it authentic. Count. Count like you care. It has to be real this time. No fade to black. No rolling credits. Just over. Empty seats. Stale popcorn left.

Fallen ticket stubs full of strange fingerprints. As the aisles clear. As the lights come up.

This blank screen longs for an image.

Pissing words. I used to watch from a distance. Sleepy feet still turning pedals. Went too far, now I must drag myself home.

Like at a museum. There it hung guarded by velvet ropes. A painting so long ago created, yet the edges still wet. I don't think they'll ever completely harden.

Too few colors. That's what it was. Plenty of shadows, but not enough pigment.

Only the frame most notable. Distracting from the absence within it was meant to indulge.

I didn't want to own it. But I did feel compelled to add to it.

He can call it finished all he wants, but I know that it isn't.

Moving graceless through that breezeway he called his personality I watched. Not enough stairs I thought. Wine not aged enough. Pink piss trying to pass for alcohol.

We are not intoxicated. Not in the least.

I dug my hands deep into his fists. Exactly where the X had been marked. I dug until the shovel fell apart. Only empty boxes have I to show for it. Bottle cap pyramids. So much glue. That stole my fingerprints. And songs that never used to mean anything so tempestuous now.

So ready to fail again. Reap the grief I have sown. Stitch by fetid stitch the costume comes into focus.

No need for masks. Other than the ones below the skin. Peel them away. Eyes and noses and chins. Unbraid the muscles. Reveal the skeleton.

Only an echo of the form I once took. Liquid bones spilling as I stumble closer to where I've always been.

I began killing myself so long ago. And have been haunting myself ever since.

Of the seven stages of dead, by now, I must be close to the sixth.

I can't sleep alone anymore. Back bent over that iceberg.

Leaving is the only thing that lets me stay. Not that I want to, but I don't know where to go. I press my chest to the pitchfork til it makes shallow holes. I need a big boulder. More weight. This death is slower than the one from before.

My breathing, it's the slow hiss of air escaping a tire. Through a tiny puncture.

This will take too long.

Suicidal narcissist.

My thinking, it's the gurgle of an almost empty engine.

There are no rest stops left.

Lost. Depression. Only excuses. Underground railroads to escape.

Alcoholic poet. Suicidal narcissist. Darkness comes to me for advice. Pain is my protege.

I can't sleep alone anymore.

Time to wake up.

There are my glasses as they float above my nose. In calm resistance to the changes the world implores. Like losing your virginity all over again. Entering that portal where time expands and minds are shrunken. One thought at a time.

Creating the world to diminish our fears. Creating a world that adheres to our judgment. In every way that it relates to how we are the center of it.

I wanted to know them. No further expectations. I tied the shoe and hoped it would let me run.

Several poems later I looked upon my progress. Knowing it was none. Just the reticulations of angles already solved. All my visions dated by my own reluctance.

Writing the sad words of crippled hearts. As if on crutches I could never climb those mountains. Cooing the sad words of little girl hearts. As if they could transition me to.

But everything I learned I learned with a bottle in my hand. Everything gone tolerable now because.

I don't care.

It still loves me.

He stared at me with a chlorine gaze. I felt so faded. That I'd been in that moment some time in the past. Somewhere I'd once found myself lost, but had long come to believe I'd escaped. It was much too late for pompous hearts to be hocking their knock-off wares.

I examined every inch of that apple, but could find no evidence there had ever been a stem.

Or maybe it's just looking back that I make myself so much more astute. There is no naivete in memory. Nor damsels in distress. Paper dresses in the rain.

Just moments. So many moments landing gracefully like butterflies alighting on open hands.

The apple I bit reluctantly. But bit it still the same. It was candy-coated. A trick question. Couldn't get it wrong or right. Just a taste of something I might never taste again.

There's no sin, only instinct leading on us along the paths of its pendantic parades.

And the core at the center of all that sweet flesh concealing its poison. Poison, so vilified most by those who crave it.

No need to know what is true. That mirror only pretends. With gated abstracts that tether the feel of the real as it ignites our skin. Every flame burns no matter how small it is.

You lose. Only lose when you want to. This is the worst of knowing. Every defeat my own.

His chagrin a garland around my throat. The sharp tinsel of obviousness forcing me to look again at the empty under the tree. No gifts.

Just morning in all its stark appeal.

Telling me without so many words that I shouldn't want what I've never had.

The gypsy in her spell. The autumn in the leaf.

As it silently crashes to the ground.

The steadfast whims of frenzied lovers and born-again alcoholics. So much lost. So much still to lose before I'm finished.

I make these notes in the morning. Microscopic scribbles feigning inspiration. In black ink that rubs against my smallest finger. In my scheduled sobriety.

I twist the caps off bare-handed and jump at the pop. The poison rushing out in a thunder. The lightning cracking in my head. I am my own bottle opener. The callouses confirm.

I make those notes in the morning and by night they're already faded. During my bouts with sobriety I imagine words that might be mine. Imagine myself turning philips head phrases with slotted screwdrivers.

Doesn't the art always turn on the artist? Become his enemy. Drawing gods on torn paper. When the ink is gone this blood will do. Where my affliction is peace. When my muse is gone only then will I change.

Isn't that what we are. Kites being flown amongst so many trees. The long tail with its slutty bows lapping at the breeze. Alluding to a flight long since over.

Looking to those notes then taken as my perpetual oblivion ensues. Abandoned first by myself. Second by them. I the substance and it the user.

Is this art both my devil and my god. To hell I chase it. And to heaven it takes me.

Am I not broken by my own willingness to be. Because this is the tunnel I've always been digging.

Both below and above.

I know only this. I am neither worse nor better because. Only more inspired.

It had to happen. I just didn't know when.

The bed was on her like a thick leather coat. She squirmed inside it. It squeaking with her every movement. She wanted to be naked, but she couldn't take it off.

Not the sheets. Nor the pillows. Or anything they remembered.

He stared at the ceiling and listened to the song. Every chord punching him in the face.

She'd wiggle and the bed would sing, but he didn't care for that song.

The world was out there. Just as they'd left it. Bleating loud like a sheep cut off from its herd. She knew this, but it would have to be a task for later.

First she had to get him off the bed. So she could get it off of her. Then she'd have to tend to the ceiling. Cleanse his thoughts from it.

Where he'd stare she would look, but never see. Where he'd bleed she would bandage, but never taste the blood.

A cloud conjoined to its rain.

She quickly lashed a tiny braid into her hair and asked him what he thought.

He answered only with a glance in her direction. Passive. She knew. She was certain the bed that wore her was all he could see. That it wasn't clothing anymore. It was skin.

The ceiling's eyes looked down on them not blinking. And for the first time in her life she truly felt naked.

Don't I facilitate this anger. Erecting these liquid bridges. The hours so much my own that it seems no one else could exist.

The villain now a victim of the crimes once committed.

Are we not born old hoping to be young again. Awaken those soft petals. Stiffen these flaccid stems.

Turn the pillow over. Find the face beneath it. Soggy and creased.

It is alone we are born into and what we strive to escape.

Pain dots the sky in ample resonance. We're always listening, but seldom hear.

The hour bends graciously to let me remember what once I was. Soft soldier with an angry trigger. Green private with a grey, grey gun.

Roll up those sleeves. Dig deep into the silence until you're covered in.

We are so alone.

So helpless against ourselves.

The more we know the less we learn.

I am not yellow. Just a shade different. Come look. See.

The puce in my expression. The relief in my submission.

I know just what I am. Always have been.

Tiger without teeth. Jaws lacking fangs. Biting down so hard, but no flesh is ever broken.

Isn't it the hour, not the minute, that makes the portrait whole. Sucking on her like a burning cigarette. So afraid the ash will drop before you've finished.

Was there nothing there. Or is there nothing left.

The empty bottles provide an answer. But her smirk asks a different question.

So young I was then, though I didn't know it. Just trying on the overalls. Adjusting the straps. Draped in so much denim and still feeling naked. Just learning the zipper. Realizing how powerful it could be.

The lure of down. The strength of up. I could've controlled them. Or at least myself. But it was too soon after just having discovered how young I was.

The decisions I gave away to strangers. The hurt I welcomed.

What more was there to want.

I looked closely at it. So sure it had to be looking back.

But it never was.

Shave the first layer of skin from the moment. This rusty badge is all I have left to wear. Pin too close to the skin.

He just mouthed the words. Didn't say them. But I still heard.

The pattern is there. I've always worn its plaid. In criss-crosses too even. Bleeding thoughtless into each other. Hardly aware. Of how near they are.

I just gripped the bat tight and swung. No ball in the air.

It's always that way.

No real target.

I didn't say anything. Shivering under a mountain of blankets. I knew I shouldn't still be cold. But I was. So what could I say to him.

Admit I was born missing pieces.

I couldn't do that. I just wanted to keep watching him as he tried to find them.

Spread my fingers. Gripping the void. It's easy to lose. Just try. It's not hard being broken until you see someone who's whole.

Sermon satisfied.

Pain my umbilical cord.

Friends are like a mirror. Lovers even moreso. That's why it's so hard to look at them.

Close my eyes. Imagine the scissors. Blades licking each other until everything is in pieces.

All connections severed.

Myself no longer there.

Nothing left except the ether still displaced by my former silhouette.

They can see the bottle in my hand, but not what's inside of it. The hours. All the hours dying. Me, hoping that they would..

My heart's silent gasp. The statue is hollow. The monument a fraud.

They see the bottle. The thickening tide. But they can't see inside it. The darkness it once parted coming back together.

They think I'm emptying. Being overtaken by. They don't see the darkness in me filling it.

Myself no longer there.

The bubbles know. Friday's almost here. It never listens. Or even tries to.

The past tugs on the present. Plastic braids steal my curls. And I'm not different anymore. Swimming in the sheets. Steering the pillows. Watching everyone else running under their checkered flags.

I hate these pit stops. How long they take.

The truth is there is no truth. Only the geometry of choices. The angles that determine where we'll meet. The distance and the arc in our trust.

I will be the rook and you can be the knight.

Checkmate something. Anything that isn't us.

Following the curve of the clover. Measuring the length of the ark by the depth of the flood.

It's always raining. Always.

But it still rains more when I don't know where you are.

Sometimes I will try to look. But there's so much distance.

I know what we are. Every wrinkle in this leather skin as we peel it off the steer.

The slope of survival infers my triumph and my treason.

Wearing your Archimedes grin. Yes, you have found me.

Again.

My Pontius. My Pilate. My verdict.

To lose myself in my vitriol. Condemning not myself. Only them.

It's better when it hurts. Old witch hazel on fresh wounds. Peel away the gauze. And all the scabs that have grown on it.

Spill.

Over and under.

Flow.

I am a river red. It moves these words. Scrape the edges. Staining them.

It'd be so much better if you could still hurt me. Your soft eyes cutting me in half.

It'd be better now, if someone could still do that.

Make me human again.

Give me your word and I will take it. I'll never give it back.

I stood beside the smallest increment. Judging, constantly misjudging it. It crackled. His hungry cellophane skin. As I made wrinkles everywhere.

We slept in the stove, but always woke up in the freezer.

Sometimes though, there's no preserving.

He said I was different. Tell me something I don't already know. He said I fancied myself a mystery, but that he'd long since figured out who the murderer was.

And it wasn't the butler.

Who then, I pressed, with beer as my backbone.

He just grunted and huffed I should know by now that it mattered to him.

So I asked, which way are you turning the screw?

And when he didn't understand the question I knew the answer.

Denim eyebrows. Satin cheeks. She's rigid, yet smooth.

Subliminal quotations roiling about her brain. Experience is the evidence. Time is the jury. And I am the crime.

It's only just begun, but it already feels like it's over.

The avenue. Driven not to; by. Skin pudding. Drowning in it.

Molecular treason. The base to its acid is drawn. Changed. And both are exposed. Former and aft.

My renaissance. Earnest pedals. Arboreal winds. Further and further still until I am near again. Faces like flash bulbs going off. Freezing the moments and blinding me.

For a few laps I was able to outrun myself. And then it was over.

Drought.

This the barter is. Hour for hour. Symptom for symptom. Red price tag on a white, white dress. As it flows between her thighs like wind against leaves too ready.

This is the sound. Solace grinding its teeth. Biting down on the rawest parts of the meat. The hunger swelling beneath loose clothes. As her shoulders drop and the fallacy relents.

Wearing life as a blouse. Buttons and holes mismatched. Tuck it in. Adjust the collar. It still won't fit right.

Flow the sleeves in smooth ripples as how it is to remember. Certainty discarded. The smooth yellow spikes that denial forged. A telegram was all there was between yourself and her, but it was sound enough.

Cool terminals transmitting heat with every cycle. Effortlessly redundant.

Armor abandoned for a taste of that steel.

No wood. No disguise.

Just to welcome defeat.

It doesn't take much to move that feather. Breathe in and it draws nearer. By instinct. By design. Breathe out and it recedes. Tracing the orbit of pale reverence. At what is the filthy truth wherein I bathe myself. The hour. So sharp as it draws across thin skin. The minutes. Frenzied needles moving like pistons.

I like to remember. Picture what I still can. A cheekbone in mid-swallow. A fingertip about to breach. A zipper coming undone. Be the lamb to their lion indefinitely. The cloak of lust slowly parting to reveal humanity.

So empty. And yet incandescent. The vacuum of potential light that draws all atoms close to it. Close enough to reveal what was always there.

Tepid skin houses hollow thoughts. Every word was smoke. From a fire long extinguished. Every touch a whisper of what long ago might've been.

For a while I thought he was lost. Until I found him. Buried treasure full of plastic jewels.

There are those that are armani. And those who only think they are. Imagining themselves to be better than the other clearance items with which they share that rack.

But the same five dollars will buy any of them.

The soulmate for whom he searches has always been there. Every time he looks at himself.

I dug through a blizzard of pages to find the girl that got buried in them. And discovered she was not near as frozen as the people she thought she should love.

This skin is only a curtain on rooms they may never see.

I wish I could be like him. So consumed with others' imperfections that I never notice my own.

If life is as precious as they tell themselves, how then do they justify treating it so poorly.

Many women will love him for everything he isn't.

But none will ever love him for who he really is.

Listen as the moment pauses to let us breathe again. Listen as I fall into you, lost, but wanting it.

Every instance challenges what I believe. What I've come to accept.

No beginnings. Only ends.

No hours except for the one where I am alone.

Listen as the words stutter from my fingertips. Knowing they will never grasp what it is they've tried to touch.

A six pack of what's and a couple shots of how later it was all over. I wanted it to be terminal, but I knew it wasn't.

I didn't mind being used. Just the fact that I like it then. That I couldn't think of anything better to do with myself. Or any reasons why I shouldn't be a victim.

The years would make tracings and overlays. It's only pencil afterall. Not hard to undo. Thin paper. Enough to see through. How hard could it be to let it go.

The truth would try to tell me so many times before I would finally take off my headphones and actually let it speak. It's not that it's hard. It's that it too easy to lose. Again and again. Tell them it's what you wanted because it's not lying if it's what you expected.

Tell them you want to be alone. And sometimes you do, but not always. Not to leave them, but to offer them the chance to go.

Listen quietly. Let them tell you how it is. How you knew it was. It's not the picture that is hard to see. Not the shadows that are hard to look at. It's the lack of color. All that gray in their stare.

Like when they look at you an outline is all they see. Nothing solid. Nothing whole.

Just another channel that they're changing.

Except for me, it never changes, no matter how many times it threatens. It never does anything at all except remind me that I'm not like them.

It's not that I wanted to be. Just that I've never had the chance.

After hours. When the vault is closed. We count the wealth we remember having seen as it passed through us. Pressing our ears to the steel until they feel frozen. Chanting silly rhymes as we skip imaginary ropes.

The small denominations, you can hear them. They each have their own songs. But the big bills. The real riches don't make any sound at all.

What we have, not really ours. Placeholders. Shadows in empty vaults.

I never thought life would be better than this. I just never thought it would last this long. That I would let it.

I know the definition of both addict and of recovery. And the closer I look, the more similar they seem.

After hours the vault is sealed and everything we think is ours becomes someone else's.

Fine. Just regular hate then.

Lingering in the lobby. Waiting for that cruel elevator. Life. Plenty of floors in the building. Not enough places.

Pressing the buttons. Numbers and all. As if those places could be named. As if once you'd been there you could return again. Enter the code and reclaim all that is gone.

Or never was.

the vine. The grape. no wine.

Bitter enough to rearrange this face.

Imagining how I know them. Wondering if they ever did.

Knowing the answers is not enough. Give me the question.

I miss how it feels. How it wastes in my hand. That dying snowlfake as the season passes. And those lies befriend us. Waving like pale flags at the top of their poles.

Telling us we were lucky to have known.

Maybe we were.

It's only paper afterall.

I didn't want to lose them, but I couldn't let them keep me.

If you will not hear what I have to say you should not read it. It's a cautious stalk of solitude I grow on now. The flower dies. The leaves remain. Pointedly drinking the sunlight as though still they were in possession of this thing called life.

It's hard to look at the world. Shaky sketches in loose ink. Cutting the paper. Peeling away its white, white skin.

I don't like them, but they foul me with their drug. So shallow. So relentlessly human. They lie to themselves so much they don't realize they're lying to everyone.

The want defiles them. In perfect precision. So ugly that they're beautiful. Lost causes. Second, third chances gone. Ego their only friend.

The world has so much mercy for liars there's none left for the honest.

Soft dominoes tumble through her mind. A black and white mosaic of how one fall precipitates an endless array of them. So terribly reactive is the mood and the desire. As they circle each other for tells and for weaknesses. Hammer the bell. Raise the microphone. It's only round one of a fight to the death.

Most people say "Have a nice life" sarcastically. But I don't. I never do.

There's sometimes this stage fright staring at the empty box. Can't keep everything. It's important to choose carefully. Not so much the words. They're transient. But what they'll mean. Not just now, but later, when it's time to clean again. Decide what to keep. What I want to keep. And what I only wish I could've.

It's not like I ever tried to be something I wasn't except for when I tried to be what they'd want. And then I'd wonder why I'd failed at being someone else. Because you can't reason with poetry. Can't tell it not to hurt when it does.

It's not as though anyone really has a nice life. Though some may be better than others.

They're all a series of dominoes. Some just get knocked down more often.

Fair temptation in her yellow dress. Sheer and shimmering above the glow of tender skin. Dances the needle as it writes words never spoken.

There were actual nightmares. The monsters were as real as monsters have ever been. I'd wake up with the images. And fall back asleep to them.

Never saying what I saw when I closed my eyes. Nor when I opened them.

I guess I was made that way.

No sound. All fury. Quiet.

Listening to the hum the crtuch makes as they scrape it across the shape of their shadow. Noting how it bisects their movement. The crack in the hourglass. All that counting lost.

Not to know what it was. I still remember well enough.

Weighing the feather always leaves me feeling cheated.

Like all I have to wear is short sleeves and it's always winter.