Four A.M. and Rolling Over

Four A.M. and rolling over,

I see your shifted features, 

tilted in the corner shadow, 

like a fitted sheet slipped

from the end of the bed

So shrewdly thrown against the wall.
Sucked into that void that pulls like a 

black hole from beneath the bed.

Little chest, fluff compressed,

Trapped in the flat maw of wall and mattress.

Your poor head, bloated from the stuffing

Forced behind your beaded eye,

Like a cotton-mouthed migraine, 

or a fuzzy thought.

Or maybe you always looked that way.

The sun graciously bleeds it's veins

of orange light through the blinds 

and onto the floor. One lonely stripe

leaks onto the bed and leaves it's stain

across the sheets to betray 

that singular inky eye.

I wonder why I haven't yet moved you.

A Needle and Nothing More

You're so precious, it fucking hurts.
Like the tiniest little needle, kissing
my pupil, pushing my pupil,
until the pop, penetration,
release of tension,
sliding in.

So fucking precious, and nothing more

To My Childhood Best Friend

I can feel your ghost knocking against my ribs again.
Like the door to my childhood home, you push yourself in
through the threshold, and all that is good about you comes
rushing back into me,
like a resurgence of memory - and blood -
and unabandoned thought.

Those nights we spent lying on blankets under the Christmas tree,
wrapped in knit bows and cotton ribbon, our eyes crusted
with the beginnings of innocent sleep... those are the nights
I miss the most.
Now, you remain as nothing but the weight on my eyelids, pulling me
under boughs much too squat.

Your essence coils around my lungs, fighting back against
the void... the void... the ever flowing emptiness that has
been my keeper since you've gone. There hasn't been a day
that I haven't wept
over the milk you spilled on the carpet in my bedroom.
I can still smell like sweet, sweet rot.

From Nothingness

I'll pretend not to care until everything goes numb.
When the world drains itself of color
Like a slow faucet, spiraling and sputtering,
Turning black and white,
That's when I'll finally find peace in the fact that
I couldn't remember the color of your eyes.

When the beating of my heart
Becomes muffled in the stillness of the gray,
And my lungs fill themselves with void -
I will rejoice in that euphoric emptiness.
Your heartbeat was always a mystery to me, and
Apathy is a welcomed friend to drying cheeks.

I have spent so many nights wandering streets
Crowded with the yawning ghosts of your memory,
Attempting to pluck your scent from the
Glittering wisps of forgotten thought.
If I angle your face just right in the street lights,
I swear I can almost see your breath.

From nothingness,
And utter abyss.

Anna

She is a shadowy wisp in my lungs,
Moving throughout my breathing being,
Cautious, quick, and simple.
There is no use in trying to force her down-
Away.
She sticks to tissues and begs to be born again.
And in my weakness I will oblige.

I am no stronger than that ephemeral wisp.
She pushes against my insides,
While I push against her with lungs at full capacity.
And we do no more than children
Breathing upon opposite sides of the same pane of glass,
Writing secret messages with our fingers that only appear
Backwards and wrong.

In my braver moments, she retreats to my stomach
Where my mouthfuls of words stopper up and bubble,
In my moments of weakness, I feel her circling
In the back of my throat like an eel, a gag.
And once again, I am a shy child reluctant to speak.
I draw pictures with the hands in my lap,
Though no one sees.

No one ever sees.

A Thought, a Thought.

The only reason I bother you so much is because I love you.

When you're out late, having the time of your life,
Believe me when I say that I'm happy for you.
I'm so incredibly grateful for those nights

Because I remember the times when those nights wouldn't come.
When you laid in bed wishing for change,

Hoping one day you'd meet someone you could call a friend.

Now that those nights have come,
And those friends have walked into your world with
Open arms, 

Open minds,
Open bottles,
All I ask for in return is a thought.
One or two words, just letting me know that you're safe.
That all those moments I spent next to you in bed,

-When you were feeling lonely and downtrodden-
That those nights weren't in vain.
So I don't have to look at these blessings with contempt,

And curse the names of those I call blessings.

Please, just a thought.
Because you're always in every thought of mine.

Seattle

There's a stone in my mouth.
It sits against my teeth and
pushes them out.
One by one, they hit the floor,
Plinking across the tile like skipping stones.

It salts my wounds where
They left me,
And I hate the taste of the flitting river fish.
But my jawbone is sore and creaking,
And it, too, falls to the floor.

I never expected much from empty promises.
They're nothing more than hollow sighs,
A waste of air,
Like rain plodding against a child's rubber ball.
Echoing, vacant, and flat.

We will never go to Seattle.
You're only saying we will now
Because you're caught in a riptide of guilt,
And basking in the glory of a
Magical moment away from me.

I realize now that you've grown
Too accustomed to my presence
And have decided it's no longer necessary
To love me the way you used to
When we were still new to this.

And this stone you've placed in my mouth,
It hurts so badly, but I can't speak
Around it.
I'm gagging on unspoken words
And the taste of fish.

It's so unforgiving.
I can't seem to swallow my pain,
Nor can I cry out for help.
And you're daydreaming about Seattle
While I crumble to rubble on the floor.

Is this the feeling of falling out of love?
I'm scaring myself with my own poetry.
But it's all gushing around the stone,
And it won't leave me be.
I think I'll be carried away completely.

You'll never read this poem anyway.

Tooth Marks

While you remember her freckles, her hazel eyes, her form
I remember her glow, her gaze, her soft pull

And you underestimated her
You tasted her sweet and you knew her body
But her mind was clouded with a certain mystery
Only she could see

While you danced along her edges and sang to her sands

I was awash in her tides, and she lapped against my hands

And I knew her
I knew her state, her ever-flowing compassion

And you entered her like an eager child
So she was cold

While I breathed her in and let her salt cleanse my miseries

You devoured her, hungry, like an aching animal, licking injuries

And you chewed her

She felt each tooth like the start of decay

And she confided to you her rot

And to me, her name

However much I loved her, she is too much like the sea

Always present but ever-leaving, receding.

And she left again

And much like the water, the salt she is made from
She slipped through my open fingers

And you grasped at open air to contain her

Astrid

I was somehow convinced that I was a product of your poetry.

I thought your words were what defined me

And your voice was what sang me into being.

I truly believed that if you played just one note of my simple melody

Things would be okay.

I never realized how I was distracted from your intentions.

The way your words tripped over each other,

Twisted into brutal entanglements that I thought intricate at first,

But were truly enigmatic and unnecessary,

Utterly riddled with thorny thought, and made oh so ever-present by the savage angles of your 

font. 

I believed my worth was written in your handwriting.

That if you just wrote one solitary verse in my name,

I'd be birthed once more as a celestial muse to your divine vision.

Little did I know that your form was more pedantic than prophetic.

I dwindled in the dying scenery like a low candle, dripping wax upon the horizon's inky 

twilight.

I felt as though my life's purpose was contained within the vial of your sultry ink.

My potential frothing upon the lip of the well,

And slowly bubbling, flattening, oozing back down into carbon depths,

Losing hope, but eager to be plunged upon and thrust into existence.

However, you said my pages embodied the stain of virginity, and thus they remained permanently untouched.

I soon thereafter realized that my essence was simply not meant to be drawn.

Not painted with words, nor scrubbed against and berated by prickly brushes and sharp nibs.

And so, hand over hand, I scaled the length of your pen

Slouching, like a cryptid, to sit upon the back of your palm.

I guided your hand.

Something Unnatural

Time sits in my belly like something unnatural in the waters of a slow sunrise.

Daybreak - it ripples as it's dropped from the sun.
Late morning - it curls up in a ball and sinks.
Early afternoon - it bobs to the surface and smiles.
Evening - it escapes behind the mountains in a flurry of pink.
Fresh legs to take it where it pleases.

At night - I feel it well up inside of me
It's the angry fire of an glowing and eternal drowning.
My lungs fill with a briny nothingness I can't expel nor explain.
And the time in my tummy keeps ticking and counting.
And counting.

It's the feeling of falling with
Nothing but empty air rising up to catch me.
Placing, in my mind, all of the scenarios around me
Hoping even just one of them is enough to ground me this time.
I crave that enlightenment.

The future - it sits in my mouth like a light bulb.
Easy to dream of more than my anatomy will allow.
Pull it out, and risk breaking the jawbone.
Bite down and suffer the consequences of my eagerness.
Bite down anyway.

Forever counting, that ticking time bomb in my tummy.
Crawling up my throat and out from between my teeth
At regular intervals.

That frustratingly honest ticking
Smothered beneath the blanket of vacant distractions
And hilarious distortions of the truth.

Plummeting from the stars
          there's nothing.
Only an absoluteness of decent

Breaking the surface,
           bone and body,
As lifeless as a coin from a child's fat fingers.

All form unravels,
            Earthly feeling
Releases me, and there's a fire inside, but I'm so cold.

Counting.


         Counting.

                     Belly time bomb, counting.

    Reset,             
                      adjust,       
                                      undo,


                                                                              boom.

4:45 A.M., Post 3 Hour Internet Chat

Its is a black ooze.
A shadow on the face
A slimy obscenity
A ripple in the fat flesh,
Jaundiced.

Blood terror, eye-stripping
Venom-winged whorish thighs.
And the vision distorts again
A new face, the old face
Not your face.

Your face. It's a plague. A funk.
You wish you could pick
it from your cheeks.
Believe me,
I wish you could too.

As much as I love that face.
The face I fell in love with
Things change. And stay the same.
You were always the same.
At the cheekbones.

It's late. I should sleep.
It's at times like this the poetry seeps
Creeps across the page
Like black ooze -- wholly unrelated --

Maybe I just need coffee.
Or a hot demon chick.

Ourboros, Domesticated.

Coiled, like a cat in the morning sun

You become the mark on the wooden floor

The circular burn on my skin

Like a bruise from the mouth of the leech.

Why the cat? Why the leech?

The mad bliss of the sun's bleach?

He stalks away for the night

Only to return when the pickings are bright.

Coiled, like a snake in the stalks

You are the guardian of these weeds

And you bite the tail, the tail, the tail,

The mouth. Repeat. 

If death be eternal, so be your stain.

Carved into the earth of my barren plains.

Scourged, scorched, scoured. 

Until the dawn of dusk, to dust, devoured.

The Ramblings of a Lovesick Girl Who Often Experiences Existential Crises

Meaning and life really are inconsequential when you boil it all down to
time, and relative time.
For example
Exactly forty-three minutes ago, I watched the northbound train inch from the station stop
Like a slow caterpillar, fat and full from garden leaves. I remember that
In its dripping mouth,
You
breathed its labored breath onto the glass.
And with a gradual resurgence of vigor, it carried on, leaving nothing behind but a
Rumbling
Like a hungry stomach.
I think I once read a children's book about a very hungry caterpillar.
Time, and relative time.
Memory, and distant memory.
You left anyway.

Eight hours ago, you were curled up in bed beside me while I wasted the day away with my
Pleasantries and vices.
Books -- Fiction, mostly, but it's all the same to you.
Not that you don't care. I actually quite value your
Attentiveness
To my books, and characters, and passions.
Even while I stoop under their weight of their words, like a beggar beneath the hemlock
From which the pages I turn,
You always pause to offer a penny for your thoughts.
But you were ill,
and you napped, and you coughed, and you sputtered like a coal engine.
I was reminded of how you would leave me that night.
And pictured the lazy crawl of departing taillights.
I reminded you of how much I loved you
You asked me to remind you to buy a train ticket.

And so life remains inconsequential, even if you believe it is a singularity, a constancy.
It is a circularity.
Though time may tick through an immeasurable number of units to describe it, name it,
And though possibilities are infinite, and often
unpredictable and
unreasonable,
And though matter and science are riddled with
sentience and
error
You still take the 8:35 P.M. train every Monday night.
Just like how I never fail to find holes
in the leaves of the hemlock
outside of the room which holds
the pillow you sneezed in earlier.

--

Just like how, at 8:37 P.M., every Monday night,
I watch you leave.
And though time, and relative time,
memory, and distant memory, all whisper
their condolences,
their reassurances,
their promises,
I wonder if you'll ever come home.

60 Second Poem Challenge!

The pains of a heart beating

Are unimaginable

Where sorrow does fill the gaps

That flesh cannot fill

Around the black that rots

About the edges, trots

And humbles itself to decay

Of jaundiced, bubbling growth

That reaps blood from flies

And fills that void

Where sorrow does lie

To the Woman in an Artist's Studio

Immortalizing her in paint so she can never escape him

It is a twisted color that binds her to the page

A vile blot that traces against ill parchment

And wrinkles under weather and rage

She is of solitude and of man’s craftsmanship

Snatched from her room like a flame snuffed

Enough of his careless penmanship!

Words will never speak for her enough

"And if folly and fae do tantalize the mind

I hope to sink in it’s dreams with her and

Ensnare what is left of our logic and rhyme

Until we breach the caverns that lay under land"

He paints with a brush as thick as his brow

And he scorns the page with his gaze

The male, he knows, applies the pressure of stroke

And brings to her the weather and rage

Three Feet to the Left

I feel like I'm living my life about three feet to the left
I'm seeing through eyes that see myself as a joke
My ghost follows close to my body, it points and laughs --
And yet my lips stay pinned to my teeth

I grasp my own ankles and I pick up my own feet
I move my own mouth with my own thumb and forefinger
Functioning is meticulous, and timeless, and hard
So much so that sometimes my stomach forgets to rumble
Or my brain forgets to sleep

And so bruises rise to meet my skin
In places I've never known my skin to bruise
Once purple and hot, they yellow like daisies
And I run together, muddy, like a watercolor

I don't want my stains to touch you right now
You've finally washed out yours to a pale pink
And my colors will bleed into yours again like the last time
And the time before that

Because where my absent body kisses your blank skin,
I see the red feathering like ink on wet paper
And I'm helpless to the paths it traces like plague through innocent veins
I wish it would just stop so I could help you blot away the worst of it

But it's hard to move your hand when you need a hand to move it
And it's hard to blot when you can never remove it
Because every time I place a finger to your frame
It blossoms with color like a mark of my shame
And no one can tell me that these colors aren't vile
Because the reds taste like blood and the yellows like bile
And I know they're unnatural against your pure shape
Because the garish procession sounds like rape
So I keep my hand to my chest and to mine alone
Because my colors already run down to the bone
And my ghost is the keeper of my tainted fingers
To smother my inks in my own drowning figure

Untitled

Of course you'd have to ask. Of course, I'm upset!
I've been stepped on, screwed over, take your pick from insults --
Your promises breed paradox
And my self-possessed mind is conflicted as a result
Both truth, and untruth, they bite at each ankle
They shackle me to your purgatory
And I'm choking against the chainlink
Just waiting for it to get gorey like some cheesy horror movie
When you know the black guy dies first.
How about you get your fucking story straight first?
You speak in these tongues, and riddles, and twists
I'm so sick of these justifications
And your rambling bullshit
Fuck your logic. Fuck your cognizance!
You think you understand the inner amalgamations of the universe
Because you took one class in philosophical metaphysics
The Divine Will is strong enough on it's own, dear!
It doesn't need your heroic opinions to build it's glass throne
Because all you do is bitch and moan and groan
About how glass does nothing to soothe your aching old bones
No silk, nor cotton, nor plushy ottoman at your feet
No grapes dangling from vines to touch the tongue you named "sweet"
No chicken soup for the soul, no ambrosia for the conceit
At level with the moon shines the second face of deceit
I'm fucking over your tiresome strategems
And your delicious distortions
Take your pick from insults
But don't you dare take more than your portion.