two-face

You think you’re something else, don’t you?
Sharing 2 am thoughts like STDs, like it’s no big deal, like it’s a strip tease,
How Well Can I Get To Know You Naked?
Justify those lies a little more, but I see the fear behind those eyes, you only cry in the rain;
you’ve got a sneaking suspicion that you can’t handle the truth.
Behind the thoughts and loud laughs and hands all over you’re just a skeleton,
you get hungry,
underneath the blanket of veins and skin and saliva
We’re all pure white.
At the first breath we start to inhale it,
we become black as night.

Coming Inside From the Rain

Hello, take your boots off, throw back your hood,
Can I make you tea? Let me tell you a story about a boy of ice
And a girl of fire.
She was getting warm and he was ever colder,
She said come inside.
He said no, I'm trudging through the snow, I'm swimming through the frozen rivers of my despair, I'd rather be left alone.
She said, well, I've a house of cards and a heart of gold if you ever happen to come this way again, i mean to say, if you ever grow cold.
She said, I'm aflame.
She said, have a good swim.
He said, okay.
A floorboard was creaking in her house of kings and queens, ash filing through the seams.
After a rainy April, after an August drought,
He happened to come back around.
He happened to come to her door and it happened to start to pour and she said,
Come Inside From the Rain.
But he couldn't remember a life without pain,
So he scraped his feet hard on the welcome mat,
And sat,
On the edge,
Of the chair
And was there
For a hour.
She said, what is your name,
And he said, you wouldn't believe me if i told you.
She said, okay.
Sipping they sat and slipping and that,
That was how it started.
A house of cards and a heart aflame,
It started a visit and ended a game.
It ended a lonely and started a pain.
This wasn't her fault and this wasn't his name.
It started a drip at the feet of his chair,
It started to quiet the flames in her hair.
No longer was the ice, no price acknowledged, no knowledge gained, no lies told, growing old.
She said, I've a house of mirrors and a heart of glass,
But the more glances I steal the less I recognize myself,
Have you ever felt this way.
He said, Yes.
She said, okay.
He felt at his pocket and a splash hit the floor, he checked for more, he checked his socks,
She looked at the door.
She said, I feel cold, and he said, I feel warm.
They looked at each other, it started to pour.
He said, if you're cold, Come Inside From the Rain,
She said, how will I know how to find you again.
He nodded at the clock but refused to explain,
He said, I'm warm
She offered him a candle and he offered her a swim,
And they looked in mirrors and acted on whims.
She said, Do you ever feel as though the hands of the clock rip you in clockwise circles, do you ever feel like time is sharp, do you ever feel like you hate yourself.
She said, tell me we're the same.
He said, Let me tell you a story about a boy of ice,
And a girl of fire.
She said, okay.

Peripheral

I know that the happier I become, the more it’s going to hurt,

the rawer I’ll have to scrub myself to have a chance of scratching out the chalky lines and scribbling new ones over my eyelids,

It’s alright to be addicted to things, it gives you something to look forward to.

Let’s edge out of this slowly, with mittens and scarves,

Twist the tuning slide to muffle the turning pages,

Closing the book is easy but only because I know that I will find a thumb jammed into the spine every time,

It’s rarely mine,

But hope is a sickness, I believe it’s held in the chest, I haven’t learned to cough,

Regret through the temples, thrumming with the vibrations of a couch-spring coil, and the

Guilt in the stomach, I haven’t been hungry for a while now, I can’t even look at food, hell,

I can’t even look myself in the eye.

Isn't this a clever poem?

The secrets are stashed between my ribs, they are shrapnel so pull them carefully through my spindle bones,
Lest you cut me open.
Carbon monoxide guilt but I keep breathing,
Lest I lose the feeling.

Consonance

What a sight to see,
A common thread divided here, and
What a life we lead,
To lose the dark but keep the fear, but
This is how I bleed,
At the top of my voice with no one near, I
Guess it's hard to see,
What's coming at you slow, my dear.

Grin and Bare Your Soul

If you were to peer into my eyes and see the way I think,
it probably wouldn't be too difficult to discern
That I've always prided myself in my ability to play well with others.
You'd probably guess that in preschool I would hand over my toy to keep the other kid from screaming,
and maybe walk over to another part of the room where I could find something better.
Things haven't changed much, and
I guess old habits die hard because I'm having trouble remembering old regrets,
Being drowned inside out by eyes like silhouettes.
Pulling me past the moment we occupy
and underneath the darkened sky,
You can make me think otherwise when we're standing face to face but
I guess I don't know whether to trust the girl in the mirror or my reflection in your pupils anymore,
I'm still learning about walking away and things, I'm young, you see.
Maybe it's the way you make me think I understand, or maybe it's the ocean at night,
I'm going to ramble until this sounds right.
I'm not really sure what this feeling is that I would do anything to preserve,
And it's beyond me why all my 11:11 wishes are for things to stay the same, things are awful,
I'm a little bit sick of tiptoeing around these shards of glass, let's just shatter the whole fucking house while we're at it.
Write a poem about me and stick it under your bed
With everything else you'd rather forget,
I'll stop trying to rhyme my feelings,
I guess,
Just write me a story and rip it to shreds.

Desert

I am in the middle of a life,
Mine is at a standstill and I am hardened by the fact that there is nothing I can do about anything.
So hardened, so bitter about the collapse and the rebound and the push,
The constant ebb of the time against my skin,
Like succulent sand, slipping through my organs and out my eyes and into my inside.
What else is there?
Listen.
Listen for it in the crevices between empty words and emptier stares,
Because you can’t even begin to know me until you pluck out all of your eyelashes.
And I don’t care how hard you’re trying to make this okay, it won’t be, ever.
You have to understand that with me, they haven’t even started making the right spare parts, in fact,
They don’t even know where to begin.
Leave me here and I’ll hate you forever, just
Leave me here and you will be better.
Lick on the promise and slip on the never,
Sullen as silence and thin as a feather.

Nothing

This dimension, my dear, is a teller of half-truths,
the Earth creates people that it cannot hold,
Those who are tethered to the bedrock with the gravity of a fateful umbilical cord that whispered to their mothers that they would never belong here.
Suffocated by their skin and
Disgusted by the frantic pumping of their hearts,
Outvoted by natural instinct, beaten by the will to keep the breath in their lungs
And disarmed by the logic that they cannot stare a hole through the night sky and escape to a less corrupt universe.
Plucking a rootless flower leaves me with something beautiful that will perish within the hour.
A wave of anxiety whispers at my feet as I turn, and seeing my footprints, confirm that I do not know where I came from or what I am made out of or what animates my carbonic shell.
Or whose breath fills my lungs, and whose elemental residue fabricates my reasoning.

Not sure what it's called yet

Tuck yourself into bed and hope it’s better tomorrow
April rain is the sweetest form of sorrow
You can be anything you want, little girl
That is what we are taught, so we expect the world
Drown me in your words and tell me when
Sing a lullaby and wait for it to happen again
Dive under the water and be at peace
All the time denying that you ever had this weakness
Drown me in your words and tell me when
Sing a lullaby and wait for it to happen again
Ribs like a birdcage, heart of a dove
Sculpted by an artist with a fear of love
I will take a chisel to my body and scrape away
Try to make myself into something you could chase
I will paint a thousand different patterns all over my face
Try to compensate for all the moments I have wasted
Drown me in your words and tell me when
Sing a lullaby and wait for it to happen again
Dive under the water and be at peace
All the time denying that you ever had this weakness

O Positive

It's rare, apparently,
Wrapping around a ferris wheel core,
A merry-go-round is my spinning periphery,
Absorbing every grain of salt.
two drops of ink have i swallowed,
for every love i have shoved down my throat,
my esophageal secrets.
Tying strings around my fingers and consistently remembering to forget.
There was nothing there,
I am a face-painted hero, a clown with glass lungs and lead feet,
living in a house of recognition.

Intermission

These days,
I can feel the sand in the hourglass slipping away
Weighing down my wings and choking what I wanted to say
Meeting your eyes brings back memories I cannot face
You are a reminder of every chance I didn't take.

I can't even give myself a reason I'm not walking away
Partially healing and then scraping the scabs away
Make-believing my heart is broken, manufacturing pain
Take all your tears and save them for the matinee

But you are a reminder of each blown out candle and
You are a reminder of each worn out melody
You are a reminder of washed-away words and
How even now my bones seem so fragile and weak.

I can't even give myself a reason I'm not walking away
Partially healing and then scraping the scabs away
Make-believing my heart is broken manufacturing pain
Take al your tears and save them for the matinee

Here's for Hoping

Look at that girl, now a couple months pass
And she only ever wanted something to last
Oh, I'm turning my back,
I want you and I want you to want me back.
Look at that boy he's so afraid,
Pushing anyone who takes a step in away,
Beautiful bird, locks himself in a cage.
So here's for hoping he don't go and want her back
Cause she's already five feet six inches down the track.

But this is the first time that I've ever felt so alive,
Cut the string I've been holding onto for dear life,
I will fly away from what's better left behind,
And I won't apologize

Here's for hoping
Here's for letting it show
Here's for giving in and
Never letting anyone know

Truth be told I only want what I know I cannot have
So here's for hoping you don't turn around and want me back
Disappointment runs in our veins but I will not bleed myself dry
Let yourself forget that I ever meant more to you than meets the eye

But I will send a whisper your way on the wind
Here's for hoping you finally let someone in,
This is my surrender I'm letting you win,
Drink the poison and never go thirsty again.

Here's for hoping,
Here's for letting it show,
Here's for giving in and
Never letting anyone know,
I want you and I want to want me back,
Yeah.

Misgiving

rainy faucet
walk right by,
the yellow-lit room,
and the sink.
This machine is broken,
the tightly sealed fissures
splitting like scabs,
the toothpick appendages
wobbling like the
cheap manufacturing plant they were concieved in.
Between the places of open,
and closed,
squeezed inside of the almost,
I am squeaking,
I am leaking.

Small Brown Door

Swallow hard, swallow to get it all out
On the table, below your feet,
You are swimming so why not let the air in on a secret,
A tantalizing corner ripped from the connection between your eyes and your mouth,
and a fleshy shard, a human.
I can be quiet, most of all when I’m thinking,
About things that are sometimes yellow and sometimes white,
And how they overlap when you tug and send you spinning,
If only someone would open this door.
Small brown door, today, meet me where we used to play,
The quiet places between the blades of grass, the spot of shadow on the asphalt.
People I have thrown away, meet me on a higher plane,
The back of a car, the front of a house, an old yellow chair in the basement,
These are the places that I have been afraid.
But any time I try to seem like much of anything I end up collapsed on my bed, drowning my thoughts out,
Scraping wallpaper and washing bathtubs, tomorrow I will walk
Backwards against the wind, the breeze heavy with reminders, my eyes closed and my hands folded and my buttons tight,
Because I need the air, but oh, god, I don’t want to have to feel it.

Pythagoras

I wish I worked
Like a calculator always suspended,
And never rearranging,
Because I should be happy here,
In this place of good and denial slowly slipping into an hanging cage
Above fields that contain nothing, I know because they told me.
A feather, floating, attractive.
A ripple, slow and still, or better-
The thunder and the wind, which break the bird’s wings.
Instead the punishment is the grass, yellow and gray and together, trodden again and again by different boots and the same species,
The unintelligible roar, rolling myself out like a boxcar, ironing over and over and
Spitting out every last confession, impression on the wet clay, hardening in that cold, dark, place,
You Know, don’t you.
Believed to be perfection but an actress the eleventh hour, every moment, every glance an actress,
This is just an uglier version of myself,
Peach-colored and fermenting,
And I am what you need but never what you wanted for anyone but the smallest You, the inner shell, the blue orb.

Five Years

How could you let her in like that she
Does not know your name she didn't
See you cry like this she doesn't
Feel this way she doesn't
Have to wait five years' time to see your face

Five years, I'll be
Better

Five years, I'll be
Better

Coffee, sugar,
Please and thank you
I'll be better when I break you

Five years, I'll be
Please and thank you
Much better break you

Take your chances out on me
What would you have me do?
If it's not now then never will it be
I've had a bad year, too.

Can you
Feel it
Swelling in your veins?
Honor us and
honor your name

Five years, I'm kidding myself
Issued and returned as someone else

Coffee, sugar, please and thank you,
I won't have to they will break you down,
Build you back up.

And I only say the stupidest things
Because I know how to keep my own secrets
Have you ever really looked at me?
I only open my eyes
To fill the silence
So don't believe everything you see.

Can you,
Feel it,
Swelling on your veins?
Honor us and
honor your name

Take your chances out on me
What would you have me do?
If it's not now then never will it be,
I've had a bad year, too.