THIS AIN’T MY BEST WORK BUT NOBODY CAN DEBATE THAT IT IS WORK THAT I HAVE DONE
What you resist
will infect and persist
if it doesn’t kill you
in the process
Oh, the things you will do
to flood it out
to drown it out
to numb it out
&
if you happen to survive it
once you recognize it
you’ll be grasping at denim strands
instead of the whole pair of jeans.
It drags somewhere deeper
when words entwine with breath
you breathed life into dead words
from breath into skin
I can skim into them
but I am scared to dive deep in
you dipped out of breathing
& now you exist only in words
undead ones
Like a girl wearing headphones
on a beach, empty, why?
just rip them off and throw them on the skeleton
and bathe in the music
I try to soak it in
but the doors to my pores
have locked
but I try to relish in
cherish in, the thought, the fact
of how the salt of the waves you brought
numbed down all the broken bottles on the shore.
Looking at a palm tree in the oven air
blowing slowly over a highway
lives passing in the darkness
and I think about when hours passed in darkness
watching palm trees swaying
from the oven in the room
changing channels to find them
to find lives I wanted to enter
driving past trees
where I wanted to be
anywhere but there
but when I’m inside
it feels the same.
Feeling like I’m skimming a pool with a net
a dead bug here
a soaked rat there
a floating spider
a thousand tabs open in my head
to songs without names
to memories of boasting
of falling
of yelling
of crying
when I want to close them all
and throw down the net
and run to the lake and dive in
with goggles on
to see all the creatures who are still alive.
Thoughts that you can feel
beeping their way into your perimeters
crawling in the ceiling above you like the monsters in “Aliens”
only you don’t have any fancy gun
and you don’t have a team with you
not even one full of idiots
you just close your eyes and hope you die before the acid burns.
Rewatching season one of “Jersey Shore”
Rewatching a woman say
“if they are sluts they deserve to be abused”
Rewatching a man say some women are easy
but the ones who are not, they have to “treat like human beings”
Rewatching something
that wasn’t shocking, turn it.
It’s in black and white
until someone points out
that it’s actually in purple and blue
and then suddenly you see that it is
and everyone else can too.
The stickers on the back of my laptop are always there
but sometimes I forget
sometimes I can’t see them
but every now and then
when I let the wheels slow down
and let myself off at a rest area
I can see them, loud and clear.
She ate Cheeto pops
like a frail statue
with delicate fingers
I imagine life was delicate for her
maybe still is
Life is not delicate for me.
Smothered in sauce
and dirt
merging two malleable
and never living
children together
to form
a metaphorical spine
only to edit it down
as time exposes what it is made of.
Like layers of an onion
memories of steamy embraces
peel away
rot
cease to exist
and if the core is empty
it will too.
it’s my harpsichord
and i’ll drag it through the dried up mud
whenever I want to
Remembering when I held a star in my hand
and I told someone I loved about it
and they wouldn’t even look at it
Remembering when I put frills around their insults
so I could still hold them in my hand
because they were stars to me
now turned into mud
that I shouldn’t have guarded
So let me ignore the pretty weed sprouts that grow
out of their cracks
from time to time
I promise to admire them still sometimes.
The flowers are beautiful
they drape my fears with petals
but they are not my friends
they are indifferent to me.
The birds are wonderful
their songs fill my anxieties with hope
but they are not my friends
they are indifferent to me.
When I lived where the sun hit the concerete
the sun was mean
When I lived where the sun hit the plains
the sun was indifferent
When I lived where the sun hit the hills
the sun seemed cheery
An emotion for each ray
when I look in the mirror
molded by landscape.
so many
want to play
both the baby and the boss
the genius and the dummy
sometimes it is
sometimes it is snake
Exfoliating pores
with a dead ant
of fire
staring at a picture
of a younger self
smiling like a baby
near a now-dead man’s car
realizing that a moment
that seemed modern
has rotted into vintage.
A virtual ephiphany, a resolution through key, and I can breathe
deeply, so much so that the faded pink flowers in the vase
turn a vibrant shade of coral
like a flip of a light
poison pink
like a lionfish, roaring, gnawning at my perception
as I gasp for air
my heart puttering
sputtering, spikes all through my veins
roses spinning out of control, all through the air
how cruel for a such stunning visuals to accompany such a painful ride
minutes after just a sip of Coke
Coca-Cola I must specify
which must have initiated the machine I had lubed up with poison of actual
kickstarting dying, rotting on a spinning computer chair
the first is the worst, they say, you really think you will.
Devoted to flashing images as frantic as Suicide Blonde
feelings that creep in as manic as a shaved head
is how they’ll see me: lodged inside a beer bottle
filled up with cheap rum leftover from hangover #8
of my entire life
no drain holes at its thick feet
that’s not how such bottles are made, they’ll say.
Even though
the wall is prettied up
with twinkles
swirls
and the bench
has a pillow on it
all I can see is the bare
Once you know what’s underneath
the blankets dissipate
I don’t want to skim
I want to dive deep
but I keep gasping for air
scared to submerge
for long enough
to see all the coral
long enough
to enter another level
letting it engulf me
how it used to
how I need to.
Skin never been clearer
stomach never been harder
as I’ve been working harder
to acheive
to see suns falling
through dissipating
particles of clouds
pouring part breath
to transform particles
in my tubes
as the skin cracks
like lightning bolts
for the very first time
and I pour in cement.
Vanity dreams
now trapped
in a glass jewerly box
during a time
when filter
would have sufficed.
Finally I have attained
it but
it’s fine
I can look good
for the cooper earrings
on the cushion beside me
and the bruised blue
sterling silver chains
of half hearts
from the half hearted remains
that still remain
on a ghost plane
whom I could blow kisses to
through glass and pixels
but won’t
I’ll tuck them into drawers instead.