I don't love me
but I love you
however, that's not enough
for either one of us

I have one leg
You have two
You offer me a steady arm
i instead, take your leg

We both fall over

I don't have dreams for me
I dream for you
I awake sweating, and desperate
You are wet and clammy, through no fault of your own

I bleed
You apply peroxide, bandages
I forget to breathe
Knowing you'll inhale

I fall down
You begin to pick me up
Then think again
Leave me to crawl, to cry

You teach me to fish
not to steal your bait
A younger me would call it cruel
Now I call it kindness

.... eh shitty poem in progress.....

my heart turned inside out
like mango clinging to its skin
backbended, split open
theirs to sink their teeth into
to feed on

you quiet me
you shutter me down, you
release the gaskets
you remind me that I don't need
to scream like that little girl
I once was
that I can stop this
anytime I want

i writhe and then settle
breathe
and hope you can see
that I am constantly getting better
even when
i fall apart

Rejection
Tastes like morning cigarette breath
And bile on your tongue

Stomach acid coating
Your teeth
Its time to crawl

You’re two years old again
Inching along the floor
Tears lubricating the wood under your skin

Howls and screams
No longer produce gentle arms
Just the suggestion of fear, brings no rescue

Indignant that this world would knock you down
Pissed off that no one comes running
Balled up fists beat the door jambs

As you lay
As you lay
As you just lay there
In that puddle of you
In that reduction of your soul
Your blood, your piss, your spit
Your tears, your vomit, your own sweat

A knock at your door
You can only whisper
“I am in here, this is where I am”

I’m afraid
I can’t come to the phone
Right now.

Perhaps I spend too much time
Storming heart first into Morrissey tragedy
When I should be dancing in the rain
Toward Jack Johnson love
Soft, innocent, sweet….

Why do I lean toward darkness
When trees are meant to crave the sun
I find special, I declare my chemicals
Run contrary to nature
I find myself on shelves
With greats, with the misunderstoods
With the shotgunned, the ovened, the praised
The fallen young, the … others

The queen of hearts
With her queer painted mouth
Muses, decides, then sneers
Yes, it is better to be feared
Than to be loved

The queen of hearts
Isn’t always your best bet
Not if you want it to be over
Just yet

I fell in love with you
Drunk, sitting on my broken-tiled
Brooklyn floor
A party roared around us
We listened to Pink Floyd
You closed your eyes
And fell into Comfortably Numb
And for the first time in my life
Or at least for the first time in years
I felt I had found my home

Billie holliday
In the early afternoon
a/c whirls, and my mind distills
it’s almost tequila time
vampire skin bakes in june sun
I drink, I miss, I will myself to grow

Come rain or come shine
She silks in my ear

Yes, come rain or come shine

I was drunk on
Pineapple, apricot, and champagne
Floating in the Atlantic
Holding my nose
Like a little girl
The sun was setting slowly
As vacation suns are paid to do

I looked back at the shore
And the light hit the waves
Casting the sand silver in its wake
Then within a breath of the earth
It returned to beach to light summer tan

My tears are not as salty as the ocean
They do not sting as much
Nor leave my eyes as red
So I have found
It is a good place to cry

Like bleeding in water
It is unfelt, it tendrils in the froth
Wisked away before seen
Sorer to be sure, but safer to the un-promised

I am alone in the salt, the surf
A young couple bounce and giggle
Twenty feet away
I pretend they and their love do not exist
And they ignore my solitude and stench
Of hearts broken
Dreams shaken, identity stolen

I make you think
With me, you sink and engage

Relativity over martinis
I don't blink an eye

And you find me
Intriguing

And collapsible

At the end of the day
You walk me to my car

And return to the shallow
The hollow
The easy answers

The concept of small talk
The exhilaration of conquest

I figure out how to walk tight ropes
And drive on the solid yellow line
Without blinking

Mr yorke and I
Walk on the shore

I ask him how he can find
Such beauty in such sadness

I've been living
The bends
On and off
My entire life

I say

Young women first go insane
Around the age young men
Find themselves wanting to save them

Problem is
Crazy is only fun in short bursts
And sex can only go so far

The men move on
And the women stay mad

Move on to younger men
Paint their baggage in different light

Sad is sad is sad
And if you keep crying --

Wolf

The firemen stop coming
With their ladders and
Trampolines

They change
Before your eyes
To white coats
And needles

And I cannot live in theory
In art, in poetry
Even if I am more in touch

Even if I am an alien
Amongst you walking pods

I have bills to pay
There are concessions you make
If you don't leap off the fifteenth floor
And as always
Before love, before passion
Comes the rent.

I sit deep in jersey sand
And even through
Darkened plastic lenses
I see them


My thighs
Loose and white
Appear as war victims
Scars run across their expanses
I have been sliced
Mutilated
I wonder if others see them

Razor slashes
Red and angry
Against pale soft
Pillowy thighs
So bright and screaming
In early afternoon sun

I attempt to cover them
Self consciously with my arms
But in the bright
I can see the past there too
Up and down my left forearm
Scars I thought had disappeared
Returned to life
Like invisible ink
Under a black light

I run into the ocean
Before anyone can see

I've come to regard
The twangs and twinges
Of falling in love
Like the first signs
Of an illness

The longing, the butterflies
Fluttering in a dizzy belly
The lack of concentration
Blurred vision
And the dread of realizing
That soon I will be missing work
Relegated to my bed
To moan and groan
Shaking and crying
wondering if death would
Feel nicer than this flu

I imagine its what detox is like
This falling in and crashing out of love
In the hell of it, I make promises
To eat right, lots of vitamin c
Avoid others use purell
I can't take the memories
And the missing

I just wish I had been stronger
That I could control my heart
My immune system
My emotions, my disease
My anything, really

I don't ever want
To fall in love
With the wrong person again
This unrequited bullshit
Burns like an ulcer in my gut

And I fear it will eat a hole in my guts
My soul

I write poems
that everyone reads

that many appreciate

except the ones
they are written for

written about
bled for
bled about

I write poems
on the back of cereal boxes
under my bed
on clean kotex pads
in pickle slices
on my torn cuticles

with
cracked pepper
insulted salt shakers
broken heart fragments
scattered chances of showers
mislead school girls
kidnapped puppy dogs
with a dash of

sugar and spice
and everything
nice

I listen to Radiohead and Sia
wish you'd walk through the door
or someone like you

used to be

someone like I thought you were

maybe someone
I just imagined

????

who knows

but I'll go back to writing poems
with

tar on tree bark
with rug burn
on new lovers's knees

with
broken bottles
flecked bloodied spit
with

vengeance and hope
malice and sauce in the corner
of my mouth
with

dreams and wine
and
and

it's a matter of what it's without
i suppose

with me it's always that matter
something is always the matter
because that's the way i roll
that's the way i rot
a baby that cannot comfort itself
or articulate it's needs
a

horse without a tail
or that is at least blind to it
or

I write poems
to get over you
to get over it
to live
to scratch these itches
to satisfy these mad men
who live behind my eyelids
under my nail beds
that demand

type type type type type

as loudly as they demand

bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed

I'm hoping someone
will fall in love with me
through my poems

call me a genius, peer into my windows
for a glance of me writing
smoking
fucking
dreaming
falling

again

Can't someone examine my wares
and demand to see what I hide
in the back room,
offer to pay top dollar?

I don't know if I am a woman
that normal men can hold
I doubt my charm, my appeal
I send out centaurs
I reverberate vibes
and write living wills
when I feel I am about to die

I eat cheese doodles
til they crust my finger nails
I drink wine until my lips
blister, turn purple,
tumble to the floor
and I send them to you
with a self addressed
stamped envelope
with strict instructions

to please return them
when you are through
as well as my heart
my head
my soul

sprinkle liberally
with rock salt and curdled lye
stab the heart to make sure
it does not bleed through
cardboard, so the folks
at the post office
do not question

I don't think anyone
can ever fall in love with me
for more than a few seconds
but perhaps they can encircle
my poems, and allow them to touch their soul

Woke up
Feeling ugly
And old
Walked to the beach
To watch the sun rise
Found that day
Had already broken
And the sand
Was littered
With hand holding
Snuggling couples
I turned round
And gave up
That dream
Of solitary
Daybreak
On solitary sand

The blessing
And curse
Of having
Close friends
Is that the really
Good ones
Deny u finding
Truth in
Your own
Lies

The stories
We tell ourselvs
The creatures we
Create
Are shaken from
The pages
Like stray ants on
A picnic newspaper

And once confronted
Once the curtains are
Pulled back
Once we are seen so naked
A spotlight on you
But blinding you
From the crowd

Once all the
Self deception is
Stripped away
We stand shaking
Frightened
Exposed
And can only
Whisper

You are right.

are we all just writing
to find our own epitath

and if we don't pick it
will someone else ever pick
just the right one?

oh, it's roaring, hank
it's roaring loud and clear
i don't need your loose women
i don't need your postal clerk blues
i don't need any of that ennui
seems i got my own

i think it's the ugly that speaks loudest
the muffled voice from gutters
from suburbs
from darkened brooklyn windows
i don't mean to have an edge
but yet i make you bleed

yeah it's roaring, hank
but i don't think it'll do no good
neil and i got a pact, you see
tonight we're staying up all night
eyes dry but open to sight

lose the sleep

you are a staggering guitar
growing intensity
your tongue a spear
a sticky pistol of poison
and subdued charcoal flavors

tonight is the sort of night
that pretty girls die in car wrecks
their drug store lip gloss
tossed out of broken windshields

nixon is coming back from the dead
and you still can't play a single riff
your window overlooks deer and gravel
and i can't get my damn cat
to return in from the grass

yeah, it's that kinda night
you're that kinda guy
and guess who will lose
the sleep
tonight

bukowski's daughter

hey, bukowski
are you home tonight, you old fuck?

i just can't help
but think
that i
could've been
your daughter

you were the one that said
"some people never go crazy...
what truly horrible lives
they must have lived."

what would you have thought of me?

neil young night

i want you to listen to tori amos with me
but it's a neil young night
and i'm all alone

i'm craving that lobotomy again
so annoyed with myself
i have such a penchance for unrequited love

fucking up everything around me
i punch the cruise control
and point the car toward concrete walls

you're not in that dive bar anymore
it's not the best place to wait for me
in fact, i don't know where you are
i just have an endless list
of everywhere you're not.

or maybe you aren't anywhere,
just a ghost in my mind, a misperception
maybe a failed communication
a dream gone awry or one of those unanswered prayers
the happy people go on and on about.

i'm just so sick of the ones-who-have
telling me how to handle my i-have-not
and i'm tired of asterisks next to my name
and after thirty years still being the one
who feels the need to explain

he called me a genius again
not everyone can have that
perhaps there has to be some
torture to find the truth
and in my melodramatic, egocentric way
i bend my head to keyboard
and think to myself over darkened, flying fingers

it's just another thing
that is so much nicer to read about
than to feel, than to live with
than to try to paint pink and
assign positive adjectives

i can't even feel self pity anymore
because it's so cliche
so used like april lilacs
and albatrosses around callused necks
there is nothing fucking new under the sun
just holes in the ozone
and an acceleration of sound

i never wanna hear you say

i never wanna hear you say
that the freckle on the
inside of my thigh
reminds you of venus or
stars burnt out and

falling
tumbling
to earth
or other far away
melon-scented
grass-stained lumps
of underappreciated land

i've been running from something
by calling it racing toward
ticket stubs pile up in torn pockets
i just gotta face the fact
that you can't be here tonight
even if you wanted to

if i can't leave a memory
perhaps i can leave a scar
i think that's how my mind works
when i'm afraid of being free

what i miss about love

what i miss about love
has nothing to do with cigarettes
and wine stains on rented carpets

what i miss about love
doesn't make me feel ugly, or fat, or unwanted
even if the feeling is unintended

what i miss about love
lies in bed with me without struggle or complaint
a partner in my pillow fort, under a canopy of stars

what i miss about love
has less to do with you than it used to
than maybe perhaps it ever did

Bitter
I drove
past the stewart's where
i craved a root beer float
I drove,
making the left turn
onto yet another street
whose name I haven't bothered
to learn

Bitter
I drive
not missing cigarettes
not missing even you
time has frozen but trips
it skips and folies and rehashes
elementary school stories
it remembers dreams of
an imaginary bank, cathedral ceilings
a painting stories-high
of a face i can't recognize

Bitter
I realize I'm blown my heart
and the alocation of caring is spent
apathy sets in and I won't love you
even if I saw you fade and die before
Not until the spell, the dream has passed
I can't and I don't know how and it's like
I'm no longer able because it's overload my circuits
shut down my neurotic mind
my brain focuses, an aperature closing
I can only think of breath
of fruit juice, of the scent of grass in the air

I won't lie on the floor
for fear that
I won't ever get up

- a new but old one written in a particularly sad, depressed time


I was cycling, hard
disregulated, disembobulated
evil-spell caught
and caught up in the stream
of negativity
that the broken faucet
in my mind
occasionally spurts and spews

i said
"why would anyone love me?
why would anyone want to spend time with me?
when i'm probably just going
to off myself by the time i'm 35 anyway"
and it startled us both
a psychic hand over my mouth
i couldn't back-peddle
and the words fell to the ether

we both pondered the truth
the perception, the power of the
self-fulfilled prophecy
and returned the old fear
that my mind is going to kill me
that my heart is going to splinter
and shattered and slice everything inside
the feeling that hyde will plunge
a sharpened letter opener
deep into jeckyl's aorta
or vice versa
in order to save the world

i laid my head on the desk
and the depressed exhausting returned
a phone call, a text, a reassuring hand on the shoulder
it'll pass, it always does
into inner chambers i retreat and sleep
waiting for the time i open my eyes
and find the dawn has broken
the fever has disapated
and I am back to me again

sometimes i think
i don't give a shit about other people
most don't interest me
most annoy me
and in my head i constantly bitterly judge
i think of my friend
describing his evil, cunty landlord
"I just don't think she's ever been happy"
and I cringe
hope someday that won't be me
barking at my dogs at 6 am
mowing the lawn before others wake
just to know that i put a dent
in their perhaps perfect mornings

saw a young couple
laughing, smiling, absorbing sun
pushing a new baby stroller
down watts street
blissfully ignoring
unaware
of the half-mile long length
of cars lined up for the holland
where i sat
watching
and crying

on the other side of the galaxy
things twine, twist, twice-rebound
flattening and fattening
crashing and exhausting
cat-calling and dreaming of
lost childhood best friends
foot long hot dogs
and purple balloons set to the breeze

my mama says times square
reminds her of the gouverneur fair
and i can't help but laugh
she says guinness tastes like
cold, bitter coffee
i giggle, but can't help but agree

and on the other side of the galaxy
we can't see the end
even with hubbles and trillions spent
we can't see the edges
because time and space are relative
and without an observer, without perception
it all curls back on itself, it bends
into tightly curved tendrils
past, present, future end
and i'll suddenly understand
the series finale of lost

:)

i tried to explain to you
one breathless morning
that it's like waking up from a spell

but kissless
and without prince charming

Like someone opens a valve
and the steam streaks out
whistling, highpitched, and screaming

then the wilting
the shaking of the head

it's like opening your eyes
to a psychological hangover
and not remember the night before

it's finding mr. hyde's ticket stub
in your dr. jeckyl wallet
a blood stained playbill
a bullet lodged in your shoe

great
if only
in my own mind

loved
if only
in distant hearts

i drive to the lake
to the center of cornered towns
past houses where you don't live
and where I can't sleep
anymore

cigarettes on the back of my tongue
razorblade barbs on my chin
paintless nails
suitcases of yesterday
strapped to my back
a pack
mule

forcing exuberance
and most other gestures
and emotions
that will miss your gaze
once again

up before the sun
awakened to dawning birds
i peer out into the twilight
making out the pink flowers in the garden
the white fogline of the early road
wondering where that distance owl rests
and whose bed you fell into tonight

you don't read the words i write for you
you are ignorant to the bliss, the depth, the turbulence
i am not worth a double click, an opened book
loved but not loved, pages not turned
you don't have time or gravitation to perchance
and i consider return to my disturbed slumber