(but deep)

I cower like a child behind I'msorry, (spilled juice) it wasn’t me screaming until 2 a.m. in an empty room, in an even emptier head, full of
unchecked ToDos and a blinking curser who mutters “I think”
therefore I feel too much and
take hyperheavy steps like an amateur human, racing to whatever end shakes my hand first
I’ll settle, later I’ll wish for sooner and learn that underneath anything isn’t understanding someone, missed somethings are just reminders of growing nothings, and words unwrapped are misshapen boxes, letters just extra crayons, outside the line acts of kindness are just as rare as unprompted creativity or raptors walking (not running) down main street.
I’ve turned automatically to the division of myself, evenly, forcing portions on street corners, stashing underneath windshield wipers
regifting free, which isn’t always desirable
taking hits, dragged but never touched
scared of things growing (inside) and dying (outside) and things that crawl (inside and outside),
jumping shadows of legs and eyes, I have no sympathy for the spider
as I plead for the courtesy to not be crushed beneath a bare hand on a even barer wall, hypocritical guts
walls covered with notes of beginnings, replaced by better beginnings with the same fate as the first, it’s all whatwasIthinking trash
that I hoard greedily, nests of papercut traps and my insides (never really outsides) smeared across notes and notebooks
always starting something, you can’t ever entirely finish with people
hate magnifies importance and indifference sloppily erases
the shallowest of footprints
which I hope I’m leaving everywhere (but deep).
The deeper I look into the time I waste and the time I will waste worrying
wasting brainless hours (not wasted and brainless) of subconscious ticking and surreal toil with a chattering mind and restless legs.
I’m still learning to walk.

ripping r.i.p

I know it is what you’re supposed to say
the a.u.t.o.m.a.t.i.c.
traditional turkey dinner elbow
reflex defense up
against
truth of the end that
you must never remember
and hide behind
commercialized thankfulness
for forgotten (but living) brutality.
I know it’s what you say,
a polite “I’m breathing and you’re not”
but I command you to be quiet about it,
an abridged cordiality
maintaining but keeping
a distance from the throbbing thing:
If you wave and shield your eyes,
maybe your words won’t follow,
or maybe they’ll latch and loom
and mimic
a silhouette of fleeing life
and puppet strings-
deluded
forward digression
driving toward
a point A
disguised as point B.

lullaby

Good night shoes,
you’ve taken me as far as my ambition,
heels bleeding and laces wild and muddy,
I’m taking a break.
Goodbye voice,
you’ve ran too far today,
There is no retracting your steps,
I’ve interrupted you with hurdles of hoarse frustration
and hiccups of repressed sobs,
You’ve done beautifully-
but it’s time.
Good riddance hands,
you’re freckly and I hate you,
you grasp nothing and you permit everything important to
slither between your stubby fingers
(p.s. fingers, I hate you too).
Good-luck legs lifting the shell of what
used to be loftily above you,
slumped and mute to your choreographic
demands.
Good for you, eyes, blind to the destruction,
ignorant but not blissful-
forced to see ahead to what the rest will never reach.

...and shine

And we’re sitting
A table, a newspaper, two mugs, some fruit,
closing and opening eyelids, blinding and revealing the obstacles
between
coffee stained breath and early aching everything-
silent separate songs
of crunching and anxious mumblings of today’s monotony,
which sounds suspiciously like yesterday’s
insanity,
tapping your foot and shaking your head
like its all new just to keep
sane-
which can’t be easy
when your brightest moments
happen in the dark
and the more you live
the greater the danger of dying,
and you know nothing is alone
in the famed manyfish sea,
because
you know the perfect fit for your left hand
is the interlaced symmetry
of your right-
the bittersweet comfort
of knowing you are always with you and
knowing you are ALWAYS with you.
And tomorrow will be like today
whether or not you button your pants
or someone likes your face,
the difference,
what matters,
is today’s reason
why you abandoned a dream
and agreed to a nightmare.

Go Ask Alice

Mind blowing book. It is basically the love child of Catcher in the Rye and Perks of Being a Wallflower... from a girl's perspective...and it's a true story. Even though I was not expecting a happy ending, I sobbed at the ending...and I don't cry easily. Read it.(please)

Dear sister

I had a dream you ended it
-found your way through the maze
of indecisiveness and
unjustified anger-
your first act of courage
but skating right in-line
with the introverted you
I know and fear.
Little me,
my first thoughts
weren't the whywhywhys,
no realization of the impossibility
of the terrible act to jolt me from it-
we share a face and name,
your bed was across the room from mine
you talked me into insomnia,
we laughed off hate
and ate ice cream with spoons on the kitchen floor-
but I'd die without knowing
what caused the hair in your fists
and the slamming doors.
In the dream, you took that too.

If you become a fan of Jesus on Facebook

I don't think we can be friends.

Narcissistic Depot

You have always said you can read me
open the pages of my insecurities and playfully
crack the binding of the confidence
which doesn’t appear until the 3rd edition
“COMING SOON.”
I would think you’d grow tired of a story you already know
whose words cannot promise to surprise
or mask the tear stained sanity
that the now deformed pages have acquired
from various puddles.
I’ve been dropped.
and I’ve walked willingly into
the muddied situations that
I suppose can now only
merit the title of
literary suicide.
I can’t write romantics.
Love poems must be beautiful
and horrifying
and make everyone who is alone feel inadequate.
I would, of course, savor such power
(you, of course, know this)
but I fear the ignorance of the optimist-
who would mistake my cynicism
for profundity-
and somehow find inspiration in my attempt to belittle.
And I cannot have that-
cannot allow superficial joy
from such a sinister cause.
I am selfless.
Can you help me find a new self?

Wordchuck

I want people to stop-
to stop the complaining
stop ignoring their painful scrutiny of every detail
the conscious riddled words and phrases of the
OH SO NOTORIOUS
--word vomit.
I’m sorry that these sentences fail to purge
the mind of the disease that has for
too long plagued your thoughts-
these empty pages and the endless piles of un-recycled
paper are yet another testimony to the forced heaves
of my failed circumstantial bulimia.
This pencil has been heaving dry for too long.
(And you say angst dies at fifteen).
Let’s get high off the excess mediocrity we’ve stashed in the walls
and the floor boards of our unrealized talent to do
a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y
nothing
and acquire unwarranted hatred
as a teenage girl collects insecurities.
I borrowed these words from faces
I pretend I know-
Adopting personalities is like shaking hands-
but taking away more than the germs
and the moist souvenir of someone you judge upon touch.
I’ve been conditioned to hate everyone equally,
with the occasional bias
tossed into a less than delectable salad of wilted acquaintances
and stale “friends.”
Can I really blame anyone for such cynicism and occasional spurts of egotism?
Yes.
But not today.
Yesterday-
When the world revolved around “you-know-who,”
I could have identified the perpetrator directly.
I’m not feeling particularly fond of clichés.
Perhaps Tuesday.
Ask then.

Commas

I can feel your not-hereness-
the absence of your voice and the
not- next- to-meness of you.
My hand is empty
and my words are lost-
merely tolerated by the other-than-yous.
My footsteps hopscotch
solo along the graveyard of worms,
the wet concrete misses your steps next to mine
mismatched, scruffyrhythm stop start-dragstop-giggle-kiss-one-two
and it starts again.
But I haven’t heard our clumsy song,
just the heavy sighs of my frustrated justmeness
and the slippery-face-almost meets gravelness
of my un-witnessed falling.
Your name inserts itself between hellos and goodbyes
and anxiously churns into gibberish mindmud-
that, like a madwoman, they can’t hear but I repeat.
Repeat.
I poke and punch the air.
I wish there was a button
for the not here
back-to-you-there,
You.
Me.
Back.
Together in the same line.