sticks and stones

they say i have a letter waiting
and it reminds me of all those
i never sent
its been one of those days and i'm hellstruck and heaven bent and my fingers

come down
and let's play a pedestal game i've been waiting around all night
with this nametag sticker
trying to think of an
appropriate
name

cardtrick casanova you pretendme
in a frame
windowchild untamed smile
free form fixed on my pages
that used to be
so

white

now the minutes
now the hours
now my t-shirts
and my closet door

now my dog
and my alarm clock

are busy whispering secrets
about me

i'm sure of it

but i bite into butterscotch
can't be bothered
with anything less than
sugarslid science
where my tongue
is pierced with the probability
of tasting you

i think i'll wear white tomorrow
as a symbol
of teeth that hunger
snow that shudders
birch that bleeds in curled
exaggeration
and cotton that could never
comfort the bleeding fingers
from where it came

then again
tomorrow's friday
fall down into furious
flocks of fantasies
deadredleaves
and i stand like spring
eternalvirgin
painted moneygreen

what's cleaner than clean

they say i have a letter waiting for me
as if words were patient enough
to stand around...

how could i have known
that it was my anger that i hid
the places i bled
the weakness
the monsters under my bed
that would
push you
so far away

i could have been a girl of
epic mythology
winter scenery
i could have given juliet a run for her
proverbial money
if i knew how to sew up all the places
torn open inside me

if i had a timeline a schedule
a countdown
if you had a meter of how much
you could take
before your heart would
crack wide open
crumble
fall apart
before your will to love me
would break
i could have changed
to save you

for a second chance at a third string
spot
for a moment of my hands in yours
for a place in your photo album
next to a picture of you
smiling the way little boys do

but i never knew what i was about to lose
so i let my threads unravel and i called
you from inside of nightmares
and pulled you down
pulled you in too
too selfish to see the hurt
i was putting you through
caught up in the color
of every self inflicted bruise

but i never deserved a second look
from someone like you
i emptied my pockets my heart and
my suitcases
but none of that would ever do
a damaged girl from a damaged world
who fell asleep lonely
and woke up next to you

now i know exactly where i belong
and what my heart can do
so i'll keep it in the basement
of my broken soul
locked and bolted
like a felon's promise
always threatening to come true

always threatening
to stay in love with you

its the way nothing always
comes from something
don't talk to me about chickens
and eggs
its the way i hold rocks in my hand
until they fall into smoothsurrender
and i don't have to have a point
anymore

i can split this up equally into
syllables and line breaks
so that when you trip into
my sidaways sonnets
you'll feel more at home
i'll draw a rectangle
on the floor

but i'm a girl and i go in circles
everything is flowerpink or
fragile
i can't not mention broken glass
or my heart
because when i breathe
my chest
is a timebomb
and it won't make sense
to your college professor
won't earn an a in an english class

but watch this
drop
of blood
fall
and fade
down into my skin
the skin you fought for
fought against
the bitterblack of
iris
tinged with doubt
tinged with guilt

i am not here to please you i am a vampire
of feeling burying my teeth in the unsuspecting
curve
of your no nonsense neck
i play games
i pretend
i pray
and then
do it all again

its the way i get lost
along the way
the way i fascinate and push you away
the way footsteps can strike fear
if you're alone in the dark
and that's all you can hear

watch me dream my eyes
flutter in fear
its just another nightmare whispered in my
ear
its the way too many blows to the head
will make you forget your baby's name
its the way you waited for an answer

and it never came.

commonplace kisses caress the
cancer of a cowboy kind of christening
to baptise
the water
with his goldplated heart
gun on his side
a reason to ride
a reason to fall apart

its the way the wool unravels
right before your eyes
the way gulliver forgot his travels
the way truth drowns in its own pool of lies

numbered again
one through ten
i'll throw a grenade of
guesswork
on your pretty plateau

i don't let boys read my poetry
tell me how it should go
they want it how they like it
and i just want to let it flow....

its the only way i know.

i was a valentine
victorian laced
captured in a whiteskin sin
my sheets followed my
everymove jealous of the
candytaste of my fingertips
but i was twofeetdeep in this
devilishdream
you drank me down
like sweetcream
your lips  
i couldn't scream
held in by chains of midnight and shuddering from
the inside
the bare weakness of my breathing
an instrument for all the things
built into your needing
as if your hands shaped  
my body into being
sculpt me now
a beautiful thing a wreckless fortune paid
a penny at a time
mouth to mouth
tasting unspoken  
poetry from  
silent shadowed hearts
sliding into togetherness
sliding into apart

find me untalented
talon less
in a sea of skinnydipped souls
find me the center of the universe
i'm so hungry i could eat a
supernova
i could implode from the sheer
notion of
emptiness

find me some fingers that
fit these icechip hands carved
out of ivory imitation
as if all i can do is mimic
mimic my old mouth

find me faulted
faulty
flawless
find me fevered and fast asleep
find me a new bed to lie in
my screams have stained all these sheets

find me a family of five little
fountains
the fury, the flame, the faucet, the fog, the
fallingdowndrunk
four times infinity
carry the zero
and i feel the weight
frozen in stone

find me a fiddle so i can
forget the music you flaunted
inside my head the voice that you
flung at my feet
the first of your many regrets

find me a shell that reminds you of me
curved a little too dangerously
to your ear you follow the crush
crashedin sound
faster than freight trains
the whole world turns around

find me a fabric to cushion my
freefall
into this forest of blankeyed fears
i flail my fists against anonymous fossils
like the garbage of unremembered years

find me inside of a fuelsoaked dream
full of angry oxygen that hates the
way i breathe
flush my face with a foreplay of fiction

now find me some fangs and i'll fine you for
fixing the fortune cookies to foretell
a fallacy
forgiveness is forming a fist
useless on a monster of
green eyed infamy

find me a fool to rush in and
fold me into fine origami
and fathom from faraway
how beautiful
i could be

brackish black tell me
what big eyes i have
tell me sew me up with stones
the field is full of flocks
untended the night is one star dripping
across
spilledmilk on velvet
i might howl
if you take one more step
closer
i have wool hidden
colorblind sailor you have no idea
what big teeth i have
and this hunger
they thought the stones could steal
or conceal
just

g
r
o
w
s

i am a word inside a word
a word spelled backwards
i am stuck between your tongue
and your teeth
i lie down with lions
when the sun burns its crooked candle
i am not hunted
i barely move

but now
is a different story
the shepherd sleeps
and my skin creeps
inside a skin of scars
layers of miles pricked by
cars
out of time
out of places to drive

oh and i look just like all the others
on first glance
curled clouds of quiet comfort
clumped in corrals
we drink the green
from the glass sharp grass
tell me what big ears i have
i learn to listen to the
lovesong of gravity
that finds the
stones inside me

tell me show me how to
forgive and forget an animal nature
that brings the beast
from the blood
and lays it
(untouched)
on the table

i circle your
camp
i could be the thing
you never saw coming
i could
(with a full stomach)
swallow you whole

hallelujah
mistletoe
let the devil pull these feathers
straight out the backs of angels
cry my baby
cry yourself to sleep
its not a nightmare if you don't wake up
and i'm happier
happier than i've ever been
misunderstood doesnt mean its not
better than good
you never knew how to say goodbye
or maybe you knew too well
come globeskip with my
head on your shoulder
the rain is falling like
a sign of things to come
the night smudged up in the corners
and the streetlights calmly licking the backs of our heels
and you laugh
what else is there to say
those pins and needles
she uses
suddenly seem so far away
not that i'd let her see me in pain
working out all the ways to hit
and run
or hit and miss
its been a monthlong apology
the moon sighed clouds jostled into each other
like shy children

we play this game of emotional chicken
let the lions roar from below
let the queens bare their brown stomachs
i won't write a letter
you'd have to give up something
to somehow feel me

bloodkissed wrists
that heal
look away from the girl
and her fictional face
her eyes no one ever believed
were real
the split second strategy of unspoken scars
slide into some self induced coma
and erase your capacity to feel
i'll be building this circle on a
skyblown hill
glass ceilings and swimmingsongs
the night resting on every windowsill
and somewhere under
a crossed constellation
of kisses we couldn't taste
i'll hear you laughing still...

close your eyes, now...
even imaginary looks
can kill

i was butterfly words
in a womb of angel feathers
painted red
i was almost
and a tongue came to rest in my tiny mouth
i was ready
for being born
i was ready
to tell you secrets
i tossed and turned and curled into swimmingnightshade
nestled in a curvingcave
i breathed in rhythms
of a mother i would never
really know
i splashed up inside her weary soul
trapped in a deadend
19 and nowhere to go
i was webbedfingers and toes
learning to undulate
like filthy prose
unaware of the curse
in my compass face
my grandmother's nose
the beforebirthmarks
on dustycream skin
the weight of the world
held off by absentgravity
the syrupysoup
i would never get tired of living in
i pushed my heels against the walls
i was urgent
and i needed a sign
smoothcell cement the
brown eyes i would refuse
from those two
i never could get enough
green
if you've ever been to ireland
and stood in the rain
you know exactly what i mean
i was a eulogy for my
mother's innocense
delivered at breakneck speed
i was a list of demands
never knowing i was the hostage
or that it would be four years
before i could read
i was almost
a daybreak described
by the edge of a tulip
and unwritten novels folded into fresh skin
i was already named
before the light could baptise me selfishly
i was already saved
before i was invaded
by something
as carelessly cold as
monday morning air
i was an infant poem
pressed into the palmsof a boy who couldn't be bothered
but i was still brilliant
and bold
rhyming at all the right moments
i took on the tone of a tragedy
and careened comicly
before collapsing
at the end of the page...