See Right Through

When everything is lonely, I can be my own best friend.
I’ll get a coffee and the paper, have my own conversations with the sidewalk, the pigeons, and my window reflection.
The mask I polish in the evening by the morning looks like shit.

—Bright Eyes

White Light White Heat

Count and multiply with the cliques
Turn around to magic me up

Clog with ferocity and sliced pores
Close mine eyes pretend I want it wrong
Bare teeth like pre-school photograph day
[for an]
Eyeline lipline tanline slimline church
Scream and twist against the concrete floor
Add to collections of graze scratches
Conjure your faith and touch me to sting
Close mine eyes it’s only a flesh thing

Dream Dressed Blue

Break my bottles and rip my skin
Not cold not loving somewhere in between.
Wasting your time on the rough boys
Use all the nice ones up take their money
pierce them with your nine inch heels and steal their clothes,
for everything they’re worth.
I don’t blame you for your bad things,
beautiful blond with those bright blue babies
I just don’t want you to stop your bitching
Remember Heaven holds a place for those who pray.

17

Tired eyes settle into grooves
around which lie a gloved leg and gravel
hitting pavement that is just as dry
as your voice was that day.
You know which day –
the one where you turned it all back
where you had it all back
and your words are falling onto my back
rolling off into the grates
chasing fragments of pieces of things
that really amount to nothing.
Scarlet and fuschia
pumps and beats upon reaching a blip
on the flat horizon
and then you’re set off without any way to stop.
And all of a sudden you’re immersed
with an outpouring of grace
lashing on your back
until you are tucked and curled
at the bottom of the glass that
magnifies and distorts
eventually breaking
eventually releasing
eventually.

Lost With Maps

There are stories no one but yourself will ever know,
of sunflowers growing from the gutters, miles of cornfields,
cities seen from the edge of forests twisting roads and glittering streets, unfinished stories of lost lovers’ empty promises and hopeful questions,
from a book you don’t want to finish
but are always sure the last pages are closed
because it could only go downhill from now.
And it’s somehow all a contest but it’s not how fast you got there;
instead the time you took to really think about those sentences.

You wake up
dry and out of breath
everything neatly tucked under the bed.

I know myself to know that I can add ink and liquid
to create a sea of poetry and graves,
and your addition and your lusting reciprocate back to me.
You still want me for my unfazed brashness and stop me
mid-sentence to stress your waiting, mystery,
glimpses into our similar mind maze that open with our rusting key.

The days here are finally getting longer.
It took seven years and nearly three countries before we slowed down.
Now I ask myself, do I go up or down the stairs?