still not bukowski.

i always fumble with my lighter;
holding it in the wrong hand, i
have trouble making sparks lunge to gas dance to flame.
and i hate heat on my fingerpads,
offending my lukewarm sensibilities.
i still cough at least
once every other cigarette, and
it sounds just like when i choke on your name.
i want to forget the people i've loved
so violently that my blood is no longer mine,
transfused from one-in-the-morning typewriter poets
and fainting red flowers in kitchen-table vases.
while boys kiss her thighs
and run the clumsy infatuated fingers of
three-in-the-afternoon text message poets
down the arching white flesh along her spine,
i smoke to forget the people i've loved like war crimes.
i only forget outside,
so the scent won't cling to me like
bad thoughts do.
i only grow gardens in ill-suited places,
where i know nothing but weeds will thrive--
so walk with me beneath the arbors of gulping english ivy,
lay with me in beds of canada thistle.
light me up
with a match or your tongue
or whatever else you've got to make me feel human.

did i forget my medicine, or is it just my terrible personality?

you're a sweater with sleeves that only reach to my wrists,

i can't pull my fingers inside for protection, 

i've outgrown you.

and i know you haven't quit smoking,

i smell cigarettes on your cardigans,

carcinogenic, 

i can taste our suicide pact in exchanges--

but weren't you crossing your fingers too...?

sometimes i still want to steal away to california,

let the city air and city cynicism 

pollute me,

the way my vices 

and nights spent with you have been doing these two years.

but there's no place for sadness like home,

and there's no place for me much of anywhere.

*yeah i am pretty sure i messed up my medicine.

smitten, seering, buzzing, sweet.

[among the networks of overpasses
like swooping concrete ribbons,
transients perched in their
tarpaulin carpeted condos
watch the traffic and breathe the
thick-hot exhaust breeze
that's coming off of passing cars.]

i like a girl who
writes like my bruises,
who makes me think my thighs
flowerbeds
and my head a hot air balloon
tugging at my shoulders.

i like a girl who writes.

no.

you thought i was sleeping,
kissed my chapped, sealed lips
like they meant something, though unmoving.

so i've got on makeup like joan jett
and a shirt that smells like my best friend,
i will wash you from my skin
i will wash my skin from my skin,
nothing left of you or what you touched
will cling to me--
and i will be okay
in spite of.

i can't really talk about this any more.

thankyou for giving me a breakup poem to write, isn't that something every artist needs in order to be real?

the first day we talked like lovers,
with hitches in our voices that meant we were being honest,
i saw you sideways lying on the bed and thought
you were one of the most beautiful humans i'd yet met.
and you talked about your scars,
and how you weren't always strong,
and my god, i knew i was caught,
i knew i was in trouble,
i knew it would hurt.
but i couldn't leave your room
until well into the night, and i drove home
so full of butterflies i'm surprised i didn't crash into a telephone pole.

the afternoon we got lost in the suburbs,
i traded my hesitation for a two-story house
with french doors, bays of flowers and succulents,
windows so tall that the light they stream in
is probably pulled from the surface of the sun itself
in folding flumes of golden plasma.
but when i reached for your hand to give you the keys,
to lace our fingers tight to show i finally
knew i meant what i said,
you would not take them,
me or the key to the front door that
i finally believed in for the first time in a long time.

the week before you decided i was not yours,
you held me like you loved me,
you laid beside me like you wanted to touch me.
and i knew you didn't, but i didn't question it,
none of me flinched or buckled-- though
i could sense it would be the last time we'd touch like that,
i was so sick and sad inside that i was just glad
somebody cared enough about me to pretend
that feeling all of me was all they wanted and
knowing the pace of my breathing was
something they'd been
waiting for.

the night i shoved you into finally breaking up with me,
into saying what i knew you'd been holding onto unsure
for two months,
i was too tired to feel all that bad.
even now there's not much aching other than:
"i was unlovable to the first person i'd ever kissed,"
and "it's a shame, she's seen me cry,"
and "every time i held her hand,
her fingers went clammy."
i think maybe you believe in god now,
but i'm left with just myself and
i don't much feel like worshiping me this week.

the monday after we became just friends,
i was afraid of falling again
for the pretty girl with the heartache made of daisies.
but i didn't and i breathed a sigh of relief until
i realized what that probably meant-
it's going to take me a week or two to
never want to touch you again.

it was mutual but also i hate it.

the hardest part of breaking up with you is
nothing broke--
and i'm not sure how to handle it
or feel about it right now.

like firecrackers, inside skulls, but all wet.

i still don't like fireworks, i don't think i ever will.

they were curling my toes and shaking my heart the night i lost half my hope,

when i acknowledged that no matter who i became, 

i would probably never feel good enough for anyone i loved. 

i think i'd just like to feel good enough for myself again.

and i know i'm not that awful, but i know i'm not that great, because

i'm alone a lot, yknow?

i can't smoke, i'm just going to go buy as many sparklers as i can find, 

and burn them up by the lake.

(if i just went out and made friends, maybe i'd feel better!
but who am i kidding, i'm not going to do that.)

(but i used to be an asshole too).

you can't rip the skin from my body and call it

liberation.

when you applied the labels,
slurs
filled with razorblades,
knotted up with rough rope,
painted the colors of rotten bruises,
it was alright?

but now that the word "queer"
is mine--
you want it back.

you are not enlightened!
you don't see past
color
or gender
or the lacing together of my fingers
with another woman's,
though you claim
"we're all human!"

you simply don't
want the weight of
"straight"
"cis"
"privileged"
on you.

you started it.

and sometimes i need a name

to remember i'm not as damned

or lost or broken or disgusting

as you taught me.

i'm queer and

you're an asshole who refuses to even intelligently listen to the educated and valid insight of those your opinions actually affect in the end. 

it's hard to have friends when we're all depressed.

it was strange the way it suddenly felt

like we'd been caring for each other 

through a pane of glass,

and all at once i thought: 

we're going to 

grow old with other people.

because i can't remember the reasons why 

i was in love with you for two years,

and months ago, i wrote long letters to tell you 

you were lovely.

i'm sorry, it's probably just because i'm sad;
i don't like myself or anyone all that much this week,
i have my own insecurities burning new on my hip,
and it's hard to find a position to sleep in,

and this summer is disappointing me already.

i just want to play songs with everyone.

i don't like this poem/ i'm still not sure how i feel about me.

and that summer i started playing war games,
digging thin trenches across the battlegrounds
of my lonely-cool skin.
even with the medicine to put my play to bed,
some nights i let you into
my tent where you turned my cot to
a crude operating table
and went about your hacksaw amputations.
the ringing of explosions beating in my ears
has persisted for two on-again-off-again years.
and i write letters to a girl who loved me
sometimes.
sometimes she loved me, not sometimes i write,
because i write every goddamn day,
with shaky ink scrawls she couldn't read
even if i'd ever sent her anything more than
dismembered parts of me free of explanations.
but this isn't a game anymore,
it is stinging showers and picking scabs
nearly every day this week,
and i think i might bleed out of love with all of you
if i don't go back to sleep.

i have a fear of heterosexual intimacy (i'm wrong but still).

i imagine he drills holes in you
while your eyes are closed,
your back against his bedsheets,
and with a clumsy tongue he
scoops from them the best bits of you,
drip-sweet from the
honeycomb catacombs
of your chest.

i imagine he lights matches
against your skin.
and burns your lips, in the name of a kiss, pinker
than i've ever seen them before,
a blood-rush deeper
than when we learned to laugh
even though nobody
loved us.

i imagine that he leaves bruises
with his vein-ridged hands and soft fingertips--

that he loves you clumsy like
a neglected guitar neck,

that he strikes sour notes on your flesh

and composes pages of hickeys in a key
so sad i want to smoke cigarettes and
mourn.

i imagine he swallows your words whole,
so nobody can hear the
colors in your voice
when you sing or when you
moan.
he paints his insides with
your spectrum, and when it begins to 

peel, he touches his tongue to yours and drinks.

i imagine he is hungry, hungry
and never satisfied,
biting your ears in the morning and whispering
your name, whistling your name,
until you crawl back into his den
to let him scoop, burn, bruise, and drink you
again and again

until you are just a pair of socks,
pants,
tank top,
curled up inside-out on his rug. 

relapse.

i put the trigger in your pocket when you weren't looking,
because i knew you wouldn't notice or care--

i put the trigger in your pocket,
sometimes you shift and i
go off.

i am scared of being too human for you.

i don't know how to tell you i need you to kiss me.

i accidentally mumbled i love you while we were kissing.

so my sunburned july flame faded like summer freckles;
i haven't missed it for months,
and i pity the we that was so crippled by one-sided infatuation that
i couldn't even see her very human face anymore
through my pride and metaphors.

that night in the car, 
we kissed a handful of times in the front seat,
even though you were afraid your dad
would decide to take the trash out at ten p.m.
and catch me biting your neck in the parking lot.

i may be infatuated again,

in like with the thought of falling asleep

with you tucked against my chest, but--

it's a nice thought and for now, i'll keep it.

in any case, i don't think much about dying anymore.

he puts his arm over the seat like he owns us.

he was touching my hair, and telling me about how, at parties, he and his friends try to get girls to make out. he thinks that's hot. he talked about the time two lesbians told him all about their sex life and crying while fucking. when he was talking about sex, he grabbed my hair for just a moment, and pulled- or maybe his fingers were caught in a knot. and i don't want to hate him, but i felt so gross and violated, even though i'm sure most of what he says is bullshit. i felt like he was digging his long fingers into my scalp and through my skull, prodding around in my brain and leaving filthy trails behind.

and i didn't know how to ask him to move his hand.

and the word rape passed his lips too many times.

and i hated my gendered body more than i have in a while.

maybe i'm overthinking it though, he's a friend, and he also talked about guitar and other nice things.

i was enough all along.

lately i've only got a lot of dusty drafts
and happy thoughts,
and i think i never needed you
to make me good.

why did they hurt her, she's kind.

she wrote me a letter

that made my chest-walls buckle--

so when i greeted her today,

i slid my lips beneath the bag

they'd bow-tied at her neck and

marked with "broken,"

i pressed my lips to the bone

and whispered

"they lied."

she called me pretty

and i didn't even doubt it;

she tells truths,

i know because she wrote her note in pen.

like lace more than anything.

the only day you've asked to see me in a month was the day you needed a ride.

which i don't mind giving you, but you have to admit it sounds sad that way, and sometimes i wonder why you got mad that i tried to leave, when you never tell me to come around, when every time you get back with him it looks like you've left me, and it makes me feel small.

well, i understand you probably don't mean anything bad by it and i know you're busy being a kid in like, but can you see why it stings?

this girl gets visibly uncomfortable when i talk about being gay, but she's home for only two weeks, has a dozen other good friends who wouldn't think to argue with her about racism or feminism or guns the way i do-- and she's been sure i've seen her twice already.

and i like you both, for your different reasons. she makes me feel wanted, even when she's not in town, and you make me feel alive, when you stop by.

but i'm still lonely sometimes and i've hurt myself again thinking about it; we're all full of holes.

spice cabinet monsters.

you smell like you wish you smelled like cigarettes,
you smell like my dirty brassy fingertips,
you smell like mold.

i'm not sure what you think you are,
but this is no forest;
darling, these are the suburbs
you've found yourself in.

and you stole the cinnamon and the nutmeg,
so i can't taste winter like hot coals anymore.

thank god it's nearly over.

(the worst feelings are creeping back.)

blahblahblah
the usual
passive aggressive
lonely grievances.

i just hate how you make me feel.

or i just need more friends.

i just need more medicine.

i just need more sleep.

sleep sleep sleep sleep sleep
until i forget their names.

if only i could stay asleep.

i'm gay though.

i really don't like muscular male builds.
everything about them makes me
uncomfortable.

trigger warning: everything.

They give you medicine and you hope that all the bad will just go away, that you'll be able to call your advisor, that you'll be able to eat like a regular person, that you'll be able to throw out razorblades, that you'll sleep through the night.

But things aren't magically better. You still have depression and it still paralyzes you sometimes. You still go to bed at five o clock on bad days, while your parents think you're doing schoolwork you never do. You still can't clean up the clothes at the end of the bed. You still skip dinner when you can get away with it. You still feel overwhelmed by an appointment or Starbucks or eye contact. 

Now with certain people, it's all okay. You've always felt fine with them; they're safe. They make you smile. And in defense of the doctors, before the medicine, you couldn't even leave your house to see these wonderful people. So things are better. 

I think it's still so sad and awful sometimes because nothing is really different. Your brain chemistry, sure, that's changed. But homophobia, misogyny, rape, war, ignorance, all of that still exists. And you're a daily contributor and enabler to so many of these things. You've got a lot of words but how can you DO anything when you can hardly drag yourself to class for half the week?

I'm just a little sad right now. I know it will feel better soon.Today I just feel windpipe-crushingly anxious and rib-crackingly alone.

So I look at pretty girls on Tumblr because for a long time that's the only place I could be gay. So I take a short nap. So I hang up a shirt. I type a sentence or two of that paper. I talk about depression with people, I don't let it become a shadow that looms and leers and tells me I'm shitty and alone. I hope maybe being open helps someone else and that makes me feel a little bit nice.

Things will get better, I know it.

But I'm sorry if I suck for a few days while I'm working on it.

And even though my mom wouldn't believe that sometimes I just wanted to stop existing, someone told me thankyou for not dying. And even though my mom gets nervous that I dress like a lesbian, someone is willing to look queer with me. And even though people don't always text back, sometimes they do. Even though yesterday was bad, today doesn't have to be. So it's alright, really, I know it'll be okay.

The medicine didn't make everything better. But it helped me notice that things aren't so bad. It helped me WANT to be better. It ate away the apathy and it lightened the sensation of drowning when I thought about the future.

I don't often believe in god or church or people, but I believe in beauty again.

Yeah, it'll be okay.

i'm tired too, thankyou for ending the dialogue.

i say one sorry and my guts fall out.

oh man i guess it's all alright now.
but the mess was upsetting and the shower stings
and people have been asking about the dark circles beneath my eyes.

"don't do that..."
he's genuinely worried and he won't look up from his history homework.
"i know."
i smile sideways and unscrunch my sleeve.

cotton crush.

i said some morbid things, but i came back to backspace it all.
i'm okay.

i'm still sorry, though. 

i'm sorry nearly every time i part my lips.

well shit.

i'm sorry i have the tact of a goat.

and i really rarely know what you're thinking,
unless you're asking me to play a certain song,
and you can't quite remember the words right
or more than a few notes and that it was acoustic.

and i hate myself sometimes,
so i figured you did too.
especially because you never told me why you wouldn't,
except that i was simply great.

and i'm a self-sabotaging asshole
who's ruined every relationship i've been in from the start.
because i dunno, i've got issues.

i am really sorry
i didn't think this through
or even try to talk it out,
because i was afraid of you
and crying
and getting a shrug for an answer.

i'm sorry.

mostly i've been scared.

maybe i should've faded out silently,
but i wanted to explain that i still think you're great.
(and part of me wanted you to argue.
to make me stay,
maybe.)

i'm just so tired.

not tired of you and not tired of the moments we're together, but
tired from the spaces between and the aching in my guts
of myself and the way your occasional affirmations aren't enough
to convince me i'm valuable or loved very much.

and there's no way i'd try to blame it on you,
that's why your sorry's make me cringe--
i'd never ask you to change
and i don't need you to apologize.

i just think i've never fit at your side
the way i felt you fit at mine,
and i'm tired from running to keep myself at least at your heels.

sometimes i get noble ideas,
i dress up like a prince and pretend i'm self-sacrificing.
"if only i can make her smile, i don't mind feeling lonely."
but it came out desperate and choked up and jealous in the end.
that's not what i wanted at all!

we have our whole lives out ahead of us,
and i think they'll be wonderful.
i hold lots of memories inside that were wonderful too.
so thankyou.
(for last summer at the lake, for all the nights on the bridge, for sharing good drinks with me, for being the only one with a comfortable silence, for staying pretty chill about my crush on you, for making me grin until my face hurt, for playing guitar with me, for reading the long letters, for being my friend this long, for everything.)

if i never came back or wrote another word for you
i'm sure you'd be alright.
i mean i think so.
i mean you never told me otherwise.

so will i, i still have lots of nice songs,
and i might move to california someday.

i'm not sure what's going to happen.
but as usual, I'm sure it will be okay.

we'll all float on alright.

i read a story about jellyfish and the ocean, and the writer made the sea sound like a prison, said that all the interesting things happen on land. but i think i'd like to be a part of the ocean, the way it touches everything, the vastness-- or even better a part of the sky, a piece of black or a speck star. and everyone on land would look out to spot me for a second, if they could see me at all, and they'd think that all the fun was where they were. but i'd be an entire galaxy sizzle-crackle-singing silence into the vacuum. i think maybe i'm like that now.

i refuse to hate myself this time.

i don't know what you want me to do
about your struggles as the parent of a queer kid.

you constantly minimize my issues and demand i
recognize and pity your place as my parent.

you're right, you didn't ask for this,
you didn't see it coming.

but deal with it.

you're a grown-ass woman.

ground bloom flower.

furiously buzzing, 

spin and spark,

i spat out ten-hundred bitter words

for each of you,

even the ones i like.

but i sputter out to a soft glow candle flame

unimpressive and sorry.

we were small with salty dirt lines on our feet,

twisted hair, tiny wrists, butterfly heartbeats.

but today we woke up as men.

when i was small,

i learned how to swallow gravel,

just so.

they filled my hands with it,

pressed them shaking to my lips,

and i took it in each time with muffled

apologies

and "i love you's."

they taught me not to lie,

or to show my sensitivity--

they taught me not to lie

or tell the truth.

in middle school i began swallowing rocks

hot like sun or cool and smooth and wet like winter.

i learned to turn my head aside and

smile

before gulping and excusing pains quickly

with half-false hugs

as that something hot or cold slipped down my esophagus

and into my belly.

high school, my stomach collected stones

weighty and shifting and sinking inside,

and i forgot how to swim,

and i dreamed about drowning every night.

i am nineteen and my body's full of boulders!

i'm so sorry,
i'm so sorry you break my heart each day,
i swear to god
i'll sweep up the pieces and hide them under rugs--

i'll swallow the moon for you.

someday.

yes i love you with all my heart and mean it,
but one day i'll just stop talking--
and i'll never write another word about you.

i won't stare at the black night ceiling with your name on my lips,
with my fingers keeping silent secrets from you,
always poised to spill my emotions and fears out
through the safety of distance.

i won't make wishes
on dandelions
or satellites
for you anymore.

that's how i go every time--
like a season passing overnight;
you'll wake to see
all the leaves dropped,
the frost gone dew,
the flowers wilting with sunrise,
the green now red and gold.

i'll disappear before you finish stretching,
before the blinds are opened,
before the first yawn;
i'll disappear like a coward
and it will be alright.

love, or like a whole lot, or whatever.

and i am only waiting for one to notice,

notice the distorted patterns in my left hand fingertips,

and the way i stand when i mean to be brave,

the smell of me stuck to my clothes,

or the sadness i hide from myself in content words

like landmines that collapse my stable structure moments after i speak them.

it's the little things that matter most

and i wait for someone to notice them,

to pluck them like tiny flowers, spin them between their fingers,

appreciate them and love them 

and press them between the pages of their favorite books.

occasionally i am just a little sick of being forgettable

and quiet in your heart.

growing up.

And none of us quite remember when we became assholes.

lost thoughts.

my tongue rubs onto the back of my teeth

the infinitely many words it holds for you

and for your eyes

and the holes they leave in me

when they light glances against my skin

like horse-hair brushes,

bristles replaced with steel wool.

if i had stuttered out only half my words,

in my own voice, splitting silence,

while my own sharp eyes parried

your's and their warning glances,

would your heart have skipped or dropped or hardened

or felt a thing at all?

i am sad, so very, very, sad.

SO SAD.

Thank you. This next one is called, 'We Hate You, Please Die.'
____________________________________________________________________