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.