Seizure of Public Property

Today I want to die
Of tight-lipped melancholy,
Or static, or a killer
Craving for watermelon, or
Assumed innocence
I wanted to burn myself at the high stakes
I'm sorry I get excited about language
And you don't

You didn't seem to mind
My forked tongue against yours last night
Rape my journal, my thoughts
Public execution of an alleged whore
Let this all be a terrible lactic acid trip
Around the bullshit sunshine

I originally wanted to die
Of happiness, or hedonism
Really whichever came first
Started out as a thought I had
About death in the afternoon
Watching the X-files, hot with Texas sweat
And hungover with all the appropriateness of artists
After well whiskey binges and well,
Streetwise poverty-line decadence
And my lion-hearted rages at midnight or whenever
We were sprawled all over each other
And the second hand living room
A trashy litter of feral kittens
And I honestly thought
This is all I'll ever need

I don't need eyes I need people
Or an island, or a street fight,
A bubble bath, champagne dripping down my grin
I'd take either an anchor or a scarf
Tie a nuisance around my neck and
Hang around the bordello
Of the subconscious

Or the opera of the black spotlight on my heart
Limelight and the salt of the earth
I am public property
You simultaneously love and hate
Everything that is Marilyn Monroe
About me and I hate the girl in the mirror some days
And nights, she needs a cigarette
Or a new tattoo
Or a room of her own
Or a knothole in a tree
Some damn thing

Working Backward

The envelope was one of my favorite colors
And the violent word on the outside was
One of my favorite names
This was one of the last times I saw you
When you returned an expensive gold bracelet
That was once thrown off of me
In a breathless moment of whiskey,
Wine and desperation
Or maybe it was the nostalgia,
Or my crippling fear of sleep and dreams

I folded a crumpled Bukowski poem inside
A long-time favorite titled, Eat Your Heart Out
It reminded me of all the times
I told you I was leavin'
All of the nervous empty
Threats I screamed and worse,
All of the things I never told you

When I think of the most desperate moment of all
I almost hold my breath
I almost die
What good is a ghost
If he doesn't still give you chills,
Or at least nightmares and poetry?
Four years ago in an airport
Call it Stockholm syndrome
Or promethazine-induced romanticism
Or my unending death wish
My constant mental whispers,
Saying, destroy me destroy me
I was strung out and strung along
And I cut all my hair off
For the second time in my life
And maybe for the same reason
I have always confused love and hate
I almost missed my flight
Kissing the face of the pale sky
That tore a hole inside of me
That never healed

The skin of that monolithic sky
Was beginning to yellow
Nicotine and self-abuse
Because he did to me what he did to himself
What he did to everything
Deathwish deathwish deathwish, baby
Pink lips and skin that didn't want to be there
I kissed the invisible scars
And made promises without words
That breathed out of cracked ribs
Struggled for air

It's confusing to be alive
And young
It's confusing to be someone with potential
Someone with thighs
And long pretty hair
Someone with a death wish and plane tickets ad infinitum
I am always confusing waking life with infinity
I remember everything
Everything affects me
Everything fucks me up

Because I hated you when it would have taken
Less courage to love you
Or something like that, right?
We all had so much potential and
Coconut Cupid popped bubble pupils
Ironically we never learned
I ache for shackles fetters freckles bruises
Spreading yellow

Fuck Your Gold Medal

The day starts at 3 am when I wake up crying
I only speak in dreams &
I only dream in nightmares I only speak in tongues
Of fire and smoke and mirrors
At 3 I come to in a black hole crying
The black hole catches fire
With seventeen thousand lightly bleeding stars
And they are all shooting themselves

I wake up at 7 something, my fingers and palms aching
In the dream I was clutching a telephone, with the bones in my hand I was
Screaming. Screaming I wake up sweating
But silent, hand still with a death
Grip on something that is no longer there
The dreams are getting better
But the metaphors are getting exhausting,
Crushing I wake up at 7 something
Not wanting to be touched
That's the worst part

I dream that I am crawling,
And chained, thick iron
Chains around my bony throat
I wake up my skin is crawling
I used to dream of my vocal cords
Being ripped out from somewhere deep inside me
Not in a violent and black way,
In a way that was like a magician,
Slowly pulling out colored scarves,
Out of my body I could not stop him
It was bright and unending
And this black magic devil, pale and freckled
Was laughing in my face
Dirty fingernails scraping inside me
I am forever choking on my lack of voice
My vocal cords being torn out of
My always open mouth

Surrender to 29

Sally could not make good
Within and without her body or her mirror and her
Tea kettle screaming, handfuls of hair

Because this is a hymn for a funeral for a cigarette or for
The fact that she will never be
Twenty years old again,

Never will be making love
In the saddest, saddest of ways, empty
Meaning and art and books next to the fire place

And walking home from anywhere, from everywhere
This song tastes like old books, like dust of
All of the trapped moths, they meant well

The quality of VHS tapes and dog parks
She couldn't handle the truth of cheap beer and swing sets
And Sally got all hot and bothered by sincerity

So in love with sadness, in love with blacking out and daydreams
Of taking it on top of a black grand piano
Never have never been a cobweb, a screen door

ALWAYS INNOCENT, BUT ASSUMED TO BE OTHERWISE
Sally did not want to prove the worst
The thought of January, September, November stomach aches waking up

Eyes of red desert, she is sweating in Italian
In italics because neurosis is better left
Alone and apart from boldness and lines

Hoping, please still be breathing,
Hoping hearts and souls were still intact, or at least in the drawer
On the side of the bed with the Vicodin and ghastly hatchets

When I was Seventeen (I Lost It)

I am probably too young

To be this post-modern yet this old-

Fashioned a dress out of shyness, hot pink heart full of

Blindness in the sunlight

Reminisce on days when I really was

Too young

Back then, everyone wanted a piece

Of cake, to have, and to hold,

And they all wanted to eat it too

But the queen is dead

Long live the queen-

Sized bed that

You broke me in

Didn’t everyone want me then:

When my arms were tanned toothpicks

Back then when light-

Beer came out of my pores

And I was always smiling, and sucking

On limes and I would lie around

Metabolizing the day away

Swimming mermaid-like and topless

Through a sea of cigarette smoke and sweat

And a sweet smile softer than the summer

Radiant, wavy wild hair

Longer than God, longer than Time

Tangled as legs

At a time when I shaved them, but now I see that

Shaving your legs is

ASKING FOR IT

Thinking back on hunters and resulting horrors

Feels like hard candy

Falling out of my mouth covered in spit

Covered in slow motion

It hits the dirt and it sticks

There’s no going back

Everything is covered in ugly

And covered in germs that make me cringe

In my sleep the way you do when you touch

A greasy

Public door handle

Dear Doctor,

I’m sorry I was late for our session I didn’t think it would take this             
Long to walk here from the library I broke                          
Both my ankles, thanks

To these stupid stilt feet I was born into

Glass slippers, glass ceilings

I had a dream that I was rolling 
In a pile of shards of glass, and shivers so small   
They bedded my gullible skin

Embedded immediately, into my malleable flesh,
It was all business, they embezzled my dazzling blood        
In shivers, and slivers, the broken glass was all over me

All inside of me, sharp silver

I was shoving the glass inside of me, I was wolfing down mouthfuls

It was creating holes inside my holes

It made me just

This mass of entryways and exits

My body is an abstract painting titled

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS

The worst part was that this dream occurred-

This dream came to me in daylight

In another dream I was the opposite

Of a princess, a disenfranchised dishrag, dishwater

Blonde and supposed to marry this villainous imaginary man

I refused I refused I refused, but I was just refuse, remember?

So they threw me into a cave they threw me into a fit

I clenched my fists and ripped out both my front teeth, the blood
Came quickly, it was hot and tasted like metal
It tasted like metal and wet dirt, like Swedish death metal and

It tasted like hacked-off limbs covered in the syrup of hackneyed pop songs

Sickening how the image of the struggle, the sugar get stuck in your head

My mouth still aches when I think about it

I am still sore in my dreams in my body in my inner thighs that lost

My body is sore with trembling, or trepidation, or fear of repetition

Sores and lesions spilling over with allegiance to this thing
That they will say I brought on myself