don't apologize for being human.

you put me in a
cage and expect me
to sing
yet i fly free and
you are jealous
only the wind hears me



you can't have me

plow, burrow, mine the doldrums

dig your heels deep into
the soil of your heart
and although your shins bruise,
tighten your ankles in the mud

plant your seeds and
speak gently
sleep gently
stirring only to
rouse the the buds to grow

make your home in the
roots--smelt of
earth and rust
absorb the sky through
storms and understand:
this is how you sprout

search the pockets of
the ground and
extract the gold
amidst the coal and ash and
dying green, life waits
grace gleams

sadness is heavy because it
sits on your heart like a
hungry crow

sadness is heavy because it
weighs on your spirits like a
wet cloth damp with blood

sadness is heavy because it
strains the strength of
your light

sadness is heavy because it
bends then breaks the
being of your soul

sadness is a burden too dense to bear

"are you ok" is a
pointless question because
the answer will always be
"no"

maybe i must
make peace with
dysfunction

i don't have a death wish, but
sometimes i drive too close to
the edge of the road

i don't have a death wish, but
sometimes i let go of the wheel,
set my course towards the cliff

i don't have a death wish, but
sometimes i peer a little too long
over hand rails

i don't have a death wish, but
sometimes i feel the height of
a building, imagine the fall

i don't have a death wish, but
sometimes i wonder what it's like to
inhale carbon monoxide

i envy victims and car crashes
i crave bloody lips and smashed metal bits
i want to feel pieces of glass
splinter against my skin
i want concrete sidewalks to
meet me sideways and broken
i want the merciless punches of
muggers and thieves

heart attack and headache
fractured skull and black eye
--sometimes i wish that was me.

maybe i do have a death wish
but then
still i am alive



maybe i don't really want to die

listen for the
voice inside your ribs
it twists and shouts and
struggles, but still it
persists
"let me live"
"let me live"

i sometimes get so large
i eclipse the dreams that i
built for myself
i sometimes get so small
i almost disappear

but the sun of my heart
burns a well worn candle
trembling within the
sacred place dug
beneath my ribs

flickering like the
light of a dying firefly
it illuminates the
paths of the dead
paving the way home for
heavy heads to
rest on the weight of
mother's breath

a sighed lullaby that
shines like the moon, it
guides the dark out of my
starless spaces

w h a t ' s t h e u s e o f l i v i n g w h e n yo u a i n' t re a l l y l i v i n g
w h a t ' s t h e u s e o f l i v i n g w h e n y o u a i n' t real
w h a t 's t h e u s e of l i v i n g w h en y o u a i n' t
w h a t ' s th e u s e o f l i v ing
w h a t' s t h e u se
w ha t
    ha


r e a ll y li v i n g
|r e a l l i v i n g|
>>a l i Ve<<
        *i*
          !

i am a never-ending wound
marred skin above
blemished bones

i am an artifact of defeat
decayed, crumbling
buried, gone

i am a failed experiment
defective dream and
unkept promise

i am a burden child
unable to lift the
fears and hopes of
tired, broken people

i am a suicide
23 years in the making

i am always running from the
heartbreak of my mother
i feel the violence of
crumbling households as it
shatters against my skin
i hear the roaring of her silence
as it scolds me for my temper
while hers burns like a furnace that
singes my bones

my mother's self-hate is
so deep it resents
the reflection it
finds in her daughter
unfortunate to learn
the very vices she
abhors within herself have
painted themselves on
her frail and young ones

i have learned my
worthlessness from my father
who himself thinks
nothing sacred of his body and blood
who belittles his wounds yet
is vindicated by their presence
as if he deserves his pain

my mother holds her anguish
as ransom to my neck, she
tells me i must rescue
her sorrows for the
price of my strength, that
i must purchase her torment
at the altar of my youth

i have been made to
carry the weight of an
old world, whose
screams and silences
burn as knives in my back,
whose injustices become my
inward injuries

but is it fair to ask children to
mother their mothers, to
father their fathers,
to be all the things they
couldn't be: a good parent
but is it fair to ask questions when
the world was already unfair to them?

life is a violent place.

that the world is crumbling
like the dust of my bones that
glides through the wind, sinks,
and settles into dirt
it scars my insides

a swallowed devastation
that defaces the walls of
this temple
curse the church that
chained you
break the arms that
maimed you

make love to the bruises and
kiss every trauma
caress the chasms of your wrist
split open from the
the sharp edges of your sadness



but it only grows.

I wish someone would
ask me if
i am ok because
i don't have the strength
to ask for myself

i wish someone would
take my hands and
squeeze them because
they shake when
i am afraid

i wish someone would
dare to see behind
my trembling walls because
even if you cared
i would refuse it

like blood in the mouth or
seawater in the throat, i
feel a caustic wrongness, a
constant creaking at the
hinges of the soul, an
invasion of my depths that
feel the scraping of their flesh from
greedy words and arms

an unrelenting bitterness
on the tip of my tongue
pieces of glass line my gum and
i bite down to taste the
wounded grin

rotten as old bones
i hide behind a cloak and
feed the dust

family is such a
strange word when
you are a constant foreigner
regardless of the
sameness of your blood

navigate

I trace the map on my arm,
the ridges of my wrists where
the land trembled and
shuddered with sadness

I am made of constellations of
despair, a dust-filled universe
throbbing with stars that
stab the darkness

I light a fire in my heart to
burn its secret pages
I untie its strings to
hear it sing

I grasp the rudder of the
ship that sails my veins
evade the rocks, endure the
clothed and roaring sea

I voyage alone but give this plea:
Traverse the sorrows with me.

I recall moments
where the tears of the world
well up as oceans
inside my chest

I feel it heave, sigh
I listen to it wrestle and
groan, restless in the
wake of its wound

Let me be your river to
carry your pain
let me soothe your scars,
absorb the blood,
diffuse it within my
stream

Let me bear the bullet
strangled within the burden
let me mend you with
open arms, let me
breathe your fragrance
exhale the poison hurt

I will be your dark
so you can be my light

matchstick

i keep my pain
like crumpled little secrets.
most days i forget about the
cluttered mess littering
my hollow insides
but sometimes all it takes is a
sorrowed spark to ignite the
paper storm until my
secrets leave me scorched

If you love me,

let me go.

I woke the wound
with tired vengeance
it moves to quake my bones
it lurks in the veins, lives in
the cracks of my heart,
cradling contempt like a
worn package

I'm too afraid to move.

bite my tongue
tossing sleep
lost teeth to
falling fences
stumble deep

imaginary deaths
breathing bloody thoughts
there's a knot in
my throat and i
fashion a noose to hang
unsuccessful me's

empty funeral of
echoing halls
unholy silence
unhappy sad

lonely
lonely
lonely
reach but
can't touch
stand here sickly
wasted struggle
wrong weary

invisible

“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and -- in spite of True Romance magazines -- we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way."
Hunter S. Thompson

And you, child, are brave because
you keep on living.

I feel sick, a
nervous laughter stirring in the
marrow of my bones, a
migraine in the ribs
do you have a voice when the
world has no ears?

rust

she wipes the dust from her
wood shelf heart, old
books and ornaments that
speak in tears and shatters

an aged journal, broken
leather that smiles in creases
tender sheets that know the
weight of soul and pen

she ruffles its pages--
smelt of earth and sadness--
tracing her fingers over
words of ink. she finds a
pin-pricked paper vein
a painful nothing, disappearing
within the folds of diaries

a lyrical abyss upon a
blank page, she hears
herself within the spaces
within an emptiness

"am i alone
and shall i always be alone?"

she twists her lungs in
knots, clenching hope as if to
suffocate it. she strangles,
stranded in a fugue of
ghostly voices--choke, smother, fight.
spirit-stifled, she waits to
exhale, but breath suspended
cannot sing

away.

threaded insides full of
paper shreds and
unfinished sentences
uninspired ink blots like
blood, my veins are
dull as white painted walls
i bite my lip and
taste a bitter something
sour, something sad
the light flutters coldly
eyes vain as whirlpools
empty as static
shallow as my lungs



silence.


thick knotted sadness
abandoned places
crumbling houses
inwardly drooping, a
flower wilting was my spirit

i am nothing
will i ever be anything?
will i [n]ever be anything?

melt like discarded snowcones
in the ground, unpretty
hearts that don't mean anything

alone in a well-lit room
it eats me up from the insides