pulse

Watching you dance

Across the room

To a song that's playing

Only in your head

Singing lyrics with your lips

But your body writes in paragraphs

Piece together pages

Of the world beneath your skin

And when you move

The world, it moves around you

Moving with the pulse

Of the blood beneath your skin

And you carve out silent canvases

Painted thick with motion

As you piece together pages
With the color in your veins

stale air

there are soundtracked conversations between us where I see future in your eyes and taste love on your breath like a fog. these words are fossilized, purified, prescribed for my own abuse. I fill a needle with nostalgia and follow the usual process:

deep breath in, exhale

fresh oxygen mixes with the stale air in my veins, takes the pain down just enough to stay conscious. I hold my breath to feel every moment that will never return, reveling in the backdrop of fireworks exploding across my eyelids.

deep breath in

going numb

I can feel myself, sinking again into something blurry and familiar, like holding my head beneath water, watching the spots form behind my eyelids, holding my breath, going numb with your taste on my mouth, my tongue touching every syllable you moaned, fingers grazing every piece of hair you pulled, something blurry and familiar, each deliberate step, holding my breath, tired of air, tired of breathing every syllable you moaned, sinking again into something, blurry and familiar, going numb.

concrete

Your fingers match the panic in your voice
sending Morse code spinal taps
"please come back"

As I'm leaning out
my second story window
And I'm smiling at the sunset
through the trees

And the only thing
that's keeping me
From meeting concrete
Is your fist clenching
the shirt that's on my back

And the moment hangs between us

Rushing adoration

I hear the heavy breath,

Of this creeping buzz,

While it clambers over white enamel

Tap the nerve,

Spike my bloodstream,

Inhale, 

Fill my chest with embarrassment 

At the strength of experience,

The rushing adoration of this altered state,

Flushing cheeks, 

Twitching finger patterns,

Spelling love and decay. 

Never knows

My love is painful,

My love could grab your throat

My love, it never knows 

When to stop and when to squeeze

My love is thick,

My love could stop your heart

My love will fill your veins

My love will stop your heart

My love is deep,

My love cannot resist

My love would paw at every door

My love would scratch at every brick

My love is bright,

My love illuminates

My love will scorch each rod and cone

My love will boil your irises

My love is tired,

My love exhausts

My love, it never knows

When to stay and when to go

safe

Nothing is easy,

Is it?

Nothing happens,

Life sliding by,

The slippery slope to happiness. 

Instead,

There's a haze of horrid hopefulness,

Trapped between lips like a secret disease,

Inhaling a quarter-century of disgust and withdrawal. 

Nothing is easy,

Nothing is safe. 

Beautiful spires

My tongue navigates the ridges of my teeth, 

Sending memories and messages,

Of castle walls with beautiful spires, 

Adorned with pieces of you impaled,

Collected with loving care. 

I feel the skin that was taken,

Held high in the summer heat,

A sunset trophy with sunrise warning,

Decaying with beauty. 

Every cell is alive with your touch,

Alive in your death,

Slow and painful,

Incisors digging into your lips,

Bitten by castle walls,

Strewing blood and love across enamel landscapes. 

incoherent ink

There’s a prescription to fill

but first we need a little blood

a little cum to count diseases

all your abnormalities

Here’s a shot of sodium

here’s a chain around your ankle

here’s the same old manic state

you thought you gave up long ago

There’s a shadow with a chain

wrapped around my ankle

dragging me along

with a slow, determined pace

Here’s a pill and there’s a pen

full of incoherent ink

there’s a prescription to fill

there’s that same old manic state.

naked sky

There’s a world above your head

That you’ve only just discovered

There’s a sunrise in addition

To the sunsets that you’ve known

I watched you hold your breath

Taking tiny hits of chaos

Until your lungs forced an exhale

Breaking ribs and cracking teeth

I heard your lips release a hurricane

Heading straight for the horizon

Filled with years of grey formations

Monsters hidden in the clouds

And it swept them all away

Now your skin darkens with summer

Flush with newly naked sky

Freckled faces turning upward

To the world above your head

slender reminders

I wondered aloud, 

bittersweet, 

if the world wouldn't look as lovely without me.

You assured me you'd seen beauty, 

decided for yourself
the air between us is not enough
to replace my breath in your lungs.

How will you remember me, 

hidden in the shadow of the new and beautiful? 

You'll follow anywhere as long as I'm standing still, 

indecision wracking my bones and clutching my capillaries.

I'm holding your neck with one hand
while promising permanence with the other, 

kissing my way to violent affection. 

I want to keep you, 

bound and lonely, 

broken and tasting blood, 

infatuated at the thought of bare skin
scraping on my asphalt tongue. 

I wondered aloud, 

bittersweet, 

how your fingers would break between my teeth

sucking on slender reminders of love, 

coursing through our veins.

sympathetic joy

You've got this picture of me 

heading straight for rock bottom

You caught me smiling

with a drink in my hand

You told me I’ve been going 

in the same direction

For the past two years

and the worst part is

You're probably right.

so,

When you say you're doing better

when you say you're doing fine

I wish I could say it didn't break my heart

every goddamn time

It's jealousy

this side of me

I should be better than six months ago

and all the slurry

Promises between you and me

i just can't seem to let go

And the worst part is

when you say you're doing better

When you say you're doing fine

i wish it didn't break my heart

I want to save you

even if I can't save myself

I want to save you

even if I can’t save anyone else

And when you say you're doing better

when you say that you're just fine

I wish I could lie. 

visionary

I’ve been faking all of my visions.
A false fucking prophet;
I am selling cynical snake oil and promises in exchange for progress.

You make beautiful things

The world is distilled in your veins as a drug

And your blood turns to watercolor

Saturating the canvas

When sickness takes root in your lungs

You cough poetry between gasps of air

Spitting truth into tissue

The ground’s pull is meaningless

But lifelines circle around you

Invisible

The captive temporality

Of your painted mind
Rests against reverence

synonym

Is the word frantic? It’s whatever keeps me hungry, quick to intoxication and slow to reason. It’s whatever keeps me holding to plans without realizing the damage they cause. My skin is fraying with the threads that hold my stitches.

Jump

I'm lost,

trapped on a ledge I didn't know I climbed,
waiting for your voice to tell me:
it's just a few feet off the ground. 

The fall won't hurt.
I don't trust you,

but I love you,

so I jump. 

Little steps

I am standing in front of a mirror, in a hotel room in Tennessee. I called my little brother to tell him that I wanted to hurt myself. He talked me off the roof; now I'm somewhere in the middle, at a height where the rocks would paralyze, but not quite kill me. The view isn't quite as good here. 

I spend my night nitpicking, memorizing every piece of me that I hate. The smell of my skin wanders into my nose and makes my stomach turn, reminds me of every warm mistake it's pressed against. I self-medicate with sleeplessness and stimulants. I am the healthiest strung-out alcoholic you know, always looking for a drug to pass the time. 

I thoughtfully chew the last of these little pills, waiting for my stomach to turn down the volume. My skull is a bitter echo chamber, but I don't even scowl when the chemicals hit my tongue. I'm proud of myself; it's the little steps toward self-control that count. 

frostbite

Grey masses cling to mountains as I close my eyes and revel in nothing. It’s either heat exhaustion or frostbite in this goddamn valley, and somehow it always takes me by surprise. If insanity expects different results from the same conditions, I should have been committed a decade ago. I squeeze my eyes tighter with each moment, hoping for a revolution: inside my head, or outside my window. I remember your voice shifting between drunken playfulness, somber sadness, pleading confusion. Your tears nearly brought me back, frozen with painful desire, but spiteful reflection shows me otherwise. Take a shot of bravery and promise me you’ll bring back summer before I open my eyes. Promise me anything, and I’ll swallow it whole.