I Am More

I am more
than the sum of my parts,
More than the heart
that beats cold inside my chest,
More than the lungs that breathe the stale air
known simply, as existence,
More than these fingers
that trace outlines on canvas,
paper, flesh, surfaces raw and
carved out, begging to be touched,
I am more,

I am more
than the scars that you've left,
Printed like the ink upon a newspaper,
Smeared and smudged when caressed by skin,
More than the brokenness that resides
perpetually in my mind,
More than the voices that taunt,
haunt & flaunt their superiority
to me at night - laying all of my
failures past before me like photographs
left over from another life,
I am more,

I am more
than the smile on my face,
Be it real or fake,
More than the breath's I take,
More than the mistakes I make,
I am more,

I am more
than the dreams I dream,
More than the songs that I sing
lost hopelessly in the melody
& tumbling over words - off cue,
More than the days I starved,
More than the times I have carved
with a blade, my sadness - forever
in my epidermis,
More than the heartbreaks that
nearly broke me down for good,
I am more

I am more
than the paintbrush in my hand,
Swirling over surfaces prepped with
Guesso - colors blending and bleeding
into something beautiful in my soul,
More than the words I write,
or type, in the night,
hoping to expunge some
of the impulsive pressure that
builds forever in my soul,
Leaving me - a state of desperate
that I pray you never know - curled
fetally in a corner,
I am more

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger,
Makes you run harder, faster, longer,
Makes you sweat blood,
Makes you afraid,
Makes you sad, lonely, pale,
But from all of that - you still become more
For with every ounce of the old you
that you lose, whether you
choose to or not,
you replace it with a piece of steel
that can never be ripped from
your humanity again,
You become forged in
a fire that burns eternally,
Hotter with every passing day,
Until one day you are pure gold,
Never dull or filthy again,
But rather - bright and gleaming
in the light,
Because you have become

...more

An Artists View on Heartbreak

"I'm sorry...Nothing can hold me...Do you really want me? I adore you still. But I hear them calling...calling...and nothing can hold me..." Evanescence "Swimming Home"



 

I've been so lost beneath the surface

of my own skin, waiting, waiting, waiting

to hear you call to me once more,

Pull me past the watery reflection of my eyes

that seem, to most, to go on for miles inside

my head,

Nothing can hold me here anymore, though,

I've finally let myself grab onto the truth -

nothing more than a simple pair of rusted pliers,

used to pull out the shards of your lies from

my heart,

The one that used to beat for you, and you alone..

But I heard my name from somewhere

far beyond and darling, it was not your voice,

the one that used to be melodic to me,

used to lull me into the most wonderful sleep

while lost in your arms, surrounded by

your soothing body heat,

But I finally learned to sleep alone

and in the cold, and darling, that's alright,

Because if I cannot learn to love myself, you said,

I would never love anything else,

You were right,

I am finding that you were right on

plenty of issues that no one else

even saw,

I wonder, though, what you saw in me...

there...there at the very last...

Did you see my desperation?

Did you peel the masque from

my face one night as I slept, soundly

and safe, in your arms,

You know I adore you still,

But this voice, love, it keeps hollering

out my name, all hours of the day and night,

and it smells of places unseen and experiences that

I am letting slip through my grasp,

All because you decided to break our bond

of trust and shove the tiny shards deep into

my already broken heart,

& darling, removing them takes time,

but I'm finally making some progress,

finally...

& from the depth of my soul, where

I've spent so many months staring at the water's

surface far above - wishing someone would come

and find me,

A trapped mermaid in this rusted cage of your "love"

and let me out, I am beginning to pick the lock

myself,

Because Prince Charming cannot swim,

Cannot dive into the depths of one's humanity

and release them from a self-constructed cage,

especially while they sit within that cage and hold the key around

their bruised throat,

I changed down here, love,

I am not myself, or the self that you knew, or the self that I was

or the self that I hated,

I am evolving like Darwin's theory and am slowly adapting

my emotional genetics so that someday, someday

I can pull these keys from my throat, unlock my cage,

and swim out the door,

& I will rise, someday, to the surface,

& when I break through it, I will break through

everything that kept me bound by you,

 

I thought you were going to be my everything,

my only one, my soulmate, my eternity,

Had dreams of us sitting upon a lovely porch

swing in our golden years, drinking tea and

talking of our life together, you & I,

But some dreams are not meant to be

and there is nothing we can do to change that,

 

So we lock ourselves away inside,

trapped, only mentally, by the hauntings in our mind,

the terror and trauma of abandonment,

the loss of a dream that we desperately pursued,

and we wait, beneath our skin...waiting...

 

Until one day we realize that we held

the clay from that dream in our hands the

entire time,

and only we can set fire to it, purify it

like gold, and reconstruct another

dream, until it's finally able to stand the

test of fire, able to be painted, glossed,

turned into something beautiful,

 

Because that's what artists do - we

take our broken pieces and assemble them

into something already good, and make it

magnificent...

 

We are the life-givers to a million

dreams, hopes, plans, desires, passions,

and we never discard any piece of material,

because, just what if it is THE piece left to finish

our greatest work of all...

 

So darling, I don't dare discard your memory,

or hate it, despise it...

I just keep it in a box and hope that someday I will

find the canvas upon which to attach it - making

my greatest work: life...

The Little Girl Inside

She lives behind the epidermis
of my skin, covered with red
gashes and bone-white scars,

She sits and taunts and
haunts me, as she always has
and always will,

She waits until darkness
falls and I have sunken deep
into the coma-like death of
cold sleep,

My heartbeat erased to almost nothing...

Once she sees my vulnerability
from the inside, her tiny, child
spindle-fingers lace through the
xylophone of my ribs, wrapping,
winding, clutching with all of her
might...

& she cracks them apart...

I shriek and wake, jolted
upright in bed, cats mewling,
having been roused from slumber,
staring at my frame - arch-backed
as a smooth, crescent moon,

I cannot scream for the pain...

She punches her fist
past my sternum, & I
hear it clink on the floor
somewhere in the room,
landing between the crinkled
backing of Marya Hornbacher
and Christ, himself,

& she sinks her little
fingernails into my skin
from the inside out, digging
her way out of my soul like a
pale-faced, empty-eyed corpse
from my flesh-grave,

& she does know that I will soon perish...

She possesses the strings that hold
me and contain me - her plaything, a
marionette - she swings me to my
cupboards where the thousands of
rainbow colored pills lay in wait
for my immediate consumption,

Jerking my wrists this way
and that, my Puppet Master,
she has me take everything in sight,
and then off to the dresser drawers
we return, where she keeps my
razorblades "just in case"...

& she turns my strings just right
and I slit my wrists "just so"...and
she smiles with her black, hollow
little eyes that gleam a bubbling,
foaming hatred for him, for me
and everything else that ever was
or will be...

& we sit together and have
a tea party, while the pills and
blood loss become my fatal
delirium,

& we are playing Alice in Wonderland and
I am Alice, she is the Mad Hatter, and
I have eaten the cake and drank the bottle
of poison, but I am neither large nor small,
for I am dead now...

& she pours my corpse another cup of magic tea...

To Love a Poetess

If you ever love a poetess, prepare yourself,
For poetesses are creatures of great feeling,
Great, deep, all consuming feeling
and once you are encompassed within
those feelings,
You can never be erased from within her,
She will write you love letters, sonnets,
lullaby's, haiku's and maybe even a book,
She will wrap her mind, body, heart and
soul around your entire being and cocoon
you in her adoration and love,
You will be nestled there for eternity - or
as long as you choose,
Should you love a poetess,
She will display her affections towards you
in a myriad of ways,
Some will surprise you,
Some will shock you,
Some might even be a tad embarrassing,
But the poetess has long since
learned that the only way to leave
a mark on the world, is to
scar it with one's presence,
Should you choose to love a poet,
she will place herself behind you,
never before you,
She will turn you into her muse,
Her opus,
Her art,
You will be the focal point of the entirety of
her blissful existence,
However...
Should you decide that her affections
are no longer required, her love no
longer needed, her presence no longer
desired,
Prepare yourself to become
her Grand Epic,
She will have lost everything with you,
She will believe that everything that she ever
wanted, needed, craved - is waltzing
right out the door of her Universe right
along with you and the stubborn 'clickclick'
of your heels,
And once you have slammed the door
in your triumphant, egotistical finality,
She may just put on her finest furs, jewelry,
manuscripts on the table, waltz to the garage with
all of her love letters to you, turn on the engine of her car
with a bottle of vodka and suck carbon monoxide
until she sleeps and dreams of you forever...
For if you love the poetess, you will become
her heart, and should you rip yourself
from the body of her world, she surely
will die,
without you...

Cutting Addiction

I am a slave to the blade,
A slave to my pain, punishment
and purgatory,
I slip a needle in my skin to try
and silence the demon that
causes my flesh to burn.
But I cant...
He screams at me still,
to slash open my legs, arms,
chest...I can't get him to stop
I plead in my voiceless way,
Plead for some help,
but they none of them see me,
None of them see me for what I am...

I don't need you to tell me that I am
"strong", "brave" "made so much progress"
or "i can't deal with your depression"
....I need you to tell me that one day, when
I fall off the wagon (as every addict does)
you will still love me and you won't change or
abandon me....

Because "I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking, maybe six feet ain't so far down" ...

The Addict

& She'd give anything to make the pain stop,
Give any little tiny thing she could muster,
Any word, beautiful epitaph, chronology, excuse,
Excuses, she's full of those, isn't she?
But what you don't know is that she once was full of life

She once radiated a glow that drew people towards her,
Once controlled the atmosphere of a room with her cheerful laugh,
Once danced upon stages, reciting lines from a book of words,
Pretended, pretended and loved every moment of it

Now she pretends to be okay,
On this broken, cracking to the cornerstone, stage of life,
Where they ripped off the wing of her costume,
Slashed the velveteen garments she performed in,
Dancing, now, beneath the body of the man who will give her what she wants,
Reciting the words from the beautiful, thick book where she hides until he is finished
destroying her once again

One pill....

Two pills....

Three pills....

Shot of vodka,
Shot of Jack,

Time elapsing...

Finally, release...

They dissolve in her bile,
Seeping through the cracks in her intestines, hitting her blood,
and finally, finally, finally - she is at peace enough to rest

Ambien/Klonopin Ramblings #9,857

No matter how hard she tries,
the silence won't leave her alone

Won't let her breathe in
peace, won't let her smile from the inside

Silence takes his chilly hands
and wraps them around her neck

Sending goosebumps along her
neck bones, down to her sternum

He reminds her that she is not of them
Not of the ones who can function the way they do

Get up, go to work, discipline,
fortitude, friendships, families,
history repeating itself for them

Not her
Never her

She watches them - awestruck
at the simple movements that they make

How the fluidity of their days
liquefy into one another, small raindrops pooling
in the empty bottles of time

She wants to be a part of that
Not much, just her own small square of the world

A tiny corner in the Universe where
she could possibly belong

To someone
With someone
With some tiny one's
Maybe even a cat or two

Husband, House, Cars,
Well trimmed lawn, Smiling neighbors
that wouldn't look down at her for the ink
she has on her skin or the hoops of sterling in her ears

She dreamed of "home"
She dreamed alone
Thank God the Dr. put her on Prazosin
for PTSD nightmares,
Cuz' now she won't have to dream anymore
and wake up to find that dreams don't manifest
for her the way spells used to

Another man,
Another bed,
Another flop of a relationship,
But who cares, really?
She has ambien and klonopin and prazosin
to take care of all the day/night fears and tears

She has her magic spells
They just sit in bottles on a shelf these days
instead of in a book or in cards

If this were Alice in Wonderland,
She would have turned into a puff of
smoke from the caterpillars hookah by now

Just drifting away...away...away...away...

Imperfection

"Am I not pretty enough? Is my heart too broken? Do I cry too much? Am I too outspoken? Don't I make you laugh? Should I try it harder? I try as hard as I can...?"
Kasey Chambers "Not Pretty Enough"


& no matter what she does,
what smile she paints so carefully
upon the peeling, cracking canvas
of her face, she will never be enough

Smiles are drawn on in the morning,
careful, thin, easily erasable lines in case
of emergency - she need only to break the glass
rotunda of her heart
and spray her smile with water, washing away
all traces of happiness

But, God forbid, they see the real her underneath,
ever,
even once,
period...

She tried to be perfect, she really did,
it's something she would swear her life on,
would swear it on God, on her mother's grave,
on everything she ever managed to hold onto
long enough to love

She really, really tried...

But now she sits beneath the tarp
of evening, shadowing and protecting
her as she silently and softly wipes away
the masque that shields her face from the
rest of the world,
she wipes it all off

Smeared and smudgy black, red, yellow, blue,
all swirled together like some disgusting cocktail
mixed by a bartender just fucking around,
She never would drink it - so why wear it anymore?

There is nothing left to hold onto,
nothing left to grip in her world,
so instead she falls asleep tonight,
vodka and razorblades sunken deep
into her throat, her flesh, her soul, to the
memories of a thousand lovers who used,
abused, bruised, mamed, tore and lied

And maybe, finally, finally - she will sleep
and not dream of being chased by the man in black
who has haunted her for all of these years

Maybe soon she "won't be so lonely, and she'll walk on water, every chance she gets..."

Degredation

It's a cold September rain
that crashes to the ground
in fallen haste, spear-heading
itself in the process

You sit, hands worrying
themselves to death in the
ICU, 3rd floor, hotel for the
emptiest forms of humanity
possible,

I'm afraid that if you worry
your beautiful hands any more
that they will be next on the gurney
sliding down the highway to hell,

I agreed to sit here with you, when
you called me, middle of the night, 3am,
her Great Escape finally successful

I awoke to the sound of your initially
inexplicable sobs, "she's gone, gone, gone..."

In the darkness we drove, bats out
of hell, rushing to get to her - but what for?
So that you could caress her broken corpse
just once more? Run your fingertips over the
black, twisted stitches that held together, the
gaping wounds that looked like tiny mouths,
screaming a thousand words she could not say?

Now we sit, waiting on her family
as you mumble about a couple
hundred blue and yellow capsules she
decided would make for a perfect dinner,
followed, of course, by vodka,

always vodka with her...

I hear you say something about her
delicate, ink-stained wrists, split wide,
and how sad, you thought, the way the
pictures drawn into her skin would no
longer be even - the way they were before

I can't focus, for the life of me, I can't -
for that, I eternally apologize, however,
I'm too lost in the beauty of your devastated
eyes, that hide a menagerie of thoughts both
depraved and brilliant

They say there is a fine line between genius and insanity
and you, my friend, have been seamlessly travelling
back and forth on that line for years now it seems

Especially with her...

I watch rain slide down the window panes
of your ivory face, eyes red-rimmed and filled
with the tiniest of spiderwebs - also a deep crimson - the
way I'm sure her bathroom must have appeared to
the inexperienced EMT - who took one look at her
fleshy, meat wrists that sprayed the walls in the gore of her pain
and suffering, and promptly vomited all over the floor...

as if she had not made enough of a mess, already...

You shake your head virulently and in disbelief,
"whowhatwhenwherewhywhywhy??" and in the process
your salty grief covers the lapel of my jacket

'Why can't you just let her go', I wonder absent-mindedly
to myself, aware that for people such as herself, peace would
never be found in the places that she had the predisposed tendency to
look...
In the crack den's, in the balled up fists of
some new abusive man,
and in the dark recesses of her mind,
where she wandered, happily lost
for eternity

"I guess," you finally say, "that she found her peace at last."

'Yes,' I think to myself, 'in a sea of vodka and pills and blood, cooked in the bathtub like her own brand of moon shine..."

Remember Me

I'm speaking to you,

Do you hear me?

Have you ever?

Or am I just the ghost,

Reminiscent and left over from an old life,

Where we were happy,

Do you hear me?

When I scream at night,

Do you hear me?

Or does it come as the vapor of

a sound?

Just enough to stir you from sleep,

& then do you look around,  

As if something might be missing?

What was it though?

A half-lucid thought,

No real importance to it,

You shrug it off & succumb

to the cold, deep ocean of sleep,

Dreaming of everything you love,

But I loved you,

Am I in your dreams?

Will I ever be? 

Was I ever?

I want to know that you have not forgotten me,

That I still linger like a memory,

Deep in the back of your brain,

Someday, when you least expect it,

A smile, a song, an object,

Will rip me to the forefront of your head,

& you will smile & remember me,

Who I was,

& that I loved you  





You Destroyed Me

You left me.

You just fucking left me.

Here, in this hell, a ring
still in layaway, sparkling
and glimmering

Hoping that it would get another
chance to symbolize love
the way it tried to do before

& with these children who
adored you

Hoped beyond all hope that
you would be the one that
they would someday call
"Uncle" after stuffing your
lies down their throats
while perched like a
god on your throne,

& devoid of anything
else left to believe in
we swallowed the
slop of your empty words
as good servants do

& praised you for
your magnificent kindness

Our "hero"...


You just left me

As if the day before
you had not called me
velveteen names that
slipped from your
satin tongue like
branches of ivy

& oh, how they wound
about my trifled head
that burned and cracked
so long ago

Slipped around my
throat - choking me
to the death of reality

What a beautiful death it was

My greatest mistake was
believing that you cared
enough to glue me back together

You did, after all, promise
to "fix me"...

I never did believe that
you could

I never didn't believe that
you wouldn't try

I never did believe that
you would be unfaithful
the way you were

I never did believe that
you would dip your daggered
tongue into the lye that you drove
into my heart, that ate what was left
of it away like acid

I never believed

But you're gone,
Does anyone know where
you currently reside?
No - obviously not with the
woman you were going to
leave me for,

The one to whom you
said "I'm over her," when
she asked you of me

"I'm...over...her..."

Those words rang like
bells and whistles
in my brain, replaying
over and over and over
in the darkness while I try to sleep

How in the hell are you
"over me" when two days before
we signed a contract to a new
home?
Looked at wedding bands?
Priced locations, venues, cakes,
gifts, tulle and ivory silks?
When you stood in front of the
awkward bulk of my family
and swore to me on your life,
your daughters life and your all
magnificent "hatchet" that you
would love me and only me...

FOREVER...?

How could you just be there
and be so damn in love with me
and then suddenly evaporate
into the air like hot steam?

My father always did say
that you were just "full of hot air"
& now I see that he is right

I feel as though I am
going to rot to death in this
enormous bed

The one that I swindled
away for us to lay in forever,

For us to make babies in, plans
in, whisper silently our hopes
and dreams for the future in, and
then someday, whisper our final
"goodnights" in...

I see, now, that I will die alone
in this fucking bed, here, in this
hell, with all of my household goods

My pots, pans, glasses, cups, silverware,
unused wedding invitations, pictures of us,
the blueprints of our life-to-be that never will,
I see that tonight, I will say "Goodnight" to you,
sip my wine, laced with lye, and fucking leave
the world...

Just like you did me...

When you come to find me,
just know, just fucking know,
that every time I said "I love you"
I meant it - but you didn't love me

Because you don't destroy people you love

Entombed

I remember you and

the way you clung to the

pillowed split of my lips some

nights, some empty, hopeless

nights, like salt to the rim of

a glass

I remember the feeling of

your hair tangled around

my fingers, snagging and

catching in the cracks of

my nails

The feeling of your

flesh, so hot, that it

burned the sickness

clean out of my soul

I never, never knew,

not even for a moment,

that you would ever leave,

not once

You were supposed to be 

Prince Charming, weren't you? 

Supposed to be Mr. Right and 

not just another Mr. Right Now?

Weren't you supposed to be 

    " The One" ... ?  

Wasn't there supposed to be some

magnificent declaration of your

love spinning and glittering

on my finger? White tulle drowning

my fears to their eternal death?

Weren't you supposed to prove

to me that you loved me above all else?

Adored me above all else?

Needed me above all else?

But you never did

Just took your sarcophagi

tongue and entombed me

in the mausoleum of your

words forever...

& I lie, rotting in here,

wandering from wall to wall,

up and down the stairs of

this miserable cage, dead roses in

hand, ragged and stinking of

every death except the kind I

desperately crave - physical...

I am a ghost

Trapped here for the rest

of my eternity

& you are gone, finally,

off to the mountains, or the

beach or some hole in the wall

where another empty-eyed,

broken hearted woman sits,

waiting for the man who

appears to be "Prince Charming

I hope you brought your white

horse, you bitch, because if I ever

get out of this tomb...I'm going to

kill you and bury you in it myself...

You & I

Us
A dove-colored morning
ripped apart by dirt-salted
rain that pooled in the tiny
bowl where your neckbones
connect,

You
Babble incoherently &
say you still dream of him
at times - when the fragrance
of night slips up through your
nostrils and suffocates you
to the pupil-dialated
coma-black of sleep,

I
Smile & try to make sense
of this mess - pick up each 
blood splattered piece of
cloth that covered the bathroom
floor, soaked with every
ounce of your still half-kicking,
sputtering, broken heart that
lay wheezing between the smooth
blades of your rib bones,

You
Silently wished that they would 
sever it to death - put it out of
it's horrid misery - it never
really liked you anyways -
but maybe you've severed
yourself enough...
this time,

I
Gaze upon you,
Or what's left of you,
drowning to death in your
own lifeblood and red froth,
too weak to stay above the water 
anymore,  

You
Are pitiful and weak 
in your current state,

I
Watch you slide below the 
stained-glass surface,

You
Have become the Lady
of your own Lake,

I
Wonder what King Arthur
would think of you now,
bleeding internally from where
his sword raped your soul,
and externally, where yours
split your wrist-veins,

You
Smile at me
one last time from
beyond the mirror,

I 
Always hated the 
way it hung above the bathtub
like a reminder of one's flaws,

You
Blow me a kiss
Goodnight

I 
Finally inhale too much
water and drift away...

Thank You for the Venom

She doesn't speak of it,

Except in ink,

Once she would have whispered it in blood,

But that's been taken from her, too,

So strange,

The way one can scream their sorrows

and fears into a cavern...

Even stranger how the cavern screams them

back, makes you remember,

She remembers,

His memory is like a corpse,

Dead, decayed hands gripping her,

salt-white against the black smudges

on her soul he left behind,

At night, while she sleeps,

he spins her hair around his

spindle fingers...

Sinks them past her temple-bones

& carves tiny holes into the twisted

grey beneath,

Sanity leaked from behind her eyes,

Blood pooling in her ears,

Even in death he haunts her,

Who would have thought that

abuse could be delivered to the great beyond?

Some nights she thinks of when

he came up behind her, wrapped

his skeleton arms around her and

seeped poison from his pores

into her veins,

Some happy version of surreality

that electrocuted her from the inside

out,

Left her burning alive for days like that

til she burned out in the dirt, left

smoking like the butt of an old cigarette,

He would always take his teeth then

and scrape away at the charred

remains of her flesh,

Tearing away at her chest meat

until the smooth, stark ribcage

was exposed and beneath it...

her beating heart, ripe and

flush with hope(s),

Carefully he laid her upon the

table of his solipsism & smiled

at her that beautifully grotesque

smile - as he plunged a fork into

it's delicate surface, sliced

clean through it & placed it on

his tongue,

She never screamed as he ate what

was left of the good in her,

The only thing she had left

of herself to love,

Just closed her eyes and made

a great exodus into her mind,

& when she came to,

Blood spattered and sprayed

the walls, the floor, the room...

She smiled to herself...

It was finally over...

The organ that had caused such

malicious grievance in her life

was gone & the ghost pains

were all that would ever be left,

Being dead wasn't all that bad...

Once he returned to find

a note, written in red ink:

"Thank you for the venom..."

                                  

Maybe

& maybe,
Maybe if I can smile some more,
Glimmery, calcium-white rocks in my mouth,
That crack one another in haste and
anger when I speak,
Lips curved, spear-heading into my cheeks,
Any tighter and my face will rip in half,
Maybe...

& maybe,
Maybe if I can starve some more,
Get down to my happy 500 a day,
Puke and exercise the rest away,
All of my unnecessary flaws
melting before my eyes,
Dripping onto the treadmill,
Any more of me lost & I will crumble to dust,
Maybe...

But perhaps if I could crack open my rib bones,
Hooked behind them, a little girl, crying,
Perpetually crying in the dark,
Perhaps if I could rip her out by the hair,
Fling her off and away - hitting the wall,
Until she splatters like bugs on a windshield,
Washed away by the rain,
Maybe...


Maybe then I could forget,
Forget your fucking face,
Forget your goddamn eyes,
Forget your motherfucking smile,
Forget the fuck why
I ever fucking loved you,
I ever believed the shit you said,
I ever bought the dream hook, line and sinker,
When you sold it to me
sparkling like every diamond that we ever touched
beneath the lamp-heated glass that never was bought
signaling to me your lying tongue and betraying lips

Maybe - Maybe - Maybe
Just fucking maybe...

What Happens in the Dark

She sits, sometimes, in the carnival
glass dome of her skull, dreaming
of home,
Sits, wondering, not wandering, for she is not
lost, where the paint-by-number
line of fissure between reality and
surreality sits, between this and that,
here and there....everywhere and no where...
But as hard as she searches, valiantly searches,
it is not something she has come to find
as of yet,
Perhaps, when the artist painted her,
some lines bled and ran down the canvas
of who she should have been,
Could have been, had they not all
smudged and smeared together,
Maybe...

The mirror sucks her in, you know,
Voice booming like some unknown god
in the atmosphere, lip-licking, haughty sonofabitch,
swirling debauchery into her veins through
the tiniest hypodermic needle he could find,
he screams

She stares, Alice looking down the rabbit hole,
yet again,
She stares, hours and hours lost to
the unwanted presence of things upon her flesh and
beneath it that must be, MUST be, expunged,
a hair here, wrinkle forming there, cellulite...
Oh God, not that!

& Ana, the beautiful one, points out
each bit, standing behind her always,
here, here, there too, don't forget this...
She makes mental note of it all,

When they vanish, she slips to
the stark white cube, her own Pandora's
box, inside, the horrors and cure-all's
to life, death and whatever may come beyond,

One small bottle, nameless, faceless,
tiny, compact, spherical, magical,
She pops the top, attached to the crud-crusted rim,
yellowed over time, and pours magical pixie dust
filled pills into her bony palms,

Breaks each one, leaving them to
spray heavenly white powder on her
tabletop mirror,
One line, two line, three line, four...
Rolled up piece of paper in hand,
Clear the sinuses, up it goes, bend over
and breathe...
Inhale each bit until it hits the carnival glass
and shatters it...
Finally, finally she can't hear them,
see them, nothing...
Just sleep... that's all she ever wanted in the first
fucking place, wasn't it? Just to fucking sleep...
Not this, none of this...but there isn't a thing
she can ever do about it now...

Except sleep...

My Mia

She lingers in my shadow,

My shadow, too large, too

ominous, too much,

That's me...

Entirely too much,

Too intense, too solipsistic,

needy, empty, hollow, shallow,

dark, strange, too much...

There is always too much of me...

But she dances in my shadow,

Limber arms and toothpick legs

flailing and spinning, swirling

like a mad, whirling dirvish,

she cackles like thunder in the

dark, she illuminates life,

makes me see...

Oh do I see...

The excess, the fat, the cellulite,

stretch marks, jiggly parts, the

places on my frame that should bend

inwards towards my spine

and not outwards towards the universe,

no, never outward...

I see them, try hard to starve them away,

make her proud, make her quiet, at least

while I sleep...she never lets me sleep...

One pill, two pill, three pill, four,

Wine, tequila, vodka, floor...

I wake up to amphetamines,

Go to sleep to benzodiazepines,

Phentermine, Ambien, Klonopin...

Cocaine, if I could...I would try it...once...

She never stays quiet, not for very long,

and even when she sits in the foyer of my

brain, silent for a moment, while I munch

pieces of chocolate or slurp alfredo,

she tssssk's at me like the ticking of an

old grandfather clock, soon, I know, she

is going to chime when the hands meet, pointing upwards...

Some things, you will never escape..she's one of them...



Babble

& I look into your face, your

eyes, bearing down into my soul,

mouth moving,

I cannot hear you,

you're all the same,

every single one of you,

You babble, babble, babble 

recounting every moment of your life,

every breath you've taken,

every tear you've cried,

Until you sound like a blur

of words, syllables, noises,

I'm sorry, what did you say?

I must have zoned out again...

You bore me to tears,

telling me the same thing

as you did yesterday,

same story,

same wound,

same outcome,

Then you babble about how

much you love me, always will,

we know each other "so well"...right?

Wrong...you can't stop talking

about yourself long enough to find me

in the maze of your life,

In the maze of myself...

You don't know my

favorite color, favorite song,

favorite food, most hated attribute,

about men, women, life, love,

do you even know my name?

Do you know who I am?

Do you see me?

Do you really know that I am here?

In front of you?

Behind you?

Next to you?

On top of you?

Do you realize that I exist?

....No.....You never will.....

Drugged up Rantings...

I stare at it from across the bedsheets,
They are crumpled from your haste exodus
from the bed of my life (our life)
...I smooth them over. Think feebly to myself,
that if I can smooth them enough, no one
will ever know you were here.

That your emotional fingerprint wont smudge my
existence too badly.
I know that's a lie.
You left your mark.

On my eye where you planted your fist
and my mouth that you chewed raw,
dry and caked with your crusted saliva
that slopped off of your tongue like it was
a wet toad.

You left it on my heart that broke into pieces
and shattered the ice of my wrist that bled,
like war wounds into the wash basin...

You left your mark, you son of a bitch...

I stare at it, still.
Remembering the times you twirled me around in public,
screaming to the universe that you adored me,
that I was the only thing you would ever love,
and I remember smiling. Not the fake "church smile" or
"funeral smile" or "I'm F.I.N.E." smile...but a real one.
One that slipped onto my face with such ease I thought
it was just a dream. It could never be real.
I wish, now, that it had been just a dream.
I wish you were nothing more than too much to drink one night...

I sit - stupefied in my chair, pills kicking in,
mind checking out. I sit.

Waiting for them to say that on that summery
afternoon, a mere inches from jumping into life with you,
that I didn't find what I always prayed I wouldn't.
Not that...please? Anything but that...
Don't make me be the failure-esque, insufficient one again... please...

I waited for your call. For you to swing open
the door with sunflowers in hand, smiling that smile,
the way you used to be...and take me away.
Not to somewhere fantastical - just to somewhere
where we could be forever.

Now - tonight - I sit staring...

Six months - six months to the date and
I find myself swallowing the barrell of a gun.
The pills have numbed me to the core. I feel nothing except
the desire for it all to be over.

I pull - - - & see your smile...

It isn't real...I know I'm dying...

But then again, it was never real
and this is as close as I have ever been
to being lost in paradise...

My heart is broken...

Sad

Your lips mouthed words, no louder than a gentle hush,

That floated on crisp, October air, the way a leaf falls to

chilled earth,

Signaling it's grotesquely beautiful demise...

I only wish I had known that your words would be the end of me....

You smiled - the most beautiful, lovely, precious smile I had ever seen,

Enrapt with the twirl of your wrist, the sparkle in your eyes, the scent of you,

I always loved falling in love, but, when you hit stone rock below,

You wonder why you didn't at least take a peek on the way down,

October saw our confluence,

November - I was so sick you couldn't leave my side,

I remember thinking that I would pay you back for your kindness,

I paid a heaftier price than I should have...

December - we smiled for cameras, snogged beneath mistletoe, made batches of warm, gooey baked things that stuck to your teeth and melted in your mouth, and...

January - it got colder and colder still...

February - you spent the night with me on my birthday at the home of my best friend,

only to turn around, and let me wander aimlessly the next day on yours

...You thanked me for not coming with you...and as those words floated as softly on the air as your "hello"...my heart shattered into a million tiny pieces.

March - March was horrid. The death threats, the wishing of my demise, telling me I was a big fat bitch, telling me I was nothing without you...that my family preferred you, that my beloved Kristie preferred you...

I almost believed you...almost...

April - Was the worst...

May- we bought an apartment in the hopes that we could start fresh. You swore you loved me. Really - you just finally realized how badly you had jaded me, I think.

June - there she was. Nothing like me, nothing like you. She made no sense. THIS made no sense. Why her? Why of all people - HER? She "made you feel loved" and you were "over me" and...

....and my heart broke....

I haven't remembered much since then.

The sound of my soul crashing into the dirt.

The tangy metallic scent of blood on the air.

The moment I realized that I would never see your smile again.

We would never be....anything...again....

Why?



Beyond You

"Look at me, my depth perception must off again. Cuz this hurts deeper than I thought it did. It has not healed with time. It just shot down my spine. You look so wonderful tonight. Reminds me how you laid us down and gently smiled before you destroyed my life. Would you find it in your heart to make this go away and let me rest in pieces?"
- Saliva 'Rest in Pieces'


Did you ever think, love, that
you would have left me this way?
That you would have cracked the top of my
mind like an egg, sank your fingers within the
shard-like shell, and ripped me open til' my
yolky heart was oozing onto the floor?

I didn't...

I saw us happy, smiling in
pictures lined with white tulle and
sparkling dreams that sat upon my
finger, screaming to the rest of the world
that I was loved forevermore.

What lies I bought...

You ripped from me my sanity, my
humanity, my freedom, my soul...
and you managed to leave me in the night for
some belligerent shrew of a woman -
who didn't want you either in the end.

I hope you sit alone at night,
and remember that we could have been
wonderful together.

That we could have had it all...
Well...that you could have had it all - I still will.


Someday you're going to see me, walking
down the road somewhere, talking to someone
wonderful, with sparkling dreams on my finger
again - and I hope you remember, that it could have been
you.

You wanted someone else, wanted someone happier
because you made me so sad that my smile wouldn't
glimmer anymore - it was shrouded with sorrow.
But when you see me - I will smile brighter than I ever have
before.

I will be everything that I ever wanted to be
and everything that you would have never helped
me to become.

But moreover - I will be flawlessly loved.
Deeply, madly, truly, amazingly - and I
will glow with that love.

You dimmed my light so that yours would shine brighter
but now I am polishing you away from my skin.
Smoothing out my wrinkles, scrubbing off the dirt
from where you thrust me to the ground, smiled at me,
and wished me dead.

You'll be sorry, baby.
I'll see to that.

After all, my mother always said, "Living well is the best revenge."

You must have smiled at her,
The smile I always thought was meant for me,
Must have laced your fingers into the web of her hair,
Must have poisoned her mind with your venomous lies,
You must have caressed her,
Palms splayed like stars,
Spanning the breadth of her skin,
Yes, yes...
You must have done all of those things,
When you smiled,
She must have smiled back,
Must have woven magic into your brain,
Must have smelled the way you always swore that I did,
Intoxicating you,
Bewitching you,
Did I not enchant you anymore, love?
Was I, once again, never good enough?
Did my eyes no longer hold beauty?
Did my smile no longer light up my face?
Did my hands feel cold?
Did my kiss feel numb?
Was I no longer the muse?
Or did I touch a place too painful in you?
Did I break the scab of a wound that gushed fear?
Did I get too close for comfort baby?
Since you were going to leave me for the ugliest whore on the corner,
I hope that I did...
I hope I broke something within your soul that can never be fixed,
For love,
You have done the very same to me...

Empty Eyes

You stare at them with your empty eyes,
These stupid plastic spheres in your cranium,
Everyone says they're "beautiful"...
But you know what lies beneath their aqua sheen,
Beyond the thick, shimmery powder and black, cracking, crumbling goo-lined rims,
You started wearing it when you were young,
To "make you pretty..."
Then you grew up and took a long look at your insides,
Realized it would never happen,
You'd never be pretty,
Not really...

Somewhere....
You lost hope,
& now you wear it to detract from the violent sorrow,
That lies at the base of your person,
And somehow, no matter what, shines through your eyes,
It's a vacancy that reaches deep into the pit of your soul,
That pulls and sucks like a fucking black hole,
You're eating everything in sight with this vacuum in your heart,

Heart...what heart?
You haven't had one of those in years...
The hole has eaten that too,
It's going to continue eating you alive,
Until there's nothing left of you,

Nothing...
Except those stupid, fucking spheres in your dome...
Oh well,
People can at least keep the most aesthetically pleasing aspect of you,
Your empty, empty eyes...

Sarah II

Your ruby lips parted in devious malice,
To reveal the shine of your pearlescent smile,
That had always reminded me of the handle,
Of an ivory knife that held tight to your tongue-blade,
That was used to slit his throat,
Leaving him sputtering and dying in your hands,

You tilt back your mineralized osseous tissue skull,
Barely covered by the duvet of your flesh,
That hangs like draperies from your clinking-clanking salt-white bones,
As that fat, lying toad flops from beyond your teeth cage,
Where it should always stay until the end,
As you cackle madly like an old fish-wife,

Your words slide deep into his veins,
The way the needle slid into yours moments ago,
Injecting a sugary sweet neurosis into your soul,
That would eventually seep from the pores on your skin,
Causing you to smell of failure and desperation,
When you begin to withdraw,

How is it, succubus, that you live with yourself?
Do your stardust irises glitter with such magick in the cracked reflections,
That it bewitches even you into believing that there is something,
Anything,
Left to love about you?
For if so - it lies...

Your vapid skull bleeds thoughts from your ears,
Flowing down your throat where hands should choke the life from you,
The way you choked the life from him,
When you wound your words around his veins,
& tugged with all the strength you could muster,
Leaving his innards strewn far beyond,
The pale, white flesh,
That had been severed from your own...

Trip Down Memory Lane

Crickets chanted our names in perfect unison,
The night we laid quiet as dead lovers in the dark,
Bleeding limbs sprawled like our drenched and soapy hair,
Wide and open across your pillowtop bed,
I am sure to the innocent passerbyer -
We looked like the corpses of octopus,
Tentacles winding in and around,
Twisting the remainder of life from our souls,
Our Klonopin & wine cocktail had proven to be,
Most destructive to us both,
& to the universe,
By the blood slathered across the bathroom floor,
& cold spaghetti in the pot,
You babbled incoherently to me in the black,
Mouth, nothing more than a flopping, snapping mandible,
& I, I was nothing more than an empty shell,
Between the pills and the bottles of sparkling white & red,
The edge of my vision decided to bend and blur,
Meshing everything into something and then nothing at all,
Ghosts chattered, demons scaled the walls,
& skeletons fell out of the closet,
I gripped onto something in the dark,
Once Wonderland turned evil,
& I, Alice, submerged deeper that night into my rabbit hole,
Than ever before,
Your breathing stilled to a steady, soft pace,
Mouth slightly ajar as you quickly fell into a deep, comatose sleep,
Or passed out,
Whichever,
I rolled to face the amethyst curtains,
Glowing from what I thought was the moonlight,
But maybe I was hallucinating again,
I made a mental note to take an extra Geodon when the sun came up,
Not that the medication ever did me any good,
Ah, yes, better than acid, this,
As if Satan himself had shoved a magic mushroom down our throats,
& we were on a rollercoaster trip that seemed like it would never end,


But I digress,
These roadtrips down memory lane come at the strangest times,
Like now, sitting here at my desk, in my job that I have actually managed to keep,
The job I never thought my once sick self would have,
With the man I never thought I would be worthy enough to find,
In the life I never thought I would appreciate,
But I guess,
That sometimes things twist just to suprise you,

The End...