I stay up all night spinning webs with my mind 

Weaving thoughts into wordplay 

From the knobs in my spine

Dripping down unfathomable depths 

Into drabble

And silently hoping the words I unravel 

Slip softly behind what was once my frail mind

Sinking slowly toward madness 

I empty sweet fragments

Between careful pink lines in the palms that I hide

In a desperate attempt to conceal

What's inside

The swollen scorn in my gut 

Shifts, clamors

Rears out my bottomless ears

Echoes obscenities 

They say rhymes are outdated

I say fuck your archetype

Your jaded conformity,

Trivial typicalities 

Standards stuck in the lump in your throat as you swallow

Does it taste like sincerity?

I wonder where you find the time to wreak havoc 

On the confines of your own frazzled psyche but

You can still try, if you really want to

I'm here

Your silent anchoress in denial

An aspirant free spirit, morose in a damp fever of solitude 

And delicious regret.

Am I cynical?

Or just chaste and unassuming?

I'll wait.

You peeled me open like the yellow skin

of a banana, ripe with spotted anticipation.

I never knew it was coming.

That first day I saw you across

the blazing heat of that cracked parking lot

cracked smile that matched my crooked soul

my lips split open like a cavernous chasm and light flew out like

the first break of morning.

You sipped blue lemonade, hazy eyes aimed directly at me.

The venom worked wonderfully,

swiftly descending like a vulture on a rotting corpse, we gazed not at

but through each other

and I realized there'd be no fix greater than you.

Gathered remnants of the night before from my torn pocket.

Snow wrapped in finger-sized plastic,

a tiny promise of rapture in powdered form.

Dropped like a wistful memory

it hit the pavement like a broken dream.

You shattered my soul like that perfect dust shattered my mind,

except one I could recover from.

You peeled me open like a beggar peels the wrapping from his first meal,

delighted by its contents.

I was candy in your presence

I was your muse, your trinket

You were my kaleidoscope

the color in my sky

my savior and my storm,

my fix.

You broke me like a scoundrel breaks an oath,

the tendrils of my splintered gut fell in ribbons on the floor.

I was a tossed vessel in your ocean, lost in your words but transfixed

by the possibilities.

A snapped twig in the twisted forest of exquisite delusion.

Abandoned by reason, foolish and numb

I was not afraid of you.

I was immune to your harm but seduced by your facade,

fractured in a thousand places yet convinced of my resilience.

I was wrong.

You were the death of me, that quiet black night.

You sucked the life from my fragile soul and left me forgotten,

deserted by my better half,

my sanity.

You destroyed me when i realized

you were the part of me I failed to kill a long time ago.

Open that wet box

of ecstasy,

slice it all open like lemon pie

on the 5th afternoon of August.

My mother never told about boys like you,

                                          Slinks so bold they’re nearly men

and the colors on their glass hands glint

like stolen wonder.

On the side of the fence on a hot

18th century afternoon,

                                          tilt my face, sun high

air too thick to see clearly.

I like your straw hat but

my mother

never

told me

about boys like you

                                     wheat stem hanging from your lazy jaw

a sticky sadness

too comfortable to forget.

Slice me open

it’s airless inside, the tangled webs of yesterday

a cold secret I hide under the floorboards of my vacant core

just like a doorway, but different

                                      because it leads nowhere.

I like the fresh scent of pine over a cliff in the morning

before a fresh rain, where I almost forget death

                                      prowls toward me

I almost forget time nicking at my careful woven bark,

carving at my spine

slowly sinking

                                       into a depthless blue.

Fresh grape skin,

I’m dewy-eyed and outspoken

Come back, I’d like to

just say hi

just 

don’t wait, don’t contemplate

if you know me too long,

I’d be gone if I knew the glass window couldn’t keep me in.

I always thought of love like a dirty hidden secret we like to pretend is true.

I can’t see why they trap me here, they like to practice encasement as a cure

I suppose that’s what makes them so flagrant but

I didn’t decide to be here.

It’s just outside the window pane,

that open crisp freedom 

just

don’t expect me to cradle you when

I can hardly cradle myself

just

let the window shield me from

myself a little longer,

don’t try to understand 

it's just

wrinkled grape skin

those heavy dark rainclouds peak

from my blinds, quaint I suppose

a dimly lit room for

a dimly lit mind 

it’s peaceful

I can almost pretend not to see the ambulances parked outside if I

just 

close my eyes and

just

breathe a little while.

We can only hide from ourselves for so long.