I have never considered myself a writer. (2011)

I am a slave, at best – a lower life form that exists to serve Inspiration.

Inspiration comes and goes when she pleases, and I am to fly to her when she comes and roll out gossamer sheets for her footfalls, so that their pristine path may be traced directly to me with no adulteration, no branching curiosity, whilst she so graces me with her presence. 
I am to bring her a golden goblet filled to the brim with the finest red, red wine, and if by some accident I have bled into the cup it is all the better, and she will pour it past her lips and let it trickle down her feathery bones, step by trickling step, until it pools in her feet and she again grows restless and must leave me at last. 
Then, only then, may I rest. 
And rest, I shall, for I am nothing without her. I am lost – a servant without a master, ink with no quill.

No, I am not a writer. I am her dog, my Muse, the lowliest of her suitors.

And still, she comes.

This is not a eulogy. (2011)

I will not shower him with praise, but I will bury him, not because he deserves ritual but because the earth should have him instead, I think. He should be swallowed and the meat sucked from his bones by the serrated teeth of time and decay and his skeleton should be left lonely until the soil claims it, too, and it exists as nothing more than a memory.

And as I bury him, I bury my darker self, that frightful twin which he had bred and nurtured from the very first – the cold other half of me that’s clawed at the hedges of my conscious self for as long as I have let it, and I have let it for far too long. I do not blame him for that; only we can face our demons and I was too weak, I could not hold them back. I should have been stronger, and I suppose it is in that weakness which I find my guilt.

That coffin holds not merely a corpse, but every jagged fragment of every heart broken in the wake of its life, now burrowing into its dead, dead skin like worms or maggots, starving vultures each and all similarly anxious for a slab of decadent retribution.

Spark (2012)

Give me any flaws but these;
I'd beg if I had pride enough to forsake.
I want to spark from the light of these eyes and leave them dull,
they've done me nothing but kindness and yet I cannot stand to be behind them,
or in them,
or of them.
These hands are not my own, may they bind themselves accordingly.
May they be still and calm and somehow keep what little dignity they have left.
I should run from these legs until I could step out of myself,
until they'd stop following and I lost sight of everything else.
But to be lost? Ha.
I should be so lucky.
Perhaps if I lost this body, this shaking heap of dissonance, perhaps then I could see.
I could cast off eyes and hands and legs,
and mouth and ears and nose
and feet and arms and every other part that is plagued by inadequacy.
Perhaps then, I could spark in spite of me, or it.
And if that spark should feed a flame,
well. There are worse things.

O, the Spider (2012)

O, the Spider walks the tightropes
of the disembodied soul
down the transcendental ski slopes
of a spectral bullet hole

and the space around her shivers
taut with fragmentary dreams
lit by dull phantasmal slivers
stitched with surreptitious seams

all at once she takes to mending
disconnected bits of string
tying ending unto ending
in a fragile, filmy ring

o, fatigue doth beckon plainly
countenance and premise fair 
in his purpose smiles vainly
saccharine in charm and air

still her weary legs weave quarter
of the most impassive kind
as her airy skeins support her
in the labyrinth she's designed

then at last, her work presented
all is as it should have been
O, the Spider, now contented
walks the tightropes back again

song of herself (2012)

her song is typed in pencil lead
confined in typeface cages

with graphite stains from where she bled

and sank into its pages

her song is but a few short lines

and smudged with an eraser
a testament to flawed designs
but still the words embrace her

her song is etched in black and white
and sssTuMbLeS off the tongue
she has to get the colors right
before it can be sung

for this is all she has to give
her very soul in verse
her magnum opus, just to live

her song, the artist’s curse

stellis (2012)

dance with me, my golden ghost
leave trails of stardust on my skin
for night is a resentful host
but not so brazen as her twin

you seem to me a fleeting flame
a moonbeam trapped in sun-red skies
like everything would stay the same
if only i could shield my eyes

so breathe your light into my pores
and shine in every piece of me
for what is mine is also yours
and what you are, so i will be

find her (2012)

waste no time with pleasantries -
find her, she'll be hiding
from you and from them

then take her by the mouth
and breathe stars down her throat
until she is bursting with moonlight

kiss her with your hands
kiss her with your lips
kiss her 'til you crack in two

she'll gather you up in her arms
and piece you back together
and stitch you closed with her heartstrings

so take what's left of you
press it into what she's become
until you are she and she is you

then take her by the everything
unzip her between the ears
open up her pages and read every word

firefly morphine (2012)

shh, i tell myself
hush, listen
there's a pounding in your chest
a heartbeat ringing in your ears
it's yours, don't you recognize it?

how foreign and how familiar
a black flag in the fog
signed on a dotted line
x marks the spot
don't you know what this means?

that shiver in your spine, is that -
fear? or something else?
trembling hands point to yes
at least, they try to

the cold overwhelms you but
your face is getting hot
are you embarrassed? why?
it's a natural reaction
fight-or-flight
your body is saving itself
from you, my dear

reality twists in your mind's eye
poisoned kaleidoscopes and shattered lenses
what do you see?
nothing, i see nothing
i see black and cold and blurry
dark figures, just shapes in the shadows
but nothing

everything is much too loud
i know, i hear it too
from the thudthudding of your heart
to the huffhuffing of your breath
to the silent shutting of your eyes
noise, noise, noise
reverberating off your bones
trapped inside your ribcage
like captive birds


wait.
did you hear that, too?
i'm not going crazy, am i?
no, there it is again.

a voice?
but what's it saying?
i can't make out the words,
just syllables and punctuations and emphases.
for a moment it almost drowns in the noise but then -
silence.
i hear nothing else.
every trembling fiber turns to listen,
and all are still.

i'll save that voice, gather up all the pieces,
catch it in a jar and let it glow through the night.

and the shadows will not consume me
with this new light in my lungs
resting peacefully behind my ribs
and warming my heart with its glow.

it flows into my veins,
and all is well.

impending light (2012)

She sees him and the world falls around her and melts at his feet. He doesn't notice; he wades through it, through the muddled chaos that soaks his shoes, through the cold, black water that she would've drowned in. It isn't until he reaches her that the blackness disappears, evaporates suddenly as if it fears the impending light. And then it's gone, all of it's gone, and it is not missed. There is not a single instant that either of them would offer to the absent world, no touch nor smell nor whispered word that they care to let go of for long enough to surrender it to the abyss. If there were light in place of the dark, they still should not see, for they are blinded by their very state and would gladly forsake their eyes indefinitely if they could only recapture this moment once more. Once more, and again, and another; they linger in each splendid second for longer than it seems they should. They are stealing these blessed moments and they know it, and this awareness costs them only their very selves - that which they have willingly given up already.

look at her (2012)

Look at her, she's just a shell -
a broken shadow of what was.
It's in her eyes, it's what he does;
she's been through hell.
She's just a shell.

Look at her, her edges cracked,
feel how jagged they can be.
It's in her eyes, it's plain to see;
it's just an act.
Her edges cracked.

Look at her, she's all alone,
but he's always in her head.
It's in her eyes, her eyes are dead.
She's not her own.
She's all alone.

Look at her, she's all alone,
her edges cracked, she's not her own.
Look at her, her edges cracked,
she's just a shell, it's just an act.
Look at her, she's just a shell.
It's in her eyes, she's been through hell.

tethered (2012)

 “I’m right here,” I say again. It started out as a whisper, I’m sure of it, but as I listen to myself reiterate the words for a third time, I realize that I am shouting.

I am shouting, and then I'm screaming. I’m screaming and screaming and my throat starts to ache and all of a sudden I’m not making any noise at all, but there’s a heat in my eyes and it boils over onto my cheeks until I’m crying.

I’m crying. I have crumpled to the floor and all but drowned. All is silent but for my sniffling, and it pains me to hear the weakness in my tears. No one will look at me. “I’m right here,” I mutter, but no one hears.

It seems impossible to me how very close he is, and it is this very closeness that is killing me. I search his eyes; they look through me. But he looks through me as if he knows that it is I whom he looks through, and while I know this hope is nothing but a foolish fancy, it seems almost as if he can feel me there.

I take his hand and he pulls away, certain that what he felt was nothing – nothing at all, just his emotions playing tricks on a damaged psyche. And of course it was nothing, wasn’t it?

But he can’t ignore the chill that sweeps over his cheek as I brush a tear away, and he raises his hand to mine, bemused. I tell myself not to be stupid, that his hand is merely on his face, but no, it’s on mine. It’s filling the very same space as mine and so I will tell myself that he is holding my hand.

This is the third sleepless night I’ve sat through with him. I wish he would sleep; God, I wish he would sleep, but he is childish and desires the mourning that envelops him. He must, else he would go ahead and get on with his life.

I just want him to know that I’m here – that I’ve been here, right here with him, from the first moment I was able. I want to tell him that he deserves to be happy, that he deserves more than this. I want to tell him I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused him – for the tear stains on his pillow, for the relapse in his drinking, for the hole in his wall.

He doesn’t deserve this, and I’ve brought it on him. I’ve gone and ruined the rest of his life because I couldn’t stand the thought of living without him.

I thought holding on would be easier, but it isn’t. Letting go would’ve hurt, sure, but it would’ve been over quickly - a gunshot wound or a head-on collision, anything but the purgatory I've trapped myself in. It would’ve hurt and then it’d be over and I’d be lord-knows-where and he’d be lord-knows-here and I wouldn’t be able to hurt him anymore.

But I am selfish. I am selfish and I couldn’t let him go, so I tethered him to me and held on tight instead of drifting away like nature intended. And now, here I am. Here we are. I say ‘we’ for convenience sake alone, for we are no longer us. We have been reduced to simply he and me, and both the me and the he are now entirely alone.

I am gone,

and he is here.

And I am here,

yet I am gone.

courage (2010)

courage
is having the will
to face another day
knowing that it won't be any better
than the last.