where dreams become captors
we find solitude in the ease in which these things come and these things go
peaceful easy comfort in knowing
and knowing
and re learning
the memories
and how they change
you fit in the place that I found in me, a cavern
a cave
an empty pool of thought
but removed you become
until you are undeserving of my talent
of the thought and beauty that comes from words
until you are a shallow heart
swallowed up in haste
by an inflamed sense of self
oh, you'll learn too one day
small lessons until that breaking point becomes your own catalyst
and I'll still smile and be grateful
that I never had to stick around to see it for myself

I'm expecting inspiration. but I feel smothered by it somehow. wanting it to jump start me, make me fly and cave and find myself on the other side. but I feel pinned down. simple and painful. I'm trying to see it through. perfect little inspiration. dripping in sweat. uncomfortable and denying itself pleasure. only to build up and explode its tension some day.. its like the way we want so badly to just fuck someone until they/me/us boil inside. because that old reliable fantasy you are inside your own head when you make yourself bleed. that fantasy is electric.
and me? I am electricity. sparks and frequencies running through my veins
my angry fist. Caught in the nicks of your tongue. Words on fire, Behind your teeth. Crooked smile and all pressing matters you inflate. Ego bursting at its seams. Every person you encounter, they’re all out to get you. Notches in bedposts, in belts. and you're calm and wishful. Hopeful.
But tiny pieces of your teeth break off in your words and they exit through your mouth onto the forearm of the girl who could be next to you. Who isn’t me. Who isn’t. me.
And as the cuffs come out you hold it in. a balloon in your chest heaving. Heaving. Breath heavy and wet. My spine it meets, greets. Says hello. Goodnight. Let me rest here for awhile until I can find time to evaporate into the atmosphere. Until I can make time to dissipate. Let me rest.
Waves of it, over and over again in me, on me, surrounding me. I’m tired. Too tired to think straight. but awake. So impossibly awake as the light comes down through the ceiling tiles. The people above saying be quiet. I can’t hear the tv.
And your angry fist in motion finds its target in me and stays home for the evening while I venture out into the dark dark night to try, Against your wishes. I try.
The nights and days are piling up rapidly around our ankles. Pools of time, of continuous motion make themselves known as we try to make our way from this bed. This moment. Into another. But we’re met not only with times opposition, but with our own sick desire to never move again.
I want to taste that thing inside you that makes you special. Makes you tick. I want to put my hand on it. Warm and soft. I want to squeeze. Until you’re the one breathing funny, and I’m the one smiling.

that concave
that concave moment
where dark becomes light. a simple shimmering light
pulled in silent direction
from front to back
and the whites of your eyes become vapor
a placid look upon myself
in every which direction
that I can't figure out
and I'm dense with every little piece of me
an emotion drawn
between two smiling faces
and a third
where the emptiness should reside
but has moved on, to another field
in some other town
and I'm simply, simple.
in the basic sense
where every powered and controlled movement you make
becomes another reason

at our most excellent moment

Somehow in the bright fake light of a motel hallway, faces are distinguished. They are burnt and contorted, remembered, fixed and emptied.

The skin around her mouth is tight and tan. It matches her hands. Her hair is an unnatural blonde, and her roots have grown out roughly 5 inches.
There isn’t much to her except the lines on her face that she seems to carry weightlessly, without notice.

Smiling, she heads back outside, and I get into bed.


There is a ray of artificial light coming through the crack in the curtains. Red and vibrant, I shut off the TV.

this piece was stolen from me awhile ago. the girl I wrote it about did the stealing. I find it laughable now, whereas I was super pissed when it first happened. oh well, what is anything without some humor.



She, An adaptation of my own self, I feel. She is here, where as I am somewhere else. She is a story yet to be told, held briefly in the palms of my hands, across my fingers. She is the intertwined nature of my heart, pushing blood around, displacing energy to make me, me.
She. If I could reach the places that no one reaches. If I could touch the spots on her that no one else could. If I could carve a notch for every time she’s made me smile, into a different tree then I’d need every tree in the world.
And when they cut those trees down, as industry demands, I’d steal the wood and make chairs, and we could sit there, until our age catches up with us. And my hands would trace over the notches, time and time again, until it’s worn down and so am I.
If I could find the words to tell her, I would. And when I can’t, I’ll steal dictionaries and take random words and make them work. Replevy: To recover goods wrongfully taken or detained. For her affection taken, I’ll take it back and keep it safe. Horripilate: To produce a bristling of the hair on the skin. What she gives me when her hands meet mine, when her eyes meet mine, her breath meets mine. Liminal- relating to the point beyond which a sensation becomes too faint to experience. Something I hope she never feels, when she feels me.
And If I run out of words someday, I’ll just invent more, and each one will tell another story to her, and we’ll entangle ourselves in these words, lost in the literal translation of us. I’ll spend years trying to catch my breath when she looks my direction and years more trying to give her instances in which she has nothing to do but smile.
I’ll write her a card, every day, since the day we met, and I’ll fill them with prose, with moments I’ve caught and stored inside myself, like when I first felt that smile or when her skin first met mine, when I first felt her heart beat. When she first made mine race.
And It will continue to race, stolen cars inside my chest, the Indy 500 beneath my ribs. It will fight to escape and come out and say hello. Oh hey, this is me, this is what you’ve gotten, what you’ve taken, and stolen. What you’ve earned and hold. It’s a process you know, each day and minute another test of things.
And my heart will get back in the car and race to its next destination within our confinement and smile. Just smile.
Because it feels like it’s won.

a cherry plank a float in simple temped waters
she’s graceful in between all the right lines
a calm cool collected version of anyone but myself, she remains, I remain, all day
until crisp sunlight eats away the layers of our skin
and makes memory’s faded scars on our backs
until we laugh, cold water pooling around our toes, and remember next time to wear sun screen
hands held, close fists, around each other we sleep
and together wake up on sunken ground, too weak to handle our collective selves
I am merely meek, wilted in the morning
before coffee and toast
before breakfast television and all things considered
trying, failing, movement forward. face this day.
face this day.
but I can’t.
I can’t reenact the successful parts of me, or get them together in one room anymore
so destined is my destiny to forget what day it is.
forget what night it is
and just remain a sunburnt version of her.

I slept today. and when I say slept, I really mean SLEPT.
like 19 hours slept.
it seems to be the only thing my body wants to do anymore, that and eat ice cream cones. I can’t conceivably find a way to do both at the same time, so someone is always missing out.
really though. I’ve been on trazadone for 6 months now and can’t say it’s doing anything good or bad for me. my sleep is still a mess. 2 hours here, 6 hours there, 18 hours, 57 minutes. it’s all just random. my entire life I’ve had this same sort of luck with the  blissful slumber. I can remember being 6 years old and sneaking out of my room into the basement rumpus room to watch amazing discoveries and old re runs of classic movies. I fell in love with Marylin when I was 6. gentleman prefer blondes.
Audry stole my heart from her though. in my fair lady. those big eyes and partial smiles. she always had this secret air about her that made me want to crawl inside of her and go to sleep. the old 70’s couch my grandparents gave us, across from the huge box tv with no remote, me with an old crocheted blanket that smelled like the basement, and Audry. I’d fall asleep thinking I was on her lap, she was playing with my hair and stroking my cheek, humming me into dreamland.
of course I would be rudely awoken moments later when the commercials came on. because back then the volume balance from movies to commercials was all fucked up.
Scared that someone in the sleeping house would wake up and catch me, and I’d get in trouble, I’d scramble to the remote-less tv to turn the volume down as quickly as my childhood hands would let me. but the moment was ruined, regardless of the volume. I’d drag myself back upstairs to my room and spend the rest of the night staring out the window into the darkness, until the darkness turned to morning, and morning turned to another day of me being tired.
I never though that I used to be so scared. scared of the dark. or so scared of things that I can barely breath. where I dream anxiety attacks and wake myself up only to be shoved right back into that panic.
But I guess I’ve always been scared. in one form or another. even back then at 6, if I couldn’t sleep, if I couldn’t see the street, if I had to panic. If I had to be scared, I figured I should be crying. I used to think of the saddest things I could remember so I could cry. because I never seemed to cry at the right times. I felt I was training myself to be normal, so when my grandpa passed away, or when my dad left my mum, the tears would be real. born out of sadness. but the shame I carry that I never did cry properly makes me pause to remember those sad things. I guess it’s distraction. I guess it’s a lot of things.
I wish I could go back to being buried under that old crocheted blanket, sucking my thumb and imaging me and Audry Hepburn living happily ever after one a torn ugly couch. because at least then I was sure of how I felt.