I want in.

I want in.

In on your consciousness

what makes you tick

float

fly -

fall.

I wanna know

exactly

what fucks you uop

so that you'll stand there

with the same dark look

on your face

as I've had in my heart

(if that's not too cliched)

for all this time.

I want in.

In on your mentality.

what burns you

hurts you

what brings tears

to those gorgeous dark eyes

I wanna make you cry

want to feel you tremble

and laugh softly in your ear

as I promise

between hard bites

and gentle kisses

that everything'll be all right.

I want that power,

that control.

I want in.

In on what makes mayhem

appear on that calm

(too calm)

exterior

what'll put chinks in the glass mask

end the facilitation

of this facade

(because I love the way that word looks)

what will return you

to regulation mode -

hit control and some combo of

computer keys

to fix this problem.

I want in.

In on the secret that you've been keeping

hiding

holding

like it's something you've never shared

before.

I want in

on the madness

the muchness

the mindless

that you spend your days with

tripping over glass-shod

skies

and pieces of plastic minds -

those people you can't stand to be around

to laugh around

exist around,

but who you fool around with

because you're good at it.

You're good at that game.

I can't play People to save my life

or yours

and I wouldn't.

I play secrets

and promises

and I play persons,

one being at a time,

each against himself

or herself

until she's in love with me,

worships me,

thinks the world of me

dies because of me.

When he's existing because I let him,

give him enough confidence -

self-worth,

self-import

that he thinks he can face anything

as long as my words have got his back.

They wanted in.

But in on a scam

doesn't give the same

level of rush

as in

on what you think is real.

Not the same as the in

I want in

In on you,

what makes you fall apart,

because I want in

on the pieces you leave behind.

Violated.

The best part - the only part? - is that they won't know. No one will know, and it'll be a secret between the two of us. Something shameful, so she'll look the other way when I pass her table at mealtimes, and maybe I'll laugh louder than intended if she goes by.

The whole time, I waited for her to say something, to ask about the scars, since she drank in my vulnerability with hungry green-grey eyes. But she said nothing.

I wish she'd taken the breath to ask.

I wanted to tell her they were his marks, and maybe then she would have stopped.

Wake me up.

Wake me up when morning no longer lies

when the sunflowers don't worship

at the moon's side

anymore

When the whores in high school

take payment

for a profession

that is a label.

Just a sticker

that - if you stick them in water -

will float away.

Wake me up when love isn't a teenage word

for girls and boys

who play an advanced game

of Let's Pretend.

Like...

let's pretend we're destined

for each other;

we're perfect- we should know,

let's prove it

in the old dumpster behind school

where they get caught,

but not before she catches,

and a lifetime of problems open up.

Wake me up when the sun rises like a gem

instead of like a disk, on a chariot

driven mad across a sky

by a boy-child

gone crazy

on too little affection

and too few friends.

Until the earth

paid the price for insolence.

Wake me up when the ghosts of memory

are really dead

for a change,

and chances don't come

with numbers

and expectations,

like "this is your second chance;

better not screw it up"

because of course I will.

Wake me up when you think I can face

whatever tomorrow hasn't promised,

but is flirting with,

maybe showing hints of

like a ninth grader

falling into the Game with a

senior PUA.

A little too much leg,

and all because

she's underconfident

in her own abilities

and maybe yours,

where subtlety is concerned.

Kiss me concrete

to remind me

to rewind me

back to better days

when a smokey haze

filled my brain

with promises

you promised

you'd make good on

maybe four months,

or four years

from today

but I'm reminding myself

that I'm alive again

like I've always been

used to being.

Strong again

strong along again

and again

and again

by this substance

this matter between

my ears

behind

my eyes.

This brain that insists

again

and again

and again

that I'm not going home

not again

because I've found a better

place to rot away

my time

my life

my purpose.

Like termites breaking

up wood in a forest

like the rest

that no one around here gets...

Rip the carnivore

from the herbivore's belly

and tell me why

he's stuck on repeat

inside my disco-tech mainframe.

I'm a high, technologically advanced

piece of machinery

living on green reasons and

rhyme schemes.

And pain sequences loaded

into the database.

What I Want.

I want to design belief up until the

portion of time where promise outweighs

potential. I want to create harmonies

of dissonance, and break red apart into

its basic parts. I want to hold color as close

as god held his first lover, and her last.

I want to know what I want.

It's not so much the time as the wonder that comes with it. Somewhere across here, I can feel my body getting ready to sag into the chair and just be done with it all. Done with breathing. With life. Really, now. Just too much to deal with.

Ink Girl

I stole the girl from your past life, the way she smiled. I wanted to kidnap the gleam in her grey-green eyes, eyes with the smooth shimmer of an unnatural silent ocean. I saw her picture on the TV that doubles as your computer screen, the first morning after. The waking up in a bed not my own, by a warm body I didn't know - but you were still sleeping when I saw her face.

I only remember her eyes. Maybe her hair was dark, but her eyes glittered. She could have been smiling, but the wide surprise at having her photo taken was all that remained.

I wanted to bring her to life on the page, to breathe new life into her existence with newly inked lungs and a newly formed consciousness.

Remainder thoughts.

You can't hurt me anymore, or I'll break. I liked pain, once upon a time. I liked it, and you ruined it for me. You ruined it all for me.

I'm afraid now. I hate being afraid. I hate being weak. I fucking hate with a passion I didn't know I had. I wanted to gouge your eyes out then. I can't meet your gaze now.

I still can't get the feel of you out from under my skin. I wake up at night, freezing, because the covers touching my body feel like your hands. Don't touch me. Don't touch me. Don't fucking touch me!

The apartment shakes as my housemates try to make me be quiet by introducing their own noise. I sit up, curled against the wall, my knees drawn in against my body, rocking back and forth in the dark. But I can't stay against the wall too long, or it'll warm up, and it'll feel like your hands again. Like you're touching me.

And I can't take that. Get away from me!

Get out of my mind, out of my skin. You're not welcome. I didn't want your mouth on mine on the dance floor, and I don't remember asking to have my addictions reduced. I didn't ask you to hurt, and you did anyway.

I didn't ask, and now I can't even conceive how that was....whatever it was.

Fun. Likeable. Addictive. Necessary.

I don't want to be in pain. Ever again.

I just want to escape my skin, cutting it away strip by strip until I can reach the bits of yourself you left inside, and destroy them. Maybe then I can have myself back again.

I think.

I think we

should curl up together

breathe the same air

laugh softly at inside jokes

jokes inside our heads,

not shared yet

I think we

should play the piano

or maybe you play and I'll

listen to notes that go sour

the moment they disconnect

from your fingertips.

Until then, they were pure.

I think we

should run away

maybe on our own

try this whole lonely thing

everyone says it happens

eventually

we've been joined at the hip

since before I knew you existed -

but maybe that's exaggeration.

I think we

should become pirates

fight wars and be bandits

of the seas,

all seven -

though there're more -

and steal rich men's treasures

I think I

would keep it

just for proof of Bragging Rights

but

I think you

would give it away

like a little Robin Hood

might pay back the poor

for all their troubles

with rich bastards

like me.

And maybe

I think we

aren't as alike as everyone

seems to think

that we're not the same person

but even if we share a face,

a father, a host of

deoxyribonucleic acid

just twins,

that's all, and everyone knows

You're the good one.

The sky is dark with morning, and the horizon bright with sun.

I'm not people.
I'm a goddamn
star.

One day, we'll relearn what pain is.

And we won't be afraid anymore.

Retrogression of a 21st century romance

She wore Converse
You stole vans
(I found out from your old man)
The two of you
Stalked music trails
Hand in hand
(My life derailed)
You called yourself her man
Traversed time to realign, to see
Just the two of you
(and me)
Walls of air
Could keep you there
But her blood calls your name
Her tattered skin
was curtain called -
(Does it sound familiar
at all?)
Fingers on a map told you
Where you'd live
With her
Before clocks rewound, rebound
Broke down the fourth wall
(Can't say it feels so strange
to fall.)
She tagged herself with a reminder
Your initials
Set to bind her
So you would know
Her body bag anywhere
(I'd want to
hold the glow.)
Then time caved in.
One ship set sail, others docking
Back to early days
Magic music set minds rocking
You're in Converse
(I've Snow-soaked Vans
watching memory
hand in hand.
Just the pair entwined
Together
Just the pair
Could last forever.)

The Kiss.

You've never had anything like it.

You've never gone home before, so tiny inside, so hurt.

You've never been dancing where someone's come up to you, started to dance with you. You've never had a guy you didn't know that close, that...close.

You've never been under the dark lights with the press of the crowd, never laughed like you were insane as some guy pulled you closer, dug his fingernails into your hips until you bruised. You've never realized something was wrong before.

You never had to. Nothing had gone wrong before.

So you didn't realize when you started your dance with a stranger how it would end. You didn't realize that when he offered to dance a strange version of the waltz, it was a precursor to other things.

You didn't realize he meant anything when he kissed your cheek.

You didn't realize until he said, "I think I missed." Then you laughed, and he silenced you with his mouth, right over yours. Over, not on.

You tried to breathe while his tongue forced itself inside your mouth, plowing up your tongue and brushing it aside. You didn't remember that kissing could be so distasteful; you hadn't kissed anyone for too long a time, and the last boy you kissed was someone you knew, someone you liked, someone you wanted.

You smiled shakily when he pulled his tongue out of your mouth like the plunger out of a toilet. You closed your mouth and tried to forget the taste of bad beer and bologna. You laughed, and you tried to pull away, and that was when you realized he wasn't letting go.

That's when you first began to think things might not work out, and when you started trying to find a way out. But his hand was on your waist, and his arm pinned your body too tightly to his for you to draw anything on him.

You felt afraid.

How long has it been since you've felt afraid like that?

Felt like you were going to stop breathing, like your heart was going to run away and hide under the chairs lining the walls. Felt like you were going to start seeing black dots dancing along the edges of your vision, like your limbs were going leaden. Dizzy and shaken, and suddenly the only thing holding you up was his arms around you.

Tell me, how did that feel?

The last time you felt it that strong, you were twelve years old and cowering in a corner in the pantry while your mother screamed at your father. You should have been asleep. You heard the crack of skin hitting skin, and a disbelieving grunt from your father. You heard your mother's triumphant shriek, and she kept screaming until you could hear your sister crying upstairs.

And your father walked out the door, took the car and drove away while your mother stood on the back deck screaming "Fuck you!" after him.

You felt like you couldn't breathe, hidden away in the pantry, and when her footsteps came closer to where you were hiding, you started to shake and go hot and cold, like being alternately doused with ice and boiling water. She didn't come into the pantry though; she wandered up the stairs, and your sister started crying louder.

Do you remember now?

And when this boy on the dance floor put his mouth over yours again and again, ramming his tongue against the back of your throat, you gagged, you teared-up, you tried to pull away. But panicking bodies don't listen to minds. And girls with bright red lipstick smeared across their faces don't get sympathy.

Do they.

Star Signs

You could be a hundred thousand
people and I've never noticed
a hundred thousand beginnings
that I've never quoted at any-
one.

You could be older than me,

younger than me

stronger than me

weaker than we ever were

together.

You might inflame the senses

of sensitivity

probability

possibly promiscuity

and late antiquity

is your star sign.

Strong and crazy - that's you in two words

but I'd need a couple thousand

to capture the taste of your lips

or the feel of your skin.

It's in my blood, star shine,

the way black steel

and maybe thievery is

in yours.

I spent a summer on the books

curled up, hooked by what

they knew about you

that I didn't.

A question, a prayer.

I'm beginning to wonder if you're still alive
if you're still breathing
still moving
still anything.
I'm not writing to you
not for you
not about you -
not really -
anymore.
Something about the way it drove me crazy
the last time
made me think that it's better to live
with regrets
than try to fix the present
or align the future.
I think of you every time
I buckle the black leather collar
that I found in the snow
a few days back.
I can't stop the remembering
but I can keep it from consuming me.
I can pretend.
Pretend I don't know who you are
who you were
who I wanted you to be.
I can pretend it's like the old days
when I knew for sure what the future would bring.
I'm sleeping with the wind again
the way I used to,
dreaming of fantasy characters
and wishing I was an Elf
or a magician.
I'm breathing water
and I've embraced the solitude again.
Welcome to my world
where everyone I'll ever need
always ends up leaving -
Keep changing your mind
like clouds in the sky;
love me when you're high
and leave me when I cry.
So long,
this is goodbye.
May we meet again in another life.
Like strangers
passing by.
May we see clearly in a different life.