It isn't "Ladies and gentlemen please remain seated at all times"
There are no little kids' big eyes
Or adults' assumed disinterest
This isn't your everyday theme park tour ride
I can't take you by the hand
Lead you through the twisted barbed wire walkways of my mind
Point out the fires burning along the horizon, fueled by the ever falling debris
Help you to wind your way around the jagged and twisted outcroppings
With which I am so familiar
I can try, in my lame way
To form words meant to somehow convey this wreakage to you
But I can't inject my thoughts, words, beliefs into you
You have to crave the understanding that it would take
To make sense of my wonderfully fucked up self

55

Am I crazy to count the minutes until I see you again?
You have me completely enthralled with your presence

54

I don't blame you for the hate you feel
She is pathetic
With her crying eyes
And trembling hands
I would cut her out of me
If I wasn't afraid
That there would be nothing left
But rage

50

First a rhythm smelling of blood and sweat
Of people and places you'd rather forget
Of sickly black incense and last night's beer
And "what the hell am I doing here?"

Then voices harsh and passion filled
Sing of little boys whose dreams are killed
Of empty garages where young lovers dance
Forgetting the world in their stale summer romance

And guitars that have seen knives slicing through skin
Unleashing thick crimson silk to stain arms too thin
And shattered old mirrors between thick locked doors
And little girls dancing barefoot on dark and dirty floors

Then the damaged sing too as the song slowly dies
While large, grubby hands slide up smooth white thighs
And the silence, it smothers the last lingering sound
Like the final crushed flower falling defeated to the ground

And all this I hear and all this I see
As the last song plays on my scratched old CD
Each note bound to a precious memory
As my life passes through me

Speak

Clumsy words uttered by a tripping tongue
Thoughts shrunken into parched phrases of insignificance
Emotions caught, stripped of color by cold, strangling, sentences

In speech: beauty stumbles on crippled legs, wiry arms grasping for a sturdy word
Emotion drowns beneath waves of syllables, sinking to the bottom of an opaque ocean
And passion flies on broken wings, falling on mountains of wasted breath

Depend on silence, the heaviest of all art forms, to bare yourself to the world
And rest your mouth, weary from wandering aimlessly in a desert of harsh sounds
Do not smother the sound of life with your weighty words

48

My eyes sting from the stench of the marker that I use to write those words of endearment to you that I know are lies but that I know I must write in order to convince you that I love you.
I would suck you dry before you realized what I had done, so blinded are you in your love for me. I am the parasite in your side, and I know it.

47

I wish that I could take your words and show them to you
So that you could see how petty they are
You would hide your face in shame
And pull out your hair in grief of those letters lost

44

My mind is constantly pulled by fantasies of escape
Thoughts like scrambling fingers pointing me in the direction of another life
An existence like a long drive on an endless road
My fingers teasing the wind and my skin absorbing the sun like happiness

43

It was nice for a while sweetie
We played house for a time
Tried to find those feelings of love
We wanted to experience so badly

But it's over now
Hope has run out
And both of us are too exhausted
To do anything but say goodbye

41

You can't hear me but I'm screaming
Rattling your windows, banging on your door
Staining your front porch with my tears
Begging you to let me in, or let me go

40

You express yourself in the most brutal of brushstrokes
Sketching your silhouette on a canvas of pain
Determined to define yourself any way you can
Willing to sacrifice your sanity for the sake of 'self-worth'

39

Have you ever felt like a wolf in sheep's clothing?
A thin layer of wool shielding the innocent from the demon within
Ever conscious of the cruel claws and unrelenting teeth
And unable to ignore the sound of unadulterated blood pulsing beneath unbroken skin
Or the instinctual urge to prey upon the pure

38

I have been talking to you all night
Trading my breath for words that will never reach you
You are too far away from me now
In your own sphere of space

37

We list the reasons how we know
The expression in your eyes
The things you whisper in the night
The tone of your voice
A categorization of items that,
When added together using careful equations
Coupled with intense longing
Equal love
We convince ourselves time and again
That this time will be different
At the same time are ever aware
That these same damages will arise again
And that there will be another moment
And within that moment, another choice
We see our door away from the atrocities of emotion
Press our cheek against the cold surface worn with time
Grasp the handle for a moment
But are never strong enough to turn that mocking knob
Your presence always pulls us back
And we step back into your arms again

36

I can see that you are falling
And I vow to myself
That I will not do the same

I don't want you
But I will wring you out
This is my promise

35

Baby you are making this so easy for me
My hand is slipping away
And your words remind me
And my memories enforce the fact
That I don't care

But I'm sad for you
Because while for me this is a pulling away
For you this must be a tearing,
A ripping of the affections
That you have come to feel towards me

There is nothing I can do to help you
This has happened before
And will again
And as always my role is of the indifferent observer
Unable to muster the sympathy to save you

34

Your jealousy pushes you to tear me apart
Greedily search among the pieces you pull away
For the beauty you know I possess
Beauty which has been hidden from your angry eyes
Behind these walls you force me to build
To save myself from your damaging ways

33

Your presence is like Novocain to my soul
Unable to find any light in which to flourish
My heart hides away and prays for sunny days
Shutting down my ability to feel
And, especially, my ability to love

Home

This is a peppy TV voiceover nightmare
That plays as the soundtrack to the lives of
Those two bruised and beautiful angels
Sprawled over the bed like fallen flowers
Blankly staring out the window
The feathers of their wings tangled and torn
And the petals of poppies crushed beneath their bones

Dorm Room Desk

Her breath dances in his ear
And the flower tangled in her hair brushes his cheek
As she whispers
"No one will miss you when you're gone"
A quick kiss to his cheek,
His hand fall from her jeans
And she slips out the door without looking back

30

I still dream of hurting you
Precious moments spent on ways to cause you pain
A dangerous obsession that could do you damage
Of which you could never dream

29

These words bleed from my fingers
And the poems I sew
Are threaded with the most delicate of tissue

28

There is so much pain in this place
And the memories bring the ghost of tears to my eyes
So that they steal down my cheeks
And choke me into oblivion

26

The sting of my kiss
Is like acid on your lips
The brush of my skin
A patient poison

Boys

The tug of your eyes keeps me alive
The feel of arms around my waist
And the way you look at my lips
Trying to hide your longing
The things that you do to make me laugh
And the dim light on your face in the hallway

24

I'm the girl that slips into the night
I'm the girl without a past
Leaving you with nothing but the imprint of my lips on your cheek
And the taste of my skin on your fingertips

23

I may just be another name on your list
But you're just another mistake on mine

P and L

It hurts to look at you
Knowing what I am capable of
Knowing the damage that I could do to you
And recognizing that my self-control is slowly slipping

I can see them
The crevices that wind their way around your skull
Tiny cracks into which I can fit my fingers
To pull you apart and lovingly destroy your sanity

Caring Too Much

Tell me, how do I learn to forgive you?
Paint over those bruises that you have inflicted
To protect you from the hate the world would show you
Once they knew what you had done

19

A plane of bodies
Their naked skin
Crisscrossed with scars
That loop and twist
And spell out 'love'

Man to woman
Mother to daughter
Fingers entwined
And their hands
Pierced through the palm

17

I wait
Listening helplessly, as that soundtrack of your longing and rage plays over and over again
As that knife tempts you and seduces you with possibilities and promises of quiet

The house is quiet
Each room filled with fear borne out of love
Waiting for the choice that only you can make

You slip the blade over your wrists
Its weight suddenly equivalent to the weight of your life
Equivalent to those days of sunshine and sleepiness that we shared
And that you can no longer seem to find

The blade falls to the floor
And I pray my love
That the damage that you have accomplished
Can be washed from your beautiful wrists forever

ED

Anorexia
A word like a razor that runs across my stomach
Slices into the smooth unbroken flesh
And lets the pain from the inside, out

You try to make it better
You put your hand over this flaw in my logic
Let the searing blood seep in between your fingers and down your arm
A silky river of trust and betrayal

College Visit

Starting at the forearm
And sliding down
Over the smooth skin of the underarm
Past the wrist crossed with veins
Over the ridge that marks the beginning of the palm
Across that wide plain of skin
And brushing across the length of the fingers to the tips
Where the muscles contract and close

And palm to palm,
Fingers interlocked
With a dose of adrenaline quickening the heartbeat
Reverberating in those gentle digits,
The world pulses with love

14

This creative curse that courses through my brain
And bogs it down in words and fantasies
Fears and anxieties
Blinding my eyes from the brutality of reality

13

You search for the magic
This is it
The ability to create, to thrive, to grow and mature
The ability to be utterly unique

12

And the thought
Being driven further into my mind with each breath I take
Is that it does not matter

Fingerprints

The tips of your fingers
Are imprinted just beneath my skin
Burned into the underlying structure of my forearms
My eyes flicker open
But your face is a blur
That I don't want to decipher
I feel the burn of those fingertips and know that I have grown up

My Promise

I will never flinch again
Never cry
Never cringe
I will never let my voice ascend the scale of vulnerability
You will not see me falter

9

I can't stand to be the same person for more than a month
I'm sorry but you wouldn't be able to keep up
My favorite color changes with the hour
My favorite song with the day

Mirror in the Dark

I am painted in darkness
A portrait done in shades of grey
My eyes black with mysterious pain
My skin blooming with bruises from wounds undiscovered
That blossom with pain when I touch them
But you, you are never allowed to touch me
You have done enough already
And have forgotten that I carry a very sharp knife

AP English 12

Nothing more than borrowed phrases
Choked and dried
Stolen from one mouth to another
Diluted and dissolved

Nolites

'Don't let the bastards grind you down'
It was something a mother would say to her daughter as she left for school
Slipping her arms through the straps of her backpack
Her mother twisting her fingers around her ponytail
'Don't let the bastards grind you down'
In a sickly sweet voice
One of amusement
With a 'honey', almost forgotten, pasted sloppily on the end

Driving

The guitar strings like razors across my bare stomach
The call of the open road, that sweet black asphalt
Tantalizing with the possibility of an impact
As deadly as the one I'm in now
Because that’s what I'm searching for
The possibility of something as damaged as me
Dreams of broken glass, twisted metal, blood on hot cement
But is that enough to make me feel whole again?

3

I am healed
Those dark and dangerous depths
In which I was so often entangled
Have been sealed off
No longer a threat to my health or sanity
Only dry land now
Permission to walk
Across the flat barren surface
And smile at the hard, dry ground
Ignoring the suppressed desire
To dive into those depths once more

FOT

These then are the young butchers of beauty.
Their world wrapped in the ugliness of their ignorance.

1

Here I am,
Just slicing open pieces of flesh
Rooting around beneath the skin
Searching for something fascinating for you to examine
And expose to the cruel and suffocating air of judgment.
Here you are
Served on a silver platter:
Little pieces of my pain.
To you they are morbidly enjoyable
To me, just morbid.
But when did you ever care about what was damaging?
You smother everything in words,
Choking the life out of true emotion
And crippling your ability to see me,
As I am
As I want you to see me
What is left of me are the pieces between the holes
That you have forced me to burrow
That is all I have left
It is mine and you can’t have it.