Sweater Weather

Maybe with this letter
Maybe with this gift
Maybe I might make it better
Maybe I could close this rift
Between us
I still hope
And dream us
Together

And I'll hold you like a sweater
If you want me to
Whisper love light like a feather
Or hard and heavy like the rain which
Falls for you

Maybe I've become untethered
Maybe i've been gone too long
Maybe all the storms we've weathered
Maybe I was never strong
Enough
I still sing
A song of us
Together

And I'll hold you like a sweater
If you want me to
Whisper love light like a feather
Or hard and heavy like the rain which
Falls for you

Wherever we go, have gone, or been
It's I and the rain
Falling for you again
All the strange ways we've changed within
I'll dry your eyes from the pain and
Hold you closer then
Hold you closer in
These waiting arms

And I'll hold you like a sweater
If you want me to
Whisper love light like a feather
Or hard and heavy like the rain which
Falls for you

Even if I can't make it better
I'll make it side by side with you
We'll warm together
While the world wakes
Bright and new

Maybe with this letter
I'll hold you like a sweater
And you can wear me
You can wear me out

PB&J

Try to keep on my brave face
Like fuck the haters
Lately I'm such a sad case
I might actually fuck the haters

You can call me what you want
I wish you'd call me who you want
I wish you'd call me
But I'm just stalling

Because I know the way time flows
And I can't go where I don't know

If I'm stuck in this spot
Why is my heart running
Don't give a fuck about me but
You're still deadly stunning

So my feet stay planted
Though my knees like dammit
Go all jelly like sandwich
With every syllable a pill
      too hard to swallow
Can't crunch the numbers
'Tween me and you, so hard to follow
And you're so smooth
Tell me the truth
Is this your last gambit?

You can call me what you want
I wish you'd call me who you want
I wish you'd call me
Shit I'm done stalling

Bad News

All your friends tell you that I'm bad news

And all your friends tell me that you are too

Maybe it's whenever we're together

But I've never ever ever had a friend like you

And friends aren't friends

If friendship ends

When it comes to some bad news

Caption

for every abandoned and lonely soul 
there's a former friend who felt it was their time to go
and the hurt you hold will still hurt the most 
left in the cold by those you used to hold so close

A Damn Pun

I'm a cliche
'Cause folks like me happen
But you don't get what it's like
To be me

I'm overdrawn
Exagerated
Uncharacteristically
Caricatured

I'm a flawed fake
Foolishly flaunting
A flimsy fixation
Fallaciously facetious

I'm kitschy knick-knacks
Worn dull by dispassionate misuse  
Like the mug you use
When your favorite's cracked

I'm so full of shit
I brought back the black plague
In those who walk the streets
Of my recourse

I love so many people
Who no longer act like I exist
So does that make me
A deity
Or just
Idle?

Not the Same Thing

He kept bringing up the money
All he deserved that they kept taking
He thought it kinda funny
I still believed in a world worth making
And any law that kept him
Safe from the needs of many
Till a colder wind had swept in
Reassuring me he earned his plenty
And he’s not racist
He just needs to draw the line somewhere
And he’s not selfish
He just cares so much that nobody cares

And it's not the same thing
And it's not okay to say
And we've heard everything
And we're not repeating your mistakes

Another hour and a half in
He starts complaining about immigrants
Tries to explain the situation
Automatically assumes I'll agree with him
But I can't take it
Another second of this xenophobic hate
And if I don't say shit
Does it mean that he just gets away

Exit Strategies

We follow laughter with slaughter

Is this maturity?

I'll cut my own legs to bleeding
Pleading for an answer
A thought
A breath

We follow laughter with slaughter

Perpendicularity

And still you stay the only one
Whose eye, if caught, I'd dote upon
Whose heart, once sought, spins so undone
And ever on and on
For you know the cracks in my foundation
Like rain
Like the ice which stretches me ever more
In the winters of my madness
In the depths of my delusion
You madden and soothe
You drive and pause
Your sparks so wildly light new fires
Yet never vain in their eruption
Bits of ash and heat and light
There is always higher, they say
Crackling like miniature thunder claps
Never louder than your joy
Never more captivating than your freedom

Understated

Love is currency
Sex utility
I guess I've gotten used to
The ways you're using me
Of your insincerity
I mean this sincerely
You can go ahead and
Fuck yourself without me

Shatter the Tendons of Some Amateur Aneurism and Shuffle the Razor Blades like a Fixed Deck Fiasco

I am the corporate lie you tell yourself to sleep at night

The constant sigh of rolling eyes and changing subjects

I reject your reclamation

I am the corners of your station

I am the comb that scrapes the scalp of a corpse

Suited up and made up to excuse your remorse

I am the hum you hear when you’re alone in the dark

And the sweat down your neck and your aching heart

I am the mites on the eyebrow raised in question

The timbre of a laugh masking your indiscretion

I am fear like the lock of a toilet that won’t work

I am near you, never touching, but always moving closer

I am the itch that you can’t scratch, but you want to

Yeah you need to, but you won’t, you 

Do what you have to and say it’s enough

I’m the violence on your TV that makes you feel tough

I am the catch in your breath like a sex scene in a PG-13 film 

you went to see with your mom

I am the comeback in the shower that always comes out in real life wrong

I am the sand or the soggy sock in your shoe

I am everything you hate when you see a picture of you

I am the common denominator in all your failed relationships

And yet you still think that this time it won’t be the same old shit

I am the tissue that rips, the heel that trips, the friend who admits

They haven’t liked you for years

If you haven’t figured out yet, I’m the you who gives into your fears

I am unstoppable, unwatchable, unquenchable, uncomfortable

I am the lie they told the teacher that got you in trouble at school

I am the ache of indifference, the soap scum of addictions 

I am a cancerous growth that shows up in your fictions
I’ll grow and grow and grow until you believe your convictions

Then list all your faults and failures while you lie in bed and must listen

I am the allergic reaction, the coward’s inaction, the dissatisfaction

The apathy of an abundance of distractions

I’m in your room, I’m in your clothes, I stink like only you can

I’m a steady, beating reminder of all that remains uncertain

I’m in your bloodstream or crawling up your neck

I am the stubbed toe of affects 

affecting your feckless treks with freckled effects

I am carnivorous, insatiable, immense and bruised and bloated

I am the nail between your nail and your finger and I linger

I am burnt popcorn, methane, ethanol, monoxide, manure

MANSIONS FULL

I’m a spore that lodges in your nose hair 

A rash that appeared out of nowhere

I’m THAT regret, yeah you know the one.

It's Not the Missing You

It's not the missing you
It's the not knowing you anymore
It's the ties that once bound
      Like we were two mountaineers
And the horizon so infinite
      Clouds like our fingers stretching and entangling
      And how the air thins up so high
Befit our grand endeavors
Our hope unending
The possibility
Of dreams
When a dreamer believes
In another
      And wonders upon wonders
A cycle of anything
Specifically everything
The ties that once bound
Turn frail in time
Like bodies do
Sucked dry of optimism
In an age of trauma
When the questions of morality
And substance
Hide their volcanic biding
No, time is no healer
And it is the missing you
It's always missing you

False Positive

Maybe it's a mistake

Every step I take 

Am I a fake 

And would I know anyway

For hope's sake 

I breath, my breath breaks

I face each day

Barely awake

Reciprocate, the gates

Slam shut in my face

Am I insane

Or ashamed

To blame

My own name 

For the stakes that raise

Their own hoorays

And lackadaisically parade

A frame, ill-fitting and arrayed

Like diamonds displayed

To hide the charade of 

Ten million takes

And give life away

For a chance to change my fate

Like brave, though I'm not

So afraid, what I've caught

May define all I've got

I've sought answers to questions I 

Can't even explain

My deranged fame containing 

Empty strains of neural flames

Bulging brains, genius untamed

And still unable to remain

A moment in time obtained

To hold infinity painted plain

Our lips blood-stained

Our love constrained

To stretch, reach, teach, lose

Gain

A cure for pain. 

More Unique, Less Perfect

It's not us I miss so much as you
Go ahead and tell all your friends I'm bad news
I guess I should be used to it by now
Scrounging through piles of clothes that no longer fit
To get a mismatched pair of socks
Dress up for the coffee shop down the street
I don't even drink coffee
Mostly, I sit and write letters in the form of poems
Formless enough to fake intent
Malcontent counting dividends
A roll of duct tape around my head
And a place to kick my shoes
Mr. No News
Good enough

Scuttle

Everyone just cut me out.
Some told me they hate me or that I’m awful first, but
Most just ceased all communication.
And it’s happened so many times,
I’ve got no one left.
Sometimes I can see it coming, and
There’s still nothing I can do.
But maybe it’s all my fault
- goddamn common denominator -
Is this such a weird thing, or
Does this happen to other folks too?
Those I care about the most
Want nothing to do with me.
I will be your friend till the end of time,
Or at least until you hate me.
Nah, even then. Even still.
It hurts how much I still love you
In such multitudinous devastation.
Fuck my heart.

Give for the Takers

I give my all for the takers
And I’m real for the fakers
Here’s my wound, you grab salt shakers
I’m a fool, you’re queen of the heart breakers
I’m rollin’ downhill with no brakes, and 
I’ll raise you like the stakes ‘cause
To keep you I will lose me
Feel useless, you can use me
I’m on your team, you never choose me
You grab me, hold on loosely
I drown, you sip like loose leaf
I frown, you smile so cruelly
I’m down so you feel higher
Watch as I catch on fire
You warm your hands and dance in smoke
And choke me till I die in your arms
Like no shit, I won’t admit what you are
I bought a gift for your birthday
Get nervous like I’m in third grade
We’re old now we get older
And response is just colder
This silence, I’m so over
But I still long to hold your
Hand in mine, I’ll wait in line
I’ll say I’m fine
I’ll love from a distance, you define
You decide, I’ll hide, I’ll ride the waves of craving
A moment of your attention
Please can you see my good intentions?

Lonesome and My Thoughts Toward You

You have mined the deep and dark

And carved the flaws from my absent heart

The cavernous cold

Stretched across timid skin

Screams breathless and wanting and

Caving in

The brakes have been severed

My numb feet endeavored

To pedal home

Lost in sweat like porcelain

Cracks some spider web

Precision

Fear of Falling

3am...ish

No one ever looked that pathetic before

No one ever looked that attractive before

I hadn’t slept in days

What major am I again?

A family friend, she said, died.

Full moon and look at that

Home has a coastline

I didn’t walk here by her side

She carried me like scraps of tissue paper

Cupped in her hands

To toss into the wind

But not yet, first

She whispers how she’ll miss me when I’m gone

And kisses me goodbye

And I float up to the moon

And I float among the leaves

And get stuck in brittle branches till

3am again...ish

And the cabby says love is worth fighting for

I go to pay him but my arms and legs have been cut off

Having spent the past four hours in a room of

Pockmarked walls and a heroin-addicted brunette

With a flower for a name and a penchant for

Throwing ice cubes at the orderlies

And then they let me go

And he let me out (free of charge)

And she let me walk past

And he made his plan

And the social worker said

You’re not a danger to yourself or others

I would’ve laughed but I didn’t want

To shake the tree

I’m just scraps after all

Blown far away from here