rainbow

it's tough to fly but but i swear someday i
i'll surprise the demons deep below
and steal the straw-feathered wings from a crow

the future divides into two separate times
i'm a smart kid but the thing i do not know
is just which way you or i will go

my word is long dead but i'll say what should be said:
one day this small blue thing will grow
into something green and tall, sweet and slow

my mind is in knots but you sing in my thoughts
i stole my rough wings from an August crow
but my hands are still soft as december snow

I-95, drafting, 10:26 p.m.

i've got to find something new
because i'm tired of these chords
i'm tired of this noise
i've heard everything already and now
all that's left is the notes
i'll only hear after i'm dead

you're the wind that chokes the sand
you're the clay that covers my hands
now every little thing feels the same
and i know where to assign the blame

jesus turned water into wine, well
i turn girls into empty vodka bottles
so i can turn them in at the grocery store
drop them out of sight and get a nickel back
for my troubles

you're so misguided it's absurd
every time you use the wrong damn word
you catch me completely off my guard
but my wrist is already scarred
i've moved past all that angsty shit
i have so many clothes but none of them fit
you think i'm so much closer to what i want to be
but it's really just bad posture and a grain of deceit

children of november 3rd

they found us —
we weren't as smart as we thought we were
so we used whatever we could find,
pocket knives, chairs, broken bottles,
and we're not that smart

but we weren't stupid enough to think we could win
and when i looked around with my temple
pressed to the floor and my arm twisted behind me,
i saw some of my brothers were on their backs
(i wasn't born with any family)

with their hands up, begging for mercy
to be shown to their comrades, and the same plea
was coming from my bloodied mouth in gasps,
automatically, and dark red was dripping into
my eye and obscuring my vision but

i will not let them blind the public to our bruised faces
or stifle our cracked and wild voices.
we knew we couldn't win when we saw their nightsticks
but we didn't take one step back, didn't even
think of it, and they can use their nightsticks and bash
all our teeth inward and separate our jaws from our skulls but
we will not let them shut us up

to save our own lives, or even those of our brothers

day 9

my head is full of osmoregulation,
balancing blood against seawater and
wondering if on some other planet
the people are filled with seawater
and the oceans are filled with blood

but that other planet is really just
judgment day and i am just seeing
four and a half months into the future.

my muscle draws out my blood and i
blanch at the sight of it for fear
of being judged. but the blood is
probably just heaven punishing me for
not conforming (osmoconforming) to their
binary. they are having trouble regulating
(osmoregulating) me and my dirty, alcohol-scented,
seawater blood, filled with the pollution of man.

i look for satan to tempt me but even
he doesn't want to come any closer.
i don't know who's the birds and who's
the mammals but i am the paper-winged
bat with the high-pitched voice.

i look for the kids or the grains of hair but
i don't even see their silhouette
rescuer ships on the horizon.

a lack of osmoconformity will stiffen
my blood into pillars of salt.

"when it pains, it roars"

one day a girl will forget to avert her eyes
to spare your tentative soul.
one day your best friend will forget to give you
back the five bucks he stole.
one day you will forget exactly what
this whole stupid thing is about.
and one day it will rain when all you want is the sun
and you'll just have to wait it out.

door to door

seriously, how stupid can you be
to keep your legs that soft and pale?
you know the boys living around the corner
they have faces like saints but eyes like shale
and you've seen them and their crying fingers
and the winking smiles and the crooked teeth
and the steam of breath and the mussed-up hair
and the stupid cruelty that lies beneath

but you're safe from me, kiddo,
i'll tell you now that my fingers don't cry
they steal whatever my lichen eyes want
but my lichen eyes will be passing you by
because you come from someplace far less wet
and you mean most of the words you say
and you shake hands without asking where they've been
what you lack is a lack of faith

i find a lack of faith
so attractive

go home, little girl

you're not old enough to satisfy my morbid curiosity

"she screamed at me, 'i want to be desired!' i said, 'easy, girl, i know it hurts.' "

sometimes, babe, i just don't buy all your shit
and sorry, babe, he just dances better than you
and i'm a shitty man, kiddo, because
it's so funny
to watch you fall so hard
for all the easy lies i tell you

if there were a fire i'm sure
you would throw yourself on top of me
to make sure you burned first.
i would feel no remorse.
no survivor's guilt.
no guilt at all.
you'd die happy anyway.

god, you have no idea how much i need to get my ass kicked

hurry up

i'm disoriented driving the wrong way
down the street
with some girl unconscious in the back seat
there's duct tape over her mouth
i can't even scream
the passing lights slide slowly off my windshield
like waves on the beach
my hands are bound behind me
wait wait here they are. the sirens
here come
the police

i was wrong to take him on
i used to be a pretty smart guy
(for a private eye)
but there are somethings you can't fight

(like drugs and duct tape binding
your hands behind your back)
i'll be dead before i even hit the ground

god, you have no idea how much i want to get my ass kicked

times change and people change with 'em

for once you surprised me
when you showed up on my doorstep.
you told me i didn't have any answers
but then you asked for them anyway.
with your hands outstretched.

i almost told you to stop being
a vain and destructive false idol
before you turned your adoring fans
into nothing but the pavement under our feet
but you don't get it.

you're an empty bottle.
you're a shotgun shell.
you're a stormy day.
you're a summer clothing catalog.
you're the bike i had when i was ten years old.
you're a candle stub.
you're the ties that used to bind me to this place.


look, just go home, okay?
i don't want you.

sic transit gloria

once you were the lamb
and i can vouch for that but then you stopped
watching out and you didn't even care
when you turned yourself into the slaughterhouse

it stuns me sometimes how much you care
about yourself, every little detail
in syzygy: your venomous egotism, your careful persona,
and your mascara — not a lash out of place

on my back; you placed them in the
shape of a tic-tac-toe grid (in the spirit of fun)
and everyone's playing
but you win every time

is it all clear for you now
is it all clear for you now

i cannot bend my arms to look like wings

in the morning i always think, i could stay
right here and forget how the human voice sounds but today
is not the day i throw my thoughts in reverse
and when i step outside i start coughing from the cold

passive hallways make me wish i was a wolf
but when i bare my teeth, everyone assumes
the flash of white is just a shiny patch of wool
sometimes i feel like a fucking sedan

but sometimes i feel like a kid sitting in the sand
making castles that no one lives in
the slippery grains make it hard to stand
back up but it's okay, i'm in my own little world down here

it is not friday yet

you wrote me
in ten short days
without the aid of pen and paper
you wrote me without color
you anagrammed my face
and made acronyms out of my emotions

you left out letters
and used words whose meanings
you did not know
you wrote me on the last page of your notebook
and closed it for good and put it
on the shelf
beneath the cigar you're saving
for your twenty-first birthday

you wrote me
you wrote me

are we fools and cowards all?

sometimes i think of writing something called
"this one's for you" but i always
stay my hand at the last moment because
it is becoming less and less common for me
to have something to say

at least something that would raise you from
your fifteen-minute descent into the incongruous sunshine
or raise me from my intermittent immersion
in sweat-drenched t-shirts and sheets that no longer scare me
(though i have a feeling they should)

sometimes i ask myself when
all of this
will matter less than you

tomorrow i am going to wish you
happy birthday
one hundred times

o androgen

every so often i wonder if
six to twelve months might really mean
four and a half, because, you'll see, in
four and a half months i will be

on my way to doctor class and
people will be looking at me so
i would like some degree of certainty
which is, as they tell me

impossible

(apparently it all depends on genetics
but did all this shit come from genetics
in the first place? at the dinner table i don't see it
so maybe i'm just the unlucky one in ten thousand)

(yes
ten
thousand)

(unlucky is a big fucking understatement)

every so often i stop believing in anything