family tries to deny the lies carried inside where the pain could be lifted if you didn’t let them reside but we clench and hold so tight and dear to a fading feeling fostered by fear the taste that fills a hand full of tears and the left over child looking in the mirror, edges torn out from diary books, time never taken and words mistook a garish glance carried by your day and your backpack full of everyone’s course in this meal of where you stay, you were forced to sit and eat. don’t get up finish your fucking meat, sit straight and widen your feet now get up lay down spread out don’t dare frown there are cameras rolling my darling this is your time to shine represent lemon and lime a tart my dear let’s come over here. know who the elders are and always the fear of allowing that blood to define you.

wizard lips with dragon hips my bones get bigger and i start to slip into that place where you once dwelled a shallow hole of a hunting ground where we first messed around a touch to know insecurities were known it’s then we left carried by the moan. they listened and didn’t believe we had more than dirt soiled souls and worn out sleeves. it was the relaxation that showed on our face that made those statues feel so out of place and race car dummies sitting neatly at dinner couldn’t figure out our grins and why when we chewed the residual bits before leaving this plain we closed our eyes staring at one another and never felt blame. 

celebrated your seventh birthday today without any presents we sat idly by while wishing the well wouldn’t have come up dry i think about you often sitting in that rocking chair withering, carrots dripping off your chin and where do i begin to live again and there was no misunderstanding in the words you said that microphone bled we were left with no choice but  to burn it in effigy after you strutted to your grieving room where everyone applauded the anchor you attached to another apathetic generation left buying your styles with wide tails and shrunken noses please let me just love again as easy when my sister was begging for that piece of the pie and tin is malleable there are bishops with salvageable sails setting out to have that sinister stance on decades of ten by ten rooms marked with teenagers names it’s all the way we cast that bait, let it sit, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, i’m feeling guilt for forgetting your sixth. 

the itch started at my neck

i wasn’t quite able to resist the temptation

claw marks raw 

drawing eyes

it’s then i noticed it on my thighs

it’s not easy satiating that need

at the pool 

it’s starting to bleed

i had to go home

my feet 

now it’s my feet

changing lanes, racing cars, finger edging out my shoe, i bent too far, my eyes lost the road

i hopped a curb

into a light

i’m finally scratched

good night. 

The ones who followed me,

racing to validation on Saturday afternoon sidewalks

they wanted neat lines and punctuation.

i thought of you soaked in insecurity, marred with the stains of wanting to be someone else

Structure and order.

temple rubbing Tuesday nights, skin shaking standoffs never ending plight

Easy to understand sentences.

i think of you, stomach a mess, presenting your best, wishing somehow this thing would leave your chest

No ambiguity.

she loved me once, i carried it for life

Words and phrases that were common enough to see your point

staring now through morning eyes at backlit screens with casual darkness shading everything

They didn’t want to read between the lines.

there is nothing else but for me to keep throwing thoughts and thinning my desires trying desperately to fit in

Tell me what to do

or at least not continue this sense of needing your nod.

lying here thinking about jello realizing i’m reduced to the guttural

a fuck off phrase that cuts to the core words flowery left on the floor, i used to hang them high a dangling reminder of beauty and death flying by, an insight masked, i do that a lot, get the shit out of your mouth a 13 year old student used to shout while i precious metal plated his punishment, he wanted it doled out. not sold. picking the words, the dressing, the tie, it’s a reminder i’m shuttering windows while writhing inside, trained to be shy? or, polite to the point it’s offensive and weak, i’ve taken your feelings into account too long, my strength is meek, pans filled with bubbling water left unattended, gotta add the powder cherry and lime mixed for a quick fix, knowing they’ll never come to our road, we gotta take a detour down to drown an emerging sound.

nazi punks fuck off should echo around.

direct transmission 

it’s all been weighed before we pull the two ton three tone trigger a hair line fracture hurts like a son of a gun it was you my sweet roll that left us undone sitting while we ravage the building of our past peace practices put into place so that we never erase the lessons forced upon us we just crawled out from under that rock the shade cold and quiet humility hoisted on people for their complacency rise up and listen it starts next door that is your mission we’re not removed and there still is time to hold hands again in our supermarket line and let’s see ourselves the manifestation of thought okay it with that kid in the parking lot look both ways reach out and see that we are all becoming the sea. Change. 

she said stop 

so we pulled off to the side of the road and held one another wondering how our clothes got us this far in a time travel fight we saw the stars yet left ourselves just enough space to listen to the words of one another and not let the moments of cataclysmic clashes rip at the core we were destined and drowning determined to see what the dawn in madrid wished for us to be and all the while whispering songs from the sign and detours are a must and one day we’ll resign to take another chance and dip sideways to that strangers glance 
i saw you yesterday.

torn, tortured, tried and true a trick to tempt the night, black and blue bonnets we wrapped on their heads to pretend they were proper it was a means to an end. know to be quiet and coy we’ll tell them when to bow and what to say. your warted elbow digging into my rib, hey i gave you that, step in to the filigree filled halls filtering friday fights what you wear shouldn’t be that tight fitting into something you’re always in sight i wish i may i wish i might it doesn’t matter day or night leave the light on the one that cast shadows under the door i can see you coming, clutching my pillow digging my nails it’s nothing now no one knows let me trail off into a dream the space where i grow something else a place that is slow i’m raising them, we’re crazing them, it’s lazy now, i’m trying how? I hope my shield will somehow spread to the length of your years.

it’s sound not fire 

though we’d eye the devastation before our ears could comprehend what mushroom vibrations in midnight places mean to the middle class who aren’t on vacation could we then agree that the situation is something not worth smothering our sister who was pregnant at sixteen over. i saw her dressed and alone waiting outside for love not methadone and the way you held your glare long enough to assure us you’d never be “that” as your mom wondered why there was always an empty chair, feet are bare, this family isn’t functioning to be dysfunction a portrait on a 90s goth kid’s chest reflecting our best a cultural enemy cause you couldn’t pass his test forgetting she has a back as you walk away 

where are you?

where did you go?

I can’t continue to make excuses thinking you’ll show and this line is long my lies a song if only the fury i hear would disappear 

it’s cold 

I’m freezing

oh, but you better make sure your child is rear facing while passing that cardboard sign 

i’ve memorized a few things from the past and this detour wasn’t our quest.