Not a Love Poem.

This is not a love poem. This is about open legs and dead eyes, closed fingers and drunk lies. This is about what the moon does during the day.

This is about coffee gone cold and a voice mail box full of unheard messages and the dial tone. This is about forgetting. This is about artificial lighting and the sun going to sleep early in December. This is about threadbare sweaters. This is not a love poem.

Do not let the world suck you dry and spit out your bones like used toothpicks. But if she does, do not lie on the concrete for too long. Soon your shadow will be traced into the gray, but no one wants to be remembered as the street beggar on the freeway off ramp. His cardboard will not tell his story. This is not a love poem, this is not a love poem.

We both grew up with a mother who wore fake breasts and liposuction. Do not skip meals as a means of weight reduction. I learned too late that size six is not a malfunction and according to math, zero is not natural. We were taught love by the mother of media, we were taught acceptance by "do or die." Measuring cups her practice, scales her god, and magazines her bible. Broken nails on the dashboard read sin and white bread crumbs on her lap were for the birds and coffee was her weekday lover, but the religious require human sacrifice and you. are. it.

Every morning Death's grip proves tighter and your skin. swings. looser, so stop reaching for that bottle to nurse you like your mother's tits did. The bottle is cold and wanting, you are cold and wanting. Your heart is a raw steak on the grill, and you pay for love with bitten fingernails and inadequate sleep. But love is not out for blood, love does not empty your pockets.

Your cheeks are looking hollow ever since you let doubt in and she scooped you out. Ageism is just another way of saying the young deserve to have it all, and you deserve it all, honey, but I don't want "beautiful" to forget you because of a number. I don't want the mirror to pick as your fingers pull. She never learned how to love. Her role in fairy tales was sole beauty pageant judge and she is constantly looking for the fairest one of them all.

I resent that tired old sign on your leg. "No smoking area. Please extinguish cigarettes here." They never learned how to love. They were kissed too briefly and too carelessly, dropped too briefly and too carelessly. They cannot whisper anything but cheap love to your lungs. Do you hear me? Inhale, exhale. I am here. Inhale, exhale. They never read the dictionary and their vocabulary is limited, but they know hate is heard too often and love forgets her own name sometimes.

This is not a love poem. I can't teach you how to kiss the bite, how to atone to the legs that swallowed all your punches. I can't teach you to breathe "I am" into the soles of your feet and walk on water with Peter's faith. I am not a prophet, not a Savior. I won't quote the Bible or the Book of Mormon, but I won't lick the dust off your feet.

This is not a love poem. Inhale, exhale. This is not a love poem.

Intro #3

I'm not here to listen to my blood fall. I'm not here to watch my footsteps falter, to see the spread of hesitating bones and goosebumps. I'm not here to cry out, "God, god, why have you forsaken me?" but I'm not here to thank him either.

The wind will not bend me over to fuck me. My roots may not be visible, but they are pulling into the earth and she's a generous lover. I'm digging up home, I'm digging up community, I'm digging up callouses on my palm and dirt under my fingernails. Love and iron stain my hands and the water doesn't rinse off my idealism. They told us, "sink or swim." They told us "white or black." And I'm walking the fence, gray painted on my chest, nipples out, screaming, "love AND war! Him AND her!" They may call me radical, but I'm eating it up. Words feed the revolution and they're not empty calories.

I stand tall. You're carving your name into my skin with a pocketknife because you want to be remembered as alive and the lightning will not crack me down the middle. My bones are not hollow because I was not made to fly. I was made to last. My arms are rough. And raw. My voice is rough. And raw. There's no flowers budding on my fingertips. My spine is crooked and the vertebra collectively spell out love in Morse code because that's what god was thinking when he peeled death off my back.

But I'm eighteen and I've burnt my taste buds too many times. I'm eighteen and I've slammed on the gas too many times. Quality and quantity both start Q, U, A and we're mass producing babies without feeling because that adds to the cost. Give me something I can die for. Give me something I can live for. Give me something seventeen credit Suzy will stop studying for. I want something that I will lick off my fingers because I don't want to leave any of it behind.

I'm not always practical. My mother never taught me to follow the recipe. I forget what day of the week it is and I substitute pink for poison. But I am brave. I am hopeful. I am honest.

And today, that's good enough for me.

I'm all out.

I'm all out of poetry.

I'm all out of bedside prayers and forced conversation. All out of used tissue and hanging light bulbs. All out of evidence and skin. Sorry ma'am. Sorry sir. I'm all out.

My broken body's been taken off the menu. You can't order my hands anymore. I was a limited edition item, a seasonal special. You can't drink my blood as holy communion or pull me from the bottom of the breadbox, piece by piece. I died for you. I died for you.

I'm the happy prince's lead heart lying next to the dead swallow and I gave my eyes away a long time ago. The angels will sing "hallelujah, hallelujah" because of my beating heart. They never rest their elbows on the table and they never talk with their mouths full. They never use the wrong fork and they know how to butter their bread.

I'm all out of poetry.
We're chanting yes we can, yes we can, but the words don't reach our hearts.
We're screaming no you can't, no you can't, but their hands still force legs apart.

My lungs are full of water and I'm praying in five different languages, but no one can hear me.
My lungs are full of water and I'm all out of poetry.

Symbols are cynics and synonyms are pretentious. Metaphors never answer their phones and personification is overused by the best of us. The words don't want to get out of bed anymore. Every breath is labored and the doctors are still working on a diagnosis.

I'm all out of poetry.
All out of black pen, blue pen, lack pen, new pen.
All out of one stare, two stare, they share, no one cares.
All out of he she you we.
All out of poetry.

closed curtains

the flowers' petals sun-dried and wind-bled,
youth and colored cheeks long since shed,
their faces turn towards the cold earth.
my nails wet with red in the old hearth.

the grass whipped dry by mother earth,
soft dying breath whispered into dirt.
moaning as hands pull off my shirt,
i sell myself for warm sheets and cold feet.

my dad's eyes i no longer can meet,
i'm winter with closed hands and old dreams,
a sister with bruised hands and broken things,
a twister running out of steam.

a china doll pushed from the shelf,
cracked face shining in the hell,
icicles deadened by the bell.
god couldn't hear after darkness fell.

i see death in the eye of needle and vein of thread,
in youth and loneliness,
cold fingers and bated breath.
she's empty cupboard legs and stale bread,
she's empty classroom thoughts and a stump for a head,
she's empty compliment kids and brain dead.

her lips turn out the light,
the candle's wick blackened and shy.
she slits her wrists, the blood gone dry.
her eyes forever see the night.

look, these are my knees,
crease after crease meeting grease after geese.
listen, these are my pleas,
calling out to the hes and shes.
close your hands around the keys,
close the sands beneath the seas.

slept-in sheets and a hospital bed,
clean white sheets and open casket dread.
no one's eaten, cold eyes in their head.
no one's eaten, blood running red.
no one's eaten since i'm dead.