This is an all-American boy
Flashing green eyes
Laughing at me
With that callous contentment
Glazed lightly with sincerity
He is as American as apple pie
In the flat teenage way he claims me
These two dimensional kisses
Defy the reality of my body
Pressing me flat into the bed under him
And yes,
Cartoons can have mass
Enough to delete me
Enough to prove me unreal
With critical paternity
Stripping me naked
The bricks are just perfectly the color of her lips
Cracked like an old scab
He presses his shuddering fingers into the soft red flesh
Whispering sweet nothings
To the apparition of aching memories
His clouded eyes miss the white cracks
Not to be allowed to drip their innocence
On his haunting
Without which he is just another brokenhearted old man
Remembered only by the stories he whispered
To the stone apparition of misplaced love
She wipes the blood from his fingers
Each individually with care
Enough to negate the violence of his love
The white innocence of the cloth
Is stained with his memory
Even when I close my eyes I can still see my hands shaking
Every one of your slurred words
A tremor
And every tremor
A prayer
All the same
Wake up tomorrow and don’t remember this ever happened
Wake up tomorrow and be ok
Or at least wake up tomorrow
Each prayer is one more fervent than the last
Each one more painful
As if every second a little bit of my soul is torn from me
The price of keeping you alive I suppose
The price also paid in his blue eyes
As they meet mine across your lap
I can see it
You wrap the velvet blackness around my shoulders
Like a blanket tucking it around me as you tuck me away
Implicating “out of sight, out of mind” as you hand me over
But what if what I’m trying not to see my own mind? I ask.
You don’t answer but she beckons me over
Offering velvet blackness to coat my lungs
Burning my nostrils on the way and twining with my hair
Rising up and finally becoming infused in my brain
At last, at last I go blind as the spicy scent of tobacco
With the dizzying whirl of impurity fuse with my depression, molding it
Into nothing more than a persona twisted around the truth of me.
Blindness is unfriendly but still she is beautiful.
I watch your fingers
Worrying precisely over blank wrong answers
With you, destruction is an art
Paper snow rains from you fingers
Its like they’re crying
Mourning the death of you laugh
You don’t meet my eyes anymore
But the last time you did
They were a blank board wiped meticulously clean
It was just once
That’s what the world knows
You know the truth
Do you still remember?
Or have you succeeded in forgetting the past
For love of the art of self-destruction?
Those perfectly straight lines
The Shadows smell like rosemary
Stammering long lost memory
Burning bright like beauty in the grave
Shining through the fog
Tragedy is universal
Even when left unknown
He saunters into the room
Smooth as a candle wax mold of a finger
Pressed with a slight gasp of pain
Into the bed of a recently darkened flame
Ringed with an angelic halo of smoke
Then smiling, he greets her
Carrying in his whispered words the scent of freshly burned paper
Calling to mind charred marshmallows in summer
Newly degraded pleasure
His fingers lick at her shoulder
Still consuming at every opportunity
She smiles back
Her lips tight as her freshly lost newness
Hiding her still raw anguish just beyond
But she keeps her mouth closed
She doesn’t say a word as she burns
She paints her face in shades of gold
Her hands shape her icy skin
Hand on face brushing away darkness
Brushing away light
So pale
So beautifully fragile
Perfection in ice
Don’t touch
It might break
But it’s all melting away anyway
More gold paint.
We need more gold paint.
Pretend there’s still a face behind the mask
Black and white questions projected on foreheads
A slip of the tongue
Wiped away before they have a chance at all to be
She stood there, staring at the stars, the same ones from when she was young. She wonders, did they always look so hopeless?
In the shower my mind ponders
I'm alone with my thoughts
The happiness I crave is far yonder
The water that glides down my body
Makes my mind go foggy
The thoughts in my mind are those that I want to have left behind
Those thoughts make me sad
They make me realize,
The happiness I'm looking for,
Is bad
That person I think about
She makes me happy all the time
Whether I think about her warm smile
Or I think about her soft, caring voice
She makes my smile widen
A hug from her makes me feel safe
Alas she does not feel the same
Makes my heart sink to the cold wooden floor
I feel like I am a bore
Although she'll never know
Don't worry tomorrow is a new day
I may not walk the best walk
I may not talk the best talk
I may not belong to the world you belong to
But I'll give it all I've got, and show you what I've got to.
I know I'm not perfect, for perfection is a disgrace
And not a trace of it you'll find....
In my world, that's full of excruciating pain
Of the mystical adventure that starts on my bed at five, in aphotics
And gives me bruises till I surrender and go under my sheets again.
But you see, I'm bleeding, bleeding all over, for I didn't surrender
Neither would I.
Go on, go out on a hunt for a treasure,
And you'll find sapphire inside my eyes.
For they burn, they burn out bright
To warm this goddamn cold heart of mine