You Never Did Care

shake me up
I'll shake you off my
sleeves are meant to warm your
arms can wrap around and feel so
safe inside you
safe in your embrace
but you're not my
only lover, my only
love me, love me not
I can only take so 
much of what I say is a 
lie to me, please won't you just
say you love me even though
you speak so softly when 
you speak so gently I want to
scream obscenities at your
form a coherent thought for your
conscience is a wearisome thing and
don't be fooled by the things that I 
say that you love me when
you never did care.

*Found this in my Facebook notes of all places...which I obviously haven't paid any attention in years. I remember I used to make a lot a poems in this format (beginning a line with the ending word of the last) and felt so clever. I still do.

Growing Up

The truth is I don't get too enthused for anything anymore.
Everything is a compromise of the original intent
Weighed against the sleep debt I'll owe
and the amount of sighing I can get away with
without hating myself.
I wonder if this is growing up?

What This Is

There is something about sharing the same skin
That feels like
Something.
I don't have a word for it yet
But it feels like
You're mine and you're me
And my dreams are in your head
And there's a right kind of wrong to us
That feels like
Something.
But this is not about love.
I don't know what this is.

Vultures

I had a dream last night
We were all convened
At a church to meet and greet
And atone for all our crimes

We looked upon each other
Found no truths, no resolution
Wearing the faces of our youth
Every blink was a tactic
Every breath a war.

I have grown too tired
For these petty, pointless games
But they are always playing
With the same worn deck of cards.
Even in my dreams we are not friends
We are vultures.

We picked through the remains
Of a million conversations
Reciting our dead memories
Regurgitating dialogue

We fed upon each other
Found no peace, no satisfaction
Sharpening beaks upon the pews
Every offer a tactic
Every truce a war.

I have grown too tired
For these petty, pointless games
But they are always playing
With the same worn deck of cards.
Even in my dreams we are not friends
We are vultures.

See

I don't see what you see,
I only see a reflection.
So I don't know what you love
Or find lovely about me.
I only see a collection
Of shapes and colors and flaws.

In My Leaving

I was born holding too many worries
Bearing the guilt of all their judgments
Side cast eyes and whispers above my head
Knowing a rejection I'd yet to earn
A perilous infraction, just existing.

So in my leaving I will be empty of
All the many things others think I should carry
And haul about for the inspectors of eternity.
I will throw them all to the crowds like confetti
And leave as the child I never was in youth.

Like This

I know grief and it feels like this
Forever falling into an abyss
But it's not as dramatic as
The words used to describe it

Grief is felt in the voice no longer heard
In eyes that will never look into thine again
And all the things they held within
Hopes and plans and worlds all vanish
Because this is what those we miss are made of
Dreams and possibilities we all are made of
And then are not, and then is nothing.

Grief is feeling all the nothing left
Where everything once was whole.
I know grief and it feels like this
It feels like lack and emptiness.

Nothing

There are words
And attraction
And eyes that speak louder
And hips that collide
With precision
And lips that meet and bruise
With intent
But I feel nothing
And the words pass through me
And I see nothing in those eyes
I feel nothing from those careful hands
So softly pleading for release
Because I feel nothing.

A Heart

I have a tiny heart of quartz
Hanging from a silver chain
It's cold and smooth and nice to touch
But it doesn't do very much

I have a heart of ink
Always hanging from my sleeve
It's purple and black and pretty to see
But it's not the one inside of me.

I don't know what that heart is made of
Stone or ink for all the good it does
It doesn't lead me anywhere and
I only feel a distant sort of love.

And it's shallow beat sounds less like a drum
Than the erratic chirp of dripping faucet.
My blood, I think, runs colder than most
In a slushing muddy stream.

Or maybe it's just a normal heart
Doing an average thing.
Maybe it's my head that's numb
And too abused to care.

Beige

Cigarette on my lips
Alcohol drowned liver
When the time comes
To leave for good and ever
I don't care if I'm on
The wrong side of a needle,
Don't let me die with beige nail polish
On my fingertips.

I don't care why
I don't care when
In disgrace or utter ruin
Just
Don't let me die with beige nail polish
On my fingertips.

YesNo

As a girl
I live in a world
Wanting me to say yes.
But every yes comes with a price.
Surrounded by hands
And eyes
That want to possess me
Or worse, to rent me.
They cut you up
If you turn them down.
But I never asked
To be a possession
And I never thought
To make a price-tag
And they want it all for free anyway
But every yes comes with a price.

All my loans are in default.

Any

Though so pretty in the breaking
You are a broken creature
So desperate for the taking
And you name her like a prayer
(sad, oft spoken)
The key to all your aching.

Just the sound of it.

Any
One will do
Now.

Fever bright and without decorum
You chase something familiar
(Any, any, any)
One to curl into.
(Any, any, any)
One to hold you tight.
(Any, any, any)
One to forget that prayer.

Just the sound of it.

I Know

Some choose to live under the sun
It's warm and tanning rays
But I have shunned the shallow fun
Of living in the bright of days.
I live mine under a million suns
Farther and deader away.

I am nothing more than so much nothing
A moon might think to dream
But sometimes I do feel a distant something
A small reflected gleam.
A howling shedding shredding
Of reality's fragile seam.

Immensity you cannot know
Looking into a blue bright sky.
What the night weaves, you rip and sew
Hunched and straining weakened eyes
Chanting always "I know, I know"
As another star somewhere dies.
Oh, how I know that bright and morbid glow.

When It's Time

When it's time
To leave this cemetery
And move to the future,
I'll write my name on a tree
And leave only cigarette ash
In Memory.

And the deadline feels so close
It's almost time, it's almost time
To shut my eyes
And imagine abundance.
But I'm tethered still
And I won't move on until...

When it's time,
I'll pack my car,
Wave goodbye to my
Hometown bar,
And leave only cigarette ash
In Memory.

Never Sorry

I never have to say I'm sorry
Because you always know me
The good, the bad, the lonely
You know I'm never sorry.

So now what's done is done
But I'm not the only one
Who didn't play nice.
You didn't play nice.

And the bad in me
Feels like the good in me
And even in misery
You know I'm never sorry.

Palaver

I'm drinking and I'm talking
But I'm not saying much
Because these people they can't
Talk like you can talk
And I'd rather palaver
All night with you.

I miss you the most
When looking to conversate
Doesn't have to be big or relate
To anything other than our little world.
But I miss you the most
When invited to someone's home
To watch them on their phones.

I'd rather
Chat with a cadaver
Than see another meme.
I'd rather palaver
Just one more night
With you.

Wane

If your body should invite me in to stay
I would be a stranger anyway
Strange to all the things I have forgotten
My memories like fruit have all gone rotten
Remembered in a different way.

The light has changed since I started this collage
With eyes like embers and hearts like cups
Lines so fine our hands were the same hands
Cupping a hearth, building an empire
Of thought and sound and ambition.

Spiders build a delicate home
In the corner where that canvas now lays
(Dusty and behind a pair of shoes)
Because starting from scratch is more appealing
Than revisiting what that picture reveals.

I wander from light-bulb to flame
With the same determination
A familiar and sweet destination
That no longer exists on this plane.
I'm a stranger in a different moon's wane.

Without

You wanted me
Torn and frayed and broken.

Now I can't look at you
Without crying.

Familiar Unknown

When I look at you
You've a face I've known my whole life
But you are a stranger to me.
Your eyes the same eyes
Watching me through childhood,
But I don't know the thought behind.
Your smile like an echo
Even your hands are hands that reached for mine
Hands that held me throughout time
It's strange to know of blood so close
And feel a stolen sort of love
Because your face is so familiar.

Ritual

Trickle lightly through my hands
Tiny grains, the finest sands
Piling into time refined
In purest form of memory.
Echoing through absent mind
Love twined thread
Beat kept palms
The rhythmic pact
The tender breathing alms.
Then merciless eventuality
Of vows ripped asunder
By the weight of eternity.

Damned If You Do

We came to this room
To decide some things
Two forces I'm in between
Too young to barter
My heart and my soul
But he wanted my decision
So I told him my choice.

The lights fled the room,
The darkness prevailed.
A power filled my lungs
As the room filled with fire.
You took full control,
Burned away my soul.

Now I feel the lick,
The pain in each step,
I feel the world and
A vicious contempt.
Your voice bellows through me
Forging my heart anew.

But I won't be an agent,
A martyr for you.
I'll be free from your traps
Til I find something true.
Through sinew and struggle
I'll carve my own map

For I let go his land
For this realm of the damned.

Eyes of Fate

Change is all around
And I don't like the sound
My conscience makes when
Our lips meet and mate
And you look at me like I'm your fate.

Couldn't we just cuddle?

Sadness

If it deadens the pain,
Lets me forget your name,
I'll gladly partake
Like you took
And lose myself for a while.

And while you prepare
For new life and fresh blood,
Old wounds will fester
And crawl through my veins,
Whiskey soaked adrenaline
Devouring what you left me with.

Speaking of which,
You left me homeless
And loveless and alone
With a sadness wrapped in rage
And it's all that warms me,
All that holds me,
All that sings me to sleep
Anymore.

Evanescent

Moving on and up and out
There is no time for rhyme or reason or doubt
Because moments are meant to be trapped in the mind
And time is meant to be fast and fleeting unkind.
You and I we exist in a memory
Evanescent, transitory
Now that the years have run
Leaving us in the webs we've spun.
We are like those tears in the rain
Existing invisibly, then never again.

Razbliuto

Razbliuto in the morning
When I wake up to your text.
You think I'm going to miss you,
But I'm wondering who's next.

Who next to walk for hours with,
Who next to lie under the stars,
Who next to swing in parks at night,
Who next to close down all the bars.

Once I held a torch,
A fire, a flame, a brazier,
But now it has all gone away,
With love I have grown lazier.