Ice.

I don't sleep, sometimes.
The teeter-totter all-nighters
Chip away at my facade,
Sweet Fates chip another inch or two off the end of my
Noose.
Glad someone is keeping score, I guess.
In the game of me vs. the night watch.
Cold creeps quiet in all the windows, curves its claws over my gutters and taps a hard heartbeat on my tin roof.
It's everywhere, barely kept just to the floor by all our flapping ministrations.
Ministers of heat, we are:
Cranking here and switching there to keep our envelope of comfort sacred.
A carpet of diamonds entertains me with their glitter,
They're not the real rare kind- the kind with fire and color and life inside- but the flat kind you buy for a girl you didn't really want to spend the rest of your days with anyway.
She knows it too, but nobody looks close enough to see the faux-gem's plain heart.
Not for now, anyway.
For now, I can't wait for dreams to happen.
I recite lines of poetry and draw impossible shapes to lull the spinning in my head.

Love.

So good to be me.
So nice to
Just be and not think about
What I'm worth to everyone
How I've disappointed you all
And how I'll
Fix it if only I could just remember
Oh yeah- gotta take care of number one
Sorry about it but if the buck's gonna stop here?
If I'm gonna be the one to call all these shots if
None of it matters then I might as well
Be the one who says hell no.
It's how it is.
That love trumps all and that
Creation and connection are the
Currency we'll ransom our souls with its
Fine. I'm fine.
I'm satisfied with my mortality my piece is just fine.
I'm fine.
I'm satisfied with climbing on top of others I'm fine.
I'm standing on the shoulders of giants I'm fine.
We'll all survive because we have eachother we're fucking fine.
We'll teach our daughters not to be afraid and our sons to not be violent we're fucking fine.
We're not afraid
I'm not afraid.
I give of my everything, I hold back nothing and scream my truth in rhyme and rhythm because art
Is all we have.
Art is our connection to eachother and in the end.
Everything you have will be taken away.
All your things.
All your dreams.
All your plans.
All your God. Damned. Dignity
And all you will have left is
Love.
Who and how and when and what
You loved.
Measure your life in love,
It's all you'll ever truly own.
All you ever have.
Everything that has the nature to arise, also has the nature to fade away.
Nothing lives on but love.

Whirligig.

Burned my mouth, tonight.
I lick my salty wounds and so I smile
Got another climbing curve to conquer
here.
Another breath of poison vapor clinging
Here.
Ignites my spiral black hole clinging
There.
Extinguishes my fears and though I
Wait.
It isn't ever finished
So I
Pray.
Don't believe in God and so I
Pray.
So glad it isn't me and so I
Pray.
So thankful that this burden isn't mine.
And so I pray.
My God I couldn't be so graceful
Drown.
In angel vapors
Burn my mouth.
Blister there.
And remind me I'm so painfully alive.
And I'm alright.
Said, I'm alright.

Odd out.

I was so excited to meet you.
To be a part of something.
To maybe feel a little like I
Belonged somewhere.
I know I have family here.
I know I should feel at home
But
I don't share a plan with them
A life, a story, a goal.
I'm the odd man out,
Everywhere I go.
Don't quite ever belong anywhere,
Anymore.
Don't quite know how.

Un ravel.

It starts at the ends.
A little here, a little there.
A small leak, or noise or frayed edge.
I sew it up, patch it back together
Only to find another crumbling, rusting
Part.
I wear a face I thought was mine.
And when even that peels off, too
I wonder where the meaning all went.
It's easy, to trip on so many rocks that you
Forget what not-falling feels like.
'Til all you're pulling up is your own bootstraps
Drown too long, you forget about the air
And all you have is the water pressing down.
I gotta breathe, a little.
I know my gray-washed world is temporary,
That technicolor life isn't far away, but
I just get so tired of grasping at the

end of my rope.

It steals things.
My bright things.
Anything pretty or shiny or good.
It tells me things.
Tells me I'm not in on the joke.
Everyone is faking it.
That I didn't try hard enough.
It steals things.
Anything that sparkles with joy
Anything that's made of laughter or connection.
It makes me feel heavy.
It whispers the answers in my ear
And pastes lists of losts and lasts and misses behind my eyelids at night.
You are ugly and broken,
It says.
You will never be.
It takes my hope and my desire and my ferocity and wears them in its lapel like a flower.
My breath is sour,
My hands are empty and my feet are still.

It tells me I'll never sing again.
That my songs weren't ever good, anyway
And that I should just hand it the keys and turn in.

It's stealing everything.

Mute.

I washed his hair.
Tried cleaning off most of the blood and sticky white.
"Like lotion for his skin", I would have said.
I would have combed a darling part on his head, but his blistered skin would have come off in the bristled little brush.
I could feel his thigh bunching up in my clumsy hand- that familiar feel of too-thick pieces sliding too far. Careful with his too-white skin, still tearing here and there, leaving gaping bloodless wounds everywhere I touch.
Rubbery skull bones rattled in a deflated head as I changed his position. Careful with this little bag of bones, rubber-band tone long gone slack.
I talked to him because it felt weird not to. My muted coos filled a terrible vacuum a little.
Three days, they said.
"But, I can still feel him moving," she said.
"Can you still resuscitate?"
"How did this happen?"
"I thought everything was fine."
"When can I get pregnant again?"
And
"How do I say goodbye?"

I never said goodbye.

I doused him in oil to keep his wet paper skin from sticking to the cold blankets. I didn't bother getting warm ones.
I never said goodbye.
I saw the still little heart sweep by on the ultrasound screen. Both praying for and wishing against some agonal rhythm that might be sparked... And feeling my own heart sink when I saw that frozen image. All a family's hopes and dreams, gone in a flash.
"My baby," she cried.
"I'm sorry." We tried to explain. And faded into the roar of a tide of grief. It threatened to sweep us all away, that night.

So, I didn't say goodbye.