Ghost Eye

scraps of paper skin
fall out of the insides of your eyelids
constant shed, dead eye
never look anyone full on
if you take in every bit of me
the blood will keep rushing

scab, expanding, over ribs
can't pick it fast enough
exposed, marrow
if only you knew
I'm skin, I'm mostly ghost

My hands are still connected
to your temples

nonetheless we're fragments

Your Birthday Party

I want to be your 21st birthday

I want to be the smokey candles

that you blow out on the same day every year

we’re a good college try in the way

you quote me these adolescent words

we used to make sense of our own skin

I swear if I tore open your flesh you’de be full of fall leaves

I like to think of people as trees

we’ll grow together but we don’t belong to each other

we’re quick to catch fire

victorious red pillars

threatening

OH!

burn me down.

shake me out.

cut off my limbs.

make me into your new breakfast table or yard sale sign

don’t mind my tree sap blood

it was only an afterthought

The Impending Bump

You hit me in the chest, pounding

with the fury of a falling tree trunk, I know this forest floor all to well

reducing me to a series of empty sentences

words that hardly mean anything to you

much less me, I think we haphazardly turned our bodies

into commodities of a sweaty back porch

that only knows how to blow smoke into our lungs


I hardly have the oxygen to fold my limbs over

but loss always made us unstoppable forces of wildflowers and rain

gentle, pounding

break through top soil of my sentience

crawling as we may

Particle Study

these bones, who can understand
a body brittle, touch it's skin
and there begins a war
kiss the mouth
and tear down a religion
the glorious machine
insect wings

flying demolition, creature, sick.
turn the bark of our consciousness
inside and outward, twist the neck
hard enough to leave broken veins
milk blood pouring
with the sounds of angels
and gospels, all we ever were
was a dirty collection
of church hymns

a bee stung my ribcage
ever since then I've been bleeding
animal bones out of my side
I call it only human
you call it a miracle
if only you knew
the burial ground
in my chest cavity

Together we're a hive
of a thousand wasps
but poison seeping out of orifices
doesn't change our decay
and our linnen bedsheet bodies
woven into sweaty eyed
circuits, and choir warbles
carry out the final note
till it shakes

Cells

I want to trace the outlines

of every blood cell in your body

it might be only monotonously tracing circles

but maybe then I’de be closer to knowing

the paths of your bloodstream

we’re only streams of movement anyway

nothing we’ve ever done is deliberate

but I’ll continue to try to tear through

your consciousness, like tearing a hole

through the asphalt of the suburban

neighborhood where you first

traced me

Tobacco Commodity

Every time I wake up I count all my fingers

because my hands might be the only complete thing

I have today, It’s a funny thing that we smoke more

cigarettes than we say I love you, if all you

have is a grey haze to comfort you I’de chase after

it with you, but grey clouds turn into rain and rain

turns into sleep and I’ll be left counting my fingers

again, waiting for you to run out of tobacco

A Morning Front

I’de show you all the lines in my hands

maps for all the mornings I made you breakfast

a crease for every time I chased after a muse

that only exists in sleepy eyes

and sunny windows


Parallel rays, almost spider webs

illuminate the empty space that resound-

bellowing, between soft skin and crusty eyes

I think we only exist in a bedsheet kingdom

as long as we don't turn our heads outward

I'll continue to wrap my disfigurements

in wooly pillowcase bandages