My one wish

My one wish is to see the stars,
unbleached by city lights.

No more darkless, harshlit nights-
please, I want only to see the stars again
and wish my wish upon the first star.
Who knows now where the first stars are?

Blotted out by blindman's ink
in the dirty bleak of eyeweep dusk.

If you didn't need me

you're standing there
with the look in your eyes
you, between me
and suicide
if you didn't need me
I don't think
I would need myself.

Pretty, white you.

You’re powder in my blood,
pretty, white powder.
But I’m riding you out
like horses,
pretty, white horses.

The shakes. Shhh.
The pretty, white flakes
of you
still falling.
I’m still falling.

“You’re on drugs”
they say.
If only they knew,
All that’s inside me
is pretty, white you.

But all that was pretty,
is pretty no more.
I’ll ride you out, pretty,
undress
and withdraw.

Untitled (Unintelligible Outcast Poem)

They cast me up,
A soulless thing
They called me creep
And liar liar

I cut my rings
Of baby hair
To hunt them down
Beware beware

See? They said
There’s nothing there
Your scabby soul
Threadbare, threadbare

And slow it dawned
Like thickest night
That maybe they
Were right right.

The hummingbird of panic

There’s a hummingbird in your chest,
in that aching cage of bone.
You hold it there too tightly
to hush its maddened drone.

And when you wake each morning,
again, you trap it still.
It’s harder, harder every day
to clench the growing thrill

of panic, at seeing the world
all clean-pressed and aglow.
You tremble as you wonder
if someone might just know

what dreams you had last night
as you starved for blessed rest
that never came, as hummingbird screams
tore through your prison chest.

If only you could crush its wings
to feathers and debris.
Or better yet, have mercy
and set the mad thing free.

But our poor, dear hummingbird,
must stay forever in its cage.
So you wash the nightmares from your skin
and claw your way onstage.

please.

i read the books
you gave me.
i’m so desperate
to keep you here
beside my bed.
i listen to all the songs
you sung to me.
i torture meaning
from every word.
i find no meaning
in this distance.
this senseless, senseless
space.
please please please
come back.
i tried eating again,
but a spoonful of sugar
can’t mask this bitter
senseless distance.
find me, please
before I find myself
whimpering, pathetic.
and throw it from the cliff.
like rags. like nothing.
like senseless senseless
distance.

They chant...

They chant
God Save Us
Their voices swooping
Like maddened birds

They stand,
Still still still
A cleared forest
Of stumps stumps stumps.

They pray,
Your will not mine,
As the waves crash
Against the walls.

I want
to scream murder
My voice ravaged,
Crucified, silenced.

Please, please,
Save yourselves
You poor, stupid,
nothing congregation.