Masochist.

We were like a factory
the innerworkings of clocks turning together
all so time stood still
at the clamor of our whispered names
we shuffled through the steam of our heat
fogging each others eyes like swamp windows
we moved across the conveyer belt
two undefined unstamped licensed plates
ready to be pressed
we played tetris with our bodies
scored higher than any player
we were the fucking game
points reaching the board
as a shriek was heard from the stationary nerd down at Pizza Castle
we made an effort that no one could defeat
but what you didn't know
was a that only I played
to beat myself
I was a played out black and white movie
wishing for someone to chase the plane I was leaving on
I was a Marilyn Monroe masochist
wishing I could choke on my own pearls
and scratch my sides with my diamond friends
praying my scars would paint themselves
into something gentleman prefer
because I could scratch the seven year itch
straight across my collar bone
bite my lips bloody
in the attempt to make a face I never found attractive
belted my hips
to signal your fingers out of my area of weakness
because the truth is
I never knew what love was in the first place
because I taught myself the hurt of every heart beat
the pain of every high pitched "Happy Birthday, Mr. President"
I taught my self to tighten the ankle straps on my high heels
even when they're contrived from barbed wire
because I have to find a way to let your hand wander down the small of my back
without shivering in the wake of your fingernail traced pattern
I have to figure out
how to stop my shivering when I'm anything but cold
I have to stop thinking
about everything I wish I was
and for once
fit with someone else
by being nothing less than
what I already am***

Fingers Crossed

We are crossed fingers

Not meant for telling lies

But only to be close as

Rings sliding past knuckles

Cigarettes in-between

And pressed to soft lips

My hands are little

Fingernails like flowers

Baby daisies growing out of palms

Your hands like tall palm trees

Down long LA streets

At night

And we cross like fates

Like Hollywood & Vine

Because a woman isn’t always the muse

I am inspired

By crossed fingers

By crossed paths

By romeo and Juliet

Star-crossed lovers

Because I’m overly romantic

And love poems are always bad

Unless you’re in love

And hate poems are bad

Unless you’re breaking up

But I’m selfish with my pen

When it comes to you

As I hold the grip with crossed fingers

Imagining us like

Kindergarten fingerpainting

The messy mixing of colors

In heart shaped palettes

Legs twisting in tangos

Heartbeat to heartbeat

Making compound time

Counted on fingers

Crossed when hands kiss like lips

We are crossed fingers

Like yours when you left hoping

I was as pretty as you remember

Crossed fingers

Like mine when I wished for affirmation

That you were here

Crossed fingers

That we could meet halfway to

Cross our fingers together instead of

Alone in crazed hopes

Because it’s juvenile

When your heart beats pop songs

And walking feels like jump rope

But it IS juvenile

Because you’ve tripped and now

You’re falling

And all you can manage to do on the way down is cross your fingers**

Bicycle Wheel

You make me hate

With every lip curtain drawn to show bad teeth

You make me hate

With the same unwashed jeans and the pompous walk you place in them

Swaying hips like panties that you wish you could wear to wrinkle

You

Make me ungrateful

For how truly good everything is

And everything I’ve missed

You’re a broken bicycle wheel

Squeaking with skids

With wishes to be holding couples and children

Jealous

That you’ll never be a ferris wheel

Because you won’t

Despite how hard you try and you know it

Lying while you sleep, eat and breathe

Until they turn into lies you believe

You live in shoeboxes on garage shelves

Confining yourself

And constantly complaining

That you’re not somewhere else

I don’t know if you wish you could go back

So you can rectangle stories

Or hope to restore some kind of former glory

You make me hate

Because I see how much you do

Everyday

In the way you caress

The womb you’ll never possess

A childless mother always

Because instead of pride

You own curses

Crumpling up who you are

And throwing it at everyone you meet

Fucking everyone who bends over

To pick up that crumpled sheet

Because you only believe in who you think you should be

Instead of owning yourself

You’d rather own me

Plastic rather than rubber

Discount training wheel

Just embrace the fact that bicycles are beautiful, too

That’s all I want from you

You shouldn’t long to be wheelbarrows and Michelin men

Because you are spoked Huffy black

With no need to pretend

So just stop

And enjoy once around the block

Instead of gathering spider webs

And sitting in the same spot

Wear your webs like royalty robes

And rust like unique coloring

You deserve more than you give yourself

Because you take more than anyone else

All this life is

Is give and take

So don’t stammer on empty mistakes

Stop taking

Long enough to give

You are the wheel of someone’s first bike

And that should be enough

Stop taking in hate

And give in love***

Spud

He was a potato
spotted spud
straight out of the bag
raw
and heavy like kitchen baseball
unpeeled
and from the ground
normal
with all-American roots
like spaghetti curled around forks
on mom's homecooked Saturdays
a backyard
Babe Ruth potato
so right-brained
it's left
when I can't comprehend
how he sees colors sometimes
because he comes from crooked treehouses
and thanksgiving football
he comes from
jeans and t-shirts
and fingers rapidly alternating between x and y
to shoot spaceships
he is raw rooted potato
where everyone knows what they're getting
while he's holding the hips
something fresh
oven hot
sour cream and chives
cheese melting
golden sunrise
Paula Deen butter for days
rich with freedom and taste
I was a baked potato
from wheelchair childhoods
to canvas splattered Saturdays
roots created in royal purple
veins with treble and bass
roughing it up in aorta bedrooms
I am the buildingside paintings
of little girl letting go of red heart balloon
I am the loaded baked potato
too rich
next to others like me
because all I need is the norm
the brown paper bag boy
who comes to lunch with PB & J
next to my Bento Box
He's the calculus
to my yoga
the Chuck Norris to my Madonna
Because New York needs Broadway
like it needs Wall Street
like hands need holding
like opposites attracting makes cliches
easy
because we could be french fries
in pigeon bird beaks
we could be baked chips and curly fries
I'll be the barbeque to your pringles
and the gravy to your mash
because you look so good
you could be a salad
handcrafted for wedding receptions
through family recipe
I would gladly call you my sweet potato
despite your lack of orange
because I'm Au Gratin for you
wrapped up in foil fairytales
because I'm steaming under eccentricities
and sometimes, I just need
 a plain
potato. 

Call Me T-Swift

They call me the Taylor Swift of slam poetry

Like they know of every inkling in my writing

That I manufacture made-up manuscripts

Written for me by someone else

Because to them each word is a catchy line from the underworld that is pop radio

They begin to shed tears as it infects the veins in their hands

Turning bloodlines to map patterns

With blood racing with the roof down belting out Our Song

Until their fingers grip pens like a constant snap

Making rough love with old notebook paper

That still has its edges

And they find themselves trying to write like me

Steal the synergy

Of my cute and free soliloquoy

About the boys who’ve wronged me

They’re only pissed because it’s so damn catchy

Clinging to the hemangeomas of their peeling poems

Because I seem too mainstream

Too big of a dream

An underlying scheme

Because they try to find something fake about me

But themselves is the only fake they see

Everything big and fake like the 80’s

You can hide behind your Dolly Parton’s ladies

But I am as real as teardrops on my guitar

I am as real as a Red kind of love

I am as real as a state of grace

I am as real as three chords and the truth

World changing

So call me Taylor Swift

Don’t care if you think that shit fits

Cause much like your muffin top jeans

I am overflowing

With success you’ve never met

And all you’re ever gonna be is mean

So we are never getting back together like ever

Hide behind your coat, I’ll brave the stormy weather

Because I could go bowling for broken hearts

And strike

Because I knew he was trouble

He said forever and always

He was treacherous

And he turned my world sideways

It’s not wrong to write about love

Over and over again

When your heart’s still getting new stitches

Embracing what it sees in mirror each day

Someone else needs to know that I feel that way

Don’t let yourself hate

Just because everyone relates to a broken heart

Even you

So mad props T-swift

No matter how many guys you’ve been with

You always get back up

Show the world your scars like tattoos

And you’re not so bad off

Kissed a Kennedy and John Mayer

Wrote a song about ‘em later

Each time a heart breaks

I’ll use the Taylor Swift intake

Take memories to notebook lines

Make him he wish he didn’t screw up this time

Because when he hears this rhyme

He’ll know his name was on my mind

and he’ll watch me making my own life

 wish he’d been a love song instead

I’ll always write what’s in my head

Because I’m real like a broken heart

And you’re real like lies about how you don’t know every part

Because you sing along whether you want to or not

Because you know what it’s like when love’s got you strung up and shot

So call me T-swift

I’ll write your heartbreak

And let you hate on me

For saying what you can’t say***

Pan

I am the shadow girl

My selfless years have just begun

As I wrapped selfishness in juvenile signatures

And tucked picture books underneath me

Reminiscing in the tootsie pop lunchbox days

And lacing up ribbons on dancing shoes

Remembering

The lost boys always manage to find me

and love me like the mother they never had

In neverland

They worship me for mere cookies and milk

And I tell them they were owed this

They became lost with mama’s shouts down the hall

And plaid robe mornings

Where tears drew up panels of gone daddies

They became lost when the broken world

Cast off together and traded for separate

And untied constellations that connected wishes left on stars

And my heart beats for giving

When all they need is to be found

As they teach me comic books and taco bell

Church camp chants

At a middle school dance

We hold hands

Reminiscing what they thought was love

When they didn’t know what mutual meant

And girls left kisses on their doorstep

And hearts at home

Because they didn’t know the gravity of deep dreams

Of a young boy

And they thought eyes were backwards telescopes

And big things were small

And I love

Stitching their broken hearts

And standing where new beginnings start

Hours of grand theft auto and youtube karaoke

Dancing dorm room production numbers

Past quiet hours

Laughing and crying

And showing them that I never had to give birth

To be a mother

I am the shadow girl

Loving lost boys

Like brothers

And still searching for the most lost of them all

Because he never grew up

Or answered any of my phone calls

I believed in his flight since we were kids

When no one else did

I’ve always been his

I am Wendy

Searching broken tree-houses and basement boxes

Because Peter Pan

Is the only man who can fly me to

The second star to the right

Because he never grew up

He just disappeared

And I know he’s there

With my heart on his sleeve

He had the heart to leave

And I continually search shadows

Because without him I become the lost girl

And I love the lost boys

Being the mom they never had

But I’m a half-ass mom without a dad

And pan stole my heart

When he told me to believe

As he sprinkled out stars like maps

For tomorrows and yesterdays

We were born to sway clouds

And defy plans

Prayers to father time

To make adventures

Like rocketship raucous

His eyes are an atlas

Of worlds I’ve never traveled

And I’ve loved him from afar

As I kept wishing on his star

That he’d come back

And we could be a fisher price family

Kids playing grown ups

Wearing shoes too big for us

Just to walk like someone else

Because we are serendipitous wishes

And chances chosen by children

Free and brave

Watercolor emotions

On canvases of pictures I painted of him without looking

And I’ll paint them with a pinky promise

To stay lost until he finds me

Because our pact is one I can’t explain

As I build soup can telephones

For us to stay in touch

And fishing poles to cast

When we sit on cushions of the crescent moon

And remember forevers

When we were young***

He will answer...

For the victims of the Connecticut school shooting. All of my heart and prayers. 

Dear Santa

A common conversation starter

Around December

As carols are sung

And little angels scribe dreams

On lined paper

To someone they’ll never admit

They put right next to God

As they address heartfelt wishes

But we live in world

That intercepts Santa

By mixing up Christmas with the dates of Manson murders

Because the sicknesses

Have only become mental

Killing the world

 the black plague of imaginations

We are plagued

With those who believe

That our children deserve to see

Deathbeds before bunk beds

We are plagued

With fathers who believe that bullets

Are the only way to get to a child’s heart

We are plagued

With unanswered Santa letters

Or were they letters to God?

Because the purity of heart and mind

The innocence is being eaten alive

By insanity

Instilled in adult psyche

We have laid to rest Roosevelts and Kennedys

Voices that could’ve colored black and white

We have laid to rest common ground

Because with each lost dimple and dance on tiptoes

We have laid to rest life

Mothers who will never dress daughters

Daughters who will never steal lipstick from mothers

Fathers who will never play pigskin in the park

And sons who will throw to themselves

As more puzzle pieces disappear

Till the big picture is full of holes

And adults don’t write Christmas letters

Because all they can think to do is argue

Over the root of the situation

The left

And the right

Is it really worth the fight?

Because when it comes down to it

The only thing we’ve gained

Is loss

Children who will never floss

The two front teeth they wanted

As they watch a red Christmas

Instead of the white they’ve dreamed

Because Red is the only color that can comprehend to be seen

As their families decorate trees an empty green

Kicking themselves for kisses

They didn’t give on Friday morning

And never knowing Christmas spirit again

Because it will only be an

Anniversary

A Red Christmas

Cruel reality

And those little angels

Will meet the man they’ve been writing letters to

Long before they were meant to

And he will answer.