I was a block of ore until I was poured
into the mold of my mother. I am iron cast and cold.
I inhale and the oxygen makes me rust.

I am seventeen years old. I tell unimportant lies
about myself because it makes me feel guilty,
and guilt makes the days last longer.
I am afraid of dying. I am seventeen and my girlfriend used to be
a prostitute, but I am seventeen and I don’t care,
I love her and how she is a cup that holds me.
She has hair that fills my hands like a fountain
of root beer and laughs
when I tell her I love her.

I am eighteen and the surface of my mother cracks.
The flood of beer that pours from her shattered mouth washes me
into the street, and it makes me rust more.
I am homeless and a prostitute wears me around her neck
like a knife on a chain; I shelter between her breasts.
It is all i know of warmth.

Nineteen and she has eyes made of honey.
They stick to me. Our apartment is an anthill.
I am nineteen and my muscles march under my skin.
I pour kerosene into my hollow guts.
I tell myself that I will be a candle,
or a lamp, but I keep starting fires
when my cup overflows.

I am twenty years old.
I am only full of rust and when the flood in me moves
it is not breathing, it is my sewerpipe bones
telling lies to make the day longer. I am twenty years old.
I love her and we carry the same secret home at night.
I know she still fucks for money.
I am leaving her because she looks at me
with my mother’s eyes. The guilt sticks to my pipes.
I wash it down with gasoline, I am slick with gasoline,
I am burning down our house with my mouth.

(Source: thenervousbreakdown.com)

geothebio:

pros to buying a pizza: pizza

cons to buying a pizza: buying

MY LIFE

(via pizza)

Nothing says lonely like my bones at 3 a.m., swimming in gin with a shallow grin
falling prey to the thinnest shadows that all seem to say:
“Hey! You’re the worst kind of drunk”
but I’m not a drunk, I’m just a drinker with a writing problem,
finding answers in 80 proof twilight
despite the Christmas lights
burning in the back of my mind and hanging behind every smile of every house I know, darkness, like pity, is a promise I swear to keep

I’ve spent hours underneath moonlight thick as your hair
exploring the space left on my skin
and I cannot find a safe place to crawl into
without losing the shape of every good idea that led me to you
I do not know if all is love or all is fair or if all is war
but everything is a battle with you.
Even on my best days
when I stretch my skin into a maze
trying to find all the ways I can make you less lost
I feel like the loneliest dot you refuse to be here with.

General Of The Way My Heart Slow Dances,
is my body unworthy of holding for too long?
You’ve got my blood on your hands but you keep
the promise of always creeping and crumbling in your knuckles
like quicksand.

There was a time when I crumbled dust from bones
just by the tone of my touch but touch, like the idea of sacrifice,
required too much forethought and I have always been an apostle of after,
like after this line

Take the poorly stitched basket caught in my palm.
I used to use it for fish and fruit and feeding you truth
Never once opening my mouth
but now I am hungry
now all I do is catch the calm in your storm
but I have never mastered my hands
so sometimes it spills,
sometimes I break beautiful things
until they are no longer beautiful
just one more thing that breaks
when you hold it without holding it.

Now, even smiling requires patience.
I am an optimist, not a ventriloquist
I can’t relinquish my lips just like that
Too many voices have run off with back of my throat
like I got some map to tell me how to get it back
my mouth is tired of chasing its tongue
like the place where all my honest waits is in a constant give and go
and language, when cut up and aimed at you
now just feels too much show and never enough tell
like there is a spell that fails to catch in the cauldron
where everything rose like prayer and bent like homage
until I called you sunrise, but I cannot  keep naming things I have never seen
like this heart.
I used to call it armor,
but it never hardens, only softens
like the cheeks of some blushing peach
my heart is a bruised and not so gently used peach
but I am not peachy, you can pinch the pain
clean from my veins, taste the nectar next to my name
what the fuck I taste like to you? A peach?

Okay. So, if you dig your teeth six feet deep into my skin
you’ll probably rip up some kind of sweet,
taste the sour-out-of-season seeds that make me indigenous to madness,
maybe you’ll find the same CD with the same sad song I’ve been playing
since I was sixteen, everything I do has a soundtrack.

When I wake, it is stillness juxtaposed against my dreams.
When I say your name, it is both rising and falling sea that follows the first syllable.
When I try to disappear, it is the fear of succeeding too well that sings me to sleep.
When I read poems, it is the collective collapse of tongue in peach that greets the audience
when they see how finely I peel into a peach
But there is one vein laid somewhere in my body that opens wide at the mouth,
every time you speak it strums, resonates and runs like rum on the tongue
until nothing else but you comes out.

What I’m trying to say is,
people make the worst kind of homes.
They invite you in, tell you to make yourself comfortable
and you do
you always do.