to the boy on the other side of my pillow

i trip over my thoughts in silent places
you poke out of cracks in concrete illusions
air creeps beneath my nail beds
where you skin is

i want to find you in my sheets

but all i have is letters
and photos
and moans
and touches
and deteriorating thoughts
and your tongue tied in a knot
neatly stuffed into my heart
and in less innocent spaces

one night was enough
to strangle me with feelings

thank you for making me feel once more
however good
however bad
i am numb no longer
sensous rapture
blossoms within me

thank
you

a ghetto girl's questions (12/30)

Does thugs mansion have room for ghetto girls too
With thick lips
Thick hips
And even thicker skin
With shotgun tongues laced with arsine

We are taught to retaliate
Like hardened soldiers
But all we want to do is love our soldiers
And teach them how to love us back

We are told that we are venomous like snakes
That girl is poison
BBD
But really we are only angels slithering about concrete
Trying to find cracks to curl up in
Trying to find cracks to plant roots in
We don't want our seeds to
Die

I don't want to die like this

Homicide
Suicide
Genocide
They are all the same

When I die can I go to thugs mansion too?

there's a man in my pants (11/30)

you are everywhere

beneath my fingernails
in the hairs of my eyebrows
but mostly on the thin flesh behind my knees
you liked to kiss that spot
but someone would most likely find you in my jeans
searching for something i guess you never found
because you left me

your tongue is sewed onto
the
low
part
of
my
back
where noone is supposed to see
i let you see it
now it's not a secret
i have no more secrets
you took them all
and stuffed them into the backpocket of your levis


alone
you left me
zipping your pants
you didn't even hold my hand
tugging at denim
i tried to get them up my thighs
you left me
i tried to catch up with you
i tripped over my untied shoelaces
i wore nikes that day
i never wear sneakers
i couldn't find my panties
i left my heart in your sheets
and my tears on your pillow
are they still there?

you left me

you saw me crying
i'm always crying
i wonder if you'll always be there
in the rims of my eyelids
or in the zipper of my cut-off shorts
the ones you liked to slip your fingers beneath
you told me i was warm

you lied
i am cold

my grandmother has heart-attacks (10/30)

God Bless my grandmother
She still believes in America
As She struggles to the door
Her heavy fingers rummage for doorknobs
Her American flag blows proudly on the other side of the door
Her health has gone with the wind like Margaret Mitchell

Her health has gone down the drain with the American health care system
If there ever was such a thing

She cannot see a thing
There is no one home
Who will save her?
It won’t be Uncle Sam or Nancy Pelosi
So why does she pay so much taxes?

God Bless my grandmother
She still believes in America
As Life sprawls across white tiles onto the kitchen floor right before her tiny blood bead eyes
As Tears spring from sockets like Hiroshima rockets
She cries political cries

Devil pulls heart into throat then swings life above head like pendulums
She cannot afford life so she bargains with death
Too many brushes with death
She’s had
every week at the Walgreens pharmaceutical counter
Do I choose rent or hypertension pills
That is the question

God Bless my grandmother
She still believes in America
As Horsepower heartbeats ride her into purgatory
As Her heart gnaws at her insides
All she feels is the shallow tunnel of death collapsing onto her American Dreams
In God we trust will be etched onto her dilated pupils

God wants to take her back
And America too
He can feel their heart beat through the flesh on the palm of his hands
He is calling her
He is calling them
But she refuses to let go of everything she’s ever believed in
She held on to see this bill pass

God Bless my grandmother
She still believes in America
And it’s deafening heart murmur that somehow strikes fear into the hearts of every other developed nation on the globe who ironically all have national healthcare systems
Why should they be afraid of us when we’re all just busy dying
In million dollar hospital beds
While we watch house
Ironic huh

God Bless my grandmother
She still believes in America
After her third heart attack
She could never afford her heart pills
And neither could the US govt.
She held on to see this bill pass
Along with the 46 million American people who were uninsured last year
all the people with “pre-existing” conditions like AIDS, cancer, and heart disease
Who were denied healthcare, legally
For the people by the people my ass
That is until now

God Bless America, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi,
the 18,000 people who’ve died annually because they couldn’t afford healthcare in their own country
A nation who’d rather fund cover ups than health centers

There is a beam of hope
Finally

God Bless my grandmother
She still believes in America
No wonder why she’s had three heart attacks

I’ve only ever seen god in a poem (9/30)

Poems don’t last long enough for me
So I try to make them run on
I am nothing but a run on
Sentence
Searching for a period to put an end to all these open ended questions

I have no subject
No predicate
No verb
I am nothing but a question mark
Standing before god
Quivering
Broken into pieces
Speaking in tongues
Hang me upside down
And I dangle out the corner of his mouth by the hook of a comma
Deprived of structure
I am nothing but a fragmented sentence my innards scattered about the universe

I know you can you hear me tiptoeing across ugly adjectives beautifully as I fondle in darkness trying to find pieces of myself within silent suicidal stanzas that never seem speak back to me
They are just like you

I am trying to get to you
Can I join you?
I just want to be close to you
Wherever you are
But I think you’re mostly likely at the tip of my pen
Or the gravity that smashes my words against blank spaces
Because I’ve only ever seen, heard, touched, tasted, or felt you in a poem

And that’s why I keep writing them
Poems send me to heaven
Each and everytime
I swear they do

I try to write my poems with the least amount of punctuation and as many words as I can push out of the womb of my imagination
Because I truly believe that one day I will cork up all my nothingness with frozen stanzas pregnant with the volume of those words
They will help me inflate and float into the palms of your hands
You will hug me atop floating stanzas
I will clog up the bullet holes in my heart with all these leftover commas
Before I bleed onto the pages of this notebook
I am the pages of this notebook
I will be happy

You will hear these poems scream
Even if I don’t say a word before I die
They will speak for me.

I hope my words have enough buoyancy to deliver me to you when there aren’t any more words left and all I can do is scribble a period onto the end of my sentence
My journey will be over then
And this you will know.

gendercide (8/30)

i am nothing but a girl
my lifeless femininity dangling
over the side of China
like mother's chandelier pearl earring
atop 160 million graves
bury me because i lack testosterone
because i was born wrong
bury me
bury me
bury me
bury me

i am already dead

in tea leaves (7/30)

I sipped on mint tea as the sun hiccuped daylight
You were at the edge of my mug like lipstick
But I never wear lipstick so you probably weren't there

Actually

I think I found you in tea leaves
Sticking to the bottom of china like India
You are my favorite spice
I paid Columbus to find you.

i'm sorry everyday (6/30)

Guilt is boulders
Dark,
Heavy,
Hazardous,
Somewhere between my
Inner thighs
Self esteem
First and last name

Guilt is boulders
Pummeling tight, innocent hard to reach places
Stuffed into every vowel escaping my lips
Tongue
Teeth
Gums
Throat
Mouth

Guilt is boulders
At the edge
Of the cliff
Of my mind

I used to be light
Now I’m heavy like eyelids chasing the coattails of dawn

Guilt is boulders
Atop my spine
In my head
In my mind
My spine is shattered
A heavy conscious is painful to carry on raw, bare, shoulders

I want to be a feather once more.

i hate mornings (5/30)

Truth came like night
A cloud over morning
I hate the way it does this

I hate the way mornings makes me remember
Everything I wish I could forget
The way it spits me up like bad karma on the cusp of justice
All I am is a pile of broken promises rolling off the devil's tongue onto God's lap

I sin every night
and ask to be forgiven every morning

I am the hollowed dust of a fragmented sentence God thought was a promise, I left out all the important parts
Whispered fallacies into his ear the night before last
Now all he ever hears from me is lies
I always says things I don't mean

My muffled tears echo in the wells of deaf ears never to be heard
I wonder when God stopped hearing my pleas
The morning hates my cries for forgiveness so it stuffs my throat with rainclouds
Every morning it is pouring

I want to know what daybreak feels like without emotional hangovers
I am hung over
Vomiting over the side of the bed as I edge closer to point of no return
Purging all my insides
So I can't feel a thing

Teach me how to not cry underneath a stack of damp pillows and bed sheets
Soaked with the sewage of lust and pride
I can feel it leaking from my skin

Teach me how to not sin
I am tired of asking for forgiveness

I am tired of the drizzle of my tears
fogging up the windows of my soul
I am a blind angel bumping into clouds
I can not see a thing

God
I hate mornings
Because with each sunrise I know I will only disappoint you more