stop snoring, samantha

this one is for the girl

the girl that can’t
breathe.
the girl that can’t
see.
the girl that can’t articulate her emotions
into discernible sentences, her thoughts
into words.
the girl that loves everyone and everything
except herself 
and the sun.
the girl with faded scars and short hair
cropped, cut, sliced, up/ it was dreaded
but the moment came.
she deals.

Oklahoma

Our gods destroyed themselves. In their wake, we lay, floundered and wasted with the scabbed reminders of lost causes. There is nothing but hate left here—hate and that smell. The stench of ever-burning stretches of rubber, piles of stain and battery acid fills our senses and it does not go away. Someone melted markers over us and painted the horizon in a chromatic fury, scouring the sky with sick pink. Scathing vapor cycles itself from clouds to lakes regularly with rain. Scattered contrivances that nobody knows enough about mark the land like Promethean relics, hieroglyphic machinery boding tribal unity. But there is no unity. There is no family other than a gang of the battered, the bruised, the purpled no ones that once were strong. There are others, we’re sure; they come and they go. They are quite like us, but they never stay. In all of our similarities, we are too different. Fewer and fewer are hungry as the first few waves. The danger we face is very real, but the fear of becoming prey has dissipated. Fear is now cupped between the palms of the flesh we inhabit. There is no destruction left but decomposition. IN search of food we sometimes encounter burdened beasts of an unknown past, half-melted and mutated by the gangrene of the gods. Our shelter appears to be waning. There are only a few places left, it seems, but this measurement is relative; we are but one mark on a map of magnitude. We are trying to construct an escape mechanism. Some of us are smarter than others, and some of us work better with our graspers. Our communication is imperfect but we think we can complete the project of our prosperity. We think we can rebuild.

to those who do not understand

when the leaves come back it is just as when they die.
there is no difference between coming and going.
betrayal and trust are not two sides of the same coin.
they are the same side of the same coin—
the other side is sadness, because, no matter how you flip it, it is there; whether surfaced with teary-eyes and wayward apologies
or buried underneath chapstick smiles,
despair licks the windowpanes, fogging up your vision
and palpitating fist-sized muscle contractions.
heartfelt does not describe what the heart felt
or what the heart feels.
if you cannot comprehend the complexity
of your own emotional turmoil,
how can you expect someone else to comprehend the complexity
of your emotional turmoil?
if you want to understand why you are so sad,
become a neuroscientist,
and when you become a neuroscientist
you will probably still be just as sad.

i can’t wait to get the fuck out of Reading

scum-bucket asked: stop snoring

scar tissue

what i once thought was manliness will end me soon.
the sad, flayed and crisp epidermis
that i created with dull burns from a cigarette
becomes sensitive in the sun,
sensitive in the sights of those who cannot see.
is that eczema?
no, it was a drunken decision.
it was a game, a test, can you not see my face,
my regrets and the obvious mindset of “it happened?”
i don’t think that these red dots will change,
like the fleeting coins in my pocket or the president
in my pocket.
the faded pink contrasts with the meaty red sizzle
in an addled concerto of color
conducted by the demons of my shoulders,
on both sides seated.
my conscience only directs me toward disaster.
this may well be cancer.

this semester didn’t kill me

I fucking did it. The eastward skies
of Reading, Pennsylvania and the
deadly streaks of strong, black women
and the drunken recklessness and
the entrapment of apartment life
could not douse my spirit’s fire.
Scholasticism did not kill me/ four classes
and ten cigarette burns later.