my poems

the dead walk icecold and stiff
as boards shuffling through this mortal
coil held close as iron springs and
every day i see echoes of your face
in the corners of my eyes like flies buzzing
'round a bloated corpse
maggots eat away at the meat of it.
my rickety fucking bones grind together
with every step i take and someday i
will come for you and make you wish
you had buried me deeper.
a shallow grave will not hold me down
i will tear you apart with my teeth like
the animal you said i am.


the sacrificial lamb on
the altar of your affection,
when you showed me the
bodies in the basement
i never thought i'd become one.
sorry about the bad blood
between us, but you
were the one that cut me open-
nails sharp as knives and
glittering as you tore through
my soft tissue,
your own personal slaughterhouse.
never thought it'd be this way,
you know how it goes, you always
kill the one you love.

twin flames are two pieces grafted
together like branches on a tree,
metals bonded into an alloy or
parasite-and-host. no thing shall
be a single thing. come not in singles
but in battalions, conjoined like twins,
inseparable. we share our organs,
we share our breaths. i am the hand
to your eye, the blade to your knife.
no thing shall be a single thing, and
the lovers are not chained by the devil,
and the tower does not burn. the red
string binds us, my bones are your bones
and your teeth are my teeth. we are
hunter-and-prey, hati and sköll
chasing the celestial bodies to swallow
whole. the light singes me, but you
are there to tend the wound. no thing
shall be a single thing and i am not
alone in this. brother sleep and sister death,
i am the raven flying above and you
are the wolf below. we rend and break
and devour together. no thing shall be
a single thing and you are not alone
in this.

you can sit and think yourself sick in circles
that wind tighter and tighter until
you have no more room to breathe but
that doesnt bring you farther than its ever brought anyone else.


pacing back and forth around and around
forever in your own skull.
do you think you'd wear a groove in the floor?
how many times have you been over the same thought
and not gotten anywhere? it's as familiar as your own bones,
worn smooth like carved ivory.


they say the heart can crack and fall apart under so much stress.
what a poetic way to go, huh. sometimes it feels like
that's happening to me.
everything gets too loud and bright and the world is so
sharp and my heart squeezes like someone
reached in and grabbed it by the handful.
sometimes i wish i could take everything out and scrub it clean.
factory reset. a toothbrush to get all the little crevices,
dip it in bleach and let the colors run free like wild horses.

a babybird to take under your wing,
you were going to teach him to fly, like you did.
you forgot that so many babybirds-
that so many babybirds hit the pavement
and never get up again, delicate little bones
shattered like porcelain teacups splintering into millions.


the world keeps turning on. the pain grows distant,
but never ignored, spearing through the years
like shrapnel buried into flesh. occasionally,
a piece rips through, bloody with fresh grief.


your first little bird-brother comes home, he tears
his way through the city like a storm, he kills.
he kills. nolonger redbreasted robin, but a masked shrike,
impaling its prey on thorn and barbed wire.
there's something wrong with him. something wrong
with him that is also wrong with you.

where all the cars spin out
and burn, smoke smoke billowing upward like a flag of death.
bare trees reach up like bony fingers digging claws
into the sky, like they're trying to hold on to something.
highbeams burn like moorlights after 4 o'clock pitchdarkness,
the sky is black as midnight, starless and heavy as a wooden
overcoat. your hands get so cold they turn bonewhite, pale
as ivory. tucking them into the pockets of your jacket doesn't
do much good, with the wind like knives and just as cold.
it's ending. everything is ending, the funeral march toward
december drags the carcass toward it's final resting place,
golgotha's killing fields.

roadkill smashed on the asphalt buzzes with young flies, bones splintered
under the black paws of thousand pound steel animals, soft meat is no match
for their invincible hides. those horrible animals, made of cold metal and hatred,
roaming the scorched-earth paths of black stone that cut through the forests
that used to be our homes like knife wounds, bleeding out the choking smoke of those great and terrible beasts.

loop 1
the wind is biting cold
like dogs' teeth around
your bones.
your shoes soaked through,
whether with rainwater or
your own blood, you can't
be sure.
loop 5
the eyes watch from the
trees, never blinking. frozen
open.
loop 15
he burns like kindling,
like joan of arc, but--
loop 30
you can see the grinning
skulls behind
their faces.
loop 100
the cut on your palm
is permanent
no longer healing
stained bloody red.
loop 400
you wander like a
ghost, always to the
watchtower.
loop ???
you don't can't won't
do this anymore.
loop 1
the wind is biting cold
like dogs' teeth around
your bones.
your shoes soaked through,
whether with rainwater or
your own blood, you can't
be sure.