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CLICK BUNNIES FOR POETRY

The air is cool and I've had a stuffy nose semi consistently since the 2nd grade. I've had an odd speech pattern and an inconsistent way of walking and sometimes I think I'm really actually very good at drawing and writing and sometimes even singing but most times I think I'd be better off hiding away. I'm pretty, only when it's the middle of the night and I've scrubbed my face so raw with scalding water it's all red and puffy, my eyes are very blue on those nights. I'm not pretty other times. Most times. I've got a fight to pick, with myself maybe or with my parents who didn't make me digestible, they can both be just as prickly. Too prickly to realize I am as well. “It's a good thing you're not an easy victim” i whisper it to myself but it comes out in my mothers voice, it's a good thing I'm rough around the edges, self aware and self mutilated. It's good, I'm good, I don't want to be pretty or talented or anything else. At least I don't want to start carrying myself like I am, what if i'm wrong? I hate being wrong. You're standing in the cold with me, early november, end of the new england lifetime. Most people I know died in the summer but I think it'd make more sense to die in early november. You stand bright and pink and alive. Ridiculous. I'm so mad I could hurt the both of us. I almost want to, an excuse to touch really. People like me need excuses. I'm finding myself fallen into the life I see in your eyes, it doesn't matter what I say, I can't hide my thoughts from myself, I want you to like me. You say something then, off topic and unimportant and hidden away in the middle of the conversation and I'm stilted and weird about it. You say something nice, you say something very nice. And I say ‘i hate you’ and i want to take those words and shove them down your throat, make you say them back to me. Make it real, tell me you hate me and my weird stuffy nose and almost lisp and not good not bad drawings and my off note singing and just say you despise it. Get it out already, get it over with. I need you to grab my head and bash it downwards, I need you to spit it at me when you're done. Just do it for me. Make the violence love again.

Dont sing to me about love
Hum devotion in my ear
Dont tell me about feelings
Words i cannot touch
I want something real
I want devotion
Demand hopelessness
To love like a dog
And a pigeon and a mother whale
To drag that babies carcass
Across the atlantic and into your bed
You ask me whats wrong
And i say nonsense
‘Something about my humanity
A ram killed by the curve of its own horn
Something about the way my heart works
Two bucks fought till their antlers locked together
Found dead and found entangled
A swan flying up high and crashing down hard
Splattered with a bleeding broken little heart
And nothing else to my name’
You say we arent animals
Oh dont look at me like that
Like you're caught off guard
Like ive hid poetry from you
As though I dont bite as a warning
Like you didn't laugh at the joke of it all
Oh and yet still i want deeply and horribly
I want devotion
I ache at the very whisper of it

For dinner I had a cup of oatmeal and one piece of buttered toast, then chased it down with three Ocean Vuong poems and two and a half chapters of a Neil Gaiman book I had read for the first time when I was 16. I am an avid re-reader these days. Familiarity finds me comfortable. For dessert I stared into the mirror and watched it stare back, how long have I been confused? How long have I cut back from two pieces of toast to one. From bold exclamation of angel words to this muted little thing. I have never known myself to be a man of belief but the snake slithers slowly and it gives me time to consider things differently. I've never known myself. And the snake is beautiful against the ocean's tides, beautiful through the marsh I've slept in. For dinner I ate very little and concerned myself with other people's inner worlds. I consider writing a new bible, I consider talking to someone about all this. I won't answer the phone for days, I won't leave for anything less than church and reunions. I still don't believe in God and I've gone to bed hungrier than I was before dinner.

Earth Angel
Are you breathing?
Do you let your heart beat?
Dip your fingers into the soil
Feel it scream
Whisper softly to the earth
"Be kind to me"
Earth Angel
Here are your things
4 snails 4 lambs and 4 children
You're a horrible thing
On the ground
An 8 yr old mother
Who doesn't know what he's doing
Earth Angel
Understand you are only a martyr
If you have an audience
If you are witnessed
And loved

id open my body up creaking on its hinges but itd still swing wide and open for you and I'd say "do you get it now" and I'd ask "can I stop talking" because I am getting sick of explanations that never feel full enough that don't encapsulate the entire problem only halfway solutions only bandages and excuses but I'd rip myself open and show you if I could walk you down the lead you into my heart that is too gory into my mind that is crashing around itself my body with that burst bullet in an empty room emotions in a hollow person

Stars made out of spiralling spit
Yellow teeth and my father's anger
Boiling in somethings stomach
A humanity i haven't yet grown into
Laying in my mom's bed my hand in hers
Learning how to be human
But I'm overgrown
And when I was a child
My favorite flowers were dandelions
Yellow buds spread across my back yard
And I'd pick them and put them in my hair
But they said they were weeds
And made me eat every last on of them
Well now I'm a weed
And now I'm getting eaten
Now I'm getting rolled into stars
Bubbling up from a pot on the stove
I'm just temporary
And overgrown
This has gone on too long
I didn't turn out right

Carved out and hollow my body is a house with nobody home and it feels so lonely there are bones in my ownself who i will never meet and i will try to consume everyone around me and try to find myself in them but i will never I am unknowable and i am alone i will open my mouth and fill it with the earth and try and become the earth and try and become loveable and avoided the bones who dont know me and avoid knowing what i might actually be cus if i dont like it i dont know what id do id become undone and i might become whole, my body is a house with nobody home - i am leaving the door open and inviting in a parasite to fill it