Lifelong Companions

There is a monster in my belly
There it lives and there it lies
There it breathes and there it dies
There it waxes, wanes, and whines.
There is a monster in my belly.
There it shrieks and cries and screeches
There it rips and tears and scratches
There it gnaws and claws and slashes
There is a monster in my mind
There it fled after a rut
Had been dug inside my gut
There it lingers in the shadows
There it prowls and growls and swallows
There it conquers me completely.
There it waits, beneath my bed
There it lurks, inside my head
Check behind the closet door,
Can’t you hear it as it snores?
“Dear, it’s all inside your head.”
There is a monster in my head.
It used to live inside my belly.
But it chose my brain instead.

Parallel Universe

I hear the tick-tick-tap of a lesson being written on the board of another room,
Where someone like me sits perched in her chair,
Scrawling down names,
and dates,
and a laundry list of facts,
Glancing at the clock with a sigh.
She gets bored of her routine:
She wakes up to an incessant, grating alarm every morning when the sun first stirs.
She spends an hour getting ready to present herself to people who will forget her name.
She listens to a love song and envies the singer's experiences.
She forgets if she has her own.
She walks to class and arms herself with a notebook,
Scribbling pretentious poetic verses in the margins,
and copying someone else's words in between,
and drifting off into the tick-tick-tap of someone else's life.

You look different.

You look different without glasses.
Who are you trying to impress?
Without those thick plastic frames and smudged glass lenses,
your eyes seem so thoroughly naked.
I'm afraid to take too long of a glance,
lest I trespass into your mind.
I wish you would put them back on,
because I can't see you clearly without my own,
and I can't offer you myself the way you're being offered to me.

Regrets

Maybe when we kissed,
I opened my mouth too wide,
and a layer of my heart got trapped within your jaws.
Maybe when we spoke,
I forgot to coat my words in shadows,
and I unveiled my tongue's intentions too quickly.
Maybe when I'm with you,
I let my guard down,
and maybe I regret that.
Maybe next time,
I'll sew myself shut.

State of Mind

Sometimes,
I like to plug my ears
and close my eyes
and live inside my head.

Choke

I choke on my words.
They pool up in my mouth until I can't swallow them
and then they block my throat and I can't breathe.

I squirm and scream and struggle
but they continue to choke me
and they begin to pour from my mouth and wrap around my neck
and they form a rope, a noose
and tighten around my neck like a great snake.

I stop fighting.
I can't anymore because I'm weak against the power of suffocation
and my muscles relax
and my head stops spinning
and there's a sudden warmth over my body
and now I feel like maybe it was for the best
and then everything fades...

and all I see

is darkness.

Bitter Truths

When I was little, I tasted baker's chocolate.
I snatched it up greedily,
with stubby, sticky fingers
and devoured it whole,
before realizing, with a gag,
that it was nothing like the chocolate I had known before.
It was bitter, and dark,
without caramel or nougat
or peanuts or almonds
to weaken its sour flavor.
I had envisioned the sweetness
the sugar that would linger on my tongue...
I was met with a strong, ugly taste--
a hideous taste--
I couldn't swallow.
I couldn't bring it to my throat.
I chewed it quickly
(I had to finish)
I chewed it, my eyes squeezed shut,
my nose pinched between my pointer finger and thumb.
I gulped it down and flushed out my mouth,
with water, with milk, with soda, with juice, with a spoon of pure white sugar,
but the taste never left; it was there the next day and the next week and the next month and the next year
and the next year, and the next year, and the next--

And the next decade, and the next century,
until I was rotting beneath the ground
until the worms gnawed at my decaying flesh
until I dissolved into dust,
until the dust became earth,
and the Earth became nothing,
and I was nothing, too,
and I simply ceased to be.

But that's how we grow up.

Little Girls

Little girls, little girls, little girls
Have something to offer in the form of skirts and flavored lip balm
They don't quite understand but they follow the example
Of their high-heeled, lipsticked mothers.

Little girls get older and stop crying over scraped knees.
Instead crying over boys once they see that they possess
The ripe red fruit that is never meant for them
Daddies guard their precious treasures but daughters give out bite sized pieces
In the form of chaste kisses.

Teenage girls are the troublesome ones
They are a hot commodity and they know it
They are pretty and ripe and tantalizing
They're allowed to be gazed at and groped for and wanted
But never, ever to be picked
So they play the dangerous game of cat and mouse
Until they're finally captured.

Little girls don't stay little
They become women whose greatest possession
Exists folded neatly between their hairless legs.
They become mothers and wives
And keep on showing, but never telling
Because this isn't their game to play.

Cavities

You were a stranger with promises of caramelized affection
With a smile so sincere and a smooth, warm voice
I was a child with a sweet tooth

You were the Novocaine, numbing the ache
Of the last man to drill a hole in my heart
I was desperate for relief

You went down like a packet of Sweet'N Low
Saccharine, syrupy, pleasant, til that awful aftertaste
I was left with a bitter reminder of you on my tongue

You crumpled me up like an empty gum wrapper
Spat your experience on me 'cause you'd been chewing too long
I was thrown aside

Now you lure another girl in
How long will you go this time
before you start to make her rot?

Black Market Bodies

In my head I see your rosy cheeks
And taste your fat lips, gritty and sweet like unrefined sugar
While your warm hands rest on my heavy hips
And your heart holds up my brain
Exchanging fantasy for a reality that bounces
Between your ribcage and my skull

Dust

Let's just stay here forever, loving each other with unrestrained
passion and blind devotion until we burn away our flesh
beyond recognition and all we have are our bare,
ugly bones with no eyes to see or ears to hear, 

just dull white skeletons that cling to one

 another so tight that we
collapse into a pile of 

homogeneous 

dust.

Virginia Summer

Humid, sticky air presses down on me
While the sun is high in the sky
Sweat soaks through my shirt
Mosquitoes gnaw on my exposed skin
There's no escape from this oppressive heat

Wind rips at the trees greedily
As rain pours from an unforgiving sky
Lightning illuminates the world for a moment
In a bizarre bluish haze
Thunder rumbles in the distance, an ominous warning

A gentle breeze teases me
The moon shines down kindly
As I lie in the wet grass
Humidity keeps me from feeling the chill
Of this cool Virginia night

Lovesick Monster

The intersection of your words and mine
Bustles with half-truths and empty eyes

Give me all of you or give me none
Together through this burning sky we'll run

Into the gauntlet that awaits
A lovesick monster's china plates

It devours us with razor sharp teeth
That rip through our hearts as our hands meet

The screen fades to black as our screams cease
We spiral downward into the belly of the beast

We prepare to die in our newfound home
I'm glad we're finally together and alone

Lady in Waiting

Every morning I wake and--
Paint my face and--
Close my eyes and--
Wait...

Every evening I pause and--
Remove all the paint and--
Discard all the skin and--
Wait...

Every day--
Every hour--
Every minute--
Every second--
I wait...

But you never come.

My Name

In your mouth , my name sounds
ugly
Spoken with a twisted face and squinted eyes
Tasting foreign and frightening on your Anglo-Saxon tongue
you stumble
Over it and wonder where such a strange name came from
It's a scary name, you think, as sweat
Beads on your forehead like oil droplets in a glass of
water
Ethiopia?
Ethiopia.
Some little place in Africa you never cared to learn of.
My name is Ethiopia
I am my name
A foreign, scary place
I am my name
I am Ethiopia

Unspoken Words

Sweet words
Dribble from your lips like honey
They're so hard to hear because they've never been
Said

Like an unplayed symphony
The silent notes blend together in my mind
Losing each other in this grand and terrifying
Chaos

You never play my symphony
No, you never sing my song
It just lingers in the air waiting to be
Heard

Sweet words
Dribble from your bitter mouth
The aftertaste is undesirable but remains
Unspoken

Sexually Transmitted Desperation

An empty room
Just me and you
My lips and nails are painted
And you seem so frustrated
Relax, tell me your name
Baby, don't be so ashamed
It's just a way to keep us entertained

Uneasy silence, hollow motions
Sweeping through us
Like shallow oceans
A sudden stop; yes, that's the end
I ain't your lover
And I ain't your friend

But I'm lonely
I'm the only
One I can trust, so stay
If you must...

If I show you cleavage and a fake smile
Will it be enough to make you stay for a while?
If I listen to your stories and sing you a song
Can we stay like this all night long?
Oh, I'm just a desperate girl
And this is cheap entertainment

Go back to your wife, go back to your life
Don't give me a thought, don't give this a thought
Just cheap entertainment, just a cheap thrill
I never gave a damn and I never will...

Best Friends

I'm only your friend when you want something
But it's okay because I stick around
You only need me when you wanna be a bitch
When you need someone whose life is more pathetic than yours
When you need to stand next to someone who makes you feel better about yourself
I'm tired of your ugly heart and your ugly words
I'm tired of how toxic you are, so fuck off
Until I'm lonely and I need reassurance that someone cares about me
And I come crawling back to this hazardous "friendship"
Just so you can tear me down.

Great Expectations

Good girls write about roses and
Butterflies and love

I guess I've always been
A little (dis)obedient

Raw emotion stains
My pages and (de)flowers them

But good girls write about other things
I guess that's why the best poets are men

Black Girl's Lament

I open up a magazine and see pretty white faces

With pretty straight hair

Blonde and brown and red

And pretty, thin lips

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

But only if you're white

I know I'll never be that kind of beautiful

So I cry and I cry and I will for my hair to turn straight

And my skin to turn white

I pray everyday that I'll wake up tomorrow

Looking like those smiling faces

In the magazines