Our Bible is Fiction Too

Every couple of months we go out into my back yard and pretend to commit suicide.
Once his weight was too much for me, and I fell from under him.
He could have suffocated, with the electrical cord around his neck.
He was a boy scout who could tie any knot in the world,
And who told me that dying was the only way to really live.

He put blanks in the gun to show me what it felt like.
I had never cried harder in my life,
And never felt more free.
We started the “Nihilist Workers Party”,
And laughed as we handed out photo-copied anarchist literature—

That we didn’t even believe.
             Wit was never so under appreciated.

For Halloween we gave the kids Marlboro blacks tied with orange ribbon,
And at Christmas the cookies left for Santa were laced.
His closet smelled like lemongrass, and in afternoons I would sleep in there.
I would dream that my cigarettes tasted like blood,
And that our insides were wires like robots.

We stole books from a local consignment store,
And burned them.

Despair is Far More Glamorous

I asked the tree to save me,
To take me in gnarled branches and remind me about simplicity.
He said, “Put on your gas mask honey,”
ChemLawn came through yesterday.
I painted his leaves with my fingertips,
Because he said my eyes were like watercolor,
And I could do anything I wanted.

I hung bells from his branches,
And we imagined he was from India.
But when I tried to put a red dot on his trunk,
I guess I was being racist,
And he stopped talking to me.

Maybe it was really because I stopped drinking,
And when I get mad I just write instead.
My poetry on the backs of receipts,
And in the margins of textbooks for someone else to find.

It’s not fair to look for happiness,
Only to find that you’re only happy when you’re looking for it.
You’ll never be happy again.

You’re welcome.

I Only Hate Men Who Love Their Penis Too Much

I am scared of everything.
And not “Oh, I’m scared of bugs.”
I mean I’m scared of fucking everything.

Automatic doors, for example--
I cringe a little when I walk through them.
One closed on me once, when I was five or so.

I don’t even remember it, but my mom told me about it.
Now I always think it’s going to happen again.
How very female of me.

Maybe I should get a sex change,
But then Mike would continue to believe I was a lesbian.
Only now, that I was a gay man.
At least then he’d finally be right.
Sometimes I think he has an issue with that.
Needing to be right, I mean.

But maybe if I had a penis my words would actually break through walls.
Penetrate them, if you will.
My morbidity would seem less out of place,
And instead of being a “punk”, I would be a man.
Only because I got a sex change,
I would know there’s not always a difference.

Hello, I’m not a femme-nazi,
You just think I am.

That’s called a one-track mind,
For you un-trendy folk.

Go make-out with a hipster and her eyeliner.

Glass Houses Love Stones

On the evenings my father would drink,
Mixing holy water in with his vodka.

On Sundays he would show up to church drunk,
But wouldn’t take the blood of Christ,
Telling the priest he was a recovering alcoholic.

The rain tasted salty and I knew that his god was weeping.
I slipped on the pavement, and he laughed at me.
My heart is only protected by a cage of ribs,
Insulted with lungs that barely work through the tar my mother gave me.

She would just sit in her armchair,
Watching infomercials, eating chocolates, and chain smoking.

I don’t even feel like a woman anymore.

My vagina has been trying to tell me to stop,
Stop looking for coffee in the road,
And salvation in something else.

You don’t even know the shit you’re in, kid.

I am Writing This Poem to be School Appropriate

I am writing this poem for a reading at my school,
Probably full of people I closely know, and then -- just the opposite.
I don't want to say that my poetry is too honest,
All I'm really saying is that it's not school appropriate.
No one wants to hear about how I was nearly naked in front of another person,
Or how we don't remeber how we met, and how I think I'm in love with him.
And not the, "I say I love you after a week" teenage love.
The, "Love only hurts because one day you'll die forever without me" love.
Or how I write about weed and cigarettes,
Neither of which I smoke.

I am writing this poem while listening to Sondre Leche,
Whose CD I picked up because I like his name, and it was free.
And the music is medicore at best.
I wonder if this poem is mediocre, at best.
He said that pretzels fell like tears upon the sidewalk,
Which I can only equate with a bitter joke he has with an ex-girlfriend.
Also, with New York, which I will be packing for once I read this poem at my school.
Assuming I have done so at all.

I don't want to say that my poetry is too honest,
But it definitely doesn't try to make rhyme work,
And sometimes I wonder if it's even poetry.
You can still break rambling into lines and stanzas.

All I'm saying is that I'll never be school appropriate.