But you Can

You can’t fall in love
And I don’t know any other way
Except falling
It is most comfortable
For me to land on my back
To roll over and crawl
Back to bed

It is easier for me to just go back to sleep
To forget your persuasive stare
to crawl into a perfect sleep
and nestle for days

to live in the wreckage of past loves
to mourn my old self
it is much easier, you’ll see
than what I have chosen

to take you on
wrap my head
around a new tone of voice
wrap my legs around a new torso
learn to breath a new shallow
breath
become a fixture in your bedroom
the walls of your mind
it is much easier for me to
lie flat on my back
in my own room
to dream up a perfect made-up love affair
that will never burn me
or take me prisoner

but I have placed you under my tongue
like a razorblade
So even if I can’t feel you anymore
I know you’re still there
a tiny paper cut I am apt to dip in vinegar
A tiny bruise
I will not stop touching
because I have let you touch me

If you cannot fall in love
I should just fall out of bed
fall off my horse mid-gallop
fall into someone else’s lap
like a clumsy napkin

Be someone else’s main course
and stop being your side dish

But there is a place for you
still there is a place for you
between my tongue and cheek
an after thought
an awkward fumble in a parked car
a perfectly rounded sigh
a half full-cup I haven’t tipped over yet

and you are soft-skin and a perfect open mouthed kiss
you are driving away
before I’m half-way out of the car
you are waving from down the street
you are moving forward
you are not even looking back.

For better or for liverwurst

Summer is a cock-tease
She wants me on all fours
Bound in leather
But she won’t deliver
Won’t deliver
I sit down because I can’t get up
Moving your bones
Is like plate tectonics
Some won’t shift without breaking
I think about you more than
What is healthy and normal
For one human to think of another
You are an extension of my limbs
If I move too fast you might break off entirely
Become the Asia to my North America
Too far
Or worse
Impossible to get to

In the other room I thought I heard you say
“okay”
But nothing’s okay
We aren’t meant to be autonomous
Your skin should have been stapled to mine at birth
I think you are too fucking far away and no car can take me there
And none of the lights guide us home
You don’t burn out like an electric lamp
Instead you start an exquisite fire in the
Coldest depths of my cerebral cortex
That is all I know
The doors shut at five and they don’t open back up until 9 am
In the fake light of our perfect life
I have learned to make exceptions
I’ve got back taxes
And you wear a frown the color of the deepest bruise
A hurt that stains the counters and spills onto my shoes
You are toxic and I am rubbing the poison off with
An immaculate white glove

help-I'm alive- my heart keeps beating like a hammer

Almost three years sober
And I am still learning
How to keep my head above water
To feel the spark I felt after my first sip
Of Jack Daniels, the rush I know,
If I drank enough I would spin
Like the skirt of a Flamenco dancer
But I could keep from falling down
If I knew just the right amount,
Just the right recipe for success
The spark in his eye, seeing me
When I felt like no one
Made me feel like something

Self-esteem and loveless dancing
Tragedy and the art of deception
Are all man-made words,
I pull the threads out and unravel
The sweater of my life
All the pink threads that were supposed to lead
Me somewhere
I am fragile and these red lines on maps
Give me panic attacks
If I could go wherever I wanted
I’d never come back
But uncertainty makes me nauseous
And still I don’t want to know what
Is true
I believe in your skin like tissue
All the femurs and fissures beneath
All seem make-believe
But I wanted to see them
To know if you were real

You are electric but still falling apart
The stuffing falling from your ears
I try to push it back in.
I am lost and confused
All the ledges seem daunting
Every night comes without warning
My skin is tracing paper
My eyes are wet
You don’t know how to read the maps
In my skin
The quiet sighs I make when I am sleeping
You don’t know how to solve
The algebra in my face
The lipstick marks on the cups
Can stay
I am pacing in slow motion around our apartment
It took only a few hours to watch everything
Decompose
If I were prettier
If I had more degrees
If I could look you in the eye
Like a viper, ready
To attack at any moment
How would you react?
I have no tact but you consume
Me and suspend me into belief.

I never really had to get this song to feel alot of things when I hear it

Ice baby,
I saw your girlfriend and she was
eating her fingers like they're just another meal
but she waits there
in the levee wash she's
mixin' cocktails with a plastic-tipped cigar

My eyes stick to all the shiny robes
you wear on the protein delta strip
in abandoned house but i will wait there
i'll be waiting forever...
i'm waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting...

Minerals, ice deposit daily, drop off
the first shiny robe
i've got a lot of things i want to sell, but
not here, babe-- you took them all

every time i sit around i find i'm shot
every time i sit around i find i'm shot
every time i turn around i find
every time i sit around i find
every time
you're my... summer babe
summer babe
-Pavement

broken record

Just regurgitating information
Just the hum of my heart like a slow fan coming to a crashing halt
I feel boring an overtired
and slightly catatonic; want to blame it on the jet lag,
the song in my heart is a broken, skipping record
the song in my heart isn't a song of thirty
and I am desperate for a solution
to time's hand on my chest like a steal grate
Why don't you find me irresistible?
What are you resisting.

Has a hard Time Making Friends

I'm checking my pulse at every stoplight
I am unsure who to be without you around
to create me, mold me into your carbon copy
lay flat on top of you, push me through
the xerox machine, make me perfect black
edges, make me speak like you do
hopeful and tragic and a little bit rude

I can't take the stare, eyes meet
I'm weak, I want to say, the fangs
are removable- most times--
my smile is delicate tracing paper--falls out &
crackles like burnt scraps

I'm not sure if you'd be okay with all of this--
all of the wanting, the fervent longing,
myt mouth wide open for you to slide
words into
Stare at me again, pose me,
a threat so I can react
adrenaline pulse through the crook of my neck,
a vein, purple bruise of the year

In former days I was less afraid
or perhaps I wore a loud mask
and put it over my face
so I could shout at you

I do all of my own stuntwork
I panic on airplanes and pull down my oxygen mask
Kerosine heart, I will
full-throttle,
jet start to your center
I will plow through rubble to find you
sleeping next to me, still perfectly warm.

Smoking is disgusting but veganism is awesome

So, a debate between my significant other began this evening as a result of me handing him my chinese food leftovers--- General Tso's tofu (and may i add it was quite bangin') Anyway, the usual protocol when I hand my carnivoire boyfriend something to eat that is Vegan is to say, "Doesn't it taste as good as meat?" His usual answer, "It tastes good but it doesn't taste like meat" was not sufficent enough tonight. Instead, he said, "You really do vegans an injustice when yous ay stuff like that. Yous hould justs say isn't it good?" He may have been right.

I have been vegan for many years---mainly because I am horrified by injesting the flesh of an animal and am a total animal rights advocate not in the Peta sense because I despise them) but in the same way I am a feminist. I believe animals deserve to be treated with respect like any other living thing...just as women should be treated equally to men...blah blah blah

Anyway, somehow the debate insued that since I am a cigarette smoker it negates the fact that I am vegan since it is "the most unhealthy thing a person can do to themselves." I agree, however am currently in the thralls of addiction and cannot see the light. Anyway, I argue...well at least I have a better chance of not developing "colon cancer." So the debate continues...

I felt the need to express that Americans have a higher cancer rate than any other country I acn think of yet many Asian and European countries have tons of smokers (any smoking is not so taboo there or outlawed in bars and resteraunts) yet they have a much lower rate of cancer. Can anyone tell me why? I am curious.... can a better diet negate the terrible effects of smoking???

If anyone has any insight on these matters beside sthe obvious..."smoking is bad" rhetoric...I'd be psyched to hear it.

Best wishes,

Zoe Alexandra

vegan smoker