i'm just a fucking artist

holding an empty stomach in my hands
so it can’t fall any farther than my heart,
that landed on the cellar floor,
i can’t help but to cry at the scenes
that roll by-
with my hands too full to cover
the staring eyes
from just what they’ve been waiting to see.

i sit in rubbernecks 
holding slow motion memories of the accident
in dusty palms,
awe struck at how close 
the road to where we were heading was
before my shrapnel slit the rubber
as we slid to cover
under the lips that twisted 
with the moments rupture-
and the bumpers mangled around the framework
of the bridges
that stripped themselves across the rivers
that dripped from your eyelids
beside the slivers that i wore
like a metal of honor to cover
the bleeding from my sores.

and as that twisted heap 
of you and me
rippled in the salt seas-
the fires tripped the spark
that started the entire 
scene.

runaways with broken matchbooks
black with ash and snapped 
in half would have done
if i had just learned to breathe
when we became such 
hardened arsonists;

and below the bridges i set fire
i’ll keep catching wire 
waiting for the hook to take me in
-even if it’s only for a minute
above the surface of cinder,
that i wish would just burn before the rain
mats down the ashes 
just enough to hold a shape of way to walk
in the stalks of disillusion
too high pitched to walk this broken strip 
of music-

tunes too deafening
for my ear drums to beat along with;
and as the mallets begin to forget
right from left from wrong to fucked,
an offbeat heart started to forget the steps
-as the ringing in my ears
split the house of glass i had built
around the tears;

the shards spilled like the water
that had started to kill-
without a gasp to last the sills falter;
every bit of glass left its kiss
below the surface of my calloused lips
before they slit your balance
and we both began to slip-

that single handed mantis 
praying for a gentile standing
didn’t have half the chance he put up
on the very landing
-that didn’t happen.

shattered benieth the histories
all the scribbled dumb fucking metaphors
can only pretend they don’t remember
where they came from-
every abstract nothing finds home
the second i open the wrong door
and you’re still there

-only, you’re not,

and i can’t feel in metaphor
before what’s real begins to seethe 
through the bullshit
and the sailor knots that choke the fuck out of my stomach
shake hands with my broken fucking heart!
and i want to feel hurt through burning bridges
and images of falling glass shards
but too quick do i just fucking hurt
before i think in art.

there’s no art to break-up,
and the metaphors that play band-aid
to the bullet wounds 
can’t wrap themselves around
the fact that they were made.

i’m only and artist
because i can’t really be honest,
and you broke my heart
but only because i was being an artist-
and the paints still monochromatic
because red is all i use-

cuz if i let blue be itself
i would have been able to keep you

-but i’m just a fucking artist!