"She let out a laugh, and then put her hand over her mouth, like she was anry at herself for forgetting her sadness"

"A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you’ve been drinking jack & coke all morning. she can make you feel high. full of the single greatest commodity known to man - promise. promise of a better day. promise of a greater hope. promise of a new tomorrow. this particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. in her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it’s going to be okay"

What I meant to say was, sometimes I stare at the cigarette in my hand and beg it to stop wasting my time and just kill me. But I figured you didn't want to hear that

History is way better if you picture tom cruise playing everyone

I've been kicked down to dirt

"Numerous times, I’ve danced with the devil and have partaken in many rituals in which I never even signed up for, or bargained for. You asked me, “What does YOUR life amount to?” I say to you “What does it even matter? We’re not here to live, we’re here to survive and make the best of what we got, it’s life that is testing us and teaching us things we either take to heart, or spit out and never look back.”

Have you ever looked back? It’s not about the successes or the failures we make, it’s about the point in trying to achieve everything we are all worthy of. We are all worthy of something. Whether you believe it or not, we are all worthy of something.

I’ve taken sips of whisky with the loneliest of sailors and we sang the blues. I spoke of many things and how unhappy I was with where I was. He told me his ship had sailed to and fro many places, and how he had lost the battle to a treacherous tidal wave that took him down, I was taken down. He asked me well, “why don’t you fight the waters and build something new? “I replied with “there’s no hope in fighting for something that is already lost.” We both than took another swig and acted as if nothing was wrong, and pretended such conversation never took place. We knew it wasn’t going to register anyways, we knew we liked the life we chose and nothing currently amounted our preachings anyway.

Maybe all we needed was to fill our body with toxins at the time to learn to appreciate anything. All I know is that I wanted to fit in, but I didn’t even have the proper size shoes to walk in myself so, how is it I expected to be comfortably wrapped into the arms of something, or someone else? We both had one thing in common and that was that we not only fell off board but we found comfort in the shape of a bottle. Drinking like there was no tomorrow, there was always tomorrow.

Tomorrow came and it was the sun that had risen and a new day had been given. We wandered about and tried finding a better place to be. Life threw us many things in which we chose to trash. Day turned to night and it was empty conversations poured into the air, poured into our lungs. Everything we sang was flat and out of tune, but we didn’t care. All we breathed was the air of ignorance and a bottle of confidence. I thought we had it made and life’s worries ate our desolate minds. We ignored the calls, we ignored the falls.

It was one day I woke and something new was felt… Everything became exasperating and everything was painted differently. I looked everywhere for you but you were… Gone… Gone like the wind. It was then I realized… You were just a ghost and your teachings finally took place. I took a sigh of relief and finally started my journey towards the sun. I was alone but I was finally not afraid, I knew you were somewhere about laughing at the fool you had made. All I know is… It wasn’t me, what does your life amount to?"-Amber Haiku

"You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone. You’ll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it’s gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It’s like you feel homesick for a place that doesn’t even exist. Maybe it’s like this rite of passage, you know. You won’t ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it’s like a cycle or something. I don’t know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place"

"Save your words, save yourself
I won’t have it anymore, I really won’t

Take the ground you walk on and make it solid, because all I can see is eggshells being walked by each regarded step you take, can’t you feel them breaking at your own expense? Do you even care to know?

Your voice is screaming towards the heart of others, but don’t depend on your own self, can’t you see that you’re digging yourself straight to your own grave? I can tell you one thing and one thing only… Are you ready? Everyone is bound to be alone and when you’re dead and gone… Tell me one thing… Who will you have than? Who will have you than?"-amber haiku

Make me nothing but bone

"We walk amongst lost faces
Faded into the shadow cast
Of the people they represent

We men and women,
Even children
Have masks welded to our skeletons

All have felt frigid cold
Crawling, creeping in our skin
Seeping in with the assumptions
Of who we might be,
And probably are

Two seconds of interaction
Come and gone
In a passing glance

We all struggle
To constantly keep
The mask intact"

"You’ve been hanging with the unloved kids, who you never really liked, and you never trusted. But you are so magnetic, you pick up all the pins. Never committing to anything, you don’t pick up the phone when it ring, ring, rings"

Blood on the carpet from a nosebleed in the bathroom from the lines on the book in the car from the years and years of heavy hearts and witless hands. I’d scrub it up but who the fuck am I to try and retract what I’ve done?

When you lived here, it was a city. When you left, it became a town

“Don’t ever think I chose to leave because I wanted to.
I didn’t.
It was more like I needed to.
We were killing each other.”

"I am this book’s disaffected youth. I am your life’s idiosyncratic mind wrinkle. I will infect your soul. Kill me quickly. Unreal and trashy. Full of the ire of youth and distortions of anger. In that same vein, full of the blessings of life. Full of vigor. Ready to see that my future bear fruits of labor, and that I wipe my mouth clean of every rotten taste"

i haven't seen my baby since i've sold my soul

"Tv’s on.

I hear the clang of game shows. I can hear their fucking hosts smiling at me.

The stairs fell down me today. My cat lost all its hair. I realized all the wood in my house is fake. I dug my fingernails under the varnish and pulled and pulled until it all came up, like a sheet of ice.

People are going nuts on the television because the bell rings and somebody says something right. It’s like the day of the dead, everybody’s dressed in skeletons and masks and jumping around screaming and wailing, eating marzipan and tamarind. Eisenstein’s having a field day. ¿Y usted?"

"Goddammit. Sometimes I feel like past girlfriends are like ghosts. And they come out at night or times of weakness and haunt the shit out of me. I know they stand in the corners of my home and whisper to each other:

“Sarah”

“Melanie”

“Emily”

“Natalie”

“Yes?”

“Yes?”

“Yes?”

“Yes?”

“Now.'"

Remember the past, but don't look back

You told me you hoped I would have a good night

and that you loved me in a letter.

I was out gambling

and shooting men in the back.

I threw all my empty bottles

on the ground when I got upset.

I broke my fist on a brick wall.

You told me you loved me in a letter.

I am such a fucking asshole

I don’t know where I’ve been. I’ve been living inside of minutes, cardboard boxes, car seats, backpacks, sad feelings. I’ve been nothing much of anything. I’ve been pretty pathetic. I’ve been acting like I was tough shit. I’ve been nobody in particular. I think soon enough I’ll just become the sum of all of my misdeeds. And then everybody will forget I existed. I will be the infection in your leg. The bad taste in your mouth

Sleeping in a basement filled with rap, dirt, and my best friends. We drank ourselves silly, smoked ourselves silly, talked ourselves out. Not but 12 hours ago I was waking up. We had spent the night yelling off of a fire escape, drinking, and telling everyone how much we loved/hated/indifferented one another. It’s just another day in the life of the inane and confused; we aren’t much but we are existant, and I guess that’s something to brag about

"I fell down all of my steps. I chewed the skin out of both cheeks. I bit all of my nails until they were perfectly trimmed. I took pills and bottles. I took showers. All just to pass the time."

"I lose my voice whenever I have nothing left to say. I do this intentionally. I force myself to stay up too late, I drink too much, I eat very little, and I scream the words to my favorite songs in my car. Then I get sick, and I lose my voice. I do this because it’s easier to have an excuse for not talking to anyone."

"Oh, to all of the girls I’ve ever loved. I wish it could have worked, but I’m much too stubborn to consider inviting you back in. I’d like, truly, only to kiss your cheeks and tell you that you have nice legs, again. We will be together, in my thoughts only. I will take you to San Diego, only in my thoughts. We will never have to worry about one another in real life, again. You will all marry. I will accumulate more girls that I love"

Model; Mary Scott

"One time I was at your house for New Years, that one house up in Indianapolis out in the middle of the soy and cornfields, where the county roads ran on a grid system and every stop sign had a pothole next to it. We’d been dating for almost two years, and you’d known I hated your guts for about a year. You hated me too, but you were too selfish to give up and I was too scared to tell you to give up, so we hated this place and we hated each other. We had so much hate that sometimes it got squeezed out of us and that’s when we would fight or fuck, violently and loudly and sometimes I’d slam things and you’d hit me, and you’d cry and I wasn’t allowed to touch you. That’s all we did. Fight and fuck.

So it was New Years Eve and we were sitting in the kitchen with your little sister. She was 6 at the time. We were playing Uno. This was after you’d found out how I felt about Sarah, and it was after you’d changed your plans for me. So you hated me very much I suppose and all I could say since you’d found out about Sarah was “I’m sorry.” I said it so much, so often, and so LARGELY, that you’d started to hate that too. So we were playing Uno and all year I’d been saying sorry, I’m sorry, you dropped a knife, I’m sorry, your class is hard, I’m sorry, your car is broken, I’m sorry, my family hates you, I’m sorry. Well your sister laid down a card and I told her it was the wrong card, and she said that she was right and it was the right card. Well it was, and I said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, you’re right. I’m sorry.” I couldn’t stop I guess, that’s how it was. And she told me, “You don’t need to say you’re sorry.”

I walked into the bathroom and began to cry. You knocked on the door and said you were going upstairs. I had a nervous breakdown. We fought, and then we fucked, and then we went home a week later."

Model; Mary Scott

"Oh all the world’s on fire, in this midday heat. The asphalt glimmers and creates swimming pools that levitate and shake. The sun washes out the colors; everything looks liked bleached bones. We stuff ourselves on chain-restaurant food. Even the smallest portions are too much. I miss Europe and its digestible allotments, its dark skies, moody relfections. My skin feels warm like darned wool. I look at my elbow and there’s a string hanging down. I go to pull it away, and to my surprise it’s not attached to my rolled shirt sleeve. It’s a piece of my elbow. I tug gingerly and it begins to unravel. I look around quietly, wondering whether or not I should tell anyone, but decide against it when my lips begin to slip off my face. I collect their stringy remnants and stuff them into my pocket. I tuck my elbow into my shirt sleeve, which I roll down towards my forearm. I sit on a bench. I watch the birds in the sky. I wonder when it will get dark."

Model; Mary scott

You don’t know what you want. You barely communicate. You say plenty, but none of it actually holds any weight. I cannot blame you for this, because I know that deep down you don’t realize what you’re doing. I know that deep down you’re scared and confused; you only want to be loved. To feel good about your choices. To have things righted. But you make some stupid fucking choices. You burn all your bridges, and then say it was an accident. You told me that when you prayed, you never knew what to say. You said that you never knew how to level with God. Be honest to yourself, and maybe that’ll help. When you aren’t trying to lie to yourself, then you’ll know what to tell God. And everyone else. Hell, you might even be able to write your book. But I don’t have much faith in any of that.

Photo by; Mary Scott
Model; Spence Dagneau

"We drove through Helena. We went up to Edmonton. We found nothing, nothing, nothing. Trees. Nothing. We drank in the car. We drank while we drove. We had big mouths. We didn’t know what we were doing. We peed against trees. We slept tangled up in the back seat. You said you wanted to be back at home, with your wood floors and roommates. You said your head felt too heavy. You said your lids were sliding shut like windows. I got sick, you got sick. We never slept. You smoked. I smoked when I got drunk. We felt confined, like the world wasn’t big enough. Edmonton was too far to go. We should have stopped at the border. But that wasn’t enough. We wanted to go to Vancouver, but we ran out of money. I’d never been to the bottom like that, but it didn’t feel good. Thank God your sister had the money to bail us out. I never called home. When I finally did, on a pay phone, my mother was too loud and so I hung up."

Photo by; Mary scott
Model; Spence Dagneau

"You called me and were too sweet to me. I was trying to tell you the truth and it couldn’t fit out of my mouth. It felt like I was trying to spit out hair. I didn’t want to do that to you. I listened and quietly hoped this wasn’t real, all of this world I was living in wasn’t real. But it was and I had to tell you. It was quiet and you sounded confused. Then you were too sweet again and I wanted to vomit. You ended up when I told you the rest of it all. When I told you of all the people I’d been seeing, what I’d done. But still you were sweet. You wiped your mouth and told me you loved me. I felt remorse, I did. But give me a break. I was tired, I was vulnerable. I felt more remorse leaving my car in Texas.

That’s not true. I’m just trying not to let all of this failure taint my vision. It’s like looking through onion stained glass. Yellow and foggy and painful and beautiful."

Photo by; Mary scott

Model; Spence Dagneau

Packing all my suitcases. And by all, I mean my only one. Throwing things into the trunk of my car. I’ve put this off for far too long. The reality of my leaving feels like falling in repetition. Streaming down through nothing only to realize it and experience it again. I’m leaving nothing, going towards nothing, feeling everything. I want a good looking girl in that front seat with me. I’ve had a good couple women over the past few months. Those that leave my lips bruised and my head a mess. Those with a lot of leg, delicate curves, small, vigorous. Ready to fuck my world up. Put one of those in the front seat and we’ll go spinning across the continent like a loose bottle.

"Did you think I was cool when you met me? I worried about that. I worried that you would think I was too much when you met me. Because I was listening to Grizzly Bear while we watched Irma Vep movies, because I was too high to think straight and fell asleep all the time and wore those fake topsiders and hated everybody in that class. I worried that you would think I was trying to be cool, and think that I was failing because all of those things were pretty not cool. But I didn’t care a lot and you said “So you’re pretty eccentric huh?” when you met me and I said, “I don’t think so, no?” And I was confused. So we just danced at Sundance and drank filthy Stella Artois and kissed like hands trying to hold each other"

"I met new people, I got a new place, I got a new car, I got a new phone, I got new numbers, I got a new look, I cut my hair, I bought new shit, I threw away old shit, I hid all of your shit, I listened to the same music, but I listened to it in a new way, I was different, but you kept texting me, calling me, sneaking out to see me, telling me you liked who I was, saying I wasn’t anything new. I wonder when I’ll know what to say back to you. All I can ever say is “Keep yourself safe kid” and “Goddammit I miss you”.

I should be saying, “There’s no going back.'"

"I am the physical embodiment of a story. Every time I move my arm or open my mouth or words stumble off of my tongue and I make a fool of myself, it’s another page, another sentence, another scene in a story I’ll tell later, at some later date, as if all of that is in the past, behind me now. But that’s a big lie, like most of the stories I tell, because like I said, I am the physical embodiment of a story, and I’ll just continue writing it all with the swaying motion of my tongue and arms and lungs.

I tell stories sometimes to relate, escape, entertain, and connect with others. But mostly I tell stories because, as a child, I realized that nothing would properly convey the way that I felt, what I wanted, or where I needed to be the way that a story could. A specific example would be every time that I’ve lied about seeing a movie when someone asks a group “Has anyone seen [insert movie here]??” I’d say yes, of course! Of course I have, I thought we were the only ones! And instantly I’d created a story, a story about a time I’d gone to the movies with a family member or by myself or with friends. And it had a theatre name (Westpointe Plaza Movies 10), a time (1:20 PM Saturday, August 12^th), and an opinion (Eh, it was alright). I did all of this because the truth of the matter, deep down underneath the folds of the details and lies, was that I wanted to be accepted and understood.

This is the reason I lie. This is the reason I tell stories. This is the reason I am alive"

If I could, I’d write a poem for every single woman I see, Whose skirts and dresses blew in the wind. Against their knees and thighs and calves, Because that’s all I want to write poetry about

I don’t miss you when I’m reading Michael Chabon stories outloud to my friends.

I don’t miss you when I’m eating a steak I grilled for myself.
I don’t miss you when I talk to my family and they ask about you.
I don’t miss you when I walk across campus.
I don’t miss you when I drink at night.

I do miss you, however, when I sleep at night, when I drive out to Heber, when I eat Arby’s, when I listen to Andrew Bird, and when I think of Thanksgiving.

These things don’t matter though. All of it is an illusion.

"I always get scared that at some point I’m just going to lose it and just sell all my shit. Get in my car and drive to Ottawa. Ditch the car when I run out of money and start hopping trains. It’s weird because I don’t feel like I’m that far away from all of that, not when I’m sitting in my basement apartment staring at my walls, or when I’m walking through the streets in this fucking town, or when I get in my car, start the engine, and turn on some good jams. I feel like I could be in a gutter eating mystery pills. It wouldn’t be so different from my life here right now. Pills and whiskey in a movie theatre, open mouths in a bathroom with flickering florescents, shoes worn through from walking, loose change clattering in my pocket like it needs a pay phone.

One day I know I’ll make that decision. The decision between being a kid with nothing and a piece of mind, or a kid with everything and no peace"

Shaking my legs, listening to Gram Parsons singin’ “Ooh Las Vegas, ain’t no place for a poor boy like me” and I think about the heat seeping out of the rocks after the sun’s gone down, about sitting on the hood of my car, lonelier than I wanted to be. I’d blown my last few bucks on a sandwich on the outskirts of town and I was trying to hit San Bernadino before midnight. The insanity of summer, of rough haired youth, of unsteady feet and free wheeling assumption; these things made me want to drive straight to the coast, straight to Vista, and get laid, get high, get sadder, get empty, get happier, get fuller, get in the water. I ended up bouncing around condos, running red lights, and wearing mismatched three-piece suits. We swam in the ocean on the way to L.A. just to feel the coast underfoot. You made my head a mess, I’m telling you.

Photo by; Matia Theodosakis
Model; Mary scott

I want to get this chip off of my shoulder. It’s too heavy to lift and whiskey doesn’t really wash it off entirely. I need some pretty girl with good legs to come and knock me on my ass. That way I can leave it in the dirt when I stand up to ask her number

Photo by; Matia Theodosakis
Model; Mary scott

I’m sick of sitting around, waiting for shit to happen. Or, I guess, waiting to get my shit together. I’ve got these big circles around my eyes, and all I want is to see those dirty roads, those reservations with “Meth kills” sprayed up onto concrete dance hall walls. I want the American West. Not this town, this place, this time.

Photo by; Matia Theodosakis
Model; Mary scott

"You can’t tell me this is getting better. I’ve ended up on more beds and couches this year than I’d ever thought was possible. And when I wake up, I don’t crave my own home, my own shower. I think to myself, “Where I is is where I am” and I stretch my legs just like a cat and wonder when I’ll ever get back home. My head throbs and my heart aches but what can one do? Get higher, get more lost."

Photo by; Matia Theodosakis
Model; Mary Scott

I liked that you called me and left me a drunkmail at 3 in the afternoon. You sounded almost like you were crying, but also kind of like you were smiling. You said to call you back at “this number anytime” but you never gave me a number to call, and at the end you yelled to all of your friends around you, “I didn’t even give a number I’m so stupid oh man” and then you laughed and I loved it and I wish I was there in that state not this state; double entendre.

You’ve got the name, the face, and the whimsy of a classic french actress. You’ve got the accent of a southern bell. You’ve got the personality of someone I’d like to see everyday for as long as I live. Oh and you’ve got lips that read mine perfectly. That always helps.

Photo by; Matia Theodosakis

Model; Mary Scott

So where am I now? Where is my place? I spend my weekends playing with friends, wondering when it will all end. My weekends pass like minutes. My weekdays like miles. I’d marry any beautiful girl if all she offered was unending liquour and a gracious frown. I want to just. Be. I want to just. Feel. Like I told you in a text, “I’m always going to be a Charlie and you’re always going to be a Sam.”

It’s true. I’ve never deserved true companionship. I got stoned or drunk around you, secretly, too many times to warrant that. All I deserve is my crutches and my velocity. We speed across the universe at so many miles per hour. But I couldn’t accept that as I grabbed your thighs and hit the gas, skidding across the ice and snow in the Ohian New Year.

I’m moving to Brazil, New York, Paris, London, and Minsk. I’m not fucking sitting around anymore, wondering where these years have gone. I’ll punch my face before I punch the wall. And I’ve broken a lot of dry wall in my day.

Photo by; Matia Theodosakis

Model; mary scott

What is it the Greeks said about looking back? Or was it the Germans? Or the Aztecs? Something about how nostalgia is an insurance plan for a crummy future? Maybe they said it better. Regardless of who said it how, I can’t help but get sucked into all of those memories. I want to kiss every single person in every single picture and tell them that it’s good to see them again, let’s sit and catch up. I think this will be ten times worse when my friends begin to die.

"And tonight my prayer was:

Another weekend gone where I haven’t bought cocaine, those expensive pills, a gun and a Bible, or a bus ticket to Vegas. But I have gotten drunk, ingested theory, slept very little; and I’m sure not saved yet. Who says any of those are good or bad; I’m just recording what’s new and what’s old.

Amen."

The boy

We got stoned on cheap wine and ran around playing nickel games in arcades, yelling out the windows, blowing our money, sleeping in foreign beds, making out in the back of old school pick up trucks. It messed my head up pretty well, but I don’t regret it. At least I’m not bored

I bit my lip when I saw you playing piano. I had made a promise to myself, the night before as I drank a bottle of wine and laughed at Bukowski in bed, that I was going to totally up-end my life like a ripped open railroad car. When I saw you, I knew just how I’d do it. And from there we went, stupid and in love, hands entwined, our lips sealed shut against each other, same beds, same nights, same days, same storms, same head trauma, same bottles of liquor, same books, same journals, same awful awful goodbye when we both knew it was over, we’d made a mess and there was no one to clean us up.

I told you that Clarence Hemingway fell in love with his wife’s voice before he ever saw her. I think it meant something, but who ever knows?

All my bones are sunken in

like floorboards in a basement.

I can grab your memory from behind

just to feel it hit me in the chest.

Live in vagaries. It makes it easier to take when I’m sucking on a Marlboro or trying to sleep in a stranger’s bed. If I live in sort-ofs and just-abouts, I don’t have to deal with definitelys and you-fucked-ups

"I cracked my existence open with a flat smack from the palm of my hand, I’m bleeding time, it’s on my bed sheets, coursing over my wrists and forearms, and I wake up disoriented. I was born without a fucking clue."

You used to eat frozen cherries and I’d admired the way the juice stained your lips and fingertips. My house is too loud, the floors crack under the weight of too many feet coming and going, their voices seeping through the carpet, cigarette smoke and fake smiles.

I’d give anything to watch you eat those cherries, mainly because I could be back in that eternal summer of youth.

"What is terrible is not death, but the lives people live or dont live up tp their death. They don't honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow god without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, They let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them great music of the centuries and they cant hear it. Most peoples deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die"

"I don’t want to be your lover. I don’t want to be your valentine. I don’t want our lips to touch. I’d rather stab myself in the fucking eye.

I’m a bachelor for life. I’m a future cat owner for sure. I’m George Bernard Shaw, without a conscience. I’m a piece of wallpaper"