Have you ever heard the sound of nothing?
A desolating sunbeam hitting the ground
Each individual on the hunt for something
Yet, nothing can be found.

The trees feel lonely,
They meet the sky for a chat.
They beg for money,
But the sky gets nothing back.

Together, the world turns grey.
The smell of death starts to cover the streets
While they all stand and wait
We just stay inside and try to fall asleep.

If I could make the sound of cortisol
pumping through my veins,
it would sound like quarantine

Empty, but full of fear
Tired, but unable to stop moving
Alone, but surrounded by whispers

And here I am, stressed
about homework

A Note From Exile

I cannot go home.
Rather I cannot go where my family lives - that place ceased to be home some time ago.

I was a soldier during the Cold War and my neighbors there have become more like East German loyalists than American citizens.

They surrender their rights without question
They are eager to call out community members on social media for ‘social distancing violations’.
They use shame and ridicule to control others
They applaud the police for keeping children from playing in gigantic public parks
They trust politicians who ignore public defecation and drug use to look out for ’the public good'
They allow themselves to be labeled ‘essential’ and ’non-essential’
They carry ’traveling papers’ in the event that they are stopped by the police
They propagate the most inflammatory statistics without ever validating their veracity.
Because…
They heard it on CNN.

So I will remain 1098 miles away
Zooming
Skyping
Facetiming
Until the contagion subsides

And then I’ll return
To a completely different world.

dating a poet is fun,
and you'll learn things about yourself,
that you never knew.
but when you leave her,
you'll be the one who's broken.

you see,
she'll break you down
into bits and pieces-

she'll carve rhymes
into your rib cage
and
she'll make your kisses
into pentameters.

your voice becomes her rhythm,
and each color in your eye
forms a stanza.

you become pieced together
and poorly stitched,
because she's taken out
the very best parts of you
and the very worst.

she's taken you,
and cut out her favorite parts,
and she'll promise to put you back together,
but the funny thing is,
she never learned to sew.

inside me is a house of mirrors

i look at everything from every angle

until i am lost in it

i take these pills to stop

the negative reflections of my haunted body

and sometimes i think that

it would take the whole bottle

to do the trick

i don't wear my mess with pride

i have been shattered so many times

that i'll end up with years of bad luck

and the glass shatters my stomach

until i can't feel anything else

i'm cutting my tongue

on the shards i threw up

and i'll keep on tasting this blood

until i stop trying to find a way out