Burning smoke
Hold it in
Cough it out
Taste it on your tongue
Burning girl
holds it in
bleeds it out
swallows it whole
makes herself forget
phasing in and out
Did I dream that?
World shakes
and bends
too weak (strong?) to crumble
phasing in and out
room flipping
screen screaming
keep it cool
hold it in
wait it out

you're not going to read this, and why would you?*

it would be either
naive
or
stupid
of me to expect even so much as a text;
as if our separation implies the ******* of a proverbial
Berlin Wall* between us,
where less than a week ago we were the same *country,
our landscapes of rolling hills,
city skylines,
and forests
so overgrown
that only
slices
of sunlight
could parse the ever-greened canopy,
phasing into one another seamlessly.

We may have been our own provinces,
but aside from small street signs declaring
Welcome to Jen
and
Welcome to Kyran...
aside from separate cognitive centers of self-government
between
your shock-blue eyes and fleek eyebrows,
between
my navy-blue irises and grey,
sunken sockets,
we were a willing confederation of persons,
impulses,
                dreams,
                             ambitions,
                                              anxieties,
                                                              lo­ves,
                                                                ­        and betrayals---

In our past, and provisional separations,
it was your betrayal that pushed us both
into the doldrums of love-lost confusions
and self-hatred;
not that there would be much value
in assigning a blame
with hurt still attached,
because the point,
it seems to me,
was that we somehow made it through everything together.

There wasn't a personal adversity we didn't learn to conquer
---until I began to fade away from you--
lanky, thin, often broke, and depressed,
I retreated.

I cocooned myself in studies of the past and the present;
for some reason, despite my overwhelming love for you,
despite the unspoken commitment I had made
to you
in my head
so long after your second infidelity
when I realized I was finally over it
and that I loved you more than I'd ever loved anyone before
--and in ways I never could have foreseen--

I backed-off,
I fell back,
I disengaged,

and

I essentially abandoned you.

After your impulsive infidelities,
when you admitted you hadn't been
nor were you in your
"right mind,"
you promised you'd get better.

You saw councilors, therapists, psychiatrists,
and psychologists... and you did.

You really did get better.

You overcame all that had been pulling you so low and so far into the darker vicissitudes of irrationality.

And yet, when it came to my own faults,
inadequacies, and disengagement,
I lacked your courage.

I didn't even try to overcome them.
In my self-imposed screen-gazed solitude,
I often thought of how much I loved you;
of how I hoped you might just wait out my confused disengagement
like I forgave you for your betrayals which had,
in their times,
hollowed me out emotionally for months on end.

The thing is, you wouldn't have blamed me if I'd left you then.
You would have understood, and let me go,
regardless of the heavy pain in your solar plexus
and the hollow feeling in your heart.

Though it never came to that,
I now have the chance to do for you what you'd have done for me.

I don't blame you for leaving.

I understand,
and regardless of this heavy pain in my solar plexus
and the perceptive hollowing of my heart,
I will watch you as you go,
        I will wave,
I will live with the weight of regret and memory,
and remember what you wrote in a poem once
when we parted ways after your first infidelity.

Sitting in the university library, reading on Moses,
what went thru your head was

"closure feels more like i can go on without you, i’m glad i met you, however an emptiness drenched in self-regret will always remain."

I’d done it before—losing that feeling that came in the door
when my love walked through, that the ground I was
standing on wasn’t quite steady and the world was spinning
the other way—but he loves me back this time, so now guiltily solid,
I watch as he shakes, head over heels with that feeling
I'm losing and painfully, I remember when both our axes
tilted right instead of left, when earthquakes followed our footsteps.

It's like age and the shorts from two summers ago,
The missed calls that are weeks old.
It's the pens I dropped behind my desk and all of the socks that never found their match.
It's the photos that I accidentally deleted and the fleeting moments I didn't make time to write about.
It's all transitory and fleeing,
Rushing by just like a breeze.
My life and the people are blurring together so quickly now that not even with glasses am I able to see
Who is there, what is staying and what will go.
I'm phasing through without stopping to hold a hand or smell the roses before
They're old and overgrown.

Blurring,
Through a lifeless realm of light.

Blinding,
Is the massive ray display!
Phasing through two different voids,
As life enfolds, the dark engulfed.

Before the storm,
The tallest bricks reform.
And waves ring silence,
As the boat stays on the shore!

I'll travel to the distant past
To cast the gauntlet to the mass!

As the wise men fill with rage,
Their heads take cover
Under hoods of shape!

Detonate!

The late January 2 p.m. sun is as follows:
    - omnipresent
    - ten thousand photon hands per body
    - shining through souls;
         >  flesh has no stopping force if completely unraveled and dissolved in the sweetness of spring;
             the promise.
         a spring something that wafts through the still fresh year air,
     the one that gets animals and humans alike frantic,
  pink in patches, rhythms beating,
resonance seeking of matter against matter,

Surface vertical,
         horizontal,
--Phasing--
& Finally
Upwards when we merge,
having found each other,
released in sync
into the sky;
Light
and heavy with the journey.

And then I kiss you again.

I liked quirky women
It was easier to breathe around them
Their irregularities gave me something to watch, whether it was entertaining or simply odd
The ones that fully embraced that quality were the most radiant
Looking at the them was almost the same as looking into the sun
They gave me insight as to what I was lacking
Embracing their warmth gave me balance
I gladly take the backseat to them to this day
My place is observing from the side
I like for my vanity to be silent
The only issue with them—women in general—is that they have a need for constant communication and affirmation and affection
In the beginning, it’s more tolerable because everything is new and exciting
Then comes the inevitable: I get tired
Their quirks have become predictable, and their conversations dull
One week I’m deeply infatuated, then after the experiment becomes a process, the next couple weeks drag by with each day seeming to last years
That’s when I withdraw
Phasing out of a fifty year long commitment of love and charity, like the coward I am, then drifting back to the safety of solitude until the cycle repeats itself
I’m a dog
I’m a loner
One of these days I’ll have to pick one
But it won’t be today, and certainly not tomorrow

Sometime.

This town is famous
     for pretty faces,
     broken legs,
     and misplaced names--

A sentence penned,
An Oxford comma
          dangling off the edge of pages,
setting off appositive phrases,
lighting fuses--accidental--
          phasing out of view and staging
     tactical retreats

The winds of February mark off
intersections
                           Dow & Broadway
Midnight laughs echo off stratos
     then fall back--
     snowstorms at midday.

Caught in the rain on Sunday evening
this place don't stay awake so late.
Except, perhaps, for pretty faces,
misplaced names, or broken legs--
But forget the Oxford comma
         retreating, drenched, off of the page.

I was 3 years old
When I pretending to love this
"It'll be just a hobby"

I was 7 years old
When you told me I was good
At this game I played

I was 10 years old
When I began to love it
Just for you
And our time together

I was 13 years old
When you told me to try harder
I was a mere teen
You shouldn't have pushed it

I was 15 years old
When you told me I was awful
I cry all night
For you no longer see it

I was 17 years old
When I realized I was more
Than some silly game
That I pretended to love

spliff blazing, room hazing
eyes fading, legs failing
arms flailing, mind derailing

but darkling
you, darling

are a clarity,
a singularity
in this 4am city