My mom
Tells me I'm a gift.

She says love
Is what keeps the atoms
In you and I
Is the moment
She caught my
Father's eye
Is the day
My grandfather died
With a candy kiss on his cheek
She had never tasted something so sweet.

When we were little
We played kickball,
The ground is lava
And hide-and-go-seek.
As I grew I knew most days,
It was harder to find myself;
Let alone somebody else.

And I have been around
Enough center city playgrounds
To see the rich
Pump every bit of spare change
In their veins fighting
A cancer that they
Never learned to put in their past.
To see the poor
Wage wars with themselves
Trying to pick up
Way too much,
Way too fast;

Nobody really knows how to make love last.

So put your prism your heart
Beneath the moonlight.
Refract the wavelengths
Of your wonders
Into ROYGB-eautiful like the sea,
It took a lot of jellyfish to let
people see through me.

And even more mirrors
To find a place I was comfortable
Praying in.

Fraying in doorways
Where I learned hope,
Is looking both ways
On a one way street
Cause it can be so easy to thank God
While you still have bread to eat.

I have never prayed
So hard for a healthy meal
Than the days I remember
The heart is a muscle;
And sometimes the only
Thing we need
Is to "work it out."

And I know that some days,
My doubt hangs my
Smile like Jesus Christ
I never quite learned
How to bleed right.

But if there's one thing
I found from cleaning
The crosses out of the
Empty hallway of my character
Is that you haven't experienced loss
Until you've held two outstretched arms
For years waiting for your innocence to come back.
Nothing, weighs more than the guilt of your past
And nothing throws punches
Faster than the ghost of who you used to be.

And I know it's hard
To stop looking for yourself
Under every bed you
Left nightmares in
And I know it's hard
To be comfortable
In your own skin

But sometimes bars
Aren’t the only thing
That builds a cage
And sometimes
The only way to live
With yourself
Is to stop digging
Your own grave.

You can spend years
Listening to morticians
And never get grounded.
Surrounded by the
Square roots we all share,
By the same air,
We've all got to learn to let go.

To learn that
Holding your breath
Has never been how
Living things
Learn to
Grow

If I were a teacher,

I'd teach plagiarism
Like a patent office.
I'd teach publication
Like plagiarism,
And I'll proofread
Any paper that properly
Cites their sources.

I'd teach every
Kid from age X to Y
That if I can't
Lift them as
High as they
Want to go
Than somebody
Else
Can.

I would be the man,
That teaches subjects
Like I'm their King,
And I'd spread
Knowledge to every
Acre of my empire
I'd teach anything.

See,
I'd teach chemistry
By making the reaction of
Why and How
Always synthesize
Wow.

I'd be a catalyst
For positive change
By keeping every
School-yard bully
and kid that's always picked last
Around after class
To teach them physics,

Like if you have mass
And you take up space
Then you ******* matter.

I'd put the cool
in Coulombs.
I'd be so electrostatic
About magnetic fields
You could feel my fluxin'
Energy in the hallway.

I'd say
His story,
And Her story,
And everyone in-between's story,
Is about the day their parents met.

I'd teach ***-ed
Like it's about the
Day their parents met.
And it wouldn't be weird
It'd be beautiful.
Because anybody falling
In love is beautiful.

And speaking of beautiful:

Mathemagics,
Would no longer
Be a bottomless hat
But a bird.
With feathers and wings
And things that always
Find their way home.

I'd transform
The Fourier of
Our foundations
With equations
Of equality
Like you,
And I are
Always equal to
Us.

It'll be cake
To be genius.
....Or pie
Or whatever else is rational
In this situation.

And I
Would measure intelligence
With the answer to the question
Of why we are alive.

I'd standardize
Every test
By removing
Any box that
Takes us
Further apart

I would make art
Combining every
Color from East to West
In a masterpiece
That every child can draw
We'll call it "human"

I would solve
World hunger
And war,
And every other problem
That stems from greed
With answers to the
Questions that I still
Don't know

But I would show
Everyone whose ever
Made you hurt
That a broken heart
Has still got the
Courage to beat

Because it's their words
Where the heart breathes
Where the heart bleeds
Where the heart sleeps

And it's our dreams
That keep us awake
In the wake of our past

So I'd put every love letter
And box of their ****
On a bonfire, light a match,
And we would watch it burn.

Hell,
If I were a teacher
I'd say there's
So much left
That I've still got
To learn.

We've been walking
Underneath these city lights
For far too long.

That we forget
The grass is a mother's breast,
Soft as the night she was married,
They are calling you home.

Home to the tree that you breathe from.
Home to the noose that you swing from.
The North East is so cold,
And it's not just the weather.

It's a place where
Even the clouds are
Robbed of their ability
To soak in the sun.

Where every
"Promise me this"
Is the chain to a boulder,
Where even eagles
Acquire a taste for flesh.

You would think
That in a place with so much fire,
You would feel a beating heart
Inside the pebbles skipping.
Across a sea of people,
On the day that your
Aspiration became dreams.

We are all human,
But not everybody wants to be-

Some of us want wings
Made from candles,
but never really learned how to swim.

-come.
A little closer.

Let the fire in our bellies
Melt our cities into ashes,
We will take them to our mother,
And ask if we can come
Home.

Last night,
I spent 45 minutes
In the bathroom
Because my doctor
Told me I needed more
Calcium in my diet.

He says calcium
Will make my bones strong,
And if I want to grow up
To be as big as my dad
Than a hefty glass of milk
Should do the trick.

I'm lactose intolerant.
But to this day I wonder,
Is calcium the culprit?

When an infant's bones
Are crushed by tanks,
And all that is left
Is the dust,
That you wipe away
With the palm of your
Blood-stained hand,
On an unmarked grave
Too old to remember,
But it keeps on
Coming back.

Back to a time
Where potential meant
The possibility of
Developmental potency.
Not the supposedly
High capacity for
Danger.

Like the flowers
In the spring,
Build their spine
From our breath;
Change is the
Life in our blood.
The minute an
Eighteen year old's
Parent's swallow the fire
Of an IED 6,032 miles away,
Believing their child fought for,

Change.

Verb.
To make or become different.
Verb.
To give or get foreign money in exchange for:
Verb.
To remove a ***** diaper from a baby
and replace it with a gun.

Where do you run to?
When sleep
is the only place
In a thousand miles
where you can find God.

When rest
is the only peace
you haven't felt
since they said
the war is
finally over.

When dreams
Are the memories
Of your children’s
Stardust

When you
Can’t adjust
To the lack of future
Freedom liberated
From materialism

When no
Dictionary
Has your definition
of Change.

Noun.
Something you find in your pocket.
Verb.
Something you find in yourself.

Change,
Is not something
You can touch;
But it's something
You should want
To feel.

She hates the city
Say street lamps
Are too cold
For marshmallows,
Too far apart
For hammocks
And a little too yellow
For stars.

She loves daisies
Especially when they're alive
And drinks sunshine
Like it's a fireball
Bottle at a bachelor party

She
Has got a body.
Like a Lego fire walk
That I can't help but
Move across
Slowly,

On the parts of her
Past that build us
Omnicolored castles
Of Kings and Queens
And treasure chests
Too small to hold anything
Outside our own imagination

And I,
Her ready loyal Knight
With nothing but
A dull promise
On the edge of my tongue
Laying my rusty faith
At her feet keep

Moving
Like my eyes
Across a line
Across a line
Across a line
That I never
Want to stop
Reading

Her edges
With my fingertips
Like the map
To my home
And her lips
The closest thing
I've got to
A key

But she
Is not the type
That needs a night
To see the stars

And I
Am not the type
To write poems
From fireflies
That I never learned
To let go

'Cause I know my life
Has seen enough jars
Of my amputated parts
To know you don't have
To be broken to be used
To picking up the pieces.

But baby break me.
Like a firefighter
With a family of four
Who knows the risks.
With your arms
'Round my fists
The only chance I've got
Of making it out alive.

So baby hold me
Like a papier mâché
Tugboat from articles
Of my past that I no longer
Want to pull.

And my plaster heart
Heavy,
Ready to be made
Into something new

With my hands full of skipping stones
I no longer have the stomach read
'Cause I don't wanna leave her life
Without being buried somewhere beneath.
But I don't wanna dig too deep
Before I figure out just how to breathe.

So every time she leaves,

I wear my teeth
On her scent
Ribs bent
In the direction
Of her return.

For the first time
In a long while
I've got a fire in me.
And this time,

I'm gonna let it burn.

Back home,
There is a boy
With red hair, freckles,
And eyes the shade of blue
His mother calls "lady killers."

He's colorblind;
At least enough to believe
In jellyfish.
His father builds houses
With a rib-less heart
The boy calls home.

His mother,
Sews trust with her spine.
And thirty years later
They still find love
In the lonely isles of
The local Laneco.

His teacher says
He needs a pen pal,
So after school
He writes to me:

"Hi, how are you."
"I'm fine, thanks, and you?"

And then he asks me
What it's like to be
"Grown up"
And just how many
Stars I've scarred
With nothing but the rusty
Edge of my name.

So I fold the
Envelope of this
Crinkled heart into a letter
Of tattered Bibles
From hotel drawers of
Lost loves and dead friends
And find the courage
To tell him what
Being a man means.

I tell him:
We call it growing up
Because boulders
Always roll down.
It's refusing CPR
For every time you drown
In your own pride.

It's loving a girl
For every time she tried.

Tried to
Convince your tunnel vision
That her body is not a cave.
That respecting a woman
Is more important
Than how well you pave
Your parking lot heart.

Shallow like a baking pan.

This is an apology.

For every man
Who ever thought a woman's body
Is the only temple worth praying to.
Making four leaf clovers
From petals of roses
Trying to get lucky.

I know it's not lovely,
To kiss someone who
Is so constantly
Full of *******.

And I'll admit it.
I'm not yet
Where I need to be
But I thank God
That I'm no longer
Where I use to

See I'm used to
Smoking way too many
*** scenes to know that
There is not enough
Alcohol in the world
To ever clear my mind.

And I have caused way
Too many Prozac commercials
To know that there is
No effective dosage
For this disorder
Of indecency.

To know that it is
No measure of good health
To be well adjusted
To a sick society
Of mechanical men
Always worried about
Who and when they're going
To plug into.

So I tell him:

You are not a robot,
A computer, or a program.
And your choices are the only
Thing that will ever make you a man.

So strap up your boots,
Bury the ashes,
Shake the dust,
And dandelion your
Heart in every
Direction of home.

But most importantly,
Go easy on the ladies;

Because
The older I get and
More I learn about myself
The more I'm writing
With my eraser
Than with anything else.

Ping-Pong, Ping-Pong, Ping,
I should be studying.
Ping-Pong-Ping,
But in this hour,
I am the happiest
I have ever been.

Ping-Pong, Ping-Pong, Ping,
I should have been studying.
Ping-Pong-Ping,
I did the best that I could,
For who I was,
At the time.

The first word in Arabic
You ever taught me
Was Aoheb:

Love,
Spelled G-I-V-E
The kind that
I forgot what I was
When I felt you holding me.

But only privately.

Like crossing the street,
We look both ways
Before our hands meet.
Because even though
it's okay for me
Culturally..

We don't do that
Until we're married.

But just like
The next words
You taught me,
Ana fahemt:
I understand.

Like that time
I called you a beautiful Woman..
You got so mad because
You want to stay a girl forever.

Baby,
I never
Want to grow up
Together

I want to grow in.

So give me a garden
To come home to
Give me a heart
I can roam through

When it's 3AM
And both of us
Have ****. to. do.

One day,
When we're tired
Of learning each other's language
You can call me Frankie,
And frankly,
I'll fly you to the moon.

Give my very breath to you
I'll keep you so warm
In my arms that baby,
Your blood will boil.

And I don't mean to spoil the fun
But could you please put that
Super cute face of yours away?

Because
Your smile,
Is so bright
Solar radiation
Needs sunglasses.
And even though
You're sweet as molasses
I don't think that Nasa's
Satellites can handle that
Amount of sunshine right now.

I think
"Ana bufuker."
...really? .. "Ana buhfucker?..
Whatever.. Ana bafaker:
I think,
Google translate is awful.
Especially when it involves
Conversations with your
Your dad and me

Because honestly
I always think I'm gonna
Say the wrong thing
At the wrong time.

And I always just end up
Saying the wrong thing
at the wrong time.
But somehow you always
Seem to know how to
read my mind.

So
Habiby. Aomry. Hayaty.
My love, My life, My age...

...And the rest of the poem is none of your business.

Truly. It's between that girl and I.
But I will say this though:
We don't talk much anymore
And I'm not really sure why.
But I know that
Somewhere out there,
In-between all of the *******
Of our daily lives;

There is a girl that
Is going to speak my language.

You
Are the sole reason
That my dentist
Makes money.

Let me tell ya’
‘Cause I,

I’ve got your
Sugar in my veins
And tremors in my teeth
Chit-chattering your name
Safe between our sheets
It’s sweet like

Honey
Since our third date
You had my thread
Spread tenderly
On your table
Set with love
And grace

And there I was
Stitching my heart on a page
Tryna hide my baggage
On a shelf

Now

When I think of myself
I see a river
That’s got to learn
To go with the flow

So,
Send me a rhythm
For the drum beat
Beating in my chest

Let me
Carve our love
In the mountains

Mount every branch
With my beaten lungs

Tape my tongue
To your thighs
And hold my breath
Until we are
So alive

Until every
Hard workin’
Upstanding
Friendly neighborhood
Ant knows my name

So name me your soldier
I’ll fight for every piece of you
Love you like the war
Is finally over

Like winter
Is the only thing
That ain’t
Gonna come

Cause Your ****
Is like a tree
That just
It just
Keeps growing
On me

It takes my breath away
And breathes me back to life

You
Soaked my
Leaves autumn red
In your sunflower sunshine

You
Have rainy days
Warm like

Honey
Give me one room
To come home to
And I will
write you a garden
Full of poems
That I do not yet
Know how
To speak

‘Till your name
Is the sweetest
Word on my tongue

Calling you up like

Honey
Honey
Mmmm.

I am a first generation
Park bench blue-jay.
I have scoured every subway
And train station track crack
Pattering my little feet
A little foot closer
To every cold heart
In every concrete city
From here to
where ever the ****
Blue birds go.

In my travels,
I have seen
Floorboards mold to the
Shape of a man's feet
Around the place
He prays every
Morning

In a much less a house
than it is a home.

I want my life to be a series of coming home.
I want my front door to be as open
As a bottle on a bad day.
And hey..
I don't condone getting
Absolutely freaking plastered,
But I want to be constantly
Under the influence of love

I want to be so
Intoxicated with
The music of the universe
That Brian Greene
Will never go
To another book signing.

I want to feel the orchestra
Of atoms in my hand
Like every Eagle Scout
Who earned his
Carving badge
On the bathroom stall

Y'all,
"I was here."

---And not one of you
Can write that
Like I  just did.---

I was here.
And God knows
If I go somewhere
I'll always know
How to get back

So if anyone asks me
What I'm going to
Do with my life
I'm gonna tell them that.
Because I swear,
I'm not anything more than me.
Experiencing this moment momentarily.

And honestly,
I have spent more time
And more money looking for the
Right church, than I have
The right God

And I have spent more time
And way more money writing
The perfect eulogy
To the parts of you and me
That I just never really buried.

I'm convinced that
When people die,
Their spirit remains
In a rebounding wave
Of influence propagated
By those whose lives they
Have changed,

So for better or for worse,
I want to be a tsunami.
I want my waves
To travel like butterflies,
And I want to dream cocoon.

I wanna learn to love the world
The way it loves the moon.
And maybe one day
My heart will grow so big
For every bumble bee
And baseball mitt
That I'll pull a Saturn
And put a ring on it.

Or.. Lots of rings..
One for every
Level of my love:
A through F...U..

..See, maybe Jesus
Will write a book
About us,
Call it the little prince,
And I will spend all day
And all night
Trying to convince you
That snakes can eat elephants.

And I swear
I will spend every
Sunset and sunrise
Gnawing my calluses
On a porch swing
Convincing myself, I think,
That these hands
Are soft as
Thunder.

And maybe then I'll listen
To a back alley
Street lamp
In the middle of
A snow storm
At that exact moment
Where electricity
And felicity
Are one in the same.

I have spent years
Looking for the answer
To who I am,
Searching through
Every letter
Of every poem,
That has ever
Spoken to two
Birds in love.

When I should have
Been out writing it.

It is a fact
That it takes
About 80 milliseconds
For the brain to
Generate consciousness,

To take all the
Information flowing in and
Construct a model of reality
From moment to moment.
An 80-millisecond-old afterglow.

It is a fact,
That major league hitters
Cannot biologically
Keep their eyes on the ball.

That actually
Human eyes can't
Track at a ball whose
Angular position is
Changing so rapidly

And actually
You could close your
Eyes once it was
Halfway in the air
And you'd still
Catch it with the bat.

In fact,
Your brain is
Doing this right now.

As I speak,
It is taking a fraction of a moment
for my voice to reach your ear drums.

But your brain
It compensates for this by
Making you believe
That you are in this moment

For
This moment

So here is a poem
For those who
Can't help but
Live in the past:

It’s called “Climb”
__

They say
The most fertile land
Forms from tectonic shifts
So great
The earth erupts into chaos
To settle into mounds

Mountains
So majestic
That they were once
Mistaken for gods.

This
Is for the ones
Who are settling.

For the lamp light.
The nightstand
Of mistaken majesties
And snow-capped summits

For the time capsules
Of recipes and
One line poems
That I once forgot.

For the promise of prosperity
That we all had and have
But none of us got.

For the thought
That breath
Is only there
To say goodbye.

The last time
I hoped to die
I pried the crosses
From my trinity heart
Buried them one by one
In my holy stomach
Until even God
Didn’t have enough
Grace to to pull me back.

Until even God
Didn’t have enough
Grace to make me
Anything but a soldier
In a war with
Myself that I’m
Tired of fighting.

Fighting for moments
When the barrel of a gun
Tastes like revolution.

When poetry
is no longer a verb
I can believe in.

When freedom
Is one man
On one stage
With one voice
And enough courage
To be something
When freedom
Is one crowd
In one room
With one voice
And enough courage
To be something

So for the moments
When gravity,
Is everything
Tearing you down:

You,
Are a temple
Where the only God is

You,
Are a map,
To time capsules
Of recipes and
One line poems

You,
Remember gravity made the stars.

Forged them
Bright and burning,
Like a phoenix
From the stardust
Of planets and galaxies
That we once forgot
From the promise of prosperity
That we all had and have
But none of us got.

So gather the ashes
And shake the dust

Like every breath
Is only there
To say goodbye

Like love
Is the moment
You caught your
Mother’s eye

Like hoping to die
Is just another mountain to climb
Another God to find
In the sacred temple
Of your trinity heart

So if you’re ever
Falling apart

Remember bars
Do not make a cage

And wings
Will never set you free

‘Cause
You can spend
Your whole **** life
Wearing a life vest
In the desert

But the bottom of the sky
Is the top of the sea

And sometimes sinking
Pressures chaos
Into courage
Breaks the
Bedrock into beauty
And we can
Erupt again

How do restaurants
That don't have any desserts
Keep getting business?

Dear Earth,

From up here,
You are gorgeous.
Sure, you may have
Your faults,
But baby,
Your craters
Are so garish,
They could make a
Golf-ball self-conscious.

I know sometimes,
I can be a little distant
But I long to be close to you.

On the rare occasion when
I come down to meet you
I greet you
With a kiss on every
Square piece of you.
And you absorb me,
breathe me into the
very life of you.

And sure,
I may not be the
Only cloud in the sky
But you can't deny
That no on else
Can get you
As wet as I do.

On the days
You are longing,
Starving like a desert
I fall into your arms
And bring you to life.

Sometimes,
When you're feeling *****
You ******* so hard
I can't help but to think
I'm going somewhere.

There are sparks
Between us.
I am your protector,
Your lover,
Your closest friend.

You build me
From your darkest
And deepest places.
But even your
Most horrifying parts
Are blooming with life.

And hell,
If you ever need
Me around
You call me once,
Or you call me twice,
And I'll come around
Twice as nice
as I did the first time.

Just a note while passing by,

  --Your favorite cloud.

When we die,
Will I feel you
One last time
Pull the hope
Out of my veins.

Will the heart
Cease to believe
In chances,

When there is
No more me
Or no more you.

When I was young
I saw Gagarin
Waving through a moonbeam

That same year
A single electron
Went from my finger
To the doorknob.

She was a radical.

In those days
I was convinced that the
Cocoon was a casket
Would bury it whole
When it came back empty
You thought it went to heaven.

We built homes
For the salamander
Picked them from the mud
Moved them into plastic boxes
And swore to never let it
Live in such poor conditions.

How could they live like that.

When I was young
My eyes saw so much love
It spread in every direction.
We called it the love canal,
Because it was so toxic.

Sometimes if you would listen
You could hear the trees
Whispering wisdom to the pine cones
Singing lullaby’s about
fireside farmers.

We would hide them from the spiders
because we hadn't yet learned
How to commit ******.

I used to think
That the raindrops were lonely
Because they were always
Holding themselves in.

You'd collect them in a glass jar
Thin enough for their worries
To creep up the sides,
And convinced me that they had
Found someone to talk to.

Our hands were stained with blackberries
Tasted sweet like the honeysuckles
On the other side of the thorn bushes
Where you found the fattest bumble bee
And told me that honey came from its throw up.
I still eat honey.

In the winter
We built a snowman.
Named him jolly old saint ****,
And I sat inside until
All he left me was coal.

At the north pole
There were three elves
Who in the summer
Built sandcastles
In their dreams
But over Christmas
They made salamander
Soup kitchens.

In a cornfield
I found myself.
Three skipping stones
I kept them in my pocket
Until it reached the shoreline.
They're still drowning.

Here's to the kids who
Never got to go
Trick or Treating,
But were **** good
At being someone else.

You and I,
We did our math in pen.
We never made the
Same mistake twice.

We didn't smudge,
We smeared.
And there was never
Any doubt
That you and I,
Were here.

She has got
A sew master 5000

It has All of the
bells and whistles
And modern conveniences
To stitch things together
Like our hands
That fit together
Like two love bugs
Just tryna fly the same way

In her closet,
She keeps boxes of
Sequins and thread
Spread tenderly across
Her papier-mâché armor set
Marked carefully with
Patterns and measurements
That lesser men have
Lived up to

And I
Have never
Been one to mend
Cause I have known
Needles in a darker light
But tonight

She’s got me sick of
Living in funeral homes
Sick of digging up bones
From my past to
Patch the tattered
Patterns of holes
In my heart from
When I was a
Lesser man

When I hold her
I wish these hands
Considered more than
My loneliness

‘Cause she
Has got a heart of gold
And mine is bronze at best

‘Cause that dress
That **** dress

Is so
Indirectly ****
That I just wanna
Rip it off
Rip it all off
Every band aid love
Cause I don’t want this
Bleeding heart to ever dry up
I wanna give you every
Every liter every cup of my love
Every cavernous cabinet
Perfectly stained with your scent

Cause I
I’ve spent
My whole **** life
Growing this ribcage
To protect my
Tender parts

Training my iron heart
Just to be crushed by a smile
I know it will take a while

For me to pack my past
And throw my
Baggage overboard

‘Cause I
I don’t wanna
Travel somewhere new
Until every piece of me
Is falling for you

And yes
Double entendres
Will always be my game
If you were my dame
I would love the
**** out of you

I would
Be your cloudy days
Soak up your sunflower sunshine
Your brilliant radiance

I would
Shower you in kisses

Be the
Quivering thunder
Beneath your ribcage

I would
Make you rain

So you could
fall into my arms love
Whether asphalt or earth

Cause I
I want to feel your fog
In the morning
I want to feel your heat
The night before

I want to lick the teeth

I want to patch
Every piece of our
Quilted love together

Tether our grain lines in turn

Girl
I have never
Been one to mend

But
Hot
****

You make me
want to learn

I, know how to turn you on.
I may not be the only thing with batteries that can,
but you can't deny that you and I,
were made for each other.