I've seen people who claim
not to suffer
cry in hotel bathrooms.
To be born without a heart
is merely practical, not fulfilling.

Those who suffer
have an eye for suffering.

As I've gotten older
I've come to understand
life is an exchange;
you lose something,
you get something.

That's a simple deal,
but no one tells you what to do
when something gets back.

Now you're stuck with an old friend
while you're a new you.
You love him,
but you can't stand him.

Guess I'm sorry for growing up.

But **** it,
give me my ghosts
and let them haunt me.
I'm sick and tired of numbing pain.

A gun only stops shooting when you stop reloading it.
Otherwise you've got generational trauma.

**** people who use their pain
as an excuse to hurt someone else.
**** saying pain made you who you are.
Those who glorify pain haven't healed from it.

We're all in a rush
to be disqualified from being human.
I envy those who are comfortable
with that position.
At least they've found something to hold onto.

Guess the rest of use just have to start over.
Call it a Perestroika of the heart,
call it tearing down the walls,
or don't call it anything.

Only thing that matters is to stop the bullet.

It is me!
Don't you remember me?
I remember you,
you wanted to be an astronaut when you grew up,
you really liked chocolate ice cream
and climbing trees.

You once got bitten by a spider and you thought you were gonna become Spiderman!
Is he still your favorite superhero?
Do you still read comics?

You look funny
why did you grow a beard?
what's the suit for?

I remember you were very good at baseball.
Did your dad ever find out it was you who broke his window?
Do you still have your glove?

Do you wanna go out and play?

Oh... You're busy.

You have done some things you are not proud of.
What'd happen If I told them?
What'd happen if they knew?
You were young, you were angry,
you were horrible, you were everything you hate now.

You hurted so many people
and disappeared.
Why did you do it?
Why would you take your pain
and put it on someone else?

It was not her fault she didn't love you.
It wasn't his fault. He couldn't know.

Yes, you were a mess,
but that's no excuse.
No, you can't change the past.
I don't even know If "I'm sorry" would be enough.

You couldn't love
cause you didn't know how to love yourself.
You thought hate
was your only weapon against the world.

Will she accept your apologies
or will she act is if she doesn't know you
the way that you did?

Will he forgive you
or forget
just like you?

You were full of poison and you killed many flowers
on your way here.
What are we gonna do, Jude?

I'll light a candle for us
and I'll try to be a better man.
It's all I can do
that'll bring a change.

You take the pieces of your broken heart and you build a future with them.

At first, you won't know you're building it, but it will become clear when the time is right.

If I smile at you,
Please never think it's because no one smiled at me.
If I hold you,
Please don't wonder if anyone held me.
If I offer you my hand,
Please don't question if it's because I've been on the floor too.

Empathy
Is not
And should not be based
On past experiences.

I've gone through pain,
That's true,
Perhaps more,
Perhaps less than you.
But that's not what informs my heart.

We seem to believe pain and experience are synonyms, they are not.

If I smile at  you,
It's because I wish to smile at you,
If I hold you is because I wish to hold you,
If I offer you my hand
It's because I know you don't want to be on the floor.

If I feel for you,
It's because you exist.

I can't run a mile in your shoes,
But that shouldn't mean
I can't tell you have a heart.

"Pleasure sleeps in the same bed as pain"
So I'm told, but to tell the truth
I don't know if that's a world
Worth living through.

We poets are bad role models.
Burn all your love poems before you fall in love again.
Don't go around taking advice from the dead.

Honey Girl,
There are already too many bruises in your soul
Maybe it's time to give up control and just drift.
The current is always kind to rose blossoms.
Besides, the world is ending,
So we might as well try to find some happiness
In this mess.

We're far too young to care about the past
And far too old to care about the future

I'll gift you my Shakespeare plays,
So you can cut them into pieces.
I'll keep my cane, though.
I'm not ready to break it yet.

The land of the living might be beautiful,
But beauty never meant much to me.

We are all kids
Looking through windows,
Wondering if someone could come out and play with us.
But no one ever does.

I'll burn the forest with your hair
And bend my soul with your lips,
Cause I'm just waiting
For the day I can see you
Without worrying about who's seeing you too.

You got me fighting with my ego.
I never thought I'd feel so lost
Without me.
How does one hold on and let go
At the same time?

Maybe you'll tell me in your heartbeat
I'll keep my head close to your chest,
When we go to sleep.

One day
///// our scars will heal.
One day
///// our broken hearts will be mended.
One day
///// we won't have to cry at night.
One day
///// everything will be alright.
One day
///// we'll know the colour of the sky.

Don't despair,
///// it will come.
Maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

Until then,
///// come a little closer;
cause lonely people shouldn't be alone.

10 billion galaxies in the universe,
an average of 100 billion stars in each one of those.
That’s 1 billion trillion (that’s a one and 21 zeroes) of stars in the known universe.
At least  10 percent of those may have at least 1 planet;
that is 100 trillion (that’s a hundred and 18 zeroes) of planets.
There might (“might”) be about 11 billion planets similar to ours,
of those, we concretely know of about 10 (ten. One one, one zero),
that number includes us,
and we only know there’s life in one of those 10,
us;
that is a percentage of 0.000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 001
of 100 trillion.

Well, ****.

And I know the world will be a much more beautiful place
when all the cosmonauts come together
and send a single transmission to everyone here:
"You're not alone".

We the sun rising,
A day here and a night gone.
Tears at sunset come.

As time slowly moves along
It seems so strange
Memories are the only thing we've got.
I've been missing your skin ever since you left,
But I've forgotten how it feels.

Now the night rolls around
And brings with her
Mysteriously familiar sensations.
It makes you wish the moon never fell down.

Another day of sun, another day apart,
But in the dark we are impervious to time.

Sleeping on the back-seat of your car.
We dream of the inevitable loss
that haunts us.
We cry a little inside
with every kiss we share,
cause we know well
we're getting closer to the last one.

We're not naive;
all things go.
We're condemned to one day meet on a train
and struggle to remember
where have we seen such a beautiful face.
Even this dream won't be here tomorrow.

Pretty soon we'll be
pictures and letters
in a box,
in a closet,
gathering dust.
Ashes of flame.

We wake-up in shock,
we make love quietly
under the spring moon,
and we pretend
we've forgotten about our dream.

Perhaps if we do forget,
it won't come true,
perhaps we can last forever,
perhaps we can,
perhaps we,
perhaps.

I'll write a poem and leave it on your door
so you have something to smile about.
I'l take my loaf of bread and cut it in half
so you have something to eat.
I'll give you a sip of my coffee
so you can greet the morning sun.

No one should be alone in the dark.

I'll give you my sneakers
if you give me yours
so you can show me your side of the story
and I can show you mine.

I know life can be pretty rough.
Angels use their wings
to cover each other from the rain.
I have a hoodie,
I hope that's enough.

Buddha told me to tell you:
"Hello, bonito.
This spring is going to have cielos azules."
I have a couple dollars in my pocket.

Let me buy you a Coca-Cola.
Share it with someone you love.
Who knows, maybe they need it more than you.
I'm just thankful we got to talk.

I was sitting on the grass, sad,
Though I don't remember why,
this was so long ago.
I was sitting and thinking
and sobbing.

My brother came and sat next to me,
he looked worse,
he looked as if he had seen something terrible.

"Can you give me a hug, Jude?"
He asked
and I thought, with my child mind,
"I am the older brother. I have to act like a man.
I'll put aside my sadness
and comfort my little brother.

So, I hugged him.
Then I asked him
"What happened to you?"

"Oh, nothing. I'm fine"
he answered
"But you looked like you needed a hug".

That's when I knew,
no matter the age,
my brother was older than me.

When we went to church
my grandma used to say
"Pray for the one next to you,
ask for his prayers to come true"

"But, grandma" I once asked her
"Why can't we ask for things for ourselves?"

"Because that's what prayer should be,"
she answered graciously
"ask for the safety of others,
for them to get home safe,
for them to never be hungry,
ask for God to love all of his children.

We can get by,
but you never know if others can too."

I'm tired of love poems,
they stay behind
like stains of blood
after a ******.

It's all so strange to read them
after their inspiration is gone.
What are you supposed to do with them?
There's no place they belong to
after their inspiration is gone.
How are you supposed to move on from them?
Everything you write is about the time
after their inspiration is gone.

Are those tears in my pillow really mine?
or are they something I wrote before?
Can I say I'm truly in love?
or am I trying to burn my old love poems away?

The poems sit in a corner of my room
and my girlfriend can see them when we make love.
Is she thinking the same as I do?
I'm so afraid she does,
I'm so afraid she might go away
and leave me behind with nothing
but stains of love poems
on the floor.

There's a girl somewhere in Mexico city
painting the world around  her
with the pigment of her heart.
You can find her by following the warm palette
she leaves behind in everyone she meets.

She's planning to start a revolution
one color at a time,
cause these gray days we have don't suit her.

She's sketching hope for the future
on the canvas of desolation
cause life is too short to sit and stare at the void.

Sometimes, when the darkness gets a little too heavy around here,
I think about her and everything gets a little clearer.

Do you know how it is to walk the street very early in the morning? Just early enough to have the sunrise all for yourself for a couple of minutes? It's a pretty scary and sad feeling. Having all of that beauty and no one to share it with.

I wonder if that's what God felt after creating the universe; that sort of supernatural-scary-loneliness. Perhaps that's why he made us; not to feel alone. It'd sure make sense. I mean, if we are made in his image, then it's fine to assume he can feel alone too sometimes. Geez! the kind of things we can do when we feel alone.

Last night, I called a very old ex-girlfriend of mine. I didn't even wanna talk to her, I just wanted to hear her voice. Her kid answered the phone; she's got a kid now (Man, time does move too fast) We ended up talking about a little of nothing. We might drink coffee one of these days.

It sometimes seems to me that I'm partially living in the future; in the "one day". Don't get me wrong, it's better than living in the "remember when", but not as good as the "right now". What I'd give for some "now".

Back to loneliness. I saw two men in the park sharing a cigarette. They were arguing about something, one of them left and the other began to cry. Some of his smoke got in my eyes.

Later, I went with a friend to an auction house. He bought some  "collectible film prints". In one of them, there was a man with a cigarette crying.

Was the man in the print the same as the one in the park? Probably. It wouldn't be the strangest thing that's happened.

I ended up buying the film print with the crying man from my friend. I keep it in the drawer next to my bed, along with some love poems and rejection letters. I try to look at it every morning. It's some "now" to hold onto.

I had a dream about love, oh boy...
About the many times it has slept on the floor.
Although it never was that kind to me,
Well, I couldn't help but feel sad.
It was me who put it there.

I met this girl last night, oh boy...
She was writing a book on how to end the war.
Although her words could make me cry.
Well, I just had to laugh,
If only so I could sleep that night.

Words have the nasty habit of haunting you in the dark.

I'd love to hear your voice.

////Sweet smell of coffee
Running around the house,
Waking the slumbering sun.
Got out of bed and served me a cup,
Then looking up, I noticed I was late.

Kissed my girl, found my keys,
Beat the moon going out.
Thought of dead when I got on the bus.
Then somebody said my name
And I got back into a dream////

I had a dream about love, oh boy...
9,125 days on Earth flashed in front of my eyes.
Although not every one of them was lovely,
I had to love them all.

Now I know how many days it takes to turn 25...

I'd love to hear your voice.

Hey, little poetess
can you share a line with me?
My poem feels broken and empty
and I do believe you have what I need.

You have been swirling in my mind
ever since you came into the room
with your pale hands splattered with ink,
and your emerald eyes
which look as if they've seen a thousand nights,
and your soft voice
which takes me on a trip
to undiscovered places in my soul.

I'm ready to go anywhere
the smoke of your cigarette takes me.
My heart has been unknowingly still,
but you've shown me how its beating should feel.

How could I put pen to paper
before we ever met?

You are the trees,
You're the sun,
You're the wind that blows the leaves.

You're the memory I've just lost
And found a new.

You're the drop of rain
Hanging from a rose
After a light spring rain.

You're the second gone
And the one to come.

You're this tear
And you're this kiss.

You're the touch of my finger on your skin.
You're the crystal reflection in my eyes.

You're this loneliness
And the grass I lay on
And pass my hands on.

You are all,
All is you.

Someday it will be enough.
Someday we will listen to each other's hearts
and find out just how close we are.
Someday the man in the high castle will have to come down
and answer for what he's done.

Don't despair.
The wind will change its course.
Today I can offer you my shoulder to cry on,
tomorrow you can offer yours to someone else.

Be to others that person who wasn't there for you,
so the world doesn't need to cry anymore.

Lessons in romance and casual *** at a college campus.
It is so weird to want and lack,
It brings the heart down with desperation.
The ache of pause killing the soul
Crying on the shoulder of one time lovers and future memories.

Kiss me before I slip away, want me before the end comes, love me like I love you; forever here until I'm gone.

Goodbye my lover, goodbye my only one. My time is mine and can't waste it anymore.

I've been thinking about going away
Ever since the spring started,
There's something about the flowers
That doesn't suite me well.

But I don't want people close to me
To cry over things that can't be changed.
My mind is pretty messed up
And I need time to put it in place.

I don't wanna take pills,
I wanna be strong and pull my own weight,
But the sun keeps shining in the sky
And taking me down with its rays of light.

I don't wanna take pills,
I wanna be strong and pull my own weight,
But I need you.

You asked me if I miss you,
and I do, terribly,
but I can't anymore.

I need to move on,
we need to move on.
I can't write any more sad poems.

Although it hurts,
although there are nights when all I wanna do is jump out of bed and run to wherever you might be,
although life is just not the same without you near me.

I'm just gonna have to carry that pain
and we are gonna have to learn to live missing each other.

There are no fairy tale endings in life,
nor are there always bittersweet ones,
sometimes, there are just endings.

At least we will always have poetry.
I'll see you at the end of another sentence.