The hate is killing me.

These cigarettes hate you.
This beer hates you.
These shots of brandy hate you.
The blunt hates you.

But I swear I still love you.

Her love shines like
a sunset through venetian blinds,
leaving me stripped
and striped with shadows and light.

Her love is the knife dissecting
my spine one vertebrae at a time.

I hope she likes
what I really am inside,
because I spill my guts
just to hear her sigh.

well this keyboard is intimidating
but jeez i can't keep
using a pen forever
so what if it's more
comfortable?

This poem looked better
When it was
Written down.

What are these words?
What are words at all?
Am I expressing?
Am I conveying an ideal?
I don't think I'm using words right.
I think I'm writing wrong.

Daisies, tulips, petunias,
orchids, and roses.

The flowers all speak to me.

I perk up my ears
to better hear them
when they whisper
in hushed undertones:

"she loves you not."

0303
9802
2004

Two thousand four hundred and fifty five days
spent floating the vacuum of space.

My lungs ache with misplaced distaste
for the beautiful sights surrounding me.

I used to add them all up in romantic displays
but my math of late just ain't what it used to be.

Obtuse angles of obtrusive angels portray
ninety degrees of too little, too late.

Skinny girls have big *****,
and that's just no fun.
Sometimes when their pants drop,
it smells like fish and grot.
But that's okay, I'll lick it anyway,
be it the middle of the night
Or the dawn of a new day.
But baby when you ***
that sticky white goo,
I'll pop in a piece of gum
and then I'll leave you.

Only two more hours of work
on this rainy Thursday afternoon,
and with each step I take
I check the clock
and between my heavy breathing
I mutter to myself with a smile:
"today can't escape tomorrow."

...

Sunday morning and we eat like royalty,
I'm all smiles and her eyes are all over me
and with these empty plates between us
I tell her I don't want this day to end,
and as a longing grin shows on her lips
she so eloquently says
"but today can't escape tomorrow."

Standing beside you, I ponder...

...was the grass always this green and lush?
...has the baby blue sky seemed this vast before?
...where have these infinite possibilities arisen from?
...is my hand too sweaty to hold?
...have the stars forever shone this brilliant?
...where does time go?
...how does her smile warm me like the radiance of the sun?
...will my face crack from smiling this hard?
...is it possible to love her any more?
...how can I prove it to her?

I'll figure it out, I'll find a covered porch and a glider or a pair of rocking chairs. I'll count the cars and admire her hair in the breeze blowing between our knees as the future unfolds itself out of thin air.
A love I've never felt before,
a beautiful pair...

"what're you thinking about?"

Oh! Me?
I'm just thinking about...

o, crashing doubt upon us,
such as gravity grounds meteors,
burning us smaller and hotter,
as we rip along through
layers upon layers of atmosphere.

Impact was subtle though,
with nary a crater
or fissure between us,
and we cooled down softly,
slightly steaming
on a December afternoon.

It's our love of course,
and our friendship,
that let us perforate the skies
without qualm,
or any harm
to become of us.

and the things I've forgotten
will line the seams of my mind,
and every last nail driven
into the coffin of my memory
will echo in my ears
just like they always have

so I'll quietly stare at these
photographs of tomorrow night,
when everything is alright,
and I'll just keep trying
to remember that they are
underdeveloped and overexposed

jizzy **** and yellowed teeth
smiling up at me
as dripping, I stand,
a man set free

Thirty six days
and nary a trace
of evidence indicating
she will ever go away.

oh, sugar packet
spill your contents thoroughly
make my coffee sweet

I didn't pursue an intimate relationship
with this little eighteen-year-old,
but when she told me she was surprised
that I never tried to kiss her,
I really wish I had.

Now my fingers imagine her firm flesh
whilst wrapped around my purple thing,
pulsing away in the darkness
and reveling in the unknown
pleasures of her love long lost.

When finished I lay
and I wonder,
with longing doubt,
if her spindly fingers
ever imagine me.

The dawn broke quietly through the last of the night,
and he rose with the sun.
As the morning light shown red and orange on the ceiling
he opened his eyes to the day's first flame.

Scott stirred, feeling the last of his dreams leave him to wake,
and felt a subtle yet prominent throb in the back of his head.
He felt the shape of her body curled into a ball beside him,
and briefly basked in the cumulative warmth they generated.
Turning away from her with a yawn he reached for the bottle
on the end table beside him, fumbling in the dwindling darkness.
The brandy was warm but still undeniably brandy as he brought it
to his lips and bit himself off a good swallow, grimacing.
He stood then, and strode to the window. The orange glow
from the rising sun contracted his irises and expanded his pores.

He felt whole. He was real here. He knew she was real too,
and that knowledge left him deeply satisfied as he turned to
explore her sleeping body with his eyes.


She heard him wake and take a gulp of that foul liquor he drank
twenty-four hours a day, recalling memories of his breath on her
from the night before. It wasn't that she was angry at his appetite
for *****, just sometimes it frightened her. She soulfully believed
he had a brilliant mind and just wished he would use it someway
other than a sponge for liquor. It was pity, she felt bad for him, and
a part of her thought that he knew it, and he fed off of that pity.
With this thought she turned and opened her eyes to the sunshine
pouring through the bay window at the foot of the bed, and saw his silhouette turn and meet her gaze at the same instant. For a moment
they just looked, pondering each other's doubts and certainties in a
way that made everything else in the room seem to fade out of existence.

He was surprised to see her looking at him in the earliest hours of
the day, she tended to enjoy sleeping in so he always considered
these moments of waking his own. Standing before the window,
and the rising sun shining through it, his shadow was cast perfectly
across her body if he were on top of her. At that thought a quiet
stirring of heat and primal instinct passed over his body and mind
and he smiled at her laying in his shadow, letting his eyes roll easily
over the hills and valleys of her naked body, further fanning the flame
in his *****. She smiled back at him and sighed, feeling the heat herself.

She saw him step forward and out of the light, and was briefly blinded
as his shadow moved from between the sun and her still sleep-ridden
eyes. Wincing and shielding her face from the sun with her hand, she
closed her eyes to the light and before she could open them again she felt his touch on her neck and on her outstretched hand as he brought
her face up to meet his. Lips full of static electricity touched her own
with a shock and she jolted, fully awake, and opened her eyes in surprise. When she saw the same expression mirrored on his face they
both laughed heartily into the long silence of the morning, breathing deeply in giant, hitching, breaths. Sighing and regaining his composure
he lay back down beside her and felt her curl up against him, almost
automatically at this point.

He played with her hair and she touched
his chest, feeling his heartbeat in rhythm with hers.

Comfort, she thought.
Comfort can be so dangerous.
Comfort is a double edged sword.

Brandy, he thought.
Brandy can be so delicious.
Brandy... I need to buy more.

The blustery winter sky sighs her name,
and my eyes pulse with the beat of the rain.
I can't help but ponder 'what if'
we hadn't been so **** selfish,
and I've grown so **** tired instead
from being so **** stuck in my head.

But my head
just ain't what it used to be,
then again
what's the point anyway.

Before dawn breaks
we're both awake
and so quietly
I run my hands
over your back.

Without words
your body turns
and those sleepy eyes
come to meet mine
in a kiss.

Forever I could live
a life like this,
with the windows open
and you right here
in my arms.

Nothing,
not even the stars,
can hurt you
as much as love.

I'll be the slumpy man
caught on the clotheslines in the wind
strung out on powerlines
graced by the company of crows
and the circling buzzards
all hungry for my eyeballs

I'll be the slumpy man
hung over the sofa
draped across recliners
trying to dry out
before my braincells die out
trying to stay awake and sober

He sat gripping his beer bottle in one hand
and a pen in the other, tapping it repetitively
on the open notebook before him.

That's when a little red-haired squeeze
came in and sat beside him, grazing his leg
with hers as she ordered her mixer.

She saw the great potential for love in his eyes
and started questioning his mind accordingly.
Seeking his essence, searching his being.

Yet he never shifted his gaze from the lined paper,
and answered all of her inquisitions without hesitation
because he knew what she wanted.

But she shifted closer to him and started to speak under
her breath, asking him if he has a woman waiting for him
at home. Asking more than her words implied.

His knuckles whitened and tightened around the green glass,
and the pen started tapping faster and faster on the unwritten
words upon the empty sheets.

She put her hand on his forearm and the tapping ceased
as blood red mist started fogging his already blurred vision,
seeing crimson, he ripped his eyes from the blank pages.

The bottle shattered and broken glass sank into his palm,
the pen erupted painting his calloused fingers black.
He turned and faced this intruder.

"Please leave me alone now," he spits into her frightened face,
and the crimson fog covers his sight completely, as his thirst is
sparked, ignited, and begins burning furiously.

He slams his eyelids shut and searches for Arlo's words,
searches for Arlo's eyes in his mind.
Searches and searches for her heart.

He massages his temples and counts his breaths.
He fights for his sanity in the face of doubt and intolerance.
He just wants his dear to be here..
He sighs and opens his eyes.

And he's alone again.

Don't ever let distance trick you
into thinking that things would all
be so much better otherwise.

The things I hated about you
from all those miles away,
are still the things I hate about you
standing face to face.

You'll see one day,
when you're only nineteen
and life is a liquid
in which you swim
and drink deeply of,
that life will get you drunk
and you'll sleep so soundly
and dream your golden dreams
until one day you wake up
and you'll be thirty-three.

Hungover from living
a little too quickly,
you'll think to yourself:
*what happened to me?

fires that flicker and dance to your beat
cast moving shadows of stumbling feet
in the dim contrast you've created
many children revel naked

uttering guttural
grunts and sighs

little palms reach
toward the skies

Looking at you, I've missed my train of thought.
Forever blue, earth in a flowerpot.