a word for beauty
for yours I've never enough:
pulchritudinous

Red wine courses through my veins
Another glass poured as the bottle drains
And my lips in time have ruby stains
I think of you and my heart, it pains

A silhouette of trees,
Spindly branchlets reaching skyward,
Yearning to pierce the very clouds they merely obscure

A clear blue sky obstructed
By a periwinkle haze
Gently drifting, drifting
Impeded by naught
Driven by inertia

An infinite expanse
And so much hope

She'll teach you the meaning of silence

Another bubble rises
Another minute gone
Watch your ache evaporate
At least until the dawn
Drink down the bitterness
And taste your hollowness
Try in vain to flood the chasm
Your relief, just a phantasm

I don't want to fix you,
Don't want to change you,
Control you,
I want you as broken as I am,
I want you *just the way you are

A fool shipwrecked
Driven to delirium
Driven to quench his thirst with seawater
Drinking more and more
Until he was killed by the thing
He thought could never betray him

Gasp and catch your breath
Hold charred remains of bridges
It's all really gone

As I pour another glass to libate
Memories appear and sublimate

I have dreams where I'm searching rooms for echoes of your voice,
Faint reverberations of my own imaginings.

How many loves have you put to rest?
How many fires have been extinguished?
I never knew someone could get so used to the smell of ashes
Fingers black with soot and shame
But practiced, so practiced
Malice? No, not malice
Simply routine by now
Shaking my head, I asked
"What did it feel like the first time your flame died?"

I've stopped trying to see the logic in any of this
What logic is there in looping a reel of moments so devastating I have to literally shake my head
(As if the attempt at giving myself a mild concussion will rid me of your visage?)

I can't escape. My only solace is between another's legs.
My longing for your skin is matched only by my desire to **** something beautiful just to get you out of my head.
Is it wrong that I feel this disequilibrium otherwise?
Something just feels constantly off.
I can feel it in my bones
Like a storm you anticipate
But all you sense is discomforting quiet

I was never the sort to waste energy on hopeless things, until I became one,
Until I realized that I no longer remember feeling satisfied on my own

I'm a prisoner in my own head
A hostage to a heart run amok
And I just wish I knew
How to break free

A fly drenched in the sap of a love most hopeless
Struggling, straining to break loose
Every flap of wings sealing its fate
Dooming it to an amber prison
Hardened, crystallized, it loved until its dying breath

Another mistake, another blunder
Fragile love ripped asunder
Fairy tale romances dead
Cruel reality, hearts bled

I find that as I get older,
Cuts take longer to heal,
Scars stay longer, deeper

Inconvenient reminders of my failures,
Trophies of inadequacies,
Agonies made tangible

You are the cut in the roof of my mouth,
The one I keep tonguing just to feel it bleed
Just to feel something

I have starved for your lips,
Reliving endless memories,
Passion and flesh ethereal

I am the ongoing experiment to see if a man can die of longing
And I have no endgame in mind,
I will build my life around this hollow

I will move forward as this gulf grows wider,
As the streams of our lives flow in parallel,
Never to cross except perhaps in cruel dreams

I've let go of every flame but you,
You, who will never burn for me again
While I continue to dutifully smolder

Keep your heart to yourself. Keep it under a glass display for others to look at, but never to hold. Tell them about the scars, tell them your stories, tell them how this is now just a museum for broken things. Be the cautionary tale for young people who look at each other and say, "That won't be us. Promise me that won't be us."

The memories still flow freely
Like a cut that won't stop bleeding
Though you've been gone for years
And to ghosts I'm left pleading

When love was severed at the root
Like a limb discarded
I've since felt dull ache
Perpetually disregarded

Like phantom limb syndrome
This missing extension can be felt still
Though there's nothing there
Naught but the occasional chill

I wanna kiss the parts of you even you've forgotten
So when I say it you know it's true:
*I honestly adore every inch of you

For every heart broken, a story is gained,
Every hypothetical forever I entertained,
Now merely an anecdote
Of how I used to dote
And I wrote, and I wrote
And I'm so sorry that all you are now
Is just another story I tell

Snow falls and coats this ugly world in a coat of white,
Clean, fresh, untouched
Bury it all
Smother this sadness with alabaster beauty
And when spring comes, maybe hope will follow

You can spend life in many ways,
Analyzing or distracted in a daze
These truths may be self evident,
But perceptions are realities bent
You seek assurances from within,
But permanence never truly sinks in

Hollow melancholy, years dripping by like venomous honey
Mourning, lamenting histories written,
Silences screaming louder than petty words
Insinuations driven home with the subtlety of hammer and nail

I feel as if I'm in suspended animation,
Floating in a memory laden soup
Trapped between two worlds,
And I simply must awake

Loving her was like chasing a sunset,
Each day, a new opportunity
To despair

A curious reflex, a little twitch,
As her smile gently curved up
Every time he tasted her memory

She's a funeral you go to every day
Every day you work on your speech
and get the words to come out
just a little better
than the day before
And every day only one thing stays the same:
*You miss her

You wield emotional harm like a knife,
Throats slit, bleeding ruby despair
You withdraw affection like a trained killer
Stopping pulses with nary a care