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

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?"

The thought of holding your hand nearly drove me to tears this morning
It was not the taste of your lips, nor the way your eyes pierced right through me,
A chain reaction of thoughts led me to the hopeless memory of simply clutching your hand as you drove along

You, you beautiful cancer, still pollute everything

This life has taught me that we are promised nothing,
Least of all that love will listen when you simply ask for it to *stay

Bury me,
Strike my name from the records,
Pretend this never happened

We never ******, or kissed,
Held hands or met

In this new world,
You are untouched, unharmed,
I was never there to hurt you,
I was never there to love you

Blacklist me from this life,
And cast me into oblivion,
Where I was never even born

I am ill and have no salve nor tonic,
No solace for a heart worn by grief,
No reprieve for a soul crushed with regret,
I am but a plaything for Love,
A rag doll to be hurled around
By a petulant God,
Punishing Man for his hubris,
His gall to demand happiness,
An impudence unforgivable,
Punishable by a lifetime of
Emotional flagellation and damnation
Damnation, forsooth
**** this bottomless heart,
**** this burning blood it pumps,
**** this undying fire,
Burning for a dead icon,
Like a dog bringing sticks to his master’s grave,
This fire burns almost to prove a point
With no regard for life,
Until it razes this body clean to the ground

What could I write you
That would make up for this time
For the words I threw
And the women I ******

I'm not sorry but that's a lie
I'm sorry every day that you aren't here
Sorry it was easier to give up than try
I'm sorry life happened this way

I've proven that I could give myself to others
Making an attempt at bliss
But it's never been the same
Something's always been amiss

What could I write you
I wonder as I sit, sighing
I don't know
But I'll never stop trying

You came along to kiss away the boy in me,
To show me what happens when you love with no compromise,
You were the most painful and beautiful thing I've ever met

I tried fixing you instead of kissing every beautiful scar
Instead of caressing every jagged edge, on which I gladly would have sliced my hands if you'd let me

Had I realized what heartache does to people, I wouldn't have been so callous,
I wouldn't have lashed out, I would have thought twice
I'm sorry it cost two broken hearts for me to learn
I'm sorry I'm blind in everything but hindsight

I wish you could have met the man you made me,
And maybe we both could reflect on years gone by

A living burden,
Unpredictability,
Crave stability

Futures rest unknown,
Hiding love, tragedy,
Chances infinite

This love is a pathology,
A mind clearly powerless over
A heart mired with longing

Go on and medicate me,
Quell these dopamine starved receptors
They want only your taste,
They want only you.

As the years stretch,
The prognosis grows more grim,
As I drink in your absence
And choke on its bitterness,
I tell myself, *"Finish your medicine"

Every woman deserves to be someone's muse

Immortalize her
Paint her with undying words
She is your purpose
The reason you toil
The reason your soul bleeds
The reason you can't fall asleep without her clinging to the tendrils of sleep trying to wrap you in sweet unconsciousness

She'll be the reason you can't absentmindedly look at lakes

She'll be why your pen keeps moving
She'll be the ink when your pen runs dry
She'll be there, even if you can't touch her

She'll always be there

He's left everybody
She grimaced, "...And me?"
He nodded, "mais oui."
She asked why. *"Ennui."

They say it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, but I question that adage. What if you can't enjoy a quiet moment without thinking about your love? What if every woman you've dated since simply brings a smile to your face but one glance at her still feels like your heart is being squeezed by a vice? What if you taste this loss every single day like a mouthful of ashes? What if you need to be distracted by a new woman just so your brain will shut the **** up for a minute? What if every song that even remotely hints at love makes you think about her and no one else? Is it still better? Is it better knowing that the only person you've ever given your heart to is spending the rest of her life with someone else? Is it better knowing that this could have been so much more?

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

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

Sorry for staring,
Your visage has simply stolen my words

I could craft volumes of poetry on your eyes alone,
I swear I see the souls of sapphires
In those bottomless pools of azure

But here, now, I am spellbound,
Bewitched by beauty,
Captivated by curves,
And I hope I can crack out a "Hello"

The heart is rich and expressive,
but one word it will never know:
*futility

rain drops
  ripples ascending
    disturbing placidity and calm

I just want to hear the truth,
I want to hear your voice and see if it cracks when you look at me,
Ages ago, you said we'd meet again when we turned 50, on the same boat we first found each other,
No matter what, you said we'd meet
I wonder if those were just convenient words,
Convenient touches, convenient love
I'm sorry, that's unkind.
(Then again, much of this has been unkind)
Our love was not convenient,
It was difficult and effortless, expensive and priceless, painful and analgesic
It was volatile and tender, it was all I ever wanted

Every day a page is written in this outrageous book of life
It's distressing how distressed these pages are

It doesn't matter
So many stories are being written in parallel
Co-authors of love and destruction
******* and screaming

I would have created volumes with you
Libraries would have stood as monuments to us

But as it stands I'm just writing epitaphs to everything I've ever lost
And at what ******* cost
And it doesn't matter
It doesn't matter

It's all in my head
And there it will die

You swept through
Like a forest fire,
Burning everything in sight.
Wanton devastation,
Reckless and cruel,
Leaving only ashes
And smoke
Rising in pretty curlicues,
The last sign of beauty extinguished.

Tasty biting whiskey peat
Yes that's right, I'll take mine neat
Smoky cask strength, burning heat
Thank you Scotland for this treat!

I'm a ******* mess
Such a ******* success
It's just an excess of unrest
Because nothing's really wrong

I watch the sunset and sip beer
And it's all just a bit queer
How I could really complain
Look upon with disdain
A life that's really not that ******* bad

The **** in your head is what'll do you in
The demons within, all dripping with sin
I just can't make peace, can't find a release
To try and grease this process along
Until I find a place where I belong

I want to fall into your gravitational field,
Feel you grab me until
I sink into your essence
And our flesh becomes one

I got to wondering the other day,
I wondered if you still have my t-shirts,
Do they still smell like me?
Do they smell like cologne, youth and regret?

I’ve gotten older, but clearly haven’t gotten smarter,
I clearly haven’t learned to avoid touching stoves
Or walking in traffic
Or poking beehives

**** your institutions,
**** your distance,
And **** your rules,
Because this heart couldn’t care less

The heart wants what the heart wants,
And what the heart wants is to **** me,
It wants to turn the clocks back,
It wants to be less of an *******,
It wants anything but this emptiness,
Anything at all but this…

Music always was an escape for me,
Until you came and went,
And stole it all from me

Tegan and Sara, blink-182
Seether, Jimmy Eat World
and Aerosmith too

Every song was a dagger,
That I masochistically plunged,
Until I was drained, haggard

I have my songs back,
But you've stained them,
Forever marked black

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

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

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

For all the things I've done
She was probably the one I hurt most
With words like daggers
And still I stagger from what I did

I'll internalize this shame
Metabolize in vain
You see my brain won't let me see another day
Without remembering
And all I do is pray you're happy

We're all made to pay for our mistakes,
And my heart spits out poetry,
Trying to repay this debt,
But some mistakes we never really stop paying for

Entitled to be untitled, blank forgotten gravestone, smooth marble untainted with dates and memories

Escape unscathed, no scratches, no scars,
No doubts or hopes or doors left ajar

Clean, empty, pure desistance, an insistence to embrace the nothing inside us all

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

It could be so different
You and I could detonate
Set off a beautiful supernova
Blow it all away

We could rediscover each other in a new world
Build anew, break it down and start again
I would love you through the birth and death of stars
The cosmos would be ours to paint
It could be so different

Two tangled, disembodied souls consuming each other
Feeding each other and growing
A loving symbiosis rippling through space and time
It could be so different

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

(n.)*: that body of water in your chest, violent waves slamming against a weathered ribcage, threatening to drown you from the inside

Imagine licking a Tootsie Pop,
And being unsure if the center,
Will taste like *regret

Spring is in bloom
While I smile through gloom
The flowers are here and they're bright
I look and I cheer
As this warmth is so dear
Maybe now the gloom will take flight

You know that lump in your throat?
The one that feels like you'll choke any second?
Those are the words you sent to die in your stomach
They're the ones you wanted to say
The ones you thought might fix everything
Or maybe they'd ******* **** you, who knows?

But you swallow that lump, and you breathe and you wonder if those words would ever be given a voice, granted an audience
because God knows they're not dead,
they're churning around in your stomach
giving you hell for what you've done

And look, I'm sorry, this is the best that I can do. I hope that counts for something.