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

Choking in this atmosphere
Help me please, I'm dying here!
I need a breath, resuscitation
A change of pace, a new location

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

When I met you, my butterflies kicked like elephants,
Nausea the defining factor in our fledgling relationship

With time, they subsided,
Fluttering from time to time

Suddenly, a cold gust,
A foreboding omen of changing seasons

My butterflies had all died,
Killed by grief and the thought of a cold, lonely winter ahead

We’re quick to blame those that break our hearts,
Railing against lovers for our misfortunes,
Consigning them to hell and so forth,

When in reality,
Our oft exhausted and defeated transgressors
Serve merely as the catalyst for the internal destruction that follows

For no one impacts your emotional wellbeing as much as you,
And you birth your demons, your pain,
After ‘us’ is no more,
There is just you and your head,
An entity far more dangerous than any borne of flesh and blood

Do not judge those that hurt you,
For they are as foolish and human as you,
And remember that though
Love may linger and torment,
It is a reminder of what your heart can do,
When it’s met its match

I miss that which has long ceased to be
I'm sure you're still beautiful
I know you are
But you're not who I fell in love with
Not anymore
Time has done so much
Changed, gnarled, skewed

I wander through graveyards of dead memories
Fondly reminiscing warm hands, soft lips, radiant sunsets, cruise ships

We amass stories, experiences
We adapt and change
What is left of the person you were 3 years ago? 5? 10?

And so again I'm sorry
(I've learned the taste of that word well)
I've no idea who you are today
But I love you, whatever that means
However I can, I love you

A living burden,
Unpredictability,
Crave stability

Futures rest unknown,
Hiding love, tragedy,
Chances infinite

My life is starting a new chapter
While nostalgia's fingers firmly grasp pages dog-eared from wear, despair
Refusing to lose their place, to let go
Stubbornly bookmarked a time pockmarked with sorrow

Oh foolish persistence!
Look ahead to new endeavor
Love's too clever to predict

After we're gone
  The clocks will keep ticking
     Keeping time for no one
         Tick
             Tock
  Hearts will keep beating
     Aching for faded lovers
         Lub
             Dub

After we're gone
   Which clock will be the last
        to finally stop?

I remember your scent well,
Of all things, coconut.

My clothes, my pillow,
It all smelled like you.

I clung to that scent and I knew it was fading,
"Please don't go."

You even sent me a letter smelling of you,
So your scent would be always be near.

And for months after, that scent made me recoil,
As all the memories came flooding back.

And now the scent is once again benign,
A gentle reminder of a love now lost.

They say ghosts feel cold,
But your hand on my cheek,
Pale, ethereal, yet warm
Says otherwise,
They say ghosts feel cold,
But my memories could warm me forever,
So throw another log on the fire, love,
It's gonna be a cold winter

Trust
Is the
First
To rust
Before
It all
C   o   l   l   a   p   s    e    s

This is performance art of the worst kind,
And the artists are performing against their will,
Trapped in glass boxes, pounding on the walls,
Screaming at ghosts

They mime at passersby for help,
Anything to relieve the pain,
The interminable burden,
Strangers sadly shrug and walk on

And so these ****** souls
Toil away at their craft,
Scribbling nonsense on bits of scrap,
Trying to fill the void

Every word I write about you,
Drives you deeper and deeper into the earth

Your blood spills on these pages,
Stained crimson for all to witness

A grotesque reminder,
Of all the seeping wounds so long ago

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 once danced to The Beatles,
Blaring through headphones as makeshift speakers,
Slowly circling on the balcony overlooking the ocean
And lost in each other,
I still remember your black and white polka dot dress,
Your charming fascinator,
And I remember wanting nothing more than to kiss you,
And envelop myself in your essence,
As tendrils of young love wrapped us tighter
Than the empty sheets I grasped this morning.
I guess it’s time to wake up.

My stomach's in knots,
Thanks to a pretty blonde girl,
I'm enveloped in nerves,
And I hope I don't hurl

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

(n.)*: a generalized ache, radiating, pounding, reminding you of everything that's been missing for so long

(n.)*: the kind of truth that makes your voice crack, no matter how many times you say it aloud

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

(n.)*: the length of silence elapsed after quietly saying, *"Please don't leave"

(n.): that nagging worry in the back of your mind that maybe you're not as happy as you could be, as you *should be, maybe this isn't enough

(n.)*: the act of inevitably setting flame to every new city you build, because starting over is easier than maintaining

Starved glutton
Hopeful pessimist
Cognizant ignoramus
Overeducated fool
I am a roiling sea of paradoxes

Whisper me sweet nothings of time melting away these regrets
Or how time itself melted away all these months and years apart
Assure me that the years have dulled these memories, diluted their potency
Lie to me and tell me these memories have faded or that time heals all

Time, the biggest liar of all,
Taking memories and simply aging them in oak barrels to be sampled like a fine whiskey with a cigar or a side of regret

Time doesn't heal a **** thing,
It makes tragedy tolerable,
Like soldiers desensitized to the smell of death and rot

Time can't heal a story whose happy ending can never be written as intended,
It can only lend itself so that the story may be rewritten.

You make me nervous,
You see, I'm not good with pretty girls
I feel like I'm disarming a bomb,
That can detonate at any second

Which wire should I cut?
The red or the green?
*The red or the green?

My life's a dichotomy
Pure business is what they see
Hair slicked back
Professional, hot ****
Smiling proud, *******
Look at my doctorate!

Charming sociopath
I'll grin like you've never seen before
"It was a pleasure talking to you," she'll tell me

And in my head, I'm ******* screaming
I'm dancing with devils and entertaining ghosts
Tempering and instigating demons with liquor in a paradox I've yet to understand
Engendering masochistic tendencies
Because I deserve no better

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

I hear your echoes in every bottle,
It's all I can do to reach for the cork
I need this, I need this, I hate this
Please, please, please
Leave it, just leave it, at ease

Such pride, such vanity
Such dignity, chin up, love

It's over but does it ever really end?

Drowning and on fire,
A hopeless love,
Torrid and dire

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

Your genitals were in my mouth
You gasped and you groaned
Your genitals were in my mouth
Pulling my hair as you moaned

Your genitals were in my mouth
But I'll never speak to you again
I've been taught well to
Dissociate readily with a grin

Dressed to impress
And I must confess
How full of **** I really am

Why did you have to pull me in like this?
Why couldn't you be like every other girl?
Benign? Impermanent?

You were untraditional, unorthodox,
You became air where there was none,
Water where there was only dust

And then you told me that you were sick,
And nothing brings two people in like illness,
All of a sudden everything changed

I've never felt like much of a father figure,
But ******* you made me care like one,
Probably why it's still so agonizing

And I'm still tasked with laughable ideas
Like "letting go" and "moving on"
And I know that there's no alternative

There is no room for me in your life,
You've set sail for new waters,
And I'm simply left to drown

You were love uncompromised, unadulterated,
You were the purest expression of the drug,
Before I tasted death on my tongue,
And before my heart learned despair,
Before inhibitions and walls were erected
Making love a feat as difficult as trying to go a day without flashbacks of us holding each other as if nothing else had ever made more sense than this moment right here