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

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…

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

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

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

I trawl the beaches of my mind,
Sifting through detritus for memories,
A single shiny bauble to add to my closet,
Overflowing with skeletons

These sands can never bury things forever,
The waves will come,
They will erode,
Nothing can stay hidden indefinitely

Erosive process
Your relentless memory
Worn walls, weakened heart

I want to explore the sensual map that is your body,
My hands and mouth the tools of discovery,
Caressing, licking your precious land,
Until your sighs become moans...

I want to explore the sensual map that is your body,
My hands and mouth the tools of discovery,
Caressing, licking your precious land,
Until your sighs become moans

A network of nerve endings,
Electrified
Mapping your ecstasy
Until you're aglow

A body erupting with passion,
A land erupting volcanically,
Molten magma flowing,
Scorching euphoria

I still tear these words out of my throat occasionally
And I talk to you but I know you're not listening
All you do is silently scream from behind every song
And oh how I play you on repeat, just to get a taste
Hungering like the ****** that I am
You're my most romantic drinking problem
You're poison and I can't get enough
My body quivers, my hands shake
But you'll never be my fix
You can't fix this mess I've wrought
With unchained heart and foolish tongue
And I'd rather see an end to this heartache
But where's the fun in finality?

You kissed her on the cheek and still remember the way her eyes crinkled as she smiled
Maybe you did it because you just didn't know what to say
Maybe it was the last time you'd get to

It's the kind of kiss you still think about years later
A neural pathway dedicated to that snippet of time, firing, firing
Devastating and vivid
A chance to live it again and again

An irrational fixation, an aberration of sense and reason, a heart committed to treason, betraying the self and the pursuit of peace

I bit off more than I could chew,
When I said I wanted you

You were a mess of scars,
****** by awful men
And I was a boy,
Trying to lick your wounds

"I wanted to fix you," I said
Foolish boy,
You can't fix people

I should have called it quits
But your kiss left me breathless
And I was at wit's end

You ****** me too,
And when you were through,
I was no longer a boy,
But a shattered man

Now I've got a scar or two,
But what does it prove?
That I've learned my lesson?
Or that I'm ready to **** up again?

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 am a fool,
Designed to crave forbidden fruit,
Made to flagellate myself,
Over and over,
Until my skin tears,
And rivulets of blood seep down my back,
I am a victim of my own folly,
A prisoner in my self imposed prison,
Praying for another day,
Where I can taste the sun on my skin

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.

Could you graph the path of my wrathful masochism?
Where would you end?
See I tend to forget the beginnings of it all,
Just this gruesome conclusion
This heinous collusion of chance and demons
An occlusion of vision
This endless derision of what I continue to hold so dear

And what if they made a movie of my narrowminded delusion?
A myopic biopic starring yours truly,
And duly shown for all to see real lunacy

"Love's forever," I says to me and
Forever can be as long as you want it to be

“I guess I’ll just have to forget about you,”
(You idiot…)
“That shouldn’t be hard,” you said, looking away
You patient angel, what did you endure?

Forgetting’s going well, just swell,
As I’m sure you can tell,
And my soul I would sell
To escape from this hell
Of living every day without you

These poems are an extension of me,
A pressure valve to keep my mind from exploding,
These poems are sieves catching grotesqueries
To be turned into something palatable

Poetry somehow doesn't pop without pain,
Somehow inadequate without lurking demons
Fueling passion and longing and fury

These cataclysms are documented and catalogued,
These emotions and stories memorialized,
Their existence in the world a fossil record
Of memories too precious to lose

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

Flesh firm ripe
Juices spilling
Carnal fruition

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

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

Kissing you tastes like nothing,
But aborted dreams and
Could have beens

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."

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

I haven’t dreamt of you in ages,
Yet last night you crept in,
The product of some subconscious fever

I wish you’d have the courtesy to keep your distance,
Because although I miss you the way gasoline misses spark,
I still remember the impact,
Broken glass crunching underfoot
And sirens wheeling away my innocence

I remember colors bleeding away to grayscale,
Like a black and white film morosely painting a plot
Where the actors simply grimace at each other
Over grievances unbeknownst to the audience,
The denouement arrives to show us a lone chalk outline,
Roll credits.

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

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

You were the tornado
I never wanted to disappear,
You left my heart
Without a home,
Dazed and stumbling
From one dead end to the next,
And I still wander,
Late at night,
Looking for a light,
To guide me *home

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

"I'm yours now. You can do whatever you want to me."
I didn't even know what to say,
I never did,
I was still shocked you could want anything to do with me

You said you had hopes for us,
But what hope was there?
We had no direction, no plans,
We just plodded forward hoping this foundation we built could brave the trials of winter

I've read that soulmates can come together and apart just as easily,
A tragic scenario to be certain,
And if that's the case,
What is a soulmate but a reminder that love is eternal agony?

I do still love you,
Love is,
It's become like breathing,
Autonomic

I can't even remember life before this,
What it was like to be absentminded,
The loveliness of ignorance,
Oh how I would gorge on its sweetbreads

But this is simply life now,
I live in flashbacks and moments,
I love ghosts and candied words,
And I drink the liquor of empty hopes

A derelict house stands,
Bereft of purpose,
A cold gust blows,
As faded shutters clap
 
Plaster cracks,
And wood rots,
Pipes freeze,
Burst and rust

The wind persists,
Making the house moan,
As though mourning
The death of hope

The house shudders and falls,
Its poor bones giving in,
(Or giving up,)
And somewhere a bell solemnly knells