I left. I'm back,
as a different person,
and a cooler cat.

Won't you come?
I mean, to sing along
with me!

I know you all despise
my poetry.

To the one person that ever read-
to this day my heart is still in dread-
and my thoughts just as thoughtless!
There's not much to be in a world
filled with coffins..

In the time we last spoke-- I mean--
my fingers with the page,
my gpa was higher- a 3.5--
and my heart was aglow.

But no- I have become what I
feared I would,
manipulative, *****, bummed
out and bitter, and
I barely noticed it.

I barely noticed it.

But thanks to coming back,
and reading through my
old catalogue--

I have found a reason
to carry on.

Tin pan, in hand,
fists closed,
clutching a thermos.

He has brown eyes,
a scarf, striped.
He sits on the floor.

Legs crossed, a cane
between the fragile limbs.
He is there, watching.

The sun casts a shadow
on narrow buildings;
tall enough to blot the heat out.

There was a fire here
until the police
put it out.

"He probably did it to himself," they say.
There are marks along his neck.
The scarf covers them, but they know they're there.

You care about only a few things.
The odd specific details in our
encounters with one another,
how you become so entranced
by the wind; how I'm sometimes insane.

Is my insanity worth the few moments
you spend happy with who I am?
Are the lapsing courses of impending
schizoaffective illness scary to only me?

It seems you're a different type of crazy.
Not a starving artist- not unlike one either
though. I wonder if it may be inside your head
as you watch me, watching you.

I'll break the poetic rambling, poetic romancing
and tie myself to the tree that is the wind flickering
across your hair, beveling your face in the morning
light as we walk, and you talk about your dreams.

Do you know anything about the nightly terror?
The slow and collapsing waves of the mind as
they reflect on horrid dilapidation, horrid existence?
I wonder as you wonder if I wonder too.

Oh! The saint has called upon the regal
battleground of Illinois to deliver me
a message of utmost sincerity and
inner-beauty. A quaint "I love you."

You ask me if I could ever be less
complicated, non complacent. And
you also ask me a million other things
I dare not answer, I would never answer.

You entertain the idea that inside my irreverence
there is some hidden truth or holy gospel undelivered
by your poetry books and your indie rock bands.
I can't see past the orange highlights in your hair.

How beautiful! What marvelous features on your
face, what exquisite traipsing lust! Sometimes
I disgust even myself with the utter health
of my persistent reeling comments on vanity.

And I suppose it seems quite blank and dim.
I mean to never have a single fear.
I see that you have become kind of slim;
the way you hurt yourself is what I leer.
Would you ever be kind enough to stop?
I don't think that you understand my plea.
You stand in the center of my dad's shop.
But I can see that you are just a flea.
A passing wave on my own separate sea.
I was writing a sonnet until you-
lost my train of thought by
cutting yourself. Can't you see?
Can't you see?

Nothing matters so why believe-
in someone who you'll barely see?
Maybe twice a week I'll entertain you.
Maybe twice a week a shaded hue
will fall to stop my clue-
less heart as it bursts.
I am cursed.
I am cursed.

So, I'll bear the weight as I watch the way the
red scar, jagged runs along your pale neck
as you undress, your v neck dress.

I'll see your perfect figure in every glass
and every reflected tabletop, my dear.
Chicago has killed you.

And every party-
every piece of sanity
is useless, hopeless.
As every man-
every other lover
is just as mindless.

I wish that-
with you I
could complete-
a thought-
maybe without
the stutter-

but with beauty
comes a sincere-
scarily closing
portion of my
chest.
A lapsing
wave as I-
proclaim
to never
breath again.

there was a penny,
lying on the ground, rusted
not much unlike me.

Bright fluorescent lights,
they are now
shining down from above.

The line is long, the wait is on,
it's taken so long and I am
only there
for sugar
and milk.

There is a woman
in front of me,
and we look at each other.

She seems to see it
deep inside me,
she seems so
worried
and
understanding.

Like she, like I, has been there before.
The place where eyes don't shine.
The darkest places that exist in our minds.

She seems to be sad
as I ask her where
she
gets her
hair
dyed.

Then I see the stamps
she passes to the clerk.
A blue, and a white paper.

"Oh, you have kids?"
the clerk asks; she
replies with
a casual
and polite
"Yes."

She is young, barely
older than me,
and I feel the weight
of the room fall
down onto all
the people in line.

I haven't seen her since,
I just hope she's doing fine.

and so
                                     beautiful
                         was the
                                     tree
                         of which
                                    hidden
                         love could
                                    reign,

if I
       could ever
name the
        feeling
of being
         nailed
to a
         wooden
board and
        thrown
into the
        sea.

I found a foreign love,
under the covers
of a scarlet moon,

she asked me how I was,
and I replied, good, you?
She then began to walk away.

And I was left,
and I felt sick
and ill
and desperate.

For I just want to be in love, not to worry of the morning light.