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Tom Leveille Feb 2014
whenever i hear a wind chime i think of your voice. i wonder what it's like to be your bedsheets. what it would really be like to understand the jargon in your head. i ******* want to kiss you sometimes and then others i really do want concrete between your hands & my skin. i can't think straight all the time so i wonder if it benefits me at all to explain what it means that i don't want or expect anything from you but if we accidentally liked eachother in that middle school "sort of way" then i wouldn't say no. i want to really understand what you mean when you say "stay" to me in our texts. i wonder if your sleeping pills do to you what they do to me. i'm thinking again about "stay" and maybe i'm choked up on you leaving for school up north but i'll never tell you because get the **** out of here and don't look back especially not for me. stay. your smile, genuine or not tears me in two. i wish every face on the planet had your smile and i am ******* afraid of you wearing lipstick. i'm terrified of your bare skin and goodbyes. i hate farewells and see you laters. i knew the first time i saw you interact on your phone while drinking coffee the way you text people and how i now do the same thing. i get around read receipts. i sometimes want to hear you say you want.. not so much me, maybe me, but my company. theres a park near my house where i've imagined us paddle boating. i got written up at work once for daydreaming about it. what the **** is in a friendship anyway, decency in a human isn't biological. i get hung up on knee jerks and gut reactions. i want to know what the ******* are thinking about when i look up and you are looking right at me. but then again, i don't. as long as i'm wondering. as long as the door might swing open or closed. stay. go. run. **** your collarbones. **** your chest and skin and lips and everything i hate but crave and might like about you without say so. stay. sit down and explain to me why it is that i care anyway. i am afraid that if i say i want to *******, you'll think i mean *******, and not "*******". i wanna know if any of this sounds familiar and i here i am back to wondering what the **** is going on and why you're looking at me. the hair on my neck stands on end when you do and another thing... **** poetry. i cloud my feelings for you & anything else with the abstract so you'll never really know if i ******* hit rock bottom or not over the fact that i know we will never kiss. somebody just said "**** buddy" on tv and i think sometimes symmetry between irony & circumstance. i have harbored some of these thoughts since the night you said hello to me. i'm sorry i had to get over the fact that once upon a time i wanted to save somebody, and you weren't going to let it be you. i do sometimes think my hands might break you, that you spend your day painting a picket fence in your head that you can't get on one side or the other on. i felt like you didn't want to get up from dinner and i rushed it out the door because i am afraid to start a sentence with so. so stay. i am sorry my words often wear brass knuckles. your smile shoots to **** and if i ever die while you still remember my name i want you to read this or read something at my funeral. i don't know if these butterflies are waiting for me to jump or sit down but they speak up when my phone lights up & it's you.
Tom Leveille Feb 2014
you are inches
measured by miles away
bulldozing oriental food
you don't intend on eating
around your plate
and i am imagining
the translation of asking
for a broom in a foreign language
for when you shatter over small talk
or the first sentence to start with "so"
breaks you into shaking
that i can feel from across the table
and i am thinking now
about tectonics and how you must be daydreaming of being submerged in a book
back home or gripping tightly
to bedsheets begging for familiar warmth
i can tell by the way you are looking at me
that you are feigning our salutation embrace
seconds drowned in ankle deep water and i wonder if you see my hands
as jackhammers and if the reason
why you hug so hard
but only for a moment
is to be as sharp as possible
so that i do not smell your perfume
or notice that you aren't wearing any and why
there are few suprises
in the safe you claim is a mouth
where shades of plush pink
hide a sickly pallor
and i continue to look over
brick & mortar borders
and think how maybe
she is thinking of kissing
but certainly not me
not these apologies nailed to my face
i give myself a moment
of benefitted doubt that you sometimes
picture your frame under mine
and if your clavicles would crack
if i were to touch them
i am sorry that i am a victim of imagination
but i swear i chalk it up
as the forgotten feeling
for when you look up
and the person you are looking
at is gazing directly at you
you have painted yourself
as a mosaic in my mind
as a mess of dust & incoherent words
that all sound like please in my ears
but that doesn't explain why
my hands are the ones that are shaking
when i imagine you
imagining me
in the spaces of yourself
where you've forgotten
you could put someone
Tom Leveille Feb 2014
you see
i had always felt
that in a dream
i was the absence
of the dream
and then it dawned on me
that i was in a time piece
trapped during forgotten hours
where everything is alien
but vaguely familiar
the beach beneath me wandering
off to anywhere but here
and i straddle the shoreline
palming stray shards of sea glass
always the color of her eyes
and i am abruptly upside down
an upheaval, a maw
where i thought it as
a nightly revenge
for skipping stones
and again i am upended
& back on the beach
born of broken hourglasses
and it makes me think
that god likes to watch things leave me
Tom Leveille Feb 2014
so i get this idea sometimes
that you enjoy being coy
when it comes to me
to conjure momentary spectacle
& make me wonder
if you paint catharsis
on the doors of a home
you've never lived in
as a memory of our first night together
because i do, i remember you
beaming white on blue
speaking softer than any storm
i ever knew, i often think that maybe
you live that night in your mind
when your pillow is cold
& you can't sleep, it makes me wonder
if you do as i do, and rewrite three years fictionally beginning with a kiss somewhere
maybe a balcony or a quiet car
on the sand or in a sunlit grove close to your home but always a familiar scar on the maps we know we know by heart
i wonder if sometimes
the idea of me loving you is too real
and if it teems under your tongue
to stay observant but distantly intrigued
if by this distance you think it safe
to get a dog and pass time
on the couch with a journal & some wine
what i really wanna know is if your fingernails ever wish to have my skin under them
or if they would boast
about winning a war with my headboard
i wonder if you can imagine me
meeting your parents in your apartment & shaking your fathers hand
as a first of many calloused palm readings
and if you know that i trembled before them
how insignificant i had felt
to not know their daughter
in the way i had envisioned
how i picture such poignant moments
so tangibly sharp that sometimes
i replace  my memories with little stories
i tell myself that i can't count on two hands
the number of times i've seen you
& that i don't feel like a crater
when i recollect our collisions
i want to know if you still find madness
in the words that have always been about you
i wanna know if your imagination of me
looks more like an anniversary or an obituary
Tom Leveille Jan 2014
i imagine pulling over at a canyon
seeing the day they took all the pictures
off the wall when she died
i stop for a picnic on a scar
from getting too close to the junk
but you made it and making it is all that matters
i see the ends of your hands
as 15th century cartography talks to the hierarch
a promise of platitudes
flat and lacking grandeur
how on that plane it knows
when you turn them over
like pages of a book
and secrets pour out
they don't tremble like they used to
haven't had an earthquake in years
not even a tremor
not even happenstance could stop me
from gawking at the pile up on 64
how outwardly looking
in you don't look like a "wreck"
your hands remind me more
of a car crash without the quotation marks
Tom Leveille Jan 2014
can you explain
what it means
to despise someone?
to frame hate
and hang it on your wall
to count the number of days
lost sleep in your coffee mug
with the aforementioned's
name expensively embroidered on it
an old feud, laid in skin
and memories
so long you no longer remember
what the original sin was
only the feeling endures
an anticlimax
that you could go on
and on for hours about
without rest
so much pathos
teeming under the surface
that you could erupt
in volcanic tantrums
at the sound of a name
the way you clench your fists
until your fingers bite blood
from your palms
over street signs that bring up
old memories
the way you dream
of burning chairs
you heard they sat in
you find solace in the fact
that you are conscious
of this pervasive madness
that you are not tired of
and never will be
Tom Leveille Jan 2014
your face went on every
milk carton in my dreams
when you went missing
& i listened to a song
about how the churches
in your hometown
were built from the martyred mahogany
of shipwrecks
i dare you
to think i can't rip
the very mood
from your temperate fingertips
when i am cold
and hell bent
on seeing you oceans away, wince
this is not an
"i saw this coming all along" poem
or a "i still wonder about the moments between breaths when your phone lights up" poem..
this is a will & a way
with brass knuckles
maybe a barehanded bludgeon
but i swear i'm trying
to sleep at night
without wondering how cold
it is in your bed.
so mother goose
tell me about
the whispered prayers
crammed into the earthquakes
you call hands
about an ennui
that speaks to me.
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