Hemingway said,
There is quite the difference
between kissing goodbye
and kissing goodnight.

I wanted a
"See you later",
but instead got the
"Goodbye".

Steinbeck stated that
Nothing good gets away,
If it's right, it happens.

If that's the case
how did we always end up feeling so
wrong?

Salinger suggested
that after falling in love
you never know
where the hell you are.

This, I can say is true.
Where the hell are we?

Dickens declared that
The truest wisdom
comes from a loving heart.

Yet a heart in love
can sometimes turn out to be
the least wise.

My friend, I think I'll just stick with
Orson Welles' theory:
"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone."

Anything else is simply illusion.

Be the barcode on my bra strap so maybe
I can finally be sellable skinny. Be my relationship goal,
the text to check outside my door, the 5k, 140 character post
about a teenage dream ****** through low brightness screens.
Be the slam poet screaming whiny, new written love songs
on the shareable Facebook post. And maybe I’m just as bad,
but at least I recognize when my eyes fall numb from staring
at self-expression turned self-obsession. Maybe it’s Jack talking back
through my shot glass or maybe it’s the blacklight absorbed
into my skin. Or maybe it’s a girl in a “vintage” dress just sizing out
bigger than the edges already cut out for her. Maybe it’s me
bending backwards over chivalry and **** coming back from the 90’s.
Don’t blame me for biting into the media sandwich that is magazines
and the indecision of being too clingy if I just freakin’ called you.
Cause picking up the phone is a lot more risky than the kissy-face emoji
at the end of a message. Don’t blame me for consuming
tissue paper lies designed to target my own vulnerability, or my lack
of understanding the truth because all everyone
has ever told me is just a step in the manipulation blueprint
to get what they want, or just get me to bed. I only trust old photographs,
things I wrote down when I couldn’t sleep, my mom, and the dirt
I used to bury my own reflection. Be the 50% off on my receipt
just so I know I got something off. Be the nicotine in my cigarette,
the Blink 182 voice inside my head, the joints that hold me up
where I stand, and maybe I’ll finally know who I am.

She said, "I can't swim"
With a voice so confident
The ocean believes
They're still best friends.

in winter it is my first time home in three years.

I am in my bed again with a body full of volcanic acid
and a throat nervously full of phlegm as repulsively sweet
as the water of the river that I swam in when I was still young
and naked and fleshy. I have not been  
young and naked and fleshy in three years.

My bed is as hard as I picture your body being tomorrow
when we are both in your car again
and your face
still crumbles open like a basket of bread.

My mother has never baked bread.
My mother at night lies alone on sheets cold as the light from a moon.
Her voice wails like a pair of haunted hands.

Last time I saw you your voice broke apart
atop your final word to me.
Before that your hands were on my thighs like a new curse.
Since then I’ve pictured you standing with raw hands
cursing into brisk air. There are times when I try
to picture my body into something smaller, like a ******
raccoon against the side of a highway strip.

There are no tall trees
in the yard anymore, nothing
to compare my body to. (Mother cries about them all falling
in past storms.)

When my father sees me in my bed he says nothing. He’s
best at walking with his hands sour as bees.

I wrote a poem for my English class and my teacher said he didn't like it.

I wasn't mad because I got a bad grade, I was mad because what if I wasn't strong enough to look past his opinion and keep writing? What if that one negative comment made me quit altogether and never share a single word again?

What if he ruined my future because he couldn't look past his idea of what a poem should be?

A poem does not have to rhyme or end with closure or even make sense to everyone who reads it.

A poem simply has to reach part of someone's soul who had no idea that these were the words they had been waiting to hear and these were the words that were meant to save them.

This is what a poem is, not a grade from a teacher or a rhyme in a book. A poem is a method of coping and a way to understand the world with ease.

I wrote a poem for my English class and my teacher said he didn't like it. But I am stronger than he thinks, and I will continue to write poems that he does not like and I will continue to love them in spite of his opinion.

i want to know what it's like to not feel anything instead of everything coming at me full force and repeatedly crashing into me until all that's left of me is tormenting feelings of uselessness and broken "i'm sorry"s and i want to know what it's like to not feel anything instead of the smallest things tearing my heart to shreds wondering how and why they held so much power in the first place. i want to know what it's like to be on the opposite side of the way i feel i want to be happy and full of joy again and i want to be happy to live instead of dragging myself around each and every day wallowing in a sea of self-pity that i swim in every day until i finally drown myself in at night when i can't sleep at 3am because i'm awake wondering what it's like to be anyone but me. i can't escape these horrible feelings because i can't run away from myself and that's the saddest truth i've ever had to live with

Will you count the stars with me
until I fall asleep?
I cannot hold them in my hand.
Forever, I will reach out to catch one as it falls.
Maybe their light could provide some warmth.
It's so cold here.

///
I am a very devoted guy
who never tell a lie
a conditional character,
very optimistic,
almost an illiterate,
but self literate and barefooted-
I have nothing
and none for me
except my pen and paper,
with you and my Hello Poetry- 
///
@Musfiq us shaleheen

A real man stands
Firm on two feet
to stop the wrongs
Or to free up a seat

I hope you stand
Whether man or not
Stand and be strong
Stand for all who cannot

I'll stand for you
And always will
When you have fallen
When nobody will