I.
I felt it the first time I saw you. My heart stopped its incessant beating upon the sight of you walking down the busy city street, a little windswept and breathless with your cheeks flushed, hair messy and your lips slightly parted as if you were asking for a kiss and I wished I were the only one who could give it. It’s what gave me courage to talk to you. This was the time when I finally understood the likes of poets like Shakespeare, Debussy’s longing and the stuff of silly songs sung by the town drunks with their guitars and slurred perspectives. It was like flying. I was walking on air and floating in bewitched water. I saw it in the color of the crimson hue in the roses I bought you, that dress you wore, the color of your cheeks and the color of your lips when you leaned into whisper in my ear your vow of eight letters, the prospect of a future that no longer promised me loneliness. Each night I heard it when you were in my arms and the whole world decided to quiet down and stand still like a child halting the spin of a wildly spinning top. In the smallest moments when all that pervaded me was the scent of your hair, the hint of your smile, your warmth and the palms of your hands over my beating heart, I have never felt more contented. I have never known people could be happy and elated like this. For once in my life I think I could never tire of seeing someone, of wanting to become part of them, of knowing every flaw and every well-kept secret. In the half-shadows of the lazy afternoons we spent together and the sleepy mornings tangled up in sheets, I saw our dog, perhaps children and then 20 years of marriage.
II.
Perhaps once upon a time, a long long time ago I met it a few times and each with a different face. I saw it in the way a mother held her child as her most valuable possession, the warmth of affection and the smell of home on her skin when she embraced you, kissed you when you stumbled and picked you up when you fell. I saw it in a father’s pride, his secret admiration. I remembered my own mother and my own father and all my bravado left me. Once upon a time, I read it in my mother’s bruises like a map, the ones my father lovingly decorated her with in strikes, punches and eager beatings. I felt it every time she kept her bags unpacked and put away the bitter ****** aftermath of the underlying storms with a forced smile on her lips and the promise that everything would be okay, that I had just been dreaming. Even then I saw it in my father when he came home-- the twisted way he held her close and said his sorries, the way he treated her like a queen and tried his best to keep his promise. In the days he told me to be strong and in the days he really did try hard, I found it difficult to blame him—I could not place the hate I felt for him and why my fortifications threatened to dissipate and crumble. I never noticed this before but it was always present in the way my mother and father laid to rest their hopes and dreams, buried them in a lot of filthy graveyard soil when the wretched curse that was me took away all their aspirations and they selflessly sacrificed their whole young lives ahead of them full of travel and the irresistible seduction and sparkling lure of opportunity to work like dogs on their hands and knees so I could live my own fickle life of wasted hours and silly daydreams. Money did not grow on trees, darling and yet for every mistake you made, every useless rebellious decision that only resulted in heartbreak and derision their forgiveness knew no bounds and they threatened no abject beleaguering, no threat of desolation. By and by, you fail to see their infinite patience, the hope and the investment—the silent prayer for all good things and mighty rising sons and daughters.
III.
Again, one day, I saw a couple in the park holding hands, their faces lined with age that told their story with their depth and their number. I saw their narrations told, young buds and blooming then the bad days that came and the sad days that kept repeating. In their intertwined fingers and the slow steps on rocky beach, bathed in glowing sunset sunlight, the twilight of a remarkable 20 years or so and maybe one, two or twenty sons and daughters, I wondered if you and I would come around like that—battle through decades with our feelings unchanging. I thought about your face and the way you slept, and the first morning that I saw it and decided that yours was the one I wanted to wake up to everyday for the rest of my life. I wondered if you and I, darling, would come out strong and happy, still holding hands after the lagniappe of challenges, the labyrinthine years of madness. I decided I would not die with you in the manner of Romeo and Juliet, the drama of Shakespeare but I wanted to spend every waking moment that I could live and breathe on this desolate earth spending it with you or else thinking of you and going through it for you. Why would I waste our precious time with grand, suicidal gestures when I could just show you in little ways, every day until we grew old and grey together?
IV.
Then I forgot you were only temporarily mine, that I could not keep you. I lost the feeling. It only turned to rot in my hands and I only grew bitter. I forgot that butterflies in mason jars died, and so did the red roses, the bouquets of flowers. It was it how I felt when I saw you in the arms of another man, laughing and smiling. It was not how I felt when my heart threatened to burst and split, along with my knuckles and hanging picture frames now lying shattered on the floor. It was not how I felt when you left, said goodbye and closed the door. It was the hope I felt when I thought you would return but it was not the face I saw when I accepted you weren’t going to. I know not the ugliness it carried, the blackened underside of a two-faced coin but perhaps this was the price paid for such elation, for years of bright colors, laughing and slices of heaven. I realized that when it was all over, when the rivers run dry that it was the emptiness that made the winds cold, the world gray, the streets empty, the people cruel and the cold winds bite and the trees shiver. It’s what turned hearts into rock-hard gemstones and what makes hopeless romantics wither. It was the wind that left me, the feeling I felt when I could pinpoint the exact moment my heart dropped to my knees and bled to the floor when I looked into those eyes, those lovely eyes, for the last time. I would forget your face, but the marks, the scars, the things you taught me and the way you made me ache for beauty and an invisible power would stay in me forever long after you have gone. It was not the feeling I felt when I let you go and didn’t run after you.
V.
In its pursuit, and in the withdrawal stage of emotional drug use and admiration, people struggle to constantly search for the fleeting high, the temporary feeling of wonder. There are girls that walk the street in short skirts, high heels and revealing blouses searching for the right things in all the wrong places in between soiled sheets and pockets full of paper. I see the beggars ply the crowded city streets, some with eyes that know the danger but hunger still and some with just innocent ideas, feigned knowledge and naïve understanding.  They search the faces of people and window shop at bars for their favorite pair of jeans, the man or woman that will fit the hole where the heart had been, heal the wounds and the body that will curve and fit theirs so perfectly into a perfect puzzle. It is not what they find on the silver-tongued strangers with sweet lips and deliberate touches. It is not in his lies that sound so much sweet music; that feels like climbing up ladders. It is not in her games, her daring looks and sweet whispers. It is not out in streets, it is not ours to claim ownership over.

Manila is beautiful at night,
Seen from overhead, high above rainclouds in the night sky
with a tantalizing view of car exhaust and the debris of broken dreams
Manila is beautiful at night.

It comes and goes like a shadow in flickering light.
At first, it hides behind wispy rain clouds, playful as a child hiding in his mother's skirt.
If you look closely, it's lights glisten-- golden and teasing
It's incessant winking, an almost promise of what's to come

From your aerial vantage point, you wonder:
"This is what it must be like to be an Angel when they fly"
Below the city, with all it's secrets, sprawls like a handful:
A rich lady's heirloom diamonds, thrown carelessly on a ***** floor.

It will somehow remind you of a creature: perhaps human, or Leviathan in it's wake
Cities, after all, are their own specie of living things

At first it is looks like a Brain, with neurons and synapses electric and active
Certain spots of the city: mall compelexes and large parking lots, like the nuclei of a brain cell
the roads that lead to and fro, the cars zipping up and down in red and yellow lines
remind you of dendrites and axons, stretching far
They communicate with each other in their own language; a code
Your imagination runs wild with untamed fantasy

On next glance, it looks like a heart.
The whole city pulses magnificently in unison it seems.
Thud, thud. Thud, thud. You feel it?
Your heart follows it's tantalizing rhythmic pattern, it's muscle beats
Though and through the city pumps it's lifeblood into each nook and cranny
Oh how it entices your passion so.

At last you seem to hear it breathing.
Listen closely and hear Manila inhale and exhale in steady tunes
Inhale, and exhale-- a silence comes over you,
And it's strangely reminiscent of amazement, excitement and bitter fear
Your ears dull and you listen to the rush of air in your lungs,
the deep drum bass of the pounding of your heart
the dizzying feeling that exists in your brain

Manila really is beautiful at night.
In the shroud of darkness, it rises from slumber;
Vivacious and lovely, it's seductive and free
Manila is lovely. Manila is a woman, as it should be.

No one truly knows,
the depth of suffering,
the painful passion,
the sinful indulgence
and all the ******, incomprehensible hard work
that goes into
writing.

Her syllogisms repose trust in her adept beleaguering of unworthy opponents.
Constantly in a state of lassitude for this desultory, inure world of the insouciant youth which dwells upon it's cathartic terrain, she engages not in lachrymose nor is she crestfallen for the hope of romance and it's everlasting ineffability.
She is a fugacious moment of frisson embodied in a human form; a juxtaposition of the serendipitous moments that ever constantly come one after the other in a fickle wheel of steep highs and deep lows. All her life, this girl will lilt through the crossroads of her obstacles and show the world the efflorescence of her beauty. Hush don't speak lest you miss hearing the mellifluous music of her voice of fail to hear the lagniappe that is her name.
She is the cynosure of human attention, the goddess and we are but her humble servants. She is innocence most rare, love most coveted. She is infinite. She is peace.

Here lie the golden girls
pretty maidens, advocates of sin
Her lie the in their earthen beds
Those born of evil, those who win

One such young lovely, with hair of liquid night, Liked to frolic in bare dresses
Her favorite playthings were her men, her asset her dark tresses
It became her life this mad chase, the center of her being
It mattered not the man or place or time, to engage in her filthy doings
Easy was the girl in tow, a slave to insatiable ****** craving
The only thing of value was, to reach the height semblance of flying
She got a babe to grow inside her once, six more with different fathers
When upon her came the syphilis bug, love her no one bothers

The other maiden fine and fair, has eyes as pale as silver
Her demon rocks in iron chains, turbulent as the winds that blow inside her
What scares her most is growing old, the waning fickle moon of  beauty
For ever since she was a babe in crib, they've always called her pretty
A love of looks indeed, my dear, nothing can be queerer!
But to this young lass all that counts-- is what she sees in the mirror
Hung herself she did one morn, when there appeared a wrinkle
She's rather die young and bold she says, before the rest of her skin crinkles

The third of these young bright gems, is cunning as fox or raven
With hair that glows red, like a thousand fires, to money she is slaven
There can never be less just more and more
such an ugly trait to be practiced by such a gentle flore
She does all she can to gain each coin, each soiled valued paper
As her greed grew and money too, her spirit left like vapor
There is no limit to the rest, so long as you have cash
It was all of which she spoke, until she became again, ash to ash

The last of these four maidens tragic, was the one lover of snow
All year she'd search for kind a hand, for someone to bestow
Upon her lips, her nose, her brow, a taste of man-made magic
Just try it once and once enough, the beginning of many a story tragic
She sold her goods, ones people would buy, herself a commodity standing
And years go by, she's but a husk, a story;s unhappy ending
All worth it was the snow, she said. it gave her new perspective
Though when she died an ****** hag, that opinion was subjective

Here lie the golden girls
pretty maidens, advocates of sin
Her lie the in their earthen beds
Those born of evil, those who win

My favorite color is yellow.

I doesn't seem like it by the looks of me, I know.
I'm all dark everything now
Dark sunglasses, dark hair
Dark clothes, trussed up, a rockstar late for her own concert
No kidding even my heart is black
black as the cold night's deepest obsidian

My mother insists it is yellow, though
She remembers me: I was five
little, skinny kid with pale skin and a large head
The first color I go to is yellow
Big old box of crayola jumbos with the eight colors
The crayon mighty meaty; huge in my little hand
In that big old box
Yellow was the shortest crayon stick

give me sunshine, lil baby.

There are so many of these girls
bright, lovely pretty young things who’ve suddenly—
(like it was a choice)
taken to all this madness of reading books,
drinking fancy tea and pretending that
they didn’t care about boys or clothes.

well i’m your messenger from the future
your ghost of Christmas past
Let me tell you now that i’ve always been the girl who
Was lonely in high school
Who preferred her books to nights out spent partying
and drank hot cocoa by the liter
and never once considered herself lovely or pretty

that was until i traded in my precious uniqueness
for the generic, unoriginal cutout that i superficially am now
i skipped meals for weighed almonds
put on heels pretending to be tall and cool
but i still stumbled and hoped no one saw me
boys came and talked to me but all i could manage was
awkward sputter that was a sad excuse for words
or else talk to them about books,
politics, social issues and science
until they walked away afraid their eyes telling me
She’s crazy.

let me tell you now, honey
being a geek isn’t cool
whatever trend or substance you’re on forget it
geeks are awkward
****** weirdos with their own language
who blurt out random fandom quotes and references
they’ve known by heart since they were ten.

If you think it’s fun to be the only one laughing
at a joke you were sure everyone knew
of to get stared at like a madman
for speaking klingon, elvish, harry potter, star wars, Dr. Who.
it’s not silly child, my lovely
for in all their uncoolness
geeks actually think they’re cool

well i’m your messenger from the future
your ghost of Christmas past
Let me tell you now that no amount of make-up
can hide the fact that you still preferred Kafka and Bukowski
over cigarettes and alcohol and clublights and you
(not really sure about this one, i like alcohol and cigarettes too)

Don't ask me what it means to love someone. As I can tell you from experience, I throw the word "love" away like they were colorful strings of beads at a Mardigras Parade, abundant and seductive but no one throws them back.

Love is a feeling I have always understood as something that is omnipresent. Not once did I believe in money making the world go round, but I believed it was love that propelled us all to keep moving forward, keep the earth dancing in awkward circles. We love the sun so much we spin around it. It loves us back enough to embrace us in it's gravity and keep us from spiraling into the deep abyss of space, from colliding with other heavenly bodies. I think the Earth fell in love with the fickle moon a long time ago that I refused to let it go. Their mutual love for each other keeps the tides turning, making the oceans weep when time comes when the moon has to disappear for a while. Once upon a time the sun fell in love with the moon that day after day He chases after Her, knowing he will never be able to catch her. Love is why, in beautiful and nostalgic synchronization with the earth, we crane our necks in tandem with the ground beneath our feet in order to drink in the sparkling stars, the languorous nebulae, endless skies.

For years there has been a struggle to find this elusive creature, this champion's prize of life. This is my lost treasure, the rare blue butterfly. I try my very hardest to capture it and keep it in my hands but love is a viscous creature that bites and scratches, fickle and changes its mind. It grows tired and weary, the firefly that flickers in and out of light. The journey towards it is plagued with dangers: false prophets that guide you in cruel misdirection, the twisted forms of evil that mimic the drug, the broken hearts that litter the road and the miles of distance you have to walk until your tired feet bring you to where you and he will meet.

I beg you, do not ask me to define love! I am the one who does not know what it is because I recognize it all too well and fall in love four times each morning and six times each evening. I fall in love with the world in the quiet of that space between sleep and waking, the moment that blurs on the border between the darkest hour of night and the first light of dawn. I fall in love with the green spirit of mother nature in the rustling of trees, the complex patterns in the colors of flowers and at the same time, I fall in love with ugly urban cities-- love it for all it's decrepit, urban decay. I love it's slow deterioration.

I love people, too. I love the boy in the coffee shop corner with his nose buried in a book. I love the mother when she calls her child that nickname only they share. I love it when people are kind and loving, and sweet and caring. I love it when I see their faces when they realize that they are a whole part of something bigger, a cog in the machine that is the world. I love then when they are sad or hurt in my smiles and warm hugs, just to make them feel less lonely when they are. I love them when they need a little bit of a reprieve from the hopelessness that pervades the very air we breath. I love them at their best and at their worst for people are just melancholic souls, restless feet and sentimental hearts that beat in unison with the cars that honk, the bass that plays and the atoms that give life and energy.

Is that not what love is? Is it not supposed to be kind? Is it not supposed to go above and beyond the ordinary, the boring and go borderline insane? It should be maddened with lust and passion, fueled by hope and everlasting desire. Should it not be allowed to be happy when it is and morose when it needs to? Lovers should understand that love is never constant but that lovers should, like vines that intertwine, hold fast and have an impending and irrefutable fear of losing and letting go.

Do not ask me what is love because I know its many faces and its many forms. Do not ask me about love because each one is different, and each one is uniquely yours.

Marry me in a far-off field dotted with small flowers, under the twinkling stars of night's magical darkness
Wear that cute white dress with the hem cut up short, the one where I can't resist you
Be a feast for heart in your angelic beauty, the shy smile and the happiness in your eyes
Darling, Darling! Please, please be mine?

There will be small pretty cakes for the guests, our honored neighbors
Just you, just me, and a few other people who are barefoot and laughing.
And Oh I, my dear, will have eyes only for you and only your forever now
I don't like cake, but I'll crave your lips, the sweetness there

So loving, so tender. My very best friend, my super duper ***** naughty lover.
Let's have a quickie in the bushes! Slip away to have a **** that will never be enough
No, I cannot wait and will not wait. In front of guests and kind friends
I'll make love to you on that very spot.

Mary me, you say.
Yes, I answer
I'm only kidding, you laugh
But you are my happy ever after.

Oops I did it again,
I tried writing measly poetry,
Now I did the next thing again:
Oops I did it again,
I held my hopes up to the light like a moth with it's wings
So I got burned and this next thing happened:
The internet was down, again
The perfect punishment to my wishful crime
Reload, submit, publish it in public
And oops I see the error: wonky sad face icon, 404
My poem and my words are now Internet trash, debris
Goodbye old prose, goodbye sentimental meaning
What do I expect from the digital, the temporary?

Oops I did it again
I let my heart feel sadness, the madness of gladness and
Now I have Irish cream,
Drinking, stylish, from a coffee cup it seems.

In love,
I only have
Naive understanding

The storm trooper costume was somewhat of a joke between us friends. When we were 20, we dreamed of buying houses full of useless merch that fans buy out of love for something, but really just feeds the capitalist machine. Those friends are gone now and so are those dreams. The apartment is bare and empty, save for rusty heater that groans like an old drunkard, the hard bed in the corner next to the window that lets in the cold winter air and the single chipped wood table that wobbles on its uneven legs. There isn't even a lighter for the cigarettes.

I wonder how much Darth Vader paid his storm troopers? I wonder what it would be like to be in that suit, firing guns at Jedi Knights but not really hitting anything. I wonder what it will be like to be on spaceships travelling between galaxies and different points of the universe at light speed, setting eyes on new planets and whole new species that may range from space worms to aliens with higher intelligence.

Then again, there was that possibility that I could die. I was part of an intergalactic army after all. I'd be no match for a Jedi and i'd probably have no idea how to work my own weaponry. You probably can't smoke or drink, either-- lest you wish to incur the wrath of Darth Vader but... despite all that, I'd still take it over all of this grimey ****.

After all, anywhere was better than here.

You forget me so easily.
I don't exist in the plains of busy workdays,
I am lost when your cellphone begins it's cheerful singing,
the overlooked missing page in a thousand pages needed signing

It's as if i don't exist at all.
I barely cross your mind in front of your friends
I blur so easily in the corner of your eye you refuse to see
I fade; a shadow in your immaculate spotlight

To catch your attention means a nuclear bomb, a WWIII
It's not enough That I give you everything, all I am
Despite all that, It compares in comparison to see you SHINE
I all pays off when I see you smile just for me.

I wash away words like dead flakes of skin up to night, from morning. I am made of them. Like a cup left under a tap, I have become full and started spilling over all the drops I wasn't built the capacity to hold. I pity these words for they have nowhere to go.

I spit them out like I've eaten something disgusting and they attach to my saliva like it was glue. The listerine washes them from my mouth every morning when I brush my teeth. The way they swirl down the drain when I shower mesmerizes me as I watch them go down one by one until I am clean. Even then, I have no idea how many more get blown away by the wind or get lost in the flurry of small movements.

I really should find a way to make them more permanent, but I don't. I write them down in the air above me head, the plastic jeepney seat, and on the skin of people I touch. Lucky are those words that are written for at least they have a home where they are recorded, remembered and immortalized. They're so unlike my words that die unheard and unsaid.

With all these words I've wasted, I could have written a masterpiece. Perhaps I have. I'll never know. I have never written them down.

I fell guilty
I like your brother, but
Right now I want him to go away.

I want it to be just us time
When I can stay in your lap, naked and wanting
and just watch hours pass by in slow motion

I like him but
I know that you
Like him more than you like me

I am also on tumblr at: paleredevil.tumblr.com

It’s strange. It’s so easy to be happy for someone else. Deep down, my senses grant well-wishes to every happy couple that roams the earth on this blessed day with the utmost sincerity one could muster. Today, I saw a man buying flowers, the expensive kind with the colorful textured wrapping. The petals looked vibrant, the leaves shone stiff and green when the sun peppered it with brightness. It was clean and beautiful, a stark contrast to the man who was holding them who was scruffy and had grime on his face. The clothes he wore had much wear on them and he was wearing a very old pair of slippers and yet, the smile he wore when the florist exchanged the goods with him was only full of happiness and pride. He held the bouquet close, and had to take a jeepney home from the spare change he counted in his hand. As a person who knew flowers on this day was a valuable commodity, that bouquet could not have been cheap and yet he took the time and money to buy it anyway. People milling about the flower shops were really an odd bunch. There were boys from high school, awkward and shy, buying roses. There were “bad boys” who chose the yellow chrysanthemums and hid their blushes when their friends teased them. The air was full of the scent of greenery and an optimism that no amount of car exhaust could overcome. Weather girlfriend, wife, mistress, or lover…. at least I knew these men remembered flowers.

I wonder what it would be like to rid the world of digital chat lines.
I think it's time we deleted IM.
Yes, I admit it's convenient and fast and easy and cheap but
It pays a much higher price.
Think about a life with no edited conversatios
In real life, you said what you could without having to think about it.
Even if it was embarrassing.
Even if it was stupid.
Hell, even if it was a little creepy.
I think it's cute when people stumble and trip over things they've said.
Have you seen a boy blush when he accidentally blurts out her likes you?
Its the best thing... the imperfection of people.
There will be no backspace, no second shot
No record for the NSA to use for future blackmail.
Won't you be more careful of the words you say then?
Won;t you be more kind?
Won't you choose words more carefully?
Won't you shed your veils and shine?

I am living my life in a self-constructed hell. It's funny because, the world disagrees with me. It comes lumbering in all it's tremendous glory, shoving life down my throat and yelling:

"HERE! Here is beauty!"
"HERE! Here is love!"
"HERE! Here is the universe and you own it."

Sounds like "Here! Here is *******." to me.

It takes great sadistic pleasure in watching me suffer. I think God is a giant kid with a magnifying glass playing with his ants. The whole shape-able reality is a bogus ad created by a room of handsome ad execs in Satan's boardroom. He also sells stupefying cream you rub on your eyes to make you forget the bleary truth, the miserable facts. What did I expect from these liars?

I know.

Stupid me. I expected more than this.

Tell me why so many people write poetry?
Tell me why so many people sing songs?
Tell me why there are celebrated anniversaries?
Tell me why there's a sorry for every wrong.

Look at the boy carrying flowers
Spot the girl smiling with silly, childish glee
Explain to me the supernatural powers
Responsible for feelings so strong and free

Tell me how they find each other.
Tell me how, the date, his sound
Tell me how he looks , or rather
Tell me where he can be found

I think you were in love with her
And a long time ago, once upon a time when she left,
She took away the part of you that was her
and in doing so
gouged out great big ugly holes with her caring claws
and sharp teeth coated in well wishes, soaked with warm blood and the taste of skin
She lovingly tore you apart.

Now years later, the edges have dried up but the great big craters are still there
and in a place in your mind I cannot reach you still long for her
When you felt the gaping absence you've been carrying with you since then
you tried to replace her with me
But the holes are in her shape
And I was a round peg in square holes who wasn't even the right color
And no matter how much you tired you couldn't make me fit
and so:
Maybe this is why you cannot love me.

I pains me to see that she no longer belongs to me.

I hate the way he makes her giggle,
The cute, reserved one when she's thinking more of
how easily he could make her laugh than the whole point of the joke.
I used to do that.

I hate the way she leans on his arm and holds his hand tight
He was Atlas and she, his world.
He held her up while keeping her dreamy head grounded.
I used to do that.

The way she longs and calls for him when he's away (even for only a minute)
Kills me because I know the feeling well.
Proximity calms the turbulent storms. I know because
I used to do that.

She's so needy of him, like he was air, water-- her fire.
I hate it because she has her own supernova under her skin
And I hate it because I remember
I used to do that.

God I swear I could **** them both. Or him, maybe just him.
Stop touching her. Stop kissing her. Stop stroking her hair.
True love lies in the minutia-- the things no one dares to take a second look at.
I used to do that.

We are all forever trapped in a prison of our own making. Hands tied and ankles heavy, there lie circlets where the kiss of our patient executioner's lips have left the skin stained red. It matters little, the poisoned despairing prisoner; it matters not the perilous journey, the illusioned destination or the immeasurable wear. Each and everyone of us is weighed down or tied to something-- a being, a duty or a cause. These, the cells we can never truly escape.

It comes in many forms, our personal Jailguard. Some wear them in metal: iron, gold, or silver. Some choose to be restrained by more delicate materials like a string of pearls, a measure of satin ribbon. The hand that seals the lock and throws the key may sometimes be ours or unbeknownst to the sufferer but it does little to appease the reality of its damnable existence.

No matter the material, the wearer, the cause.. Chains, like God or smoke or most anything supernatural... Are only as real as the faith you invest in its power.

Hello guys! I think i'll be spending time not writing for a while. It's gotten a bit hard and i need to figure things out and maybe learn to get better. I will still be on here to read your works from time to time, but my poetry will be sparse. I'll be back soon, though, and I will see you then!

My actions as of late,
have been stunted by the contradictions in your fickle emotions.

Is this how you're supposed to keep me on a leash?
Hurt me then scoop me up into your arms and tell me you like me
You're not even man, or good enough a liar to say it:

you love me.

No harm will come to you under your covers at night.
Grab Mr. Teddy and turn out the light
Know mummy and daddy are right outside your door,
No monsters are coming to hurt you anymore
Yet under the blanket on top of the bed,
you closet is empty but full is your head.
Under the covers in the covers of night
you don't have the courage, you've run out of light
That monster shares your blanket, darling it's true
It's not under your bed now the monster is you.

When in love,
take the precious time to draft out dreams on soft sand or temperamental snow.
This verifies their possibility,
Gives color to their cold cheeks and gives them new life.

When in love,
Find someone who will takes these plans and help you set them in stone
What were only foolish dreams then
Become your reality, now

"It feels like swallowing nails for saying this-- but for you, I wanted all that cliche, Valentine's day cheesiness. On any other day, for any other person, I would puke my guts out and rather **** myself than be a girl with hearts for eyes and roses for sleeves. I never thought I'd want what other couples had that I scoffed at, condemned, ridiculed and spited because for the longest time i thought I was too good for all of that... until i met you. Right then, I realized that the only thing worse than shaming people for what they had was falsely glorifying my own loneliness as something grand was that there  was nothing worse than loving without being loved back."

Today is the one day of the year when all your romantic notions come to die slow, brutal, merciless and ****** deaths and all one can do is stand by watching. On this day, each year, over the span of two decades, the hope and belief in such a holiday dwindles as time goes by. Bit by crumbling bit, the desires and the wishes of a hopeless romantic falls away into the abyss of nothingness and soon, I will be swallowed up by darkness— a skeptic, a cynic; bitter to my own lonely end.

I am also on tumblr at : paleredevil.tumblr.com

Today at the supermarket, I felt the first pang of jealousy and spite for this holiday. I’ve had no reason to feel this way before when I had not known the faces of love nor felt the need to recognize it. Around me, stores advertised shelves of red hearts and roses, to me as if colored by blood or red-lipped kisses. There were gift cards with the generic greetings and teddy bears that looked so cuddly, the tools of a capitalist trade that made me sick to my knees.

And yet I wanted it all. I wanted someone to give me flowers, I wanted the cheesy lines, the dreamy promises. I wanted cheap plastic hearts and scented letters and felt a loss and a longing for them I never knew I had. I felt hate the first time around and finally knew why women could be so cruel and so bitter. Right in front of me, sprawled on every empty surface, embodied in every molecule was a promise once made to every little girl and boy on this earth: that they would find love, they would find the one. How easily could some people take all of this for granted? After a week, they threw away the flowers. In a year, the letters would be forgotten, the boy gone and the love replaced. For once in my life I knew what it was like to love someone and to not be loved in return.

The fear crept from my stomach to my fingertips like wildfire and snuffed the passion that fueled the entities that grow inside me. I remember your face, so childlike and kind— then your back as you walked away from me. At home, I knew I wasn’t going to get flowers, i knew my bed was going to be cold. I knew you weren’t going to call or plan anything special. I knew what it was like to be lonely even if you said i was not alone. If you were under the presumption that since I was oh so smart and badass, liberated and nonchalant that I would not mind an absent holiday, you were wrong, my darling. You and me both. When you told me you were spending time at with your family up north tonight instead of Valentine’s day, I wondered — in my own delusions of the insecure— if that was fancy code and your way of explaining Your time with her, instead of a day of just you and me.

In the beating of my heart beneath my clothes, beneath sweaty sheets
I can feel the world pulsate through me

Down below in all my woes
the demons dance and frolic-- happy and so very merry

The darkness outside matches the abyss inside and takes me on rollercoaster trips through infinite oblivions and over timeless hours
I wish so very hard to fall asleep and never wake up
but life is cruel and love is unkind.

Up above and soaring high
are all my hopes and dreams and angels dancing

White filters through in empty shafts that tease and quiver-- a dalliance with my aspirations before slashing them
and brutally cutting them
I try but I have no wings to fly and Lucifer is such good company

Around me all the world's glow
In all it's restless bounty.

Girls have bats,
spiked with rusty nails,
waiting for a ****** shower.

They are prepared and ready to hit
the boys who come
and give them flowers.

I do not wish to be someone whose hate colors the intones of her voice, fills the abyss behind my eyes and overflows through every little action.

I want to be someone known for their kindness, their grace and humility… but most of all… known for the way they love with all their heart, sincere and hopeful; always looking on to a better tomorrow.

I am also on tumblr at : paleredevil.tumblr.com

I know I am intelligent enough to know better than to weigh my worth in plastic flowers, mass-produced teddy bears and balloon hearts but I can’t seem to shake the small bubbles of jealousy and desire — two dangerous devils of seductive temptation — that make me want those things too.

Are these supposed to make me feel more than worthy of love? Are these supposed to measure how much you love me, on a holiday where expressions of passion are mandated and required? I’d like to think that our love, the one we will have and share will be more than this. It will not be limited to one day of the year, but will be manifested in every single day, every small moment, every precious smile and meaningful look. Think of it. 365 days of being together; 365 mornings of waking up next to each other, of morning coffee and showers. Between us, the world will stand down and keep quiet, fall to its knees in sheer awe at the magnitude and intensity of the passion we share. What does one day out of a year have for our hundreds? Why should I stick to just one day when everyday I am free and oh so very willing to keep reminding you that… I love you.

I am also on tumblr at: paleredevil.tumblr.com

I thought about him, about the one they called the ONE. I wondered once more where he was and what our valentine’s day would look like. Or how he would look like. I tried ignoring the nagging threat that maybe he wasn’t you and wasn’t ever going to be you no matter how much I wanted it to be you because you didn’t want it to be you.

Or you didn’t want me.

I’ll admit I had wished for a semblance of celebration, a hope that this was the year and this was the day when all that saints and sinners had vowed the forgiving God to do would be met and done without impunity. Yet, how could I expect you to understand when you did not know what it was like to be lonely? To have someone you loved with all your heart until every bone in your body ached so close and yet so out of reach?

You. You’re okay with your solitude, prefer it, crave it — whereas I, pitiful dreamer and hopeful me had so desperately clung to the hope that maybe you would change your mind. I’ll admit it. I’ll admit that for nights now I have been living in fear that one day you would leave me for someone better, for someone you loved long ago and have lost and I was just a temporary replacement. People leave, they always do… so why do I still have trouble accepting that? Alone on a day meant for hearts and lovers, I sit thinking about the man I dreamed you up to be and the man you are I love them both but something is stopping one from becoming the other and if there is one thing I can’t fix it’s you.

I live by the solid breath of society's stinking waste, dashed hopes and dreams
and burning potential.
surrounded by lonely hearts and broken people, I can only assume to dream is to escape and to face reality is to be brave. I know not how to do either.
Kiss a tender soul and do not condemn kindness, they are shields;
impenetrable fortresses of immeasurable purity to cleanse you of your sins and stains

you look like ***** laundry.
Come on and breathe in the decay, the slow descent into darkness and vitriolic madness
the world you once knew is gone
It can only grow darker and darker still
This is why you shouldn't waste a drop of glittering sunlight
or turn away love in all its shapes, sizes and forms

You cannot afford it.
Accept that we are far gone and have no hope to go back to the way we were no matter what force or what reason.
To live is only to survive and you need to be a sea sponge and live off very little.
know that no matter what you do, there is no way out and the easy ways are only cowardice and playful imagery
the only way through go through life is to wade through the sewer, the dark underbelly and come out scathed and filthy.

Don't tell me
that you don't care
I know deep down
you do.

There is no poetry
in
anger.

I missed you for a while.

I was never your cup of tea.