Adulthood is never initiated
on a birthday,
the obligation to pay the bills,
or even the freedom
to eat those two desserts,
but rather when you realize that childhood
has been terminated—the stage
where you sigh and suppose
that magic was just an illusion
when you finally see how
the real world operates.

The whole concept
of adulthood
is one that seems to
trespass
from the ever-anticipated world
of the theoretical,
just to barge into your life
one night
like an uninvited drunken friend.

It will never really “hit you,”
but it’ll come **** close
the first time your aunt
offers you a glass of wine
as she and your mother
gossip frankly about
your father’s mistress—
you sip on cheap Chardonnay
and pretend to be used to the taste,
as they talk with
a middle-aged bitterness
of the man you were raised
to believe was too virtuous
to be in debt for some glitzy
engagement ring that he
bought to restart his life
with a woman he left your mother for
shortly after the pandemonium
of a guiltless affair.
The man
whose brutishness
you were told to overlook, cradling
the sparse memories
of when he’d tuck you
too tightly into bed, or
when he’d tell you that he loved you
even though half the time
you really didn’t believe him—
The man whose love confused you,
whose clumsy attempts
of fatherhood
kept the heart of a young girl
perpetually guarded
by a cautious skepticism—
The man who brought you into
a world he found absurd
as carelessly
as he raised you to face it,
torn apart
like every illusion that makes a child,
the ashes of which
that slip through your fingers
inevitably declare you
another bitter adult.

More wine will reveal
that your beloved father
is a controlling ******
and his relationship
with that *****
the whole family hates
only appears to be functioning
because she lets him have
all the control
he couldn’t exert on your mother,
even though you’ve had dinner
with the two of them a couple of times
and if you had met her
under any other circumstance (though
you’d feel like a traitor
if you said it aloud)
you wouldn’t think
she was all that bad.

In red, declarative letters
I want to write to any children I may ever bear
into this bittersweet game of *******
we play that we’ve since called ‘life,’
that when they first gaze with awe
at the unattainable grace
with which every grown-up seems to navigate
the world they created,
with all the pain of tax-paying and womanhood,
I want to scream
that we don’t know what the hell we’re doing either
and if at any point I try to convince you otherwise
you should tell your mother
that she’s full of ****.

I stand here
Open, with every thread of security within me unwound
The bitter words upon my tongue have been swallowed
Rendering a vacant mouth dry
With all the world ready to spill from me
With every tear contained within
I gaze at you in silence

(So is that alright?
Take it from me, rip it from my feeble fingers
Don't steal it, don't take it for yourself
You've "lived a charmed life,"
haven't you?
Don't lie to me, don't uproot the little truth
that I seem to know
Skirt chaser, *******, womanizer
Great to know that I was only points to score
in the game you play
     So is that alright?)

The whole concept
of adulthood
is one that seems to
trespass
from the ever-anticipated world
of the theoretical,
just to barge into your life
one night
like an uninvited drunken friend.

It will never really “hit you,”
but it’ll come **** close
the first time your aunt
offers you a glass of wine
as she and your mother
gossip frankly about
your father’s mistress—
you sip on cheap Chardonnay
and pretend to be used to the taste,
as they talk
of the man you were raised
to believe
was too virtuous to be
in debt for some glitzy
engagement ring that he
bought to restart his life
with a woman he left your mother for
shortly after the pandemonium
of a guiltless affair.
The man
whose brutishness
you were told to overlook, cradling
the sparse memories
of when he’d tuck you
too tightly into bed, or
when he’d tell you that he loved you
even though half the time
you really didn’t believe him.
The man who brought you into
the world as carelessly
as he raised you to face it,
torn apart
like every illusion that makes a child,
the ashes of which
that slip through your fingers
inevitably declare you
another bitter adult.

More wine will reveal
that your beloved father
is a controlling ******
and his relationship
with that *****
the whole family hates
only appears to be functioning
because she lets him have
all the control
he couldn’t exert on your mother,
even though you’ve had dinner with them
a couple of times
and if you had met her
under any other circumstance (even though
you’d feel like a traitor if you said it aloud)
you wouldn’t think
she was all that bad.

In red, declarative letters
I want to write to any children
I may ever bring
into this ******-up little game that
goes by the name of “life,”
that when they first gaze with awe
at the unattainable grace
with which every grown-up seems
to be navigating the world they created,
with all the pain of tax-paying and womanhood,
I want to scream
that we don’t know what the hell we’re doing either
and if at any point I try to convince you otherwise
you should tell your mother
that she’s full of ****.

In high school
we learn of logarithms, iambic meter
how to balance an equation between zinc oxide
and excess hydrogen gas–
only to find there was no reaction to begin with.

We’re told that colleges get to know you
through three letter acronyms—ACT, SAT, GPA…
and our name is somewhere in the application.
It’s repeated to us to the point of meaninglessness,
like a perpetually chanted word:
Grades, scores and testing, testing, testing.
The students they want know everything
that will be forgotten by their thirtieth birthday.

I anticipate the day
that our Geometry teacher is to write an essay
on the individual’s struggle
against a systematically inhumane society
in Orwell’s 1984
only to receive a “D” under the scrutinizing eye of
the honor’s English teacher

Or, perhaps, the day someone in charge
is faced with some insufferable fate
the textbooks call chemical stoichiometry,
thirty years after repressing memories
of having to memorize the periodic table

Socrates once said that the youth today
will be the demise of civilization.
We contradict our parents, are smug in the face of authority
and tyrannize our poor teachers—
a youth who will ultimately leave behind a world
too damaged for our children to inherit.
Funny he said this
roughly 2,000 years ago–
I think my dad said something like that last year.

But, until the day we grow up to pay taxes
and marry someone we despise,
we’re just stupid teenagers.

In high school
we learn of logarithms, iambic meter
how to balance an equation between zinc oxide
and excess hydrogen gas--
only to find there was no reaction to begin with.

We're told colleges get to know you
through three letter acronyms-- ACT, SAT, GPA
And the students they want know everything
that they'll forget once they turn thirty.

Little do we realize
that if our Geometry teacher were to write an analysis
on the coexistence of good and evil in To **** a Mockingbird,
he would likley receive a "D" under the scrutinizing eye of
the honor's English teacher

Nor do we see that the art instructor would freeze in her tracks
faced with an assignment filled with the insufferable fate of
chemical stoiciometry

Socrates once said that the youth today
will be the demise of civilzation.
We contradict our parents, are smug in the face of authority
and tyrannize our teachers.
Funny he said this roughly 2,000 years ago--
I think my dad said something like that last year.

But, until the day we grow up to pay taxes
and marry someone we despise,
we're just stupid teenagers.

I spent Thanksgiving
this year
not in the blue-collar comfort
of my aunt’s house,
nestled somewhere
within a well-buried suburb
of a quaint, but un-noteworthy neighborhood
with walls decorated with Budweiser signs
juxtaposed against portraits of the ****** Mary,
where a football announcer’s voice plays like
conservative talk radio
in the background.

Instead, to save the labor
of my weary immigrant grandmother,
we dressed in Sunday best
and drove ourselves in
three well-packed mini vans
to some elegant hotel restaurant,
ideal for people-watching
from the gaudy, art-deco staircase
while pretending to be in the Great Gatsby.

It didn’t feel natural, though,
that beside a modest turkey breast
with cranberry dressing, sat a beautiful
cut of prime rib, carefully ladled
with truffle au juis–
nor beside a humble dollop
of mashed potatoes and gravy,
should there be salmon to die for,
and berries slathered with brie.

The food I nibbled
with bites of nervous guilt,
as the impeccably dressed waiter
exhaustedly refilled our water glasses,
nodding his head reflexively
to my mouse squeaks of “thank you’s”

What monsters are we,
letting these people work on Thanksgiving Day?
Grandma said, calmly, that some people
are just happy to be paid,
recounting
her impoverished childhood
in war-torn Germany—
that to simply muffle
the aggressive rumbling
of a days-empty stomach,
she and her brother
would ****** a handful of
potatoes from a government farm,
not many, but just enough
as she grimaced
at the ever-so-slight mealiness
of her rosemary-infused pork chop—
the woman who couldn’t afford ham
until she became a citizen.

We nodded quietly and
swallowed our privileged guilt,
washed down with
politely cut bites
of perfectly cooked salmon.

I’ve always had certain
thoughts
that manifest as forbidden plays
performed privately only in
a mental stage
I always swore
to keep unspoken,
unwritten and
eternally unprocessed
in hopes that
keeping it ineffable
and far away from explanation
would shield it from the
soul-draining burden
of legitimacy.

But the longer
I keep these things
an embarrassing secret,
and the longer I insist
that in my every thought
lies shame best kept suppressed,
the more I realize
that maybe the reason that I,
like every animate creature
stumbling through their earthly existence,
have come to condemn an abrasive world
for never understanding me,
stems from every human’s destructive habit
of refusing to understand the parts of ourselves
the world will never accept.

And what we never realize
is that we are the world—
sponsoring our own
oppression and feeling as responsible
as every snowflake in the avalanche.

Among the depths of the deepest sea
Beyond the realms of vicinity
Every breath of air sighed through delicate lips
Every sensation in curious fingertips

Young hearts afire in the midnight air
What more to desire than flesh so fair?
Shrouded in secret and always discreet
Who knew forbidden fruit could taste so sweet?

No one born too far from Niedersachsen, said Oma,
ever quite captures their sing-song intonation.
Characterized by subtleties, like an umlauted vowel,
all non-native imitations sound inevitably as ******
as would a cry of “ello, guv’nah!” in a London coffee shop.

Her Plattdeutsch instincts neutered
by decades abroad, married to a son of Milwaukee,
her permanent, dormant longing for Salzgitter awakes only
to trigger hunger pangs of irreconcilable nostalgia
at the passing whiff of a Germantown bakery.

She taught me the word “sehnsucht” over lukewarm coffee
and a pause in our conversation: a compound word
that no well-intentioned English translation
could render faithfully.
It isn’t the same as just longing, she sighed— longing is curable.
Sehnsucht holds the fragments
of an imperfect world and laments
that they are patternless. How the soul
yearns vaguely for a home
remembered only in the residual ache
of incomplete childhood fancies;
futile as the ruins
of an ancient, annihilated people.
How life’s staccato joys soothe
a heart sore from the world,
yet the existential hunger, gnawing
from the malnourished stomach
of the bruised human psyche, remains—
insatiable, eternal.

Long enough ago, a reasonably-priced bus ride away
from the red-roofed apartment in which she babbled her first words,
a kindly old man in a pharmacy asked her
about her peculiar, exotic accent. Once inevitably prompted
with the question of where she was from, she responded only
that she was a tourist off the beaten track.

And when I pointed out, to my immediate regret,
that she gets the same question back here in Ohio,
I realized then that, not once, has she ever referred to the way
the people of her pined-for hometown spoke
as though she had ever belonged to it.

His gaze veiled in a layer of clouds, he looks down upon us with such contempt
A perfect being, driven by such flawed emotions
A jovial comic, or an angry father
A split-personality sadist with a hell of a sense of humor

We gathered any words that he might have said
And transcribed them into our own human jumble
Every syllable uttered, down to a trace of a sigh
Molded to yield to our instincts
Dominance and glory, all in the name of “love”

His favorite son walks on water, did you know?
But the naughty children have a special place to go
If they dare disobey their strict father

It’s in every breath within us, shining in every ray of light
The human will to be, spawned from hands not our own?
It pillages towns, and takes innocent lives
Of those who chose against
The word of the “wise”

It sews our eyes shut from the ugly world of enlightenment
And guides the sheep away from the forbidden trail
The heathens reside on the other side of the river
And only the sinners dare to build a boat

You and I grew
up by the outskirts
of their society, with no other
choice, but to observe…

We pretended to hide
from a cruel
and indifferent world,
that was never looking
for us to begin with.

Turbulently, we grew
into erratic teenagers,
pillaging our world
with a vengeance.
My youthful rage dulled
with the waning of age, but
you never ceased to seethe.

I stumble by a lake
to find you there;
flinging pebbles to break
the surface, distorting
the reflection of yourself
you’ve never wanted to see.
In the settled water I greeted the
uncertain face, solemn as I was
to share a likeness…
And hesitantly I asked you
what brought you here.

We both said nothing
(we knew you had nowhere else to go)
All we could tell the world
they stole from our tongues;
The reflected face distanced her glance
from you, an aloof and bitter woman
of the rest of society,
and beyond your bent knees
the water had never settled,
revealing cryptic shards
of a jigsaw puzzle face.

Yet in that water I had drowned
a part of myself;
my animosity, and pride
against a mechanical world
that never pitied me…
Your vengeful heart
stayed forever smoldering,
never forgiving a careless god
that let you suffer, blinded
by the walls surrounding
your lesser world.

I found you leaning over the balcony,
gazing into a world that was becoming
an illusion to you, smoking a shrinking
cigarette.
I never knew you as one to smoke,
But I suppose that everyone
Has their surprises to the world.

Your eyes burnt like coals, staring until
everything before you smoldered to dullness,
the intensity
of your gaze could burn
down any hopeful living thing
to an ashen pile of decay.

Your disillusionment brought you here,
guided by
the optimistic notion, that the other side
of the garden bears riper fruit.
You traveled here with weary eyes, your hope
diminished to find the same dust
of your native dystopia
lingering on the bottom of your shoe.

I could feel you burning from here,
Your sweat glistening face lit
by the cigarette flame and moonlight,
Your shoulder tensed by the touch of my hand,
As you said to me,
How the stars seemed so close,
glowing together,
seeming inches apart in the sky,
But they were oblivious of eachother,
as they burnt unmindfully
billions of miles away.

I stood by you feeling the refreshing bitterness
of the cooling Autumn air,
oh, how we stood inches apart, you and I,
and had since grown billions of miles
away…

I want to write about *******.
I want to write about everything I’ve
ever been forbidden
from thinking—I want to ****
everyone, I want to be everyone.
I want to lick up the salt
of your sweat, and bite the supple skin
of your beautiful neck,
and I don’t give a ****
who the ‘you’ is in question.
‘You’ can be anybody, any soul
throbbing with the grit of
humanity, who’ll rip their decency
wide open and stand naked and
unrestrained by the starched collared
shirts of everything that civilization
has taught you about how
people should be.

I want to write
about something that terrifies me, and paint
it in permanent ink across my chest.
I don’t want to find clothes that fit, and ****
finding a moral tailor,
I want to be naked and free and feel the wind
sting my winter-chapped lips and
whip my hair against my face,
and I’ll burn every metaphorical rulebook
containing anything I’ve ever believed
while dancing around the fire.

And I realize this poem (if
you can call it a poem)
doesn’t make any *******
sense, but neither
do you and neither do I.
We’re all confused and ***** and tragically
beautiful little ******-up creatures crawling
this earth knowing only
our ridiculous little ******-up lives.
And I can’t really tell you anything
you should always take seriously, because
one day you’ll die and **** yourself afterward, and
so will everyone who ever knew you—so you might as well
not care about being naked because we’re all pretty ******* ridiculous
running around in suits we’ve purposely designed
to never fit.

We always talk about those who
you will never forget as long as you
exist, but
I’m thinking of someone
who I’d never  be the same without
if you didn’t approach me
that one lonely night,
sliding into my life like
a lost piece of a jigsaw puzzle
all those years ago.

I bid you farewell, my dearest friend
So very sorry it all had to end
(I don't know who I am anymore)

I'm leaving you today
To keep it all at bay
If you see me, don't say hello
(I don't know who you are anymore)

I'll journey long, singing a song
Of what I'll hope to find
I'll breathe the air
And no one'll dare
To remind me of what I left behind

I'll remember you in fondness, I suppose
But don't expect much more
(I don't know who we are anymore)

She’ll wander back to you again,
but drawn by the string
of ineffable instinct—kissing the sand
of your beaches still damp
by the routine of her departure.
Yet as she recedes,
you already ache her homecoming
as though longing for an estranged relative.

You count the years
by the bitterest point
of every winter, and
value your harvests
against the cruelty of the drought—
and even when she rearranges herself
nightly, by increments you’ve already calculated
by meticulous observation,
somehow good fortune owes you eternity,
even as it crumbles under the weight
of its own impermanence.

You’ve never dealt well with entropy;
all that came before you, which also happens
to survive you—an honorary god.
Stranded on earth,
you monitor your greying scalp as grimly
as you decry a darkening sky above you succumbing
to the certainty of winter, but
even she is ebbing, too.
You curse her departure like an abandoned child,
but she had never sinned against you—
that was your idea.

You mourn the day she repossesses
with mortal anguish,
yet you still find a way to forgive her
when she sends Dawn
to shine his light between the trees.

He stands against the wind and smiles—
a boy of intuition against the harsh world
of concrete.

You might find him waiting, standing alone
along the sidewalks
with his trusted old guitar
Unjudging eyes merely wander—
watching fellow lives simply be.
His sing-song voice
speaks joy into the world,
never telling anyone
how they ought to live.

He says he knows nothing of the world, but
I’ve never met one more wise, than one
who denies his ego, just letting
the world go by.

Superhero man
Defier of all odds
The world’s a symphony
A guitar chord
A melody
Everything is song

Buried away for all the years
Slowly, surely unearthing
Through the cracks
I see a familiar face
yet worn from the world

Sobered by truth
Flattened by reality
But in there somewhere lies
a glimpse of optimistic youth
That shines through
within every note

Music man, impossible man
Laughing in the face of
probability

We thought we’d declared it dead
The words we bury in the soil of time
Eroded by broken silences
In the most unexpected of times

The words that stung my tongue seem to flow numbly
Desensitized and dehumanized,
We wrap ourselves within a world of plastic
Where the external disturbances are kept at bay
Where no one may tap on the window and see within the soul

If we seethe in the residue of our animosity
We’re as good as snarling animals quarreling for the final prize
Before we draw the line between harm and benefit
We must draw the line between man and beast

My most persistent friends
have become six hours of jetlag
and the fading buzz of airline coffee--
as black and unforgiving as our red-eye flight,
as we wander German streets-- Füssen,
where the air is always crisp
and graceful, even awkwardly emerging
from an ugly winter.
Neuschwanstein castle sits mockingly
in the horizon-- the locals pass it by,
as I, some baffled foreigner
from Nowhere, Ohio,
where the streets bear gas stations
and the shameless scars
of recent construction (always
building, nothing built)
stand in disbelief.

Our thirst brings Jenny
and I to a Getränkeladen --
I sip on my first taste
of Apfelsaftschorle
as a roaring crowd
of local teens barge in,
with the violence of
a tornado we'd see in Xenia...
They speak in a crude,
indistinguishable slang
that Frau never could have
taught us
in room 322

Jenny hovers mindlessly
by the door-- contemplating
a bottle of Coca-Cola,
as the teenage stampede
shoves her off to the side--
fleeing out the door,
having bought nothing,
as the storekeeper sighs in disbelief.

They tore through
such a quaint little shop
with such an aimless recklessness,
one wouldn't think
a centuries-old castle
looms nonchalantly in the distance...

I was thirteen years old
and clueless--
Ben, who I believe is now
in juvie, and Ryan
stand on either side--
dumpy teenagers
in baggy clothes,
speaking in a crude,
brutal slang
that was invented in its usage.
We loitered every street
that would tolerate us,
in these exhausted Ohioan
suburbs, we tore through sidewalks
bearing unremarkable houses
in a sleepy neighborhood
with no grand castles nearby.

Our lazy strides, our ******
banter-- from Füssen, Germany,
to Who Cares, Ohio--
whether there's Neuschwanstein
or a Speedway to conquer,
there's never anything to do at home.

*So wie ist das Leben...

Dear Mom,
I know I shouldn’t have been
snooping, but when looking
for some socks on a day when I was
still living with you and had neglected
to do my laundry, meticulously paper clipped
in your drawer, I found a 26-page document
that made my insides curl
when I saw the name of Dad’s mistress
printed blatantly on the front cover.
Yes, I looked through it
(and I know I shouldn’t have) and I don’t know
what made me more disturbed—the fact
that you took the time, ink and paper
to look up the woman who
destroyed your marriage
on public records,
and neatly annotated the highlights
of her messy divorce
prior to meeting Dad—or that this
26-page monstrosity sat innocently beside
his old Valentine’s Day cards,
still painstakingly arranged by year, mixed in
with your daughters’ decade-old crayon drawings
captioned by the loopy letters of a child’s handwriting
next to little plastic baggies with worn edges
containing baby teeth,
the roots yellowed by age and decay.

You never let anything go, do you?
You hold time captive by the wrists
until the soft skin bruises, and even when
it finally jerks itself away, you still manage
to sweep up every speck of dust
its presence
left behind, and store it
perfectly labeled in your archives
like some neurotic historian,
where you think your daughter, who was
only looking for a pair of socks,
would never just happen to stumble upon
this hoarded material record
of every ******* thing
that torments you.

The sweetest scent her skin emits
Every serenity the plastic reflects
A trace of sunshine in the mist
And repressed desires of intimate flesh

Still trying to see you with these eyes too blind
Without a will to conduct such a simple mind
Clawed away to pieces when I didn’t want to see
The distorted reflection, of what became of me

With no arms to keep the seams together
And no warmth to suppress these childish fears
I will wander this barren earth alone
In all of fragility, and away from the tears

Fire is only as warm
As chilling is the air around
Water is only as quenching
as dry is the tongue it falls upon.
Those who savor every morsel
And beg for every bite upon their knees
One can only taste the sugars of nectar
When you **** the flower dry
Of every sweet, salvaged drop

Hollow-minded without a thought,
A numb mind assesses the world.
Amongst a static hiss of sound
Against feet untouched by ground
Demoted to the empty void of blue

An empty mind impotent of thoughts
A happy mind blissfully ignorant
An unconscious mind rendered numb
A dumb mind assesses the world

The benefit
of challenging anything
too comfortably established
isn’t so much
some clichéd grand expansion
of one’s worldview, but rather
a well-warranted reminder
that anyone claiming to have found
any conclusions is very likely
full of ****.

I love you dearly, humanity, but
you discover the world
like a toddler discovers his own foot,
and cling
to obsolete sensibilities
like trying to justify your belief in Santa Claus.

And you hate what you find
when you look too long,
because
you say that you discover the world
but what you so stupidly, so humanly
overlook is that the world bears herself
with no inhibitions, and even though
you can’t see everything immediately,
it’s all there; she has
nothing to prove to you. Yet the mystery
you so excruciatingly choose to maintain
is that even though the earth bares her skin
unashamed, you find her ****** absurd and
clothe her blatant body
in preconception, tragically dedicating
the decoding of your existence
to finding out
what truly lies beneath.

So perhaps, humanity, you should
embrace those who **** you off,
because you cushion your soul
with every reason to distance yourself
from any realization
that there is no inherent parallel
between every finite question
and the eternal answer,
unsatisfied with
the tantalizing ellipsis
the universe leaves you, and that the very fact
I even formed a sentence
is punctuated
by my mortality.

I swear I dwelt alone
Amongst a million other faces
In a city full of every opportunity
I cannot attain

I suppose you’ve found a native-born foreigner
And you’ve stopped by long enough
to hear
A voice too quiet speak…

I’m not anything phenomenal,
Black jacket-clad with a caged-up heart
I suppose you’ve found a kindred soul,
Just a stranger in a familiar land.

Tell me again why you are here?
I’ve heard every other reason,
They all end the same…
Fifteen years I’ve lived cold
and alone
With patches of warmth that
Only faded away.

Would you mind staying here,
my dear only friend?
I have empty ears that hunger for
words.
I have empty hands that clutch for
warmth.
An empty heart that could use your
touch, but
A mouth so full, they stitched it shut,
a tongue overflowing with words.
A brain that defied them, so they
Called it dumb, but
Could you please stay
and listen?

You pretty little thing
Sprouting yellow from the grass,
so delicately…
Staring into the sun
Rooted from the soil,
Declaring to the world that spring has come.
Careless feet trample you over;
The fate of all innocence,
bent and limp against the dirt.
They call you a ****, but it doesn’t stop you
from spreading your graceful seeds,
the wind as your messenger.
Hoping your words of hope wander
to the vicinity of fertile ground
As you wither back into the grass.

I’ve spent time I’d rather not count
hoping fruitlessly,
by an impenetrable sense of obligation
that can only belong to the delusional,
with the last specimen of hope
whose blood I have drained dry,
just waiting
for a disappointment
that I now expect.

I wake up every morning with
hopes of you,
and rush out of bed as though I haven’t waited months
just to hear you say something,
     just something
          only once…

I come home every night with
erased expectations
that dutifully regenerate
in stubbornly constant dreams
haunted by your face

Wake up.
It’s a new day
Just like yesterday
and every day before that
were meant to be.

My most persistent friends
have become six hours of jetlag
and the fading buzz of airline coffee--
as black and unforgiving as our red-eye flight,
as we wander German streets-- Füssen,
where the air is always crisp
and graceful, even awkwardly emerging
from an ugly winter.
Neuschwanstein castle sits mockingly
in the horizon-- the locals pass it by,
as I, some baffled foreigner
from Nowhere, Ohio,
where the streets bear gas stations
and the shameless scars
of recent construction (always
building, nothing built)
stand in disbelief.

Our thirst brings Jenny
and I to a Getränkeladen --
I sip on my first taste
of Apfelsaftschorle
as a roaring crowd
of local teens barge in,
with the violence of
a tornado we'd see in Xenia...
They speak in a crude,
indistinguishable slang
that Frau never could have
taught us
in room 322

Jenny hovers mindlessly
by the door-- contemplating
a bottle of Coca-Cola,
as the teenage stampede
shoves her off to the side--
fleeing out the door,
having bought nothing,
as the storekeeper sighs in disbelief.

They tore through
such a quaint little shop
with such an aimless recklessness,
one wouldn't think
a centuries-old castle
looms nonchalantly in the distance...

I was thirteen years old
and clueless--
Ben, who I believe is now
in juvie, and Ryan
stand on either side--
dumpy teenagers
in baggy clothes,
speaking in a crude,
brutal slang
that was invented in its usage.
We loitered every street
that would tolerate us,
in these exhausted Ohioan
suburbs, we tore through sidewalks
bearing unremarkable houses
in a sleepy neighborhood
with no grand castles nearby.

Our lazy strides, our ******
banter-- from Füssen, Germany,
to Who Cares, Ohio--
whether there's Neuschwanstein
or a Speedway to conquer,
there's never anything to do at home.

*So wie ist das Leben...

From the inception of our lives,
once sheltered in the warmth of the womb,
we wake to bright hospital lights
and our groaning mothers.

From the inception of our days
cocooned in the comfort of the blankets,
we rise to the nakedness
the frigid morning air.

Alarm clocks routinely ending
comfort we were never aware of
until we knew the bitterness
of being exposed to the world.

I've found a wonderful man,
everything I could have wanted--
one who listens, who tells me I'm still
pretty, even if I forego makeup and
revealing clothing.

One who straddles the fine line
of being chivalrous and never sexist,
protective but never possessive.
I cannot help but wonder,
what some recluse like me
could have ever done to deserve him.

Down to the details, even--
his shiny black hair, his innocent smile
(And I've always had a thing for foreign men...)
While I stumble as I walk, shrivel under the sunlight
and stutter on my words.

I've likely grown spoiled by him, and when I tell him
how much of a catch he truly is, he only says,
"There are plenty of other nice guys out there,
I'm nothing special."

Oh, Saleh, I could only smile, and
repress the memory
of what other 'nice guys' before you
have done to me.

I love you
irrationally, without reason,
And no matter how I try to cure myself
of you,
My eye stays drawn to the outline
Of your worn face and dissonant mind,
Your flaws that remind me that
We are all human—

I shouldn’t love you with this
hemmed up heart
I’ve let you destroy,
then sew back
so carelessly together
So that every stich, every oozing
Drop of messy adhesive keeping me
was by you.

And there is no rational reason
I should still love you,
and not the man who has not the heart
to ever intend the slightest of sin…
The pale angel who never deserved
some dysfunctional adulterer ,
who remains drawn to the dark and hateful
lust, of her favorite demon.

And perhaps us sinners deserve eachother;
I’ve grown to watch you live off of ***** by the
bottle and your abused old guitar—
And never could I pull myself together to fit
my shattered edges of disarray
into the blunt puzzle of their world.

They decry us in the absurdity
of our very existence,
A drunk and a misfit, children of a lesser
creation, as we stand against the bitter winds of hate.

It seethes and it cries
This animal contained inside

Gnawing so rabidly at raw, scathing wounds
Howling so desparatley to the unattainable full moon
Snarling, screaming-- dying, dreaming
The beast snarles from out its cage
Clawing away its tears of rage

Hidden fragments of a feeble human mind
Buried in the morals left so far behind
Condemned to fury, a degenerate of its race
Manifested into the form of a calm human face

I am neither
a war trophy
and indulgence
nor a hobby.

Because I live in a country
where women are no longer
legal property of their husbands,
I am, as of current
unavailable for mail order
due to the radically progressive
notion, that took years decades centuries
to develop
that a human female is, as a matter
of fact, a human.

You can, for a vicarious experience
leer at me
like cheap jewelry
then, appalled, denounce me
as too ugly for your usage
when I give the implication
that I am sentient.
And of course, I must be modest
Lest my tantalizingly average looks
provoke some poor man
into committing a crime
against humanity.

I dated some glassy-eyed narcissist
a while back
in a regrettable period of youth,
who indulgently stated
that his three favorite things
in the world
were food, music
and women.
(Charmed to be a novelty)
And a privileged, modern woman like me
Shouldn’t mind being consumed
like a pain-staking meal prepared
especially for him,
Or replaced in his tri-annual rotation
like the discovery of a new favorite song.

I continue to be
a favorite
thing, as somehow in 2012
the term “feminist”
continues to be the social equivalent
of “kitten strangler.”
And because my father
can no longer sell me
for a flock of sheep,
I no longer need to be more human.

There’s a vague sense of longing
that provokes the heartstrings
of the soul, in an unexplainable combination
of warmth and bitterness. It begs for a name,
but no word has found a way
to render it.

I mutter the crude anthem
of a perpetual Lazy Sunday,
banking on the anticipated
accomplishments, that dissolve
in laziness, by the light
of Monday morning.

I tried to speak of society
(but my words of the world
have rendered themselves redundant)
I tried to speak of love,
but my body has grown stiff
and numb to any attempt
of endearing touch
(my heart much the same…)
And I’ve long and regretfully acknowledged
that I’ve been put at a distance from the world.

There’s a strange sense of longing,
tingling in my unconscious soul,
emerging, coated in dusty residue
from its time incarcerated in storage.
It beckons me to feel the provoking tingle
of the fresh and bitter morning air,
and all I can do is stare out the window...

I used to think
that those who swept
their issues ‘under the
rug’ were weak
and lacked the maturity
to address their problems.

Now, thanks to you,
I think that that anyone
who disdains
sweeping anything
under the rug—
is just lucky
to never have had any
problem
immense enough
that if their mind slips
for a second long enough
to so much as think about it,
it makes their insides curl.

Bitterly
I miss the naiveté
of not understanding
the appeal of living
at the mercy of the timer
rather than tempting
the bomb.

I moved out in a backpack
of crumpled clothes
stuffed hastily in tears—resorting
to the bomb shelter of cowardice
so I won’t see us
collapse into eachother.

Maybe it was a better idea—I breathe
my own air, you breathe yours.
It’s calmer here, but I still
can’t stop hearing the silence
of that empty house
I know you hear right now.
I left with five pounds of baggage
on my shoulders, you shackled
two tons more to my ankle.
You know I had to leave,
I couldn’t bear the silence—
the last trace of himself
he left for you.

Dad showed me his new apartment;
we stared silently into off-white walls.
When he asked me
why I was so quiet, I muttered
“No reason.”
All I could think about
was why the absolute hell
would that ******* exchange his family
for some barren apartment
with nothing
to his name but a mattress without sheets
and weeks-untouched guitars
scattered across a hideous tan carpet,
accompanied only by silence.

I peeked in your medicine cabinet, too—
and painfully I read the labels.
Anti-anxiety, anti-depressant, anti-psychotic,
anti-everything they found wrong with you.

Mom still didn’t give you
your pocket knife collection back
that she locked up when you were
under suicide watch.
And I couldn’t dismiss the irony.
Dad, of all people you’d be the one
to end your life
with a hand-crafted Italian switchblade
previously under neat display
behind an immaculate glass door,
only to act in violence
no one could have anticipated.

I still don’t want to go home,
and I’ll give you any excuse
that sounds half-way rational.
But what I dread more than anything
is to hear that bitter silence—
ghosts of ugly words
we’ll never say to eachother.

There must be a word
for the bleak realization
of the systematic inhumanity
on which our world operates—
which carries the
self-directed disgust
of how desensitized we’ve
been— up until the moment
the thought shakes us
that our ending point
is a corpse—
like a child distraught to realize
his body is a separate entity
than the womb who
created him,
How he curses an indifferent god
who has left him naked,
How as a race we suffer
by the cruelty of a creator
to give us the concept
of eternity, yet
the tantalizing confines
of mortality.

Awoken so rudely from the bliss of a dream,
Some reverie it was, some reverie it was…
But from the vague traces I recall, perhaps it was a better place to be
Somewhere distant from here, deep into the abyssal sea
Nestled amongst the sand, away from the infertile land
Where no other faces reside than our own,
No other loves reside than our own…
But the sea, like our love, has dried into evaporation
Only an obscuring mist can reside
And you, and you alone, are my will to stay alive

The winds have retired
to stagnant air—a stillness
restrained by tension.
One that can only signify
a gnawing anticipation
of the unpredictable.

Anything that can be said
shouldn’t be, but the words
shunned to our minds
burn at our tongues—
and it only takes
one forlorn look
to remind you
that the storm will not
dissipate if you only
shut your window.

What have we become?
We died at the pinnacle
with the ruthless anticipation
of a stillborn infant—
a corpse before a body,
decimated by the arbitrary brutality
of nature.

I pray to a god I shouldn’t believe in
for some eventual day
of enlightenment—
where the dilemma lies, however,
isn’t whether this day
should occur,
but rather when we’ll strip out of
dignity, and stand in the nakedness
of how dearly we love
to torment ourselves.

I don’t see the same curiosity
in those once intent and happy
eyes, youthful spirit drained
by the aging of disappointment.

The boy who once took me
into the vast and curious night
Has adjusted to the daytime notion
That no one can live forever.

I still recall who you were
Before I thought you disappeared,
You journeyed long into what you thought
would be your inspiration—
You returned with vague reluctance
wearing a disheartened gaze;
the stare of the boy who sought his ways
in the life he prepares to live,
how in his disillusionment he cursed
the world in the core—yet he says
that all is well.

I think you once told me, that no one
is born a cynic.
Bitterness to the world
Is all but an empire
of crushed ideals
you once held dear,
my misanthropic friend.

I never thought it’d be me
The naked doll of plastic
Tossed consumer to consumer
*******
***** bucket
Who belongs to everyone
Except herself
So, **** me baby
You wouldn’t be the first
Don’t try to please me, I won’t feel it
Just use me up
‘till I’ve nothing more to give

The sorrow of humanity;
Paradoxical in that we believe
that the grey in our heart,
the dull ache of the soul
is contained within our borders.
Mankind’s common blindness,
But perhaps the poets and the saints will see…
Exclusion of human sorrow within the self,
the universal human condition.

In summertime I waited for you
Longing idly under August heat waves
I carried my disappointment through
Autumn, and kicked the leaves
that piled like clutter on the ground.
Sometimes I’d get a word from you,
A drizzle of rain in my life of drought—
But the water didn’t last long,
And all I had were puddles of you
That dried all too quickly.
In wintertime my soul would freeze
and the pain would numb away,
I’d curse the wind and count the days
Until Spring Salvation came my way.

From the inception of our lives,
once sheltered
by the innocent warmth of the womb,
we wake to bright hospital lights
and our groaning mothers.

From the inception every day,
out from our hazy world of dreams
cocooned in the comfort of a familiar bed,
we rise with reluctance
to the frigid morning air.

Alarm clocks routinely ending
comfort we were never aware of
until we knew the bitterness
of being exposed to the world.

You finally roll over,
after downing the remainder
of the wine you said you’d share with me
and lay the bottle to rest
beside the bed, in a graveyard of clutter
I periodically nag you to tidy up

so now
I can finally assure myself
with more than tenuous trust
that you will not confirm
your gazing over my shoulder
at my laptop screen
with that irritating ******* chuckle
when you see whatever I’m
privately trying to enjoy for myself

because
now it would make more sense
that I’m doing anything
other than typing, typing
furiously about how I can’t articulate
why I’ve admitted you
into my bed. Why
we mutually burn through seasons
of wasted time on Netflix, and
instinctively, someone’s head
falls within the soft hollow
of another’s shoulder, yet I cringe
the moment you reach over
to make the embrace
intentional

and why
when the remnants
of the drunken, desperate stumbling
to my then celibate bed
that spawned
what we can’t seem to finish
have long dissipated, do we
insist on carrying our dead within us

and why
once you turn back and see me,
do you retreat to the living room
to strum hopelessly on the
Les Paul you spent too much money on
and had shipped to my apartment
because you barely spend any time at yours,
as I type this
groggy and reaching
for what’s as reachable as mist

with only a room
between us, separately
we decode the repercussions
of being haphazard nomads
somehow assigned
to civilization.

There was a certain face today that did not return my usual gaze into the mirror. She was a faded, sore woman; one who saw the world through dull eyes and assessed her surroundings amongst a static hiss of white noise. She followed my gaze only vaguely, her frame worn thin as pale, sallow skin clung loosely to the bone. Behind a frayed curtain of an unkempt mane, perhaps there was the smallest trace of a youthful beauty hidden behind her decrepit, hardened shell, a trace that exposed itself discreetly and seldom. I told myself in vain that I did not know this worn woman, that the dull gaze she stared with under no circumstances belonged to my own face. Surely, I thought in a mindset detached, This woman’s misery is mere stranger to my own.

Stranger. The word comforted me, knowing that this wretched, coarse woman, was nothing to me but a stranger, staring coldly from the mirror so grimly into my eyes.

And all before you I stood uncertain
Descended between us, an iron curtain
With lips sewn silent, thoughts rendered null
With doused animosities in smoldering ashes

I forced you a smile, transparent deceit
You returned the favor with akin reluctance
Where were you, when these thoughts were ripe?
Our fruit has decayed and shed new seeds

I repress my childish curiosity,
And donned the indifference of maturity
But who are you? I know your name and face
Who are you, the stranger staring you down?
With eyes beneath a guarded glaze
In oblivion to every memory,
We stare at eachother in silence

It’s a very conflicting feeling
writing poetry in high school—
the world overlooks us
as we sulk for recognition,
hoping that one day
long after we’re too dead
to get any kind of satisfaction out of it
that our words will be immortalized
and important enough to appear
in the worn pages
of some high school kid’s English textbook.

It’s a very conflicting feeling indeed
to hear every teenage voice around you
sigh in a collective groan of boredom
when assigned to read what every
grey-haired scholar calls
a poetic masterpiece—
the highest caliber
of anything you write could ever hope to achieve.

It’s the most absurd irony
that a poet’s world is a binary one.
If you ever manage to crawl out
of the black pit of mediocre obscurity, maybe one day
(long after you’re dead, of course)
your greatest ambitions
can be actualized—the literary purging
of your soul, the collective narrative
of your world view can one day be immortalized
as the dull assignment
some overwhelmed honor’s student
can suffer through.