I gild myself
in a sheet of
plastic, thick enough
so that no one
can see through…

Like an Easter egg shell;
I let them hollow out
the sloppy insides,
and paint my delicate skin.

I am no individual, I am
cultivated, harvested,
like the simple product I am.
Protect me: my flesh is delicate,
They’ll throw me away
at the first sight of a crack.

You consume my comrades,
But I am lucky—
I am now but a pretty little shell,
Painted pink and lush to conceal the sallowness
of my frail and immaculate skin.

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.

I couldn’t help but notice the difference
between the smile worn before a camera,
and how one’s face upturns
much more beautifully
in that split second of joy,
before vanity adjusts the angle.

She clutches a toothless baby,
posing stiffly before a tacky blue backdrop,
standing faithfully
beside my indifferent father—
a dormant madness
written subtly into
the lines of his face,
smothered
by suburban stoicism.

But her impeccably tailored grin,
which beams predictably
from the outstretched lips
of every frustrated housewife,
screams the words
forever condemned to silence:
“******* it, Andy,
for the good of our family,
couldn’t you at least pretend
to be happy about something?”

But what she didn’t realize
is that for far too long,
he did.

He stares out the window
for hours,
that little stray cat we’ve taken in.
Watchful and serene by the warmth
of the daylight,
contemplating the sun.
His belly has grown plump since that
bitter December day, his fur now white
and clean—
And though we know he loves us when
the winter nights grow cold,
I can’t blame him.
The windowsill littered with fur,
As every warm, lazy summer day,
From out in the backyard you see
two curious yellow eyes,
trying to remember the smell
of freedom.

A jaded mind clogged
with empty thoughts
on an hour I should be sleeping
With sleep-heavy eyelids,
and an uneasy buzzing silence.

Life so fragile annihilated
Before we have time to double-take,
Or those who leave claw marks
As death drags them by the toes
(Clawing away the face of fate,
How did you survive?)

Shivers tiptoe through my bones
And all the faces
of the overlooked seem to surface…

The perils of a ghost's existence,
Staring upon the same cycle
of human foolishness.
Seeing your mistakes and trials
re-enacted for you to never forget.
(wandering, observing in
the shadows of man)

Human tears and stomach aches
to distract you from your fears
when they stare you in the face,
as you lower your eyes and weep.
What are we as humans,
crippled from birth, crawling
with innate self-importance
annihilated by chance?

They sing their songs to console themselves
Looming in their lonely rooms;
Transparent, feared by man
Watching them meet their fate.

I think it’s the sickest
part of our wiring
that the things we
long for the most intensely,
with the deepest
and most poignant ache
of the soul
are always the things
we’ve already told ourselves
will never return.

Hazy purity of morning
Beautiful uncertainty
Of the unblossomed bud of day

Walking down familiar halls
Searching for the face I love;
The clean scent of sanctuary
On freshly showered skin

I smile worth a hundred words
And keep my lips in silence.
Your hand in mine,
Our interlocked arms,
Together, you and I.

And as we go our separate ways
Our days unfolding the innocence
of optimistic morning sun,
we join again
in weary afternoon

The smell of your hair,
The hollow of your shoulder,
The light of my waning day.

And as evening ages, side by side
we sleep in nighttime’s shadows
before the sun awakens the sky
as we rise to the clear of morning.

How humanity suppresses its own nature
As people do what they feel they must,
Overlook their senses
As they resist the sharp pains of suffering,
As they forge a vile mimicry of happiness
to the next destination
Oh, how they forget
Or neglect to acknowledge
That at one point in time,
They wanted to drown the world
In a sea of their own tears

I used to believe
there could be somekind of
god, when I prayed
for someone like you.
Now that you’re not all
a prayer was meant to be,
maybe God’s as reckless
and as ungracefully human
as the drunk of you
and the misfit of me.

The taste of fear burns my tongue
Flesh to flesh, I am for you
Ravished to ruin, abused by masochism
You stare at me with a face glazed in sweat

Tell me what you're thinking: I'm a ***** little *****
See the words pass through a mind rendered hollow
Spread my legs and let the insects crawl in further

I've been used before, so why do you want me?
I've been claimed and pillaged by prior barbarians
Show me the devil behind your mask of virtue!
I've seen it all before

(You can kiss me all you want
but the memory will never erase
Pushed flat on my stomach by pure testosterone
A hell of a way to lose your innocence)

They sent Daddy home
from suicide watch—
he was bound to lose it someday.
Mom locked up the
kitchen knives.
She comes back to me,
her quivering voice
delivers some deluded promise,

“He said he won’t hurt himself,
I’m just being safe.”

The house is still silent with absence,
he stares at the wall—
hidden in the basement
like the last twenty thirty years
of some void of a life,
guarded by an eggshell
cracked by decades of denial.

You aged ten years in a weekend, Daddy,
And I always feared I’d bury you
before I witnessed my first grey hair,
silver like the lining
of some magical cloud
I can’t seem to distinguish
in this homogenous fog, looming
in the bleak and inescapable sky
hovering over me
with careless indifference

I knew there’d be a day like this,
only now has it come true.
I knew you couldn’t love me, Daddy,
You never loved you, too.

I have learned several
things I wish I never had to
know, from you.
Your bitterest lesson
being that only one side
of any outcome
can go about their lives
believing that fate is
deliberate enough
for any event to be
intended.

To drown out the murmurs
of doubt you’d rather dismiss
as unfounded paranoia,
you may say to yourself
that even though
you’ve recklessly left behind
a path of ruin
for everyone outside
of the delusion
to joylessly sweep up,
everything will eventually play out
in some sick game
of destiny—
naively overlooking
all the precious things
you’ve carelessly destroyed
to get yourself there.

No words will reach you. I’ve
reduced my one feeble wish
to hoping that one day
you’ll feel that same powerless rage
gut out every delicate tissue of your body
when you’re selfish enough to tell me
that there is any force in the universe
who manipulated the fabric of time
to give you one thing you want
that has thus far made
everyone else around you
needlessly miserable.

A sensitive creature-- every touch leaves a mark
you hide in the shadows, observing...
You see a world that frightens you, a world so stark--
the black and white shocking to your greyscale.

You run through the forests to clear your thoughts
running into Mother Nature's arms of soil
you forfeit the existence you've accumulated,
Screaming as your brain begins to boil, but

All I can say, is tell me what your eyes are seeing?
Don't throw away the thoughts you leave behind.
Tell me now, how this ugly world must look,
to your beautiful mind?

I wrote you a letter addressed to nowhere
(Wherever you may be)
And waited in my solitary room.
Foolish that I would expect a reply,
As it sat in a thickening sheet of dust
In a rusting mailbox.
(As I sat stupidly in idleness)

I came home one day, my faith dissolved
(Never once did I think your face)
To find a note tacked on the door.
Collecting my sinking heart, I stared into the ink
vacantly, before they became words.

“Every apology,” it read, “Could never define
my guilt.”
A cynical sigh left my lips, but my eyes kept reading…
“And I understand if you want to hear of me no more,
but read these words before you crumple this in your fist.
I remember this house, engraved into my mind.
I know you’re sitting in that lonely room.
I’ll tell you what happened, all those years
and maybe things could be the same again.
But first, could you please unlock your door?
                                        From, Nowhere.”

I was an idle child, hiding silently
behind old curtains, concealing my gaze
to the rain-dampened street
that beckoned me beyond the window.

There was an unquenchable thirst, a burning,
Irrepressible drive, which had followed me
Whispering down the nape of my neck,
Provoking me, summoning me
To the uncertain depths
Of the flower-bearing forest.

It has followed me well into the age
Where the fancies of childhood
Are replaced
By *****, drunken nights—
hunting, scavenging, like some id-ridden
savage, for the fleeting taste of adventure
that was suppressed  with painful gratuity
as we grounded our souls, and our longings
into the confines of the world.

So, I suppose that you are gone now, such a shame
And upon this plane of stone, I can scarcely trace your name

Surrounding you amongst the placid sea
A decrepit grave, for a love that used to be

The soft brown earth clings beneath my feet
A whistling wind around to lull me to sleep

And amongst the vague, serene blur of sound
Broken, is our last piece of common ground

It’s empty
here—and I do not mean
empty as is usually implied
regarding the barren apartment of any
minimum wage-earning college student
having just stumbled into society
from her mother’s house.

Naked walls stare dumbfounded
at their lonely inhabitant, itching for the embrace
of some picture frame
to kiss their forsaken skin, and soothe
the subtle damages of time,
embellish their existence
with purpose
lest they confront the world
bare as they were born into it—
     but that is not the reason why
it is empty here.

I like to think
that time will collect itself
like my fondness
for useless knickknacks—and will eventually react
with experience to create the byproduct
of familiarity, and thus
I can finally call
my lonesome apartment
‘home’— but the reason
it’s empty isn’t because
of naked walls or unfamiliarity,
or even because you aren’t here.
It’s because there isn’t a ‘you’
to even be missing—I abandoned
the house haunted by every ghost
I have ever called ‘you,’
and let my walls bear nothing but
the naked plaster of
an empty home.

you are
the puddle after the rain
the love that remains
the last animate ember
in a numb and unconscious soul
and I can still smell the smoke
long after you’ve been gone

From the marrow of my bones
I wanted to stare you down
Absorb your every detail
Witness your every movement
But with only the satisfaction
That came from flickers of a gaze
To negate your suspicion,
I looked away

We are stories told
through carbon bonds and
the smoky trail of cigarettes—
the distant chatter
from porches and balconies,
caught out of context
in a moment of humanity.
The faint light of
illuminated apartment windows,
inches parted curtains
unveiling another segment
of infinity.

Overlooking the lackluster glory
of Fairborn, Ohio
from the balcony of a student apartment,
the smoke from her cigarette vanishing
like the sweet impermanence of mortality,
Alena stares. Too pensive
to tend to the nearly-falling ashy tip
of her Camel Silver, our conversation stagnates.
Bonded intimately by
growing into the stumbling result
of our respective ****** childhoods—aching
for the familiarity of disaster— we find ourselves pondering
the answered question
of why we’re repeating history.

The street is nearly empty; the traffic sleeps.
Sparsely spaced cars
cruise on by like gypsy travelers.
8am is for commuters—a sensible time,
but 3:30 is for the lonely. A time to uncover
what daytime banishes
to the subconscious—
the peak time for catharsis
too inconvenient for civilization.
When insomniacs stare restlessly at ceilings,
and when the desperate tearfully pray;
when procrastinators type frantic essays,
when the chaste *******, when the stoic weep.

And then of course, there are poets like me
half-drunk on seven dollar tequila after working the night shift,
cultivating my loneliness. I can’t finish
your story for you, Alena, but I will say this:
there is a reason why advertisements
repeat their names a mind-numbing number of times.
They don’t necessarily think
you’re stupid enough to assume
their product is superior for that reason,
but they’re relying
on that one moment you’re rushed
into a dilemma, too frazzled to think.
You’ll reach for whatever name has been
shouted to you the most
just because it’s familiar. Of course,
that’s a terrible reason and not grounded
on anything sound, but something-something
caveman brain that evolved to escape
a ******* mastodon rather than
perpetuating poor life choices,
itches for familiarity.

And though anyone who says we write
our own stories has never looked beyond
the microcosm of their own apartment window
(or realized we don’t own them at all)
no one was ever prepared
to make any decision with consequence,
so of course we **** it up. But at least resist
the dark temptation of habit
like a type II diabetic before a chocolate cake.
We are stories, and the rest of infinity passes us by—
it sounds daunting, I know,
but I’ll be willing to bet that the bulk of it
is just the familiar perpetuating itself.

The Sun Maiden sets early today
An auburn beauty reluctant to show her face
The day is young, so scarsley noon,
Why, darling, must you fade so soon?

She finds her comfort in twilight's veil
Staring sadly upon her fraying kingdom
The withering rose, the waning moon
Why must beauties fall so soon?

So softly she fades
Into the premature night
Her burning eye and scarlet lip
Will dull to a lifeless grey

She will rise from her dust
And become the moon
My beautiful maiden, Why must you fade so soon?

I thought I was being saved
by Peter Pan
until they evicted us
from Neverland.
We thought we could outrun
debts higher than numbers
we could count—
the bills we must pay
to Foreverland,
when childhood became some distant
part of space-time
that mocks your
hilariously brief existence,
Where life is a fluorescent-lit
doctor’s waiting room
where you twiddle your thumbs
waiting for death to get around to you.

And then there’s the fear of death,
that an optimistically counted eighty years
of ******* are annulled by the
billions of years surrounding the beginning and end
of everything in existence you will ever possibly know—
ensuring that a Nobel Prize winner and a drunk on the
street, have essentially accomplished the same ******* thing:
existence.
And so goes the life of Foreverland…

(I buried my optimism
to see what it would do—
I’ve grown no fruit
and should I be surprised
the ground’s as barren as my faith in you?
I sold it up and gave it a price—
my ignorance, my security,
And you can have the sacrifice
I make to exist in a world
I’m sure I lost everything to.
So what is it now?
What’s a mortal like me to do?)

In your ’97 Mercury, that grumbles
like an arthritic old mare
at every cautious nudge
of her gas pedal, evoking the utterance
of “easy now, girl” at least twice a commute,
we’ll journey haphazardly
to wherever I-675 spits us back out.

With whiny indie music
harping cumbersome lyrics
aided by passion-silly guitar solos
blaring on ****** speakers, we’ll savor
the names of every exit
we pass by in defiance; accelerating through
sensible opportunities
to get gas somewhere and
turn back to obligation. Midwestern gypsies,
urban nomads, academically-disoriented
college students—whatever we are, reveling
in the aimless misadventures
of going ******* nowhere.

They raised us to pursue infinity,
we grew to embrace the absurd;
we press our handprints in the sand
and thank the gentle tide
for letting her shoreline’s scars
fade painlessly.

I wish
I could fill this
space, with something
more meaningful
than this ringing in my ears—
echoes of lost sentiments
that were never written down.

The innocent child
Wide eyes stare into a world
So beautifully unknown

Charlie crumpled up the script
that his mother left him as a note on the banister;
an ode to matronly passive-aggression
scrawled in haphazard cursive
on the back of a Meijer receipt when she was drunk.

While conducting a routine bedroom sweep
for any arbitrary evidence
to convict her son, yet again,
as the eternal family scapegoat,
Marilyn was far from pleased
to find his final disregard
of her bankrupt maternal instinct
clouded by inherited alcoholism
wadded up in his wastebasket.

Jaded by plot conventions, dodging foreshadow,
we scrapped our narratives and hopped in his car.
Untethered by destination, we drove through the rain
in the last hours to waste of a Sunday night.
Stopped at an intersection in an unfamiliar town,
he turned to me with an expectant smile:

“Where to now?”

With no surrounding traffic to rush our decision,
I glanced in both directions.

“Let’s turn left.”
“Where’s that lead?”

I squinted in the dark.
*“Wherever the hell we’re going.”

I kept your birthday
written in my calendar—
in a vague hope that by January,
we’d be able to speak again.
The naked skeletons of trees
bear the white virginal blossoms
of awakening springtime,
yet if you stared serenely
into the wind, you could still feel traces
of a bitter winter’s frost.

I try to search your eyes by
bashful glances, you withdraw
at every opportunity we could possible see
a trace of humanity within eachother.

You keep me well confined
within your silent tomb—freezing
away any warm-blooded soul
that dares to approach you.
Woman of ice, maiden of
annihilation— shrinking
into some faint white sliver,
waning into the vast night sky
of oppressive black.
Spring has come
for the rest of us, but
the ice never melted for you.
And If I weren’t certain,
you would only resist the light,
I would have tried to revive you.

The newborn leaves, the hopeful
blossoms—to you they are worthless;
your heart as bitter, and fatally
naïve, as the bleak winds of January,
your convictions as stubborn as permafrost.

Looking for the lost prophets
that seemed to slip right through the sand
through the cracks of time…

My thoughts of you bring a warm sensation
that I shouldn’t have
You’re my Peter Pan, something to fall upon
when the real world is null and grey.

I still think of you from time to time
and remember how I felt
when I’d talk to you for hours and hours
About particularly nothing at all,
my mind said.
But my heart found a reason to be
in you
And then you went
from my little world
where the sky was always grey and
saw its first glimpse of blue
from the light of your eyes,
shining into me.

It’s a lonely existence when you think about it,
I’m surrounded and isolated all at once.
Is there anyone in this world
who shares these thoughts that
echo in my mind?
I still think of you,
but why?

You disappeared and came right back
So sheepishly, as though I’d never welcome you
back into my door, into a dusty house.
I kept a spot open for you, and everyday
I stared at the empty space that
needed to be filled
in this quiet house
in my quiet mind, that needed someone
to reassure me
that I’m still human.

I still think of you even though you probably don’t of me.
I thought those thoughts when you walked away,
and then you saw me.
You saw me standing there all alone,
trying to fill the spot you left behind
they didn’t fit, no one could.

I thought for sure you’d forgotten me, but
it was as though I saw the ghost
of you.
You were just as I remembered,
and when I told you
of that empty space I tried to fill
and that artificial fluff I tried to stuff inside,
you told me
of all of those nights
you stayed up
And thought of me.
How you’d stare at my letters,
all the things
I’d given you.

I still think of you,
But I hate to think you’ve left a second time,
third, fourth, fifth?
I lost track when I accepted,
that I was going to live this life alone and old,
my dear Peter Pan.

I know that once you escape the clutches
of your overbearing Arab parents,
it will be something of a rabid dog
unchained
running from the mercy of his master.

You’ll experience a bold new world
they tried to conceal from you,
(in both ends of the extremes)
But perhaps after late night meals of
canned vegetables and ramen, you’ll
develop the lingering taste
in your mouth
for Mama’s Kenafeh.

You say you’ll never miss them,
but somehow I know
that one day,
be it just when you step into your dorm
or when you’re thirty-five and
pondering how to raise your own children--
you’ll have the vague intuition,
that perhaps your parents only wanted for you
what they never could have had,
before you dismiss the idea as nonsense.

You are mortal,
regardless of how you choose
to go about it. There will be
an infinite amount of time
surrounding the beginning
and end
of your hilariously brief existence.
The universe will go on without you.

You are one
out of seven billion
humans, inhabiting a planet
we are slowly destroying,
orbiting about
an un-noteworthy star
within a dull suburb of
the Milky Way Galaxy—
one out of billions, by the way—
which is expected
to eventually collide with Andromeda,
flinging Earth like a ping-pong ball
into oblivion.

No matter what you have done
with your life, or
how special you think you are,
we are all
born naked
and screaming,
and defecate when we die.
You will eventually be a corpse.
Your beautiful
     animate
          breathing body
will decompose into something
revolting.

If it’s any consolation, your mistakes
(like your achievements) mean nothing.
What have you got to lose?
Don’t discard the fruit
blemished only
by one unsightly spot—
Let its juices drip
savagely down your chin;
savor the frustratingly temporary
sweetness
that will never be tasted again.

He hides you from the world
and guides you by the hand
He speaks to you in softness
as you forget everything
outside his house near the river

We have our special crawlspace,
where the world forgets where we are
He smiles gently as you speak
without even thinking.

With your soul in the palm of his hand
he shows you to the water
the evening sun highlights your faces,
his skin glows in the light like honey
As the faded winter sun smiles upon
the young rosebuds waiting to bloom
In the springtime.

When the old man of the night
Dwindles into newborn dawn,
The conjoined soul feels a sigh
When the river must be crossed.
As he, still guiding your hand,
Navigating your soul
kisses you goodnight.
With a reluctant wave,
You watch him disappear;
Engulfed by the mists
On the other side of the river

Only as they lie
flat with defeat
on a rain-slicked sidewalk
will we remember how dearly
we loved the autumn leaves.

The trees stand half-naked,
sparsely adorned with
red and orange emblems
of mortality, dropping like
the gradual sands
of an hourglass. They
stare down desperately
at the passersby,
warning us
of the impending winter.

“Remember me,” they plea,
branches gesturing
toward a greying sky—
resisting entropy
like every creature
who finally realized
his impermanence.

I locked my Heart up in a musty closet,
we assumed it wouldn’t mind.
It had exhausted itself to ruin, resigned
to a useless slab of meat.
My brain muttered the order to me, sighing
As it sat counting to its day of demise.
Wallowing in a puddle of ennui,
Decaying, incarcerated within
the dankness of the skull.

We suffocated my Ambition,
short after seeing the dull, hopeful light
Which was then washed away
by the blinding god-rays of the All.

We staggered away to behold the spectacle,
Came back astonished, undermined…
Our bodies were then withdrawn from us,
our existence reduced to molecules

We saw a speck of ourselves on the Universal Map,
Like idiots we stared in disillusionment
when we knew that all our feeble Eyes could ever see
were mere inches in the legend.

The softness of your skin still itches at my fingertips
And your scent never seems to leave these sheets
How silly of me—to think you’d keep your promise
How silly of me—to think you’d ever return

Your thoughts are of another now, I’m not dumb
I still can’t help but wonder, what you’d look like right now
In this silent house that needs your voice
In this empty bed that needs your warmth

I know the tears I cry won’t be enough
And the words I write you'll never see
Lips sewn shut with screams that will never surface
A smile painted on and good humor forged
I know you can see behind my mask
Even though you convince yourself that I’m happy

Perhaps I should be sleeping
Midnight has long since passed
But perhaps I can stay a while
And think these thoughts of you

I still recall so vividly
Your broad smile and bright eyes
When I admitted that I loved you
Taking my hands, so small and pale
Within your large, dark ones

I still feel the coolness by the pond
When we stayed out till midnight
Staring at the water, hand in hand
Soul in soul
Pretending that we didn’t have parents
Who would scold us for missing curfew
Pretending that the serenity surrounding us
Would be eternal

I still remember your troubled glance
And puppy-dog eyes
When you said that this was goodbye
The softness of your skin, in our last embrace
Still itches at my skin

And it never seems to go away.

I still have your letters in my drawer,
The birthday cards your little sisters drew
The delightfully tacky hat on my coat tree
The condoms that we ended up never using
The shirt you lent me
When I wore a tank top in 40 degree weather
As we laughed at my foolishness
That you never took back
That I still inhale to remember your scent

Perhaps it is silly
That I still don’t think you should be gone
But I’d be harassing you to say it
And when I see you passing by
I smile and ask how you are doing

My little flower,
still a seed
planted gently in the ground.
Soaking up the water
Basking in soft, most soil
waiting.
Sprouting surely, you only teethe
through the dirt.
You’re no flower yet,
But I know your bud will bloom.

Your petals will be bright and lush;
your stem so green and strong.
You only peek through the soil,
but there are careless feet and snarling animals
to take you away.
But never worry, I’ll stand near
and keep the weeds at bay.

You’re beautiful in the skin
But ugly down in your bones
(And for that I despise you.)
You flash a rehearsed smile
And let them think you otherwise…
Foolish men love a crazy girl,
And off the glares of jealous women,
you feed.
I anticipate the day you’re wrinkled and ugly
(Though I will be too.)
But perhaps I could relish in the fact
That you no longer can hide behind
your ugliness
in pretty skin.

You know I’ve been
far too scatterbrained
to write anything
reasonably coherent.
But frankly,
the word “coherence”
has no place
if I were to truthfully describe
anything that’s happened
between you and I.

I could sit here
and type fruitlessly
until I conceived
the perfect
soul-wrenching metaphor
to illustrate every
painful nuance
of our struggle.
But, unfortunately
there is nothing
terribly poetic
about absolute
*******.

I suppose
I could say that
we were “the dream
that eventually got
its rude awakening” but
that’s stupidly cliché,
and all I want to do
is fall back asleep.

Soft summer evening light
Warm potent silence in dimming air
A backyard bonfire warms my hands and
caresses my face,
Its smell intoxicating.
A strange emptiness stings when I know
that every serenity of life is worthless
without the warmth of your skin
radiating into me.

Got tired of pretending that this worn pillow
could ever be the soft hollow of your shoulder
Stumbled over to the mirror to see how much life has faded
and the face staring back agrees with everything you said

A muted tongue drained from every word said to you
"I love you, why won't you look at me?"
Supressed into silence, and belittled into guilt,
"The little gifts in life are not for all to enjoy."

The magic of the first
leaves our ****** hearts a flutter
The second pushes the residue away
Sweet words sour to a distant mutter
Keeps the wishes of our cooling hearts at bay

I dreamt I found you in the meadow—nestled
happily in the forgiving arms
of mother earth.
You had since grown accustomed
To a life of wilderness – of hummingbirds
and weeping trees, the dirt
and sunshine, and
on your knees
you prayed, to your newfound god
of the soil.

I beckoned you near, and you froze
Unsure of the language of the verbose
world you came from
and had forgotten.

I once walked carefully, step by step
Avoiding the savage mud,
yet instead
I ran toward you, and let
my garments
of civilization tatter.

Please tell me why I stand here, for I
have forgotten,
And perhaps, if You’ll forgive me,
it’s better that I stay here…

Sing the anthem of the lonley people, maybe we could find
eachother within a barren labyrinth
forged within our minds...
Say what you want, I still mutter your name
on these restless, silent nights, as I think I've forgotten your face...

It's a useless endeavor, to cure this void--
Born with a hole in my heart, I've stared like a ragged child
into vast and uncertain a universe
that will never hear my name, hopelessly trying
to learn its ways...

It's people like you and I, my friend, why seven billion isn't enough.
I've wandered to every corner, searched every stoic face
for an exception.
It's a loneliness that is incurable-- one that stares longingly out of windows,
stands silently in roaring crowds, sighs wistfully in empty rooms,
and weeps bitterly onto old bedsheets, watching and waiting as the world rushes by.

In our own vanities, we drown
And beneath our skins
the delicate insides rot

The world has divided in two:
Those who do, but shed the blame
and those who carry its burden

With plastic smiles rotting on our faces
And hollow words upon our tongues
The shield we bear to keep our humanity at bay

Why would we be deceiving
our fellow human beings?
Staring at eachother without seeing
Hearing our words without listening
Blind and deaf, mute and dumb
Numb to our world in its every essence

I let them hollow me out,
(I didn’t want the insides anymore)
They gutted my heart, mummified my soul—
(So I will not decay anymore)

I have sanitized
my humanity, and now
I am immune.
(It’s lovely not to feel anymore…)

Life as a shell
is an existence surprisingly pleasant
but I almost miss
that defective little mind of mine…
(But the memories do not hurt anymore)

There’s a strange feeling of soreness, though,
that aches where I used to have a soul—
phantom pains of discarded passion,
but thankfully I do not hunger
(I no longer have a stomach anymore)

You uproot me from my convictions
and expose my skin to air,
dusting away
with saintly tenderness
the accumulated crumbs of earth
with which I have buried myself.
I breathe
as an organism full of blood;
with the vigor of life
and the comfort of purpose.

I wanted to thank someone
for you;
as though, just maybe,
there could be something
beyond us, cognizant
of my microscopic existence,
sending me with grace
a signal of hope, blooming
out of the impossible soil of chaos.

I think I could be a theist
if I spent enough time with you—
a perfect and strange little blessing
to an imperfect and strange little life.
Sometimes I wonder
if someone put you here,
but it’s simply too human
to think the world beautiful
and believe it was there for me
to find it that way.

I want to write a letter to everyone
who ever made me question anything, from
the nature of the universe to
what tastes best on toast, because
this is the only way I know how
to say thank you—thank you for not letting me
stay the person I was at
any moment when I thought
I had come to any conclusions.

And even though
I spend most of my thoughts
creating answers that are only to terminate
curiosities too abstract
to even be a question, I’ll admit
that I try to tie things together that
don’t even have strings— and I sulk
in frustration that I can’t even find them,
things that don’t even know
that they should exist. So I take my
pencil of imagination and draw
lines between everything and end up
with a blueprint
of some hypothetical reality—because
we say that we discover the world
but what we so stupidly, so humanly
overlook is that the world bears herself
to us with no inhibitions, and even though
we can’t see everything immediately,
it’s all there; she has
nothing to prove to us. Yet the mystery
is that even though the earth bares her skin
unashamed, we find her ****** absurd and
clothe her blatant body
in preconception, tragically dedicating
the decoding our existence
to finding out
what truly lies beneath.

I want to thank everyone
who has ever ****** me off, or negated
any idea I’ve held too dear, because
you get me closer to realizing
that there is no parallel
between my finite questions
and the eternal answer, and the very fact
I even formed a sentence
is punctuated
by my mortality.

I lost my faith in art—
So I burnt every unfinished creation
haunting me in this paint-stained room
to ashes.

I lost my faith in poetry—
And I stare at my 3am
Purgings of the soul
With a sigh.

I lost my faith in beauty—
And I don’t know what to look into when
I see your innocent eyes

And yet I remember how a painting
Can halt my every knowledge of reality
And yet in me there must somewhere lie
The silent fire of passionate words
And still I remember the warmth of your shelter
In the bitter winter months…

But I’ve lost my faith in myself—
And I simply gaze at this world in no direction.