I have wearied of grand romances
Of deep sighs and swooning trances
Of doting gentlemen’s advances
And all manner of courtship play
I am tired of love confessions
And of dizzied, dazed professions
And of unrestrained obsessions
I grow sicker day by day

I once dreamed of adoration
Went quite mad for veneration
Laughing, flirting with temptation
The queen in Camelot
The lonely, lovely Guinevere
Dainty-masked with girlish fear
But when King Arthur wasn’t near
Dreaming of Sir Lancelot

These days I want no noble knight
Despite my seeming helpless plight
I wish to set myself aright
And tread upon the ground
Yet here I am, pedestal-high
Too close to the dazzling sky
As my life keeps passing by
And boys keep running round

I’ve let myself grow much too proud
Drew up arrogance from the crowd
Heard the cheering, bright and loud
The queen in Camelot
And though I had my faithful Sir
Still my heart was all astir
With flying fancies, all a blur
For Guinevere and Lancelot

These fantasies have grown too old
I’d rather let my bed grow cold
For I have wearied of being told
“You are mine to keep”
Men have tired me to the core
Left me sad and sick and sore
And have turned into such a chore
And I’d much rather sleep

What blasphemy for a maiden fair
To toss such doting to the air
To turn away without much care
Though queen in Camelot
But I have withered, I have tired
Felt as if my brain’s been mired
And find not Arthur much desired
Nor dashing Lancelot

Is it so bad to want respite
From endless longing, day and night?
This constant charm becomes too trite
With ever staler tone
I only wish to rest a while
Recover from incessant guile
Forget the weight of lovers’ trial
And simply be alone

“Studying at ------- University
Would afford me so many opportunities
That I could not find elsewhere…”

Personal statements are always BS
Filled with flowery phrases that
No one
In her right mind would ever actually use
My sentences had started to look like
A thesaurus had come along
And vomited up last night's party all over them
Who even talks this way?
Who can take himself so seriously as to think
That his pompous-assery would go unnoticed?
Moreover,
Who seriously wants to read all of this
Pretentiousness
Splattered all over the page
As though some English major's senior thesis
Had been brutally murdered?

“I am ready to bring my own
Determination and
Motivation
Into the equation to improve the
Lives of patients.”

I am disgusted with myself
For trying so hard
To impress a committee of nameless, faceless
Academics
To convince them
With fancy words and pretty sentences
That I am the best person ever
The more I write
The more I wonder if it even matters
If it's really so important for me to become a
Well Connected PhD
Doctor of Philosophy
Engineer Extraordinaire
Patients are going to keep dying
And there's no guarantee I can do a **** thing about it

“The Institute of Biomedical Engineering teaches engineers
To work side by side with clinicians to deliver
Meaningful healthcare results.”

Meaningful
Healthcare
Results
What a wonderfully vague phrase
It means nothing, really
Not without context
But it's Impressive and Dynamic
A phrase a committee would salivate over
(Because "drool" is too simple a word for them)
It's not enough for me to just come out and say how
For my entire life
I've dreamed of myself as Superwoman
Armed with engineering skills and a well-stocked lab
Ready to take down human suffering
I just want to heal people
And blood makes me faint
So I can't be a doctor
But I know my way around a lab now
And I can make medicines
In fact, that's all I want to do
Is to make new, better medicines
To grow cells and tissues and cures in my bioreactors
To make someone, anyone's life a little less painful
And these things cannot be told in florid prose
Because these are the messy parts of life
These are the parts that ache and ooze and itch
Keeping us up all night
Until words blur together
And all that's left are limbs and bodies and faces
So you can throw your thesaurus out the window
Because it's of no use here
None of the BS is helping anyone
Pretty words aren't going to make
A failing heart grow back
And this personal statement isn't going to
Purge anyone's cancer from their veins
But this person
Untroubled by higher diction
Might just do something useful

You came crashing into me that night when there was a super moon
shining through the blinds onto an unmade bed where you laid
your head against the softness of my chest and kissed between
my two moons
holding me to their atmosphere and brightening
the stars that fell from my mouth with every sigh.
I closed my eyes and let you lead me through,
and through, and through again until I was tired and slow
and you kissed me so good.
You cradled my head with light kisses to spread the pressure
from the bruise of hitting the headboard when you moved me-
how you moved me and how good that felt to be intertwined with a body
that was thick and warm and made me feel
enticed with how your fingers would run against my thighs.
My lips were sore from your tongue on their insides,
rolled over to see your glistening body come into mine
so simply with tension breathing between the space of our next kiss.
Our sleepless night turned into a rushing morning where the aqua twilight
would fade over your smile as you pulled back from my lips.
Your skin was warm and the air was cold as you pulled up the covers
to darken the sky we created with the steam from our bodies and from
being so close and so complete in a single moment
in a simple night
where our beauty was felt with only our hands.

This house doesn't need ghosts to scare anyone
The walls take sanity for fun
They'll hex you with whispers in tongue
Arrive with confidence - leave with none
The longer you stay, the further undone
The air stifles, it thickens and numbs
It weighs down on you like tons
Constricting every cell, it stuns
Skeletons in these closets tote guns
Heat comes at you like fire from the mouth of dragons
I mean heat like blaze of a million suns
All the while, your mind weakens and maddens
This house kills souls like it's a soul assassin
A suffering only the wicked can fathom

Forever we used to whisper
While Forever was just a vapor
Here and gone
Ripped as far as
the distance in your eyes
We said Forever..
But who knew Forever dies?

"I'm done crying."
As the tears rolled down her cheek.

when he's gone,
i told myself,
it'll be no different
than it is now.

when he's gone,
you'll miss him, yes,
but you didn't see
him much anyway.

his long, gray beard,
his reoccurring, rough laugh,
and his hilarious, yet silly jokes
resound in your head
over
    and over
        and over again.

even now, when his body
is only ashes,
you know that you were wrong;
you always were.