hopelessness is a fish gasping in oxygen
I take in the air but I refuse to call this
breathing and I refuse to call it dying.
I call this a desert; an eternity missing
the shoreline, missing the ocean wave
tango before leaving with the moon. I
refuse to call it foolish to hope I can be
more than a carousel ride of mistakes,
a revolving door of regrets. "I am more
I am more" I whisper to the moon.

Hopelessness is losing all your senses
and believing in love, or music, belie-
ving you can dance with the shoreline
one more time even with the saltwater
in your lungs, even with the ocean
waves pulling you back because

"I am more, I am more" the moon whispers, and
you believe him.

i know a boy
who sits behind me
always tapping his pen
tapping
and tapping
fingertips spelling

i am anxious

i know a boy
who walks me to class
looks at me before I leave
his foot keeps
tapping
and tapping
and I keep waiting

for him to tell me goodbye
so I can go to class

i know a boy
who cannot stop

like a car alarm on
christmas morning

like police sirens
underwater

a boy
afraid of the pause
the rest, the wait, the halt
the slow motion of eyes meeting,
elbows accidentally touching
words becoming deep breaths,
hesitating instead

I know a boy
who is still a child

and over and over,
i loved him "still"

age extending by the severity of my mistakes
i am nothing but the hours I stay awake
everyone seems to know who they are
cutting jagged outlines of their personality with
cardboard boxes
friends afraid of waking up, diplomas in hand, graduating
but I am worried of staying up, stuck in this timeframe
watching lovers and childhood friends growing into
unrecognizable bodies
days becoming strange hellos and
short conversations

I imagine trees swaying
as if they are dancing to the sound of cars passing by
and I imagine looking at stars is a two way street
wishes being made from both sides of the cosmos
I imagine hope to be universal
and I imagine stray cats holding as much freedom
as the uncaged birds they gaze upon
both, hoping to be found

will I ever know the struggles of a man?
the loneliness of a stray?
the burden of a clock?
will I ever find my place in the Red Sea?
I sit unable to ask anyone this question,
no one understands.
--
it is 4:43 am
I am waiting to grow into an age I can look back at my life
and explain everything by saying
"I was a child"

and everyone will nod.

i imagine you golden
sun always behind you
peaks of light through the curve
of your neck, the
outlines of your jaw

i imagine you found
like anchor shaped shoulders
swimming the pacific
draped with blonde ribbons
and confetti dusk

i imagine pages of calender
flipped and turned
never spoken in familiar tones
our names never heard
only a simple thought before the bus

how did we get here?
backs facing from opposite sides of the bench
a reflex to turn my head away when you look at me
like a buried sin, a mumbled confession
half smiling to salvation

the moon floating on indigo sky
the way I would rest on your chest
specs of childhood and uncertainty
shaping into dying stars and serenity
a volcano eruption of broken promises
and we rest, like we have already been turned
to stone
we rest, like we have died before and again
we rest, like we already met in our next lives
i imagine this is what nirvana feels like

but in this truth,
you are not here, empty in the marks of november
pages left blank in the corners i folded to remember
your name

it is not fair to call you a
stranger
but it is not fair to call you
anything more

dear friend,

I sit criss-crossed on my bed, trying to
think of a way to start this poem my
mouth fidgets like some nervous kid's
fingertips right before a test. Or like a
coke addict inside an elevator. I don't
know how to say it. But
I hope we're friends long enough I'm
the first person you call when you get
a boyfriend. When you're waiting for
the bus, or as you're walking down the
construction jammed block, I hope you
want to tell me first.
I hope we're friends long enough I can
watch you evolve. Cutting your clean cut
corners and bending every straight edge
in your book because you love him, I hope
I see you lose your mind and find it in him.
Irrational or emotional, up or down I hope
I'll be there. In the corner of your peach
room, scared as hell.
I hope we're friends long enough I can
watch your music change. Your hair, the
way you do your make up.
I hope we're friends long enough to see
more presidents be elected,
I hope we're friends long enough we share
more Christmases, more birthdays, more
first days of school. Like a timeline of
pictures hanging from a clothespin, I hope
our memories extend around the equator.
I hope we're friends long enough I'm there
when you're dog dies, or when there's
another hurricane or tornado. Play card
games through the phone remind ourselves
all we have is trust.

and if not,
if time, or distance, or other people or even
just ourselves get in the way. Stretches us
out like an orange rubber band rusting to
snap. If we can't survive the grip of fate.

I hope through all your boyfriends, all the
hair cuts, all the make up experiments, all
the hard times and especially the best
times, if I couldn't be there
I just hope someone is.

the road looks like two aisles of Christmas lights
all turning their sides into the dim night
asleep in the comfort of sheets
bought by people who love them
the dogs homed to the fences of my neighbors are all asleep
the mice and the raccoons are walking back home
the birds have whispered their prayers
the stray cats are done for the day
all in the tug of night
ready to sleep
but the ants
and the cockroaches
the flies
and spiders
are all out
restless
passing by sleeping children
and drunk men
lining up the instruments
setting up the dance
free and safe
words on a soldier's tongue before
residue and ripped cloth are hung by their guns and boots
I am awake in perfect harmony
a balance of night and day
of an agreement the moon and sun had in the beginning of time
I am a pest
reincarnated from a man who's days and nights
were whiskey and the smell of a ******'s breath
luck and karma spelled on the bents of my body
I was not a good man
and now
I am nothing more than a spec of darkness in your vast blue sky
nothing more than stains on pearl walls
in the mornings I wake
dreaming of my body being shaped back into a pulse of a mans
promising to be better
I wake to a toddler staring down at me
step on me
hit me with your storybook or
hide me
release me to the corners I belong
I am nothing more but the ripped spine of a leaf
I am nothing more than the roughest patch of a child's palm
I have always been nothing more
I am nothing more
I am nothing
and yet I have
been given
time to
be

where's the meaningful tug
pulling each other from the waist
our palms resting on each other's side
the fast world of businessmen and
mothers, us, standing like a patched heart
saying our goodbyes

where's the moment of silence
the pause, the deep breath, the uncertain
exhale, where's the lip biting, the half smiling,
the word choking, the not knowing

standing like two dandelions in the open field
facing each other, with nothing to say except
for when the wind blows,
we give each other a hundred wishes

where's the promise to never forget each other
where's the clever comeback to hold back the tears

where's that one moment that sums up everything
the birthday card, the christmas present, the one last trip
where's the humbleness in our voice
like we were speaking in goodbye

you disappeared out of my life like a name I forgot
like a word on the top of my head

so sudden, yet so smooth
like tender rain
like a distant anthem

sometimes the significance is not in how it ends
but the parts of you that are left afterwords

sometimes is all the time

life is nothing but an ocean of waves
a wave of highs
a wave of lows
of sadness
of glee
of holding back
of letting go

a wave of loving your mother
a wave of forgetting to call

a wave of many friends
and then relying on the trust of a stranger

a wave of 3 am puking
and hangover mornings

a wave of coming home early
and listening to the quietness of your own home

and then a wave of the train rides knowing
someone is waiting for you
cooking the dinner
setting the table
checking the clock

there will be a time when
it seems as if the wind has stopped blowing
the moon and sun has gotten tired of the chase
this is the end

keep watching the tide,

life is nothing but an ocean of waves
a constant battle between shoreline
and sunset
you can never have both

you can't see the sand from the middle of the ocean
but the sun will never leave you
if you choose the shoreline

you'll never see the future from living in your past
but there will always be a pocket full of memories
for when the storm is coming
so keep moving on
follow the ocean

I stumble online, finding stories saying

"90 year old couple dies holding each other" and "Lovers find each other
again after 50 year separation" and I think of the modern day love story,

meeting in between bar stools, exchanging twitters and Instagrams
adding them on Facebook, waiting for the message button to light up

cutting every minute they won't reply into an exact science of what it
all means, we fall in love in front of our phone or our computer screens,

looking into the eyes of a camera and playing chopsticks on the skin
of our keyboards I stumble online, finding

these stories,
and I hope their true.

If we were on a voyage to find the Americas, when I believe its west
But you believe its east
We will get lost at sea together, going east
If I was blind and my body has only memorized the size of your hand and the edges of your knuckles
I will follow you to whatever death trap you are leading me to
When I'm covered in dirt and sweat, when my hair is not shiny and and my skin is not glowing
And you say " You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen,"
I will throw out all my make up
When I ask you if you want to go to dinner
And you say you have to work late but really, you're locking lips with your coworker
I'll say okay,
When we are in two different cities,
When my morning is your arm around a one night stand
I will call you and say "Good night" and fold your clothes
I will never know
People search years for the whole truth
People die wanting to know
When I find a girl's phone number tucked into the pockets of your jeans
I will ask you only one thing,
"Do you love me."

before the clock starved
our summer fling
I remember how
we would feast off
hour glass sand
spend every last minute
as if we just discovered
honey,
we would sweet tooth
away each other's edges
and the taste of
your mouth
I silver spoon fed you
with time
as if we can live forever
but
no one has ever
survived on sugar
and like us
no one has ever
tried

We are further away
than the word Aardvark  and Zymurgy
further than thought and paper
now and later
the start and forever
we could fit the solar system between the distance of our fingers
we are further than
stubborn minds and apologies
stubborn minds and acceptance
stubborn minds and stubborn minds
I love you more than fate loves keeping us apart
So I will call you a world wide emergency
have your picture in secret escape routes of North Korea and on the glass windows of 5 star restaurants
I'll scream out the memories we had on the corners of streets
hoping one day you will come up to me finishing my sentence
because distance is reachable.

And yet I sit on the train
Seeing specs of your freckles on an old mans cheek
I see your awkward figure on the teenage boy
Who adjusts his bones to fit the edges of the seat
So perfectly
Like you used to
I notice your hands on an ad for soda or gum
And I catch your sarcastic humor downstairs when I pick up the mail
And your tendency to take in the city when we walk on broadway
The naive look in your eye
The lift of your cheekbones
I see that everywhere
On faces I do not remember
And bodies so meaningless
Sometimes, I feel your spine again on people who I do not love
And I think of how
I would place my hands on you
you would not flinch
as if my palms were meant to fit on your back
I keep choosing to remember you everywhere I go
Because
Even though it's everywhere, all the time
That still is
not
enough

woman
we have fought this war before
do you remember this feeling
in the absence of dawn
our swords shaped like crescent moons
and our fists clenching into pond water
thin Lilly pads healing old soars
lovers spinning around the orbit
of a woman's thigh
spine trembling
I will not give up
because I have shared too many shades of indigo to be the other woman
I have given too much silk and lavender air to be a bedtime story
a midnight call
borrowed time
an option
a lie

woman
I have fought this war
limbs bending into someone who can win affection
If there ever was a way
I have given my palms to him
the curve of my body
the backs of my ears
my opposable thumbs
my sweet tooth
I have given him not everything
but the choice to take
anything

because fighting and war are two different things
one is of passion, unexpected,
the other are waves of the loudest ocean
a never ending grudge of today's and tomorrow's
a tug of war in the infinite universe
rooted from centuries of ancestors who have lost
a battle destined before birth
fighting and war are two different things
one will pass
the other won't
and that's when I know I have won

the sun does not set
automatic

trees of autumn do not
wither away its feathers
immediate

nor do the formation of
old souled clouds, or
the birth of flowers or
even death, even death
nature rots, and molds,
and decay, and spoils,

it all fades.

the childhood of lovers
consumed with these
slow deaths, through-
out the seasons, years
teach a simple moral

when the phone calls
become shorter, when
the meetings are more
meaningless, when the
plans are rescheduled,
they can blame the stars
for never just leaving,
always a subtle wave, or
a whisper goodnight, then
fading into someone else's
window or balcony, (they
have heard this story
before)

you called me and I called
back, you said "we don't
talk much" I agreed, I had
to go and I hung up before
you could've even say bye,

and that's kind of how its been for a while.

like an old dream, I stand in
my fantasy saying "I have been
here before."

old friends pass by an aged street
fathers and mothers missed till the
holidays inside worn out homes,
former professors and previous
neighbors all fleeting through the
same corners, "I have seen you
here before."

when I saw you, when I reminded
myself of all the street yelling, all
the cursing through the phone, the
door shutting, the plates breaking,
the walking home alone, crying,
when I saw you, when I reminded
myself of a time across the river,
when we sat on the line between
naive and forever, when we had
nothing to lose yet
everything to gain,

like a familiar scent in your new
apartment building, or an old
song from your childhood, when
we find familiar again, when we
pass by our adolescence, we hurry
a quick smile, we set up our kind
eyes, ask a simple question, be-
cause if we learned anything from
old dreams and old friends, its we
never have enough time, not even
in the past,
never will
and
never have.

we were up watching the sun rise,
the sky turning shades of a disco
ball; we watch through the blinds
the morning appear; the fathers
and 6 am runners snoozing their
alarm clock while we laid pinned
against the cotton sheets, drunk
off the summer haze, we became
restless of this life style, we were
young, eager like a young boy
sneaking into an R rated film, we
dipped our bodies into freedom
inside glass bottles and the mouths
of red eyes and blank stares.

summer is a fog of nights, vertigo
making promises on the backs of
people's necks and on the wrists
of our old friends, we promise we
will keep in touch, we will write
letters, we will call when the nights
get heavy, we take an oath to hold
forever in the palms of our hands
like a little girl clenching onto the
hourglass sand as she runs to her
father,

running with everything except the
fear of time running out, that is freedom.

woman
we have fought this war before
do you remember this feeling
in the absence of dawn
our swords shaped like crescent moons
and our fists clenching into pond water
thin Lilly pads healing old soars
lovers spinning around the orbit
of a woman's thigh
spine trembling like the
promised a child I told long ago
I will not give up
because I have shared too many shades of indigo to be the other woman
I have given too much silk and lavender air to be a bedtime story
a midnight call
borrowed time
an option
a lie

woman
I have fought this war
limbs bending into someone who can win affection
If there ever was a way
I have given my palms to him
the curve of my body
the backs of my ears
my opposable thumbs
my sweet tooth
I have given him not everything
but the choice to take
anything

because fighting and war are two different things
one is of passion, unexpected,
the other are waves of the loudest ocean
a never ending grudge of today's and tomorrow's
a tug of war in the infinite universe
rooted from centuries of ancestors who have lost
a battle destined before birth
fighting and war are two different things
one will pass
the other won't
and that's when I know I have won

i'm stuck
just stuck

between walls
and buildings

between soil
and sidewalk

between wood
and paint

body
and shadow

i'm just stuck

between music
and words

ocean
and city

between old
birthday cards
and childhood
photos

i'm the crease
of double sided
bad parenting

i'm the shadow
between all the
books, all the
poems

i'm every edge
every corner

i'm the rim between
sweaty palms
and sweet victory

and i'm just stuck here
being everyone's middle

and somehow that
is the loneliest place
to be.

my mind is a football stadium
filled with sports anchors
hallowing our conversation
in class
the other day

did I say this right?
did you mean your laugh?

i am nothing but a child!
mazed by a fable or
some sort of
fairy book story

i imagine the other day in
class, wanting it to be
all days
all moments
in different aisles of hallways
different shades of walls

i am still a child

picking on my mind
like a sunflower on valentines day
"will he like me"
"will he not"

and you have nothing to do with this
but you are everything to blame

my poems are just passive voices
asking you questions without saying your name
indirectly

it is 10:03 I am
lying between the covers of my bed
pondering when you told me you like music

i am listening to the
same song
over and over
each time,
thinking of you
differently

have I been here before
lying under sheets I have covered our bodies with
when the midnights have been chills
our naked feet relying on the warmth of corners and limbs
listening to airplane skies
and the echoes of infomercials sending radio waves through my thin walls
the sound of you breathing
as trees sway along my blinds
if I compared you sleeping to music
will it be harder to let go

the nights have always been the same
airport schedules have always followed routine
the trees and the cars passing by will always be stuck between my shades

all has happened
before and after you
and my poetry will never save me

frosted upon my bed
I am gazing the ceiling
an absence of stars
nothing but sky

and I think of a time
when inside your arms
it way okay

we always worry
who says "hello"
first

holding our breaths
at our white phones
in front of a tsunami,
ocean waves like
bear claws or
shark teeth, i stand
like a dandelion
and I take a step
forward, toward
everything yet no-
thing, because this
is a fragment of the
atlantic, this is left
over shreds of un-
loved tides, I walk
because if i take a
step and you push
me back, or if i take
a step and you pull
me toward aisles of
blue cigarette ash, I
know more than I
ever did just standing,

well my poem for you is short
there's nothing much to say

because of you,
I can stand in the
middle of a maze
in the bermuda triangle
in complete darkness,
inside the twilight zone,

still
never lost

Till the moon comes back
I am not your friend, your lover
I will not comfort you
I will be a stranger

And till the sun is down
I will not love you

I will distract myself with things
Like work and friends
Lie that we are over
That it has come to an end

And when the moon is finally home
I will give you my thoughts, my bones
Jinx everything good to me
Everything left from the shipwreck
And everything survived from the hurricane

Because when the moon is back
When he finally appears again
Everything is worth the risk

when I think of you
i think after rain smell
sky scrapers and bridges
tinted by fog, the busy streets
empty yet filled with grey
you carried yourself
like your body was a
tourist's favorite love poem
nothing but a weekend
for foreigners, your soft spots
were man made and
your spine was cemented
so it's easier for people to
step on you
I cared for you
after the tornadoes hit
when your oceans were hallow
and just sand
I did not resort in you
you were not five stars to me
you were constellations

I wonder where you are now
off being someone else's city
when you could've always just been
my home

I fear
the loneliness of an aged man

holding onto the grip of the bus
with his arthritis hands

with his soar knuckles
shook to his fingertips

I fear
the old woman's short temper
her waist resting against
her bags of groceries
on the bus seat

falling asleep to the sound of
children from the back

we all hear "dreams" differently

I fear the type of loneliness
not an empty island in the middle
of the pacific
but an apartment you have spent
your whole adult life in

like a bed that has not been moved
in decades
like forks and knives on the dinner
table pointed
to the same direction
always

I fear a type of solitude
where I'd see a family of three
passing by my lawn and
I can't imagine myself in their shoes

When I have missed a part of life
busy untangling myself from pride

I fear
the windowed grandfathers
the divorced elderly
the senior citizens with no family
who know the routes of the city bus
too well

never lost,
just not enough change

outside of my window
i watch the town turn into
a skeleton of the summertime
the trees have all starved themselves and withered away the road
covered in a dull cold fog
as if God himself ripped and erased the gold sketches of July
how odd I miss the afternoons I spent boxed in a cubicle
stacks and stacks of meaningless endless work on the edge of my desk,
like a poor boy in an assembly line

but when id come home
you'd lay me down like a hot cup of coffee
countdown my vertebrae with your fingertips
like a boy in an old attic
and i was your archive
i was that page in the encyclopedia
i was that record in the juxebox
and when id fall asleep, i was the kid  on Christmas Eve
maybe the world around us was blazing in dantes inferno
maybe the world ran out of fossil fuel
countries filed bankrupt
the apocalypse begun
or aliens attacked
maybe everyone fled to the moon
and the earth was nothing but a disposable waste
but what would i care
under your arms
i didnt even
complain about
the weather

i keep finding myself
a few inches away from the
finish line

always a smile too crooked
a laugh too loud
a few answers off
a couple of minutes too late
my age engraved in some
never enough
era

and somewhere in the months
i have mistaken every mistake
from "couldn't" to "didn't try"
efforts shaping into thoughts
effortlessly because of the fear
of rejection

i have let the best of me
get to me

--
while walking home yesterday
I saw a neighbor's cat on a window still
"here kitty, come down"
she waved her paw toward me
as if she understood "hello"
like she has done this a million times
she looked down at the ground
unable to jump
she froze
timid

and I figured
I am not
alone

lightning comes
before thunder

and
sometimes
you look at me
pause 

then inhale
then exhale

then you 
allow yourself
to crash down
fall to pieces
inside my arms
hang by 
my shoulders

with no intention
to be saved

but with every 
desire to be
heard

you allow yourself
to be this storm
one moment you
are my world

my streets infested 
with your rain
basement flooded
windshields soaked
my house filled
with the noise of you

next minute 
you are gone 
stripped down to 
crickets and the sound
of my body moving
you have moved on

you are someone else's
reason they cannot sleep
yet still you are my reason
i cannot sleep

i cannot stand the quiet
the stillness, the complete
darkness

i listen to my faucet

tiny drops of water
hittig the sink

i am settling for less
because i am tired

and i am ready to
give up

With you, I have forgotten how to love.
Would you believe me if I said there was once a time where I knew?
Where I knew how to slide my fingers into the spaces of someone else's,
Where I could hint how much I love you in the pauses of my sentence,
Would you believe me if I said there was once a time I knew?
When to give up, when to keep fighting
But with you, everything seems to be confusing
You spin me around, always leaving me dizzy
And I fall into the spaces you always give me,
Would you believe me if I said I've never known to how to love
Because they've never worked out, and this is no longer "practice"
You are as perfect as the curves of the moon
You are the northern lights of my lonely nights  
You are not the sun, or the far stars you can never tell apart
You are special
And nothing in my life could've taught me how to love you
I love you

stars are caught, frozen
in the honey jar of the sky while
your shirt reeks of bonfire wood
your eyes fall red, heavy
you watch me all dizzy
you lie your head on my lap
and close your eyes
wrapping your hands and arms
around my child thighs

you wanderer
soaking under the neon revelry of youth
loud music, fast cars, hard liquor
mixed with juice

and now I remember:
you would hold me
and I loved you the way a child
loved the beauty of an ocean
from pressing their face against
a fish tank
we weren't going to last
but I have never felt so close

the blinds cast
shadows of shapes

that remind me of
your everything

they taunt me with
the lining of your arms,
your spine, your neck,
your side, your every
thing

over, like our childhood
on the swing set of before
if I could choose a moment back
I don't know if I'd pick my finger tips reaching for the clouds or

when you turned your smooth spine over
and you opened your eyes
and told me you want every 2:15 AM to be like this night
just over
and
over

our bodies were like shoe strings
tied and knotted
not fitted
but held
and I'm scared I'll never find someone who can love me the way you did

like the way my oversized hands feel on the rust of a swing set now
nothing has changed except everything

when you held me that night
I reached my hands out to your back
my finger tips ran through your spine
and i wonder if this is what clouds feel like
or forever
or getting something back
when you thought it was over

give her your blessing
be happy for her, truly

when the sun and moon
meet, there is no fight for
the ocean. Somewhere
across the Atlantic is a
toddler walking back to
a parking lot; premature
fingers holding onto her
father because that is
what she was taught to
do. With the other, she
is pointing to warmth,
I do not know why. But
here, you are an aging
man, gazing at the tide
coming and going, that
is not a song you sing.
Give her the luck, you
do not know how to use.
All the goodness and
all the virtue you thought
drowned with the alcohol.
be happy for her, truly.

because when the sun
and moon meet, there
is no fight for the ocean.
Because when the sun
and moon meet, she
knows its time to go.