have you ever seem the mouth of a person on psychedelic drugs
their lips stretch in all directions
blissful eyelids creased feeling
little lines
a smile that says
welcome to the limitless universe

you and i drove to oregon in my nightmare
but only after the scary part was over
cruise control
streaks of morning color on the highway when we got to the coast
and drove over the rock
and drove over the wet sand
and drove into the sea
and the waves crashed over us as if to say
welcome to the limitless universe
and silently we answered

at four in the morning you rode your bike to the gas station
the streetlights bled out onto asphalt
ice slick
the illuminated glow-sign posted in the lot
said welcome to the limitless universe
street tires thin as ribbons
4 dollars in your pocket

during a dissociative episode i hit myself over and over
i am still learning how to be kind
i motioned to the spaces around me saying
there is nothing left to find
it is all here, i am here, welcome
to the limitless universe

you breaking my heart is not a cosmic response to all the people whose hearts i have broken
but it sure as hell feels that way and i’m
sorry for the numb that settles over my face to mask
the feelings it wouldn’t be fair to burden you with
so i burden myself and i welcome
the limitless universe

You liked my status.
We broke up months ago, but
You liked my status


He broke my heart, so
No matter what facebook says
We're not really friends


I see you're online
I do miss talking, but I've
Got nothing to say

Genius comes with revision
Like the way the best line in a poem delivers an emotional punch
That can't be described, only recreated
By other poets with their sharply focused emotions filtered through words like a camera lens.
Take your poem and photoshop it. Add in blurred edges for
Vagueness. Adjust for context.
Revise, revise again.
I want to revise the way I feel about you
Put it aside like a short story and return in a month with a red pen to make corrections
Love is for people who can't focus
Love is for people with bad photoshop skills
Who keep moving the eraser tool over and over your picture but can't seem to make you fade away
And the images are saved to a permanent file in my heart's hard drive
I want to delete the way I feel about you
It's the wrong extension, and a more experienced photographer would know not to make this kind of stupid mistake
Don't let your emotions get in the way of a good picture
Don't let a good picture get in the way of a major revision
Hold the pen in your hand and deliver an emotional punch
I want to punch the way I feel about you
Crossing you out in every stanza
Until revision makes me a genius
A poem with red lines over my heart.

If I pinned a sign to my shirtfront
Wrote the words "Love Me" in sharpie
And went out into the world alone
And everyone I met looked into my eyes and said
"I love you"
It would still not be enough
Unless you recognized my handwriting.

This is a poem about how I'm waiting
But it is not about how alternative I am or how I am writing a book in the coffee shop
I am not writing a book
I'm not writing a book about particle physics
I'm trying to figure out, instead, how love can be simultaneously the most pleasurable and painful feeling
In the entire universal lexicon of feelings
And why I work so hard to get you to say I LOVE YOU
Even though I know it's true from the way you move your face slightly to accommodate mine
And the way you hold me after we have rough *** as if to say
You are delicate and I will not break you
That's love
But I need to hear you say it
I need you to run to where I am sitting in this coffee shop listening to
Country western folk songs on college radio
And tell me
Come into my arms
I love you even when you let yourself go. Even when you dissolve into a million particles I cannot see or even comprehend
Like the Higgs Boson
Or the things they do in the LHC
And love is something, that, like those particles
I am not sure I understand
But it is something that I feel
And I feel it for you.

they say a goldfish has a memory of only a few seconds

and I think, how lovely, to love and forget

a hundred times a day.

but the wikipedia page on common misconceptions says really

their memory lasts up to several months.

Well if I could forget you every 30 days

that would suffice for me.

Wikipedia doesn’t say whether goldfish

even have the capacity to love

but if they do

it must be often, and sweet, and forgiving

unlike me

who gets hurt once

and never forgets.

at least not this month.

Q:  When is the right time to tell someone you love them?


A: When it's true.