The ocean and I
Talked about you last night,
The moon came down
To see my sorrows drown,
And my dreams float
On a beautiful boat
That carries your name.

And I lay in the sand,
Held it, pretending it was your hand,
And it just slipped through again.
The stars still pass through my heart -
The light dances with the dark -
And I wish for things that haven’t been.

The ocean and I
Talked about you last night.
It laughed our jokes,
And cried at our fractures.
Never did I speak in verse, but in chapters,
Whenever your name I spoke,
As thoughts of you soak me in smiles.

My skin writes in Braille
Whenever I think of you.
Every bit, every detail,
Of every inch of you
Comes into the light;
And you’ll never know
The ocean and I talk about you at night.

Jasmine knew
Stones are telling to a river
The lines would be my blood

یاسمن می دانست
سنگ ها به رود می گویند
خط ها باید خون من باشند

don't tell me about your first love-
tell me about your last.

tell me how he made you believe in love
when you thought your time had passed.

tell me how he made you feel
when you thought the butterflies were dead.

tell me how you tried silencing your heart
and all the crazy thoughts in your head.

tell me how he taught you
to love just a little bit again.

tell me how it was like taking your first step
how it was like to once more begin.

tell me how you thought your heart was dead
how you'd been hurt too many times before

tell me how you saw yourself falling for him
and constantly wanting more.

tell me how you thought you weren't worthy of love
tell me how all those thoughts vanished with one touch

a year, a decade, a century
how no time with him was too much

tell me how he excites you
how you're seeing colors you didn't know existed.

tell me how you finally gave in to giving love another chance
how you couldn't fight it, no matter hard you resisted.

tell me how you thought that love just wasn't for you
tell me how being with him makes you feel love is just for you.

tell me how the world seems just a little better
tell me how the grass is greener, the sky a little more blue.

tell me about your last love;
the one who really stayed.

how he's the missing piece of the puzzle
the one for whom you always prayed.

tell me about your last one
the one standing by your bed.

the one you hold on to a second too long
before you forever rested your head.

i wrote a lot of great poetry when i was in love
i wrote even better poetry when i was in pain
i wrote the best poetry when i realized that the two emotions were actually the same.

fingers tapping against your thigh, music note mumblings. subtract everyone else and watch the feeling
m
  u
     l
       t
         i
           p
              l
                y
disassemble and reassemble the ensemble and allocate your earnings as earnestly as you can without appearing overeager. overhearing a conspiracy between my lips and your neck. a secret isn't a secret unless you whisper it, so do it, make sure the russians don't hear us as they rush off to give reports on that look I just gave you, the one that is oh so telling. reveling in it. living in the revelation of your skin, pouring down your presence like honey, like sweet molasses dripping thick and sweet, simmering under the sun, glimmering in the water like a jewel, jealous and ****, painful and dark and dazzling. beating only in anatomical hearts, out of tune, cacophony and cruel crimson, missing someone not something, left wanting and waning in the light of a lopsided moon, farsighted and fingers that prune in purple light rippling across the walls, willing to travel the planes of your body, embodied travesty traversing the sahara, dunes doomed to be swept away by the wind, breaking and kept away, each grain unable to touch one another more than once, gorgeous enough to be pain, staking your claim on misery before the misers bury it in their own backyards, backwards discovery, a convenient amnesia, believing ruses and runes to decipher in delicate dictum like tricking a language into translating itself.

almost too much of not enough.

In my dreams, we are giants
with palms wide enough to hold the earth in,
keeping it still, freezing the human
machinations below and watching them
run about like ants when we let go.

In my dreams, you take the stars
out of my eyes and put them
in your mouth, constellations on
your tongue that I can't make out, and then
we make out, those stars mingling
between us, sizzling and sharp, cutting
the insides of my cheeks like razor blades.

In my dreams, you are hungry
and cruel, so when I wake up to the ruins
of a love that looks more like a suicide
attempt than a refuge, I find myself
wishing you had the decency to hate me.

In my dreams, we're nightmares.
In my dreams, you set everything on fire.
In my dreams, smoke curls down our throats,
and in the morning, you taste like ash.

Will the world look so beautiful again
as sunset through a broken window?

With greasy hands I try
to capture youth as
a leech with a camera.

Will the light fall on her face, like it did
in the festival - like it did
when her eyes caught the sun.

I don’t like myself when I’m awake.

I, in the absence of dreams where the coaster spins
and the smell of sugared doughnuts lingers,
was the sweaty hands in hers.
Wet knees, wet boxers, wet grass
Backs to the sunset and skyline high on
plasterboard roofs, spotted chimneys. The fire and
the smell, the screech of the tubetrain -
the squirm from the darkness.
Gravel tracks, picking away the small stones
from pinkish tramlines on her thighs.
The tightness of her skirt on her knees, glitter eyed,
blush eyes, fosters cans stamped in the bush,
Bad ****, every bad smell-
the light we see is
plugholed but free from the sewer.
Sewered but free in the ocean.

Love bottler, the skinny fingered
Love bottler. I stamped on the cans.

I don’t like myself when I’m awake.
Dreaming the sickness of my thoughts.
Memory-sick, it hurts til it doesn’t.